"Genomics" and intra-European variation

Guessedworker claims:
As for any attempt to reify Germans over Slavs, Englishmen over Irishmen, Nordics over Alpines and Mediterreneans, those are screamingly obviously on the “Idealist” or “thought” side of the equation. But they are falsified by the genomic components on the “empirical” or “experience” side.
I assume GW's assertion reflects a misinterpretation of studies such as this one, which involve principal components analysis of European SNP genotype data. I understand GW to mean he somehow believes these studies indicate no two European populations differ genetically in any systematic way which could lend support to "intra-European supremacist" arguments. Naturally, GW is wrong.

Granting that "superior" and "inferior" are subjective judgments rather than scientific universals, essentially any demonstration of a population's genetic distinctiveness can be seen to support both preservationist and "supremacist" arguments. Studies (from Cavalli-Sforza's work on "classical" markers to the recent analyses of 500k+ SNP microarray datasets) have repeatedly demonstrated sub-European genetic distinctiveness (particularly along a N/S or NW/SE axis).

SNP/PCA studies can (and do) demonstrate distinctiveness. They can't (and haven't) proven the absence of intra-European differences in genes influencing IQ and personality, for example -- if for no other reason than that no one has so far been able to use SNP genotypes to explain much variation in phenotypes like IQ. (In addition, 2-dimensional PCA plots typically leave plenty of variation unaccounted for, so -- even if we limit ourselves to considering common SNP variants -- samples which have identical values on the first two PCs might turn out to vary in some important way.)

Even the largest commonly-used SNP microarrays capture only a small fraction of human genetic variation, and definitive answers on many issues will await complete sequencing of large numbers of genomes.

In the meantime:

Compared to southern Euros, NW Europeans are demonstrably "superior" at digesting lactose as adults (92% LP in Utah vs. 11% in S. Italy), and -- though this may shock GW -- have demonstrably higher frequencies of alleles associated with light pigmentation.

Recent and ongoing (and probably accelerating) human evolution is a reality. "Genomically", Southern Europeans are more similar to Ashkenazi Jews than to Northern Europeans. Strangely, AJs and SEs don't have identical average IQ scores and personalities, and one doubts the finding would lull a Jewish supremacist into calling for a merger between AJs and SEs. "Small" genetic differences may have large phenotypic effects.

Even if, say, the English and Sicilians sprang from identical pools of ancestors 15,000 or 10,000 or even 5,000 years ago (and the genetic evidence says this was not the case), there's been plenty of time for differences to accumulate and plenty of reason to believe they have. See, e.g., Gregory Clark (thanks TGGP for that particular link). I find it hard to imagine radical differences in culture between Eastern and Western Europe (or, to a lesser extent, between England and Ireland) haven't engendered (and/or been engendered by) some degree of genetic differentiation. Again, even if you could show large German and Polish samples plot identically on a 2-d PCA chart (they don't), you would not have demonstrated genetic identity between them.

27 comments:

Guessedworker said...

Lactose tolerance! I'll assume you are playing the reductionist for tactical reasons.

The discussion at MR is about "intra-European supremacism", and the fact - because it is a fact - that no future nationalism claiming German supremacism will be supported.

Supremacism as it was conceived in the Herrenrasse was the manifest destiny of Germans to rule over their "sphere of interest" as G-d's chosen aryans. It was Judaism in the mirror. Get it?

Not genetically proven, I think.

You must prove German moral and intellectual supremacism, or admit you are wrong.

Anonymous said...

Lactase persistence = an example of a very large intra-European frequency difference in genotype and phenotype that arose relatively quickly and recently in response to cultural and climatic differences, included for purposes of illustration since you don't seem to understand how evolution works.

And, no, I don't have to "prove" anything. I'm saying at present it's impossible to know one way or the other how "significant" genetic differences between, e.g., Germans and Poles might be. You're the one who made the outlandish assertion (akin to "the HGP shows humans share 99.9% of their DNA therefore race doesn't exist"-type nonsense). You need to learn not to spout off on topics you don't understand.

Anonymous said...

"...that no future nationalism claiming German supremacism will be supported."

How do you know or prove that?

"It was Judaism in the mirror. Get it?"

