Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition

by Kevin MacDonald

  Although all Western European-derived societies are undergoing replacement-level, non-White migration, there can be little doubt that Scandinavia and especially Sweden, are extreme in welcoming replacement of their peoples and cultures. As elsewhere in the West, a major role in these transformations has been played by Jewish activists and Jewish media ownership,[1071] but Scandinavians seem particularly favorable to these transformations. Indeed, Noah Carl, analyzing 2015 survey data from the European Union, found that Swedes were the least ethnocentric group as measured by items such as approval of children having a love relationship with various ethnic groups, sexual minorities, and disabled people.[1072] Respondents from the U.K. and the Netherlands were also highly tolerant, with Eastern European countries on the low end, data consistent with northwestern Europeans being the most tolerant.

  The reputation-based moral communities of Scandinavia have been strongly egalitarian. The “Jante Laws” of Scandinavia are paradigmatic: 1. Don’t think you are anything; 2. Don’t think you are as good as us. 3. Don’t think you are smarter than us. 4. Don’t fancy yourself better than us. 5. Don’t think you know more than us. 6. Don’t think you are greater than us. 7. Don’t think you are good for anything. 8. Don’t laugh at us. 9. Don’t think that anyone cares about you. 10. Don’t think you can teach us anything.[1073] In short, no one must rise above the rest. Such egalitarianism is typical of hunter-gatherer groups around the world[1074] and is antithetical to the aristocratic ideal of the Indo-Europeans.

  Extreme egalitarianism results in high levels of conformism and social anxiety. Individuals fear social ostracism for violating egalitarian norms and standing out from the crowd—a phenomenon that has played a major role in creating a public consensus in favor of mass migration and multiculturalism. Decisions are by consensus, implying that individuals are loathe to stand out from the group. In Sweden especially there is no public debate on the costs and benefits of immigration; sceptics typically remain silent for fear of shunning and disapproval.

  Reflecting this pattern, contemporary Scandinavian society in general has a history of relatively small income and social class differences, including the absence of serfdom during the Middle Ages (see Chapter 4). A recent anthropological study of hunter-gatherers found that economic inequality approximated that of modern Denmark.[1075] Chapter 4 discusses the individualism of Scandinavian family patterns, including relatively egalitarian relationships between spouses—extreme even within the Western European context.

  Reputation-based moral communities thus lead to groupthink as individuals trust one another to have honest opinions, and individuals who deviate from group norms are shunned. A Swedish attorney commenting on a legal case where an innocent person was convicted of a crime, noted that many people were involved in the decision and all agreed with what turned out to be an unjust verdict:

  When the same people participated in all or most of [the decision], a groupthink developed. … Strong trust between people is often described as one of Sweden’s great assets [but] it cannot replace a critical approach to serious allegations, even when they are self-accusations [i.e., a false confession by the accused].[1076]

  Strong social trust is indeed a great asset of Sweden and other countries with a significant Nordic population, leading to societies based on individual merit (a facet of reputation) and low levels of corruption. However, as in the above example, it can lead to groupthink as individuals who stand out or dissent from group norms in any way are ostracized—a facet of the Jante Laws (and the Tall Poppy syndrome New Zealand; see Chapter 8): it's not only excellence that is punished, but any deviation from group norms, including opinions shared by group members.

  Egalitarian groups thus make decisions by consensus, not in a top-down, authoritarian manner. Once there is a decision-by-consensus, dissenters are seen as willfully ignorant or obstinate, and they lose status within the group.

  Strong tendencies toward egalitarianism can thus easily lead to powerful social controls, either formal or informal, on behavior which are designed to ensure that individuals do not deviate from consensus attitudes, as noted in Puritan-derived cultures which became dominant in England and had a strong influence on the United States (Chapter 6). Thus, even though Scandinavian cultures have been described as the most individualistic in terms of family functioning (Chapter 4), it is not surprising that these cultures may exert strong controls on individual behavior to ensure conformity to the norms of a moral community.

  Both egalitarianism and socially enforced norms (conceptualized in moral terms) thus typify these cultures. Sweden appears to be extreme in these tendencies. Whereas Chapter 3 discussed Sweden’s egalitarianism, here I describe the intense social controls that have virtually banned discussion of the negative aspects of immigration and multiculturalism, support for which has become a consensus among the Swedish elite.

