The Moral Factor, Part 2

^[1]2,417 words

Part 2 of 2 (part 1 here ^[2])

Translations: French ^[3], Polish ^[4], Spanish ^[5]

“This ain’t no party. This ain’t no disco.
This ain’t no foolin’ around.”
—Talking Heads, “Life During Wartime”

Alternatives to Bourgeois Man

Fortunately, not all men are of the Bourgeois type. In terms of Plato’s psychology, the alternatives to desire-driven Bourgeois man are men who are ruled by reason and by spiritedness, i.e., intellectuals and warriors. If Bourgeois man corresponds to the Hindu Vaishya (merchant) and Sudra (laboring) castes, then the man ruled by reason is the Brahmin, and the spirited man is the Kshatriya.

The intellectual’s highest values are the true, the good, and the beautiful. He hates the dishonest, sordid, and ugly more than death itself. Thus he is willing to die for matters of principle. The warrior’s highest value is honor, and he fears dishonor more than death itself. Thus warriors are willing to die over matters of honor. If intellectuals and warriors can conquer the fear of death over matters of principle and honor, then they can conquer all lesser fears as well.

This makes intellectuals and warriors much harder to rule than Bourgeois types. Thus the leadership of any effective revolutionary movement needs to be composed of intellectuals and warriors rather than Bourgeois producer-consumers. Specifically, they need to be intellectuals and warriors by nature, in terms of their deepest values and moral psychology, not merely in terms of their professions. There are businessmen and bricklayers who are warriors and intellectuals by nature.

Intellectuals come in two kinds: those who are interested in pure theory and those who have practical commitments and aims. According to Cicero:

When Pythagoras was once asked who philosophers were, he replied that life seemed to him to resemble the games in the Olympic festival: some men sought glory, others to buy and sell at the games, and some men had come neither for gain nor applause, but for the sake of the spectacle and to understand what was done and how it was done. In the same way, in life, some are slaves of ambition or money, but others are interested in understanding life itself. These give themselves the name of philosophers (lovers of wisdom), and they value the contemplation and discovery of nature beyond all other pursuits. (Tusculan Disputations V, III, 8)

Here we have the three Platonic types: the spirited men competing for honor, the appetitive men hawking sausages, and the intellectual men watching from the stands. Pythagoras’s point is that the pure intellectual is a spectator not a participant in the great game of life, including politics.

Pure theorists, however, do not make revolutions. Thus in the metapolitical context, intellectual and warrior types may be distinct, but they should not be separate. Each type needs the other. Thus they should work together and strive to embody one another’s virtues.

Intellectuals naturally love ideas. To prevent them from becoming unmoored among abstractions, they need to remind themselves of the concrete groups to which they belong and for which they are fighting.

Warrior types are naturally attached to concrete groups and predisposed to take offense and fight over matters of honor. But intellectual discretion is the better part of valor: one has to know who one’s friends are, who one’s enemies are, and when and how to fight effectively.

A Moral Case for White Nationalism

Offering a moral case for White Nationalism combines the virtues of the intellectual and the warrior, because it is an intellectual defense for loving one’s own people and fighting for them. This is not the place to set forth an ethical theory. But I will at least sketch a few of its desirable elements in broad strokes.

1. Objectivity

I believe that moral theories and moral judgments can be founded on facts and supported by reason. Thus they can be true if they meet objective criteria—or false if they do not measure up.

2. Biological Foundations

Following Plato and Aristotle, I believe that an objective morality can be founded in human nature, specifically an account of human self-actualization. Since man is both an individual and a social being, objective morality deals with both individual and collective self-actualization.

3. Universality

If moral and political right and wrong are based on human nature, what are the ethical implications of the diversity of human nature? Namely, the differences between men, women, and children, and the differences between the races and sub-races of mankind? At minimum, we can say that there will be some universal moral principles, in view of our common humanity. For our purposes, two universal principles stand out.

