Francis Parker Yockey’s
“Imperium, The Philosophy of History and Politics”
a Summary and Evaluation
by Neighbors Network
The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the
growing violence and instability both around the world and here in
the United States, have impressed on the minds of millions the idea
that the world is at a crossroads. People with an interest in
history and in ideas are hungry for a perspective that can show
their own country and the world what new direction it can take to
get out of the current confusion. So far, two trends have emerged.
New nations have arisen and claimed what they consider to be their
rights, including sometimes the right of revenge against their
neighbors for centuries-old grievances, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
On the other hand, former U. S. President George Bush and others
have expressed the hope for a New World Order.
“Imperium, The Philosophy of History and Politics” by Francis
Parker Yockey, published in 1948 and still available, provides an
ambitious perspective on the future, specifically for all peoples
of European descent. Francis P. Yockey was no statesman, nor a
professional academic, and he has been dead for thirty years. Why
is his book important today?
“Imperium” is important because Willis Carto is important. Willis
A. Carto, publisher since the Seventies of the tabloid newspaper
“Spotlight,” knew Yockey in the last decade of his life, was one of
the last visitors to Yockey before Yockey’s mysterious death in
jail in 1960, wrote the introduction to the 1962 edition of
“Imperium”, and has recommended the book on many occasions since.
Because readers of “Spotlight” have been engaged in much discussion
about the alleged anti-Semitism or “fascist hidden agenda” of
“Spotlight,” they will no doubt be interested to know what
“Imperium” has to say about the possibilities for the survival of
Western Culture.
“Imperium” begins with a biographical sketch of Yockey by Carto.
Yockey was born in Chicago in 1917. He received a B.A. in 1938,
then attended Notre Dame Law School, graduating cum laude in 1941.
Though opposed to intervention in World War II before the Pearl
Harbor attack, he enlisted in the U. S. Army, but received a
medical discharge in 1942.
Back in civilian life, he began a law practice in Illinois, but
soon relocated to Detroit, where he became an Assistant District
Attorney in Wayne County, Michigan. In 1946, Yockey was offered
and accepted a job preparing testimony for the War Crimes Tribunal,
set up by Allied occupation forces after World War II to try Nazi
leaders. For eleven months, he worked in Wiesbaden, Germany,
helping to prepare the cases against some mid-level Nazi leaders.
After a quarrel with his superiors, who, he claimed, were
pressuring him to produce propaganda instead of indictments based
on objective facts, he resigned in early 1947. Yockey returned to
America for a short time, and then moved to Ireland, where took up
residence in an inn in Brittas Bay, County Galway. There he wrote
“Imperium”. Anticipating controversy, he wrote under the pen-name
Ulick Varange. Only a handful of copies were printed, at the
author’s expense, and the two-volumn first edition attracted little
notice. Carto published a one-volumn hardback edition in 1962, and
a paperback edition in 1969.
With a few followers, Yockey founded the European Liberation Front
in London in 1949. For his activism, he was beaten in Hyde Park.
The group soon collapsed because, according to Carto, Yockey’s
collaborators were consumed by their great envy for his enormous
gifts, and because a great philosopher is almost never also a great
man of action. Carto considered Yockey a thinker first and
foremost. After a brief job at the Red Cross, he resigned in 1951,
and began to travel. Carto does not say where Yockey went on his
travels, nor how he supported himself. The FBI, however, revoked
his U.S. passport. In 1960, he was arrested in San Francisco for
passport fraud, after three passports had been found in one of his
suitcasese. Yockey allegedly committed suicide in his cell. Carto
is skeptical of this official story.
The following evaluation of “Imperium” is footnoted, so the reader
can easily verify from the text the points which are summarized
here. The index Carto’s 1969 paperback edition is very inadequate,
containing only references to proper names.
Yockey on History
Yockey’s philosophy of history proposes a cyclical “life-cycle” for
the history of all hitherto existing civilizations. He proposes to
demonstrate the existence of this “organic” process in eight
distinct “Cultures” existing in the past, to explain what part of
the cycle our own “Western Culture” is in, and thereafter to
expound the political principals which alone can effectively guide
the West out of the Civilization Crisis which he saw around him.
