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Subject: Holocaust Almanac - Yockey's "Imperium" - A Critique
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                       Francis Parker Yockey's 

         "Imperium, The Philosophy of History and Politics"

                      a Summary and Evaluation
                        by Neighbors Network

   The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the
   growing violence and instability both around the world and here in
   the United States, have impressed on the minds of millions the idea
   that the world is at a crossroads.  People with an interest in
   history and in ideas are hungry for a perspective that can show
   their own country and the world what new direction it can take to
   get out of the current confusion.  So far, two trends have emerged.
   New nations have arisen and claimed what they consider to be their
   rights, including sometimes the right of revenge against their
   neighbors for centuries-old grievances, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
   On the other hand, former U.  S.  President George Bush and others
   have expressed the hope for a New World Order.

   "Imperium, The Philosophy of History and Politics" by Francis
   Parker Yockey, published in 1948 and still available, provides an
   ambitious perspective on the future, specifically for all peoples
   of European descent.  Francis P.  Yockey was no statesman, nor a
   professional academic, and he has been dead for thirty years.  Why
   is his book important today?

   "Imperium" is important because Willis Carto is important.  Willis
   A.  Carto, publisher since the Seventies of the tabloid newspaper
   "Spotlight," knew Yockey in the last decade of his life, was one of
   the last visitors to Yockey before Yockey's mysterious death in
   jail in 1960, wrote the introduction to the 1962 edition of
   "Imperium", and has recommended the book on many occasions since.
   Because readers of "Spotlight" have been engaged in much discussion
   about the alleged anti-Semitism or "fascist hidden agenda" of
   "Spotlight," they will no doubt be interested to know what
   "Imperium" has to say about the possibilities for the survival of
   Western Culture. 

   "Imperium" begins with a biographical sketch of Yockey by Carto.
   Yockey was born in Chicago in 1917.  He received a B.A.  in 1938,
   then attended Notre Dame Law School, graduating cum laude in 1941.
   Though opposed to intervention in World War II before the Pearl
   Harbor attack, he enlisted in the U.  S.  Army, but received a
   medical discharge in 1942.  

   Back in civilian life, he began a law practice in Illinois, but
   soon relocated to Detroit, where he became an Assistant District
   Attorney in Wayne County, Michigan.  In 1946, Yockey was offered
   and accepted a job preparing testimony for the War Crimes Tribunal,
   set up by Allied occupation forces after World War II to try Nazi
   leaders.  For eleven months, he worked in Wiesbaden, Germany,
   helping to prepare the cases against some mid-level Nazi leaders.
   After a quarrel with his superiors, who, he claimed, were
   pressuring him to produce propaganda instead of indictments based
   on objective facts, he resigned in early 1947.  Yockey returned to
   America for a short time, and then moved to Ireland, where took up
   residence in an inn in Brittas Bay, County Galway.  There he wrote
   "Imperium".  Anticipating controversy, he wrote under the pen-name
   Ulick Varange.  Only a handful of copies were printed, at the
   author's expense, and the two-volumn first edition attracted little
   notice.  Carto published a one-volumn hardback edition in 1962, and
   a paperback edition in 1969.  

   With a few followers, Yockey founded the European Liberation Front
   in London in 1949.  For his activism, he was beaten in Hyde Park.
   The group soon collapsed because, according to Carto, Yockey's
   collaborators were consumed by their great envy for his enormous
   gifts, and because a great philosopher is almost never also a great
   man of action.  Carto considered Yockey a thinker first and
   foremost.  After a brief job at the Red Cross, he resigned in 1951,
   and began to travel.  Carto does not say where Yockey went on his
   travels, nor how he supported himself.  The FBI, however, revoked
   his U.S.  passport.  In 1960, he was arrested in San Francisco for
   passport fraud, after three passports had been found in one of his
   suitcasese.  Yockey allegedly committed suicide in his cell.  Carto
   is skeptical of this official story.

   The following evaluation of "Imperium" is footnoted, so the reader
   can easily verify from the text the points which are summarized
   here.  The index Carto's 1969 paperback edition is very inadequate,
   containing only references to proper names.

