Riposte to KMacD

A response. In all cases, emphasis added.

See this

First, I will summarize my initial criticism of MacDonald’s western individualism work:

1. I do not see that MacDonald and supporters view the work as a properly scientific, testable, falsifiable hypothesis, because every time data points falsify the hypothesis, they either ignore the data or utilize Occam’s Butterknife to invoke overly complex absurd explanations to save the thesis (e.g., “Scandinavians are conformist and collectivist because they are so individualistic”) or to constantly redefine “individualism” or to ignore inconvenient genetics data.

2. Related to #1, the data do not support the theory (e.g., Scandinavians are not particularly individualistic by reasonable definitions of the word) and things like population genetics are being completely ignored, misinterpreted, or lied about. This is dogma, religious belief; there is no critical thinking here whatsoever.  This is Kuhnian “prove my theory correct” rather than Popperian “attempt to falsify my hypothesis.”

3. If any observations support the hypothesis, are they due to genetics? Can they be reproduced in the American context?  Twin and adoption studies?  Are they stable over time in novel environments?  Or are they merely cultural?

4. These people never seem to consider the consequences of the hypothesis, even if it was true. If they really believed in such marked intra-European differences in individualism vs. collectivism, universalism vs. ethnocentrism, etc. then you’d think that they would promote recruitment for pro-White activism among the more collectivist, ethnocentric European groups, and focus on having such people in leadership positions, instead of actively attacking, rejecting, and alienating such groups while focusing on having a “movement” – top to bottom – consisting of those Europeans they consider the most individualist, universalist, altruistic, high-trusting, etc.  

5. Racial Proximity Theory is more closely aligned to the data and is more closely aligned to Occam’s Razor in not requiring endless ad hoc modifications to maintain its validity.

Now to answering MacDonald’s response to my criticisms - I’m not going to answer every point of MacDonald for two reasons.  First, I’ve already spent years at this blog critiquing the “western individualism” thesis in extreme detail and I’m not going to repeat everything I previously wrote on the subject.  My concern here is addressing those points of greatest concern to my major critiques of that work (and note that my critiques were targeted toward specific aspects of the work, not all of it, so I see no point answering defenses of material that I never critiqued in the first place).  Indeed, much of MacDonald’s “answer” to me has nothing at all to do with the substance of my critiques and is instead an excuse to gibber about his various theories on this subject. I’m not going to waste effort answering points that have virtually nothing at all to do with my major criticisms.

Second, unlike others, I am not retired and I am not a full time activist. Thus, to save precious time, I’m going to invoke The Pareto Principle and focus on the core fraction of MacDonald's comments that cover most of the important issues. There are opportunity costs here, particularly for part-time activists who need to support themselves.

I will give credit to MacDonald for actually attempting to engage with my critiques, as opposed to Greg Johnson, whose response to criticism is “banning,” defamation of critics, and a refusal to engage and debate.

Nordicism

I suppose one can argue with that, but I don’t see an argument in Sallis’s writing. 

So, basically he ignores all of my extensive writing on population genetics. For example, see the genetics comments here.

Unless I missed it in his screed, he hasn’t defended his bizarre characterization of Northern Italians as “Germanic.”

The family history data show a more collectivist pattern in southern Europe (e.g., brothers living together with wives and parents) than in northern Europe, the extreme being Scandinavia with nuclear families characterized by very weak ties among their members.

MacDonald has certain ideas about family structure in non-Nordic Europe:

…a tendency toward nuclear families rather than, say, compound families common in Southern and Eastern Europe based on brothers living together with their wives…

Let’s focus on the reality in Southern Europe. See this.  Also see this (including Figure 1), from the paper:

Egalitarian nuclear families were strongest in northern and eastern France, most of Spain, and southern and north-western Italy…this map of family structure does not appear to reflect an opposition between Northern and Southern Europe. Communitarian families are heavily concentrated in a few areas, whereas stem and nuclear families can be found nearly everywhere.

Back to MacDonald:

But the claim that I am a Nordicist has an evaluative ring to it—that I think that the Nordics are superior in some way. In fact, Individualism reveals the weakness of northern Europeans, especially in the current cultural environment in which traditional social controls embedded in religion have disappeared, resulting in a dysfunctional, guilt-prone culture unable to oppose the invasion of other peoples that is now besetting them. 

Implicit in this and how MacDonald’s fans interpret it – Northern Europeans are just too good for their own good, too noble, too honorable, too altruistic, too individualist, too productive, too disinterested, etc. The Eloi-Morlock distinction at Counter-Currents derives from this.

Even more important, assuming this is all true, consider my point # 4 in my summary above. If Der Movement, including MacDonald, really believes his thesis, then why don’t they focus more on recruiting Southern and Eastern Europeans, and having such people as pro-White leaders, instead of focusing exclusively (which they do) on recruiting those “weak” “altruistic individualist” Northwest Europeans, and having as leaders people whose “primordial” evolved traits make them vulnerable to Jewish manipulation (Taylor?)? They never answer that, do they?

Moreover, Scandinavia was a relative backwater in European culture compared to the dynamic northcentral regions of Western Europe. Charles Murray’s map of human accomplishment (discussed in Ch. 9 of Individualism) excludes the great majority of Scandinavia, apart from Denmark which has a strong infusion of German genes (Ch. 1). 