He acknowledges a large debt to Oswald Spengler, author of “Decline
of the West,” whom he calls “the philosopher of the twentieth
century”; and to Friederich Nietzsche. (1) To understand Yockey’s
philosophy, one must first understand his definition of Culture, a
word which he uses to define the whole history of a civilization.
Yockey’s definition of a Culture includes not only the arts and
literature of a period of history, but also its technology,
politics, and economic activities. This resembles the
anthropologist’s definition of culture, except that for an
anthropologist, any people, including a primitive tribe, has a
culture, while for Yockey only certain peoples in certain times and
places can have a Culture. It also resembles the more typical
historical use of the word Civilization, but for Yockey
Civilization is a specific later stage in the development of a
Culture. The Cultures are Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Chinese,
Arabian, Classical, Western (also called European), and
Mexican-Peruvian, for a total of eight in all. (2)
Following Spengler, Yockey rejects the usual
Ancient-Medieval-Modern “linear” conception of world history. For
Yockey, what is commonly called “ancient history” is actually the
history of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Classical cultures. Egypt,
Babylonia, and the Classical world each went through stages of
early growth, vigor, senility, and death, followed by barbarism.
Medieval history is not merely “a middle age” in between ancient
and modern history. It is actually the history of a new beginning,
the early stages of the history of the Western Culture. (3)
The human mind cannot make sense of reality without grouping
observed facts into categories. However, any attempt to categorize
will produce ambiguities, doubtful cases that straddle the
borderline between two categories. Yockey does not recognize that
his grouping of civilized human history into eight Cultures creates
such doubtful and ambiguous cases. For example, the two halves of
the “Mexican-Peruvian” Culture were separated by hundreds of miles,
and before the Spanish conquest they were not aware of each other’s
existence. On what historical grounds are they the same Culture?
Was the Byzantine Empire a remnant of the Classical Culture, or the
Medieval Greek section of the Western one? Did the Ottoman Empire
belong to the Arabian Culture? Yockey does not trouble himself to
acknowledge, let alone answer, these questions. Others could be
raised as well.
A Culture (sometimes he uses the term High Culture) has an organic
nature. “Since a Culture is organic, it has an individuality, and
a soul. Thus it cannot be influenced in its depths from any
outside force whatever. It has a destiny, like all organisms. It
has a period of gestation and a birth-time. It has a growth, a
maturity, fulfillment, a down-going, and a death.” Therefore it has
its own individual stamp. After its death, it does not recur.
There will not be another Indian or Peruvian Culture, and after its
death there will be no recurrence of the Western Culture either.
(4)
Yockey contrasts the organic view of Culture, which he prefers, to
the rationalist-materialist view of history. The latter seeks
cause and effect in events of human history. This is, according to
Yockey, a misleading way to view history. “Material happenings can
be controlled, are reversible, produce identical results under
identical conditions, are recurrent, can be classified, can be
successfully comprehended as though they are subject to an a
priori, mechanical necessity, in other words, to Causality.” (5) On
the other hand, the events of a Life are “uncontrollable,
irreversible, never-recurring, unique, cannot be classified, are
not amenable to rational treatment, and possessed of no external
mechanical necessity.” (6) Destiny-thinking (or organic thinking)
is the most fruitful way of viewing history, because the history of
a Culture is the history of a type of life. Causality-thinking (or
rationalistic-materialist thinking) has produced errors in
understanding of history and erroneous theories such as Marxism,
Darwinism, and Freudianism. (7)
Yockey opposes Materialism on the grounds that it fails to take
into account the spiritual aspect of history and of human activity.