                         Yockey on History

   Yockey's philosophy of history proposes a cyclical "life-cycle" for
   the history of all hitherto existing civilizations.  He proposes to
   demonstrate the existence of this "organic" process in eight
   distinct "Cultures" existing in the past, to explain what part of
   the cycle our own "Western Culture" is in, and thereafter to
   expound the political principals which alone can effectively guide
   the West out of the Civilization Crisis which he saw around him.
   He acknowledges a large debt to Oswald Spengler, author of "Decline
   of the West," whom he calls "the philosopher of the twentieth
   century"; and to Friederich Nietzsche.  (1) To understand Yockey's
   philosophy, one must first understand his definition of Culture, a
   word which he uses to define the whole history of a civilization.

   Yockey's definition of a Culture includes not only the arts and
   literature of a period of history, but also its technology,
   politics, and economic activities.  This resembles the
   anthropologist's definition of culture, except that for an
   anthropologist, any people, including a primitive tribe, has a
   culture, while for Yockey only certain peoples in certain times and
   places can have a Culture.  It also resembles the more typical
   historical use of the word Civilization, but for Yockey
   Civilization is a specific later stage in the development of a
   Culture.  The Cultures are Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Chinese,
   Arabian, Classical, Western (also called European), and
   Mexican-Peruvian, for a total of eight in all.  (2)

   Following Spengler, Yockey rejects the usual
   Ancient-Medieval-Modern "linear" conception of world history.  For
   Yockey, what is commonly called "ancient history" is actually the
   history of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Classical cultures.  Egypt,
   Babylonia, and the Classical world each went through stages of
   early growth, vigor, senility, and death, followed by barbarism.
   Medieval history is not merely "a middle age" in between ancient
   and modern history.  It is actually the history of a new beginning,
   the early stages of the history of the Western Culture.  (3)

   The human mind cannot make sense of reality without grouping
   observed facts into categories.  However, any attempt to categorize
   will produce ambiguities, doubtful cases that straddle the
   borderline between two categories.  Yockey does not recognize that
   his grouping of civilized human history into eight Cultures creates
   such doubtful and ambiguous cases.  For example, the two halves of
   the "Mexican-Peruvian" Culture were separated by hundreds of miles,
   and before the Spanish conquest they were not aware of each other's
   existence.  On what historical grounds are they the same Culture?
   Was the Byzantine Empire a remnant of the Classical Culture, or the
   Medieval Greek section of the Western one?  Did the Ottoman Empire
   belong to the Arabian Culture?  Yockey does not trouble himself to
   acknowledge, let alone answer, these questions.  Others could be
   raised as well.  

   A Culture (sometimes he uses the term High Culture) has an organic
   nature.  "Since a Culture is organic, it has an individuality, and
   a soul.  Thus it cannot be influenced in its depths from any
   outside force whatever.  It has a destiny, like all organisms.  It
   has a period of gestation and a birth-time.  It has a growth, a
   maturity, fulfillment, a down-going, and a death." Therefore it has
   its own individual stamp.  After its death, it does not recur.
   There will not be another Indian or Peruvian Culture, and after its
   death there will be no recurrence of the Western Culture either.
   (4)

   Yockey contrasts the organic view of Culture, which he prefers, to
   the rationalist-materialist view of history.  The latter seeks
   cause and effect in events of human history.  This is, according to
   Yockey, a misleading way to view history.  "Material happenings can
   be controlled, are reversible, produce identical results under
   identical conditions, are recurrent, can be classified, can be
   successfully comprehended as though they are subject to an a
   priori, mechanical necessity, in other words, to Causality." (5) On
   the other hand, the events of a Life are "uncontrollable,
   irreversible, never-recurring, unique, cannot be classified, are
   not amenable to rational treatment, and possessed of no external
   mechanical necessity." (6) Destiny-thinking (or organic thinking)
   is the most fruitful way of viewing history, because the history of
   a Culture is the history of a type of life.  Causality-thinking (or
   rationalistic-materialist thinking) has produced errors in
   understanding of history and erroneous theories such as Marxism,
   Darwinism, and Freudianism.  (7)