Please point out where in my arguments I have brought up the issue of accomplishment. Plus, MacDonald is being disingenuous if he thinks that these fine points are noted by the rabid Nordicists who support his work.  They view “Nordics” as a whole.

If anything, I suppose one could call me a Germanicist.

No real difference. By the way, isn’t MacDonald himself mostly of German ancestry? Ethnocentrism perhaps?

I’m reminded of the old days at the Legion Europa site, in which the person running the website told me he received a message from Arthur Kemp objecting to being labeled a Nordicist.  That’s the neo-Nordicism of Der Movement – they reject the label while being as radical, or more so, that the old-school Guntherite crowd. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck….

Of relevance to the Nordicism question, this is the Amazon review of MacDonald’s book that MacDonald believes is a good summary; excerpts of relevance for my case, re: Nordicism:

Western Hunter gatherers, and to an even greater extent Scandinavian Hunter gatherers were fiercely egalitarian warrior societies…

…MacDonald argues that for some combination of reasons, including geography, Western and Scandinavian hunter gatherers developed highly communal societies without strong kinship bonds. They married exogenously…

…MacDonald further argues that the above-named traits led to individualism. The harsh northern European environment required a lot of intelligence to survive and leave offspring. Exogenous, monogamous mating created married couples matched in ability, each with considerable status within the family and community. Individuals rose within the community on the strength of their abilities rather than family connections. This emphasized individual accomplishment – individualism.

He posits that the northern European hunter gatherer society was so efficient, especially in warfare, that they withstood the advance of agriculture for a couple of millennia past the point at which it would have taken hold in less severe climes. This hunter gatherer society was an incubator for individualism and intelligence…Mate selection in the harsh environment resulted in a great deal of evolutionary pressure for higher intelligence. Conversely, in agricultural societies in more benign climates a man would achieve reproductive success by controlling a large number of women – and the quality of the mate didn't matter as much…MacDonald remarks on the extremely high level of altruism in today's Scandinavian countries…

[Sallis note – "High level of altruism" just like with hyper-collectivist and ethnocentric purity-spiraling of blood-obsessed Norwegians viciously persecuting half-German children after WWII, see below]

…MacDonald contends that the Indo-European warrior ethos gave way to the even more individualistic and altruistic Puritan ethos. The Puritans had Scandinavian roots, from the Jute resettlement from Denmark into East Anglia. They had always been a highly productive and monogamous people with large families. They were to play an outsize role in the Industrial Revolution and subsequent English history…A feeling that there was too much immigration from southern and Eastern Europe that dated back to the 1880s led finally to the immigration act of 1924 which set quotas consistent with the current levels of representation within the American population...

…protestations of non-racism, and violent suppression of free speech – dissent from government policies - is baffling to many in the United States but totally consistent with the sentiments in Scandinavia and much of northern Europe.

[Sallis note – and those are the people we are supposed to recruit and have as leaders, right?]

That’s just warmed-over Nordicism injected with HBD pseudoscience - the same as the whole “western individualism” thesis. 

And as regards the hypocrite who wrote that review, see this. You see, those High Trust Nordic Aryan hunter-gatherers are so wonderful and altruistic and all, but Mr. High Trust Inner Hajnal Seibert has to go and live in nasty Outer Hajnal Ukraine married to an Eastern European collectivist Ukrainian woman.  After all, Eastern Europe is merely a flophouse and an incubator for female mates for the High Trusters, right?

Finally, Sallis’ Law of Tropism – that “movement” entities tend to attract writers, commentators, and supporters who fit with the real underlying worldview of that entity – is relevant here. Amren attracts Jews, Asians, and the Whites who love and defend those groups; Counter-Currents attracts the LGBTQ crowd as well as ethnoimperialists who live in other people’s countries; and TOO attracts Nordicists and conspiritards (as well as the obvious category of anti-Semites). None of that is by accident.  Thus, in the comments thread to MacDonald’s reply to me, one of his commentators writes:

The extremities of Eastern & Southern Europe have been thoroughly colonized with members of the pure Black races…

No Nordicism at TOO?

Individualism and Conformity

I portray Scandinavians as highly individualistic but also as highly conformist—what I regard as a paradox in need of explanation, but Sallis regards their conformity as a fatal flaw in my argument. I regard this paradox as a fundamental problem for any analysis and certainly not solved by Sallis’s theory that individualism resulted from geographical distance from racially dissimilar others (see below). 

No, No, NO.  That is NOT my theory. See more discussion of my theory below (with link).  I note here that my theory is described as:

I suggest a new theoretical paradigm for intra-European differences in ethnocentrism – Racial Proximity Theory.

Consistent with my Occam’s Razor ideal that one should not over-complexity theories, and should instead aim for the most direct and simple ideas that have sufficient explanatory power (*), Racial Proximity Theory is indeed more simple than its competitors.

Thus, I suggest that European groups whose ethnogenesis took place farther away from non-Whites, i.e., a greater geographic distance from Afro-Asia, would tend to exhibit relatively less inter-racial hostility but relatively greater intra-racial hostility; in contrast, European groups whose ethnogenesis took place closer to, or at, the periphery of Europe, geographically close to Afro-Asia, would tend to exhibit greater inter-racial hostility than intra-racial hostility… Thus, Racial Proximity Theory is associated with the relative amount of ethnocentric hostility toward racial (and sub-racial and ethnic) outgroups in nearest geographic and historical proximity.