First, it is natural, normal, and good for all people love one’s own—to be partial to people and places that are close to you—to have stronger or weaker obligations based on proximity or distance (including genetic distance) from one’s self. These spirited attachments—suitably refined and enlightened by the intellect—are the proper basis of political nationalism.

Second, the group has metaphysical and moral priority over the individual. The preservation of the group is more important than the preservation of the individual, because the individual is an offshoot of his people, and, when his finite existence is over, he lives on through his people. Thus, when faced with the choice of sacrificing oneself for the good of one’s people or living on at their expense, one should choose self-sacrifice for the greater good. This is the foundation of effective White Nationalist politics, since men who are willing to make sacrifices—and even court death—for their people are far harder for the system to cow and control than Bourgeois types, who value their own lives and comfort over the existence of their people.

4. Objective Pluralism

To the extent that there is a common human nature, there are universal moral principles. To the extent that human nature is diversified by age, sex, and race, we should expect variations and particularities among moral principles.

First of all, we would expect universal principles to be applied differently in different cases. For instance, it makes sense that self-sacrifice for the group should fall more to males than females, since individual males are more expendable from a reproductive point of view. Furthermore, although it makes sense for the young and strong to fight, it also make sense that self-sacrifice among males should fall more to older males, since they have less life ahead of them anyway, and to males who have reproduced rather than those who have not.

Second, we should expect different particular rights and duties for men, women, and children. Furthermore, when we look at the fine-grained norms of social life, we should expect these to vary between races and sub-races, for if their natures are truly different, then the conditions of their actualization will be different as well.

But this does not imply moral relativism if that means that the right way of life is merely a matter of subjective choice. Instead, what we have here is a completely objective form of relativism, in the same way that the most comfortable pair of shoes varies from foot to foot, but in completely objective ways.

The objective pluralism of some moral principles means that there is not a “one-size-fits-all” way of life for all peoples. It implies that any attempt to create a one-size-fits-all system will be about as comfortable and elegant as one-size-fits-all shoes and clothes. Objective moral pluralism is thus one of the foundations of political pluralism—including ethnonationalism—whereas one-world globalism is the political equivalent of outfitting the world in totalitarian boiler suits and flip flops.

5. Reciprocity

The Golden Rule of “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” counsels taking a certain moral risk in behaving towards others not as they are actually behaving toward you, but as you would like them to. This sort of risk is necessary to expand one’s moral community, and it is richly rewarded when one’s moral dealings are reciprocated in kind.

But because morality is about self-actualization, individual and collective, one should not allow one’s moral risks to turn into moral exploitation and parasitism. Nothing is more obscene than exploiting people through their virtues. Thus, at a certain point, it is necessary to demand reciprocity as a condition for further dealings. Since white dispossession involves a host of non-reciprocal moral demands—for instance, only white countries are under the alleged moral obligation to destroy themselves through immigration—simply demanding moral reciprocity would bring many of our problems to a screaming halt.

Moral Seriousness

I have been involved with the White Nationalist scene since the year 2000. My experience has been overwhelmingly positive, but not entirely so. The hardest thing to take has not been the crooks and crazies, but the pervasive lack of moral seriousness, even among the best-informed and most principled White Nationalists. I know people who sincerely believe that our race is being subjected to an intentional policy of genocide engineered by the organized Jewish community. Yet when faced with a horror of this magnitude, they lead lives of consummate vanity, silliness, and self-indulgence.

I am convinced that more people will get involved with our cause if we follow two rules: (1) each person gets to determine his own level of explicitness and involvement, and (2) the rest of us have to respect those decisions. But our cause will never move forward unless we can also persuade people to (1) do everything they can within their own individually determined comfort zones, and (2) expand their comfort zones, so they are willing to take greater risks for the cause. But to do that, we need to grapple with the issue of moral seriousness.