He does not distinguish between Materialism as a method of analysis
and Materialism as a value system. He lumps together Materialism
and Rationalism. Moreover, he does not recognize the usual
distinction made by philosophers between Rationalism and
Empiricism. Here is his list of the foremost philosophers of
Causality-thinking: “Kant is the height of this type of thinking,
and to this side of Western philosophy belong also Hume, Bacon,
Schopenhauer, Hamilton, Spencer, Mill, Bentham, Hobbes, Locke,
Holbach, Descartes.” (8) This is a curious collection. Yockey, who
vehemently rejects atheism, includes in his list the eighteenth
century French atheist and materialist Holbach, but also Descartes,
who proved to his own satisfaction the existence of God from the
existence of thought. What have all these thinkers in common?
According to Yockey, they have in common that they all sought to
find “Causality” in human institutions, even in Culture.
The enmity of a Culture to all outside itself is a fundamental
concept for Yockey. “Each Culture-soul is stamped with
individuality. From others it takes nothing, and to them it gives
nothing. Whatever is on the frontiers is the enemy, whether
primitive or Culture-populations. They all are barbarians,
heathens, to the proper culture, and no understanding passes
between them.” According to Yockey, historical facts prove this.
“We saw the Western peoples prove the lifeworthiness of the
European culture by their Crusades against the highly civilized
Saracens, Moors, and Turks. We saw the Germanic populations in the
East and their Visigothic brothers in the South push the barbarian
Slavs and the civilized Moors continually back during the
centuries. We saw Western ships and Western armies make the whole
world into the object of booty for the West. These were the
relations of the West to that [sic] and those outside.” (9)
A Culture is the highest form of life, in a hierarchy that consists
of plants, animals, “man”, and Culture. (10) “A High Culture is
plantlike in its attachment to its original soil ….;
animal-like in its ruthless devouring of other life-forms; man-like
in its spirituality; and original in its power to transform human
life, its great life span, and the forcefulness of its destiny.”
(11)
However, not everyone belongs to a Culture. Those outside are no
better than animals. “… Man’s life in primitivity, and in an
area where a High Culture is fulfilling itself, are two
incommensurable things. . . . Vis-a-vis the history of
Culture-man, primitive man seems merely zoological.” (12)
By Yockey’s premises, there is no such thing as humanity, and
therefore no universal ethical duties which any human being owes to
any other human being. In fact, there is no serious discussion of
ethics in “Imperium”. Yockey implies something about his ethical
philosophy when he asserts that a Culture proves its
“lifeworthiness” by conquest and looting.
We can also now note an important feature of Yockey’s methodology.
Whenever in history Europe is antagonistic to those outside, he
cites “the facts” to support him. He ignores the many known
historical facts of borrowing between Cultures, or of peace between
them. For instance, as Yockey defines his terms, Christianity must
be considered a product of at least two non-Western Cultures, the
Classical and the Arabian. In the Arabian, Yockey includes not
only the Arab civilization at its height, but also both the ancient
Israelites and all modern Jews. Nonetheless, Christianity has had
a profound influence over the arts, literature, social life and
politics of Europe during the whole of what Yockey calls “the
Western Culture.” So what are we to make of Christianity, according
to Yockey’s scheme? A profound silence on this subject is
maintained throughout the book.
A Culture must have a Culture-bearing stratum, which contains all
the creators of “religion, philosophy, science, music, literature,
the arts of form, mathematics, politics, technics [i.e.,
technology], and war.” It also contains the appreciators who
“transmit the great creations downward” and thereby recruit the
more talented of individuals into the Culture-bearing stratum. The
Culture-bearing stratum is not a class. Some of its members are
poor (like Beethoven), and others are unnoticed until after their
deaths (like Copernicus and Kierkegaard). (13)
According to Yockey, the life-cycle of a Culture is as follows.
