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The Myth of the Blood: The Genesis of Racialism
Written during the rule of National Socialism in Germany and the rise of the so-called Racial Laws in Fascist Italy, The Myth of the Blood offers a unique window into the historical origins of the racialist thought that so fatefully characterized an era. More than a study of history, however, The Myth of the Blood is a magisterial overview of the problem of human race itself, by one of the great thinkers of the past century, the traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola.
This book traces the development of the concept of race from antiquity to contemporary times, proceeding through historical, mythical, scientific, and philosophical perspectives, keenly dissecting the thought of the foremost theoreticians in the field of race studies. The result is an unmatched analysis of a notoriously difficult issue, undertaken with an admirable mixture of fearlessness, fairness, and erudition.
In a day of growing questions, controversies, and doubts surrounding the nature and meaning of human race, Evola’s reflections are as timely now as they were on the day of their publication.
This book traces the development of the concept of race from antiquity to contemporary times, proceeding through historical, mythical, scientific, and philosophical perspectives, keenly dissecting the thought of the foremost theoreticians in the field of race studies. The result is an unmatched analysis of a notoriously difficult issue, undertaken with an admirable mixture of fearlessness, fairness, and erudition.
In a day of growing questions, controversies, and doubts surrounding the nature and meaning of human race, Evola’s reflections are as timely now as they were on the day of their publication.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1937
About the author
Julius Evola
207 books1,110 followersJulius Evola, born Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola, was an Italian philosopher and esoteric scholar. Born in Rome to a Sicilian family (often claimed to be landed gentry, giving Julius the title of Baron, though his birth certificate lists his father's occupation as "Mechanic," while his mother worked for the post office), Evola was raised a strict Roman Catholic. Despite this, his life was characterised by 'an anti-bourgeois approach' hostile to both 'the dominant tradition of the West—Christianity and Catholicism—and to contemporary civilization—the 'modern world' of democracy and materialism'.
By turns 'engineering student, artillery officer, Dadaist poet and painter, journalist, alpinist, scholar, linguist, Orientalist, and political commentator', he has been described as a 'rare example of universality in an age of specialization'. Yet behind it all lay a singular emphasis on, and pursuit of, a 'direct relationship to the Absolute'. For Evola, 'the center of all things was not man, but rather the Transcendent.' This metaphysical conviction can be seen to have determined both Evola's stance on socio-political issues, and his antipathetic attitude towards 'all professional, sentimental and family routines'.
The author of many books on esoteric, political and religious topics, his best-known work remains Revolt Against the Modern World, a trenchant critique of modern civilisation that has been described as 'the gateway to his thought'. Since his death, also in Rome, his writings have influenced right-wing, reactionary and conservative political thought not only in his native Italy, but throughout continental Europe and, increasingly, the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, he should not be considered primarily as a political thinker, but rather as an exponent of the wider Traditionalist School that encompasses the work of such individuals as René Guénon, Titus Burckhardt and Frithjof Schuon.
By turns 'engineering student, artillery officer, Dadaist poet and painter, journalist, alpinist, scholar, linguist, Orientalist, and political commentator', he has been described as a 'rare example of universality in an age of specialization'. Yet behind it all lay a singular emphasis on, and pursuit of, a 'direct relationship to the Absolute'. For Evola, 'the center of all things was not man, but rather the Transcendent.' This metaphysical conviction can be seen to have determined both Evola's stance on socio-political issues, and his antipathetic attitude towards 'all professional, sentimental and family routines'.
The author of many books on esoteric, political and religious topics, his best-known work remains Revolt Against the Modern World, a trenchant critique of modern civilisation that has been described as 'the gateway to his thought'. Since his death, also in Rome, his writings have influenced right-wing, reactionary and conservative political thought not only in his native Italy, but throughout continental Europe and, increasingly, the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, he should not be considered primarily as a political thinker, but rather as an exponent of the wider Traditionalist School that encompasses the work of such individuals as René Guénon, Titus Burckhardt and Frithjof Schuon.
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August 20, 2019
"In the present volume, we have set ourselves the task - as we have already announced - of presenting with the greatest objectivity the various motifs which, up to the advent of Germanic National Socialism, have nourished the racist current." (p. 203).
"By now all the constitutive elements of the racist theory, beginning from its most distant antecedents, are known to the reader." (p. 185)
These quotes summarize the essential purpose of "The Myth of Blood". This purpose is peculiarly relevant to the politics of our own day, dominated as it is by the controversies surrounding nationalism and mass immigration from the third world. Evola writes with a clear, unbiased, and lucid style which I found refreshing.
