Pelliot – the Gentle Art of Making Enemies

 

Despite their colonial toe-hold on the continent (in Hanoi they even had an archaeological institute) the French were late in joining in the Central Asian treasure hunt, although they were not the last to try their luck. By the time Pelliot reached Chinese Turkestan in August 1906, the British, Swedes, Germans and Japanese had all been there at least once, the Beresovskys were nearing the end of their stay, and Stein was already back for more. The belated arrival of the French on the Silk Road is perhaps explained by their discovery, not long before, of a once-rich civilisation in the jungles of Indo-China – including the magnificent ruins at Angkor – which had been keeping their own orientalists busy. But whatever the reason for their dilatoriness, they were now determined to get their share. ‘If France was to do nothing,’ the distinguished French orientalist Sylvain Levi exhorted his fellow savants, ‘we would be betraying our glorious tradition.’ A powerful committee was set up, headed by Emile Senart, another leading oriental scholar and member of the French Academy, and backed by the Minister of Public Instruction. This had the support of no fewer than nine leading bodies devoted to scientific, geographical or cultural studies. It was decided to dispatch a three-man expedition to Chinese Turkestan as soon as possible. Chosen to lead this was a brilliant young sinologist of twenty-seven named Paul Pelliot, a former pupil of Levi’s now on the staff of Hanoi’s celebrated (but later to be embroiled in controversy) Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient. His companions were Dr Louis Vaillant, an army medical officer and old friend of his, who would be  responsible for mapping, collecting natural history specimens and other scientific work, and Charles Nouette, who was the expedition’s photographer.

In addition to Pelliot’s linguistic genius – he was at home in some thirteen languages – as a very young man he had won the Legion of Honour during the siege of the foreign legations in Peking in the summer of 1900. Trapped there at the age of twenty-one by the Boxer uprising while searching for Chinese books for the Ecole library, he was involved in two exploits which won him both praise and criticism. One was his daring capture, with the aid of two sailors, of a huge Boxer war standard, an act which greatly enraged the enemy. In his siege diary, published subsequently, there is a photograph of him proudly holding his trophy. The other exploit occurred during a temporary ceasefire when he climbed over the barricade announcing that he was going to have tea with the rebels. For several hours his fate was discussed, and his bravado condemned, by the besieged Europeans. But eventually, after being seen to take leave of the enemy with great displays of cordiality, he returned laden with gifts of fruit. He had told them, he said, that the Europeans’ morale was extremely high, but that they lacked fresh fruit.

Pelliot’s diary, much of it scribbled under fire, reveals a courageous but hot-headed young man always in the thick of the fray. He is fiercely critical of many of the senior diplomats, hinting at their cowardice and incompetence. It is not surprising, therefore, that some of them found him bumptious. (Even Stein, who greatly admired him as a scholar, described him some years later as ‘a bit too self-centred’.) One French officer, on the other hand, wrote: ‘Pelliot, the youngest of the volunteers, is adored by everybody, and, because of his youth and courage, we forgive him for getting carried away at times.’ Whether one liked him or was irritated by him, it seems that it was hard to ignore him. On his return to Hanoi, and still only twenty-two, he was made Professor of Chinese at the Ecole. At the same time he began to review – often very critically  – the works of other sinologists in learned journals and in the Ecole’s own bulletin. ‘The gentle art of making enemies …’ he once called this. Here perhaps are clues as to why, some nine years later, he would find himself victim of a vicious and concerted campaign in France when he returned in triumph from his Central Asian expedition.

Their preparations now complete, Pelliot and his two companions left Paris on June 17, 1906, travelling by rail via Moscow to Tashkent where they were held up for two months awaiting the arrival of their heavy baggage. Pelliot had used the time to polish up his Russian and also, as we have seen, to study Turki (or Eastern Turkish, as some scholars then called it). Thanks to his amazing gift for languages and prodigious memory, he was soon able to converse easily in the latter. It was this near-unbelievable power of recall that later was to mislead Pelliot’s detractors into challenging some of his claims. The expedition finally reached Kashgar on the last day of August. There they stayed at the Russian consulate-general as guests of Petrovsky’s successor, making diplomatic and other official calls on those mandarins whose goodwill and help they would require. This caused something of a stir, for few western travellers who passed through Kashgar (and certainly none of Pelliot’s rivals) spoke Chinese. Dr Vaillant recalled long afterwards ‘how amazed these high officials were to hear Pelliot speaking fluent and elegant Chinese, quoting from their classics and reading with ease the sentences written on the long scrolls which, in China, adorn all reception rooms’. Above all, they were impressed by his familiarity with what the doctor calls ‘the refined ceremonial practised by a civilisation so proudly aware of its longevity …’. Although all this sounds suspiciously like the young hero of the barricades showing off once again to the natives, it was – as Vaillant points out – soon to pay dividends. For a start they had decided to take with them a yurt (the circular tent of Central  Asia) and Pelliot asked the Prefect of Kashgar to try to obtain one for them. ‘When we mentioned this to the Russian consul,’ Vaillant recounts, ‘he laughed at our pretensions.’ He assured the three Frenchmen: ‘They are unobtainable and even if you did find one it would take you six months to get it.’ A week later, to the Russian’s astonishment, the yurt was delivered, whereupon – Vaillant adds – ‘Pelliot immediately got us used to erecting it and living in it in the consulate yard.’

Their plan was to travel eastwards to Kucha where they proposed to excavate at some length. This would take them past Tumchuq, where Hedin had reported seeing some ruins which he had dismissed as Moslem and not old enough, therefore, to be of interest. After six weeks of preparation at Kashgar, the three Frenchmen set out on the first leg of their journey. A few marches short of Tumchuq an amusing incident occurred when they halted for lunch at the small sub-prefecture of Faizabad. After paying their respects to the sub-prefect, and apologising for being unable to receive a return call from him, they returned to the inn for a hurried meal before moving on. Vaillant picks up the tale: ‘But scarcely had we regained our camp than we heard the three shots from the cannon which meant that the mandarin had left his yamen.’ Moments later Ting, their servant, shouted: ‘Here is the mandarin!’ The Frenchmen were aghast. Vaillant writes: ‘We had nothing prepared for a visit. Pelliot greeted him with profuse apologies and invited him into the reception room. After the customary courtesies we sat down and tried not to show our anxiety. We then saw cups of tea arriving and plates laden with slices of melon and cakes.’ When the meal was over, the mandarin turned to Pelliot with a smile and said: ‘Really, you Europeans certainly know how to travel. I am full of admiration for the way you are able to organise such a reception in the middle of a journey. I am deeply honoured by your delicacy.’ When he had gone, Pelliot immediately began to congratulate Ting on having coped so  well. ‘I did nothing,’ he replied. ‘Servants from the yamen brought everything.…’

The ruins at Tumchuq, far from being Moslem, proved to be those of an early Buddhist monastic city which had flourished until at least the year 800. It was mere chance which led Pelliot to discover this during their brief halt there. Idly prodding the ground with his riding crop, to his astonishment he turned up a figurine which was unmistakably Graeco-Buddhist. Although all their baggage, including their winter clothing, was already on its way to Kucha, Pelliot felt that they had no choice but to stay and excavate further. Six weeks later, numbed with cold but laden with painted sculptures and other finds, they hastened on to Kucha – and the comfort of their fur coats. They had been disappointed to learn that not only the Germans but also (as we shall see) the Russians and Japanese had preceded them to this archaeologically rich area. In the event they found plenty to do in the temples which their rivals had overlooked. Most important to Pelliot was their discovery of a large hoard of Buddhist documents, including many in unknown languages. Some of these proved later to be in the lost language of Kuchean, and were subsequently deciphered by Sylvain Levi.

After eight fruitful months in Kucha, the French expedition moved on to Urumchi to replenish their stores before making the desert crossing to Tun-huang. At this point their plan was merely to photograph and study the wall-paintings and sculptures in the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, for word of Stein’s great discovery six months earlier had not reached them.

While they were in Urumchi, Pelliot met an old friend – or rather foe – from Peking days. Following the defeat of the Boxers, the Duke Lan, brother of the movement’s leader and himself deeply implicated in the uprising, had been exiled for life to Urumchi, where he devoted his remaining years to photography. ‘We had fought one another in 1900, but the passage of time heals all things,’ Pelliot wrote afterwards, adding: ‘We  sealed our friendship with many a glass of champagne.’ When the day of their departure finally arrived, the Duke remarked sadly to Pelliot: ‘You are going, but I have to stay.’ Pelliot forbore from reminding the one-time Peking police chief that, some seven years earlier, there had been a day ‘when he had forced us to stay when we would have asked nothing better than to leave’.

In fact, although the Duke probably did not realise it, it was an act of generosity by him which made Pelliot even more eager to get away from Urumchi and reach Tun-huang. During their stay in Urumchi they had heard vague stories about a mysterious cache of manuscripts that had been found in the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. Pelliot knew at once that this was more than a mere bazaar rumour when the exiled Duke presented him with a manuscript which he said had come from Tun-huang. ‘Pelliot had hardly unrolled this,’ Vaillant recounts, ‘when he realised that it dated from before the eighth century.’

When the three men reached Tun-huang and the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas they found, just as Stein had, the manuscript cave locked and Wang absent. However, before long, they ran the priest to earth in the town. Dazzled no doubt by Pelliot’s Chinese, he agreed to show the Frenchman his finds. In view of the prolonged struggle that Stein and Chiang had had with Wang before being allowed to see the manuscripts, it may seem surprising that Pelliot managed it so relatively easily. Indeed, his enemies were to find it unbelievable. However, fear of discovery had been Wang’s great dread, as he repeatedly told Stein and Chiang. Now, because this new visitor from Europe did not even mention Stein (Pelliot still did not realise, it seems, that his rival had beaten him to the secret chamber), it must have appeared to Wang that the Englishman had kept his vow of secrecy. The discovery that these ‘foreign devils’ could be trusted not to talk must have been very reassuring to him. Furthermore, he had already begun to spend Stein’s ‘donation’ on his garish restorations,  and now, no doubt, was looking for further contributions.