First there is a Race, which then develops into one or more
Peoples, which then develop into Nations, after which there is a
Civilization-Crisis, which ends with the resurgence of Authority
and the founding of an Imperium. Civilization is the stage at
which a Culture becomes “completely externalized” through conflicts
(military and Cultural) with alien peoples. Yockey is unclear on
the precise difference between the terms “Civilization” and
“Civilization-Crisis.” He seems to be saying that Civilization is a
higher category comprising the two stages of Civilization-Crisis,
and Imperium. (14)
According to Yockey, it is possible to recognize a person’s race at
a glance, but he admits that it is difficult to say exactly how one
knows a person’s race. For Yockey, pigmentation and facial
characteristics are mere “group anatomy,” and insufficient to
characterize a race, for a race possesses a “spiritual” as well as
a material nature. He concedes that races can only be classified
“arbitrarily,” though he also maintains that a Race is
“organically” related to its native soil. (15) However, races can
be ranked in a hierarchy according to function. The function that
Yockey considers most important is “will-to-power.” Will to power,
the desire to control, is the fundamental difference between human
beings and animals. Only by classifying races by will-to-power can
modern history and the imperatives of the Western Culture in this
age be understood. (16) Will to power is a healthy racial
instinct, and is not only good for soldiers, but also impels the
higher intellectual achievements of a ulture. “Life which places
rationalistic ideas of ‘individualism,’ ‘happiness,’ ‘freedom’
before the perpetuation and increase of power is decadent.
Decadent means moving towards extinction, extinction of Higher Life
in particular, and finally even of the life of the race.” (17)
Two things, a superpersonal idea and a leader, transform a Race
into a People. The superpersonal idea is communicated by a leader,
or a leader-stratum. The leader and the superpersonal idea can be,
but are not necessarily, at the service of a Culture. The leader
can transform a race into a people if he harmonizes instinct and
intellect. “Instinct says, preserve! Multiply! Increase power!
Intellect seeks means of preserving Life and increasing power.”
(18) There must also be some tension between the People and the
surrounding human environment. (19)
Peoples can exist outside a Culture, but only a Culture is able
create Nations. Each Culture has its own conception of nations.
In the Arabian Culture, people of the same religion were of the
same nation. Their nations had no national frontiers at all. All
Muslims were a nation, and all Jews another. In the Classical
Culture, the nation was the City-state, a few hundred square miles
in extent. The modern concept of a nation-state with wide-ranging
boundaries would have been incomprehensible to inhabitants of
Arabian or Classical Culture. (20) Nations play a role in the
development of the Culture. A Culture goes through a succession of
stages, and each stage has its corresponding Spirit of the Age.
Since each Nation has a distinct Nation-Idea, the Nation whose
Nation-Idea best expresses the Spirt of the Age will come to
dominate the Culture. The Nation-Idea is not something that can be
summarized in words, but can only be shown by deeds. The English
Nation-Idea, for instance, includes Rationalism, money-making, and
parliaments. These ideas (which most people would call
institutions) have advanced in recent centuries because the English
Nation-Idea was in tune with the Spirit of the Age during the
“English Age,” which Yockey dates from 1750 to 1900. (21)
At the height of the Civilization-Crisis, whatever the
constitutional law may say, the real power behind the government is
the Master of Money. Rationalistic theories of all sorts are now
his servant in the realm of thought. Rationalism’s “sole effect is
to destroy. It destroys . . . art forms and literature, its
destroys traditions of service, dignity, loyalty, honor. It
destroys the State-idea as embodied in its last refined form, the
Absolute State. It lays Civilization waste from within,
politically speaking.” Meanwhile, the Master of Money keeps all
real power in his own hands by corrupt means. What can freedom
mean in such a setting? Only two things. “Freedom was attractive
to two great groups, the intellectuals and the trading-class. To
both of them, the State was a burden. For its one pulse, one
imperative . . . the pavement-intellectuals wish to substitute
universal criticism, and the traders introduce universal trade
without any restriction whatever. . . . The intellectual with
his atheist pamphlet and the trader in his counting-house are
respectively the masters in the democratic world of thought and
action.” (22)
The twentieth and twenty-first centuries mark the transition from
the Civilization-Crisis to the resurgence of Tradition and
Authority, and creation of an Imperium. The Imperium will unite
all the Nations of the Western Culture, and it will be governed by
an Absolutist State. (23)
Yockey makes a detailed attempt to demonstrate the
Civilization-Crisis only in the Western Culture. He makes passing
references to such a stage in the Classical, Egyptian, and Chinese
Cultures, and merely asserts that it occurred in the other four.