   Yockey opposes Materialism on the grounds that it fails to take
   into account the spiritual aspect of history and of human activity.
   He does not distinguish between Materialism as a method of analysis
   and Materialism as a value system.  He lumps together Materialism
   and Rationalism.  Moreover, he does not recognize the usual
   distinction made by philosophers between Rationalism and
   Empiricism.  Here is his list of the foremost philosophers of
   Causality-thinking: "Kant is the height of this type of thinking,
   and to this side of Western philosophy belong also Hume, Bacon,
   Schopenhauer, Hamilton, Spencer, Mill, Bentham, Hobbes, Locke,
   Holbach, Descartes." (8) This is a curious collection.  Yockey, who
   vehemently rejects atheism, includes in his list the eighteenth
   century French atheist and materialist Holbach, but also Descartes,
   who proved to his own satisfaction the existence of God from the
   existence of thought.  What have all these thinkers in common?
   According to Yockey, they have in common that they all sought to
   find "Causality" in human institutions, even in Culture.

   The enmity of a Culture to all outside itself is a fundamental
   concept for Yockey.  "Each Culture-soul is stamped with
   individuality.  From others it takes nothing, and to them it gives
   nothing.  Whatever is on the frontiers is the enemy, whether
   primitive or Culture-populations.  They all are barbarians,
   heathens, to the proper culture, and no understanding passes
   between them." According to Yockey, historical facts prove this.
   "We saw the Western peoples prove the lifeworthiness of the
   European culture by their Crusades against the highly civilized
   Saracens, Moors, and Turks.  We saw the Germanic populations in the
   East and their Visigothic brothers in the South push the barbarian
   Slavs and the civilized Moors continually back during the
   centuries.  We saw Western ships and Western armies make the whole
   world into the object of booty for the West.  These were the
   relations of the West to that [sic] and those outside." (9)

   A Culture is the highest form of life, in a hierarchy that consists
   of plants, animals, "man", and Culture.  (10) "A High Culture is
   plantlike in its attachment to its original soil ....;
   animal-like in its ruthless devouring of other life-forms; man-like
   in its spirituality; and original in its power to transform human
   life, its great life span, and the forcefulness of its destiny."
   (11) 

   However, not everyone belongs to a Culture.  Those outside are no
   better than animals.  "...  Man's life in primitivity, and in an
   area where a High Culture is fulfilling itself, are two
   incommensurable things.  .  .  .  Vis-a-vis the history of
   Culture-man, primitive man seems merely zoological." (12)

   By Yockey's premises, there is no such thing as humanity, and
   therefore no universal ethical duties which any human being owes to
   any other human being.  In fact, there is no serious discussion of
   ethics in "Imperium".  Yockey implies something about his ethical
   philosophy when he asserts that a Culture proves its
   "lifeworthiness" by conquest and looting.  

   We can also now note an important feature of Yockey's methodology.
   Whenever in history Europe is antagonistic to those outside, he
   cites "the facts" to support him.  He ignores the many known
   historical facts of borrowing between Cultures, or of peace between
   them.  For instance, as Yockey defines his terms, Christianity must
   be considered a product of at least two non-Western Cultures, the
   Classical and the Arabian.  In the Arabian, Yockey includes not
   only the Arab civilization at its height, but also both the ancient
   Israelites and all modern Jews.  Nonetheless, Christianity has had
   a profound influence over the arts, literature, social life and
   politics of Europe during the whole of what Yockey calls "the
   Western Culture." So what are we to make of Christianity, according
   to Yockey's scheme?  A profound silence on this subject is
   maintained throughout the book.  

   A Culture must have a Culture-bearing stratum, which contains all
   the creators of "religion, philosophy, science, music, literature,
   the arts of form, mathematics, politics, technics [i.e.,
   technology], and war." It also contains the appreciators who
   "transmit the great creations downward" and thereby recruit the
   more talented of individuals into the Culture-bearing stratum.  The
   Culture-bearing stratum is not a class.  Some of its members are
   poor (like Beethoven), and others are unnoticed until after their
   deaths (like Copernicus and Kierkegaard).  (13) 

   According to Yockey, the life-cycle of a Culture is as follows.
   First there is a Race, which then develops into one or more
   Peoples, which then develop into Nations, after which there is a
   Civilization-Crisis, which ends with the resurgence of Authority
   and the founding of an Imperium.  Civilization is the stage at
   which a Culture becomes "completely externalized" through conflicts
   (military and Cultural) with alien peoples.  Yockey is unclear on
   the precise difference between the terms "Civilization" and
   "Civilization-Crisis." He seems to be saying that Civilization is a
   higher category comprising the two stages of Civilization-Crisis,
   and Imperium.  (14)

   According to Yockey, it is possible to recognize a person's race at
   a glance, but he admits that it is difficult to say exactly how one
   knows a person's race.  For Yockey, pigmentation and facial
   characteristics are mere "group anatomy," and insufficient to
   characterize a race, for a race possesses a "spiritual" as well as
   a material nature.  He concedes that races can only be classified
   "arbitrarily," though he also maintains that a Race is
   "organically" related to its native soil.  (15) However, races can
   be ranked in a hierarchy according to function.  The function that
   Yockey considers most important is "will-to-power." Will to power,
   the desire to control, is the fundamental difference between human
   beings and animals.  Only by classifying races by will-to-power can
   modern history and the imperatives of the Western Culture in this
   age be understood.  (16) Will to power is a healthy racial
   instinct, and is not only good for soldiers, but also impels the
   higher intellectual achievements of a ulture.  "Life which places
   rationalistic ideas of 'individualism,' 'happiness,' 'freedom'
   before the perpetuation and increase of power is decadent.
   Decadent means moving towards extinction, extinction of Higher Life
   in particular, and finally even of the life of the race." (17) 

   Two things, a superpersonal idea and a leader, transform a Race
   into a People.  The superpersonal idea is communicated by a leader,
   or a leader-stratum.  The leader and the superpersonal idea can be,
   but are not necessarily, at the service of a Culture.  The leader
   can transform a race into a people if he harmonizes instinct and
   intellect.  "Instinct says, preserve!  Multiply!  Increase power!
   Intellect seeks means of preserving Life and increasing power."
   (18) There must also be some tension between the People and the
   surrounding human environment.  (19) 

   Peoples can exist outside a Culture, but only a Culture is able
   create Nations.  Each Culture has its own conception of nations.
   In the Arabian Culture, people of the same religion were of the
   same nation.  Their nations had no national frontiers at all.  All
   Muslims were a nation, and all Jews another.  In the Classical
   Culture, the nation was the City-state, a few hundred square miles
   in extent.  The modern concept of a nation-state with wide-ranging
   boundaries would have been incomprehensible to inhabitants of
   Arabian or Classical Culture.  (20) Nations play a role in the
   development of the Culture.  A Culture goes through a succession of
   stages, and each stage has its corresponding Spirit of the Age.
   Since each Nation has a distinct Nation-Idea, the Nation whose
   Nation-Idea best expresses the Spirt of the Age will come to
   dominate the Culture.  The Nation-Idea is not something that can be
   summarized in words, but can only be shown by deeds.  The English
   Nation-Idea, for instance, includes Rationalism, money-making, and
   parliaments.  These ideas (which most people would call
   institutions) have advanced in recent centuries because the English
   Nation-Idea was in tune with the Spirit of the Age during the
   "English Age," which Yockey dates from 1750 to 1900.  (21)

   At the height of the Civilization-Crisis, whatever the
   constitutional law may say, the real power behind the government is
   the Master of Money.  Rationalistic theories of all sorts are now
   his servant in the realm of thought.  Rationalism's "sole effect is
   to destroy.  It destroys .  .  .  art forms and literature, its
   destroys traditions of service, dignity, loyalty, honor.  It
   destroys the State-idea as embodied in its last refined form, the
   Absolute State.  It lays Civilization waste from within,
   politically speaking." Meanwhile, the Master of Money keeps all
   real power in his own hands by corrupt means.  What can freedom
   mean in such a setting?  Only two things.  "Freedom was attractive
   to two great groups, the intellectuals and the trading-class.  To
   both of them, the State was a burden.  For its one pulse, one
   imperative .  .  .  the pavement-intellectuals wish to substitute
   universal criticism, and the traders introduce universal trade
   without any restriction whatever.  .  .  .  The intellectual with
   his atheist pamphlet and the trader in his counting-house are
   respectively the masters in the democratic world of thought and
   action." (22)

   The twentieth and twenty-first centuries mark the transition from
   the Civilization-Crisis to the resurgence of Tradition and
   Authority, and creation of an Imperium.  The Imperium will unite
   all the Nations of the Western Culture, and it will be governed by
   an Absolutist State.  (23) 

   Yockey makes a detailed attempt to demonstrate the
   Civilization-Crisis only in the Western Culture.  He makes passing
   references to such a stage in the Classical, Egyptian, and Chinese
   Cultures, and merely asserts that it occurred in the other four.
   In the whole text of "Imperium", nearly all of the historical
   references come from the Western and Classical Cultures, with only
   occasional references to Egypt and China, and about two sentences
   on the "Arabian" Culture.  The others are barely mentioned.  In
   fact, there are no footnotes at all in "Imperium", and according to
   Carto's introduction, Yockey wrote the entire book without notes.
   In short, Yockey has failed to document adequately the life cycle
   of a Culture from his eight historical Cultures.  Therefore, there
   are no historical grounds for believing what he says about the
   Civilization-Crisis and the Destiny of the "Western Culture." 

                       Yockey on Politics

   When Yockey speaks of the State, he refers to sovereignty, like a
   European theorist, not to the autonomous States of the Union which
   most Americans means with they speak of "States." His views on the
   State can be summarized briefly.  "The State is the form of the
   nation for action." In Western Culture, it transforms itself
   through stage of (a) Empire and Papacy; (b) Feudal or aristocratic
   State; (c) Absolutist State; (d) Democracy, by which he means the
   whole history of constitutional and elected government; and (e)
   Resurgence of the Absolute State, which instead of being merely
   National constitutes the unity of the West in a single Imperium.
   (24)

   "Politics," as Yockey defines it for us, "is activity in relation
   to power.  .  .  .  Thus it is not morality, it is not esthetics,
   it is not economics.  .  .  .  The way politics divides the world
   is into friend and enemy." (25) Inner political differences within
   a State can exist, but if the State has to resort to force, then
   there are at least temporarily two States, not one.  Yockey
   sometimes uses the term "political unit" to mean State.  (26) Since
   he separates politics from morality, he provides what he calls a
   political justification for war.  "Units engaged in politics may
   either gain or lose power.  Instinct and understanding direct them
   to seek to increase power.  War is the most intense method of
   trying to increase power.  Thus a war that has no practically
   foreseeable possibility of increasing power is not politically
   justifiable.  A war which promises an increase in power is
   politically justifiable." (27) He goes on to declare that a
   political victory can emerge from a military defeat.  His example
   is the utter defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars, followed by
   Tallyrand's diplomatic victory for France at the "Congress of
   Vienna." Yockey's illustration proves the opposite of what he
   claims for it.  When we compare France's position in defeat after
   the negotiated settlement at the Congress of Europe with its highly
   influential diplomatic and strategic position in the last quarter
   of the eighteenth century, it is obvious that France lost power.
   By Yockey's own criteria, France was defeated.  

   Yockey's definition of a true enemy is very revealing.  "To say
   that a unit gained a military victory and also suffered a political
   defeat is only another way of saying that the military opponent was
   not a real enemy.  A real enemy is he whom one can strike down and
   thereby increase one's own power." (28) The real enemy is someone
   weaker than oneself.  This is the consequence of Yockey's complete
   separating of politics from ethics: the politics of a bully, and
   therefore the politics of a coward.

   He criticizes Great Britain for fighting two World Wars.  In the
   process, he says, Britain lost commercial supremacy, supremacy at
   sea, the Empire, and even allegedly its own independence, and
   survives as a weaker ally of the United States.  How did this
   disaster happen?  Because Germany and Britain were not real
   enemies.  Both were a part of Europe and therefore of the Western
   Civilization.  Their real enemies were Russia, Japan, and the
   United States.  Yockey, an expatriate American, does not regard
   Russians and his fellow countrymen as part of the Western Culture.
   To him, both are as alien as Japan.  (29) Is "Imperium" a post-War
   rationalization for the Nazis?  Yockey himself removes all doubt.
   Referring to the end of the Second World War, he says, "The Western
   Civilization was not extinguished .  .  .  even though it was
   brought to the lowest possible point politically." (30) This can
   only mean that Germany and her allies were the political
   representatives of Western Civilization in that war.  Yockey does
   not note the fact that Japan, alleged threat to the West, was
   Hitler's ally.  Perhaps he considers the alliance with Japan as
   Hitler's temporary expedient, like his two-year-long pact with
   Stalin.