I am talking about ethnocentrism, not individualism (which is mostly a separate, but related, issue). MacDonald is TOTALLY MISREPRESENTING my views.  He is debating a straw man. This is not good. Back to MacDonald:

There is no question that Scandinavians are conformists.

Thank you.  Here we get to the core of the matter.  To me, and to standard definitions of individualism that everyone except for MacDonald and his supporters accept, conformity is inimical to individualism and vice versa.  If a society is all about strictly conforming to group norms, then how is that “the most individualistic society on Earth?" It seems definitions of individualism are key to this debate.

My solution was thus to emphasize the point that extended kinship is less important as a social glue among Nordics (and to a lesser extent, among the Indo-Europeans compared to southern Europeans). All cultures require mechanisms of social cohesion, but rather than relying on kinship distance, as in the rest of the world, social cohesion is maintained mainly by reputation in the community: Can you be trusted? Do you uphold the moral values of the community? Are you a courageous, competent warrior? 

Note the implicit suggestion that Southern Europeans do not care about reputation, moral values, courage, or competence.  Just like Middle Easterners, all they care about is “kinship.”  

And this is all beside the point.  Why Scandinavians are collectivist conformists is one matter; the point is that they ARE collectivist conformists.

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. 

Yes, as long as the replacement is composed of Afro-Asiatics; see Racial Proximity Theory.  When the replacement is, say, Germans, well, see the Norway case discussed below.

As elsewhere in the West, a major role in these transformations has been played by Jewish activists and Jewish media ownership,[1] but Scandinavians seem particularly favorable to these transformations. 

For reasons I discussed.

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.[2] 

But if the children are half-German, they are persecuted and put into mental institutions.  

Respondents from the U.K. and the Netherlands were also highly tolerant, with Eastern European countries on the low end…

Including nations with lots of hunter-gatherer ancestry.  FAIL.

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.[3] In short, no one must rise above the rest. Such egalitarianism is typical of hunter-gatherer groups around the world[4] and is antithetical to the aristocratic ideal of the Indo-Europeans.

Again – the important thing is that it is conformist collectivist behavior.

Extreme egalitarianism results in high levels of conformism and social anxiety. 

Throughout history, egalitarianism has been inimical to individualism and vice versa, which is why extreme egalitarianism has been linked to the authoritarian and totalitarian Left – to collectivist ideologies.

So my view is that Scandinavians are conformists in a social setting where reputation is paramount because of their evolutionary background as hunter-gatherers living in socially enforced, highly egalitarian moral communities where extended kinship relationships were relatively less important. In interacting with another person, the important issues are whether another person is trustworthy and whether one can benefit from the relationship, not how closely related the person is...

Collectivism. All else is not really relevant to my argument.

The radical individualism of Sweden is illustrated in the following, from Chapter 4:

Nordic societies also cluster at the top of social trust, despite also being high on secular/rational values and despite trust typically being associated with religiosity. [9] Finally, the high standing on “generalized trust” provides economic advantages because it lowers “transaction costs”—less need for written contracts and legal protections, fewer lawsuits, etc.[10]

All of which can be explained by collectivist conformity.

The concept of moral communities as the social glue of Western societies is recurrent throughout Individualism, particularly in Chapter 7 on the movement to abolish slavery. It is not cherry-picking but backed up with numerous examples and is strongly rooted in theory. Sallis writes, “unfortunately, MacDonald started to extend that idea into bizarre HBD-Nordicism, and stretching facts to fit into some overarching theory of heritable group differences to explain even relatively shallow differences in national behavior.” I need specific examples of how I have stretched facts in order to reply. 

Your entire work, for godssakes!  Thus: Saying that extreme conformists are individualists, that amoral familists who are stereotyped as being undisciplined to organize collective social goods are collectivists, ignoring contrary data points (e.g., Norwegian hyper-ethnocentrism against other Europeans; Southern European acceptance of immigration, etc.).

And I should add that one thing that stands out from my reading is how persistent family structures are…

I have written about family structures above. That is not really relevant at all to my critique, which makes me wonder if that is the real reason MacDonald keeps on harping on about it.

Sallis:

For example, the HBD Nordicists claim as part of their theory, their hypothesis, the importance of intra-European differences in individualism vs. collectivism, with groups descended from (altruistic) northern hunter-gatherers, exemplified by Scandinavians, being extremely individualistic, particularly compared to those selfish collectivist swarthoids and other non-Nordic groups.

This is falsified by data such as this. See the Y axis, which describes group individualism vs. collectivism. On the one hand, Sweden and Denmark are more individualistic than, say, Spain, Russia, or Poland (but Russians and Poles have a lot of “northern hunter gatherer” ancestry, so their collectivism is itself a partial refutation of HBD Nordicism).

I never claim that any group of Western Europeans is altruistic simpliciter apart…

The last part could have been worded better.

Such willingness to punish others at cost to self for violations of the standards of a moral community is important for understanding the behavior of individualists—apparent now in the willingness of many Whites to punish defectors from racial egalitarianism (although at this point, such punishment can easily be in one’s self-interest because of the reward structure that goes along with contemporary racial orthodoxy).

One can redefine individualism any way they wish but it doesn’t convince me.

….Henrich explains relative lack of individualism in southern Italy…

Amoral familism is not collectivism; I have argued on my blog it is a form of individualism; I need not repeat all of that here.