But even Pelliot was made to bide his time. He recounts in a letter written from Tun-huang on March 26, 1908: ‘Wang arrived rather late and said he had left the key behind at Tun-huang. I had to wait again.’ It was then that Pelliot learned to his disappointment that Stein had already visited the secret chamber, but – he was assured – had spent only three days there. Had he known the true length of Stein’s stay he might have been less sanguine about his own prospects. As it was, he feared that in the eight years since its discovery much of the library inevitably would have disappeared. After all, the manuscript presented to him by Duke Lan, some four hundred miles away in Urumchi, was unlikely to be the only one to have escaped thus from the cave.

Finally the key arrived from Tun-huang and nearly a month after their arrival at the great ming-oi Pelliot was allowed into the secret chamber. ‘I was stupefied,’ he wrote. He estimated that there were between fifteen and twenty thousand manuscripts in the cave. To unroll each one and examine it properly, he realised, would take him a minimum of six months. However, his mind was quickly made up. ‘If only cursory, examination of the entire library was essential,’ he wrote. ‘I must at least open everything, recognise the nature of the text and see whether it offered anything new.’ He decided to make two piles : first the cream, which he must obtain at all costs, and then the desirable but less essential manuscripts.

Working by the light of a single candle, and crouched uncomfortably in the tiny space resulting (though he did not realise it) from the removal of Stein’s great haul, Pelliot spent three long and claustrophobic weeks sifting through the dusty bundles. In the Pelliot gallery at the Musée Guimet in Paris there is a memorable photograph of him at work in the secret chamber taken by Nouette. Behind him, as he crouches, can be seen a daunting mountain of tightly packed manuscripts.  ‘During the first ten days,’ Pelliot wrote in a long letter to Senart in Paris, ‘I attacked nearly a thousand scrolls a day, which must be a record …’ He likened himself, somewhat flippantly, to a philologist travelling at the speed of a racing-car. It was an analogy that his critics were to fasten onto with glee.

At the end of each long session in the cave, Pelliot would rejoin his two colleagues – ‘his greatcoat stuffed with his most interesting finds … radiant with joy’, Vaillant recalled years afterwards. ‘One such evening he showed us a Nestorian Gospel of St John; on another a description, dating from the year 800, of the curious little lake … situated in the high dunes south of Tun-huang; another time it was the monastery accounts.’ Pelliot ruled out any hope of persuading Wang to part with the entire collection, for the discovery was too well known in the district. ‘Mongol and Tibetan pilgrims came to read some of these precious documents as part of their pilgrimage,’ Vaillant explains. Pelliot’s great fear, however, was of leaving behind, or not recognising, any key document. ‘All the same, I do not think I overlooked anything essential,’ he wrote. ‘I handled not only every scroll, but every scrap of paper – and God knows how many bits and pieces there were.…’

Now came the most anxious moment of all, when Pelliot had to persuade the little priest to sell him the two piles of manuscripts which he had set aside. The negotiations were conducted between the two men amid great secrecy. ‘We ourselves’, Vaillant recalled, ‘were compelled to speak of the discovery in only the most guarded fashion, even in our letters.’ Finally the figure of 500 taels (about £90) was agreed and the hoard was carefully and discreetly packed for shipment to France. Vaillant wrote: ‘Only when Nouette had embarked on the steamer with the crates containing our collections did Pelliot mention them openly and leave for Peking with a box containing samples of the manuscripts.’ He added: ‘They were a revelation to Chinese scholars, who could scarcely  believe that such a find had been made.’ But as a result, a telegram was immediately sent by the Peking authorities to the sub-prefect at Tun-huang ordering him to place an embargo on whatever remained in the cave. Vaillant observed wryly: ‘The good monk must have had a bad quarter of an hour, and perhaps repented that he had accepted Pelliot’s money.’

Although the acquisition of the Tun-huang manuscripts represented a great personal triumph for Pelliot – whatever one may think of the ethics involved – his two companions had also been far from idle during nearly four months there. Nouette had taken hundreds of black and white photographs of everything that Pelliot considered worthy of interest, and these were published later in six volumes. Although Pelliot never got around to writing an accompanying text, this corpus remains today the principal source of information on the paintings and sculptures, mainly because of the vandalism which was to occur only a few years later when White Russian soldiers were interned in the caves.

When Pelliot finally reached Paris on October 24, 1909, he had been away for three years. He returned to a hero’s welcome, but also to find trouble brewing. This was to develop into a vicious campaign embracing not only himself but also Professor Chavannes and the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient in Hanoi. During his absence, the long and often graphic letter he had written from Tun-huang to Senart in the first flush of excitement had been published in the widely read journal of the Ecole, where he was still officially employed. He might well have written differently had he known what capital his foes would make of it, and almost certainly would have omitted some of his more candid, and sometimes light-hearted, comments. We have already noted how Pelliot’s intellectual arrogance – as some saw it – had earned him enemies in the academic world. His letter to Senart gave them the opportunity they had been waiting for.

That part of the campaign which involved Chavannes and  the Ecole does not concern us here, but in essence it sought to cast doubts upon the former’s scholarship and upon the competence of the entire staff of that prestigious institution. It was waged initially as a whispering campaign, but before long it had spread to the columns of some newspapers and periodicals, especially those concerned with Indo-China. Pelliot’s involvement was on two counts. As Professor of Chinese at the Ecole, he, like all other members of the staff, had to face general accusations of élitism and – more serious – of having to rely on local interpreters for assistance with the publication of their works. But in addition to this, as leader of the highly successful expedition to Chinese Central Asia, Pelliot found himself singled out for special attention. For this triumph by one so young had inevitably aroused envy in some other French orientalists who felt, perhaps, that they instead should have been chosen.

Among his principal detractors was a senior librarian in the oriental department of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, where the Tun-huang manuscripts had been deposited by Pelliot in a locked room to which only he had a key. Clearly furious (and perhaps understandably so) at being denied access to them, the librarian wrote a caustic letter to a French newspaper in which he endeavoured to cast doubts on the authenticity of Pelliot’s manuscripts as well as upon the young scholar’s capabilities as a sinologist. On the pretext of wishing to safeguard his own reputation as conservator of the Bibliothèque’s oriental manuscripts – which those in the locked room were due to join – he announced that he was forthwith disclaiming all responsibility for Pelliot’s Tun-huang purchases. Meanwhile, the other works of art brought back by the expedition – paintings, sculptures, textiles, wooden figures and terracottas – were put on public view in the Louvre, in a specially named Salle Pelliot. These, too, his detractors endeavoured to belittle. ‘One wonders how it is possible that a room in the Louvre, however small, should be devoted to so little,’ wrote one.

 In December 1910, this ‘malevolent campaign’, as one French scholar has called it, reached its climax in a particularly virulent attack on Pelliot, Chavannes and the Ecole in the anti-colonial journal La Revue Indigène. A mixture of the unctuous and the vitriolic, and filling twenty-three pages of the magazine, it purported to analyse the Pelliot ‘scandal’. The author – M. Fernand Farjenel, an old China hand and himself a Chinese speaker – first disposed of Chavannes, whose translations, he claimed, ‘were inaccurate on every line when not in every word’. His main target, however, was Pelliot. The ‘young explorer’, as he repeatedly calls him, was accused of frittering away public money in two years of ‘wandering’ which, Farjenel claimed, yielded nothing of any value. He implied that by the time Pelliot reached Tun-huang he was so desperate to justify his mission that his critical judgement was seriously impaired.

In support of this, Farjenel quoted Pelliot’s letter to Senart in which he admits to being ‘stupefied’ at what he saw when he entered Wang’s secret chamber. So stupefied was he, Farjenel claimed, that he swallowed the priest’s tale ‘with credulous confidence’, apparently unaware that, shortly before, Stein had removed ‘twenty-nine cases’ of manuscripts and paintings from the chamber. ‘This must have pretty well emptied it,’ the writer argued. But Pelliot, he went on, ‘full of joy at the thought that he had just discovered a priceless treasure took no precautions whatever and made no attempt to check the monk’s claims’. The obvious conclusion, he added, was that the cave had been refilled with forged and other worthless manuscripts by the local people who knew that Europeans liked to buy such things. He reminded his readers that the Far East abounded with clever rogues, as Stein’s unmasking of Islam Akhun had shown. A scholar who, by his own admission, had to examine some thousand scrolls a day (Farjenel calculated that this meant two a minute) was a natural victim for such forgers, he added. The fact that the manuscripts remained even now behind locked doors, out of  reach of other oriental scholars, could only reinforce his and others’ suspicions. He demanded that in view of ‘the very large sum that the expedition has cost’, Pelliot should reply at once to his critics. But Pelliot did not reply, confident that his detractors would have to eat their words sooner or later.

The French public, of course, had no way of telling who was right. If Stein had cleaned out the secret chamber, then where had all these manuscripts come from? Anyway, why were they still under lock and key, unavailable to other scholars, a full year after being deposited in the Bibliothèque? It was not until 1912, when Stein’s Ruins of Desert Cathay came out, that Pelliot’s critics were finally put in their place. Had Farjenel been able to read it before launching so confidently into print, he would certainly have thought twice. For a start Stein made it perfectly clear that he had only been able to purchase part of the Tun-huang library, leaving behind him ‘masses of manuscripts’. Moreover, he had not been allowed to choose freely – as Pelliot had – from the secret chamber, being limited to the bundles that Wang brought him. Furthermore, unlike Pelliot, who – as Stein put it – had been ‘aided by his exceptional mastery of Chinese literature and bibliography’, he himself had been gravely handicapped by his lack of Chinese. Clearly aware of the campaign to discredit his young French colleague, Stein went out of his way to praise the excellence of Pelliot’s scholarship as well as to express admiration for his methods of excavation, evidence of which he had seen at Kucha.

Although the campaign had failed signally to damage Pelliot’s reputation where it really mattered – in the world of learning – it had not been for want of trying. But did Pelliot’s detractors genuinely believe the charges they brought so vituperatively against him, or were they seeking to destroy a man whom they clearly loathed or perhaps envied? Today, some seventy years later, and with all the witnesses long dead, it is impossible to say. But a comment by Vaillant perhaps provides the answer. During their expedition, he recounts: ‘Pelliot  made brief notes whose accuracy and detail astonished their recipients in France. They could not understand how, in the wilds and far from a library, he could possibly recall certain facts or texts … His prodigious memory enabled him to do without all reference material.’ This is confirmed by others. ‘When Pelliot has read a book, the whole thing remains in there,’ one colleague declared, pointing to his own forehead.

