The Salterian Ethics of Imperium

Analyzing the worldview of Francis Parker Yockey through the prism of Salterian ethics.

Previously, I discussed the ethics of EGI and of genetic interests in general (“Salterian ethics”) and would now like to discuss how those ethics can be utilized to judge a proposed biopolitical project – Francis Parker Yockey’s  idea of Imperium (a pan-European empire), as outlined in his book by that name. I had, some years ago, attempted to synthesize the world views of Salter and Yockey with respect to the genetic/biological and political considerations – essentially tracking with the first two sections of Salter’s On Genetic Interests, and now I will focus on ethical considerations, which was the topic of the last third of Salter’s book.

In my previous TOQ essay focusing on Salter and Yockey, I explained the difference between gross and net genetic interests, although I did not use those terms:

Alternatively, consider the possibility that a future, very finely grained, autosomal genetic analysis would show a clear distinctiveness between East and West England. A very narrow pursuit of ethnic genetic interest may suggest that the East and West English separate to form new ethnostates and that members of those groups should consider themselves distinct ethnies, not intermarry, etc. However, the costs of such a scenario need to be balanced against the relatively small extra gain in raw genetic interest obtained. This pursuit of narrow regional intra-national genetic interest would result in a disruption of the organic solidarity of the English nation and people; if this disruption makes the English—all of them, East and West—more vulnerable to foreign interests and intrusive demographic expansions, then the costs would outweigh the benefits. Likewise, the legitimate pursuit of intra-Western genetic interests and particularisms needs to be balanced against the possible costs incurred by not presenting a united front against other civilizational concentrations of genetic interest.

The “...very narrow pursuit of ethnic genetic interest” that “may suggest that the East and West English separate to form new ethnostates” would be an example of a pursuit of gross genetic interests – a naïve attempt to maximize EGI without consideration of costs vs. benefits. Taking a broader view, and considering that larger entities may be able to better defend the genetic interests of the populace can lead to optimization of net genetic interests – maximization of EGI when costs and benefits are balanced out.

Yockey’s words...in Imperium are relevant here:

The touching of this racial-frontier case of the Negro, however, shows to Europe a very important fact—that race-difference between White men, which means Western men, is vanishingly small in view of their common mission of actualizing a High Culture. In Europe, where hitherto the race difference between, say, Frenchman and Italian has been magnified to great dimensions, there has been no sufficient reminder of the race-differences outside the Western Civilization. Adequate instruction along this line would apparently have to take the form of occupation of all Europe, instead of only part of it, by Negroes from America and Africa, by Mongols and Turkestan! from the Russian Empire . . .

If any Westerner thinks that the barbarian makes nice distinctions between the former nations of the West, he is incapable of understanding the feelings of populations outside a High Culture toward that culture . . .

. . . But the greatest opposition of all has not yet been named, the conflict which will take up all the others into itself. This is the battle of the Idea of the Unity of the West against the nationalism of the 19th century. Here stand opposed the ideas of Empire and petty-stateism, large-space thinking and political provincialism. Here find themselves opposed the miserable collection of yesterday-patriots and the custodians of the Future. The yesterdaynationalists are nothing but the puppets of the extra-European forces who conquer Europe by dividing it. To the enemies of Europe, there must be no rapprochement, no understanding, no union of the old units of Europe into a new unit, capable of carrying on 20th century politics . . .

. . . Against a united Europe, they could never have made their way in, and only against a divided Europe can they maintain themselves. Split! divide! distinguish!—this is the technique of conquest. Resurrect old ideas, old slogans, now quite dead, in the battle to turn European against European.

Yockey argues that dividing Europeans against themselves, which in the context of an EGI perspective would be an unfettered pursuit of gross genetic interests regardless of the costs, would benefit only the enemies of Europe (and of Europeans) - hence, again from an EGI perspective, net genetic interests would be damaged. Thus, even though Yockey was arguing form a High Culture (and geopolitical) perspective, his comments can be reinterpreted as being consistent with a concern for net EGI as opposed to a blind pursuit of gross EGI.  From the standpoint of Salterian ethics, a focus on net EGI is reasonable, particularly from a "mixed ethic" perspective that also includes concerns for proximate interests (e.g., actualizing a High Culture).