Regarding Sallis’s link to the paper on individualism-collectivism, it goes to a chart from an unidentified study linking variation in a single gene, the 5-HTTLPR gene, with individualism-collectivism. Unless one believes that individualism-collectivism is influenced genetically by only one locus, this is hardly conclusive and ignores all the data on geographical variation in family structure.

Absolutely ludicrous. I was not commenting on the X axis – the allele frequency – but instead only on the Y axis, which was a measure of national individualism-collectivism. I NEVER said, or even implied, that “individualism-collectivism is influenced genetically by only one locus” so I think MacDonald needs to actually reread what I wrote.

Regarding the point that Russians and Poles “have a lot of northern hunter-gatherer ancestry,” the review of population genetic evidence from Chapter 1 does not support a general northern hunter-gatherer profile….

Instead of citing your own book, look at Belarusians and Ukrainians as reasonable stand-ins for Russians and Poles. Northern and Eastern Slavs have approximately as much WHG ancestry as do Northwest Europeans - but the Slavs rank high on collectivism.

Let us consider a definition of individualism that is consistent with most people’s understanding of the term.

Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-reliance and advocate that interests of the individual should achieve precedence over the state or a social group while opposing external interference upon one's own interests by society or institutions such as the government.

Do we agree then that a society that stresses a hyper-conformist adherence to strict social norms is not individualist by that definition?  How can one reasonably argue otherwise?

A problem is that MacDonald invents his own definitions of individualism, contrasting his conceptions of “aristocratic” vs. “egalitarian” individualism without understanding the practical reality that his fanboys throughout the “movement” simply conflate all of that to the standard definition of individualism and make blanket statements about how Northwest Europeans, particularly Scandinavians, are “the most individualist peoples and societies on Earth” – which is not true based on the standard definition that everyone except MacDonald uses. Laughably, MacDonald believes the following is consistent with extreme individualism:

In such societies people are closely scrutinized to note deviations from social norms; violators are shunned, ridiculed, and ostracized.

Err, no, sorry. That is not individualism. You cannot redefine individualism by conflating it with egalitarianism and ending up with an individualism that is rigidly conformist and enforced with collectivist group-think. If MacDonald is going to argue that Scandinavians are “individualistic” based on his own invented definitions of individualism, then his definitions are worthless and have no practical informational value. It is intellectual masturbation at best and destructive gaslighting at worst. If MacDonald wants to define individualism in a manner so as to be indistinguishable from collectivist Law of Jante conformity, then I suppose he can truthfully label Scandinavians as “extremely individualistic.” However, that is a definition that has no explanatory power and that is not going to be well received by informed individuals. The idea that (Scandinavian) collectivism is individualism is an Orwellian formulation.

And of course these problems opens up the work to misuse by those who use it to promote views about “individualism” not strictly consistent with MacDonald’s definitions. Is he responsible for the misuse of his work?  Yes, because the misuse is obvious and ubiquitous, and how can he be so oblivious that he is unaware of it?  Just read the comments sections of TOO posts. If he would put a fraction of the energy he expends on defenses of his thesis (instead of a scientifically sounder attempt at falsification) to combating misuse of his ideas, then at least he would have some moral high ground to stand on.  

And my argument is really not so much with the basic thesis of the work (although I have reservations about that as well) but with the irrational and unscientific manner in which it is presented, the factually incorrect statements about population genetics and about the behavior of non-Nordic Europeans, and, as alluded to above, the acceptance of the use of the work in ways that are damaging to White solidarity – ways that both misuse the underlying thesis AND leverage the factually incorrect statements and inferences.

I want to make clear – in general I do NOT believe that scientists and other academics should be responsible for how others may misuse their work (e.g., discover a new form of energy and have it used as a weapon, etc.) IF the work was done in good faith, in an objective, scientific manner. But if one’s work is a pseudoscientific polemic with obvious political implications, then the misuse problem becomes relevant and very salient.

Let’s consider this example of Occam’s Butterknife:

And the chapter on Puritanism shows that essentially it started out as what one might call a group of individualists (because of their evolutionary background as northern Europeans). This concatenation of individuals formed a cohesive group via powerful social controls embedded in Calvinism. In America, the Puritans originated with the intention of keeping non-Puritans out of Massachusetts (building “the proverbial city on a hill”), but this gradually gave way, mainly because of the colonial policies of the British government preventing the colony from restricting immigration and settlement. During the nineteenth century, several intellectual offshoots of Puritanism, having escaped the powerful social controls of Calvinism, revealed themselves to be radical individualists (e.g., the libertarian anarchists).

So, the Puritans were individualist Northern Europeans who acted in a collectivist, conformist manner because of “Calvinism” (itself a Northcentral European theology), including the ethnocentric exclusiveness of trying to exclude non-Puritans. So, the ultra-collectivist and ultra-conformist Puritans were really, really, really, Nordic individualists who were somehow controlled by (Nordic) Calvinism.  Then, freed from Calvinism, they “revealed themselves to be radical individualists” presumably because some people of Puritan background were “libertarian anarchists.”  Of course, one can find “libertarian anarchists” of all different ethnic origins (e.g., Rothbard in an economic sense), so this says nothing specific about evolved individualism in Puritans.

MacDonald:

Ideologies are cultural creations enabled by human general intelligence and language; they are not a deterministic outcome of evolved psychological mechanisms. In Chapter 8 I discuss the ability of ideologies such as racial egalitarianism created by elites throughout the West that dominate the media and academia to control evolved tendencies toward ethnocentrism—a major problem for White people now. Hence, I absolutely reject biological reductionionism.