Unfortunately not. According to MacDonald;

The ideology of National Socialism viewed the entire society (excluding the Jews) as a large kinship group -- a "Volksgemeinschaft transcending class and creed" ( Rempel 1989, 5). A constant refrain of the literature of the Hitler Youth was the idea of the individual sacrificing himself for the leader:the basic idea is. . . that of a group of heroes inseparably tied to one another by an oath of faithfulness who, surrounded by physically and numerically superior foes, stand their ground. . . . Either the band of heroes is reduced to the last man, who is the leader himself defending the corpses of his followers-the grand finale of the Nibelungenliedor through its unparalleled heroism brings about some favourable change in its fortune. ( Koch 1976, 143)

MacDonald is claiming NS is a reflection of the Old Testament, i.e. Masada, not German, or more appropriately, Nordic supremacy.

Guessedworker said...

Northerner,

So, a revived Herrenrasse policy, complete with Prussian disdain for the moral and intellectual frailties of Germany's neighbours, will lift all good Aryan children free from their moment of danger at the hands of Rienzi's fiendish WOPS, will it?

It's odd but we've interviewed Roy Armstrong, who is well connected with the NPD, and he never mentioned any of that. Maybe you should take a reality check.

Desmond,

Two can play the selective quotation game:-

It is on the basis of that conviction that MacDonald takes an understanding view of the Nazi Holocaust. Nazism, he explains, was only a “mirror image of Judaism, with its emphasis on creating a master race.”

http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/laksin.htm

Actually, NS built its faith features on top of völkisch foundations. These foundations were romantic in derivation and rustic in expression. There was none of the nuttier elements of NS's extreme paligenesis there, like the Herrenrasse and the adoration of der Führer.

Whether MacDonald understands that I cannot say. But it is useful for us, since it allows for German nationalism to have a pathway to the future which is not cursed by the teleological claptrap.

Anonymous said...

GW,

If it is a game, then it's disappointing that you play so poorly.

From your link;

It is on the basis of that conviction that MacDonald takes an understanding view of the Nazi Holocaust. Nazism, he explains, was only a “mirror image of Judaism, with its emphasis on creating a master race.”

The quote is Jacob Laskin writing about KMac, the Cal State Prof of Anti-Semitism.

KMac replies;

[The quotation used by Laksin is actually a slightly reworded passage from Judith Shulevitz’s critique of my work, where she wrote, “Even the most extreme forms of anti-Semitism, such as Nazism, can be seen not as aberrations but as ‘a mirror image’ of Judaism, with its emphasis on creating a master race.” The fact is thatI did not state that Judaism had an emphasis on creating a master race, but by moving the quotation marks, Laksin makes his readers think I did. (Again, even the most elemental scholarly task of quoting sources accurately is beyond him, although in this case, it's reasonable to suspect malice on his part.) This was Shulevitz’s attribution, and I reject it as an oversimplification of my views. My comment to Laksin is the same as the one I made to Shulevitz in January, 2000: I describe several ways in which Nazism was a mirror image of Judaism, including a powerful concern with socializing group members into accepting group goals and with the importance of within-group cooperation in attaining these goals. An important part of my view is that anti-Semites often envied Jews’ ethnic cohesiveness. For example, I cite historian Steven A. Aschheim, who noted “the perception that Jews maintained their cohesiveness and sense of identity under all conceivable circumstances was a source of both fear and envy. Indeed, for many antisemites this racial perseverance and historical continuity provided a kind of mirror-image model worthy of emulation.”(Aschheim, S. E.. (1985). “The Jew within”: The myth of “Judaization” in Germany. In The Jewish Response to German Culture: From the Enlightenment to the Second World War, ed. J. Reinharz & W. Schatzberg. Hanover and London: University Press of New England for Clark University, p. 239.)]

The question is why so blatantly ignore KMac's refutation of the quote you lift from a Jewish critic when KMac's refutation follows one line later? It's sad and disappointing.

Why the reference to Rienzi? No one mentioned his name. It is understood you feel an obligation to defend a colleague. It's admirable. However, to raise his name at this juncture appears to smack of paranoia.

Anonymous said...

GW,

You're retarded.

I've never advocated German hypernationalism, and I take exception with those who do so while living in the Anglosphere (what Germans in Germany choose to believe is of little concern to me).

Which doesn't change the fact that you have no fucking clue what you're talking about when it comes to "genomics".

Guessedworker said...

