Individualism and the Western Liberal Tradition

by Kevin MacDonald

  This hostile, adversary culture is far more common and far more explicitly stated even than two decades ago when Gelernter’s article appeared, as indicated, for example, by the frequent displays of anti-White venom noted in Chapter 8. It was certainly apparent during the 2016 election and thereafter as the vast majority of the media have displayed an almost apoplectic hatred for Donald Trump. Trump regularly returns the favor at his rallies, often pointing to the media area and referring to them as “the most corrupt people in the world” or similar—to enthusiastic audience applause.

  At a basic level, the addiction of the left to identity politics has destroyed the traditional social-class basis of Western politics and resulted in a political scenario based on ethnic/racial identity and electoral benefits to the parties of the left and to business interests (via cheap labor) achieved by importing millions of non-Whites into Western countries. Historically this began with a shift among intellectuals associated with the Frankfurt School as a response to the emergence of National Socialism in Germany during the 1930s.[1136] These intellectuals had been orthodox Marxists, believing that the fundamental divisions in society were based on social class, but they realized that a classical Marxist analysis could not explain the attraction of National Socialism to the German working class.

  Common themes in this body of writing are hostility to American populism, the need for leadership by an elite of intellectuals, and pathologization of White identity and pursuit of White interests, including the ideology that concern by Whites about ethnic displacement and the rise of the power of ethnic minorities is irrational and indicative of psychiatric disorder. These themes became established in intellectual circles by the 1950s and rose to dominance with the success of the countercultural revolution of the 1960s.

  And because homogeneous White societies were seen as inevitably dangerous in the long run—as proved to be the case in Germany from 1933–1945—this ideology became fused with the effort to overturn the 1924 immigration restriction law that biased U.S. immigration toward Northwest Europe.[1137] The result was the Hart-Cellar Immigration law of 1965 that opened up immigration to all the peoples of the world—the same era that saw the final phase in the rise to power of the new elite.

  Over the years legal immigration has expanded to well over 1 million/year and a total of 59 million as of 2015 at which time first- and second-generation immigrants constituted 26 percent of the population, and nearly 65 million Americans did not speak English at home.[1138]

  Foreign-born Americans and their descendants have been the main driver of U.S. population growth, as well as of national racial and ethnic change, since passage of the 1965 law that rewrote national immigration policy. … Without immigration since 1965, the U.S. … would be 75% White instead of 62%. Hispanics would be 8% of the population, not 18%. And Asians would be less than 1% of Americans, instead of 6%.[1139]

  The result has been the racialization of politics as White people have increasingly coalesced in the Republican Party, whereas the post-1965 immigrants and their descendants have coalesced in the Democratic Party along with previously resident groups such as Blacks and Jews. In 2016, over 90 percent of Republican votes were from White people, while around 40–44 percent of Democratic votes were from non-Whites.[1140] This racially polarized trend will likely increase in the future even if immigration were to stop immediately because people who have already immigrated and their children tend to be younger than the native population.

  If present trends continue, the Democratic Party and the left generally will dominate American politics beginning in the very near future, quite possibly with the 2020 election. Despite the anti-immigration rhetoric of President Trump, nothing substantial has changed the trajectory of American immigration policy, with the result that, barring some kind of cataclysm, the left will soon win the presidency and both houses of Congress. The left has already shown its authoritarian tendencies, particularly with regard to free speech. College campuses have become bastions of liberal/leftist intolerance for even mildly conservative viewpoints.[1141] One or two Supreme Court appointments by a liberal president would essentially gut the First and Second Amendments. And the anti-White rhetoric noted in Chapter 8 would be exacerbated far beyond current levels.

  The deepening, racially based divide will mark the end of individualism for the White population of America as Whites coalesce into cohesive groups in an increasingly hostile, anti-White environment. An upsurge in ethnocentrism on the part of the European-derived majority in the United States is a likely outcome of the increasingly group-structured contemporary social and political landscape—likely because human evolved psychological mechanisms function by making ingroup and outgroup membership more salient in situations of group-based hostility and resource competition (see Chapter 8). The major examples of Western collectivism—medieval Christendom and National Socialist Germany—have been characterized by strongly negative ingroup-outgroup attitudes and sharp social divisions.

  Intellectual Movements of the Left Have

  Exploited the Western Liberal Tradition

  The intellectuals who came to dominate American intellectual discourse and academe were quite aware of the need to appeal to Western proclivities toward individualism, egalitarianism, and moral universalism discussed throughout this volume. A theme of The Culture of Critique is that moral indictments of their opponents have been prominent in the writings of these activist intellectuals, including political radicals and those opposing biological perspectives on individual and group differences in IQ. A sense of moral superiority was also prevalent in the psychoanalytic movement, and the Frankfurt School developed the view that social science was to be judged by moral criteria.

