I have a theory that the Strong Gods of the 1920s are reanimating in the 2020s. We are
helpless to prevent the revenge of history.
Let's go through them together. First, the view there are fundamental biological
differences between classes of race, otherwise known as 'Scientific Racism.'
Galton had proposed this in the 1880s, but it took until the 1920s and '30s to gestate into
a political program. According to the scientific racist, humanity can be divided into
classes and objectively ranked. There were the Nordics and Anglo-Saxons (regarded,
sometimes, as 'The Great Race'); the inferior Southern Europeans, consisting of the Greeks
(Turks…), Spanish, Portuguese, and Southern Italians; and odd degenerates, like the Irish,
Basque, and Rural Scots. Going East, we find the feudal Slavs (the Russians believing
themselves to be superior to their country bumpkin relatives); the repressive, autocratic,
medieval Middle Eastern kingdoms; and, according to some race scientists, the dynamic,
hard-working, highly intelligent, but culturally backwards Chinese.
World War II killed scientific racism, but largely through political rather than
scientific means. Educated elites in the post-war era came to believe that race science
would inevitably lead to genocide and colonialism. A good example of this attitude is the
promulgation of the UNESCO statements on the racial equality of mankind: the Statement
on race (Paris, July 1950); and the Statement on the nature of race and race
differences (Paris, June 1951). Both asserted that mankind was biologically equal.
Biologists objected at the time to these declarations, arguing that although scientific
racism was bogus pseudo-science, it was a matter to be resolved through evidence rather
than political fiat.
But even if that was so, it was beside the point. Consider the following
thought experiment: you are a biologist carrying out research into physiological
differences between Northern English factory workers and Bangladeshi farmers. Let's say you
have two possible theses: Thesis A and Thesis B. Would you abandon your research if it
turned out Thesis B increased the likelihood of the Holocaust being repeated by 2%? Or, if
it was too late to abandon your research, would you suppress Thesis B, even if the evidence
showed otherwise? If a possible result of your research is fascism, or colonial
extermination, or genocide, then the question is one of evidence but the morality of the
inquiry itself. A good example of this is the Bell Curve debacle, in which the study of
racial differences in IQ was criticised for, amongst other things, 'being fascistic.'
The Holocaust, in the post-war Theology, has infinite negative utility. The 2% figure
above could be replaced with 1% or 0.00000001%, it doesn't really matter. Does your action
increase the likelihood of the Worst Possible Outcome? If so, then don't even
think about it. Theodore Adorno, and the wider Frankfurt School, extended this logic to all
forms of 'authoritarian' behaviour. Insistence on the authority of the Church, of the
Father, of the School, of the Court, all manner of 'conventional social norms', could be
coded in terms of their likelihood to lead to Fascism. All of the following would lead to a
higher score in the 'F-Scale':
It is best to see the UNESCO rejections of scientific racism as a wider project
against a variety of cultural beliefs. The American Anthropological Association (AAA)
statement of Human Rights in 1947 made this clear when it asserted:
'Man, biologically, is one.'
It is not just race that has no biological difference, but every traditional social
category. Differences between social classes are arbitrary (except when meritocratic), just
as differences between gender, nationality, and race are a load of Rubbish. Popularly, this
thesis is known as 'Blank Slatism.'
Most educated Westerners, from the 1960s and '70s onwards as blank-slatism percolated
more widely, have lived in a world where asserting biological differences between
traditional social groups, whether sexual, national, or racial, is obviously false. It has
generated a vast governmental program to undo the equalities which remain, for any that do
exist, whether between races, gender, or between the 'smart' and the 'dull' in school, must
be social rather than essential. But can you feel it? The air is changing. The old racial
science of the 1930s is returning, assisted by two relatively recent, post-2016 changes.
First, media gatekeeping has completely atrophied and now cultural elites can no
longer suppress the return of race science. X is replete with biological racists asserting
all the old tropes, from the corruption of Sicilians and Irishmen, to the laziness and
stupidity of African Americans, to the East Asian 'bugman' obsession with maximising stats.
The bizarre measurements, of 'cephalic index', of the 'Great Races', of 'the classical
form', are returning in charts little different from their 1920s predecessors.
Second, WWII has almost completely passed out of living memory. Dismantling the so-
called 'Strong Gods' of the 1930s (Nationalism, Crown, Church) had been justified on the
ground it would ensure Never Again. In the 1980s, Allan Bloom asked why modern
youths had no strong moral views, no powerful 'prejudices' they would defend; why were they
so blandly tolerant and meekly nice? The answer was that anything else was a little scary,
a little 'problematic', just a bit 'off': it might risk the resurrection of an Evil so
immense that it had to be stopped at any cost.