The fact that his enemies found him too clever by half is perhaps thus explained. Until they learned, too late, just how clever he really was, they simply assumed that he was a braggart. To some extent Pelliot appears to have brought it upon himself. Like many other archaeologists, he found it difficult to get down to the drudgery of classifying and publishing his material. As we have seen, his detractors made much of the fact that, a whole year after arriving at the Bibliothèque Nationale, the manuscripts were still in their packing cases, and that Pelliot had not so much as produced an inventory. This had enabled them to suggest that he must have something to hide – the dreadful discovery, perhaps, that his Tun-huang purchases were all forgeries.

Nor was this the only row in which he was to become embroiled, although it is the only one which concerns us here. Pelliot, who went on to carve out a brilliant career for himself as France’s foremost Chinese scholar, never again excavated in Central Asia – the only one of our principal characters not to return for more. But this was not because of any lack of interest on his part. When serving as French military attaché in Peking during World War I, he told the American archaeologist Langdon Warner that he had ‘several new sites up his sleeve’, but no money to work them. By the time there was money available it was too late, for the Chinese had finally shut the door in the face of western archaeologists.

FOREIGN DEVILS ON THE SILK ROAD

The Search for the Lost Treasures of Central Asia

Peter Hopkirk

The circulation of the élites

 “Whether certain theorists like it or not, the fact is that human society is not a homogeneous thing, that individuals are physically, morally, and intellectually different.… Of that fact, therefore, we have to take account. And we must also take account of another fact: that the social classes are not entirely distinct, even in countries where a caste system prevails; arid that in modern civilized countries circulation among the various classes is exceedingly rapid.… We shall consider the problem [in order to simplify it] only in its bearing on the social equilibrium and try to reduce as far as possible the numbers of the groups and the modes of circulation, putting under one head phenomena that prove to be roughly and after a fashion similar.” (2025.)

“Let us assume that in every branch of human activity each individual is given an index which stands as a sign of his capacity, very much the way grades are given in the various subjects in examinations in school. The highest type of lawyer, for instance, will be given 10. The man who does not get a client will be given 1—reserving zero for the man who is an out-and-out idiot. To the man who has made his millions—honestly or dishonestly as the case may be—we will give 10. To the man who has earned his thousands we will give 6; to such as just manage to keep out of the poor-house, 1, keeping zero for those who get in. To the woman ‘in politics,’ such as the Aspasia of Pericles, the Maintenon of Louis XIV, the Pompadour of Louis XV, who has managed to infatuate a man of power and play a part in the man’s career, we shall give some higher number, such as 8 or 9; to the strumpet who merely satisfies the senses of such a man and exerts no influence on public affairs, we shall give zero. To a clever rascal who knows how to fool people and still keep clear of the penitentiary, we shall give 8, 9, or 10, according to the number of geese he has plucked and the amount of money he has been able to get out of them. To the sneak-thief who snatches a piece of silver from a restaurant table and runs away into the arms of a policeman, we shall give 1. To a poet like Carducci we shall give 8 or 9 according to our tastes; to a scribbler who puts people to rout with his sonnets we shall give zero. For chess players we can get very precise indices, noting what matches, and how many, they have won. And so on for all the branches of human activity.” (2027.)

In some such way we shall be able to distinguish, at least roughly, the élite or better the élites in society from the mass. We shall quickly observe, moreover, that human beings are not distributed evenly over the scale. At the top there are very few, considerably more in the middle; but the overwhelming majority are grouped near the bottom. The élite is always a small minority.

Within the élite we may further distinguish a “governing élite” from a “non-governing élite.” The élite within many branches of human activity—chess-playing, for example, from the list quoted—does not exert any appreciable influence on political affairs and social structure.

The character of a society, Pareto holds, is above all the character of its élite; its accomplishments are the accomplishments of its élite; its history is properly understood as the history of its élite; successful predictions about its future are based upon evidence drawn from the study of the composition and structure of its élite. Pareto’s conclusions here are the same as those reached by Mosca in his analysis of the narrower but similar concept of the “ruling class.”

The élite in any society is never static. Its structure, its composition, and the way in which it is related to the rest of the society are always changing. Most obviously the élite changes through the death of its individual members, and their replacement by other individuals. In itself, however, this is of no significance. If each dead individual were replaced by another of the same type, the élites as a historical group would remain unaltered. What influences social development is not the mere shift of individuals, but change in the types of individual, and in the relations of various types to each other and to the rest of society.

If, in the selection of members of the élite, there existed a condition of perfectly free competition, so that each individual could, without any obstacle, rise just as high in the social scale as his talents and ambition permitted, the élite could be presumed to include, at every moment and in the right order, just those persons best fitted for membership in it. Under such circumstances—which Pareto seems to imagine after the analogy of the theoretical free market of classical economics, or the biological arena of the struggle for survival—society would remain dynamic and strong, automatically correcting its own weaknesses.

However, a condition of this sort is never found in reality. There are always obstacles, or “ties” as Pareto calls them, that interfere with the free circulation of individuals up and down the social scale. Special principles of selection, different in different societies, affect the composition of the élite so that it no longer includes all those persons best fitted for social rule. Weaknesses set in; and, not compensated by a gradual day-by-day circulation, if they go far enough they are corrected sharply by social revolution: that is, by the sudden intrusion into the élite of large numbers of individuals hitherto prevented by the obstacles from finding their natural social level.

The most evident and universal of the obstacles to free circulation is the aristocratic principle. The children of members of the élite are helped to a position in the élite regardless of their own capacities and at the sacrifice of individuals of greater capacity appearing among the non-élite. If this principle is carried far enough, if the élite becomes “closed” or almost so, degeneration is bound to set in. The percentage of weak and inferior persons within the élite necessarily increases, while at the same time superior persons accumulate among the non-élite. A point is reached where the élite will be overthrown and destroyed.

This, for example, is what happened to Sparta. The doors of entrance to the Spartan élite (the Citizens) were firmly closed to the other classes of the population (the Perioeci and the Helots). The élite to some extent guarded its internal health by the negative device of killing its weak and feeble children, but this was not enough. In spite of an unmatched tradition of self-sacrifice and discipline, the élite declined gravely in numbers and even more in quality until it was utterly defeated, in the 4th century, at the battle of Leuctra, by the people of a city (Thebes) which Sparta had for generations thought of as little more than a second-rate ally. From this defeat, which might in a nation less rigidly organized have become the stimulus to rejuvenation, Sparta never recovered.

From these considerations it follows that a relatively free circulation of the élites—both up and down the social scale—is a requisite for a healthy and a strong society. Conversely, it follows that when in a society the élite becomes closed or nearly closed, that society is threatened either with internal revolution or with destruction from outside. It must be added that Pareto is discussing here not the law or theory dealing with entrance to the élite, but the facts. In theory—as in almost all modern nations, for example—entrance to the élite may be open to all comers. This is of no importance if, in fact, by one device or another—as, again, is true of many modern nations especially since the end of the 19th century—newcomers are kept out. In the United States, everyone has the theoretic right to become a millionaire and the owner of a great industry. In fact, however, from about the time of the First World War the door admitting newcomers to multi-millions and major ownership has been narrowing. Conversely, there have been societies where, though in theory the élite was closed (by rigid hereditary regulations), it was in fact opened, at least sometimes, by such means as adoption or clientage or re-definition of citizenship. This was true at certain periods in Athens and in Rome.

But, since a perfectly free circulation according to ability is never found, a healthy and strong society is not assured merely by keeping the élite more or less open. The additional problem remains of the kind of individuals admitted to or excluded from the élite. We have noted that, according to Pareto, the basic residues within a given society change little and slowly. However, the character of the society is determined not only by the basic residues present in the entire population, but also by the distribution of residues among the various social classes; and this distribution may change quite rapidly. To put the matter simply: a given society will include a certain and relatively stable percentage of, for example, clever individuals; but an enormous difference to the society and its development will result from the extent to which these clever individuals are concentrated in its élite, or spread evenly throughout the entire population, or even concentrated in the non-élite.

The residues which, in their circulation, are of chief influence on the social equilibrium are those belonging to Class I and Class II. Indeed, in discussing the circulation of the élites, Pareto expands his definition of these two Classes so that the whole problem can be summed up roughly in terms of them.

Individuals marked primarily by Class I (Combinations) residues are the “Foxes” of Machiavelli. They live by their wits; they put their reliance on fraud, deceit, and shrewdness. They do not have strong attachment to family, church, nation, and traditions (though they may exploit these attachments in others). They live in the present, taking little thought of the future, and are always ready for change, novelty, and adventure. In economic affairs, they incline toward speculation, promotion, innovation. They are not adept, as a rule, in the use of force. They are inventive and chance-taking.

Individuals marked by Class II (Group-Persistences) residues are Machiavelli’s “Lions.” They are able and ready to use force, relying on it rather than brains to solve their problems. They are conservative, patriotic, loyal to tradition, and solidly tied to supra-individual groups like family or Church or nation. They are concerned for posterity and the future. In economic affairs they are cautious, saving and orthodox. They distrust the new, and praise “character” and “duty” rather than wits.

Pareto cites ancient Athens as a typical example of a state with a heavy proportion of Class I residues in its élite, and an unusually large proportion even in the non-élite (where Class II residues almost always greatly predominate). From this distribution sprang many of the glories of Athens, as well as the extraordinarily rapid shifts in its fortunes. In every field, economic, political, and cultural, Athens welcomed the new, and was ready for any adventure. After the defeat of Persia at Salamis, Athens could not return to the old ways. Taking immediate advantage of the fleet which had been built up for the war, she went on to establish her commercial empire in the eastern Mediterranean. When the tribute from the alliance was no longer needed for war, it was used to build the wonderful temples and statues. Philosophers and poets were honored for attacking the old, traditional ways of life. But her glories were comparatively short-lived. She was always weakened from within by the numerous Class I individuals who were constantly forming factions, plotting with internal or external enemies, and organizing rebellions. And Athens could not endure the long-drawn-out trials of the Peloponnesian Wars. On the one hand, the Class I tendencies led her to attempt too much: she refused peace when it could have been made with honor and profit, and launched the Sicilian Expedition which in its outcome proved her ruin. On the other, wit and shrewdness were not a firm enough foundation to sustain the shock of plague, death, siege, weariness, and defeat.