  The triumph of these intellectual movements to the point of consensus in the West has created a moral community where people who do not subscribe to their beliefs are seen as not only intellectually deficient but as morally evil.

  Israel Zangwill is good example of an intellectual activist who emphasized that Western ideals of morality and fair play could be used against immigration restriction.

  You must make a fight against [the immigration restriction bill of 1924]; tell them they are destroying American ideals. Most fortifications are of cardboard, and if you press against them, they give way.[1142]

  America has ample room for all the six millions of the Pale [i.e., the Pale of Settlement, home to most of Russia’s Jews]; any one of her fifty states could absorb them. And next to being in a country of their own, there could be no better fate for them than to be together in a land of civil and religious liberty, of whose Constitution Christianity forms no part and where their collective votes would practically guarantee them against future persecution.[1143]

  It has been noted that during the period of ethnic defense in the 1920s, Darwinist thinking on race was common throughout Western culture and assumed prominence among many U.S. immigration restrictionists, energized by the changing ethnic balance of the United States (Chapter 6). A theme of The Culture of Critique is that the intellectuals who became influential beginning in the 1930s (particularly the Boasian school of anthropology) targeted Darwinian theories of race as well as individual identities based on White racial group identity. For example, attacking racial identities in favor of atomized individualism for European-Americans was a central strategy of the Frankfurt School. Group identities based on race and even the family, were portrayed as an indication of psychopathology. Radical individualism was thus promoted by intellectuals who retained a strong allegiance to their own group and self-consciously promoted group interests.

  These ideologies fell on particularly fertile soil because they dovetailed with Western European tendencies toward individualism. And whereas individualism has been the key characteristic of Western peoples in their rise to world dominance, these ideologies and their internalization by so many Europeans now play a major role in facilitating Western dispossession.

  In particular, the ideology that White identity and havin
g a sense of White interests are signs of psychopathology has made it impossible in mainstream media and academia to argue for the legitimate interests of White people in having homelands and in avoiding becoming minorities in societies they have dominated for hundreds, and in the case of Europe, thousands of years. Such ideologies are disseminated by the mainstream media—including conservative and libertarian media—and throughout the educational system, from elementary school through university.

  They have in effect created a moral community that is radically opposed to the interests of Whites. And as with the Puritans, the new elite has been able to create a culture of altruistic punishment in which White people punish fellow Whites who deviate from the dogmas of the moral community created by the new elite, even at the cost to compromising the long-term interests of themselves and their descendants.

  These ideologies have been increasingly buttressed by powerful social controls. As discussed in Chapter 8, in much of the West these controls include formal legislation punishing critics of immigration and Western dispossession. Because of the First Amendment, such statutory controls are in their infancy in the United States but are likely to gain traction in the coming years if the left gains power.

  However, informal controls are also very effective in the United States and throughout the West. For example, many people have been fired from their jobs as a result of the actions of activist organizations simply phoning their employers. These organizations take advantage of the moral community created by media and academic elites over the last 50 years by limiting the influence of dissident individuals and exposing them to public scrutiny, thereby subjecting them to ostracism and job loss. The effectiveness of these tactics relies on elite consensus and conformist popular attitudes for their effectiveness. Scientifically based ideas that were entirely respectable less than a century ago now result in ostracism and job loss.

  The Moral Argument for White Interests

  Ultimately, the effectiveness of the contemporary moral community of the left depends on Western tendencies toward individualism and liberalism, as recounted throughout this volume. Pro-White activists attempting to combat this moral community must be aware of the very powerful tendency among their constituents toward wanting to be part of a moral community. In particular, they must emphasize that Whites have interests that are morally legitimate. While the moral sentiments of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century abolitionists were certainly praiseworthy, adopting an ideology of moral universalism amounts to suicide under the present conditions where migration over long distances is so easy. Calling Whites “racist” for asserting their legitimate interests is an attempt to place their opponents in a morally illegitimate category. Such campaigns are uniquely effective in the West. For example, Israel and its defenders in the West are remarkably immune to the charge, despite their erection of a society based on an ethnically defined immigration policy, ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies toward Palestinians, and expulsion of African migrants.

  To an evolutionary psychologist, moralistic aggression against those who deviate from group attitudes seems obviously adaptive for maintaining the boundaries and policing the behavior of a close-knit group. Groups of Angles, Jutes, and their Puritan descendants doubtless benefited greatly from moralistic aggression because of its effectiveness in enforcing group norms and punishing cheaters and defectors, thereby creating effective groups.

  Moralistic aggression is not inherently wrong. The key is to convince Whites to alter their moralistic aggression in a more adaptive direction in light of Darwinism. After all, the object of moralistic aggression is quite malleable.