In the whole text of “Imperium”, nearly all of the historical
references come from the Western and Classical Cultures, with only
occasional references to Egypt and China, and about two sentences
on the “Arabian” Culture. The others are barely mentioned. In
fact, there are no footnotes at all in “Imperium”, and according to
Carto’s introduction, Yockey wrote the entire book without notes.
In short, Yockey has failed to document adequately the life cycle
of a Culture from his eight historical Cultures. Therefore, there
are no historical grounds for believing what he says about the
Civilization-Crisis and the Destiny of the “Western Culture.”
Yockey on Politics
When Yockey speaks of the State, he refers to sovereignty, like a
European theorist, not to the autonomous States of the Union which
most Americans means with they speak of “States.” His views on the
State can be summarized briefly. “The State is the form of the
nation for action.” In Western Culture, it transforms itself
through stage of (a) Empire and Papacy; (b) Feudal or aristocratic
State; (c) Absolutist State; (d) Democracy, by which he means the
whole history of constitutional and elected government; and (e)
Resurgence of the Absolute State, which instead of being merely
National constitutes the unity of the West in a single Imperium.
(24)
“Politics,” as Yockey defines it for us, “is activity in relation
to power. . . . Thus it is not morality, it is not esthetics,
it is not economics. . . . The way politics divides the world
is into friend and enemy.” (25) Inner political differences within
a State can exist, but if the State has to resort to force, then
there are at least temporarily two States, not one. Yockey
sometimes uses the term “political unit” to mean State. (26) Since
he separates politics from morality, he provides what he calls a
political justification for war. “Units engaged in politics may
either gain or lose power. Instinct and understanding direct them
to seek to increase power. War is the most intense method of
trying to increase power. Thus a war that has no practically
foreseeable possibility of increasing power is not politically
justifiable. A war which promises an increase in power is
politically justifiable.” (27) He goes on to declare that a
political victory can emerge from a military defeat. His example
is the utter defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars, followed by
Tallyrand’s diplomatic victory for France at the “Congress of
Vienna.” Yockey’s illustration proves the opposite of what he
claims for it. When we compare France’s position in defeat after
the negotiated settlement at the Congress of Europe with its highly
influential diplomatic and strategic position in the last quarter
of the eighteenth century, it is obvious that France lost power.
By Yockey’s own criteria, France was defeated.
Yockey’s definition of a true enemy is very revealing. “To say
that a unit gained a military victory and also suffered a political
defeat is only another way of saying that the military opponent was
not a real enemy. A real enemy is he whom one can strike down and
thereby increase one’s own power.” (28) The real enemy is someone
weaker than oneself. This is the consequence of Yockey’s complete
separating of politics from ethics: the politics of a bully, and
therefore the politics of a coward.
He criticizes Great Britain for fighting two World Wars. In the
process, he says, Britain lost commercial supremacy, supremacy at
sea, the Empire, and even allegedly its own independence, and
survives as a weaker ally of the United States. How did this
disaster happen? Because Germany and Britain were not real
enemies. Both were a part of Europe and therefore of the Western
Civilization. Their real enemies were Russia, Japan, and the
United States. Yockey, an expatriate American, does not regard
Russians and his fellow countrymen as part of the Western Culture.
To him, both are as alien as Japan. (29) Is “Imperium” a post-War
rationalization for the Nazis? Yockey himself removes all doubt.
Referring to the end of the Second World War, he says, “The Western
Civilization was not extinguished . . . even though it was
brought to the lowest possible point politically.” (30) This can
only mean that Germany and her allies were the political
representatives of Western Civilization in that war. Yockey does
not note the fact that Japan, alleged threat to the West, was
Hitler’s ally. Perhaps he considers the alliance with Japan as
Hitler’s temporary expedient, like his two-year-long pact with
Stalin.