All of this goes deep into the mythos of WWII. The persecution of the Jewish people is
the central pillar in showing why the Allies were the 'good guys.' Initially, their motives
were not so clear. The Allies entered the war on the basis of mutual defence treaties in
much the same manner as they had in WWI. Churchill was pro-Mussolini and was a committed
eugenicist. Nicholson Baker, the modernist author, published a book called Human
Smoke which argued this point and, more controversially, suggested the Allies should
never have fought in the first place. Historians blasted him into smithereens for the
latter claim but were unable to substantially challenge the former. After all, the Allies
were somewhat unconcerned by the persecution of the Jews (taking in relatively few
refugees), and were clearly far more motivated by the threat of Germany to their
territorial interests.
What the Holocaust provided was a symbolic tool to convert the allies into the
liberators of the oppressed and the only force strong enough to prevent the worst evil
imaginable. Thus, the vast industrial complexes spun up to generate the planes, tanks, and
guns necessary to fight the war, the conscription, the strategic bombing campaigns, the
naval blockades, were all justified. WWI had placed too much weight on a Christian
war and had buckled under the pressure; the Great War is therefore seen now as a rather
pointless and tragic war. The persecution of the Jews in the Holocaust transmuted WWII from
the dull and bloody WWI into a Great Fight for Freedom, one which could spin up endless
movies, books, and memorials about the great humanitarian crusade.
Sometimes people do bad things which have good consequences. I break into my
neighbour's house to steal his television and prevent him murdering his wife. We would
probably prefer the world where he did so rather than obeying the law, even if his initial
motivations were impure. I am not making the point that WWII should not have been fought
(the claim that destroyed Baker's career). I am pointing out that WWII's remembrance is
closer to mythology than fact. And, like all myths, it can weaken over time: as the 1930s
drift out of living memory, and Fascism is detached from its specific meaning, the codes
become confused. Recently, the mythos has been even more destabilised by Israel. A nation
supposed to stop the Holocaust ever happening again is now engaging in ethnic cleansing.
Imagine, if you like, a world where Jesus starts to behave like the Devil, tempting people
into Sin, deceiving his followers, engaging in the deadly sins. What the hell is going
on?
The historian of Protestantism Alec Ryrie has called this 'The End of the Era of
Hitler', in which the old symbols of WWII lose their moral impact. Without the Moral
Authority of Never Again, not only is Scientific racism rejuvenating, but a whole
cast of regressive monsters. Scientific proof for the superiority of the aristocracy
becomes possible, as do the old theories about the differences between men and women.
Traditional social norms, such as socially conservative Christianity, traditional gender
norms and their related memes ('women are irrational and ruin politics'), and elite
hierarchies based on heredity start to appear not only possible but natural. The old
attempts to reject these theories using 'Never Again' are
appearing puny and milquetoast as the 'fascism' label grows weaker. Just as
traditional conservatism got outflanked in the '60s and '70s, now so too is the WWII
mythos.
The prejudices of the 1930s are not isolated positions one can pick and choose from. One does
not reject trad-wifery because it might lead to the Handmaiden’s Tale: one rejects the entire
matrix of beliefs it presupposes. When it rains it pours; when the 1930s’s ghosts return, they do
so en masse. The dense matrix of ideology is not always apparent at first glance. TERFs
who reject the possibility of trans-women often drift more and more rightwards as this fixed
ideological point begins to influence nearby political nodes. So a woman is a distinctive class?
This must be because of some essential differences from men… and these differences might suggest
some social forms designed to account for them, right? And, traditionally, patriarchal social
forms have been designed in a way that matches these differences… and we arrive, say like Louise
Perry, to rejecting the entire sexual revolution in favour of the 1950s (or ‘30s!).
When you start swapping out pillars in your ideological infrastructure, it can be hard to
predict what else in the wider structure will change. Believing in scientific racism tends to lead
to nationalism, which tends to lead to a belief in ‘Civilisation’ as a full-stack package, replete
with clothing, rates of petty crime, habits on public transport, and so on. Thus, you start out
using random studies to show Black people have Low IQs and end up asserting that the West is
superior because it uses forks and knives, or because it can roll out a red carpet neatly, or
because they can build fighter jets. There is no simpler explanation why the modern nationalist is
so obsessed with Graffiti, or ‘cultural decline’ in media, or mundane antisocial behaviour by
immigrants.