Chapter VII: The Arctic Myth
Reading this book has given me a much clearer and more precise understanding of what "racism" is and how it has morphed over time. Evola abstains from critical commentary, for the most part, but he sometimes pokes fun with extremely dry wit at the extravagant claims of certain authors, such as Herman Wirth:
"Finally, Wirth goes so far as to suppose, rather fantastically, an emigration of this legendary race so far as Australia, referring to the Ma-ori, the last descendants of this archaic South-Atlantic colony, which in their anthropological type, in their symbols, in their language, display even today a neat difference with respect to the savage aboriginal stock of Negroids and Mongoloids." (Chapter VII: The Arctic Myth, p. 122)
Chapter VIII: The Racist Conception of History
Evola emphasizes the fact that racism evolved into nothing less than a religion under the influence of the German National Socialists: "Today a new faith is awakening - the Myth of the blood; the belief that to defend the blood is also to defend the divine nature of man in general. It is a belief, effulgent with the brightest knowledge, that Nordic blood represents that MYSTERIVM which has overcome and replaced the older sacraments." (Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century as in Evola, Chapter VIII: The Racist Conception of History, p. 127).
With his characteristic hint of sardonic humor, Evola describes the long litany of civilizations attributed to the "Nordic" stock by racists within Rosenberg's tradition, for example: "Gunther gives to the ancient Roman social constitution the usual racist interpretation: [...] The Senate for the entirety of the first century B.C. appears to be 'Nordic.'" (Chapter VIII: The Racist Conception of History, p. 137).
Chapter IX: Racism and Antisemitism
Evola devotes Chapter IX to distinguishing between antisemitism and racism, which he notes are not necessarily correlated but in practice mutually reinforcing: "The Aryan and racist front considers Judaism as a destructive force for every other race or civilization." (p. 152). This opinion is based, per Evola, on certain passages of the Law and Prophets, for example:
"And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down." (Deut. 28:12-13)
"You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you." (Deut. 7:16)
"Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven will be handed over to the holy people of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him." (Daniel 7:27)
"Foreigners will rebuild your walls, and their kings will serve you." (Isaiah 60:10)
Christianity managed to adopt an inclusive, universalist vision of the world despite these passages, but anti-semites cite the Talmud as evidence of anti-gentile sentiments among Jews, according to Evola:
"What is the reason it is called Mount Sinai? It is because it is a mountain upon which hatred [sina] for the nations of the world descended because they did not accept the Torah." (Talmud, Shabbat 89a)
"But if one applies anointing oil to gentiles why is he exempt? Aren't they included in the meaning of the term person [adam]? The Gemara explains: Indeed they are not. As it is written: 'And you My sheep, the sheep of My pasture, are people [adam]' (Ezekiel 34:31), from which it is derived that you, the Jewish people, are called adam, but gentiles are not called adam." (Talmud, Keritot 6b)
Certain citations from the Talmud given by Evola in this chapter are not verifiable, however, and the chapter is plagued generally by a many unsubstantiated statements that Evola appears to accept uncritically.
Chapter X: The Racist Conception of Law
These chapters describe the racist conception of law, "which is supposedly an ancient Nordic tradition, which today should be reconditioned." (p. 169). This conception is"a blood related scheme" (Alfred Rosenberg as in Evola, p. 170)) wherein, the "unadulterated blood", "possesses an innate sense of right, of justice and injustice, valid for it and not for others" (Helmut Nicolai as in Evola, p. 170). Evola quotes Falk Ruttke summarizing the tenants of the racist conception of law:
"...fist of all, so that the law is connected to the racial idea, and a juridical doctrine is created which is founded on the laws of race; in the second place, so that in the constitution of law and in its application the care of heredity and racial hygiene stand at the center of all the provisions; thirdly, so that legislators of racial quality are presupposed by the juridical order, itself conforming to race; and finally, so that the constitution and the application of the law are accompanied by a continuous education of the people in matters of racism and of heredity..." (p. 172)
This concept of law as shaped and determined by racism stands in contrast to the impersonal, egalitarian and racially-ambivalent legal system of Rome. Racist law breaks radically with the roots of legal equality, therefore.
Chapters XI: The New Racist Legislation
The practical implementation of this racist legal concept is reported by Evola in Chapter XI. Evola identifies one category of Nazi legislation aimed, "to isolate a pure 'Aryan' substance at the center of the State" (p. 179). Such laws produced no small amount of disarray, according to Evola, partly because the resulting racist action was often, "devoid of a precise juridical basis." (p. 180).
The "second branch" of Nazi legislation was concerned with eugenics and was derived from America, according to Evola, particularly by way of Francis Galton. The eugenics laws in the Nazi regime closely followed their American predecessors by sterilizing people with hereditary illnesses, but the Nazis implemented this program on a much larger scale.
Chapter XII: The Racism of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler contributes, "almost nothing new" (p. 185) to the racist myth of National Socialism, according to Evola. It was Hitler's pathos and political ability that set him apart rather than any theoretical innovation in the racist myth.
"The fundamental premise of racism in Hitler is presented almost in the form of theological predestination: Providence desires that men not be equal, it has predetermined a plurality of races and has fixed them with gifts and special characteristics which cannot be altered without incurring degeneration and decadence." (p. 186).