  Sweden has declared itself a “humanitarian superpower”— a superpower whose ideology is that no sacrifice by the Swedes on behalf of Third World migrants is considered too great. Official policy is that Swedes should make sacrifices to ensure sufficient housing for the continuous flow of immigrants, including repurposing churches (while mosques are being built). The government buys virtually any standing structure to be turned into immigrant housing, and there are proposals to confiscate vacation homes “for the greater good.” Meanwhile, Swedes have a lower priority for housing than immigrants, and thousands can’t find an apartment, a situation that is particularly difficult for young people, especially those wishing to start a family. Leading politicians openly say that Sweden does not belong to the Swedes, and that Swedes and Swedish culture are bland or that Sweden does not have a culture. [1077]

  This phenomenon is a violation of the general finding that people are less willing to contribute to public goods (e.g., public housing, health care) to people who don’t look like themselves[1078] and again indicates very low ethnocentrism. Thus, the European societies that inaugurated national health care programs did so when they were racially homogeneous. Besides a long history of self-reliance as fundamental to Americans’ self-concept, a likely reason universal health care has been so slow in coming in the U.S. is its historically large Black population, and in recent decades the post-1965 multicultural tsunami.[1079]

  A critical aspect of the success of Swedish multiculturalism is that Swedes are terrified to violate the moral consensus surrounding migration for fear of ostracism and loss of job. They are engaging in groupthink that demands allegiance to a moral community as defined by the media and the political culture. In effect, considering the genetic distances involved, this is an extreme form of what evolutionists term “altruistic punishment”—willingness to punish one’s own people and sacrifice them on the altar of a moral ideal for fear of violating violate the norms of a moral community (Chapter 3, with further examples in Chapter 6).

  Journalist Ingrid Carlqvist comments on the enforced silence on any criticism of multiculturalism, particularly in the above-ground media. Violating the silence is met with moral outrage intended to produce shunning and ostracism—in other words, there is a socially mandated groupthink where people are terrified at the thought of having dissenting opinions:

  The situation in Sweden is far worse than in Denmark [which, as noted in Chapter 1 is quite different from Sweden genetically]. In Sweden nobody talks about immigration problems, the death of the multiculti project or the Islamisation/Arabisation of Europe. If you do, you will immediately be called a racist, an Islamophobe or a Nazi. That is what I have been called since I founded the Free Press Society in Sweden. My name has been dragged through the dirt in big newspapers like Sydsvenskan, Svenska Dagbladet and even my own union paper, The Journalist.[1080]

  This phenomenon has nothing to do with Christianity. Sweden is the most secular country in the world. Its elites are hostile to Christianity and more than happy to donate Christian churches to the non-Christian newcomers or to destroy churches to make housing for them. Rather, it is a
new secular religion of moral consensus. They are behaving like the Puritans and Quakers, as discussed in Chapters 6 and 7, but without the religious veneer. Of course, we see the same thing throughout the West, albeit to a lesser extent. Western societies have uniquely been high-trust, reputation-based societies, a basic corollary of the psychology of Western individualism.

  Ironically perhaps, one of the major findings on multiculturalism noted above is that it erodes trust not only of ethnic outsiders, but also of people of one’s own race or ethnicity. We can thus look forward to Swedes and other Westerners being less trusting, but by the time this happens, Sweden will already have been transformed into a non-homogeneous society prone to intra-societal conflicts and lack of willingness to contribute to public goods. When trust evaporates, Swedes may become more willing to stand up to the suicidal consensus.

  Groupthink implies failure to look at the facts of the situation rather than idealized versions that reinforce the consensus. Groupthink thus makes it difficult to question multicultural mantras like “diversity is our strength” by considering the research on the effects of importing ethnic and religious diversity. In the case of Sweden, research indicates that, as in the United States noted above, Swedes, especially highly educated, relatively affluent Swedes, are the first to flee diversity, typically while failing to question its value.

  We’ve found a so-called “tipping point” at around 3-4%, says Emma Neuman, research economist at Linneuniversitet. When the non-European immigrants are that many in a residential area then the native Swedes start moving out. …

  The effect doesn’t revolve around immigrants generally. Immigrants from European countries do not result in a moving effect, only non-European immigrants. It is reminiscent of the phenomenon of white flight in the USA where whites move away from neighbourhoods where many blacks move in.[1081]

  Despite such implicitly nativist behavior, these Swedes are unlikely to publicly dissent from the consensus opinion that forbids any discussion of the effects of importing non-European diversity. The question of whether Swedes benefit from an increasingly segregated, culturally and racially divided, conflict-ridden society is never raised in public.[1082]

  The Special Case of Finland

  I noted in Chapter 1 that Finns, particularly in eastern Finland, are genetic outliers compared to Western Europe. It’s interesting that Finnish society exhibits a similar phenomenon to the Jante Laws discussed above. Edward Dutton notes that a factor contributing to the lack of condemnation of a recent epidemic of rapes by migrants was the desire not to stand out from the crowd. Like their Scandinavian neighbors, Finns are high on conformism and social anxiety, concerned to maintain a good reputation in their moral community.[1083] They do not want to dissent from the moral consensus that defines the community. Being ostracized from the small face-to-face communities that Finns evolved in was certain evolutionary death.