   Yockey's attitude toward cross-cultural borrowing and cooperation
   can be summarized in two words: Culture Pathology.  Because a
   Culture is a form of life, it can suffer from diseases, which can
   kill it, thereby preventing it from achieving its destiny.  As
   Culture Pathologist, Yockey enumerates three diseases: Culture
   Parasitism, Culture Distortion, and Culture Retardation.
   Immigrants into an Alien culture cause Cultural Parasitism.  They
   are parasites because the native Culture comes into conflict with
   them, and has to expend energy fighting them.  Race riots in the
   United States are Cultural conflicts, in which the host body is
   attempting to expel the parasites.  Such conflicts are not caused
   by hatred, intolerance, or ignorance.  Hatred, intolerance, and
   ignorance are merely traits of individuals.  However, racial
   conflicts are the result of "higher organic unities" which "impel
   the mere individuals." (31)

   Culture Distortion is the borrowing from one culture into another.
   Any sort of borrowing is unhealthy to the Culture and prevents it
   from achieving its destiny.  Inviting in troops from a State Alien
   to the Culture---such as the Russian troops in Europe in 1815 and
   in 1945 and after---is Culture Distortion, for instance, since
   Russia is outside the European Culture-idea.  The political
   influence of Jews in American life is Culture Distortion also.
   Writing in 1948, Yockey insists that the Jews control broadcasting,
   the film industry, book and magazine publishing, and the
   Universities, as well as both political parties.  The election of
   Franklin D.  Roosevelt was "the American Revolution of 1993," in
   which the Culture Distorters (that is, the Jews) took over the U.
   S.  Government.  (32) Culture Retardation is the failure to keep up
   with the latest advances of the Culture.  In America, it means that
   Americans do not appreciate the advances in thought made by Oswald
   Spengler and other twentieth century German apologists for the
   Third Reich.  (33)

   By this point, the reader call well imagine what Yockey thinks of
   the Jews.  Because of the Middle Eastern (Yockey prefers "Arabian")
   origin of their religion, the Jews are spiritually alien to the
   Western Civilization.  It is only to be expected that the European
   or European-descended majority would resent their presence, or even
   persecute them.  The Jews would as naturally resent the Gentile
   majority in return.  (34) When Jews in Great Britain and America
   were given equal rights, they merely took advantage of their
   Gentile fellow-citizens, as revenge for many years of persecution.
   They used the new freedom to undermine the Western Culture, working
   through secret societies such as "the Illuminati and its
   offspring." Yockey believes that the Jews have one ethic for
   themselves and another for the Gentiles, which requires them to
   treat a fellow Jew decently, and allows any crime no matter how
   vile if done by a Jew to a Gentile.  These are standard
   anti-Semitic slurs.  Anti-Semitism is no problem for Yockey.  He
   sees it as a sign of the fundamental health of Western
   Civilization.  "Anti-Semitism is precisely analogous in Culture
   pathology to the formation of anti-bodies in the bloodstream in
   human pathology.  In both cases, the organism is resisting the
   alien life." (35) In other words, the Jews are bacteria, and their
   presence makes Western Culture sick.

   We have seen that Yockey uses historical facts to prove his point
   about the necessity of conflict between a Culture and anyone from
   outside it.  However, when he deals with cross-cultural influences,
   he places a value judgement on the facts, calling them symptoms of
   Culture Pathology.  The medical analogy does not disguise his
   obviously contradictory and subjective method of treating the
   facts.  One might as well compare anti-Semitism to the immune
   system's attempts to reject a kidney transplant, even though the
   host body needs at least one functioning kidney and both original
   kidneys have had to be removed.

   Yockey's alleged Jewish-controlled conspiracies, of course, do not
   exist.  Judaism teaches that a Jew has precisely the same ethical
   duties toward a Gentile as toward another Jew.  Because Yockey
   avoids discussing religion in any concrete terms, he never explains
   in what precise sense the Jews, whose ancestors wrote most of the
   Bible, can be "spiritually alien" in the predominantly Christian
   Western Civilization.