Northerner,

I repeat, "the discusson at MR is about "intra-European supremacism", and the fact - because it is a fact - that no future nationalism claiming German supremacism will be supported."

In that context, you are attempting to argue, through reductionist means, for genetic proofs of supremacism.

Now you say you don't mean German hyper-nationalism. But it's a bit late for that. Racial supremacism is radically different from distinctiveness. It is different to mere difference - which already posits better/worse human performance on given scales. It is an "ism" - an ideology of human value that has profound real-world implications.

Thus, the Herrenrasse considered themselves licenced to racially cleanse other peoples' homelands and to press Jews and other Europeans into slave labour.

Thus the Chosen People consider themselves licenced to call us cattle and our women whores, to claim ownership of our goods and lordship over our lands.

Once you set foot upon the racial supremacist path you
introduce highly destabilising new perspectives and negative feelings that will, in the end, poison you. Germans were poisoned by it. Jews are poisoned by it.

It has no place in intra-European relationships - unless, of course, genetic evidence emerges for it, in which case we all fall down at the feet of Arthur de Gobineau. But that's not very likely, is it?

Which brings us back to the very beginning of this discussion at MR and your one-word contention that, yes, genetic evidence exists. But it doesn't, of course, and you can't conjure it out of nothing.

Perhaps we are only arguing because you didn't understand what racial supremacism really means. I hope it's clear now.

Desmond,

I readily bow to your expertise in appealing to authoruty. That's not really my game. I try to think from my own positions.

My remarks above will suffice for my rather off the cuff view that Nazi teleology and Judaism are equally faith objects, equally criminal in application, and equally but oppositely contrived to monopolise wordly power. I repeat that I don't think MacDonald has separated out the folk elements in NS, which is where the significant departure from Judaic particularism arises.

Anonymous said...

GW,

My apologies, sir. It is remiss of me. The triumph of the anecdotal, how did I forget?

Anonymous said...

GW,

You positively asserted all "supremacist" arguments are "falsified by the genomic components". They are not. I did and have made no positive argument in favor of "supremacism", and I have no time for you lame attempts at saving face.

Guessedworker said...

This is the passage at MR to which you took exception:-

"... JWH favours a version of Yockeyism. I’m less inclined to rush that decision, believing it to be, actually, an extraordinarily difficult synthesis to pull off. Kant claimed to have done so once, marrying thought and experience within a single system. But not many agreed with him.

As for any attempt to reify Germans over Slavs, Englishmen over Irishmen, Nordics over Alpines and Mediterreneans, those are screamingly obviously on the “Idealist” or “thought” side of the equation. But they are falsified by the genomic components on the “empirical” or “experience” side."


Obviously, I am talking about the Kantian synthesis, and the impossibility, in the manner of one trying to force together like magnetic poles, of synthesising a National Socialist racial supremacism with an empirical component from the modern world.

First you jump up and say, "No, wait ... don't forget lactose tolerance!" Which, intellectually, is rather sad.

Then you back-track and claim that you never intended to try to justify German hyper-nationalism. But that's what I was writing about when you jumped in with your "point".

Then you call me a retard, and tell me you haven't got time for my "lame attempts at saving face".

MY lame attempts at saving face! In England we call that sort of thing "brass neck".

Look, old man, why don't you set out your best arguments for your Nordicism as an MR guest-post. I am perfectly happy to give you house room and air the subject at length.

Jaw-jaw and all that.

Anonymous said...

GW,

If you continue to stand behind your assertion that:

As for any attempt to reify Germans over Slavs, Englishmen over Irishmen, Nordics over Alpines and Mediterreneans, those are screamingly obviously on the “Idealist” or “thought” side of the equation. But they are falsified by the genomic components on the “empirical” or “experience” side."

Please show us evidence and explain your reasoning.

Guessedworker said...

Very well, but you won't like it! My focus is more theoretical than yours.

Philosophical nationalism is polarised on the axes of volkishness and palingenesis. There are many other ways of looking at this axiality. "Being" and "Becoming" is a pretty good one.

In 19th and early 20th century Germany there was a folk movement which concentrated on "being" ... on the German essence. It was highly populist and grew to be rather influential. Nazi ideology duly coopted its fundamentals, but grafted them on to the local interpretation of Italian Fascism.