Want to understand how this network of beliefs feels in a mature form? Speak to any modern
ethno-nationalist, whether Chinese, Serbian, or Russian. You will quickly realise how the
collective endeavours of nation, both material and symbolic, can be back-chained to personal self-
understanding as a “member of the race.” The Chinese are the best race because of their number of
super-computers, the safety of their streets, the speed and cleanliness of their trains. India, on
the other hand? Just look at the litter…
And with nationalism comes the potential for further, even more disturbing beliefs. If “Man,
biologically, is not one”, nor culturally one, then that seems to seriously damage cosmopolitanism
and internationalism, especially if you are a Deep Scientific Racist and believe that racial
characteristics go beyond IQ. The Pakistani man is not merely less intelligent, he has less
openness, less conscientiousness, less social trust, and, getting more mystical, lacks the
essential fragrance of the English/American/X national people. If you believe this, then
international trust can appear hopeless: those guys over there are not just us with different
culture, they are different at a sub-atomic level. And so, once again, we drift back to the 1930s.
Even during the days of the League of Nations, it was common to understand competition between
Western and Non-Western nations in terms of Darwinian Competition. Our balance of trade is weak.
They are acquiring more territory. Something strange is happening in Germany. Don’t you see? If we
aren’t careful the ‘Yellow Peril’ will overtake us and control the world.
Again, if you want to get a flavour of this, imagine a hypothetical ethno-nationalist Chinese
man working for the CCP. He does not live in the ‘Gingerbread’ Europe of Decarbonisation,
‘Cultural Excellence’, ‘World Heritage’, and ‘Diversity is Our Strength’: he lives in a terrifying
Darwinian world in which, if China remains weak, the Western Imperial Powers will continue to
humiliate her for another century. And another. And another. Just look at Venezuela/Iran/Iraq…..
He is outside the UN-US-EU time trap of ‘war is impossible’, and ‘democracies never go to war’,
and ‘two countries with McDonalds never go to war’, and ‘the better angels of our nature.’
Instead, he is in the 1930s world of Our Neighbours Grow Stronger and Look Enviously at Our
Resources.
The tenor of political discourse has also grown more cosmic and histrionic. The main concern
of the 1930s intellectual was not himself, or his mental health, his ‘oneness with nature’, or his
childhood. It was the Great Civilizational Challenge of reconciling national cultural traditions
with rapid industrial and technological progress in a world where God is (Probably) Dead. Writers
in the 1930s might refer to industrial capitalism as The Devil, a terrible force which needed to
be mastered and controlled, else he would master and control you. They talked of ‘Mass Effects’,
of ‘Vulgarization’, of ‘the loss of sovereignty.’ Politicians in the ‘30s took these concerns
deadly seriously and sought to solve them directly, whatever the cost: Scientific Socialism was
one answer, as was Totalitarianism and Fascism. We have almost no insight into this way of
thinking after WWII; this is so for two reasons.
First, the post-war consensus knocked out Fascism completely. No longer could the power of
Nationalism or the volk be provided as a possible counter-measure to the rapacity of capitalism.
Don’t you see the danger? Thus, whilst many intellectuals continued to agonise about Industrial
Capitalism, they were unable to convert this into a meaningful political praxis. Many progressives
simply turned inwards: Huxley, Marcuse, Adorno, sought to interrogate the psyche of the Western
Man and discover how he could be capable of the Holocaust and Colonialism, why he hated nature so,
why he was so base and materialistic, and so on. The personal is political, all wars start from
childhood, if we could all gain enlightenment then the world would be a better place; the most
important political act you can take it resolving your trauma and finding your true self.
Second, the post-war consensus strengthened the Benthamite-Technocratic movement in favour of
Progress and Maximising Utility (aka, material abundance, aka, economic growth). WWII had been won
largely with the vast, awesome technological and industrial might of America. Industrial
capitalism is not evil, it defeats evil. You mean to tell me this power, used to vanquish Hitler
(The Devil), is the true Devil? Ridiculous! The techno-Benthamites were of course powerful in the
1910s, 20s, and 30s, advocating via the Fabians, H.G. Wells, and other futurists, World
Government, Rationalism, Expert-Government, and Technocracy, but they were regarded as slightly
vacuous and morally unserious by the political elites. “All well and fine with sensible and
rational people like you and me old chap (aka, Brits), but go out yonder and you will see how mad
the world really is.” But don’t you see? Man, biologically, is one! Internationalism is obvious,
backed by Pax Americana, new technology (planes, television, internet!) and greased with global
markets.