  A proper Darwinian sense of moralistic aggression would be directed at those of all ethnic backgrounds who have engineered or are maintaining the cultural controls that are presently dispossessing Whites of their historic homelands. The moral basis of this proposal is quite clear:

  (1) There are genetic differences between peoples, so that, from an evolutionary perspective, different peoples have legitimate conflicts of interest.[1144]

  (2) Ethnocentrism has deep psychological roots that cause even relatively non-ethnocentric Whites to feel greater attraction toward and trust in those who are genetically similar.[1145] Ethnocentrism among Westerners has paved the way toward creating the high-trust, culturally homogeneous societies that have traditionally been more common in the West than elsewhere. As noted in Chapter 8, studies have shown that areas with greater cultural and ethnic diversity tend to have lessened political participation and social trust, including trust of others from one’s own racial/ethnic group.[1146]

  (3) As Frank Salter notes, societies with a predominant ethnic group bound by ties of kinship and culture are more likely to be open to redistributive policies such as social welfare and contributing to public goods like health care.[1147]

  (4) Societies with a predominant Western European-derived majority are predisposed to political systems characterized by democracy and rule of law.[1148] There are already signs that these features of Western European societies are threatened as a result of the rise of radical forms of leftism based on coercion, the eradication of individual liberties, and radical changes to the Constitution. A necessary condition for this transformation is the new electorate being imported into Western countries as a result of immigration policies brought about in the United States ultimately by the passage of the 1965 immigration law and spreading to other Western countries shortly thereafter.[1149]

  (5) The accusations of moral depravity now being leveled against Whites as a group for the history of conquest and slavery would also apply to non-White groups. Huge swaths of humanity (Arabs, Han Chinese, Bantu) have been able to ethnically monopolize vast areas as the result of the conquests of their ancestors, yet we never hear them expressing guilt for their conquests or their treatment of conquered peoples; nor are they exposed to messages from their elites that welcoming millions of non-Whites is a moral imperative.

  (6) At least since the eighteenth century, Western societies have been not only more economically prosperous but also fairer and more equitable than non-Western societies, with the result that vast swaths of humanity would like to move to the West. A prime example is that slavery persisted in many parts of the world long after it was abolished in the West, and it continues in many parts of the world today, particularly Africa.[1150]

  (7) Because the great majority of post-1965 immigrants have IQ below the White average, they will be a long-term drain on the society because of low academic success in a highly technical economy,[1151] high levels of using social services,[1152] and proneness to criminality,[1153] especially after the first generation.[1154] This constitutes a long-term cost for White taxpayers as well as a general lowering of the culture.

  (8) High levels of immigration result in downward pressure on wages for working-class people[1155] and increasingly even in high-tech areas with the proliferation of visas for information technology workers from India and China.

  (9) Immigration has resulted in the racialization of politics and an increase in political polarization and civil strife that could ultimately prove cataclysmic. Despite wars framed as being moral crusades against cruel dictators (Iraq, Libya), Western interventions in these cultures have not altered their kinship-based dynamics—a harbinger for the increasingly fractionated future of the West unless the transformation of Western societies is reversed.

  (10) I have already commented on the increased anti-White hatred emanating from the elite culture and from the wider society in the West. This will only get more intense as Whites lose political power, and may well lead to increases in violence against Whites. Already Whites are vastly more likely to be victims of violent Black crime than the reverse.[1156]

  (11) Because of the relatively high standard of living in Western countries, there are negative ecological effects of importing millions of poor people from the Third World.

  And it goes without saying that immigration enthusiasts ignore the ethnic genetic interests
of Whites. Moreover, they are unconcerned with intellectual consistency: they would be horrified at the thought that Korea, Nigeria, or Israel ought to have replacement-level immigration.

  A good sign is that the great majority of pro-White activists and sympathizers see a strong moral imperative in preserving our people and culture. Often without a lot of conscious thought about it, there is a sense that we are a moral community, and we reject and shun those who hate us and our ideas. There is a sense of moral rectitude and an awareness of the hypocrisy and corruption of our enemies—particularly the globalist elites who now control the fate of the West. There is a lot of confidence that we are morally and intellectually right.

  And that is a very good start indeed. It is a message that will find increasing resonance among the broad mass of White people as the West becomes ever more polarized across ethnic divisions and increasingly hostile toward Whites.

  Conclusion: The Uncertain Future of the West

  In The Culture of Critique I wrote that “segments of the European-derived peoples of the world will eventually realize that they have been ill-served and are being ill-served both by the ideology of multiculturalism and by the ideology of de-ethnicized individualism.” I envisioned increasing between-group conflict as well as stepped-up social controls that attempt to buttress the multicultural project: