by Stefano Vaj
[152] Quoted in the introduction to Julius Evola, Indirizzi per una educazione razziale, op. cit., Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss would also have influenced various components of the völkisch movement and of the Konservative Revolution, including the specifically National Socialist ones, and through his studies of psychoanthropology, deserves to be mentioned: Rasse und Seele [Race and Soul], Monaco 1926, and Von Seele und Antlitz der Rassen und Völker [On the Soul and Countenance of the Races and Populations], Monaco 1928. His interest in Arabic ethnic culture distantiates him from a racism of the Ku Klux Klan style, and has yielded specialist work of some signinficance that, unlike those mentioned, can still be found on the market.
[153] And obviously clones: but the author writes here on the human species and in 1973 the idea of a routine cloning of mammals was certainly not an imminent possibility.
[154] On Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetic Diversity and Human Equality, op. cit.
[155] On the implications and the contemporary meaning, especially political meanings, of the word “race,” see instead Gianantonio Valli, “Semantica del razzismo” in L’uomo libero, no. 37. Besides, the semantics in question crumbles nearly completely when one confronts the interlocutor with the most innocent questions pertaining to animal races, especially pet animals.
[156] In reality there exist different kinds of non-cultural segregations, and therefore generically applicable to all animal species, including the human species, among which geographical isolation (created by the distance or by other natural barriers that are difficult to surmount), ecological isolation (that is the genetically determined preference for different habitats) and ethological isolation, represented by the lack of sexual attraction between males and females, even though potentially inter-fecund, from two different populations. Another factor is the statistically lesser fecundity of interracial mating, that seems probably also for the great human races.
[157] One question that is debated, especially with respect to the modern confirmation founded on DNA analysis that various members (now gone extinct) of the Homo family known to paleontology belonged to a different species, and not to a race of the species Homo sapiens, is the question of whether the races “evolved” before or after hominisation, as well as if this one has a unique origin at a specific point in time, or if it occurred multi-regionally following genetic mutations and selective pressures convergent between the different races. The question is given remarkable ideological weight, in particular when stand is taken on the second theory, cf. Rachel Caspari, “Origines et diversité. L’évolution multirégionale de l’espèce humaine,” in Krisis no. 27, November 2005, that even contains unacceptable concessions to common “antiracism” on the incapacity specific to humanity to break up into sub-species. Another way in which to ask this question is if Homo sapiens acquired his present day characteristics at the point in time, if so relatively recently, in which he would have been constituted as a species, or if hominisation took place following an “intra-specific” evolutionary process (similar to the one that for instance saw today’s horses significantly increase their size with respect to their cospecious progenitors). See too Milford H. Wolpoff, Rachel Caspari, Race and Human Evolution. A Fatal Attraction, Simon & Schuster, New York 1997.
[158] Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, “Some Data on the Genetic Structure of Human Populations,” in Proceedings, X International Congress Genetics, I, 1959; “Human Diversity,” in Proceedings XII International Congress Genetics, III, 1969; The Genetics of Human Populations (with Walter F Bodmer), Freeman, San Francisco 1971; Bodmer’s Genetics, Evolution and Man, San Francisco 1971, also deserves mentioning, while the above quoted Dobzhansky is the author of a more recent book with a similar title, Evolution, Genetics and Man, Wiley, 1966.
[159] Christopher G.A. Harrison, “Human Evolution and Ecology,” in Proceedings III International Congress Human Genetics, 1967.
[160] James Neel et al., “The Phylogenetic Relationship of Some Indian Tribes of Central and South America,” in The American Journal of Human Genetics, 21, 1969, p. 384.
[161] The variant alleles of genes are the observed variances of a given gene; for instance those that code for the main blood groups.
[162] A. Langaney, “La quadrature des races,” in Génétique et Anthropologie, September 1977.
[163] The author refers here to Richard Lewontin, The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, Columbia University Press, 1974, a piece of research whose data are made suspect by the overt ideological and “progressist” intent of the scholar, which has even led him to try to rehabilitate Lamarckian themes inherent in alleged genetic influences of acquired traits!
[164] A brilliant and ironic revival of Rousseau’s declaration according to which it would be better wrongly to give apes the status of human beings rather than wrongly deny them this status, is contained in the pamphlet by the nominalist philosopher Clément Rosset, Lettre sur les Chimpanzés, Gallimard, Paris, 1965 and 1999. It also deserves mentioning that the author was required in the second edition to add a preface in which he defended his respectability against accusations of racism…
[165] Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, The History and Geography of Human Genes, Princeton University Press, 1996 (Italian translation: Storia e geografia dei geni umani, Adelphi, Milan 1997.) The conclusions of this masterly research are summarised in the more accessible Genes, Peoples and Languages, op. cit., where the data extracted from the “cartography” of present-day geographical distribution of many hundreds of genes is plotted against an enormous amount of demographic, archeological and linguistic data, so that one can observe how altogether different genealogies, such genetic, paleoanthropological and linguistic lineages, are showed to agree and corroborate one another.
[166] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, Penguin 2004.
[167] In reality, as we shall see, it is in fact on the “cultural” nature of man that attention could have been focused. A fact which leaves ample scope for the study of the “natural” mechanism of race formation through the observation of other species and the proper comparison between animal and vegetal races and human ones.
[168] The step in question has been lengthily analysed by Stefano Vaj, Indagine sui Diritti dell’Uomo. Genealogia di una morale, LEdE, Rome 1985, p. 59, online edition: http://www.dirittidelluomo.org
[169] Beiker, Weiner, Biology of Human Adaptability, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1966.
[170] Riggs, Sargent, “Physiological Regulation in Moist Heat by Young American Negro and White Males,” in Human Biology, 1964, 32, pp. 339-335.
[171] See the repeatedly quoted pamphlet by Jacquard. While studies on monozygotic twins raised separately are valid on matters of the hereditary component of IQ, as regards race the study Race et intelligence, op. cit, by Jean-Paul Hébert, examines the average results of individuals raised in basically the same conditions (for instance the inmates of an orphanage) but of different ethnicity. Such tests, as is well known, do not only reveal inferior average results on the part of the negroid populations, but also a distribution curve that is significantly different for Europoid and Asian races.
[172] Interesting in this respect are studies that identify the resurgence of modules of expression and grammar that are specific to the African languages within the English spoken by black Americans, even though it is debated if any kind of cultural continuity between the former and the latter could exist, given the demise of African languages among the slaves imported to the United States.
[173] A “sociobiological” example given by Lorenz is that of the peacock’s tail feathers, that makes it more difficult to escape predators, but whose length is a decisive factor of preference among the females of the species, presumably because they guarantee a masculine offspring that will be as irresistible to females of its generation, while the hypothetical “short-tail loving” female, would tend to see the number of her grandsons diminish for each generation. See Konrad Lorenz, King Salomon’s Ring, Plume 1997, and Stefano Vaj, “L’etologia,” i
n L’Uomo libero no. 5, op. cit.
[174] Cf. Hans F. Günther, Platon als Hüter des Lebens, op. cit.
[175] Salzano et al., “Further Studies on the Xavante Indians,” in American Journal of Human Genetics, 1967, 19, pp. 463-489; Chagnon et al., “The Influence of Cultural Factors on the Demography and Pattern of Gene Flow from the Makritare to the Yanomama Indians,” ibidem.
[176] Joseph B. Birdsell, Human Evolution, Rand McNally, Chicago 1972.
[177] To mention an equivalent European example, according to a study completed in 2006 by Irish scientists, an historical character with the name Niall of the Nine Hostages, who left behind him twelve sons, may have around…three million descendants, because he has been identified as the source of a piece of genetic material, localised on the Y chromosome, that is shared on average by one in twelve males in Eire. See Lester Haines, “Irishman has three million kids” in The Register, 19th January 2006.
