Race is a vital subject to any kind of reactionary political theory, especially in light of the abuse this topic has endured in the post-WWII era. It has become quintessential in contemporary discussions of race to posit that it is either a ‘social construct’ which can then be easily dismantled, or else is arranged in a hierarchy of moral culpability, i.e.—the quality of a race of people, and thus its right to integrity or even existence, is to be judged based upon the scandalized actions of its ancestors.

One can say without doubt that both views have as their core a dogmatic commitment in lieu of any factual basis. The noted Steve Sailer has written endlessly on this topic, and one is best advised to begin with his FAQ. Also of interest, Spandrell’s racial theory on civilizational decline.

Such research allows us to discount any notion of equality between peoples of contrasting racial backgrounds, but does not provide further explanatory undergirding for a wise policy of separateness. After all, dogs experience a very similar inequality between breeds (the doberman, the St. Bernard, the dalmatian, and the chihuahua, just to name a few), and yet dogs interbreed freely, requiring the maintenance of humans to ensure ‘pure breeding,’ and perhaps more importantly, dogs have no reservations about engaging in social play with dogs of different breeds.

To be clear, nothing of significance put forward in the most rudimentary forms of human biodiversity is inaccurate.

I would argue instead that it is incomplete. This is because rightists, torn from their moorings in the World of Tradition by force of revolution, have been required to work with the tools available to them, namely a kind of profane science. This is a little like Christians in the Soviet Union having the Encyclopedia of Atheism’s polemics against them as their only apologetic tool. In this regard, it is truly a stupendous feat that the case against equality between races has been made with a towering force by science itself, and only remains ineffective because it is ignored by large parts of academia.

What separates us from the animals, the dogs, if you will, is the human ‘inner’ component, first of self-recognized agency, and second of the spiritual nature of the human being. In his long and fruitful studies, Julius Evola developed a doctrine of race that builds upon the realities of human biodiversity, grafting it seamlessly into the reactionary worldview through a more expansive, and in my opinion, more accurate assessment of race in its totality.

For Evola, race was not a property that could be so easily discerned at its fundamental level, as the National Socialists of Germany had wanted with their anthropometric and phrenological sciences, which sought to define the ‘pure Aryan race.’ This was a limited and deeply flawed outlook, which by his estimation was emblematic of modern materialism.

The Italian Fascists would later adopt Evola’s outline to assert their distinctiveness from the German regime. As is written in ‘Grundrisse der faschistischen Rassenlehre‘:

In a cat or a thoroughbred horse the biological is the deciding element, and thus the racial observation can be restricted to this criterion. This, however, is no longer the case when dealing with humans, or at least with beings that are worthy of that name. Man is indeed a biological being, but also connected to forces and laws of a different kind, that are as real and effective as the biological realm and whose influence on the latter cannot be overlooked. Fascist racial doctrine therefore holds a purely biological view of race to be inadequate.

This doctrine, to which I have become very partial myself and do believe to be a viable ‘core doctrine’ for the reactionary worldview, sees race as having a tripartite nature, bound in the principles of body, character, and spirit. Let us reflect on each:

The Race of the Body

The first, lowest, and most crude order of race which can be applied to any animal, is the race of the body. This is the aspect of race which experiences a privileged visibility. It is how our senses most easily delineate between peoples, differentiated as they are most notably in appearance. On this order, we may speak of physiological attributes (cranial structures, average height, facial features), attributes of physical prowess (stamina, athleticism, flexibility), and neurological attributes (average IQ levels). Combined, these form what we might deem the fundamentally undeniable aspects of race, which can only be dismissed on a faux academic level, rather than one of any true human experience. When we meet someone of a disparate race, we know about it. Nobody has to tell us that they’re black.

While existing at the bottom of the hierarchy of fundamental importance, the race of the body is incredibly significant, because it is used by the inner aspects of race to convey themselves in a way that the senses of those around us, particularly our kin, can perceive. Indeed, the higher manifestations of race are shot through with the bodily aspect:

The exterior is a function of the interior, the physical form is a symbol, tool, and means of expression of a spiritual form.

Furthermore, the sociocultural effects, particularly of IQ levels, have ramifications for the structuring of educational establishments in particular. Such effects are hard for anyone to ignore, especially those with firsthand experience.

The Race of the Character

The race of the character (sometimes translated in more problematic terminology as the ‘race of the soul’) refers to psychological types. Extending beyond the bodily race, which would include such neurological data as IQ levels, this is instead to denote a people’s collective predispositions and attitudes towards earthly matters. From ‘Aspects of Racial Doctrine‘:

As racialism of the second degree, one means a theory of the race of the character and a typology of the character of the race. Such racialism has to recognize the primary and irreducible elements which act from the inside, so that groups of individuals manifest a constant way of being or “style” in their actions, thoughts, and feelings.

He goes on to observe how the degeneration of the character race in the modern world is ubiquitous, even within family lines, and this we observe to a far greater extent today with the collapse of collective national conscience, declining recognition of norms and presuppositions, as well as the increasing rapidity of retroactive condemnation from generation to generation. Even among those family lines with no significant miscegenation, we observe this phenomena; the death of nationality, the death of identity:

Let us consider, for example, the phenomenon of mutual understanding: In everyday life there are many cases of persons who are of the same physical race, stock, or sometimes even – as in the case of brothers or fathers and sons – the same line, who do not succeed in understanding one another. A boundary separates their characters and their way of feeling and seeing is different. A common race of body or line is not enough to bridge such differences. The possibility of understanding, and thus of true solidarity, can only exist where there is a common race of the character.