Sparta, in extreme contrast, was a nation where Class II residues were wholly predominant both in the general population and in the élite. Innovation in Sparta was a crime; everything was regulated by ancient custom and religion and time-sanctified tradition. The individual counted for nothing, the group for all. Adventure was always to be distrusted. From these roots Sparta derived a tremendous power of endurance when faced with adversity. But she always stopped short of anything spectacular. She produced no philosophy, no liquid wealth, and little art. She never tried to establish a great empire. Her own armies went home after the Persians were defeated. In spite of defeats and crushing hardships, she finally conquered in the Peloponnesian Wars; but in the 4th century, when the conditions of life and warfare greatly changed, she too was lost. Because of her lack of Class I residues, Sparta could not adapt herself to new ways; so, defending the old, she perished.

The social combination that is strongest against external enemies, and at the same time able to bring about a fairly high internal level of culture and material prosperity, is that wherein (1) Class II residues are widespread and active among the masses (the non-élite); (2) the individuals with a high level of Class I residues are concentrated in the élite; (3) a fair percentage of Class II residues nevertheless still remains within the élite; (4) the élite is comparatively open, so that at least a comparatively free circulation can take place.

The meaning of this optimum combination can be translated as follows into more usual terms: (1) The masses have faith in an integrating myth or ideology, a strong sense of group solidarity, a willingness to endure physical hardship and sacrifice. (2) The best and most active brains of the community are concentrated in the élite, and ready to take advantage of whatever opportunities the historical situation presents. (3) At the same time the élite is not cynical, and does not depend exclusively upon its wits, but is able to be firm, to use force, if the internal or external condition calls for it. (4) The élite is prevented from gross degeneration through the ability of new elements to rise into its ranks.

A combination of this sort does not, however, as a rule last long. The typical, though not universal, pattern of development of organized societies goes along some such lines as these: The community (nation) becomes established and consolidated after a period of wars of conquest or of internal revolutions. At this point the governing élite is strongly weighted with Class II residues—revolutions and great wars put a premium on faith, powers of endurance, and force. After the consolidation, activities due to Class I residues increase in importance and are able to flourish. The relative percentage of Class I residues in the élite increases; the Foxes replace the Lions. The proportion of Class II residues remains high, as always, in the masses. A time of great material prosperity may follow, under the impulse and manipulations of the Class I residues. But the élite has lost its faith, its self-identification with the group; it thinks all things can be solved by shrewdness, deceit, combinations; it is no longer willing and able to use force. It reaches a point where it cannot withstand the attack from an external enemy, stronger in Class II residues; or from within, when the masses, one way or another, get a leadership able to organize their potential strength. The combinationist élite is destroyed, very often carrying its whole society to ruin along with it.

Let us put this process in the simplest possible terms by reducing it to the problem of force (noting that a willingness and ability to use force is primarily an expression of Class II Residues). “To ask whether or not force ought to be used in a society, whether the use of force is or is not beneficial, is to ask a question that has no meaning; for force is used by those who wish to preserve certain uniformities [e.g., the existing class structure of society, the status quo] and by those who wish to overstep them; and the violence of the one stands in contrast and in conflict with the violence of the others. In truth, if a partisan of a governing class disavows the use of force, he means that he disavows the use of force by insurgents trying to escape from the norms of the given uniformity. On the other hand, if he says he approves of the use of force, what he really means is that he approves of the use of force by the public authority to constrain insurgents to conformity. Conversely, if a partisan of the subject class says he detests the use of force in society, what he really detests is the use of force by constituted authorities in forcing dissidents to conform; and if, instead, he lauds the use of force, he is thinking of the use of force by those who would break away from certain social uniformities.” (2174.) [*]That is one side of the matter. But, in addition, the argument may be carried further, and directed against the use of force in any sense whatever. Such arguments express a concentration of Class I residues, at the expense of Class II, in the élite whose spokesmen formulate the arguments. “The dispute is really as to the relative merits of shrewdness and force, and to decide it in the sense that never never, not even in the exceptional case, is it useful to meet wits with violence, it would be necessary first to show that the use of cunning is always, without exception, more advisable than the use of force. Suppose a certain country has a governing class A, that assimilates the best elements, as regards intelligence, in the whole population. In that case the subject class, B, is largely stripped of such elements and can have little or no hope of ever overcoming the class A so long as it is a battle of wits. If intelligence were to be combined with force, the dominion of the A’s would be perpetual.… But such a happy combination occurs only for a few individuals. In the majority of cases people who rely on their wits are or become less fitted to use violence, and vice versa. So concentration in the class A of the individuals most adept at chicanery leads to a concentration in class B of the individuals most adept at violence; and if that process is long continued, the equilibrium tends to become unstable, because the A’s are long in cunning but short in the courage to use force and in the force itself; whereas the B’s have the force and the courage to use it, but are short in the skill required for exploiting those advantages. But if they chance to find leaders who have the skill—and history shows that such leadership is usually supplied by dissatisfied A’s—they have all they need for driving the A’s from power. Of just that development history affords countless examples from remotest times all the way down to the present.” (2190.)

The result of such a revolution—for the passage just quoted is simply the generalized description of the form of social revolutions—is to get rid of the weaker elements of the old élite, open up the élite to the rapid influx of new elements, and to alter the balance of residues in the élite in favor of those from Class II. In spite of the cost of revolution in bloodshed and suffering, it may, under certain circumstances, be both necessary and socially beneficial. Even in the latter case, however, it is always an illusion to suppose that the masses themselves take power through a revolution. The masses can never successfully revolt until they acquire a leadership, which is always made up in part of able and ambitious individuals from their own ranks who cannot gain entrance into the governing élite, and in part of disgruntled members of the existing élite (members of the nobility, for example, in the opening stages of the French Revolution, or dissatisfied intellectuals and middle-class persons in the Russian Revolution). So long, therefore, as the governing élite is both willing and in a position to destroy or to assimilate all such individuals, it has a virtual guarantee against internal revolution. If the revolution does take place, we merely find a new élite—or more properly a renewed élite, for the old is almost never wholly wiped out—in the saddle. Nevertheless, the change may quite possibly be for the benefit of the community as a whole and specifically of the masses who, remaining the ruled and not rulers, may yet be better off than before.

Pareto’s theory of the circulation of the élites is thus a theory of social change, of revolution, and of social development and degeneration. It is a re-statement, in new and more intricate terms, of the point of view common to the modern Machiavellians and found, more crude, in Machiavelli himself.

Pareto claims, as we have seen, that, though we can come to objective conclusions about the strength of a society relative to other societies, we cannot make any objective judgment about what type of social structure is “best” from the point of view of internal welfare. However, a certain tendency in his own feelings becomes evident from his analysis. To begin with, he plainly puts external strength first, since it is a pre-condition of everything else: that is, if a nation cannot survive, it is rather pointless to argue in the abstract whether or not it is a “good society.” In order to survive, a society must have a fairly free class-circulation; the élite must not bar its doors too rigidly. This freedom will at the same time on the whole operate to increase the internal well-being of the society.

Second, in discussing the distribution of residues, Pareto implicitly joins the other Machiavellians in an evident preference for social checks and balances. The strongest and healthiest societies balance a predominance of Class I residues in the élite with a predominance of Class II residues in the non-élite. But Class II residues must not be altogether excluded from the élite. If Class II residues prevail in all classes, the nation develops no active culture, degenerates in a slough of brutality and stubborn prejudice, in the end is unable to overcome new forces in its environment, and meets disaster. Disaster, too, awaits the nation given over wholly to Class I residues, with no regard for the morrow, for discipline or tradition, with a blind confidence in clever tricks as the sufficient means for salvation.

The laws of the circulation of the élites serve not only to clarify our understanding of societies of the past; they illuminate also our analysis of present societies, and even, sometimes, permit us to predict the future course of social events. Writing in the years just prior to the first World War, Pareto analyzed at length the United States and the principal nations of Europe. He found that the mode of circulation of the élites during the preceding century had brought most of these nations into a condition where the ruling classes were heavily over-weighted with Class I residues, and were subject to debilitating forms of humanitarian beliefs.

The results of such a condition he summarizes in general terms as follows: “1. A mere handful of citizens, so long as they are willing to use violence, can force their will upon public officials who are not inclined to meet violence with equal violence. If the reluctance of the officials to resort to force is primarily motivated by humanitarian sentiments, that result ensues very readily; but if they refrain from violence because they deem it wiser to use some other means, the effect is often the following: 2. To prevent or resist violence, the governing class resorts to ‘diplomacy,’ fraud, corruption—governmental authority passes, in a word, from the lions to the foxes. The governing class bows its head under the threat of violence, but it surrenders only in appearances, trying to turn the flank of the obstacle it cannot demolish in frontal attack. In the long run that sort of procedure comes to exercise a far-reaching influence on the selection of the governing class, which is now recruited only from the foxes, while the lions are blackballed. The individual who best knows the arts of sapping the strength of the foes of ‘graft’ and of winning back by fraud and deceit what seemed to have been surrendered under pressure of force, is now leader of leaders. The man who has bursts of rebellion, and does not know how to crook his spine at the proper times and places, is the worst of leaders, and his presence is tolerated among them only if other distinguished endowments offset that defect. 3. So it comes about that the residues of the combination-instinct (Class I) are intensified in the governing class, and the residues of group-persistence (Class II) debilitated; for the combination-residues supply, precisely, the artistry and resourcefulness required for evolving ingenious expedients as substitutes for open resistance, while the residues of group-persistence stimulate open resistance, since a strong sentiment of group-persistence cures the spine of all tendencies to curvature. 4. Policies of the governing class are not planned too far ahead in time. Predominance of the combination instincts and enfeeblement of the sentiments of group-persistence result in making the governing class more satisfied with the present and less thoughtful of the future. The individual comes to prevail, and by far, over family, community, nation. Material interests and interests of the present or a near future come to prevail over the ideal interests of community or nation and interests of the distant future. The impulse is to enjoy the present without too much thought for the morrow. 5. Some of these phenomena become observable in international relations as well. Wars become essentially economic. Efforts are made to avoid conflicts with the powerful and the sword is rattled only before the weak. Wars are regarded more than anything else as speculations. A country is often unwittingly edged towards war by nursings of economic conflicts which, it is expected, will never get out of control and turn into armed conflicts. Not seldom, however, a war will be forced upon a country by peoples who are not so far advanced in the evolution that leads to the predominance of Class I residues.” (2179.)

