Lovecraft on Race

highly influential in the nascent science fiction and horror genres.
Lovecraft’s views on race do not fit easily into any 21st century category. Lovecraft believed that the
Teutonic, Anglo-Saxon races (which he sometimes called Aryans) were superior, though he saw other
races, such as the Italians and the Chinese, as having different but valuable cultures, that should be
preserved by keeping them separate. While Lovecraft thought America could absorb a small number of
non-Aryans, provided they adopted the dominant culture, he saw largescale immigration as a disaster
and antithetical to progress.
Lovecraft viewed blacks and Australian aborigines as biologically inferior to other races. He believed
they lacked the inborn capacity to create any sort of civilization. He viewed the “color line” with
approval, since it prevented “mongrelization,” i.e. mating between blacks and whites.
Though he briefly married a Jewish woman, Lovecraft wrote about being repulsed by Jews and Jewish
culture. He lived to see the rise of Adolf Hitler, though not the second World War, and was highly
critical of Nazi race theory, which he considered crude. It is not clear from his writings whether he
viewed Jews as Orientals (Asiatics) or Europeans; though he occasionally refers to them as white, he
also laments their Oriental characteristics.
Some of Lovecraft’s letters made liberal use of the ampersand (&) instead of the word ‘and.’ I have
changed the ampersand to ‘and’ when it makes for easier reading.
Descended from the race that produced Mendelssohn, [Charles D. Isaacson] is himself a musician of no
ordinary talent, whilst as a man of literature he is worthy of comparison with his co-religionists Moses
Mendez [?] and Isaac D’Israeli. But the very spirituality which gives elevation to the Semitic mind
partially unfits it for the consideration of tastes and trends in Aryan thought and writings, hence it is not
surprising that he is a radical of the extremest sort. ––”In a Major Key,” from The Conservative Vol. I,
No. 2, 1915.
Mr. Isaacson’s views on race prejudice, as outlined in his Minor Key, are too subjective to be impartial.
He has perhaps resented the more or less open aversion to the children of Isreal which has ever
pervaded Christendom, yet a man of his perspicuity should be able to distinguish this illiberal feeling, a
religious and social animosity of one white race toward another white and equally intellectual race,
from the natural and scientifically just sentiment which keeps the African black from contaminating the
Caucasian population of the United States. The negro is fundamentally the biological inferior of all
White and even Mongolian races, and the Northern people must occasionally be reminded of the
danger which they incur in admitting him too freely to the privileges of society and government. ––
ibid.
A Jew is capable of infinite nastiness when he seeks revenge, & I believe I shall have ample grounds
for making [Isaacson] the hero of a spirited Dunciad. I can almost predict his line of attack. He will call
me superficial, crude, barbaric in thought, imperfect in education, offensively arrogant & bigoted, filled
with venomous prejudice, wanting in good taste, &c. &c. &c. But what I can and will say in reply is
also violent & comprehensive. He will ask why I am an advocate of war, yet am not at this moment in
the British army. I shall not stoop to explain that I am an invalid who would certainly be fighting under
the Union Jack if able, but shall have plenty to say about the decadent cowardice responsible for the
propagation of peace ideas. Peace is the ideal of a dying nation; a broken race. Isaacson belongs to a
stock wholly broken & emasculated by two thousand years of cringing at the feet of Aryan masters. But
I, thank the Gods, am an Aryan, & can rejoice in the glorious victory of T. Flavius Vespasianus, under
whose legions the Jewish race & their capital were trodden out of national existence! I am an anti-
Semitic by nature, but thought I had concealed my prejudice in my remarks concerning Isaacson. I
showed him every consideration in my article, carefully saying that I attacked not the man, but the
ideas. However, if Jerusalem wishes to start trouble, he will find in me a new Titus, eager to inscribe on
my eagles the triumphant legend IVDAEA CAPTA! I might here remark that my anti-Semitism is not
entirely due to blind prejudice. The Jews are fundamentally Orientals, whilst the rising civilization of
the world is Western—Teutonic—Anglo-Saxon. The struggle between the East & the West dates back
to Marathon & Salamis, & it is the West which has ever represented progress & superior culture. The
Jew is an adverse influence, since he insidiously degrades or Orientalizes our robust Aryan civilization.
The intellect of the race is indisputably great, but its nature is not such that it may be safely employed
in forming Western political & social ideas. Oppressive as it seems, the Jew must be muzzled. ––from a
letter written August 10, 1915.
It is an ironical truth, that those foreigners who most desire to become thorough Americans, are
generally those who are least fitted for amalgamation out of reverence to his vaterland; but the greasy
Jew from Russia impudently assumes a pseudo-Americanism to which his race does not entitle him. In
considering matters of this sort, the student must free himself from tons of sticky sentimentalism about
“broad humanitarian ideals”, “America the land of equality”, “down with the race prejudice”, and other
nonsense of like tenor. The question is; do Americans desire to remain a vigorous, clean moraled
Teutonic-Celtic people; or do they desire to transform their country into a sordid, amorphous chaos of
degradation and hybridism like imperial Rome? Jews, Italians, Slavs and their like must somehow be
segregated or gotten rid of before they rise to taint the better classes. ––from a letter written October,
1916.