Did you forget The Devil of industrial capitalism? Easily done in the heady world of UN, IMF,
World Bank, UNESCO, EU, ECJ, ECHR, and countless other international institutions. Then, in the
1990s, the only other progressive alternative to Fascism capable of fully integrating a humanistic
morality with the techno-systems of the modern state imploded. Without communism, there was no
workable Praxis for the median progressive beyond vague gestures to ‘democratic socialism’ (sans
Nationalism, which exists precisely nowhere), or ‘Communism’ (but this time it’ll work!), or
anarcho-primitivism (good luck finding a mass audience), or ‘romanticism-within-liberal-
capitalism.’ Most of the modern progressive activists are stuck in the critique mode: less
pollution, less authoritarianism, less this, less that, because, with religion, without
nationalism, without the teleology of communism, with, at most, a vague hand-wavey kind of
romanticism, they have no positive workable vision. They have been left stranded in the Y2K time
trap.
But now the old pieces removed from play are being brought back to restart the great
Ideological game. One can be a Nationalist, an Accelerationist, a World-State Socialist. One can
even be an Ethno-Nationalist. One can assert the Civilizational Unity and Superiority of the West.
One can resuscitate the old trans-humanist theories of living forever, removing illness, making
one’s children healthy, intelligent, and attractive, of, in Teilhard de Chardin’s cosmology,
‘breeding angels.’ They bubble up because they address genuine problems and felt needs more
honestly and urgently than the now moribund liberal mythos. Nor were ever properly refuted, merely
suppressed by the post-war consensus in an attempt to deny the return of Hitler. Here they come,
the dust clouds in the distance filled with raving, distorted monsters, returning not like old
friends, but the rabid child locked in the basement. Untempered, undisciplined, savage, angry.
Theoretically, in the 1930s these insane beliefs – ‘nooceleration’, ‘cosmism’, the ‘World
state’, ‘fascism’ – were, for all their syncretic vigour, supposed to be moderated by the shadow
of Christianity and conservative social values. Fascism, it was said, ‘did not suit the British
character.’ Mussolini, in Churchill’s view, couldn’t be all that bad if he was a true believer in
the Western canon? Whether these cultural chains would be enough was one of the central concerns
of the age: had we, like the boy hitting puberty early, grown strong before we had grown wise? One
could only hope the elites would remain connected to the values and lives of those they proposed
to govern, in some way, any way.
By the 2020s most of these old moderating forces have been corroded away. After all, they
score highly on the F-Scale. I believe this helps explain the twisted and perverted feel of modern
‘traditional’ ideologies. I am a ‘Traditional Husband’ with a ‘Traditional Wife’, but actually I
have no firm ties to any particular community, or even my wife, it’s just a brand we’re using to
market ourselves. Or the ‘techno-nationalists’ who claim to represent ‘America’ or ‘Britain’ but
would surreptitiously, one assumes, throw “The Nation” under the bus if it meant getting out with
the bag. The problem with getting rid of true believers is that whilst there is no more danger of
a mass totalitarian movement, there is also no possibility of an organic, cultural mediating
force. It’s just Maxxing, fluidity, and selfish atomism.
It feels as if the West turned its back on the Great Questions of the Interwar Era because
they were too big, too terrifying, too Monstrous. The result was a Sleep of Reason as we lulled
ourselves into an 80 year dream of peace, liberalism, and social liberation. We assumed the Devil
would not return, we assumed the old prejudices could be suppressed: we assumed that people would
either be satisfied with their rich consumer lives, their domestic romantic adventures, or their
political freedoms. We assumed the great Darwinian battle between powers had ended. And yet the
old irrational manias haunt us.
How do you know if you are still asleep? Ask yourself whether the potential for fascism, the
Holocaust, Colonialism, &c, is sufficiently aversive that you shy away from scientific inquiry,
moral debate, and strong attachments. Ask yourself whether you think War between nations is past
its time, or whether it has merely been undergoing a hiatus under the Pax America. Look at your
own political ideology and work out if it reconciles of your vision of the Good Life with the
semi-autonomous techno-structures of modernity. If you find this too tiring, or too intimidating,
or too uncomfortable, then you have not woken up from the Sleep of Reason. Everyday events are
mysterious and inexplicable to you, for your true reality is the dreamtime rather than the dark
reality.
You continue to sleep, but others are waking up, and with their consciousness comes all the
old Monsters of the 1930s. I can only hope we have the tools necessary to hold them at bay, lest
our strategies to deny history turn out to be foolish compromises to delay it.
Dr. Alexander Thompson