Nothing here is peculiarly innovative except perhaps that Hitler's racism has become even more explicitly religious in previous generations of the Myth. Thus, to accomodate miscegenation is, for Hitler, "to sin against the will of the Eternal Creator" (Hitler as in Evola, p. 187).
Chapter I: Origins
In many ways, the later developments of the racist myth contrast strongly with more ancient conceptions of race, but two principles remain consistent, according to Evola: 1) "humanity" is an abstract fiction in so far that it exists in reality only as qualitatively and fundamentally different races, and 2) each human racial type is gives rise to its own distinctive type of civilization by virtue of an interior "spirit".
Evola notes that the essential characteristics of the racial myth seem inspired by the ancient concept of the Zodiac and astrology, wherein ancient scholars viewed spiritual influences connected to the stars as influencing not only individuals but also larger groups of people:
"We therefore find already in antiquity the idea of differences between human beings which are innate, congenital, and, to a certain degree, even 'fatal,' because they draw their origin from a state anterior to the human state." (p. 3).
Evola goes on to note that this concept of congenital traits is found also in the Bible wherein we find concept of different "seed" conceived as lineages which bear various curses and blessings through the generations. This gave rise to an effort to acquire the blessings of Biblical lineage through, "the idea that the most ancient Brittonic stocks are derived from one of [the Twelve] tribes." (p. 4).
Christian literature, Evola points out, normally uses the term "genos" in a spiritual sense. Gnostic and Medieval visions of race were also predominantly spiritual. Gnostics divided humans into "pneumatic" (spiritual), "psychic" (psyche), and "'ule" (material) men, while the Medieval "doctrine of the four humors" differentiated men according to identifiable psychic and physiological marks, with, "various forms of character and of predispositions in the soul." (p. 5).
These ancient and medieval ideas gradually morphed into the description of races in terms of faith, language, and culture. The Englishman Max Muller, for instance, identified the existence of the "Indo-Germanic" or "Arya" language together with an associated mythological pantheon unearthed by means of comparative mythology. Thus, Evola concludes that, "...racism has taken its origin less from racial and ethnic, than from philological and cultural, considerations". (p. 8).
Chapter II: The Doctrine of Count Gobineau
Here Evola notes a profound shift away from the ancient, more spiritual, conceptions of race and towards a more scientific racism. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752 - 1840) was remarkable in this regard for his work describing various forms of human crania to achieve, "a scientific subdivision of the various human races" (p. 12).
The earlier conceptions of race were not lost such that Evola identifies three components to the racist myth at the beginning of second half of the 19th century: "...one philosophical, one anthropological, and the third philological. The philosophical component is represented by the Romantic conception of the soul or spirit of peoples; the anthropological component is represented by the distinction between dolichocephalic man and brachycephalic man, which is associated more or less with other ethnic traits, as well as with the first starts of the theory of heredity; and finally the philological component is represented by the discovery of the common origin of groups of Indo-European languages, and by the hypothesis of primordial 'Arya' language anterior to their differentiation." (p. 15).
Arthur de Gobineau synthesized these components into a historiographic theory explaining the rise and fall of nations in terms of race: "It is race which gives origin, strength, value, and life to a nation and to its civilization. [...] It is therefore the intermingling of blood which appears to Gobineau as the cause of degeneration." (p. 19). Gobineau classifies humanity as "white Arya", "yellow", and "black" types (p. 21), and he boldly affirms the superiority of the "white Arya" race.
Chapter III: Developments
Writers such as Ludwig Wilser (1850 - 1923) and Karl Penka (1847 - 1912) decided that the Arya race originated in the arctic instead of in central Asia, as previous writers had theorized (p. 34). Vacher de Lapouge decides that the Arya race is strictly speaking Nordic and "blond dolichocephalic" (p. 30). Ludwig Woltmann (1871 - 1907) continues moving further towards a strictly materialist conception of race and introduces the idea of genetics as the means of, "transmission of characteristic moral and spiritual gifts amongst the races." (p. 38).
Chapter IV: The Views of Chamberlain
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855 – 1927) continued the familiar tradition of identifying the blonde Arya people as the most favored and superior of races, but he broke ranks significantly by introducing the idea that this superiority is acquired rather than hereditary: "no affinity binds more closely than elective affinity, and in this sense the Indo-European Aryans certainly form a family" (Chamberlain's "Foundations" as in Evola p. 48).
Chamberlain doesn't necessarily deny the idea of an original, pure Aryan stock, but this is insignificant to him compared with the voluntary cohesion of the Aryan people in his own time: "Whatever might be their origins and their components, Chamberlain has no doubt that races exist with very clear characteristics, and he experiences an authentic horror and panic at 'ethnic chaos,' the principle of general bastardization and inevitable decadence." (p. 50).
Chamberlain is brazenly supremacist ("Only the superior races can arrogate to themselves the right to liberty..." [p. 52]), anti-Roman ("...he nevertheless proceeds to law ethnic chaos to the account of Imperial Rome" [p. 56]), and anti-Church ("...the Church assumed this tradition of promiscuity and made it its own, uniting it with a fanatical intolerance" [p. 56]).