Yockey’s attitude toward cross-cultural borrowing and cooperation
can be summarized in two words: Culture Pathology. Because a
Culture is a form of life, it can suffer from diseases, which can
kill it, thereby preventing it from achieving its destiny. As
Culture Pathologist, Yockey enumerates three diseases: Culture
Parasitism, Culture Distortion, and Culture Retardation.
Immigrants into an Alien culture cause Cultural Parasitism. They
are parasites because the native Culture comes into conflict with
them, and has to expend energy fighting them. Race riots in the
United States are Cultural conflicts, in which the host body is
attempting to expel the parasites. Such conflicts are not caused
by hatred, intolerance, or ignorance. Hatred, intolerance, and
ignorance are merely traits of individuals. However, racial
conflicts are the result of “higher organic unities” which “impel
the mere individuals.” (31)
Culture Distortion is the borrowing from one culture into another.
Any sort of borrowing is unhealthy to the Culture and prevents it
from achieving its destiny. Inviting in troops from a State Alien
to the Culture—such as the Russian troops in Europe in 1815 and
in 1945 and after—is Culture Distortion, for instance, since
Russia is outside the European Culture-idea. The political
influence of Jews in American life is Culture Distortion also.
Writing in 1948, Yockey insists that the Jews control broadcasting,
the film industry, book and magazine publishing, and the
Universities, as well as both political parties. The election of
Franklin D. Roosevelt was “the American Revolution of 1993,” in
which the Culture Distorters (that is, the Jews) took over the U.
S. Government. (32) Culture Retardation is the failure to keep up
with the latest advances of the Culture. In America, it means that
Americans do not appreciate the advances in thought made by Oswald
Spengler and other twentieth century German apologists for the
Third Reich. (33)
By this point, the reader call well imagine what Yockey thinks of
the Jews. Because of the Middle Eastern (Yockey prefers “Arabian”)
origin of their religion, the Jews are spiritually alien to the
Western Civilization. It is only to be expected that the European
or European-descended majority would resent their presence, or even
persecute them. The Jews would as naturally resent the Gentile
majority in return. (34) When Jews in Great Britain and America
were given equal rights, they merely took advantage of their
Gentile fellow-citizens, as revenge for many years of persecution.
They used the new freedom to undermine the Western Culture, working
through secret societies such as “the Illuminati and its
offspring.” Yockey believes that the Jews have one ethic for
themselves and another for the Gentiles, which requires them to
treat a fellow Jew decently, and allows any crime no matter how
vile if done by a Jew to a Gentile. These are standard
anti-Semitic slurs. Anti-Semitism is no problem for Yockey. He
sees it as a sign of the fundamental health of Western
Civilization. “Anti-Semitism is precisely analogous in Culture
pathology to the formation of anti-bodies in the bloodstream in
human pathology. In both cases, the organism is resisting the
alien life.” (35) In other words, the Jews are bacteria, and their
presence makes Western Culture sick.
We have seen that Yockey uses historical facts to prove his point
about the necessity of conflict between a Culture and anyone from
outside it. However, when he deals with cross-cultural influences,
he places a value judgement on the facts, calling them symptoms of
Culture Pathology. The medical analogy does not disguise his
obviously contradictory and subjective method of treating the
facts. One might as well compare anti-Semitism to the immune
system’s attempts to reject a kidney transplant, even though the
host body needs at least one functioning kidney and both original
kidneys have had to be removed.
Yockey’s alleged Jewish-controlled conspiracies, of course, do not
exist. Judaism teaches that a Jew has precisely the same ethical
duties toward a Gentile as toward another Jew. Because Yockey
avoids discussing religion in any concrete terms, he never explains
in what precise sense the Jews, whose ancestors wrote most of the
Bible, can be “spiritually alien” in the predominantly Christian
Western Civilization.