The Race of the Spirit

Finally, for Evola the most important aspect of race, is the race of the spirit, which examines a people’s predispositions and attitudes towards divine and religious experience, a vertical manifestation of racial identity.

In his autobiography, ‘The Path of Cinnabar’, Evola makes clear the distinction between the spirit and the character, which while both intangible attributes, are immutably different:

‘Spirit’ should here be distinguished from ‘character’ as that component of man in touch with higher values that transcend life. In this sense, the ‘race of the spirit’ manifests itself in the different approaches to the sacred, to destiny and to the question of life and death, as well as in world-views, religions, etc.

Quite apart from the race of the character and certainly the race of the body, the race of the spirit is a transhistorical element expressed through a less numerous series of peoples with common metaphysical characteristics, and thus when we consider the Occidental people we can most certainly see common spiritual elements indicative in large part of what Evola theorized as a ‘Hyperborean’ origin. This not only encompasses what we might deem ‘symbological’ similarities between ancient European forms of Paganism, but to a more intriguing degree, the birth of Christendom, which despite theopolitical divisions and fracturing based on character conflicts, was indicative of a collective spiritual unity, perceived or not as it was. From The Eternal Race:

Symbol and myth in our doctrine of race instead have the merit of documentary evidence through their capacity to lead us into the primary super-rational spiritual element of the races, to what is truly elemental in the world of origins. This element constitutes the leading thread for complementary investigations of various types. Custom, ethics, ancient law, and language certainly furnish other signs for the investigation of the third degree of race and for the racial interpretation of the history of civilization. But, even here, in order to obtain valid results it is necessary to remove the limitations of the modern mentality and to recognize that, in the ancient world, ethics, law, and customs were only chapters dependent on “religion”: i.e., they reflect meanings and principles characteristic of a super-rational and sacred order.

In addition, the race of the spirit sees an absolute differentiation in quality and health, hence both Evola’s preoccupation with ‘Solar’ and ‘Lunar’ racial modes (that is the masculine, higher, unified spirituality contrasted with the feminine, lower, diffuse spirituality), as well as a hierarchy of spiritual understanding within any healthy society. For this reason, there is a racial justification for the crossbreeding of aristocrats across the Occident which in no way compromised the character race of any given nation, but instead retained the quality of the ruling classes who shared a superior stock of the collective, spiritual, racial consciousness. It was preferable for a German princess to marry an English prince than for her to marry a German who was lower on the hierarchy of the broad spiritual race. In this way, aristocracy was maintained to some degree, and yet the character of the nation was rarely if ever affected.

Conclusion

As Evola applied his racial doctrine to modernity, it was observed that Occidental man had seen his tripartite expression of race corroded by various influences, so that now the spiritual, character, and bodily races were confounded and confused, corrupted and compromised. There is of course much gnashing of teeth and Nostradamus hyperbole concerning the fate of the ‘white’ bodily race, that miscegenation and the much more pressing issue of birth rates represent the most dire racial calamities of the century. We should however first confront problems close to the root, and ask ourselves, how can brother betray brother on the scale that we witness? How does Sweden breed a Jonas Sjöstedt? How does England breed a Jeremy Corbyn? The death of the nation, mentioned above, is evident here as we see people we might identify as ‘our own’ not only lacking any sense of commitment to their kin, but an outright hostility to them and their interests.

The distortion of the psychic character, which is supposed to rally the entire nation to collective unity, is endemic to the modern world. Furthermore, the destruction of Christianity as the religious principle around which any semblance, any hope, of Occidental unity could be wrapped, also confirms that the higher race of the spirit has been completely overturned, in 90% of cases replaced with a nihilistic detachment from all matters of religious experience. The regression of the castes, and the collapse of the aristocracy only add to the ubiquitous misery, proving that liberalism is no less destructive to peoples than the Soviet-style of collectivism was.

What might we say then, to round off this exposition of Evola’s racial theory? I believe there is a compelling case to accept this aristocratic view of race, transcending the overly simplistic reduction of race to a mere biological reality. Of the contributions that the Sicilian baron has made to the rich lore of the reactionary Right, this represents one of his most valuable insights. To close, one more excerpt from The Path of Cinnabar:

Human nature, instead, is ordinarily differentiated, and this differentiation is expressed in the form of different bloodlines and races. This differentiation constitutes the primary feature of humanity: not only is it a natural condition among all beings, but also a positive element, something which ought to exist, and ought to be defended and safeguarded. The acknowledgement of diversity never led me – unlike certain other racists – to conceive humanity as a series of isolated, self-contained units; nor did it lead me to reject all higher principles. A kind of unity is certainly conceivable for humanity, but only at a higher level; and such unity accepts and preserves differentiation at a lower level. Unity ‘from below’, on the other hand, is a regressive phenomenon: such is the leveling unity sought by democracy, ‘integrationism’, humanitarianism, pseudo-universalism and collectivism.