Since Obama’s re-election, I have read a lot of “race realist” material in my research on Western Civilization and its defense.
A particularly important theme, from Richardo Duchesne a pro-Western historian, is the “Faustian” personality type, i.e., a fundamental in pre-history, which is said to account for the need to strive to one’s limits, to climb to the top of a mountain for the sake of it, or to go around the world for the sake of it, to land on the moon for the sake of it, to run a marathon for its own sake. It is not a means to an end, but to prove one’s worthiness. The end is one’s own glory and sense of satisfaction that one did it, as in a need to “justify one’s existence” in terms of one’s accomplishments.
Where else does “man’s need for self-esteem” come from?
Indo-Europoean warrior cults demand arete on the battlefield. The need to prove oneself on the battlefield to have social standing; one exists and survives in terms of accomplishments, not merely, existing as part of a group. People are ranked and seek rank, not equality.
This Faustian personality type, would account for the popularity of Ayn Rand’s heroes among descendants of Indo-Europeans, and since it tickles the heart of this personality type: the hero-worshipper and his need to identify and stand with heroes. This is not as universal as you might think.
Here is the Faustian personality in detail by Duchesne:
http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2012/06/explore-duchesne/
Ricardo Duchesne’s book the Uniqueness of Western Civilization is reviewed here by Kevin Mac Donald.
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/Duchesne-Review.pdf
The intellectual leader of this movement is primarily Kevin MacDonald.
If I had to make a prediction, the race realists are a very fast growing movement and will dominate the culture in ten years, with Objectivism as a sort of side-kick.
Unlike Objectivists, they have a sense of strategy and a detail-orientation. There is always news to draw on that suits their cause from Travyon to quotas to the knockout game and make their points. They just have “fourteen words” to get across, not a philosophy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words
They are very good writers and know many obscure writers who have been marginalized by the “cultural marxists” who they draw upon.
They’re intellectual productivity is far more than Objectivists. Where are all the New Intellectuals? The race realists are minting them by the day.
They also attract libertarians and Objectivists:
http://www.toqonline.com/blog/a-sense-of-life-ayn-rand/
Sooner or later, one will swallow the other.
If there is one thing that can down or co-opt the Objectivist, and libertarian, and Austrian movements, it is race realism because their conception of man is different. I suppose a race realist would say Objectivism is, “true as far as it goes, but can only go so far.” A major theme for MacDonald is the challenge “universalism,” which for him, is “pathological altruism,” i.e., the presumption that the whole planet has a right to live in the United States and other western countries.
Outside of Objectivists, no one in the culture regards altruism as “pathological.” For race realists, a “pathological elite” is bent on the ruination of Western societies.
Kevin Mac Donald’s trilogy is like the Ominous Parallels -encyclopedia version. When Objectivists talk about “transmission belts” of the irrational he is completely focused on that transmission belt via the Frankfurt School into the US. He takes ideas seriously. His thesis would explain why Objectivism is marginalized from academia, and why Mises and Rand never made it in academia, whereas armies of cultural Marxists did.
Per MacDonald, a cultural anthropologist,
"Western cultures have a unique cultural profile compared to other traditional civilizations:
A tendency toward monogamy.
A tendency toward simple family structure based on the nuclear family.
A greater tendency for marriage to be companionate and based on mutual affection of the partners.
A de-emphasis on extended kinship relationships and its correlative, a relative lack of ethnocentrism.
A tendency toward individualism and all of its implications: individual rights against the state, representative government, moral universalism, and science."
I think this is Duchesne, under a pseudonym, discussing this Faustian personality:
http://www.counter-currents.com/author/dcorbulo/
All of this would be material for pursuing the Indo-European roots of Western civilization, which for race realists is not merely a philosophy, but a personality-type rooted in evolutionary psychology, genetics, and environmental conditions of the Northern spartan ice climates.
Race realism is a cultural phenomenon, no doubt.
The influence of Objectivism works in mysterious ways.