In 1903-4 I had private tutors, but in the autumn of 1904 I mingled with the world once more—to the
extent of entering Hope St. High School. Here I was confronted for the first time with
cosmopolitanism. Slater Avenue school is public, but it is rather a neighborhood affair, with most of its
pupils drawn from the old families. But Hope Street is near enough to the “North End” to have a
considerable Jewish attendance. It was there that I formed my ineradicable aversion to the Semitic race.
The Jews were brilliant in their classes—calculatingly & schemingly brilliant—but their ideals were
sordid & their manners course. I became rather well known as anti-Semitic before I had been at Hope
Street many days. ––from a letter written November 16, 1915.
It is a mistake to allow Jews to mingle with Aryans as social equals. I have never been forced to do this,
& at high school I drew the colour line at Jews as well as negroes, though of course there is no racial
comparison between the two classes of undesirables. ––from a letter written November 25, 1915.
Sometimes I think of racial combinations as chemical reactions; for instance, I believe that certain
stocks have greater assimilative powers than others. The Gallo-Basque stock with Latin infusion, which
constitutes the bulk of the French population, is much more receptive to alien blood than is our colder
and more Teutonic stock. That is, the French type seems more easily attainable by inferiors than is the
straightforward Teutonic type. This is probably because France is more mongrelized to start with. Many
eminent French have the Israelitish taint without apparent detraction from the Occidentalism of their
mental type—Sarah Bernhart owns the touch of Judea—so does Henri Bernstein, the dramatist. But
among English, Germans, & Americans, a Jew is a Jew, & is in no wise to be confounded with the
dominant people amongst whom he dwells. ––ibid.
It is difficult to be patient with the political idiots who advocate the relinquishment of [the Phillipines]
by the United States, either now or at any future time. The mongrel natives, in whose blood the Malay
strain predominates, are not and will never be racially capable of maintaining a civilised condition by
themselves. ––From an article in the United Amateur, June 1916.
The instincts that governed the Egyptians and the Assyrians of old, govern us as well; and as the
ancients thought, grasped, struggled, and deceived, so shall we moderns continue to think, grasp,
struggle, and deceive in our inmost hearts. Change is only superficial and apparent. ––”At the Root,”
from the United Amateur 17, number 6, July 1918.
The whole U.S. negro question is very simple. (1) Certainly the negro is vastly the biological inferior of
the Caucasian. (2) Therefore if racial amalgamation were to occur, the net level of American
civilisation would perceptibly fall, as in such mongrel nations as Mexico–& several South American
near-republics. (3) Amalgamation would undoubtedly take place if prejudice were eradicated,
beginning with the lowest grades of Jews & Italians & eventually working upward until the whole
country would be poisoned, & its culture & progress stunted. (4) Therefore the much-abused “colour
line” is a self-protective measure of the white American people to keep the blood of their descendants
pure, & the institutions & greatness of their country unimpaired. The colour line must be maintained in
spite of the ranting & preaching of fanatical & ill-informed philanthropists. ––from a letter written
January 18, 1919.
The genius of a few individuals is never an index of collective racial capacity. In spite of all the Booker
Washingtons & Dunbars we can see that the negro as a whole has never made any progress or founded
any culture. We cannot judge a man sociologically by his own individual qualities; we have the future
to think of. Two persons of different races, though equal mentally & physically, may have a vitally
different sociological value, because one will certainly produce an incalculably better type of
descendants than the other. We must see that the best retain social & political supremacy, in order that
our best traditions may be preserved. Therefore, to me, racial prejudice is not irrational or
unexplainable; nor in any way unjustifiable. It has awkward phases, but its benefits immeasurably
outweigh its disadvantages. ––ibid.
“Americanism” is expanded Anglo-Saxonism. It is the spirit of England, transplanted to a soil of vast
extent and diversity, and nourished for a time under pioneer conditions calculated to increase its
democratic aspects without impairing its fundamental virtues. It is the spirit of truth, honour, justice,
morality, moderation, individualism, conservative liberty, magnanimity, toleration, enterprise,
industriousness, and progress—which is England—plus the element of equality and opportunity caused
by pioneer settlement. It is the expression of the world’s highest race under the most favourable social,
political, and geographical conditions. Those who endeavour to belittle the importance of our British
ancestry, are invited to consider the other nations of this continent. All these are equally “American” in
every particular, differing only in race-stock and heritage; yet of them all, none save British Canada
will even bear comparison with us. We are great because we are a part of the great Anglo-Saxon
cultural sphere; a section detached only after a century and a half of heavy colonisation and English
rule, which gave to our land the ineradicable stamp of British civilisation. ––”Americanism,” July 1919
Most dangerous and fallacious of the several misconceptions of Americanism is that of the so-called
“melting-pot” of races and traditions. It is true that this country has received a vast influx of non-
English immigrants who come hither to enjoy without hardship the liberties which our British ancestors
carved out in toil and bloodshed. It is also true that such of them as belong to the Teutonic and Celtic
races are capable of assimilation to our English type and of becoming valuable acquisitions to the
population. But, from this it does not follow that a mixture of really alien blood or ideas has
accomplished or can accomplish anything but harm. Observation of Europe shows us the relative status
and capability of the several races, and we see that the melting together of English gold and alien brass
is not very likely to produce any alloy superior or even equal to the original gold. Immigration cannot,
perhaps, be cut off altogether, but it should be understood that aliens who choose America as their
residence must accept the prevailing language and culture as their own; and neither try to modify our
institutions, nor to keep alive their own in our midst. We must not, as the greatest man of our age
declared, suffer this nation to become a “polyglot boarding house.” ––ibid.