  At the same time, traditional Finnish society, especially in eastern Finland where there is relatively little Swedish genetic or cultural influence, clearly has not exhibited the northwestern European family system discussed in Chapter 4.[1084] Family structure was patriarchal, with fathers controlling sons and determining marriages. ‘‘The head of the household took the decision as to when to partition his farm, when to make appointment to the son and when to retire.” Although they could leave the family farm with an equal inheritance as their brothers, sons tended to remain in the household, the oldest son becoming patriarch, while daughters married outside the family. In eastern Finland in the second half of the eighteenth century, fully 70 percent of families were extended or multiple, rising to 84–90 percent among the peasants. This pattern is remarkably similar to that found in southern France and southeastern Europe, and contrasts with the patterns of northwest Europe, as discussed in Chapter 4. In Finland, it wasn’t until well into the eighteenth century that this pattern began to change as a result of influence from Sweden via the Lutheran church’s opposition to clans and marrying kin. (Sweden dominated Finland until 1809.)—characterized by socially enforced egalitarianism as typified by the Jante Laws.

  This suggests that egalitarianism, social anxiety, and conformism evolved in Finland independent of other parts of Scandinavia where they are linked to extreme individualism in family structure.

  Conclusion: The Importance of Changing the

  Explicit Culture

  Evolutionists have not been properly sensitive to the enormous gulf between humans and animals resulting from human general intelligence and the Conscientiousness system. At a very broad level, the Conscientiousness system allows our behavior to come under the control of the surrounding culture. We make complex appraisals of how our behavior and attitudes mesh with the rewards and punishments present in the current cultural milieu, and we are inundated with ideas and ideologies emanating from the academic world and the media. Importantly for the present political context, potential political dissidents must assess the risks to their reputation and livelihood in their face-to-face world.

  But it gets more complicated than that. The people creating messages emanating from the mainstream media and academic culture need not—and often do not—have the same interests as the recipients of the messages. For example, it is a commonplace that media images have important effects on behavior even though people are often unaware that their behavior is so influenced.85 These images are often engineered by advertisers who are consciously attempting to influence the recipients of the messages in ways that conform to advertisers’ interests, not those of the audience.

  More important, media messages and academic culture—both dominated by the anti-White left—have been able to shape the discussion of issues related to White identity and interests. The culture of critique has become the explicit culture of the West, endlessly repeated in media messages but packaged differently for people of different levels of intelligence and education, and for people with different interests and from different subcultures.86 White people are constantly exposed to suffering non-Whites as proper candidates for immigration and refugee status. They are exposed to messages intended to induce guilt for the history of slavery and dispossession of the Native Americans. A theme of this chapter is that by programming the higher areas of the brain, this explicit culture is able to control the implicit ethnocentric tendencies of White people.

  To find a way out of this morass, therefore, changing the explicit culture is critical, in particular legitimizing a strong sense of identity and group interests among Whites. This won’t be easy, but I suggest that the first step is a psychological one: making proud and confident explicit assertions of White identity and interests, and creating communities where such assertions are considered normal and natural rather than grounds for ostracism. The fact that such assertions appeal to our implicit psychology is certainly an asset. It’s always easier to go with a natural tendency than to oppose it. And in this case, opposing our natural ethnocentric tendencies by using our quintessentially human prefrontal inhibitory control against our own ethnic interests is nothing less than suicidal.

  Moreover, the massive demographic changes that have occurred throughout the West along with increasingly common anti-White themes in the mainstream media appear to be making Whites more aware that their interests are not being met by the erection of minority-White, multicultural, multiracial societies throughout the West. As discussed above, this anti-White rhetoric has the effect not only of making Whites more conscious of being White, but of making them more willing to coalesce into a White political force.

  The result has been increasingly strident efforts to ramp up propaganda in support of the status quo on issues related to race and immigration and to shut down free speech on these issues. Particularly since the election of President Trump, the dominant cultural apparatus of the left has moved into high gear, with major newspapers (The New York Times, Washington Post) and television networks (CNN, MSNBC) becoming obsessively anti-Trump. Since the charge of Russian collusion has collapsed,
the media has shifted to greater emphasis on Trump’s alleged racism.

  However, when propaganda fails to have its desired effects of manipulating our evolved psychology—as appears to be increasingly the case—the establishment has been resorting to force. Stifling speech by people who disagree with the establishment line on race has become common. Speakers are barred from college campuses or shouted down, often amid rioting.[1085] Social media companies have shut down the accounts of outspoken White advocates, such as Jared Taylor, and have engaged in shadow banning, and limiting numbers of followers. Media sites associated with the Dissident Right have been denied financial services by PayPal and credit card processing companies.

  As noted in Chapter 7, there is also a robust academic literature by leftist law professors that justifies essentially abrogating the First Amendment on issues related to race.[1086] If Hillary Clinton had been elected president and appointed even one or two Supreme Court justices, the First Amendment would have been gutted. Justice Elena Kagan has already shown a willingness to rein in the First Amendment regarding speech on diversity issues.

  And recently the American Civil Liberties Union—long a stalwart defender of free speech and often regarded as a de facto Jewish organization[1087]—has changed its policies to combat ideas associated with the Dissident Right:

  A recent internal ACLU memo on “case-selection guidelines” explicitly says that the cases the organization takes up may be influenced by “the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values. … Factors like the potential effect of the speech on ‘marginalized communities’ and even on ‘the ACLU’s credibility’ could militate against taking a case.”[1088]