The intellectual story gets complicated here, because "the philosopher of Fascism" Giovanni Gentile had actually borrowed certain ideas from the German Idealists such as Marx and Hegel, and from Nietzsche. The Herrenrasse is rooted in Gentile's Uomo Fascista, which is a reinterpretation of Nietzsche's ubermenschen. The triumph of the will was another. So there was quite a lot of philosophical toing and froing, and I am strongly of the opinion that in the process a certain truth was set aside (we must presume, knowingly because of the post-facto efforts by the Party's race-scientists).

Since the days of the Greeks, the task of uniting thought and experience into a single system of ideas has frustrated allcomers. The only way that National Socialists could lay claim to synthesis was by "proving" the superiority of the Aryan through that very dodgy race science. But their science wasn't true, and Aryan's weren't Supermen. It all proved to be a very toxic illusion indeed.

Today we stand in no less need than Germans in the 1920s of a functioning system of ideas that does not contain the same range of possible outcomes as liberalism. But it's a tall order. Nowourdays, we have a much stricter master in modern science. We can't cheat the fundamental question: Is it true?

But I happen to believe that the palingenic side of the equation ... the side of the heroic rebirth ... has been transformed to our advantage. If we still need a vision of ourselves which is higher and more idealistic than life today, we do not need the supremacist fantasy. It's the wrong metric. Heroism can also be just. Heroism can be far-seeing and devoted - and infinitely more relevant to our peoples' situation.

So that's where my thinking, such as it is, is heading and why I reject supremacism outright.

Obviously, I don't reject preservation of European genetic distinctiveness on the North American continent. But neither do I make the mistake of thinking one can just move directly toward it. Nor that the path is known. Nor that it requires us to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Anonymous said...

At this point, the above falls short of a theory. A theory is well substantiated. Where's the beef? Where's the evidence that the "Herrenrasse is rooted in Gentile's Uomo Fascista". Where's the evidence that Italian Fascism was grafted onto German populism?

What is heroism if it is not "an individual/group of elevated moral stature and superior ability who pursues his goals indefatigably in the face of powerful antagonist(s)".

How is that different from KMac's definition of NS?

. . . that of a group of heroes inseparably tied to one another by an oath of faithfulness who, surrounded by physically and numerically superior foes, stand their ground. . . .

Guessedworker said...

First, Desmond, I am not finally convinced that a European rebirth need be heroic at all. So I used the words "if we still need a vision of ourselves which is higher and more idealistic than life today ..."

I suspect that, personally, a man like Joseph Goebbels, a genuine intellectual heavyweight, had little time for the heroic narrative. He would have left that to the politician Himmler, recognising that beyond moving a people to mighty ends, it had no intrinsic value at all (Goebbels seems to have preferred manipulating the people's emotions).

In any case, we also have to move our people. So the question must be asked, and I asked it in my post "Filling the empirical gap".

My current position extends only so far as recognising that if we must tend to the heroic, it has to pass the test of truth. The search is for the limit of that truth on the journey outward along the palingenic axis ... a point of compromise certainly, but I, for one, am quite incapable of representing synthesis to myself without compromise. Perhaps the element I am missing, in my dullness of mind, is catalysm.

All this is an unfamiliar task for me is because I am English, and our national recourse in times of need has always been more volkish than palingenic. Listen carefully to the narrator in this short on the wartime film-maker Humphrey Jennings. You will see my meaning:-

http://www.vtap.com/video/The+Man+Who+Listened+to+Britain+3/CL0155923006_49db10b6a_T0MyMzc2NjE

Among the credits is one for is a man named Kevin MacDonald!

Our Kevin MacDonald, meanwhile, has a definition of National Socialism which is, IMO, inadequate. It shows that he does not understand the attempt at synthesis which is NS. And, therefore, he does not understand its volkish elements. He has bought the heroic narrative wholesale, in a way I am suggesting that Goebbels would not!

I am sorry I can't provide you with those appeals to authority you love so much. I am moving around a darkened room which others much more able than I seem to have passed straight through. When I am done there, and am ready to move on, it will be because I have found the value of things the others either knew anyway or thought they knew.

Anonymous said...

Fallacy: Begging the Question

A: KMac's definition of National Socialism is inadequate.

B: How do you know?

A: Goebbels would not have bought the heroic narrative wholesale!

B: How do you know?