Of what use is it to please the herd? They are simply coarse animals — for all that is admirable in man
is the artificial product of special breeding. We advocate the preservation of conditions favourable to
the growth of beautiful things — imposing palaces, beautiful cities, elegant literature, resposeful art
and music, and a physically select human type such as only luxury and a pure racial strain can produce.
Thus we oppose democracy, if only because it would retard the development of a handsome Nordic
breed. We realise that all conceptions of justice and ethics are mere prejudices and illusions — there is
no earthly reason why the masses should not be kept down for the benefit of the strong, since every
man is for himself in the last analysis. ––from a letter written February 10, 1923.
Nothing must disturb my undiluted Englishry — God Save The King! I am naturally a Nordic — a
chalk-white, bulky Teuton of the Scandinavian or North-German forests — a Vikinga berserk killer —
a predatory rover of Hengist and Horsa — a conqueror of Celts and mongrels and founders of Empires
— a son of the thunders and the arctic winds, and brother to the frosts and the auroras — a drinker of
foemen’s blood from new picked skulls — a friend of the mountain buzzards and feeder of seacoast
vultures — a blond beast of eternal snows and frozen oceans — a prayer to Odin and Thor and Woden
and Alfadur, the raucous shouter of Niffelheim — a comrade of the wolves, and rider of nightmares —
aye — I speak truly — for was I not born with yellow hair and blue eyes. ––from a letter written May
3, 1923.
I certainly hope to see promiscuous immigration permanently curtailed soon—Heaven knows enough
harm has already been done by the admission of limitless hordes of the ignorant, superstitious, &
biologically inferior scum of Southern Europe & Western Asia. ––from a letter written Demember 13,
1925.
Only a damn fool can expect the people of one tradition to feel at ease when their country is flooded
with hordes of foreigners who—whether equal, superior, or inferior biologically—are so antipodal in
physical, emotional, and intellectual makeup that harmonious coalescence is virtually impossible. ––
from a letter written September 27, 1926.
The actual individual—apart from a small group of theorists who specialise in this kind of feeling and
derive certain artificial emotional-imaginative satisfactions from it as I do from my “infinitecosmicism”—
can form no more of a satisfying conception of himself as a member of an hypothetical
biology-stream than a hen-louse can form satisfying conceptions of himself as a proud unit in the whole
pedicular pageant cat, dog, man, goat, and sand parasites. It all may be theoretically so—all men
certainly have a vague common origin in one or two earlier primate species, while a few isolated
culture-ideas are occasionally passed along—or taken over in a more or less garbled and fragmentary
way—from one group to another—but, from the point of view of the normal member of any existing
human group, what the hell of it? It simply doesn’t mean anything. All our feelings and loyalties are
based on the special instincts and inherited values or our immediate racial and cultural group—take
these away, and absolutely nothing remains for any average person to anchor his sense of direction,
interest, or standards to. ––from a letter written October 30, 1929.
We live, always, by two codes—the external and professed code based on an artificially cosmopolitan
culture; and the inner, real, and motivating code, based on the true response of our instincts to their
habitual stimuli. It is all very well to theorise decoratively from the outer code—but we must apply the
inner code when we wish to calculate actual results. Stripping off the mask of nineteenth century
euphemism and decorum, we know damn well that the human race is divided into many groups whose
whole instinctive conceptions of what is desirable and what is undesirable are so antipodally apart in
half to three-quarters of the affairs of life, that they cannot possibly be thought of as having any goal or
complete set of standards in common. And to pretend that such a community can exist, is to complicate
the matter all the worse. We misunderstand all the more, when we feign to understand what we do not
understand. ––ibid.
Half the tragedies of history are the result of expecting one group to conform to the instinctive
reactions of another, or to cherish its values. One of the worst examples of this is the cringing Semitic
slave-cult of Christianity which became thrust upon our virile, ebullient Western stock through a series
of grotesque historic accidents. Obviously, we whose instinctive ideas of excellence centre in bravery,
mastery, and unbrokenness, and whose ultimate fury of contempt is for the passive, non-resistant, sadeyed
cringer and schemer and haggler, are the least fitted of all races for the harbourage of a Judeo-
Syriac faith and standards—and so the whole course of history proved; with Christianity always a
burden, handicap, misfit, and unfulfilled mockery upon our assertive, Thor-squared, Woden-driven
shoulders. We have mouthed lying tributes to meekness and brotherhood under Gothic roofs whose
very pinnacled audacity bespeaks our detestation of lowliness and our love for power and strength and
beauty, and have spouted hogsheadfuls of hot air about “principle” and ethics, and restraint at the same
time that our hobnailed boots have kicked around in utter loathing the broken Jews whose existence is
based upon these principles. That is the hypocrisy of the altruistic and humanitarian tradition—talking
and theorising against Nature as she actually works within us. From our attempts to assimilate
Semitism we have gained nothing but misery—and the attempt itself has not succeeded, because it was
based upon impossibility. Far more sensible is it to recognise that such an alien tradition has nothing for
people of our blood and inheritance—that it presupposes goals and instincts which we do not and
cannot possess; exalting that which we must always despise, and condemning that which we must
always cherish as the supreme criterion of respect—worthiness. ––ibid.