[178] B. Glass, „Genetic Changes in Human Populations, Especially Those Due to Gene Flow and Genetic Drift,” in Advances in Genetics, 1954, 6, pp. 95-139; Steinberg et al. „Genetic Studies in an Inbred Human Isolate,” in Proceedings III International Congress on Human Genetics, 1967, pp. 267-269.
[179] Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetic Diversity and Human Equality, op. cit.
[180] Cfr. Motoo Kimura e James F. Crow, “Natural Selection and Gene Substitution,” in Genetic Research, 1969, 13, pp. 27-41.
[181] Darwin, The Origin of the Species, ch. IV.
[182] Motoo Kimura and James F. Crow, “Natural Selection and Gene Substitution,” op. cit.
[183] Degree that is ultimately relative. As has been observed, there exist animal species, including wild species, in which the process of racial differentiation is much more advanced than in man, so much so that it is verging on speciation (like the races that remain genetically compatible, but that are no longer naturally interfecund because of obstacles of an ethological or mechanical type to the mating members of different races, or for the female to carry a hypothetical gestation to completion). Cf. the jocular speculations about the hypothetical mating of a Chihuahua and a Saint Bernard.
[184] Of course, sexual selection and segregation are two faces of the same medal, when one takes the former not in absolute terms, but in terms of the probability that person X will generate offspring with person Y. In this sense, an element which, as we have already seen is definitely “cultural,” and of which Cavalli-Sforza stressed the immense role, is language, the limits of which, despite conquests, colonisation, migrations, etc., still today often mirrors the “genetic gradients” to a significant degree. Apparently, people who defend their own linguistic identity also defends their ethnic identity, and language normally plays a decisive role in human courtship…
[185] For a discussion around the sense and scope of mass immigration in ethnocidal terms, we refer to Stefano Vaj, “Per l’autodifesa etnica totale” in L’Uomo libero no. 51 (http://www.uomo-libero.com).
[186] Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans, op. cit., p. 57.
[187] It is easy in fact to understand that in a species that lives in the same environmental conditions and in a state of approximate panmixia, differentiation has neither reason nor possibility to emerge, let alone to persist.
[188] Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples and Languages, op. cit., p. 300.
[189] Here we hear the echo of the point of view well illustrated by Berthold Brecht when he invents the imaginary “Chinese curse” “May you live in interesting times”. If man’s future is no longer the bliss of celestial paradise or of classless society, may it at least be the most tedious possible…
[190] The book reiterates a series of lectures given in the University of Sorbonne in 1981, and reiterated and updated in 1990. In the beginning of the eighties, and worse still ten years later, Cavalli-Sforza appears to be, for a professor of genetics, oddly uninformed about the developments that were clearly looming…And in any case it is hard to see on what grounds he hopes that the “luck” he repeatedly mentions would be destined to last for more than a few years.
[191] Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, Harper 1998.
[192] Graceful and anodyne euphemism, in which the author acknowledges that his most likely readers are not yet ready to hear him casually speak of their own extinction.
[193] Oswald Spengler, Der Mensch und die Technik. Beitrag zu einer Philosophie des Leben) op. cit., p. 100.
[194] Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature, Polity Press 2003 (Italian: Il futuro della natura umana: i rischi di una genetica liberale, Einaudi, Turin 2002, p. 44).
[195] Cf. Giorgio Locchi, Nietzsche, Wagner e il mito sovrumanista, Akropolis, Rome, 1982.
[196] Giorgio Locchi, “Espressione politica e repression sovrumanista”, in l’Uomo libero no. 53, http://www.uomo-libero.com
[197] If throughout its history Italian fascism suffers from the pervading influence of external forces, much less present in the case of Germany, the Niebelung phantasmagoria of the Third Reich, and specifically the antifascists’ diabolisation of it, tend paradoxically to conceal the conservative, if not petit-bourgeois, stakes variously present in National Socialist mentality and in the formation of Hitler himself. Hence, also in the area of biopolitics, as in its social aspect, the National Socialist movement ends up, despite its proclaimed radicalism, to speak a more “right-wing” language than contemporary Italian elaborations, as in the case of the romantic ruralism of Darré (cf. Walther Darré, Neuadel aus Blut und Boden, 1929, English: New Nobility from Blood and Soil) or of Rosenberg. Moreover, many people like Jünger, initially deceived by what was perceived as a Wilhelmine and middle-class slip by the party, will paradoxically end up even further to the right of the political spectrum, both during the regime and after the war.
[198] It is not by chance that, in Italy, the racial question in particular quickly becomes a “litmus paper,” on which the “revolutionary fascists,” as noted by De Felice (cf. for instance Storia degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo, ult. ed. Einaudi, Turin, 2005), tend to peg their own hope of revival and palingenesis in the crisis of debility of the regime at the end of the thirties.
[199] It is hence quite unusual that a recent and exceptionally stupid film like Les Rivières pourpres by Mathieu Kassovitz (France 2000, English title: The Crimson Rivers) – a crime story with in essence a muddled plot about some academics who, in a university in Upper Savoy, first try to select for exceptional individuals by crossing the children of Ph. D’s, then abduct peasants’ children to compensate for the “impoverished bloodlines” (?) that ensue – instead acknowledges, despite reiterated references to “fascism,” a recurrence and radication of a “French way to eugenics,” largely extraneous and preexistent to any possible National Socialist influence. In the biopolitical camp, however, not even writers otherwise known for their anti-conformism refrain from commonplace “incapacitating reprimands” of the National Socialist past, such as the editor of Effedieffe Maurizio Blondet, who “ironises,” in polemics with La Repubblica, about the already mentioned Italian Law on IVF: “if it is obscurantist to prohibit human cloning (with twenty years incarceration), then why not rehabilitate the pioneer on monstrous human experimentation, the unjustly persecuted Doctor Mengele?” (Avvenire, 20th June 2002, “Provetta e principio de precauzione”). At last a film that does describe a “eugenic” society (but not biotechnological) without any “fascist” reference, and which paradoxically embodies overhumanist values (surpassing oneself, sense of the tragic, fighting spirit) in the “genetically imperfect” protagonist is Gattaca, by Andrew Niccol (USA, 1997).
[200] Quotation given by Thuillier in “Les scientifiques et le racisme,” La Recherche, May 1974, and by Jacquard, Eloge de la différence, op. cit., p. 90.
[201] This sentence, published it is said in an article that appeared in 1940 in the review Zeitschrift fur angewandte Psychologie und Charakterkunde, has been reported by a Harvard psychiatrist, Leon Heisenberg, in Science of Apri
l 1972, and was the main argument in a campaign to have the Nobel Prize in Medicine, attributed on October 11th 1973 to von Frisch, Timbergen and Lorentz, voided by the competent committee. There is no doubt that today such phrases would be more than enough for an unprecedented annulment of a Nobel Prize.
[202] Jacquard, In Praise of Difference, op. cit., p. 146.
[203] Highly significant in this respect is the little known initiative of the Lebensborn (“Fount of Life”). Cf. on this matter Georg Lilienthal, Der Lebensborn e.V’. Ein Instrument nationalsocialistischer Rassenpolitik, Fischer (Tb), Frankfurt 2003; Will Berthold, Lebensborn, Macdonald & Co, New York 1988; Mark Hillel and Henry Clarissa, Lebensborn, Im Namen der Rasse, Zsolnay-Verlag 1991, English translation, Of Pure Blood, Pocket Books, 1978. The Lebensborn were SS centres dedicated to the assistance of German “unwed mothers” and of abandoned children, not necessarily German, with ethnical characteristics that were considered desirable. Of course, in the context of World War II such centres saw a remarkable expansion, and immediately after the war gave rise to scandal-campaigns on the “mass abduction of blond Polish children” and on “SS stud farms”.