A: Joseph Goebbels, a genuine intellectual heavyweight, had little time for the heroic narrative. (The final appeal to authority).

Second request:

Where's the evidence that the "Herrenvolk is rooted in Gentile's Uomo Fascista". Where's the evidence that Italian Fascism was grafted onto German populism?

And, where's the evidence that Goebbels had little time for the heroic narrative?

Anonymous said...

Magazine Article Excerpt

Hitler and Carlyle's 'Historical Greatness.

by Alan Steinweis

Already in his pseudo-autobiographical novel of 1923, Michael, Goebbels had articulated a heroic conception of history and politics. `History', Goebbels wrote, `is a sequence of many virile decisions. Armies are not victorious, but men with armies'. He continued:

Europe will be reconstructed by peoples who will be the first to overcome the mass madness and find their way back to the principle of personality ... Works of art, inventions, ideas, battles, laws and states - at the beginning of all of them stands always the man.

Carlyle's Frederick the Great biography was arguably Joseph Goebbels' favourite work; it is cited in the Propaganda Minister's diaries more frequently than any other book. (The portrait adorning the wall behind Goebbel's desk at the ministry was one of the Prussian king.) Goebbels increasingly sought refuge in the work once the war had turned decisively against Germany. In the desperate days of April 1945 Goebbels read to Hitler from the Frederick biography, suggesting that the German Fuhrer might find salvation in a latter day `miracle of the house of Brandenburg'. In his speech to the Reichstag on September 1st, 1939, Hitler had cited Frederick as his model of a German leader who would never capitulate in the face of a hostile coalition, so perhaps there was a certain historical symmetry in seeking inspiration from Frederick as the Allies converged on Germany.


Steinweis may have it entirely wrong. If so show us the evidence.

Heroes and Hero Worship

Carlyle moved towards his later thinking during the 1840s, leading to a break with many old friends and allies such as Mill and, to a lesser extent, Emerson. His belief in the importance of heroic leadership found form in his book "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History", in which he compared a wide range of different types of heroes, including Oliver Cromwell, William Shakespeare and the Prophet Mohammed.

Wiki may have it entirely wrong. If so show us the evidence.

Anonymous said...

Faith is loyalty to some inspired Teacher, some spiritual Hero. And what therefore is loyalty proper, the life-breath of all society, but an effluence of Hero worship, submissive admiration for the truly great? Society is founded on Hero-worship. All dignities of rank, on which human association rests, are what we may call a Heroarchy (Government of Heroes), -- or a Hierarchy, for it is "sacred" enough withal! The Duke means Dux, Leader; King is Kön-ning, Kan-ning, Man that knows or cans. Society everywhere is some representation, not in supportably inaccurate, of a graduated Worship of Heroes; -- reverence and obedience done to men really great and wise. Not in supportably inaccurate, I say! They are all as bank-notes, these social dignitaries, all representing gold; -- and several of them, alas, always are forged notes. We can do with some forged false notes; with a good many even; but not with all, or the most of them, forged! No: there have to come revolutions then: cries of Democracy, Liberty, and Equality, and I know not what: -- the notes being all false, and no gold to be had for them, people take to crying in their despair that there is no gold, that there never was any! -- "Gold," Hero-worship, is nevertheless, as it was always and everywhere, and cannot cease till man himself ceases.

On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History

Book by Thomas Carlyle; Frederick A. Stokes & Brother, 1888

p. 13

Anonymous said...

There seems to be an absence of linguistic thought and absolute dialectical discourse here. Ha
I have to add that if you only apply the Philosophical assumption , and supply a conclusion based on those assumptions then the discourse of discussion is endless and abusive ; but deductively if you investigate the assumption of the Aryan race , then you will know it to be a fantasy , unless you are Persian or an Indian. Proclaimed by the Zoroastrianism’s High Priest Zarathustra. ( German) or Zoroastrianism outside of the German dialect.
SSSShishcobab----

Guessedworker said...

Desmond,

If you have faithfully represented MacDonald's definiton of National Socialism it is uinadequate for the reason I have already set out.

You think Goebbels was a palingenicist. I think he was too clever for that. Neither of us can "know", of course. But ... Goebbels was very proud of his ability to drive an audience into a frenzy. After a successful speech he would boast about it to his acquaintances.