The question of relative status among different cultures is of wholly minor importance—it is the
difference which makes cultural amalgamation a joke. China of the old tradition was probably as great
a civilisation as ours—perhaps greater, as Bertrand Russell thinks—but to fancy that more than a tenth
of the emotional life of China has any meaning for us, is as foolish as to think that more than a tenth of
our emotional life has any meaning for a Chinaman. ––ibid.
Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior.
There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists—eminent
Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist. But, it is also a fact that there would be a
very grave and very legitimate problem even if the negro were the white man’s equal. For the simple
fact is, that two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same
territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional
personal aloofness. No normal being feels at ease amidst a population having vast elements radically
different from himself in physical aspect and emotional responses. A normal Yankee feels like a fish out
of water in a crowd of cultivated Japanese, even though they may be his mental and aesthetic superiors;
and the normal Jap feels the same way in a crowd of Yankees. This, of course, implies permanent
association. We can all visit exotic scenes and like it—and when we are young and unsophisticated we
usually think we might continue to like it as a regular thing. But as years pass, the need of old things
and usual influences—home faces and home voices—grows stronger and stronger; and we come to see
that mongrelism won’t work. ––from a letter written in January, 1931.
Naturally, if a race wants to submit to the fantastic martyrdom of mongrelisation for an agonising
period of centuries, there will emerge a new composite race and culture whose members will have
attained a new homogeneity—and therefore a new and satisfying equilibrium. But who cares to
sacrifice himself for the sake of this hypothetical future race—a race as genuinely foreign and
meaningless to him as the Peruvians would have been to the Greeks, or as the Thibetans are to
ourselves? ––ibid.
It is possible that the economic dictatorship of the future can work out a diplomatic plan of separate
allocation whereby the blacks may follow a self-contained life of their own, avoiding the keenest
hardships of inferiority through a reduced number of points of contact with the whites…No one wishes
them any intrinsic harm, and all would rejoice if a way were found to ameliorate such difficulties as
they have without imperilling the structure of the dominant fabric. It is a fact, however, that
sentimentalists exaggerate the woes of the average negro. Millions of them would be perfectly content
with a servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may
yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry. The real problem is the quadroon and octoroon—and
still lighter shades. Theirs is a sorry tragedy, but they will have to find a special place. What we can do
is to discourage the increase of their numbers by placing the heaviest possible penalties on
miscegenation, and arousing as much public sentiment as possible against lax customs and attitudes—
especially in the inland South—at present favouring the melancholy and disgusting phenomenon. All
told, I think the modern American is pretty well on his guard, at last, against racial and cultural
mongrelism. There will be much deterioration, but the Nordic has a fighting chance of coming out on
top in the end. ––ibid.
What we mean by Nordic “superiority” is simply conformity to those character-expectations which are
natural and ineradicable among us. We are not so naïve as to confuse this relative “superiority” (we
ought to call it conformity or suitability instead) with the absolute biological superiority which we
recognise in the higher races as a whole as distinguished from the negro, australoid, neanderthal,
rhodesian, and other primitive human and humanoid types both living and extinct. We know perfectly
well that the Italians excel us in the capacity to savour life and beauty—that their centres of taste are
better developed than ours—but they annoy us and fail to fit into our group because their glandfunctionings
and nerve reactions do not correspond to what our own heritage has made us expect. We
do not call them inferior, but simply admit that they are different beyond the limits of easy mutual
understanding and cultural compatibility. If we wisely kept vast masses of such foreigners out, we
could regard them with a more impersonal appreciation. It would be wholly possible, too, to assimilate
a few to our own fabric. But when we get so damn many of them that a wholesale test of strength
betwixt their ideals and ours starts up on our soil—well, forget your idealism for a second, use your
horse-sense, and guess what will happen! ––from a letter written January 18, 1931.
No anthropologist of standing insists on the uniformly advanced evolution of the Nordic as compared
with that of other Caucasian and Mongolian races. As a matter of fact, it is freely conceded that the
Mediterranean race turns out a higher percentage of the aesthetically sensitive and that the Semitic
groups excel in sharp, precise intellectation. It may be, too, that the Mongolian excels in aesthetick
capacity and normality of philosophical adjustment. What, then, is the secret of pro-Nordicism among
those who hold these views? Simply this—that ours is a Nordic culture, and that the roots of that
culture are so inextricably tangled in the national standards, perspectives, traditions, memories,
instincts, peculiarities, and physical aspects of the Nordic stream that no other influences are fitted to
mingle in our fabric. We don’t despise the French in France or Quebec, but we don’t want them
grabbing our territory and creating foreign islands like Woonsocket and Fall River. The fact of this
uniqueness of every separate culture-stream—this dependence of instinctive likes and dislikes, natural
methods, unconscious appraisals, etc., etc., on the physical and historical attributes of a single race—is
to obvious to be ignored except by empty theorists. ––ibid.