Given all Yockey has said about the utterly alien nature of the
Jews, and given what he has said throughout “Imperium” about the
inevitability of conflict between Cultures, then presumably he
would consider the Holocaust, in which millions of Jews perished,
to be just another example of the German antibodies consuming the
alien Jewish bacteria, out of organic necessity. Yockey does not
do this. Writing in 1948, he is a pioneer of what is now called
Holocaust denial. The photographic evidence is all fraudulent, the
gas chambers never existed, and the survivors are all liars. After
all, the Jews have one ethic for themselves and another for the
Gentiles, so why wouldn’t they lie to us? This is what Yockey
really meant when he condemned as propaganda the evidence which he
was required to gather for the War Crimes Tribunal. (36)
According to Yockey, American ideas of liberty and equal rights are
nonsense, and were only adopted because the Spirit of the Age was
the spirit of the Civilization-Crisis, which promotes individualism
and every type of decadence in the name of liberty. In his
chapters on America, he repeats the charges which many others have
made before him, in his own time, and since, about corruption in
American politics. Yockey, however, is not interested in reform.
He even questions whether European settlers should have come to
America to begin with. White people are “organically” related to
their home soil in Europe, and emigration to other continents
weakens their resistance to Culture Pathology. (37)
The pro-Axis minority in the United States who still opposed the
war after Pearl Harbor were the real patriots of World War II in
America: “Certain American nationalists were held in gaol for
having said in 1941 that a military defeat was to be desired for
the welfare of America, since a defeat would destroy the hold of
the Culture-distorting group.” Those who fought were merely dupes
of the Culture Distorters who have controlled America since 1933.
(38)
If the Axis was fighting for Western Civilization, did the defeat
of Germany in World War II spell the doom of the West? Yockey
urges the sympathetic reader to take courage. The Spirit of the
Age favors revival of the Imperium. Men will no longer die for
“liberty.” The last chapter of the book is an extended outburst of
ranting, the text of which Yockey might have subsequently used in
his Hyde Park addresses on behalf of the European Liberation Front.
In these last few fervid pages, he assures us that the West
possesses “the mightiest superpersonal idea that has ever appeared
on this earth-ball.” He looks forward to the day when “the Western
banner waves on its home soil from Gibralter to the North Cape, and
from the rocky promontories of Galway to the Urals.” There is no
room for his native America in such a vision. Yockey finishes with
his favorite quote from Nietzsche: “What does not destroy me makes
me stronger,” which he presents both in English and in the original
German.
Conclusion
Yockey repeatedly calls for a resurgence of Faith, Tradition, and
Authority. Implicitly, Yockey asks the reader of “Imperium” to
take his philosophy of history on faith. If “Imperium” is a
religious revelation to be accepted on faith, then we can take
Western Culture to be its God. Oswald Spengler or Friedrich
Nietzsche takes the place of Abraham, the nations of Europe play
the role of Israelites, the upcoming Western Imperium is the
location of the Promised Land, and Adolph Hitler is the Aryan Moses
who pointed the way to the Promised Land without himself being
allowed to enter it. If this is Yockey’s faith, what personal
satisfaction did he receive from it?
Earlier we noted that, according to Carto’s admiring preface,
Yockey’s brilliance provoked envy in those less talented than
himself throughout his life. Yockey could play the piano well
enough for the concert hall, was able to speak several languages,
never lost a case in the courtroom, was well-versed in finance,
and, above all, knew all the main issues of modern philosophy.
Carto does not mention that Yockey’s discharge from military
service in 1942 was for dementia praecox, a synonym for
schizophrenia. His medical report stated that he head disembodied
voices speaking to him, believed that a great destiny lay ahead for
him, and included important world leaders in his delusions.
Perhaps he did have all the intellectual gifts and talents which
Carto ascribes to him, but the schizophrenic episode of 1942, even
if of brief duration, is the real clue to his philosophy, and to
his faith. Yockey’s undocumented and ill-conceived “Imperium” is a
pseudoscholarly rationalization of his delusion that the envious
and resentful dupes of Culture Distortion who were forever dogging
him. Yockey wrote “Imperium” confident that History would
vindicate him, for it was his destiny to be the prophet of the
future Western Imperium!