I know White Nationalists who would run down the street in broad daylight shouting “thief!” at the top of their lungs if their car were being stolen. But when confronted with the theft of our whole civilization and the very future of our race, they merely mutter euphemisms in the shadows.

I know White Nationalists who are fully appraised of the gravity of the Jewish problem, who have seen the Jewish takeover and subversion of one Right-wing institution after another, and yet still think that they can somehow “use” Jews.

I know White Nationalists who are fully aware of the corruption of the political establishment yet still get caught up in election campaigns. I know outright National Socialists who have donated far more to Republicans than they have to the movement.

I know White Nationalists who spend $50,000 a year on drinks and lap dances—or $30,000 a year dining out—or $25,000 a year on their wardrobes—or $100,000 on a wedding, yet bitterly complain about the lack of progress in the movement.

I know White Nationalists who tithe significant portions of their income to churches which pursue anti-white policies, yet never consider regular donations to the pro-white cause.

I know people with convictions to the right of Hitler who argue that we should never claim that we are fighting for the white race or against Jewish power, but who still think that somehow our people will want to follow us rather than 10,000 other race-blind, Jew-friendly conservative groups.

I know White Nationalists who believe that our race is being exterminated, yet insist that our enemies “know not what they do,” that they are deceiving themselves, that they are fundamentally people of good will, and that this is all some sort of ghastly misunderstanding.

I know White Nationalists who would never admit to hating anyone or anything, even the vulture gnawing at their entrails.

None of them are being forced to behave this way. All of them are operating within their self-defined comfort zones. All of them could do more, even within their comfort zones. So why do they fail to comport themselves with the urgency and moral seriousness called for by the destruction of everything we hold dear?

I want to suggest two explanations. First, deep in their hearts, they don’t believe that we can win, so they aren’t really trying. Second, and more importantly, they are still wedded to the Bourgeois model of life.

People display their true priorities when facing death.

The true intellectual values truth more than life itself. Socrates is a hero to intellectuals because when forced to choose between giving up philosophy or death, he chose death. Most intellectuals do not face that choice, but if they do, they hope they are capable of heroism too, for nothing reveals fidelity to truth more clearly than a martyr’s death.

The true warrior values honor more than life itself. Leonidas and the 300 are heroes to warriors because when faced with death or dishonor, they preferred death. Again, not every warrior faces the choice so starkly, but if he does, he hopes he will choose a glorious death, for nothing reveals fidelity to honor more clearly than a heroic death.

Bourgeois man values nothing higher than life itself. He fears nothing more than a violent death. Therefore, there is no form of heroic death that demonstrates true fidelity to Bourgeois values. The true intellectual dies a martyr. The true warrior dies on the battlefield. The true Bourgeois looks forward to a comfortable retirement and dying in bed.

Yes, countless American soldiers have died fighting for “freedom,” “democracy,” and college money. But they have been suckered out of their lives by men who think there is nothing worth dying for, so that the Bourgeoisie can make money, play golf, and die in bed.

You only have one death. Thus even people who would glory in heroic martyrdom have to choose their battles wisely and make their deaths count. Yes, you have to pace yourself. Yes, you have to save yourself. Yes, you can’t live as if every day were your last.

But these truisms easily serve as rationalizations for cowardice. Because, at a certain point, you have to ask what you are saving yourself for. You can’t take it with you. And ultimately, accomplishments do not come from saving ourselves but from spending ourselves. What we do not give, will be taken by death in the end.

Yet the whole Bourgeois dream is premised on evading this simple, grim reality. Bourgeois man seeks eternal springtime and perpetual peace, a “happily ever after” on sunlit putting greens, free of tragic choices and tragic grandeur, free of ideals that can pierce his heart and shed his blood.

But you can’t do battle with Sauron while playing it safe. You can’t overthrow a system you are invested in. You can’t challenge the rulers of this world and count on reaching retirement age. In the face of world-annihilating evil, we can no longer afford to be such men.