Chapter V: The Theory of Heredity
The Theory of Heredity is principally distinguished from earlier anthropological racist systems by the definition of race in terms of hereditary groups defined by genes rather than by external forms. Thus, hereditary racism is concerned principally with the distinction between genotype and phenotype: the heritable gene and the external forms arising therefrom.
The Theory of Heredity is described in terms of certain laws, first among which is that, "...the environment can produce only certain external variations (parvariations or modifications)." Such variations are contingent, transitory; they do not transform themselves into elements of a new heredity; they are lost." (p. 72).
Hereditary racism departs from the definition of race according to rigid anthropological types and adopts a definition of a race as, "a type which oscillates around an average value, that is, which has a maximum and a minimum of modification (just as the primrose had its two form-limits red and white)." (p. 73).
The Theory of Heredity is also characterized by laws of inheritance, the first of which is Mendel's law of segregation: "(that is: in the hybrid product, the two different qualities are made uniform, they balance in an intermediary quality)." (p. 75). White and red snap-dragon plants are mixed, they produce pinks, yet when pinks are cross-bred, they dehybridize.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have run out of space. :)
"By now all the constitutive elements of the racist theory, beginning from its most distant antecedents, are known to the reader." (p. 185)
These quotes summarize the essential purpose of "The Myth of Blood". This purpose is peculiarly relevant to the politics of our own day, dominated as it is by the controversies surrounding nationalism and mass immigration from the third world. Evola writes with a clear, unbiased, and lucid style which I found refreshing.
Chapter VII: The Arctic Myth
Reading this book has given me a much clearer and more precise understanding of what "racism" is and how it has morphed over time. Evola abstains from critical commentary, for the most part, but he sometimes pokes fun with extremely dry wit at the extravagant claims of certain authors, such as Herman Wirth:
"Finally, Wirth goes so far as to suppose, rather fantastically, an emigration of this legendary race so far as Australia, referring to the Ma-ori, the last descendants of this archaic South-Atlantic colony, which in their anthropological type, in their symbols, in their language, display even today a neat difference with respect to the savage aboriginal stock of Negroids and Mongoloids." (Chapter VII: The Arctic Myth, p. 122)
Chapter VIII: The Racist Conception of History
Evola emphasizes the fact that racism evolved into nothing less than a religion under the influence of the German National Socialists: "Today a new faith is awakening - the Myth of the blood; the belief that to defend the blood is also to defend the divine nature of man in general. It is a belief, effulgent with the brightest knowledge, that Nordic blood represents that MYSTERIVM which has overcome and replaced the older sacraments." (Rosenberg, The Myth of the Twentieth Century as in Evola, Chapter VIII: The Racist Conception of History, p. 127).
With his characteristic hint of sardonic humor, Evola describes the long litany of civilizations attributed to the "Nordic" stock by racists within Rosenberg's tradition, for example: "Gunther gives to the ancient Roman social constitution the usual racist interpretation: [...] The Senate for the entirety of the first century B.C. appears to be 'Nordic.'" (Chapter VIII: The Racist Conception of History, p. 137).
Chapter IX: Racism and Antisemitism
Evola devotes Chapter IX to distinguishing between antisemitism and racism, which he notes are not necessarily correlated but in practice mutually reinforcing: "The Aryan and racist front considers Judaism as a destructive force for every other race or civilization." (p. 152). This opinion is based, per Evola, on certain passages of the Law and Prophets, for example:
"And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down." (Deut. 28:12-13)
"You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you." (Deut. 7:16)
"Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven will be handed over to the holy people of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him." (Daniel 7:27)
"Foreigners will rebuild your walls, and their kings will serve you." (Isaiah 60:10)
Christianity managed to adopt an inclusive, universalist vision of the world despite these passages, but anti-semites cite the Talmud as evidence of anti-gentile sentiments among Jews, according to Evola:
"What is the reason it is called Mount Sinai? It is because it is a mountain upon which hatred [sina] for the nations of the world descended because they did not accept the Torah." (Talmud, Shabbat 89a)
"But if one applies anointing oil to gentiles why is he exempt? Aren't they included in the meaning of the term person [adam]? The Gemara explains: Indeed they are not. As it is written: 'And you My sheep, the sheep of My pasture, are people [adam]' (Ezekiel 34:31), from which it is derived that you, the Jewish people, are called adam, but gentiles are not called adam." (Talmud, Keritot 6b)
Certain citations from the Talmud given by Evola in this chapter are not verifiable, however, and the chapter is plagued generally by a many unsubstantiated statements that Evola appears to accept uncritically.