Yes, but remember:

Puritanism shows that essentially it started out as what one might call a group of individualists (because of their evolutionary background as northern Europeans).

And this:

However, a purely cultural shift would have to entail strong social controls to prevent evolved predilections for kinship ties from dominating. Seems difficult and there is no evidence for it.

Inconsistency abounds, and is troubling.

Essentially, he will, at one time, write about “primordial” genetic evolved behaviors and then, later, denounce “biological reductionism.” Is this because he really believes in strictly biological explanations but is trying to evade accusations of “genetic determinism?”

Getting back to Puritans, the Amazon review that MacDonald endorses states:

…the even more individualistic and altruistic Puritan ethos. The Puritans had Scandinavian roots, from the Jute resettlement from Denmark into East Anglia.

But the Puritans were not individualistic, far from it, and their “altruism” was in-group only. Thus, they were ethnocentric collectivists, which actually makes sense since the “…Puritans had Scandinavian roots, from the Jute resettlement from Denmark into East Anglia.”  If we agree with Sallis that Scandinavians are collectivists who are ethnocentric against other Europeans, then the Puritan behavior – that differed from the true individualism generally observed in the Anglosphere – makes sense. The behavior does not make sense from MacDonald’s perspective, unless one invokes ad hoc Occam’s Butterknife “explanations.”

See this.

The Puritans felt that conformity was essential to keeping the community together. The leaders not only demanded conformity and enforced it, but dissention and divisiveness were silenced. The community could not thrive if too many independent thinkers attempted to change the power structure of the community. Individual beliefs and liberties would have to be sacrificed in order to promote a strongly linked community. Individual beliefs and liberties would have to be sacrificed in order to promote a strongly linked community, according to the Puritans.

Is that individualism?  No.

Back to MacDonald:

Culture and Evolution

My work has always featured a strong role for culture…

See all that I have written above about how MacDonald lurches from explaining everything in terms of “primordial” genetic evolution to then denying he engages in biological reductionism.  

Individualists can be molded into cohesive groups—think of a Western military unity with a strong ideology of patriotism (even of the civic nationalist variety), courage in the face of lethal danger, and the importance of following orders, but combined with severe penalties for desertion or treason. In Individualism I discuss group cohesion among the early Puritans as enabled by the powerful social controls and ideology of Calvinism, but with the disappearance of these controls there were movements of Puritan-descended intellectuals promoting radical libertarianism.

As have Jews.  So what?

Moreover, my claim that Western Europeans tend to be individualists does not imply that there is no shred of ethnocentrism or racial ingroup-outgroup feeling among them. We are naturally drawn to people who are like us (e.g., Rushton’s Genetic Similarity Theory, reviewed in Chapter 8). As reviewed in Chapter 6, in the nineteenth century it was common to take pride in America’s Anglo-Saxon heritage (often combined with the view that other groups could and would become “just like us” after immigrating so that America would retain its Anglo-Saxon character forever—a view that soured toward the end of the nineteenth century). 

First, I never denied that Anglo-Saxons are individualists – Scandinavians and Germans not so much.  And this idea that people’s relative ethnocentrism can be turned around can cut both ways – what about Southern Europe being flooded with migrants and being demographically transformed like other parts of Europe? And then you have Salvini prosecuted for attempting to stop illegal immigration into Italy – Italy sounds fairly Universalist to me.

By the way, the “souring” MacDonald refers to coincides with Southern and Eastern European immigration to the USA, doesn’t it?

But whereas ethnocentric tendencies are difficult to inhibit among people with strong genetic tendencies toward ethnocentrism (e.g., the Jews), they are much easier to overcome among relative individualists. 

Like in Southern Europe today?

Racial Proximity Theory

There are alternative theories to explain intra-European differences in behavior, such as mine that Northwest Europeans underwent ethnogenesis in an environment in which their enemies, those they engaged in conflict with, were other Europeans (given the greater geographic distance of Northwest Europe from Africa-Asia), while in Southern and Eastern Europe, conflict with Afro-Asiatic non-Europeans was an important part of ethnogenesis.

At times, Sallis appears to deny that Nordics are highly individualist, while here he is proposing to explain the high levels of individualism among some Europeans (presumably including Nordics) as the result of geographical distance from racially distinct others. 

Wrong, wrong, wrong.  I’m looking at the TOTALITY of the Universalist vs. Ethnocentric axis (that a contain undertones of individualism vs. collectivism, but is not equivalent to it) and am trying to explain why Nordics act as Universalists toward non-Whites but are Ethnocentric vs. other Europeans (for Norwegians even against Germans!).  I believe that Anglo-Saxons can reasonably be seen as individualistic, and the Anglosphere in general ranks high in individualism. But I see Scandinavia as being collectivist. However, in both cases, the ethnocentrism seems more focused on other Europeans than on non-Europeans, so this “dislike those closest to you and love the aliens” mentality seems independent of the individualism-collectivism spectrum. Or, perhaps this “inside-out” ethnocentrism is the only thing the WASPs are really collectivist about.