Footnotes
(1) Friedrich Nietzsche was not, or course, a twentieth-century man,
but Yockey credits him for anticipating the Spirit of the Age of
the next age.
(2) Yockey, Francis Parker, “Imperium,” (Sausalito, California, 1969),
pp. 1-8. All references are from the paperback reprint of
“Imperium” published by Noontide Press at the date given.
Not only are Yockey’s definitions of the terms Culture and
Civilization unusual, he scatters other idiosyncratic usages
through “Imperium”. He uses the adjective “erotic” to mean
“eroticism” or “eros.” In the place of “traditional” he always
says “traditionary,” a less familiar but acceptable synonym.
Instead of “technology” he always writes “technics,” which is an
acceptable synonym for “techniques,” but not of “technology.” He
refers to Charlemagne in one place as Karl der Grosse, and in a
passing reference to the Belgium city of Dunkirk, he calls it
Dunkirchen. Throughout, Yockey’s choice of words reveals a
fondness for the sometimes inappropriate display of obscure
vocabulary, and shows him to be an extreme Germanophile.
(3) Ibid., 29-37. In opposing the “linear” view of history, Spengler
wished to give appropriate significance to the breakdown of the
Classical civilization through barbarian invasions during the 5th
Century A.D. However, the debt of Western Civilization to the
Classical world has been vast and deep. How can a sharp line be
drawn between 5th century Rome and Medieval Europe? Since
“Imperium” was written, Spengler’s criticism of the “linear view”
of history has been more convincingly made by Arnold Toynbee and
others. Toynbee, for instance, does not insist on the enmity of
different Cultures. His theory that a “universal church” can
survive from the end of one civilization to the beginning of
another accounts for Spengler’s objection, without ignoring the
profound cultural influence of the Roman Catholic Church, a legacy
of ancient Rome and of the ancient Jews, on Medieval Europe.
(4) Ibid., 12.
(5) Ibid., 13.
(6) Ibid., 13.
(7) Ibid., 66-97, 224-230. Yockey’s critique of Marxism is directed
at a narrow, mechanical post-Engels Marxism which was popularized
during his lifetime by pro-Moscow intellectuals and propagandists.
Yockey is unaware that Marx and Engels conceded that an idea can
achieve a “material force” when it is believed in and acted upon
by large numbers of people. However, many Marxists of Yockey’s
time, and since, have been equally unaware of this concept.
Yockey’s treatment of Darwinism and Freudianism is equally
superficial, and with less excuse, since all the significant
concepts of Darwin and Freud had been widely published and debated
in the literature available in his time.
(8) Ibid., 13.
(9) Ibid., 9.
(10) Ibid., 38-39.
(11) Ibid., 369. Like nearly every male English language author
before 1975 or so, Yockey uses “man” where many people today would
say “humanity” or “human beings” or “a man or woman.”
(12) Ibid., 43.
(13) Ibid., 253-254.
(14) Ibid., 612-614.
(15) Ibid., 274-285.
(16) Ibid., 286-291. Despite all he has just told us, Yockey has no
difficulty detecting “blondness” as the physical sign of strong
will-to-power in European populations.
(17) Ibid., 294-295.
(18) Ibid., 321.
(19) Ibid., 323.
(20) Ibid., 330.
(21) Ibid., 334-337.
(22) Ibid., 362-363.
(23) Ibid., 364-366.
(24) Ibid., 355-362.
(25) Ibid., 127.
(26) Ibid., 131.
(27) Ibid., 147.
(28) Ibid., 149.
(29) Ibid., 150.
(30) Ibid., 123.
(31) Ibid., 376-381.
(32) Ibid., 402-439, 491-511.
(33) Ibid., 517-523.
(34) Ibid., 311-313.
(35) Ibid., 381-391.
(36) Ibid., 533.
(37) Ibid., 450-471.
(38) Ibid., 549-558.
(39) Lipstadt, Deborah, “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing
Assault on Truth and Memory,” (New York, 1993), p. 147.
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Holocaust Almanac – Yockey’s “Imperium” – A Critique
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