Living side by side with people whose natural impulses and criteria differ widely from ours, gets in
time to be an unendurable nightmare. We may continue to respect them in the abstract, but what are we
to do when they continue to fail to fulfil our natural conception of personality, meanwhile placing all
their own preferential stresses on matters and ideals largely irrelevant and sometimes even repugnant to
us? And don’t forget that we affect alien groups just as they affect us. Chinamen think our manners are
bad, our voices raucous, our odour nauseous, and our white skins and our long noses leprously
repulsive. Spaniards think us vulgar, brutal, and gauche. Jews titter and gesture at our mental simplicity,
and honestly think we are savage, sadistick, and childishly hypocritical. Well, we think Chinamen are
slimy jabberers, Spaniards oily, sentimental, treacherous, backward, and Jews cringing. What’s the
answer? Simply keep the bulk of all these approximately equal and highly developed races as far apart
as possible. Let them study one another as deeply as possible, in the interest of that intellectual
understanding which makes for appreciation and tolerance. But don’t let them mix too freely, lest the
clash of deep and intellectually unreachable emotions upset all the appreciation and tolerance which
mental understanding has produced. And above all, don’t get led off on a false trail through observing
the easy comraderie of a few cosmopolitan intellectuals and aristocrats in whom similar manners or
special interests have temporarily overridden the deep wells of natural feeling ineradicable from the
bulk of each of the divergent race or culture groups represented. ––ibid.
The population [of New York City] is a mongrel herd with repulsive Mongoloid Jews in the visible
majority, and the coarse faces and bad manners eventually come to wear on one so unbearably that one
feels like punching every god damn bastard in sight. ––from a letter written November 19, 1931.
In my opinion the paramount things of existence are those mental & imaginative landmarks—language,
culture, traditions, perspectives, instinctive responses to environmental stimuli, &c.—which give to
mankind the illusion of significance & direction in the cosmic drift. Race & civilisation are more
important, according to this point of view, than concrete political or economic status; so that the
weakening of any racial culture by political division is to be regarded as an unqualified evil—
justifiable only by the most extreme provocation. ––from a letter written February 26, 1932.
The cardinal virtue of Asia is its sane and philosophic timelessness. Whenever I contemplate that side
of the Oriental nature, with its easy handling of centuries and millennia and its patrician disregard of
momentary stirs and bustling, I am tempted to weep at the futile tail-chasing and clock-grovelling of
the hectick West; and to wish that the virile Nordic had never left his homeland in the Hindoo-Koosh to
merge his fortunes with the restless, fever’d, machine-driven European chasers after mutable
nothingness. Had we stuck to Asia, we might have founded a permanent world-empire of unrivalled
splendour and irresistible strength—as mighty and puissant as Rome, and as stable and enduring as
antique Aegyptus or deathless Sinae. We might have kill’d off all the slant-eyed yellow folk, and have
had long camel-trains of slaves and gold and ivory and strange crystals sent us as tribute by the darkeyed
vassals and cringers of Ind, of Persia, of Africk, of Europa, and of the empires Cuzco and Uxmal
beyond the monstrous River Ocean. Glory to the Aesir! A bullock to golden-bearded Odin, and a fat
buck Negro to hammer-wielding Thor! Long life to Astahahn, our capital on the Yann—for here we
have fetter’d and manacled Time, who wou’d otherwise slay the gods. Eheu—the things that might
have been! ––from a letter written April, 1932.
As for [the Nazis'] much-advertised and hysterically condemned Jew policy––there is something to be
said for one phase of it. Of course it is silly to ban Jewish books, to impose disabilities on Germanically
cultured Jews, or to assume that––biologically speaking––a dash of Semitic blood unfits one for Aryan
citizenship. That is generally conceded. But after all, there is a very real and very grave problem in the
presence of an intellectually powerful minority springing from a profoundly alien and emotionally
repulsive culture stream, defying assimilation as a whole, and using its keen mentality and ruthless
enterprise to secure a disproportionate hold on the mental and aesthetic life of a nation. ––from a letter
written May 29, 1933.
The question is whether an enormous Aryan nation, with all the innate feelings and perspectives of
Aryan culture, is going to allow its formulated expression (literary models, art, music etc.) to belie and
embarrass it by reflecting an altogether different and sometimes hostile set of feelings and perspectives
through gradual and perceptible Semitic control of all the avenues of utterance. It is needless to point
out that a nation’s literary and artistic utterance depends very largely on those who control the
periodicals, schools, colleges, publishing-houses, galleries, theatres, and so forth—this control largely
determining what works & types of art shall receive preference in presentation to the public and in
treatment by critics, and what attitudes shall receive official recommendation. If such control be
gradually seized by a culture-group profoundly foreign to the natural culture-stream of the nation, the
result is bound to be tense, awkward, & finally intolerable. ––ibid.