See this for more on Yockey’s racial views, a topic that is relevant to the current analysis. Yockey’s views on race, taken at literal face value, are not very compatible with EGI. If, however, we interpret Yockey as being concerned with eschewing overly disjunctive divisions among (Western) Europeans, and if we view that in the context of preservation of net generic interests by fostering pan-European solidarity vs. outside threats, the seemingly stark incompatibility between Yockey and EGI essentially vanishes.  

My concept of “The EGI Firewall” is useful in these discussions. The firewall establishes the “floor” - the minimum acceptable EGI (or genetic interests more generally) consideration that absolutely must be incorporated into any sociopolitical scenario.  Thus, there is an absolute boundary beyond which one cannot cross without so seriously compromising EGI that the relevant proposal must be rejected.  For example, any scheme that would flood Europe with large numbers of non-Europeans would be completely unacceptable from any reasonable scenario that considers EGI as important and that incorporates Salterian ethics.  There has to be some foundation of EGI for any political project. The question is - where should this boundary be? There is of course no purely objective answer to that question, although the scenario just given does provide an example where most adaptively-minded Europeans would agree that the boundary has clearly been crossed. Of course, the scenario given is precisely the situation being actualized into reality today with the globalist EU and mass migration; it is certainly not merely some theoretical exercise.

From my essay on Salterian ethics:

Salter compares three ethics – pure adaptive utilitarianism (PAU), mixed adaptive utilitarianism (MAU), and the rights-centered ethic (RCE).

Obviously, the RCE would reject both Yockeyism and a biopolitical system based on EGI as damaging “individual rights.”  But the focus of this essay is to evaluate how Yockeyism can be incorporated into Salterian ethics (and vice versa), so the RCE, which is incompatible with Salterian ethics, is irrelevant. We are therefore left with the PAU and MAU ethics.

We can now consider the PAU and MAU.  From the perspective of gross genetic interests, one may question the appropriateness of Yockeyism for the PAU, as the PAU would lead one to favor “smaller is better” micro-states, independent of the effects of that choice on the long term stability of the genetic continuity of the peoples involved.  However, from the perspective of net genetic interests, if Yockeyism maximizes the power of the peoples involved through the establishment of a European Imperium, thus protecting these peoples from outside threats, then Yockeyism could be compatible with PAU. That would hold IF the system set up can safeguard the uniqueness of its constituent peoples. This safeguarding could be accomplished via the acceptance of a degree of local sovereignty (that Yockey agreed with) and the preservation of borders, with the Imperium being a confederation of nations and regions, each preserving their particular biological and cultural characteristics. One would in this case reject a single borderless state in which national and regional identities are erased and in which ethnic distinctiveness is lost via panmixia.  In order for this scenario to be stable long term, this characteristic of the Imperium – the preservation of the unique characteristics of its constituent parts – would need to be considered an absolutely fundamental and unalterable keystone of the state’s raison d’etre.  This is the EGI Firewall discussed above – a minimum absolute requirement for preservation of EGI, even at “lower” levels, as part of any political and social projects that are actualized.  I note that civilizational blocs are proposed by Salter in his book as one approach for protecting EGI, so the idea is not by its nature incompatible with EGI; it is a question of implementation.

Thus, Yockeyism could be compatible with PAU ethics under conditions such as described above, and with a firm understanding of net vs. gross genetic interests.

If Yockeyism could be compatible with the PAU, then it certainly can be compatible with the MAU, since the latter allows for other (proximate) interests, besides the ultimate interests of genetic interests, to be considered and actualized into policy, as long as the fundamental rights of genetic continuity are not abrogated. Here we see that an enlightened PAU that considers net genetic interests begins to converge onto the MAU, if the proximate interests under consideration are such that could actually contribute to EGI in some manner (e.g., actualizing a High Culture, as opposed to a mere concern for “individual rights).

So Yockeyism, with the proper caveats, and from the net genetic interests respective, could indeed be compatible with Salterian ethics.