More on Yockey and Race

Understanding Yockey's motivation.

In some of my previous writing on Yockey (summarized here) I made clear that I believed that the major motivation for Yockey to take a contrarian attitude about (“vertical”) biological race (favoring, instead, cultural and spiritual “horizontal race” concepts) was that this was the only way Yockey could conceive of to oppose the hierarchical Nordicist racial theories that set Europeans against each other, thus threatening his ideal of European Unity, Imperium.

See here (emphasis added):

However, as the 1960's wore on, and with the failures of the NSPA to prosper, Cawthron came to see 'Nazism' as - a tactical mistake. Then, he 'found' Imperium around 1965-6. Certain passages in Imperium were obviously critical, but also cryptic, references to Nazi Germany. Cawthron referred me to three passages that moved him to revise his views:

"The materialist race-thinking of the 19th century had particularly heavy consequences for Europe when it was coupled with one of the early 20th century movements of Resurgence of Authority. Any excrescence of theoretical equipment on a political movement is a luxury, and the Europe of 1933 - 2000 can afford none such. Europe has paid dearly for these old-fashioned racial theories and they must be destroyed."

"The racial snobbery of the 19th century was intellectual and its adoption in a too-narrow sphere by the Resurgence of Authority in Europe between the first two world wars was a grotesquerie."

"The attempt to interpret history in terms of Race must be abandoned. The 20th century sees it quite otherwise. It had a vogue of a century. It is now quite dead. Its last formulation, and its most radical, attempted to intervene in the sphere of action. That was the last attempt. An Empire of a thousand years duration - yes, but that has been actualized - in India, China, Egypt." (17)

Indeed, Yockey had amplified these thoughts in The Enemy Of Europe (1953), a pamphlet that sought to mobilise neo-fascist cadres and historical-fascist residue into a new politics. He said:

"Everyone must now openly admit that the engrafting of the outworn nonsense of the vertical race theory onto the glorious European Resurgence of Authority brought about by the European Revolution of 1933 was an enormous tragedy - all the more so since the coupling of these two ideas was in no way necessary or even logical." (18)

Cawthron could see by 1967 that there had been 'neo-fascist' objections to key components of the ideology and practise of Nazi Germany, criticisms which were valid and compelling. Nazi Germany had pursued a false 'racial doctrine' which had set Europeans against each other, the very thing which the neo-nazi movement claimed Nazism did not do and which they would negate with their new racial faith.

This suggests that my hypothesis is correct and that Cawthron perceived that “Nazi” racial ideology “had set Europeans against each other” and that was something to be avoided. Thus, Cawthron saw in Yockey's racial views a way to avoid this problem, supporting the idea that Yockey's racial ideas were primarily focused on de-emphasizing intra-European differences.

Now, of course, Yockey was somewhat misguided because one can understand biological distinctiveness without imposing a hierarchical superior-inferior value system on it.  And since Yockey would allow local preservationism in his Imperium, distinctiveness could have been maintained even in political unity. One can also distinguish between variable levels of difference - just because there are differences between Europeans does not mean we need to adopt the Arnold Leese approach of considering non-Nordic types such as "wops and dagoes" to be akin to "Kalahari Bushmen."