In my opinion, all nations ought to take quiet & moderate steps to get such pivotal forces as education,
large-scale publishing, legal interpretation, criticism, dramatic management, artistic control, etc. into
the hands of those who inherit the respective mainstreams of thought & feeling of those nations.
Chinamen ought not to let American missionaries dictate and interpret their policies––and by the same
token Aryans ought not to leave their guidance and interpretation to persons of an irreconcilable
Semitic culture. Of course, this does not mean that the crudities of Hitlerism are to be copied. It is
absurd to think that a man of complete Aryan culture ought to be squelched because he has a quartershare
of Semitic blood, or anything like that. But it is not absurd to feel that something ought to be
done to keep expression true to the real psychology of the nation involved. We really face the same
problem in America-where the city of New York is virtually lost to the national fabric through its tragic
and all-pervasive Semitisation. Our literature and drama, selected by Jewish producers and great Jewish
publishing houses like Knopf, and feeling the pressure of Jewish finance and mercantile advertising,
are daily getting farther & farther from the real feelings of the plain American in New England or
Virginia or Kansas; whilst the profound Semitism of New York is affecting the “intellectuals” who
flock there & creating a flimsy & synthetic body of culture & ideology radically hostile to the virile
American attitude. ––ibid.
By the way—it’s hardly accurate to compare the Jewish with the negro problem. The trouble with the
Jew is not his blood—which can mix with ours without disastrous results—but his persistent &
antagonistic culture-tradition. On the other hand, the negro represents a vastly inferior biological
variant which must under no circumstances taint our Aryan stock. The absolute colour-line as applied
to negroes is both necessary & sensible, whereas a similar deadline against Jews (though attempted by
Hitler) is ridiculous. ––ibid.
While of course the demand for more than 0.75 Aryan blood in full citizens is an excessive one except
where the diluting blood is biologically inferior—as with Negroes and Australoids—it remains a fact
that many modern nations need to take steps to preserve the integrity of their own native cultures
against shrewd and pushing alien influences. One must view such problems realistically—without
patriotic sentimentality like Hitler’s on one hand, and without idealistic sentimentality on the other
hand. Certainly, a dash of alien blood of a superior race (among which a large section of Jews as well
as Mongols must be included) does not harm another superior stock so long as the culture is
unimpaired. But that’s where the rub comes. When the alien element is strong or shrewd enough to
menace the purity of the culture amidst which it parasitically lodges, it is time to do something. ––from
a letter written June 12, 1933.
[A]ll these newspaper discussions of recent months miss the one great point of the age-long and
ineradicable Jew-Aryan line of cleavage. It isn’t religion—all religion is a negligible factor today. It is
only slightly race—half the Jews in existence are of very superior stock, as their ability to undermine
our culture shews; and only a fraction are more physically repulsive than many races whom we hate
less. The real, impassible barrier is cultural. Our whole system of values differs utterly and
irreconcilably from the Jewish system, even though (and this is what obscures the real problem) our
absurd pretence at harbouring the silly, alien, decadent Jewish by-product called Christianity makes us
pretend to endourse the Hebrew slave-psychology. The Jew is a worshipper of the sort of intellectualethical
adjustment which his superstitious ancestors interpreted as cosmic “righteousness”. His supreme
test of value is the degree of perfection of this adjustment—to other things he is relatively indifferent.
We are Aryan pagans by heritage, and our deep, instinctive code of ultimate values is completely
antipodal to the Jew’s. Twenty centuries of flabby Christian fakery have not succeeded in changing our
real natures one jot. Our code is not that of hair-splitting old slave-women. We are men—free men—
and the one sole thing that supremely matters to us is the maintenance of our own unbroken freedom
and dominance. In our hearts–whatever our lips say—our sole definition of a man as distinguished
from a crawling reptile is a person who possesses a maximum of freedom of action, who lives under
the government he chooses, and who unhesitatingly accepts death in preference to servitude. ––ibid.
What we can’t forgive the Jew is not the tone of his prayers or the size of his nose, but the fact that he
is willing to survive under the conditions he accepts. Being weak may not have been his fault—but it is
his fault that he is alive and not free and dominant. It we were as weak as he, and could not fight our
way to self-respect, we would perish utterly—taunting our foes, virile and unbroken, as the last man
fell. ––ibid.
In the end, there will have to be a separation of the cultural Jew from the body politic, plus a complete
absorption—with abandonment of hereditary traditions—of thousands of other Jews. That will call for
concessions on both sides—the Jews will have to realise that they can’t drag their folkways into our
national patterns, while we will have to abandon the tight race-lines of the Hitlerites. That ought not to
be a hardship either way. The Jews are used to subordinate positions, and good governments need
impose no hardships on their unassimilable faction. And on the other side—Aryan nations have taken
on varying doses of Semitic blood in the past (Spain has oceans of it; England and America since
Cromwell’s time have absorbed a trickle) without any unfavourable results whatsoever. ––ibid.