For example, he seems to deny that Nordics are particularly individualist when he complains about my statement that “Scandinavian [societies] are the most individualist cultures on Earth…” (Sallis’s emphasis): “That MacDonald continues to assert that lie, refuted at my blog, and then cites himself as evidence (!!!), really trashes his reputation as an objective scholar.” I think I have made clear here why I think Scandinavian cultures are the most individualist cultures, and a more elaborate version is in Individualism. And it’s based on much more than citing myself. And calling it a “lie” is outrageous—at most it’s a garden variety scholarly mistake.

Outrageous to dismiss the evidence that Scandinavians are collectivist conformists.

In any case, I find Sallis’s theory of European individualism unpersuasive for a number of reasons. For example, eastern Europe in general is more collectivist in terms of family structure than western Europe despite living among racially and ethnically similar peoples for the vast majority of their history.

Absolutely ludicrous. The Mongol Yoke? The Turkish occupation of the Balkans for centuries?  Der Movement’s constant refrain that Eastern Europeans are admixed for these reasons?  The low level of Asian/Siberian genetic admixture in Northeast Europe (e.g., Russia)?  This is basic history – History 101.

When called out on that, he answers weakly thus:

Happy bugsays:

July 26, 2022 at 10:16 am

‘For example, eastern Europe in general (e.g., Poland) is more collectivist in terms of family structure than western Europe despite living among racially and ethnically similar peoples and not prone to being invaded by racially dissimilar others’

Turks? Mongols etc?

Reply

Kevin MacDonald

Kevin MacDonaldsays:

July 26, 2022 at 10:32 am

OK, but I doubt that invasions in the 13th and 17th centuries would have changed family structure, & didn’t make the Austrians more collectivist.

First – STOP FOCUSING ON FAMILY STRUCTURE WHEN I’M TALKING ABOUT ETHNOCENTRISM. As regards Austrians, first, my theory is not necessarily about individualism vs. collectivism, and, second, Austria was not occupied (long term) by the Turks as was the Balkans. When I’m talking about long-term evolutionary pressures I’m not talking about the Siege of Vienna for godssakes.  Sometimes, I cannot believe what I’m reading here.

Most Western groups lived with Jews as a very distinct alien, often hated outgroup for centuries without effects on family structure or obliterating individualism. 

True, and this is one weakness in my thesis, although Jews are genetically much closer to Europeans than are full-blooded Afro-Asiatics.

How does the theory explain the uniqueness of Western individualism cross-culturally—were Western European peoples the only people in the world with no experience confronting racially dissimilar others? How does the theory explain the relatively collectivist family structure of traditional Ireland compared to Germanic family structure (reviewed in Chapter 4)? 

He keeps on yapping about “family structure” but I’m talking about ethnocentrism.  The Irish are very anti-English.  If only they are as intolerant to Afro-Asiatic migrants, eh?

In Individualism I make a major point about the contrast in family structure within France between northeastern France and France south of the Loire. I rather doubt that the latter area was threatened by more racially dissimilar others—the only invasion from the south that I am aware of were the Muslims defeated in 732 by Charles Martel of the Germanic Franks who are more individualist in terms of family structure than France south of the Loire; the Huns came from the east, but their invasion was short-lived and would have affected Germanic groups at least as much. Indeed, how would it explain Murray’s map of human accomplishment in general? Moreover, it is at best an incomplete theory because it does not provide a mechanism for understanding the paradox of individualism mentioned above: If, say, Swedes are so individualist because they evolved at a greater distance from racially dissimilar others, why are they also the most conformist?

First, the French data would put my theory in question IF I was talking about family structure, which I am NOT, instead of relative ethnocentrism, which I AM.  Second, why stop at the eighth century AD?  Southern France has a history more ”Latin-Mediterranean” while Northern France is more “Germanic-Nordic.” How about the histories of those groups going back thousands of years? Third, why the hell is he talking about “Murray’s map of human accomplishment” when I’m talking about ingroup/outgroup ethnocentrism? And, again, I’m NOT talking about “individualism” in isolation, but in conjunction with ethnocentrism. By the way, thanks for admitting Swedes are conformist.

I want to talk more about my Racial Proximity Theory. Let’s consider Norway first; the Scandinavian Norwegians being the kind of northern population that MacDonald considers the archetype of high trust, low-ethnocentric, altruistic and welcoming individualistic populations.

See this.

How is that in any way consistent with “individualistic high trust” behavior?  Mental institutions? Really? In reality, that is reflective of EXTREME collectivist and ethnocentric behavior, something you might expect from Hasidic Jews in some Polish ghetto, but not from the wonderfully hyper-individualistic WHG-Steppe Herrenvolk. The deportation that took place - that I can understand (but it is certainly not reflective of "individualist" behavior). They - in a collectivist fashion - wanted to safeguard their genepool (but how much damage could some half-German children really do to Norway?). But - "abused, attacked and confined to mental institutions because of their parentage?" I cannot even envision the most extreme Hasid putting children into mental institutions (!) based on their parentage. That's a level of sadistic maliciousness beyond the pale of normal human decency.  "Inner Hajnal," I suppose.

In contrast to HBD fantasies, my Racial Proximity Theory explains this behavior. Thus, the ethnocentrism of the northern-isolated-evolved Norwegians is primarily aimed against neighboring, closely-related, European groups like Germans. More distant, racially alien groups, not the targets of evolved negative reactions, would be viewed more benignly.  Thus, German-Norwegian hybrid children are viciously persecuted in a shocking manner, while, say, Nigerian-Norwegian hybrid children would be worshipped and met with warm smiles and tears of unbridled joy.