Chapter X: The Racist Conception of Law
These chapters describe the racist conception of law, "which is supposedly an ancient Nordic tradition, which today should be reconditioned." (p. 169). This conception is"a blood related scheme" (Alfred Rosenberg as in Evola, p. 170)) wherein, the "unadulterated blood", "possesses an innate sense of right, of justice and injustice, valid for it and not for others" (Helmut Nicolai as in Evola, p. 170). Evola quotes Falk Ruttke summarizing the tenants of the racist conception of law:
"...fist of all, so that the law is connected to the racial idea, and a juridical doctrine is created which is founded on the laws of race; in the second place, so that in the constitution of law and in its application the care of heredity and racial hygiene stand at the center of all the provisions; thirdly, so that legislators of racial quality are presupposed by the juridical order, itself conforming to race; and finally, so that the constitution and the application of the law are accompanied by a continuous education of the people in matters of racism and of heredity..." (p. 172)
This concept of law as shaped and determined by racism stands in contrast to the impersonal, egalitarian and racially-ambivalent legal system of Rome. Racist law breaks radically with the roots of legal equality, therefore.
Chapters XI: The New Racist Legislation
The practical implementation of this racist legal concept is reported by Evola in Chapter XI. Evola identifies one category of Nazi legislation aimed, "to isolate a pure 'Aryan' substance at the center of the State" (p. 179). Such laws produced no small amount of disarray, according to Evola, partly because the resulting racist action was often, "devoid of a precise juridical basis." (p. 180).
The "second branch" of Nazi legislation was concerned with eugenics and was derived from America, according to Evola, particularly by way of Francis Galton. The eugenics laws in the Nazi regime closely followed their American predecessors by sterilizing people with hereditary illnesses, but the Nazis implemented this program on a much larger scale.
Chapter XII: The Racism of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler contributes, "almost nothing new" (p. 185) to the racist myth of National Socialism, according to Evola. It was Hitler's pathos and political ability that set him apart rather than any theoretical innovation in the racist myth.
"The fundamental premise of racism in Hitler is presented almost in the form of theological predestination: Providence desires that men not be equal, it has predetermined a plurality of races and has fixed them with gifts and special characteristics which cannot be altered without incurring degeneration and decadence." (p. 186).
Nothing here is peculiarly innovative except perhaps that Hitler's racism has become even more explicitly religious in previous generations of the Myth. Thus, to accomodate miscegenation is, for Hitler, "to sin against the will of the Eternal Creator" (Hitler as in Evola, p. 187).
Chapter I: Origins
In many ways, the later developments of the racist myth contrast strongly with more ancient conceptions of race, but two principles remain consistent, according to Evola: 1) "humanity" is an abstract fiction in so far that it exists in reality only as qualitatively and fundamentally different races, and 2) each human racial type is gives rise to its own distinctive type of civilization by virtue of an interior "spirit".
Evola notes that the essential characteristics of the racial myth seem inspired by the ancient concept of the Zodiac and astrology, wherein ancient scholars viewed spiritual influences connected to the stars as influencing not only individuals but also larger groups of people:
"We therefore find already in antiquity the idea of differences between human beings which are innate, congenital, and, to a certain degree, even 'fatal,' because they draw their origin from a state anterior to the human state." (p. 3).
Evola goes on to note that this concept of congenital traits is found also in the Bible wherein we find concept of different "seed" conceived as lineages which bear various curses and blessings through the generations. This gave rise to an effort to acquire the blessings of Biblical lineage through, "the idea that the most ancient Brittonic stocks are derived from one of [the Twelve] tribes." (p. 4).
Christian literature, Evola points out, normally uses the term "genos" in a spiritual sense. Gnostic and Medieval visions of race were also predominantly spiritual. Gnostics divided humans into "pneumatic" (spiritual), "psychic" (psyche), and "'ule" (material) men, while the Medieval "doctrine of the four humors" differentiated men according to identifiable psychic and physiological marks, with, "various forms of character and of predispositions in the soul." (p. 5).
These ancient and medieval ideas gradually morphed into the description of races in terms of faith, language, and culture. The Englishman Max Muller, for instance, identified the existence of the "Indo-Germanic" or "Arya" language together with an associated mythological pantheon unearthed by means of comparative mythology. Thus, Evola concludes that, "...racism has taken its origin less from racial and ethnic, than from philological and cultural, considerations". (p. 8).
Chapter II: The Doctrine of Count Gobineau
Here Evola notes a profound shift away from the ancient, more spiritual, conceptions of race and towards a more scientific racism. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752 - 1840) was remarkable in this regard for his work describing various forms of human crania to achieve, "a scientific subdivision of the various human races" (p. 12).
The earlier conceptions of race were not lost such that Evola identifies three components to the racist myth at the beginning of second half of the 19th century: "...one philosophical, one anthropological, and the third philological. The philosophical component is represented by the Romantic conception of the soul or spirit of peoples; the anthropological component is represented by the distinction between dolichocephalic man and brachycephalic man, which is associated more or less with other ethnic traits, as well as with the first starts of the theory of heredity; and finally the philological component is represented by the discovery of the common origin of groups of Indo-European languages, and by the hypothesis of primordial 'Arya' language anterior to their differentiation." (p. 15).