But among intellectuals like Goebbels sentiment and the manipulation of sentiment count for little in reality. Work like this would invariably count for more:-

“As much as we safeguard the
achievements of modern civilization and wish to make it ours in the embellishment of our life, equally much are we convinced
that it cannot be seen as the meaning of Being.”

Now, as it happens this Goebbelesian critique of America's materialist progress echoes through Adam Curtis's acclaimed documentary on modern-day progressivism, The Trap:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-TqZDdPHmDE&feature=related

Curtis stands well outside the theoretic sphere he critiques, and in that of solid analysis. Just so. In the end, everything comes back to "what is true". Today, the heroic is assailed by truth, and any genuine intellectual appealing to it must become cynical, and keep his cynicism well-hidden.

For him, it will become unimportant whether the heroic imagery showered upon the masses is literally true. It is only important that it is useful.

Anonymous said...

GW,

It makes little difference to the teleological construct created here whether or not KMacs definition is inadequate or not because your creation myth is not falsifiable.

Readers must decide whether they wish to worship at your church or not. If we can never "know" Goebbels' intentions then it matters not what evidence is presented or if evidence is even given. All that matters is the belief in the superiority of an extrinsic finality, (We were not ignoble to our Jews) is unassailable. The foundation of that supremacy is German debasement. The culmination is the German holocaust. The justification is the evil that abounds in the Herrenrasse ideology and the fact that belief can never be falsified.

Guessedworker said...

Of course we can't know whether Goebbels actually believed in the palingenic ideology of his party. My comments about him only arise because of my doubt that many highly intelligent men, whose natural mein is to question, will believe in such things. I am suggesting that a lack of belief is most likely in one who is a master of propaganda.

Incidentally, I think it is important to stress that admiration for human virtue and heroism is not at all the same thing as a political attempt to build The New Heroic Man. Carlyle, in all his brilliancy, would have seen the difference in two seconds flat. He is one authority I do not think you can enlist in this discussion.

You then return to a theme which I thought I had dealt with on the MR thread, and which takes us off into the wrong direction completely. I am interested in the future, not the past - not even Germany's embered past.

Certainly, the world that extreme Nazi palingenesis created for other men, whether they were Jews or Germany's neighbours, was a moral outrage of the very highest order. I do believe that it had to be opposed by Britain and France for moral as well as geopolitical reasons.

The German holocaust was a product of that opposition, filtered through the then current theories of air war and the great desire to avoid a land war until the most militarily favourably moment. It has no bearing on the development of the body of vivifying, anti-liberal ideas I believe we need to much. But, of course, Germans and those of German descent are fully entitled to their sense of grief and grievance.

Anonymous said...

desmond,

Please, please stop banging your head against the wall. Wintermute had to finally leave because of guessedworker's obliviousness, and it'd be a shame if you did the same. He'll never change - it's always "morals" and "if only you were smarter" and "please be honest with yourself" and my current favorite, a semi-sneering mention of Gobineau, LOL. He is truly incapable of realizing that it's his hypocrisy - the same type of English hypocrisy the world has witnessed for centuries - upon which all his assertions break. His freshman view of WWII ("I do believe that [Germany] had to be opposed by Britain and France for moral as well as geopolitical reasons") should be indicator enough of what you're dealing with. You can trot out quote after relevant quote of the German government at the time about how Churchill and his crew were living in the ridiculous European past of competing nation-states, while the true struggle was race -- and it'd mean nothing.

You know, I was just going to write a lot more, but my breakfast is ready and it struck me that I was beginning to waste MY time. GW is a conservative, with nothing left to conserve.

Anonymous said...

You managed to string a lot of words together while coming no closer to justifying the statement I challenged you on.

As for the rest, history/empiricism suggest "supremacist" ideas have moved large groups of people in the past. Maybe you're right and some sort of hysteresis prevents any straightforward return to tribalism by whites. But science (as distinct from leftist political agitation) presents no obstacle in that direction that I can see.

And ingroup biases don't need to be any more literally true than heroic myths in order to be useful.

Guessedworker said...

NEAG,

Character assassination is not argument. Can you prove that Aryan Supremacism is true? No, of course you can't.

Look, please try to understand that I am arguing for German nationalism, but one that is not dependent on fantasy. You cannot have your Herrenrasse because it is not true. Germans are not, and never were, the Master Race with a might-based and, therefore, "true" right to dispossess and/or enslave whomsoever they wish within their self-proclaimed sphere of interest.