   Given all Yockey has said about the utterly alien nature of the
   Jews, and given what he has said throughout "Imperium" about the
   inevitability of conflict between Cultures, then presumably he
   would consider the Holocaust, in which millions of Jews perished,
   to be just another example of the German antibodies consuming the
   alien Jewish bacteria, out of organic necessity.  Yockey does not
   do this.  Writing in 1948, he is a pioneer of what is now called
   Holocaust denial.  The photographic evidence is all fraudulent, the
   gas chambers never existed, and the survivors are all liars.  After
   all, the Jews have one ethic for themselves and another for the
   Gentiles, so why wouldn't they lie to us?  This is what Yockey
   really meant when he condemned as propaganda the evidence which he
   was required to gather for the War Crimes Tribunal.  (36)

   According to Yockey, American ideas of liberty and equal rights are
   nonsense, and were only adopted because the Spirit of the Age was
   the spirit of the Civilization-Crisis, which promotes individualism
   and every type of decadence in the name of liberty.  In his
   chapters on America, he repeats the charges which many others have
   made before him, in his own time, and since, about corruption in
   American politics.  Yockey, however, is not interested in reform.
   He even questions whether European settlers should have come to
   America to begin with.  White people are "organically" related to
   their home soil in Europe, and emigration to other continents
   weakens their resistance to Culture Pathology.  (37)

   The pro-Axis minority in the United States who still opposed the
   war after Pearl Harbor were the real patriots of World War II in
   America: "Certain American nationalists were held in gaol for
   having said in 1941 that a military defeat was to be desired for
   the welfare of America, since a defeat would destroy the hold of
   the Culture-distorting group." Those who fought were merely dupes
   of the Culture Distorters who have controlled America since 1933.
   (38)

   If the Axis was fighting for Western Civilization, did the defeat
   of Germany in World War II spell the doom of the West?  Yockey
   urges the sympathetic reader to take courage.  The Spirit of the
   Age favors revival of the Imperium.  Men will no longer die for
   "liberty." The last chapter of the book is an extended outburst of
   ranting, the text of which Yockey might have subsequently used in
   his Hyde Park addresses on behalf of the European Liberation Front.
   In these last few fervid pages, he assures us that the West
   possesses "the mightiest superpersonal idea that has ever appeared
   on this earth-ball." He looks forward to the day when "the Western
   banner waves on its home soil from Gibralter to the North Cape, and
   from the rocky promontories of Galway to the Urals." There is no
   room for his native America in such a vision.  Yockey finishes with
   his favorite quote from Nietzsche: "What does not destroy me makes
   me stronger," which he presents both in English and in the original
   German.

                          Conclusion

   Yockey repeatedly calls for a resurgence of Faith, Tradition, and
   Authority.  Implicitly, Yockey asks the reader of "Imperium" to
   take his philosophy of history on faith.  If "Imperium" is a
   religious revelation to be accepted on faith, then we can take
   Western Culture to be its God.  Oswald Spengler or Friedrich
   Nietzsche takes the place of Abraham, the nations of Europe play
   the role of Israelites, the upcoming Western Imperium is the
   location of the Promised Land, and Adolph Hitler is the Aryan Moses
   who pointed the way to the Promised Land without himself being
   allowed to enter it.  If this is Yockey's faith, what personal
   satisfaction did he receive from it?

   Earlier we noted that, according to Carto's admiring preface,
   Yockey's brilliance provoked envy in those less talented than
   himself throughout his life.  Yockey could play the piano well
   enough for the concert hall, was able to speak several languages,
   never lost a case in the courtroom, was well-versed in finance,
   and, above all, knew all the main issues of modern philosophy.
   Carto does not mention that Yockey's discharge from military
   service in 1942 was for dementia praecox, a synonym for
   schizophrenia.  His medical report stated that he head disembodied
   voices speaking to him, believed that a great destiny lay ahead for
   him, and included important world leaders in his delusions.
   Perhaps he did have all the intellectual gifts and talents which
   Carto ascribes to him, but the schizophrenic episode of 1942, even
   if of brief duration, is the real clue to his philosophy, and to
   his faith.  Yockey's undocumented and ill-conceived "Imperium" is a
   pseudoscholarly rationalization of his delusion that the envious
   and resentful dupes of Culture Distortion who were forever dogging
   him.  Yockey wrote "Imperium" confident that History would
   vindicate him, for it was his destiny to be the prophet of the
   future Western Imperium!