Arthur de Gobineau synthesized these components into a historiographic theory explaining the rise and fall of nations in terms of race: "It is race which gives origin, strength, value, and life to a nation and to its civilization. [...] It is therefore the intermingling of blood which appears to Gobineau as the cause of degeneration." (p. 19). Gobineau classifies humanity as "white Arya", "yellow", and "black" types (p. 21), and he boldly affirms the superiority of the "white Arya" race.
Chapter III: Developments
Writers such as Ludwig Wilser (1850 - 1923) and Karl Penka (1847 - 1912) decided that the Arya race originated in the arctic instead of in central Asia, as previous writers had theorized (p. 34). Vacher de Lapouge decides that the Arya race is strictly speaking Nordic and "blond dolichocephalic" (p. 30). Ludwig Woltmann (1871 - 1907) continues moving further towards a strictly materialist conception of race and introduces the idea of genetics as the means of, "transmission of characteristic moral and spiritual gifts amongst the races." (p. 38).
Chapter IV: The Views of Chamberlain
Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855 – 1927) continued the familiar tradition of identifying the blonde Arya people as the most favored and superior of races, but he broke ranks significantly by introducing the idea that this superiority is acquired rather than hereditary: "no affinity binds more closely than elective affinity, and in this sense the Indo-European Aryans certainly form a family" (Chamberlain's "Foundations" as in Evola p. 48).
Chamberlain doesn't necessarily deny the idea of an original, pure Aryan stock, but this is insignificant to him compared with the voluntary cohesion of the Aryan people in his own time: "Whatever might be their origins and their components, Chamberlain has no doubt that races exist with very clear characteristics, and he experiences an authentic horror and panic at 'ethnic chaos,' the principle of general bastardization and inevitable decadence." (p. 50).
Chamberlain is brazenly supremacist ("Only the superior races can arrogate to themselves the right to liberty..." [p. 52]), anti-Roman ("...he nevertheless proceeds to law ethnic chaos to the account of Imperial Rome" [p. 56]), and anti-Church ("...the Church assumed this tradition of promiscuity and made it its own, uniting it with a fanatical intolerance" [p. 56]).
Chapter V: The Theory of Heredity
The Theory of Heredity is principally distinguished from earlier anthropological racist systems by the definition of race in terms of hereditary groups defined by genes rather than by external forms. Thus, hereditary racism is concerned principally with the distinction between genotype and phenotype: the heritable gene and the external forms arising therefrom.
The Theory of Heredity is described in terms of certain laws, first among which is that, "...the environment can produce only certain external variations (parvariations or modifications)." Such variations are contingent, transitory; they do not transform themselves into elements of a new heredity; they are lost." (p. 72).
Hereditary racism departs from the definition of race according to rigid anthropological types and adopts a definition of a race as, "a type which oscillates around an average value, that is, which has a maximum and a minimum of modification (just as the primrose had its two form-limits red and white)." (p. 73).
The Theory of Heredity is also characterized by laws of inheritance, the first of which is Mendel's law of segregation: "(that is: in the hybrid product, the two different qualities are made uniform, they balance in an intermediary quality)." (p. 75). White and red snap-dragon plants are mixed, they produce pinks, yet when pinks are cross-bred, they dehybridize.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have run out of space. :)
April 29, 2017
Interesting from a historical point of view, contains a history of modern racism, since Gobineau. The tone is one of objective distance, but Evola´s point of view is that of an outdated "metaphysical" racialism and nordicism.
Evola was a nordicist, a fascist and a nationalist. Hence: "Italians have more Nordic blood than the English"; the picture of a "typical" Spaniard is that of an ethnic minority, a gypsy, etc.
Evola and Italian racists (the most mixed population in Western Europe, btw) would be dissapointed by the facts of population genetics (Europe´s map of haplogoups; autosomal mal of Europe, 2008, Univ. of Rotterdam).
Evola was a nordicist, a fascist and a nationalist. Hence: "Italians have more Nordic blood than the English"; the picture of a "typical" Spaniard is that of an ethnic minority, a gypsy, etc.
Evola and Italian racists (the most mixed population in Western Europe, btw) would be dissapointed by the facts of population genetics (Europe´s map of haplogoups; autosomal mal of Europe, 2008, Univ. of Rotterdam).
May 23, 2025
The Myth of the Blood: The Genesis of Racialism (Arktos, 2018) skrevs av den Italienske författaren, esoterikern och Traditionalisten Julius Evola (1898-1974). Denna inbundna upplaga från Arktos pryds, i vanlig ordning, av ett tematiskt korrekt och mycket vackert bokomslag.
Till att börja med vill vi hylla översättaren John Bruce Leonard för hans inspirerande förord.