Confronted with these circumstances, Pareto believed that analogies from comparable processes in the past made plain what was to be expected. In one way or another, probably catastrophically, the social unbalance within the élites would be corrected. Internal revolutions and the impact of external wars would re-introduce into the élites large numbers of individuals strong in the residues of group-persistence (Class II) and able and willing to use force in the maintenance of social organization. This development might mean the almost total destruction of certain of the existing élites, and, along with them, of the nations which they ruled. In other cases, a sufficient alteration in the character of the élite might take place in time to preserve the community, though greatly changed.

This survey should seem familiar today. Pareto was writing, in advance, an outline history of the generation just passed, and the present. Munich, in 1938 was, in its way, a definitive expression of his theory of the circulation of the élites. At Munich, there was demonstrated the importance of an exclusive reliance on Class I residues: combinations, no matter how shrewdly conceived, could no longer meet the challenge of the matured world social problems. And at the same time Munich revealed that only those two nations—Russia and Germany—where a redistribution of the élites had already taken place, had been able to prepare seriously for the war which was so evidently sure to come.

THE MACHIAVELLIANS DEFENDERS OF FREEDOM

James Burnham

Research on children who remember previous lives began around 1960

 Beliefs about reincarnation

Before diving into the evidence, I should remind you that what is documented here is another example of simply following evidence. Reincarnation, for some, is an emotionally charged subject because of existing beliefs. This book aspires to be detached from preconceptions or wishful thinking. I certainly hadn’t heard much about reincarnation before I began my research. It was a completely foreign topic to me that  had no basis in reality, as far as I knew. It was an idea that I assumed people made up to comfort themselves about their mortality.

Lead reincarnation researcher Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia reminded us: “Critics of the evidence for reincarnation have sometimes pointed to its element of hopefulness with the dismissing suggestion that such evidence as we have derives only from wishful thinking. This objection wrongly assumes that what we desire must be false. We might be more easily persuaded to believe what we wish to believe than the contrary; nevertheless, what we wish to believe may be true. Our inquiry into the truth or falseness of an idea should proceed without regard to whether it fortifies or undermines our wishes.”6Children who remember previous lives

Research on children who remember previous lives began around 1960. Then-department head of psychiatry at the University of Virginia (UVA) Medical School, Dr. Ian Stevenson, heard about such children and became intrigued. He then devoted the remainder of his life to this study, examining more than 2,500 cases around the world, until his death in 2007. Dr. Jim Tucker, also a professor at UVA, has continued Dr. Stevenson’s research.

Dr. Stevenson’s work is highly regarded. Dr. Larry Dossey remarks:

[Stevenson] reported thousands of cases of children who remembered past lives and whose descriptions of previous existences checked out on investigation.7…No one else has researched this area with the scholarship, thoroughness, and dogged devotion to detail as he has. Stevenson combed the planet, from back roads of Burma and the remote villages of India to the largest cities on Earth. He devoted decades to scouring every continent except Antarctica, investigating always the same quarry—children who appear to remember a past life. The scope of his work is breathtakingly universal, and even skeptics are generally awed by the thousands of cases he has amassed. The cases occur in every culture including our own and demonstrate strong internal consistency.8

Furthermore, Dr. Stevenson received praise from the well-respected Journal of the American Medical Association in 1975: “In regard to reincarnation [Stevenson] has painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases from India, cases in which the evidence is difficult to explain on any other grounds.”9 What did Dr. Stevenson find?

He found common themes in the cases reported all over the world and in different cultures: A child between the ages of two and five begins to speak emotionally of a past life, including specific events (typically traumatic ones) that are clustered around the end of some previous life.10 When a child remembers his or her death, the account described is usually violent.11 Dr. Stevenson stated: “Too often the children are troubled by confusion regarding their identity and this becomes even more severe in those children who, conscious of being in a small body, can remember having been in an adult one, or who remember a life as a member of the opposite sex.”12Dr. Stevenson also noted that age plays a role in a child’s ability to describe and recall past-life memories:

I cannot emphasize too strongly that—with some exceptions—a child who is going to remember a previous life has little more than three years in which to communicate his memories of other persons, and he often has less. Before the age of two or three he lacks the vocabulary and verbal skill with which to express what he may wish to communicate. And from the age of about five on, heavy layers of verbal information cover the images in which his memories appear to be mainly conveyed; amnesia for the memories of a previous life sets in and stops further communication of them.13Often children’s traits can be linked to the previous lives they remember, such as fears, preferences, interests, and skills.14 These traits typically bear no resemblance to those of anyone in the child’s current family. In some cases, the traits make no sense for a young child, such as desiring certain foods that the family doesn’t eat, or desiring “clothes different from those customarily worn by the family members.” Stranger than that are cases in which the child has “cravings for addicting substances, such as tobacco, alcohol or other drugs that the previous personality was known to have used.”15

In some cases, the person allegedly being reincarnated had made a prediction of the next life before his or her death. In other cases, the child has birthmarks, birth defects, or other biological features that align with events of past lives (to be discussed further in the next section).  In a minority of cases, the child exhibits “xenoglossy”: speaking a foreign language he or she hasn’t been taught.16Where possible, Drs. Stevenson and Tucker have looked for historical facts demonstrating that the person the child remembered matches the child’s description. The degree of historical verifiability varies from case to case, but in some cases the accuracy is astounding. In such cases, it is difficult to imagine how a young child could possess such knowledge without access to some broader consciousness.

James 3

One such case is of James Leininger, a young boy in Lafayette, Louisiana.17 When James was 22 months old, his father took him to a museum, and he showed an affinity for the World War II exhibit. Prior to going to the museum, James had been pointing at planes flying overhead, but he became much more interested after the museum visit. So his parents bought him toy planes and a video of the Blue Angels, the Navy’s exhibition team (formed after World War II). James was obsessed and would crash the toy planes into the family’s coffee table, denting and scratching the table while saying, “Airplane crash on fire.” After his second birthday, he began having nightmares several times a week. He thrashed around the bed with his legs in the air, yelling, “Airplane crash on fire! Little man can’t get out!” When awake, he said, “Mama, before I was born, I was a pilot and my airplane got shot in the engine and it crashed in the water, and that’s how I died.” He told his dad the Japanese shot his plane as part of the Iwo Jima operation, that the plane was a Corsair (a plane not at the museum James had visited), which flew off of a boat called the Natoma. He also mentioned that Jack Larsen was there. An additional strange behavior: James was signing his name “James 3.”

James’s parents were confused, so they investigated some of James’s claims. Ultimately, they discovered that James’s description matched the historical facts of the life of James Huston Jr. (i.e., James the second), a pilot on Natoma Bay who had flown a Corsair and was shot down (in another plane) by the Japanese. Huston was the only pilot killed in the Iwo Jima operation, and eyewitnesses reported that the plane was “hit head-on right on the middle of the engine,” after which it crashed in the water and quickly sank. Jack Larsen was the pilot of the plane next to James Huston’s plane.

 The Hollywood extra

Another case is of a four-year-old boy, Ryan, who was born into an Oklahoma family that was traditionally Christian and did not believe in reincarnation.18 When Ryan played, he would often act as though he was directing imaginary movies by saying, “Action!” When he would see the Hollywood Hills on TV, he would say: “That’s my home. That’s where I belong…I just can’t live in these conditions. My last home was much better.”19 He also talked about having traveled the world and loved Chinatown, saying it had the best food. Ryan claimed that he chose his mother before he was born.

Eventually Ryan started having nightmares, waking up saying he was in Hollywood and his heart exploded. Confused, his mother bought Hollywood books to see if they would trigger any memories. In one book, Ryan saw a photograph of six men from a 1932 movie called Night After Night. He said, “Hey, Mama that’s George. We did a picture together. And Mama, that guy’s me. I found me.” Ryan’s mother researched and learned that the man Ryan had identified as George was a movie star in the 1930s/1940s named George Raft. However, Ryan’s parents could not identify the person who Ryan claimed was “him.”

After investigation with the help of Dr. Tucker, they discovered that the man Ryan pointed to was named Marty Martyn, an extra who had no lines in Night After Night. Dr. Tucker tracked down Marty’s daughter, and she and Ryan then met in person. Ryan’s reaction: “Same face, but she didn’t wait on me. She changed. Her energy changed.”20

Many of the claims Ryan had made lined up. For example, Ryan talked of taking girlfriends to the ocean; Marty had taken girlfriends to the ocean and had been married four times. Ryan had remembered an African American maid, and indeed, Marty had one. Ryan mentioned meeting “Senator Five” in New York; Marty’s daughter had a picture of Marty with Senator Ives of New York. Ryan said he was a smoker; Marty smoked cigars. Ryan recalled having a nice home and traveling; Marty had a big house with a swimming pool and traveled the world. Ryan talked about liking the food in Chinatown; Marty had enjoyed a Chinese restaurant in Hollywood. Marty died in a hospital room when he was alone, so it is not known whether a heart attack was the ultimate cause of his death, as Ryan’s nightmares would have suggested.

 As Dr. Tucker summarizes it: “Many of the details Ryan gave did fit the man he pointed to in the picture, who had a much more exciting life than anyone could have guessed a movie extra would have.”21

How could these children know such detailed facts at such a young age with no evidence of exposure to the details they report?

No wonder Carl Sagan thought this was an area deserving “serious study.”

Birthmarks and physical defects

Dr. Stevenson also found links between previous lives and birthmarks and physical defects. His body of work is robust—he wrote a two-volume book entitled Reincarnation and Biology, which is more than 2,000 pages long, with dense scientific text and fine print, covering 200 cases (with photographic evidence).

Amazingly, the birthmarks and physical defects he studied correlate to “previous lives” described by the children he examined. It’s one thing to read summaries of Dr. Stevenson’s work here in this book, but it’s another to see the pictures and detail contained in his literature. In an attempt to simply provide some flavor here, I present several examples out of many.