                            Footnotes

(1) Friedrich Nietzsche was not, or course, a twentieth-century man,
    but Yockey credits him for anticipating the Spirit of the Age of
    the next age.

(2) Yockey, Francis Parker, "Imperium," (Sausalito, California, 1969),
    pp.  1-8.  All references are from the paperback reprint of
    "Imperium" published by Noontide Press at the date given.

    Not only are Yockey's definitions of the terms Culture and
    Civilization unusual, he scatters other idiosyncratic usages
    through "Imperium".  He uses the adjective "erotic" to mean
    "eroticism" or "eros." In the place of "traditional" he always
    says "traditionary," a less familiar but acceptable synonym.
    Instead of "technology" he always writes "technics," which is an
    acceptable synonym for "techniques," but not of "technology." He
    refers to Charlemagne in one place as Karl der Grosse, and in a
    passing reference to the Belgium city of Dunkirk, he calls it
    Dunkirchen.  Throughout, Yockey's choice of words reveals a
    fondness for the sometimes inappropriate display of obscure
    vocabulary, and shows him to be an extreme Germanophile.  

(3) Ibid., 29-37.  In opposing the "linear" view of history, Spengler
    wished to give appropriate significance to the breakdown of the
    Classical civilization through barbarian invasions during the 5th
    Century A.D.  However, the debt of Western Civilization to the
    Classical world has been vast and deep.  How can a sharp line be
    drawn between 5th century Rome and Medieval Europe?  Since
    "Imperium" was written, Spengler's criticism of the "linear view"
    of history has been more convincingly made by Arnold Toynbee and
    others.  Toynbee, for instance, does not insist on the enmity of
    different Cultures.  His theory that a "universal church" can
    survive from the end of one civilization to the beginning of
    another accounts for Spengler's objection, without ignoring the
    profound cultural influence of the Roman Catholic Church, a legacy
    of ancient Rome and of the ancient Jews, on Medieval Europe.

(4)  Ibid., 12.
(5)  Ibid., 13.
(6)  Ibid., 13.

(7) Ibid., 66-97, 224-230.  Yockey's critique of Marxism is directed
    at a narrow, mechanical post-Engels Marxism which was popularized
    during his lifetime by pro-Moscow intellectuals and propagandists.
    Yockey is unaware that Marx and Engels conceded that an idea can
    achieve a "material force" when it is believed in and acted upon
    by large numbers of people.  However, many Marxists of Yockey's
    time, and since, have been equally unaware of this concept.  

    Yockey's treatment of Darwinism and Freudianism is equally
    superficial, and with less excuse, since all the significant
    concepts of Darwin and Freud had been widely published and debated
    in the literature available in his time.

(8)  Ibid., 13.
(9)  Ibid., 9.
(10) Ibid., 38-39.

(11) Ibid., 369.  Like nearly every male English language author
    before 1975 or so, Yockey uses "man" where many people today would
    say "humanity" or "human beings" or "a man or woman." 

(12) Ibid., 43.
(13) Ibid., 253-254.
(14) Ibid., 612-614.
(15) Ibid., 274-285.

(16) Ibid., 286-291.  Despite all he has just told us, Yockey has no
    difficulty detecting "blondness" as the physical sign of strong
    will-to-power in European populations.

(17) Ibid., 294-295.
(18) Ibid., 321.
(19) Ibid., 323.
(20) Ibid., 330.
(21) Ibid., 334-337.
(22) Ibid., 362-363.
(23) Ibid., 364-366.
(24) Ibid., 355-362.
(25) Ibid., 127.
(26) Ibid., 131.
(27) Ibid., 147.
(28) Ibid., 149.
(29) Ibid., 150.
(30) Ibid., 123.
(31) Ibid., 376-381.
(32) Ibid., 402-439, 491-511.
(33) Ibid., 517-523.
(34) Ibid., 311-313.
(35) Ibid., 381-391.
(36) Ibid., 533.
(37) Ibid., 450-471.
(38) Ibid., 549-558.
(39) Lipstadt, Deborah, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing
     Assault on Truth and Memory," (New York, 1993), p. 147.

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