John Derbyshire: The White Nationalist’s Step Towards Mainstream Acceptance
John Derbyshire has been at National Review, the magazine founded by the venerable William F. Buckley decades ago, for quite a while. His profile has been accelerated with the publication of his book We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism. That book has been actively promoted by Lighthouse Literature, the publishing house founded by skinhead hearthrob and protege of Holocaust denier David Irving, Janelle Antas. Derbyshire has his own section hosting his columns and musings on National Review’s website, in addition to a semi-weekly podcast “Radio Derp” - sorry - “Radio Derb,” hosted by National Review.
Prior to 2008, Derbyshire’s thoughts were fairly temperate semi-libertarian fair. I listened to the podcast for a good while and most of the subject matter was on our indebtedness to China, questioning of the accomplishment of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, history and opposition to illegal immigration and open borders. Subtle undertones of reactionary politics were there (one podcast after Obama was elected had him arguing that the election of Obama would lead to liberals telling blacks that the problem is solved) but, since 2008, Derbyshire has absolutely transformed into some sort of neo-Rudyard Kipling, a proponent of the “natural” superiority of the white man to a world in which the white man is no longer on top.
Derbyshire, like his fellow bigot all stars, is a contributor at the neo-fascist screed site Alternative Right. Here’s a little taste of his scribblings, which should give you a pretty easy illustration of what he’s selling:
Unfortunately this is not because, or only very partially because, proper understanding of biology is now more widespread. It is much more an aspect of what my friend Peter Brimelow calls “Hitler’s revenge.” We defeated the Nazi armies and killed their ideology; but the horrors that ideology had generated left us terrified that it might rise from the dead. To prevent that happening, we ruled out of polite discourse all the intellectual streams that had fed into the Nazi pond, of which social Darwinism was certainly one.
That we might be throwing out some babies with the bathwater was not considered. That the ideas of social Darwinism — however wrong-headed the implication that they had something to do with actual Darwinism — that those ideas might have some merit, was no longer a thinkable thought.
The Trotskyists of my college days, defending Marxism against the charge that it inevitably led to tyranny and mass murder under despots like Stalin, Mao, and Castro, used to chide us that “an idea should not be held responsible for the people who hold it.” That Hitler was, as he undoubtedly was, a variety of social Darwinist, killed off social Darwinism stone dead. Somehow the fact that Stalin was, as he undoubtedly was, a variety of socialist, did not kill off socialism. These are the paradoxes of intellectual history.
Next comes his speech to the Black Law Students Assocation of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he was for some bizarre reason invited to speak:
When the organizers first emailed me to suggest I appear on the panel, I told them that this is my view of the matter. I said that I was flattered to be invited to speak at such a prestigious institution, and that, having two teenage children, I am always glad to get out of the house for a few hours; but that racial disparities in education and employment have their origin in biological differences between the human races.
Those differences are facts in the natural world, like the orbits of the planets. They can’t be legislated out of existence; nor can they be “eliminated” by social or political action.
It’s pretty easy to demonstrate where he’s going with all this and his prominence within conservatism should demonstrate easily that the racism that has begat the Birther conspiracy is not a relapse but a full blown terminal illness. Old intellectual horseshit that decent people long ago buried is being dup up by these sociopaths, placed in front of us and presented as fresh fruit. I worry the most about impressionable youth who don’t know the full connotations of what they’re being sold.