The Ethnic Nepotism Fallacy
By Ian Jobling • 12/11/09
So far my series of articles on a philosophy for the pro-white movement has proceeded without a thesis. Readers may have been frustrated by my remarks about liberalism, conditional rights, and so forth because they didn’t know what I was driving at. So with the next few articles, I will set out my thesis. I will explain what is wrong with white racialism today and propose a better approach.
Ask a typical white nationalist the reason for his political views, and you will most likely get an answer along the following lines:
We must preserve the white race because of our ethnic genetic interests. Members of races share genes with each other, just as members of families do, and it is the purpose of every living thing to multiply the number of its own genes. So we should love our race for the same reason that we love our families. All races have a natural instinct to work in their racial interests, and all races except for whites act on this instinct. Whites have left their natural tribalism behind because of the corrupting forces of modern life and multiculturalist propaganda, but unless we work to maintain our race against others, we will be destroyed.
Call this a statement of “ethnic nepotism theory,” derived from the work of writers like J. Phillippe Rushton, Frank Salter, Jared Taylor, Kevin MacDonald, and Steve Sailer. The basic idea is that the ethnic bond is an extension of the family bond. According to kin selection theory, which is well established in behavioral biology, humans, like other organisms, evolved to favor their close relatives because family members share genes. Since our co-ethnics (members of the same ethnicity as ourselves) also share genes with us, loyalty to our race is as instinctual and moral as loyalty to our families.
However reasonable it appears at first blush, ethnic nepotism theory (ENT) is certainly untrue. Even worse, it fatally distorts our understanding of ethnicity and race and even tends to justify and encourage evil. As one example, ENT partisans view suicide bombing as a natural extension of our love for kin, a link that disastrously confuses the most natural and wholesome of human behaviors with the most demented insanity. (I am not claiming that ENT partisans intend to encourage evil, merely that their theory does so.)
ENT is responsible for endless amounts of mind-numbing commentary. For most white nationalists, anything that tends to serve “white ethnic interests” is right and anything that counters these interests is wrong. Such a crude and nakedly self-interested framework of moral evaluation does not lead to illuminating writing. The harm done by ENT does not stop at white nationalism, as the inclusion of Steve Sailer in the list above indicates. Though a fervent believer in ENT, Sailer is no white nationalist, and most of his numerous and enthusiastic fans are not either.
If we are to place the pro-white movement on rational and moral grounds, there are two things we must recognize. First of all, our instincts for nepotism stop at our kin, probably going no further than cousins. The ethnic bond is not an extension of the family bond; rather, these affiliations have different sources and natures. People did not evolve to be ethnic nepotists, but what I will call “kindividualists,” whose purpose in life is to advance their own interests and those of their kin. Since our co-ethnics would have been our primary competitors for mates and resources throughout the history of our species, directing altruism towards co-ethnics would have been a path to genetic extinction, so it is at best highly implausible that any instinct for ethnic nepotism evolved.
Though the word is new, kindividualism is far from a novel theory of human motivation. Rather, it is the established wisdom among behavioral biologists, a category that includes evolutionary psychologists, who study human behavior from a Darwinist standpoint, and students of animal behavior. ENT partisans view it as a great injustice that mainstream behavioral biologists have ignored them and declare that political bias on issues of race must be the reason.1 However, the more likely cause of this neglect is that ENT is implausible on theoretical grounds and unsupported by the empirical evidence ---
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Poster Comment:
Now see us rednecks have this here little "problem" licked.
Why, we're ALL cuzins! :)
Compared to you YANKEES that is.
So race isn't genes. Or not just genes, anyways. Who cares?
With all due respect to proFESsor macDONald and the folk at the OXiDAYNTal obSERVah, this is a SUR-PRISE to y'all? Y'all need hunnerds a words to DEBATE this shit?! What are y'all, a bunch a Jews?!
Sad, boys, truly sad.
-- and what the hell kind of a name is JOBling anyways?