That Norwegian behavior is not only collectivist ethnocentrism but radical extreme collectivist ethnocentrism that seems to have a “purity of blood” component – the half-German children were “impure” and were subjected to vicious persecution.  That’s completely inconsistent with MacDonald’s thesis – a very good falsification. Oh, you may say, but the Germans were invaders.  Aren’t alien immigrants invaders as well, particularly illegals and “asylum seekers?”  And who abused/abuse natives more – disciplined German soldiers or criminally inclined Afro-Asiatics? No, WWII is no excuse for the vicious behavior to half-German children contrasted to “hugs and kisses” for Colored invaders. That is wholly consistent with Racial Proximity Theory. How is any of that absolutely inhuman and crazed Norwegian behavior in any way altruistic?  

We can consider Brexit, where Eastern European immigration to the UK was happily replaced with more Afro-Asiatic “commonwealth” immigrants, as well as Germany, which seethes with hatred toward the Southern European “PIGS” countries (with subtle racial undertones), while enthusiastically welcoming the Afro-Asiatic migrant invasion. We can consider John Lindsay, who was the living embodiment of Racial Proximity Theory. Lindsay combined lickspittle groveling to Blacks and Hispanics – including radical Black nationalists – with contemptuous disdain for New York City’s White ethnics.  If Lindsay was merely an altruistic Universalist, why did he reject White ethnics?  If we ascribe his behavior in that regard to “altruistic punishment of Whites” then why didn’t he apply the same attitude to his fellow Anglo-Dutch New York founding stock elites? There seems to be a damning consistency here. All that is more consistent with my thesis than MacDonald’s.

Ironically enough, we can also consider Der Movement here, where the likes of Jorjani, Kumar, and Lipton Matthews are welcomed with open arms (as is Derbyshire’s inter-racial marriage) but Ted Sallis is “blacklisted” and called an ”insane paranoid piece of crap.” Old Stock American Jared Taylor runs American Renaissance, where Italians, Hungarians, and Romanians are attacked, but Jews are (notoriously) defended and one hears talk about the superiority of East Asians every five minutes or so. A comment left at Counter-Currents summarizes how Racial Proximity Theory works in Der Movement:

NikandrosNovember 26, 2021 at 8:33 am White nationalists are now more welcoming of Asians, Jews, Jamaicans, and mutts into the movement than they are of Southern and Eastern Europeans. Where did it all go so wrong?

Indeed. Well, it went “so wrong” because the Northwest Europeans who dominate Der Movement have their collectivist ethnocentrism triggered by Southern and Eastern Europeans and not by “Asians, Jews, Jamaicans, and mutts.”  Just look at actual behavior, not HBD Nordicist theory. Go back to the Norway case. It all fits.

MacDonald tried to explain why the Northwest Europeans of America went from social Darwinism and the racialist-oriented Reed Johnson act of 1924 (that by the way restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe but not from the Colored Western Hemisphere…hmmm, sound familiar) to the racial surrender of today:

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.

All the fault of the Jews!  Or maybe the earlier attitudes were hostility to White ethnics and the later liberal attitudes were “civil rights” for beloved Negro pets and open borders for non-Whites?  The response to me would be: What about Black slavery and Jim Crow?  Yes, but wasn’t that counter-balanced by radical abolitionism?  John Brown wasn’t alone. There were plenty of nice High Truster Whites who not only wanted full equality for the races but also promoted miscegenation.  Do you blame “the Jews” for that too?  So, I’m not sure if slavery and Jim Crow falsify my hypothesis. Even if so, MacDonald’s hypothesis is even more falsified.

Conclusion

It’s always difficult and a bit distasteful to have to respond to someone who is basically in agreement on many issues, and someone who has posted on TOO. But it has to be done, and frankly I thought the tone of many of Sallis’s comments was non-collegial to say the least. 

The Nordicist cries out in pain as he strikes you.  I consider the promotion of Nordicism, and the HBD reinvigoration of Nordicist doctrine, to be “non-collegial to say the least” and, further, the vicious comments at TOO over the years that this work attracts supports my view in that regard. Like I said, re: the Counter-Currents Eloi-Morlocks incident – these types believe their own propaganda, and therefore they do not see the problem with it.  Of course, Southern and Eastern Europeans are alien, collectivist freaks with bizarre family structures who are unconcerned with honor, courage, competence, and reputation. So what are those runty chicken Morlocks getting all worked up about, anyway?

I hope this can clarify some of these issues and move the ball forward a bit.

What about my comment:

These people never seem to consider the consequences of the hypothesis, even if it was true.  If they really believed in such marked intra-European differences in individualism vs. collectivism, universalism vs. ethnocentrism, etc. then you’d think that they would promote recruitment for pro-White activism among the more collectivist, ethnocentric European-derived groups, and focus on having such people in leadership positions, instead of actively attacking, rejecting, and alienating such groups while focusing on having a “movement” – top to bottom – consisting of those Europeans they consider the most individualist, universalist, altruistic, high-trusting, etc.  

“Move the ball forward a bit” on acting on the practical consequences of the theory you say you believe.  Thus, Southern and Eastern Europeans are better suited as pro-White activists and leaders than are Northwest Europeans, if everything you aver is true.

