282. Contemplation (VII)

Spengler observed, in Taoist mode: “Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them.” The sentiment was taken up by Evola; and I think it deserves expansion: we live in a time when people constantly talk about race, but say nothing about it. Specifically, contemporary Western ideology holds that race does not exist, except, in a move borrowed from Marxism, as a cultural construct designed to exploit people. It is possible to say whatever you wish about race, on the proviso that what you say assumes that race is a temporary cultural construct to be obliterated by progress.

Progressives often use racial vulgarities and tropes, but this is permissible when it is assumed that race is not anymore real than the convention that we drive on the left. What is not permitted is to suggest that race exists as a biological or spiritual fact; and, worse still, to suggest it should be used as the basis for a political unit. Even within these parameters, people who use racial terms in the “correct” way fall foul of ideological redshift and end up cast into outer dark.

For this reason people with moderate opinions refuse to comment on race, since to be a “racist” is to be what it was to be an atheist in Christian societies or an “anti-people element” in Communist societies. The discussion is left to regime ideologists who have endless opinions on race as an oppressive cultural construct, but have nothing substantive to say about race because the substantive things that can be said about race treat it as real.

With moderate opinion recused, the regime ideologists contend with nutcases, the sort of people Spengler had in mind, who think their value as an individual self-evidently comes from their race. While it is true that the West’s hegemonic ideology tars all objective racial views as low status—black nationalism included—it has a particular disdain for white nationalist views. This is because progressivism is noblesse oblige; the top knows other races lag behind the whites, but it is extremely vulgar to say so—the correct attitude is to draw a veil over the issue and make special allowances for others. To suggest that you need to assert yourself on the basis that you are white indicates low social status; you cannot afford noblesse oblige.

So the low status accorded to white nationalism is connected to Spengler’s observation: those who say it do not have it. Evola would chime in that an aristocrat never talks about his pedigree; it is only vulgar social climbers who comb their family tree for a distant relative and then brag: “I’m from the de Vier line on my mother’s side.” Arriviste. We need to take Spengler’s approach to race—not to brag about it or use it to push others down—while at the same time being sober enough to accept that it objectively exists. So I would not build a political unit on race, I would build it on fraternal organisations and families—though this would implicitly preserve the race. To preserve a thing, as the Tao observes, we must not act to preserve it: those with a mania for race, such as Hitler, destroy their own race.

“Racism” is the cornerstone for all the other progressive lies; currently, conservatives bemoan that the left has declared that sex is not real. “How could such an obvious category be denied? Madness,” they wail. “It can’t last. Sex is millennia old. The left has gone too far!” These same conservatives will solidly tell you there is no such thing as race, a concept as old as sex. The left already successfully made everyone lie about race and pretend it is not real; the process has now been extended to sex; and I see no reason why, if they succeed, the left cannot extend the principle further. People in the USSR lived a lie every day for decades; we have done the same—the lie is young.