Nothing but pain and disaster can come from the mingling of black and white, and the law ought to aid
in checking this criminal folly. Granting the negro his full due, he is not the sort of material which can
mix successfully into the fabric of a civilised Caucasian nation. Isolated cases of high-grade hybrids
prove nothing. It is easy to see the ultimate result of the wholesale pollution of highly evolved blood by
definitely inferior strains. It happened in ancient Egypt–and made a race of supine fellaheen out of
what was once a noble stock. ––from a letter written July 30, 1933.
As for New York—there is no question but that its overwhelming Semitism has totally removed it from
the American stream. Regarding its influence on literary & dramatic expression—it is not so much that
the country is flooded directly with Jewish authors, as that Jewish publishers determine just which of
our Aryan writers shall achieve print & position. That means that those of us who least express our own
people have the preference. Taste is insidiously moulded along non-Aryan lines—so that, no matter
how intrinsically good the resulting body of literature may be, it is a special, rootless literature which
does not represent us. ––ibid.
As for Handsome Adolf [Hitler]—in saying he is sincere, & that there is a certain basis behind some
phases of the attitude he represents, I do not mean to imply that his actual progamme is not extreme,
grotesque, & occasionally barbarous. His attempt to banish arbitrarily all literature he does not like is of
course essentially uncivilised—while his ethnological theories (as distinguished from any defence of a
purely Aryan culture) are contrary to the maturest beliefs of science. I doubt if he is actually a Jew,
though—for that sort of story follows a familiar folklore pattern. It would be too aptly dramatic if he
actually did represent the group he opposes. ––from a letter written August 14, 1933.
Virtually all the great department stores of New York (except Wanamaker’s) are solidly Jewish even
when they deceptively retain the names of earlier Aryan owners; & a clear majority of the large shops
of other sorts are, as well. These Semitic merchants are clannish & touchy to the very limit, & will
arrange to withdraw all their advertising at once whenever a newspaper displeases them. And, as
Mencken has pointed out, their grounds of displeasure are limitless. They even resent the frequent use
of the word “Jew” in the news, so that papers speak of “East Side agitators”, “Bronx merchants”,
“Russian immigrants” &c. Let any N.Y. paper try to refer to these people in the frank, impartial,
objective way a Providence or Pittsburgh or Richmond paper would, & the whole pack of synagoguehounds
is after it—calling down the vengeance of heaven, withdrawing advertising, & cancelling
subscriptions—the latter a big item in a town where 1/3 of the population is Semitic in origin &
feelings. The result is, that not a paper in New York dares to call its soul its own in dealing with the Jew
& with social & political questions affecting them. The whole press is absolutely enslaved in that
direction, so that on the whole length & breadth of the city it is impossible to secure any public
American utterance—any frank expression of the typical mind & opinions of the actual American
people—on a fairly wide & potentially important range of topics. Only by reading the outside press &
the national magazines can New Yorkers get any idea of how Americans feel regarding such things as
Nazism, the Palestine question (in which, by every decent standard, the Arabs are dead right & both
England & the Jews intolerably wrong), the American immigration policy, & so on. This is what I mean
by Jewish control, & I’m damned if it doesn’t make me see red—in a city which was once a part of the
real American fabric, & which still exerts a disproportionately large influence on that fabric through its
psychologically impressive size & its dominance both in finance & in various opinion-forming
channels (drama, publishing, criticism, &c.). Gawd knows I have no wish to injure any race under the
sun, but I do think that something ought to be done to free American expression from the control of any
element which seeks to curtail it, distort it, or remodel it in any direction other than its natural course.
––from a letter written November 8, 1933.
In general, I think any nation ought to keep close to its original dominant race-stock—remaining
largely Nordic if it started that way; largely Latin if it started that way, & so on. Only in this manner
can comfortable cultural homogeneity & continuity be secured. But Hitler’s extremes of pure racialism
are absurd & grotesque. Various race-stocks differ in inclinations & aptitudes, but of all of them I
consider only the negro & australoid biologically inferior. Against these two a rigid colour-line ought to
exist. ––from a letter written February 13, 1934.
It is no novelty for Aryans to dwell as a minority amidst a larger black population—such has been the
case in Alabama & Mississippi for decades, & the upper part of South Africa is having a similar
experience. But the effect of this condition is generally to heighten rather than relax the colour-line.
The white minority adopt desperate & ingenious means to preserve their Caucasian integrity—resorting
to extra-legal measures such as lynching & intimidation when the legal machinery does not sufficiently
protect them. Of course it is unfortunate that such a state of sullen tension has to exist—but anything is
better than the mongrelisation which would mean the hopeless deterioration of a great nation. ––from a
letter written November 22, 1934.
Even if some desperate social crisis were to sweep America into communism, I doubt if the racialequality
plank of the Marxist programme would survive. Blood is thicker than doctrine—the reason the
Russians can accept an equality programme with equanimity is that they are already largely
mongrelised with Mongol blood, & also that they are not faced with the practical problem of dealing
with vast hordes of beings as widely & utterly aberrant as the negro. Of the complete biological
inferiority of the negro there can be no question—he has anatomical features consistently varying from
those of other stocks, & always in the direction of the lower primates. Moreover, he has never
developed a civilisation of his own, despite his ample contact with the very earliest white civilisations.