In some cases, birthmarks correspond to wounds verified by a child’s memories. For example, Dr. Stevenson described a Turkish boy who remembered a previous life in which he was stabbed through the liver area. In this life, the boy had a “large depressed birthmark, really a small cavity in the skin, over his liver.”22 In another example, a boy from Burma had “a small round birthmark in his right lower abdomen and a much larger birthmark on his right back. These correspond to wounds of entry and exit on the bandit whose life he remembered.”23In the strongest cases, medical records verify that the location of a birthmark matches where a trauma occurred in a deceased person. A Lebanese boy recalled a previous life in which he was drinking coffee before leaving for work one day and was shot in the face. The story was verified by an actual shooting that took place. According to medical records related to the shooting, the bullet entered one cheek, damaged the man’s tongue, exited through the other cheek, and the man later died in the hospital. The boy, who claims to be the next incarnation of the murdered man, had birthmarks on each check and had difficulty articulating words that required him to elevate his tongue. Dr. Stevenson reported: “I was able  to study the hospital record in this case. It showed that the birthmark on [the boy’s] left cheek, which was the smaller of the two, corresponded to the wound of entry, and the larger birthmark on the right cheek corresponded to the wound of exit.”24In another case, a Turkish boy was believed to be the next incarnation of a recently deceased relative who died after being shot. The bullet did not exit his head, but the pathologist made an incision to extract the bullet. The Turkish boy was born with a birthmark that corresponded with the location of the incision. Dr. Stevenson commented: “Like many other children of these cases, [the boy] showed powerful attitudes of vengefulness toward the man who had shot [him in the previous life]. He once tried to take his father’s gun and shoot this person, but was fortunately restrained.”25 The boy came to his parents in their dreams, before he was born, saying he would be the next incarnation of this same deceased relative.

It gets even weirder.

Dr. Stevenson examined “experimental” birthmarks: cases in which a mark was left on the body of a deceased person in the hopes that the mark would show on the person who later reincarnates. In a case in Thailand in 1969, a boy’s dead body was marked with charcoal before he was cremated. He had died from drowning. The next boy that the same mother birthed was born with a birthmark near the location of the charcoal marking. Once the boy was able to speak, he began describing details of the life his deceased brother lived. He also had a fear of water.26In another case in Burma, a girl died after unsuccessful open-heart surgery. Her classmates put a mark in red lipstick on the back of her neck before she was buried, in the hopes that the mark would show in the deceased girl’s next incarnation. Thirteen months after the girl’s death, her sister gave birth to a girl who had a “prominent red birthmark at the back of her neck in the same location where [the deceased girl’s] schoolmates marked her with lipstick” [emphasis in original]. Dr. Stevenson commented that she also had a birthmark that appeared as a thin line with “diminished pigmentation that ran vertically from her lower chest to her upper abdomen. This corresponded to the surgical incision for the cardiac surgery during which [the girl] had died.”27

In other cases, more extreme physical deformities can be linked to traumas experienced by the previous life remembered by the child. A Burmese girl was born with birthmarks near her heart and on her head; she was missing  the fifth finger on her left hand, and she had “constriction rings” on her legs, the most dramatic of which was on her left thigh.28 In the disturbing picture provided by Dr. Stevenson in Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (shown below), her leg looks as though it had been constricted by something like a rope. But her leg is naturally shaped that way, without anything constricting it. It is by no means the typical shape of a leg. When the girl was able to speak, she identified herself as a man who had been tortured (fingers cut, tied in ropes). Dr. Stevenson was eventually able to verify this man’s identity. There was indeed a person tortured and killed in the precise manner described by the little girl. Distressed by her birthmarks and deformities, the little girl said, “Grandpa. Look at what they did to me. How cruel they were.”29How could she have known such specific details? Why would a young child be saying these things? Why did her body reflect such distinctive deformities that matched the way the man had died?

Dr. Ian Stevenson investigated the case of a young girl who had specific, distinctive deformities that match how she described dying in a past life (shown above). In fact, there was a person who died in the precise manner described by the little girl. She described being tied in ropes and tortured in her past life. The shape of her legs seems to match that description. The figure above is from Dr. Stevenson’s bookWhere Reincarnation and Biology Intersect(1997).

 Dr. Stevenson noted that the girl’s mother happened to have walked past the tortured man’s dead body when she was two and a half months pregnant. She saw the police handling the situation. She believes the same man came to her in a dream before her daughter was born.30 Was this little girl the next incarnation of the man who was tortured—even though this man had no biological relationship to the little girl?

Maternal impressions

Dr. Stevenson conceded that in some cases it is not fully clear that birth defects can be tied directly to a previous life. Instead, “maternal impressions” sometimes could have been the cause. Maternal impressions refer to frightening mental images that the mother of a baby has during pregnancy, which result in the baby’s having a deformity that closely matches the mental image. Dr. Stevenson referenced an 1890 study at the University of Virginia written by a pediatrician who reviewed 90 maternal-impression cases. In these cases, the mother experienced something particularly frightening during pregnancy. And in 77 percent of the cases, there was “‘quite a close correspondence’ between the impression upon the mother during pregnancy and her baby’s defect.”31

Dr. Stevenson researched this topic further and focused on 300 cases from around the world, of which he studied 50 in detail. The example that Dr. Stevenson pointed to is disturbing, but makes the point. He recalled the case of a woman whose brother’s penis was amputated for medical reasons. While pregnant, “her curiosity impelled her to have a look at the site of her brother’s amputation.”32 She then gave birth to a male baby without a penis. Dr. Stevenson researched medical records of the general population and found the odds of a male baby being born with this birth defect is one in 30 million.

Dr. Stevenson’s analysis of the cases revealed that maternal impressions most likely impacted the baby when the impression occurred during the first trimester of pregnancy and when the traumatic incident occurred to the mother or someone close to her.33 Examples such as this caused Dr. Stevenson to question whether every case of physical deformity was induced by reincarnation. Instead, it is possible that some cases could be attributed to maternal impressions (which on its own deserves investigation!).

 But Dr. Stevenson noted that sometimes the mother had no knowledge of a deformity during pregnancy. In those cases, the maternal-impressions explanation doesn’t hold, and something else (reincarnation?) is needed as an explanation.34

Where does this leave us?

The totality of Drs. Stevenson’s and Tucker’s work points in the following direction, as summarized by Dr. Stevenson: “Some persons have unique attributes that we cannot now explain satisfactorily as due solely to a combination of genetic variation and environmental influences. Reincarnation deserves consideration as a third factor in play.”35 If this is true, the implications are immense for science, medicine, and beyond (as we’ll explore in chapter 13).

Under the materialist view that the brain produces consciousness, reincarnation is “nonsense.” However, if consciousness is more fundamental than matter and does not arise from brain activity, then the evidence discussed in this chapter is truly plausible.

Chapter Summary

❍Drs. Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker of the University of Virginia have studied more than 2,500 children over 50-plus years who claim to remember previous lives.

❍Sometimes the stories these young children tell match historical records of the individuals they claim they were in past lives. In other cases, the children speak foreign languages that they had no way of knowing.

❍In some cases, the child has distinctive birthmarks or physical deformities that match the way in which the child describes having died in a previous life. Sometimes, medical records verified the accuracy of the child’s claims.

An End to Upside Down Thinking

Dispelling the Myth That the Brain ProducesC onsciousness, and the Implications for Everyday Life

Mark Gober

To be powerful enough...

 

Joel Davis: We’re never going to live in a world where people treat it [ethics] as an absolute because it’s fundamentally incongruent with the human condition and with the political as such! The political is fundamentally a question of:

“What are you willing to fight for. On what basis can the state legitimate war? On what basis can the state legitimate putting people in prison? On what basis can the state legitimate organise men with guns, pointing them in people’s faces and potentially shooting?”

That’s what politics is about.

And so there is not going to be a world in which we all put down our guns and sit down and rationally negotiate some peaceful set of agreements. Now with our guns pointed in mutual directions, we can sit down and negotiate alliances or negotiate agreements to prevent us from engaging in mutually destructive conflicts. So we can have a limited negotiation, but we’re never going to have an absolute negotiation. So it’s not only like frivolous question that has no basis in historical or human reality!
***
[As far as political reality goes, unfortunately Joel Davis is right. (With exception of the times of Universal Monarch, but even if Universal Monarch isn't myth but very real possibility, waiting for the next one may take some time 😌.) Of course such realistic political thinking should not be applied on individual level. The most fundamental difference: ariyan as the ethnic group strives (or should strive) to survive in space and time, ariya as individual aspires to cessation of his own existence in space and time😌. From this point of view entire discussion isn't of any value. But on lower level perhaps is no harm to be able distinguish between the two levels of ethical conduct and abandon the idea that we can't be treated as "enemy" simply because of our ethnicity. Joel Davis operates only within the question: "What should be done for survival of White Man Civilization", and his views may seem cynical and unethical, unfortunately history teaches us that politics is all about power, and one who promotes noble idea of pacifism (valid on individual level)  as valid for entire nation actually proposes suicide of entire nation.]

Greg Johnson: Will Germany and France fight it out?

Joel Davis: Well, I mean they probably will have antagonism, but you know, if they have a mutual animus of greater enemies around the world, that gives them a strong incentive to work out their differences and form a strong alliance. Right?

Greg Johnson: Yeah. I mean, it’s possible to come up with a simulacrum of human behaviour that’s entirely based on selfishness as a motivation. And liberals love to do that. Right. And foreign policy realists love to do that’s sort of what you’re doing now.

Joel Davis: It’s not based on selfishness though. It’s securing your national community and its future, that is not selfishness. That’s service to your people!

Greg Johnson: Well, but you’re talking about selfishness in terms of vis a vis other countries. And I, …

Joel Davis: Yeah. Okay. So obviously Germans care more about Germans than they care about Greek people. But there could still be a wider European fidelity as well. It’s not an either or.

Greg Johnson: Yeah.

Joel Davis: They can also care about Europe at large.

Greg Johnson: Yeah.

Joel Davis: Like if you’re really awake, you would realise that the particular national destiny of any one European nation is actually intimately tied to the collective destiny of the European people. And so you have to safeguard that to safeguard your own national interests as well.

So you can have concentric circles of identity. It doesn’t have to be one absolute identity to the exclusion of all others. There can be multiple layers of identity at play. Just like you’re a member of a family, you’re a member of member local community, you’re a member of a nation, you’re a member of a race. Like all of these things are important and have to be balanced.