Further, perhaps MacDonald would be kind enough to tell us all what he would consider a reasonable falsifying test of his hypothesis, a test the results of which he would accept without proceeding to engage in ad hoc Occam’s Butterknife hand waving spin to salvage the hypothesis.

Ultimately, I see the problem with MacDonald’s “western individualism” hypothesis as being the same as with all HBD pseudoscience – it starts out with the desired conclusion and then works backwards to cherry pick data, invent definitions, and explain away aberrant data so as to confirm that conclusion. In this case, the desired conclusion is that Northwest Europeans have evolved to be high trust, altruistic, productive, nuclear family-oriented, individualists and Scandinavians are the extreme archetype of this genetically inherited (denying “biological reductionism" is dishonest here) phenotype. Other Europeans are genetically evolved ethnocentric dishonorable non-productive non-altruistic unpleasant collectivists.  And then we all work backwards to make sure all of the data points, explanations, and definitions fit. Whatever that is, it is not rational science.

What I see happening is that a moribund Nordicism has been reinvigorated by being infused with HBD pseudoscience. So instead of focusing on physical aesthetics and “spiritual” qualities, we instead observe an emphasis on individualism, IQ (“estimated” not actual) and “educational attainment,” Hajnal lines, fabrications and misinterpretations of population genetics (carefully ignoring contradictory data, especially archaeogenetics), family structure, GDP, etc. It’s the same old tired nonsense repackaged for the 21st century.  Occasionally, the original formulation percolates through, as in the Counter-Currents, Eloi vs. Morlocks (Nords vs. Meds) distinction.  But all of this fools no one with any sense and knowledge of actual data and the capacity for logic.  This whole “western individualism” work is essentially Ostara with a superficial veneer of “science.”

Addendum

From this, a particularly stupid TOO commentator (more succinctly, a TOO commentator) scribbles:

In other words, Ted Sallis says that the peoples of northwestern Europe—presumably including Scandinavians and Balts—learned effectively nothing that was usefully adaptive about the nature of the rest of the world and of the widely differing characteristics of the various peoples inhabitig [sic] that world after the period when their languages consisted of a thousand words and various grunts.

First of all, the EXACT same "criticism" can be made of MacDonald's theories of "western individualism" that this comically self-unware retardate is attempting to defend.

Second, it is factually incorrect. Ethnogenesis obviously continued into historic times, when, presumably, the language of the superior Nords was more than "a thousand words and various grunts."

Third, during this entire period, these Northern peoples were primarily in conflict with other Europeans, while Southern Europeans were not only in conflict with other Europeans but also Afro-Asiatics - which is my entire point.

Later in his screed, this moron mentions "the Vikings" and their travels –

…not to mention travel, something the northern peoples, the Vikings notably, are famous for?...

Which essentially supports my contentions, for apart from possible interactions with Amerindians in Western Hemisphere landings and whatever NECs were encountered in Byzantium, the Vikings had 99.9% of their conflicts and interactions with other Europeans.

The problem with Nordicists, past and present, is that they have a caricature-like "understanding" of European diversity. Thus, they see Northwest Europeans as all looking like Dolph Lundgren, all being high IQ, altruistic, trusting, disinterested, ethical, rugged individualists. Southern Europeans are dark-complexioned, akin to Bengalis, marrying (at age 10) their cousins, with extended kinship ties and "compound families." Eastern Europeans, with similar kin/family ties, are brutal, perpetually drunk semi-mongoloids. The latter two groups are, of course, low IQ, unethical, and completely corrupt. All of the fancy new HBD theories essentially boil down to all of that.

The comments thread for the TOO post linked directly above (the one about Zman) is disturbing. The TOO crowd likes to critique “Jewish gurus at the head of dogmatic cult-like intellectual movements filled with slavish adherents,” yet the situation there is exactly the same, with McDonald as a guru of a rightist intellectual movement and a host of slavish cultish adherents who treat any critique of their guru’s theories as if it was some sort of blasphemy or moral failing.  

My major problem with the “western individualism” thesis isn’t even whether it is right or wrong; it goes much deeper than that.  The whole milieu around the thesis is unhealthy and irrational. The thesis is polemic advocacy, not science, and it is practically non-falsifiable since the guru and the adherents (some of whom believe that any hypothesis correct more than half the time is therefore “proven!”) will never accept any possible falsification and will always come up with new ad hoc defenses (Kuhnian approach rather than Popperian).  There is no critical thinking, just blind religious dogma. And it is hypocritical, because if they really believed it, then why do they promote an activist approach that rejects allegedly more collectivist and ethnocentric Whites and instead puts all its energies into recruiting Universalist individualists?  Why is their “movement” exclusively led by people derived from what they believe to be the least ethnocentric White ethnies?

Lest anyone claim that I behave the same, re: Salter’s work; that is untrue. I will critique Salter when warranted and I engage in cult-like guru worship to no one.  However, denying the existence of EGI is as absurd as denying the existence of a continuum of individualism vs. collectivism. I do not deny the existence of such a continuum nor do I deny individual and group differences along this continuum. I do not deny objective reality (as do the EGI deniers).  What I do is to critique descriptive and prescriptive interpretations of that objective reality, I critique specific memes and paradigms related to it, and most of all I critique the irrational and unscientific cultism surrounding it (just like I critique idiots who invoke “EGI” to explain everything from bad weather to the price of milk).

See this for an explanation of how small differences in population cognitive traits can result in large changes in societal outcomes.