Vidare bjuds vi på en kallt objektiv och opartisk historisk redogörelse för rasförankrade idéströmningar och ideologier som sträcker sig från antiken till 1930-talets Tyskland. Bland annat belyser författaren De Goubineau, Chamberlain, Mendel och den arktiska myten. En av bokens höjdpunkter är kapitlet "Racism and Antisemitism" som innehåller en mycket informativ, nyanserad och upplysande sammanfattning av "The JQ". Vi konstaterar att detta är en briljant exposition skriven av en mycket lärd man. Det är helt enkelt ett mästerverk som är mycket välskrivet och rejält efterforskat.
Detta verk innehåller ytterst lite analys, syntes, kritik eller korrektioner. För allt detta rekommenderar både vi och författaren hans utmärkta bok Synthesis on the Doctrine of Race.
Vi rundar av denna recension med ett citat från bokens sista del:
“As has already been indicated, already in GOBINEAU its fundamentally aristocratic origin is quite visible: it affirms itself as a reaction against the morass of democratic egalitarianism and against a materialistic and anti-qualitative climate, which, at bottom, is precisely the climate wherein scientism itself has developed: from which scientism, by a most curious inversion, racism, in other of its aspects, has however borrowed various of its arms, and in which it has had to seek its alibi. Now, it is entirely possible, in the whole of racism, to discriminate and isolate precisely the superior tendency just now mentioned, understanding it as a principle of revolt against an internationalistic, leveling, rationalistic and plebeian civilization, thus finding in the return to the idea of race and above all of superior race or over-race, presentiments of a recovery of a spiritual heritage which we have forgotten.” s.202
Till att börja med vill vi hylla översättaren John Bruce Leonard för hans inspirerande förord.
Vidare bjuds vi på en kallt objektiv och opartisk historisk redogörelse för rasförankrade idéströmningar och ideologier som sträcker sig från antiken till 1930-talets Tyskland. Bland annat belyser författaren De Goubineau, Chamberlain, Mendel och den arktiska myten. En av bokens höjdpunkter är kapitlet "Racism and Antisemitism" som innehåller en mycket informativ, nyanserad och upplysande sammanfattning av "The JQ". Vi konstaterar att detta är en briljant exposition skriven av en mycket lärd man. Det är helt enkelt ett mästerverk som är mycket välskrivet och rejält efterforskat.
Detta verk innehåller ytterst lite analys, syntes, kritik eller korrektioner. För allt detta rekommenderar både vi och författaren hans utmärkta bok Synthesis on the Doctrine of Race.
Vi rundar av denna recension med ett citat från bokens sista del:
“As has already been indicated, already in GOBINEAU its fundamentally aristocratic origin is quite visible: it affirms itself as a reaction against the morass of democratic egalitarianism and against a materialistic and anti-qualitative climate, which, at bottom, is precisely the climate wherein scientism itself has developed: from which scientism, by a most curious inversion, racism, in other of its aspects, has however borrowed various of its arms, and in which it has had to seek its alibi. Now, it is entirely possible, in the whole of racism, to discriminate and isolate precisely the superior tendency just now mentioned, understanding it as a principle of revolt against an internationalistic, leveling, rationalistic and plebeian civilization, thus finding in the return to the idea of race and above all of superior race or over-race, presentiments of a recovery of a spiritual heritage which we have forgotten.” s.202
March 23, 2024
Julius Evola had an interesting conception of race, seeing as three-fold; race of the body, race of the mind, and race of the soul... with the last one taking greater precedence over the other two (something which put him in contention with the biocentric-centred worldview of the National Socialists).
His spiritual interpretation of race and nationality/tribal affiliation echoes that found in ancient Rome and other traditional societies rather than the modern liberal view where such things are almost considered fluid and malleable to the point one can hop between race/religions without consequence.
This very spiritual worldview in his eyes also tied into what god/gods a person worships as people in the ancient world linked religion to tribal identity, examples being at several points in the Bible (Book of Ruth, Saul's Road to Damascus, etc) where a person traditionally adopts a new name signifying their change in identity.
The book also highlights Julius Evola's explanations and critiques of the Nazi eugenics policies, antisemitism and attitude of racism of the era from the perspective of an aristocrat.
His spiritual interpretation of race and nationality/tribal affiliation echoes that found in ancient Rome and other traditional societies rather than the modern liberal view where such things are almost considered fluid and malleable to the point one can hop between race/religions without consequence.
This very spiritual worldview in his eyes also tied into what god/gods a person worships as people in the ancient world linked religion to tribal identity, examples being at several points in the Bible (Book of Ruth, Saul's Road to Damascus, etc) where a person traditionally adopts a new name signifying their change in identity.
The book also highlights Julius Evola's explanations and critiques of the Nazi eugenics policies, antisemitism and attitude of racism of the era from the perspective of an aristocrat.
Read
March 9, 2016• J. Evola - Il Mito del Sangue (Ulrico Hoepli, Milano).