If, as I presume you do, you want to save our people today you've got to find something else. If are unwilling to do that, you are adding to our very profound difficulties, not resolving them.

I am only asking you to give up a medley of fantasies that came together once in the long and wonderful history of European Man. I am asking you to cease being a slave to the German past, and to think creatively.

That is what we need.

Guessedworker said...

Northerner,

Thanks for an intelligent reply. Hysteresis is a new one on me. Interesting.

I am mulling over a post at MR on the search for the true European, because I want to do a book review related to it. I will give your suggestion some thought.

Meanwhile ...

The need for nationalists to cling to the teleology in National Socialism is really about the potentcy of belief. I've said before that a majority of Europeans, maybe two-thirds, have a predisposition for belief, whether it is expressed in actual religious forms or not. I don't think this predispositon is culturally derived.

So in the "real world" of populist rhetoric, whether or not the Herrenrasse can be proven genetically is immaterial. Most people need faith objects regardless.

This is the basis of my speculation that intelligent, psychologically astute National Socialists like Goebbels will have reserved a place in their private mentation where teleology had no place.

I do not see in what way you have challenged me. I don't have to "justify" anything. I critique on the basis of the non-falsifiability of teleology - a position which Desmond, in his more personal attacks, tries to turn into a belief system itself!

His basic mistake lies in confusing individual heroism with the Nazi reification of the German people as The New Heroic Man. In similar fashion, you are confusing adaptive evolution with this Nazi belief system.

Take the belief system on its own terms - you don't have to exaggerate anything - and show me the proofs of its claims. Then I will concede everything to you, and join Mr McCullough's Nordish tribalists!

Btw, I did mean what I said about a guest post. It would be interesting.

Anonymous said...

gw,

You've pulled one of your great straw man routines again. "Aryan Supremacy". Huh? My point is that you're a hypocrite in your approach to the Germans and WWII, and that that seems to be a trait shared among your blessed kin for years.

It's pointless to debate you. You have your beliefs, I have mine. I'll make no ridiculous attempt to convert you like some missionary skulking across the Dark Continent. I'm not naive enough to think you'll have some cartoonish epiphany along the lines of, "My god, when I view the Germans through the same historical lens as everyone else is viewed, they were justified in all their actions." I could write volumes refuting your quite standard assessment of the conflict that destroyed our race and it still wouldn't make a difference. Desmond Jones puts you to shame with his examples, and it still means nothing. Thus it's all a waste of time.

Good luck on advancing your cause, whatever it might be, by telling the world, "We're no better than you. Please give us a chance." Good luck doling out copies of Salter and waiting for the crescendo that will put everything right. Good luck explaining to the Chinese, Koreans, Jews, Lebanese, Hindus, Japanese, Armenians, Greeks, and Muslims that they shouldn't view themselves as supreme because it's not "honorable".

You will simply never see that when Germany was killed, you were too.

Please don't write back for my sake. I won't reply. I won't be dragged down into the madness.

Guessedworker said...

NEAG.

Why are you so keen to raise up "devastating Desmond"? He didn't produce a coherent reply, and neither do you. His best effort was in regard to my remark about the Judaism/Nazism mirror image, appealing to the authority of Kevin MacDonald. But does MacDonald distinguish between the German mysticism and sense of specialness which the 19th century Volkish movements encouraged, and which have echoes in all ethnically-rooted movements, and the next-century step-change to a Gentilian totalitarian ideology informed by anti-semitism and a post-Versailles national victimilogy? That, to me, is the foundation for comparison with Judaism's myths of Chosenness, supremacism and binding.

Your claim that the Germans were fighting for "us" fails somewhat to take account of the Europeans they dispossessed, enslaved and murdered. When are you going to speak up for them? Were they dying for "us", too, and we should want nothing more than that more of them died ... as many as possible, until the Herrenrasse had completed its land-grap?

Wake up. In the late 1930s honour did not all reside with Messers Hitler, Heydrich and Himmler, but inhabited France and England too.

To compound your unwillingness to comprehend, you inform me that I am telling the world, "We're no better than you ..." I have only critiqued German palingenesis for its intra-European supremacy. I make no such claims in respect to non-European Caucasian peoples. I hope that's clear, and you understand your error.