The point of reducing it to selfishness, I mean, it’s just that only makes sense in your abstract theoretical model. It doesn’t actually make sense in the concrete humanity of what we’re discussing. Patriotism is not selfish. Patriotism is a love of the other, of the direct other of your blood!

Greg Johnson: Yeah. I do think it’s possible for there to be non-selfish relationships of amity and mutual respect between different peoples. And they’re.

Joel Davis: Yeah, of course that’s possible, but it’s still like, for example, Australia now has an alliance with the Japanese.

Greg Johnson: Yeah.

Joel Davis: Now there was one point in which we were massacring each other, in the Second World War and they were a great threat to us.

But now Australia and Japan, because of the strategic circumstances surrounding the rapid rise of Chinese military and economic power, well now we have common cause and we have very strong military agreements. Both of our militaries have permission to operate in each other’s sovereign territories, which is agreement that I think both countries only have with the United States and maybe we have similar agreements maybe with the British actually as well. But it’s a pretty like rare agreement for either country to have with another country.

So we have very close military relationship now. And I admire Japanese culture. I think Japanese culture has a lot of very compelling things both historically and contemporarily and I think the Japanese people are very respectable people and I’m happy to be allied, and I think it’s a good thing for both countries for us to have an alliance.

But at the end of the day, if circumstances were different like in the Second World War where Japanese interests and Australian interests are diametrically opposed, then I am totally fine with killing Japanese people. Right. Because that’s actually what’s good for Australians. Those two things can both be true.

So it isn’t about that I respect their universal right to self-determination. I don’t! I don’t give a shit about this universal concept of self-determination! I care about the particularity of how is my region going to be organised and how can I secure a future for my people. If that means respecting the Japanese nation as our ally, then I respect the Japanese nation as our ally. I would also like it if the Chinese state was divided into like 10 states, because that would be fantastic for Australia because then it would completely weaken them and they could all be turned against each other and massacre each other. That would be in my interest as well.

So I don’t give a shit about the Chinese right to national self-determination because that right actually is very scary, if it’s practiced! And that’s, I think that’s a totally reasonable worldview. I care about my people more than I care about Chinese people or I care about Japanese people. So it’s all relative.

Greg Johnson: Well, I think that’s completely reasonable because there is this, but that’s a universal fact as well, namely that people have a love of their own and given that you have the greatest interest in your own people, it makes sense for you to take care of your own people first. But you also recognise that that’s true of everybody else on the planet. And again, you can posit an international order that respects that fact, …

Joel Davis: And I don’t support Aboriginal self-determination. There are people! Because that directly conflicts with my, the sovereignty of my people over this continent.

So I don’t actually respect the universal right to self-determination! That’s the thing. I will respect particular claims to self-determination where it makes sense, but I do not support an abstract universal. The abstract universal doesn’t actually exist! It isn’t based on anything. You’re proposing that we negotiate one into existence on the basis of our shared individual national interests.

Greg Johnson: We can raise the question like this. You can say, okay, let’s say that, let’s use this example. Let’s talk about property rights within Australia. You have private property rights. Now you could go through life negotiating and calculating all the whole time and saying:

“Well, you know, is respecting this person’s property rights in my interests in this particular moment?”

And oftentimes it might not be, but you might still recognise that as a general rule, having a system of private property in place benefits you as much as it benefits other people. And therefore you want to, you’re not going to go through life thinking:

“Can I steal this pen and get away with it?”

You sort of get beyond that because you recognise that you’ve got a general interest in civilised rules like respecting other people’s property. And you can go on to you broaden that out. Any kind of general civilised rules. You might be able to benefit yourself by violating these rules in particular circumstances. But in a broader sense you probably benefit from just having these rules.

Joel Davis: As a nationalist, I support seizing the property of foreign nationals. I support seizing the property of racial aliens. I support a taxation system that seizes a significant portion of everyone’s property in order to make arrangements for national defense. And the national interest in various other ways. And so I don’t actually respect the universal right to property. I respect the limited right to property.

Greg Johnson: It’s an analogy. Okay, I’m not saying, …

Joel Davis: That’s the same as what I’m saying on the international basis. I respect in a limited sense, the national self-determination of various other peoples, but I do not support it in an absolute sense.

Greg Johnson: Would you be safer in a world where people treated it as an absolute or treated it as something that they renegotiated in every particular circumstance.

Joel Davis: We’re never going to live in a world where people treat it as an absolute because it’s fundamentally incongruent with the human condition and with the political as such! The political is fundamentally a question of:

“What are you willing to fight for. On what basis can the state legitimate war? On what basis can the state legitimate putting people in prison? On what basis can the state legitimate organise men with guns, pointing them in people’s faces and potentially shooting?”

That’s what politics is about.

And so there is not going to be a world in which we all put down our guns and sit down and rationally negotiate some peaceful set of agreements. Now with our guns pointed in mutual directions, we can sit down and negotiate alliances or negotiate agreements to prevent us from engaging in mutually destructive conflicts. So we can have a limited negotiation, but we’re never going to have an absolute negotiation. So it’s not only like frivolous question that has no basis in historical or human reality!

Greg Johnson: I don’t think it’s baseless, because the world has been working in one way or another for hundreds of years to create institutions that allow different states to come together and mediate conflicts and avoid conflicts.

Joel Davis: But that is the world underneath the domination of the United States of America. This idea of liberal nationalism has only actually been successfully implanted, implemented underneath American global power where the American led international order has been organised around these institutions. But without the American guarantee of power, sovereignty, etc, what the American Navy guaranteeing global trade, American participation in all these international institutions, they would crumble! They would no longer function! And insofar as states have become powerful enough to challenge the American led international order, they challenge these institutions and they’re, and at the same time America itself has destroyed the legitimacy of these institutions by also violating its dictates where it saw fit, for example, in the invasion of Iran.

Greg Johnson: Absolutely! Absolutely!

Joel Davis: So these institutions are fundamentally, as I said, I use the phrase “bullshit edifice”! It’s a very reasonable assessment. It’s a very reasonable assessment because what it actually is a form of American imperialism. And that’s all it is, basically.

But then with a very amicable negotiation, it’s a very good propaganda. It’s a very good way of bringing your junior partners in the empire in and giving them representation and giving them a voice and so on, which is a prudent way to run an empire. But what it isn’t, is what you’re describing it isn’t actually a respect for the abstract universal of self-determination because that same American empire has been utterly destroying in concrete terms our capacity as Western states to have self-determination by literally genociding our race and creating state sponsored programs to destroy our national self consciousness!

So according to the abstract universal, well we’re all in all these international organisations that respect Australian sovereignty or French sovereignty or German sovereignty or Italian sovereignty or whatever. But in concrete terms there’s a series of international institutions and organisations and the perpetuation of an international order that destroys the capacity of our nations to have a genuine seat at the table because we can’t even be self conscious. We can’t even assert our national interest within our own political process!

So we have a bunch of traitors that will go and sit at these international meetings and represent us. Well, isn’t that fucking fantastic? I feel:

“Oh my national self-determination is so respected when they send some communist traitor like Anthony Albanese to go sit at the UN and go and sit down with the Indian Prime Minister and negotiate how they’re going to bring more Indian immigrants into Australia so I can be genocided more quickly!”

That’s fantastic!

Greg Johnson: Well I was, last year I gave a talk at the Institute for Historical Review in Southern California and I gave this analogy that I’ve used for years about how institutions fail, how diversity hollows out institutions. And I talked about the fire department. It was just an arbitrary thing. I said imagine the fire department decides to go woke and diversify and you know, it’s all fine, it’s all well and good if you lower standards and you spend more time worrying about the gender and racial mix of the people on the department, so forth. It’s great, it’s great for parades, it’s great for propaganda videos. But what if there’s an actual fire?

And then as if on cue, [chuckling] right? As if God wanted to prove my point, Los Angeles bur burned down! And we found that part of the reasons why the fire department was so ineffectual was it was being run by a lesbian and it was full of lesbians and they were all doing TikTok videos showing off their diversity, but they weren’t paying attention to what was necessary to actually put out fires. And you can just say that this is an institution that’s been rotted out by a crazed idea. Right?

And this is the way I think we have to understand what’s happened with NATO and the EU, and things like that. The purpose of the fire department is to fight fires and the purpose of NATO is to defend its member states. And the purpose of the EU is to pursue conflict resolution and greater prosperity and mutual understanding and respect in Europe, blah, blah, blah. And these institutions unfortunately have been become infected with these insane ideas, this insane woke ideology.

But we have to understand that there’s a distinction between the institutions and its purposes and the bizarre destructive goals that they have been wrenched around to by these ideologues.

Joel Davis: They’re not just “bizarre”, Greg. They’re not just like this random appendage of ideas that that spontaneously emerged within these institutions and just made them retarded! What these ideas are in concrete and historical terms is a social engineering project to actively destroy the national identities of the constituent states that make up this liberal international order. Because of the recognition that nationalism is an idea which contradicts this liberal international order and its fundamental premises itself, embodied in National Socialist Germany. So, but if you understand it historically and dialectically, then that is the case.

Like if you look at the motivations of these “woke” academics, so to speak, if you look at the motivations that they explicitly state themselves, particularly in that 1950s, 1960s period where these ideas are being formulated and they’re being actively supported and so on, their concrete motivation is directed specifically at the Third Reich and its conditions. And there was a mutation in Left-wing ideology around the recognition that:

“Well, when the White working class is empowered, they didn’t actually support socialism, they supported fascism and National Socialism. And so the Left needs to be reconstituted around a different set of clients as opposed to the working class.”

Greg Johnson: Absolutely, yeah.

Joel Davis: And so all of, all of these things are fundamentally relevant. And so the rehabilitation of the nationalist idea as something which can stand necessarily has to stand against the Liberal international order. The rehabilitation of a nation which asserts itself in its particularity that doesn’t need to justify itself within these, the shackles of these moral universalisms that you’re so partial to is fundamentally tied to the historical experience of the National Socialist regime insofar as it existed.

Now that doesn’t mean that every single illiberal nationalist is exactly the same as a National Socialist. But what it does mean is that nationalism has been fundamentally cucked and morally outmoded from our political process. It can’t represent itself correctly, it can’t assert itself, and in fact is being actively attacked pre-emptively and purposefully to make it harder and harder and harder for any for a nationalist movement to ever exist, that it has any concrete chances of success in any of our respective democracies. In order to preserve this liberal international order where no nation starts thinking about its own interests too hard and starts asserting them too directly and brings down this whole bullshit edifice as I called it, and starts challenging the American led liberal international order.