Compare the way the Gauls took on the highest refinements of Roman culture the moment they were
absorbed into the empire, with the way the negroes remained utterly unaffected by the Egyptian culture
which impinged on them for continuously for thousands of years. Equally inferior–& perhaps even
more so—is the Australian black stock, which differs widely from the real negro. This race has other
stigmata of primitiveness—such as great Neanderthaloid eyebrow-ridges. And it is likewise incapable
of absorbing civilisation. In dealing with these two black races, there is only one sound attitude for any
other race (be it Indian, Malay, Polynesian, or Mongolian) to take–& that is to prevent admixture as
completely & determinedly as it can be prevented, through the establishment of a colour-line & the
rigid forcing of all mixed offspring below that line. I am in accord with the most vehement &
vociferous Alabaman or Mississippian on that point, & it will be found that most Northerners react
similarly when it comes to a practical showdown, no matter how much abstract equalitarian nonsense
they may spout as a result of the abolitionist tradition inherited from the 1850’s. If a Russian-inspired
communist dictatorship ever tried to force negro equality on the U. S., there is scant question but that
the descendants of Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, & William Lloyd Garrison would stand side by
side with those of Jefferson Davis & John C. Calhoun in fighting its ultimate implications to the death.
––ibid.
Only an ignorant dolt would attempt to call a Chinese gentleman—heir to one of the greatest artistic &
philosophical traditions in the world—an “inferior” of any sort….& yet there are potent reasons, based
on wide physical, mental, & cultural differences, why great numbers of the Chinese ought not to mix
into the Caucasian fabric, or vice versa. It is not that one race is any better than any other, but that their
whole respective heritages are so antipodal as to make harmonious adjustment impossible. Members of
one race can fit into another only through the complete eradication of their own backgroundinfluences–&
even then the adjustment will always remain uneasy & imperfect if the newcomer’s
physical aspect forms a constant reminder of his outside origin. Therefore it is wise to discourage all
mixtures of sharply differentiated races—though the colour-line does not need to be drawn as strictly as
in the case of the negro, since we know that a dash or two of Mongolian or Indian or Hindoo or some
such blood will not actually injure a white stock biologically. John Randolph of Roanoke was none the
worse off for having the blood of Pocahontas in his veins, nor does any Finn or Hungarian feel like a
mongrel because his stock has a remote & now almost forgotten Mongoloid strain. With the high-grade
alien races we can adopt a policy of flexible common-sense—discouraging mixture whenever we can,
but not clamping down the bars so ruthlessly against every individual of slightly mixed ancestry. As a
matter of fact, most of the psychological race differences which strike us so prominently are cultural
rather than biological. If one could take a Japanese infant, alter his features to the Anglo-Saxon type
through plastic surgery, & place him with an American family in Boston for rearing—without telling
him that he is not an American—the chances are that in 20 years the result would be a typical American
youth with very few instincts to distinguish him from his pure Nordic college-mates. The same is true
of other superior alien races including the Jew—although the Nazis persist in acting on a false
biological conception. If they were wise in their campaign to get rid of Jewish cultural influences (& a
great deal can be said for such a campaign, when the dominance of the Aryan tradition is threatened as
in Germany & New York City), they could not emphasize the separatism of the Jew but would strive to
make him give up his separate culture & lose himself in the German people. It wouldn’t hurt Germany
—or alter its essential physical type—to take in all the Jews it now has. (However, that wouldn’t work
in Poland or New York City, where the Jews are of an inferior strain, & so numerous that they would
essentially modify the physical type.) ––ibid.
The fact is, my instinctive loyalties and area of interest seem to follow cultural rather than biological
lines…a tendency directly opposed to the Nazi tribal ideal. Undeniably, my own blood kinfolk on the
continent interest me less than my cultural kinfolk—whose blood diverges sharply from my own as the
stream recedes in time. The northern nations—biologically akin to me—seem foreign and of minor
interest; whilst France, Italy, and Greece—the successive cultural precursors of the Anglo-Norman
civilisation around me—seem close, ancestral, and of vital personal interest. To me the Roman Empire
will always seem the central incident of human history—and this perspective cannot but colour (both
consciously and unconsciously) my national interests and literary appreciations in connexion with the
modern world. Incidentally—this perspective was quite typical of the 18th century, to which I am so
inextricably bound. The conflicting inclinations and tastes of a composite civilisation—where race and
artistic-intellectual heritage spring from different sources—form a curious study. Conscious, objective
interests tend to follow the line of culture rather than of race; but inward mental and emotional
processes (ethical concepts and compulsions, social-political preferences, trends of imagination, modes
of every-day living, &c) gravitate toward the line of race. An Anglo-American can talk art and history
and philosophy with a Frenchman better than with a German…yet his unconscious habits and outlook
and way of life make him vastly closer to the German in practical, everyday matters. ––from a letter
written June 13, 1936.