Ce petit volume est une histoire du racisme, depuis les théories du comte de Gobineau et de Vacher de Lapouge, puis de Houston Stewart Chamberlain, jusqu’aux nouveaux développements qu’il a reçus récemment en Allemagne et qui y ont revêtu le caractère d’une doctrine en quelque sorte « officielle ». Le terme de « mythe » n’est pas pris ici dans le sens d’une simple fiction imaginative, mais dans celui d’«une idée qui tire principalement sa force persuasive d’éléments non rationnels,
une idée qui vaut par la force suggestive qu’elle condense, et, par suite, par sa capacité de se traduire finalement en action ». L’auteur s’efforce d’ailleurs d’être aussi impartial que possible dans son exposé, bien que, naturellement, il ne dissimule pas les contradictions qui existent entre les diverses conceptions dont l’ensemble constitue le racisme, et que parfois il laisse même deviner les critiques générales qu’il aurait à leur adresser, critiques qui porteraient surtout sur le caractère « naturaliste » et « scientiste » qu’elles présentent dans la plupart de leurs aspects. À vrai dire, la notion même de la race est assez difficile à préciser, d’autant plus qu’on est en tout cas forcé de reconnaître qu’ actuellement il n’existe nulle part de race pure ; ce qui est plutôt singulier, d’autre part, c’est que les races ou soi-disant telles qu’envisagent les anthropologistes et les préhistoriens, dont les travaux sont plus ou moins à la base de toutes les théories en question, n’ont plus absolument rien à voir avec les races qui furent reconnues traditionnellement de tout temps ; il semblerait que le même mot
soit pris là en deux sens totalement différents. Un point, par contre, où ces théories se sont notablement rapprochées des données traditionnelles, c’est l’affirmation, si longtemps perdue de vue en Occident, de l’origine nordique ou hyperboréenne de la civilisation primordiale ; mais, là encore, bien des confusions et des interprétations fantaisistes ou hypothétiques se mêlent, dans des ouvrages comme ceux d’Herman Wirth par exemple, à la reconnaissance de cette vérité. Tout cela, au fond, et même dans les éléments valables qui s’y rencontrent, ou, si l’on préfère, dans la façon dont ils sont traités, relève donc certainement bien plutôt de la « recherche » moderne que de la connaissance traditionnelle ; et c’est bien pourquoi le point de vue « naturaliste », qui est essentiellement celui des sciences profanes, ne saurait guère y être dépassé ; quant à savoir ce qui sortira finalement de ce véritable « chaos » d’idées en fermentation, c’est là, assurément, une question à laquelle l’avenir seul pourra apporter une réponse.
Ce petit volume est une histoire du racisme, depuis les théories du comte de Gobineau et de Vacher de Lapouge, puis de Houston Stewart Chamberlain, jusqu’aux nouveaux développements qu’il a reçus récemment en Allemagne et qui y ont revêtu le caractère d’une doctrine en quelque sorte « officielle ». Le terme de « mythe » n’est pas pris ici dans le sens d’une simple fiction imaginative, mais dans celui d’«une idée qui tire principalement sa force persuasive d’éléments non rationnels,
une idée qui vaut par la force suggestive qu’elle condense, et, par suite, par sa capacité de se traduire finalement en action ». L’auteur s’efforce d’ailleurs d’être aussi impartial que possible dans son exposé, bien que, naturellement, il ne dissimule pas les contradictions qui existent entre les diverses conceptions dont l’ensemble constitue le racisme, et que parfois il laisse même deviner les critiques générales qu’il aurait à leur adresser, critiques qui porteraient surtout sur le caractère « naturaliste » et « scientiste » qu’elles présentent dans la plupart de leurs aspects. À vrai dire, la notion même de la race est assez difficile à préciser, d’autant plus qu’on est en tout cas forcé de reconnaître qu’ actuellement il n’existe nulle part de race pure ; ce qui est plutôt singulier, d’autre part, c’est que les races ou soi-disant telles qu’envisagent les anthropologistes et les préhistoriens, dont les travaux sont plus ou moins à la base de toutes les théories en question, n’ont plus absolument rien à voir avec les races qui furent reconnues traditionnellement de tout temps ; il semblerait que le même mot
soit pris là en deux sens totalement différents. Un point, par contre, où ces théories se sont notablement rapprochées des données traditionnelles, c’est l’affirmation, si longtemps perdue de vue en Occident, de l’origine nordique ou hyperboréenne de la civilisation primordiale ; mais, là encore, bien des confusions et des interprétations fantaisistes ou hypothétiques se mêlent, dans des ouvrages comme ceux d’Herman Wirth par exemple, à la reconnaissance de cette vérité. Tout cela, au fond, et même dans les éléments valables qui s’y rencontrent, ou, si l’on préfère, dans la façon dont ils sont traités, relève donc certainement bien plutôt de la « recherche » moderne que de la connaissance traditionnelle ; et c’est bien pourquoi le point de vue « naturaliste », qui est essentiellement celui des sciences profanes, ne saurait guère y être dépassé ; quant à savoir ce qui sortira finalement de ce véritable « chaos » d’idées en fermentation, c’est là, assurément, une question à laquelle l’avenir seul pourra apporter une réponse.
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