So this is all interconnected! It’s not just like oh, we had this great idea of liberal internationalism back in the 19th century and it went all wrong with wokeness. We could just get back to it. It’s completely non-dialectical, it’s completely ahistorical to think like that!

And it’s also just patently ridiculous when you think about how discourse actually works in the contemporary situation. That’s why it works the way that it does. That’s why whenever you start advocating for anything that sounds like White nationalism or ethno-nationalism in any White country, particularly in Western Europe or the English speaking world, immediately you start getting called the Nazi and all of these discussions around National Socialism start popping back up because it is all fundamentally tied. But there still needs to be a level of rehabilitation where we say:

“Okay, but the Germans asserting their national interest wasn’t some unique historical evil.”

Greg Johnson: My position still boils down to this. I think that National Socialism was the wrong kind of nationalism! It was the bad kind of nationalism in the sense that it was imperialistic, that it was aggrandizing itself at the expense of other primarily White European nations.

And basically I think that what nationalists need to do, and I’m going to put this in an intentionally provocative way, is that we need to solemnly swear that we’re not going to do that kind of shit again!

Joel Davis: I diametrically oppose you. I think it was the good kind of nationalism precisely because it didn’t cuck itself to these universalist moral limits that you want to impose upon nationalism, and actually took on a form that was actually capable of asserting itself in a totalizing way against the enemies of nationalism, which were foreign and domestic. And that in order for us to free ourselves as a race of all of these forces, whether it be the Leftists, whether it be jews, whether it be what have you, structures of international finance, capitalist elites that are diametrically opposed to nationalist goals, all the rest of it. We need to take on a similarly uncompromising ideological project that seeks to seize state power and then use state power to utterly destroy and eradicate them from our lands and push them back. Create an international order in which they fear us too much to attack us.

In fact it actually makes sense why they would react against liberalism, why they would react against Marxism, why they would react against jewish subversion in the way that they did, why they would find a necessity to take on the Soviet Union and the Anglo-American world order to try and assert a different idea for Europe and a different political order for Europe. All of this actually makes sense! And is actually things that we can sympathize with and you should sympathize with, particularly in retrospect after seeing what has happened after their defeat, if you actually care about the European race and its destiny.

That is ultimately the only way in which we can genuinely have self-determination as a race is to become powerful enough to do that, to actually defeat our enemies! And actually be sovereign over our own territories. And that’s what those are the principles in National Socialism, not necessarily the, … Now German Chauvinism I, from the perspective of culture, I do think the Germans had the greatest culture of any nation in Europe. They are the cultural and spiritual Guardians of the European race, particularly in the modern world. You could make historical arguments as well, but particularly in the modern world because okay, you want to cry about Poland. Where’s Poland’s Beethoven? Where’s Poland’s Wagner? Where’s Poland’s Hegel? Where’s Poland’s Nietzsche? Where’s Poland’s Heidegger? Where’s, … The list goes on. The Germans and their contribution is exceptional without equal in the modern world.

And also it is antagonistic directly to the ideas of which have destroyed Europe. The Germans were the great power in Europe that actively, on a cultural and political basis provided the most resistance to the development of this hellscape that is what has become of modernity.

So the Germans should be Chauvinistic to a very large extent. They should see themselves as superior because they actually are on a cultural basis. But I don’t necessarily mean that doesn’t necessarily mean they should be genociding the other European peoples. It doesn’t mean though that the other European people should be looking to German culture for leadership as opposed to looking to Anglo-American culture for leadership, which has been a total disaster! Which is what has actually happened due to our imposition. And what that means is jewish cultural subversion and leadership to a very large extent because we’re infected with this.

So that’s what has actually become of Europe’s destiny, which has been a total disaster! So I think Germanophilia is actually necessary for the White race because the Germans did provide, in their political thought, in their philosophical thought, in the development of their particular nationalist movement, the most spiritually powerful refutation of all of these forces. And then they then created, in a political form, the most politically powerful opposition to all of these forces.

And so, of course we defend it. Absolutely!

Greg Johnson: And yet they were defeated by liberal internationalism. Is there any lesson in there?

Joel Davis: Yeah, they were defeated by an ideology that is genociding our race. So you could say:

“Hey, this ideology that is genociding our race won against an ideology that was trying to defend our race. So maybe we should side with the ideology that genocides our race!”

No! That’s not the lesson to be taken away.

(...)

Joel Davis: But also, you also have the other side of that coin, which is that. Well, yes, like often major conflicts can be quite shocking to the communities involved in them and they can retreat into a more pacifistic set of doctrines for a period of time.

But then there always comes a point as well in history where a particular paradigm becomes so intolerable and a different idea in opposition to it becomes so compelling that eventually you get another major conflict. And that’s part of the human condition.

And right now our race is being genocided! Right?

So this is existential. This isn’t just a battle of ideological preference or something on the basis of these values or those values. This is a fundamentally existential question. Are we going to continue to exist as a race or not? And that is in a very precarious position. And the entire establishment of the Liberal international order is basically in an agreement that. Yeah, that this is either unimportant or that they actively support it. Right. In most cases.

So under those conditions, an ideology that is violent or that has violent potential is actually alluring. An ideology which limits itself purely to moralizing and rational discourse and so on lacks appeal because we do not have a rational and sympathetic interlocutor with whom we’re negotiating our survival. Here we have an existential enemy. And an existential enemy can only be confronted through force, through active resistance.

Joel Davis: Yeah, yes and no.

Greg Johnson: That is why my ideaactually has incredible relevance to the contemporary situation, because I do not believe that we’re going to negotiate our survival under this order. I think we’re going to need to assert it.

Greg Johnson: I disagree with you on this because what we have is we’ve got an existential enemy that’s a rather small party, a rather small number of people spread around the world in key positions. But these people depend upon a large number of other people who are basically just goofy liberals. And these goofy liberals can be persuaded. Especially because even from their point of view, there’s something ridiculously unjust about, say, the idea that:

“It’s okay for China to be for the Chinese, and Africa for the Africans, but White countries are for everyone.”

There are things about this ideology that’s promoting and greasing the way towards White genocide. They’re just flagrantly immoral by liberal universal standards!

And frankly, what we have to do to beat the enemy, which is an existential enemy and is not going to be persuaded, but to beat them, we have to start reducing the number of people who are on their side! People who take their phone calls and take their money and make this shit happen! We have to reduce the number of people on their side. And the way we can do that most easily is not playing into the stereotypes of the 1930s, but by using patient arguments that appeal to moral universalism, ideas of fairness and things like that. Because there’s nothing unfair about nationalism for all people.

Joel Davis: What you’re now appealing to is, first of all, a quantitative rather than qualitative argument. You’re saying:

“Well, if we remove the moral barriers to entry for the largest number of people, this is going to ultimately be what best serves the nationalist movement.”

I believe in quality over quantity. I believe that what is actually necessary is to cultivate a spirit of radicalism and of sacrifice.

Because the reality is in politics, there is a Pareto distribution of political influence. A very small amount of people have pretty much all the influence.

Greg Johnson: Absolutely.

Joel Davis:: And most people are not that politically active at all! They maybe vote once every four years, if that. And they don’t really have a very well developed political worldview. Only a very small minority of the population is politically engaged enough to even have an ideological worldview, and is engaged enough to be participating in the political process in a more direct way.

And those people fundamentally set the paradigm. So going for broad spectrum mass appeal with people who are largely indifferent towards politics is not going to be that successful. We already have the opinion polls, right? In basically every White country. Nationalist political policies are more popular than their alternatives on basically every metric. What actually will create political power is a committed group of radicals who are willing to devote their life, their resources, their time, their efforts to struggle for political victory. An ideology, …

Greg Johnson: I absolutely agree with that.

Joel Davis: Inspiring those people with an ideology like mine. An ideology like yours, the spirit of compromise, the spirit of kind of reducing oneself to achieve mass appeal is going to actually turn off those who seek after ideological coherence, those who seek after purity of thought, those who seek after purity of principle.

And also your worldview is fundamentally already conceding defeat in many respects to the enemy. It is fundamentally lacking in confidence in our own people’s innate capacity to assert our collective will.

Greg Johnson: I absolutely have enormous and reasonable doubts about that! Until they are given, … I mean, people. This is a very cynical thing. People are only as good or bad as they are, … You know, basically, they’re as good as they’re permitted to be, or they’re as bad as they’re permitted to be. What permits them? Well, ultimately it’s going to be their consciences.

But there’s another thing about the sort of political process as I understand it, that needs to be brought in here. I do think that most people are politically passive. I do think that our enemies are highly, politically, active. But they exist in tiny numbers. But around them is a group of people who are more politically engaged because they’re cogs in the machine. And it’s those people. And that would include, you know, educated people with above average social capital, people with above average incomes. These people count more. And these people are being held in bondage basically, to the woke idiots who are running our race to ruin by certain moral principles that they hold. I think that that moral consciousness has been hacked and distorted and turned against our interests and that we can, by appealing to them, change things around. And we can’t do that by enacting 30s fascist stereotypes.

And there’s no way of doing that!

Joel Davis: Let me respond to that though, because number one, what you’re basically saying is that, yes, the issue is the moral state of our people. What I believe the solution then is to create an inspirational, romantic, idealistic notion in direct opposition to those moral values. Because frankly, the vast majority of Whites do not go along with Left-wing ideology, or Leftism gone mad, whatever it is. This ideology of White self-erasure on the basis of its internal compunction and they’re like deeply committed to it, to its values. It’s simply a product of social inertia and a fear of social exclusion and other social penalties. It’s easier to just internalise and believe the prevailing worldview to basically go along to get along. There’s only a very small minority of Whites that are actually active Leftists that really, truly and deeply and viscerally believe in these principles. And they’re obviously largely motivated by themselves being very spiritually and psychologically defective to the point of a collective self hatred which I diagnose as most fundamentally being a consequence of seeing this ideology as a way to drag down their superiors within our own race.

[Remainder of Transcript in Progress]

https://katana17.com/2025/10/28/counter-currents-radio-no-629-joel-davis-and-the-ns-question-mar-26-2025-transcript/