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== Summary ==
== Summary ==


Following Spengler, Yockey saw cultures as spiritual organisms, identifying eight "high cultures" in human history, all being fulfilled except the Western culture.{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}. He described a high culture as "a Life-form at the peak of the organic hierarchy of which plants, animals, and man are the lower members", and argued that high cultures follow a pattern of birth, growth, maturity, fulfillment and death.{{sfn|Gardell|2003|pp=51}} He wrote that each high culture has a soul that seizes humans in its landscape and determines religious expression, science, art forms, politics and morality of culture throughout its life span.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=260}}<ref name="Rose2">{{cite book |last1=Rose |first1=Matthew |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NSA3EAAAQBAJ |title=A World after Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2021 |isbn=9780300263084 |name-list-style=and}} p. 67-79</ref> He described races as "spirituo-biological" entities, raw material for cultural expression which change in accordance with its historical development.{{sfn|Maibaum|2003|pp=15}}{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=260}} He argued that civilization is not an end product of progress, but a certain phase in the life of each high culture. Yockey wrote that the West's fulfillment of its destiny was threatened by "cultural pathology", including interrelated sicknesses of "culture-parasitism", "culture-retardation" and "culture-distortion".{{Sfn|Gardell|2003|p=169}} Yockey saw the influence of non-Western cultures as corrupting to the Western soul.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |last=Reilly |first=John |date=2010-09-12 |title=Francis Parker Yockey's 'Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics' |url=http://constantinereport.com/francis-parker-yockeys-imperium-the-philosophy-of-history-and-politics/|url-status=live |access-date=2022-04-24 |website=Constantine Report|language=en}}</ref>{{Failed verification|date=May 2022}} He argued that Jews were most harmful to the West by aggravating an organic "Culture-crisis", which Yockey associated with the rise of materialism and rationalism since 1750.{{sfn|Gardell|2003|pp=51-52, 170}}{{sfn|Reilly|2010}}{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=76}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Coogan |first=Kevin|url=https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster78/lob78-lost-imperium.pdf|title='Lost Imperium? Yockey: 20 years later.' Review of Yockey: A Fascist Odyssey by Kerry Bolton|date=2019 |publisher=Lobster Magazine|pages=6 |language=en}}</ref> He saw America as more susceptible to this distortion than any other Western nation, as a colonial offshoot of Western culture founded on ideology embodying the spirit of age of rationalism and materialism, lacking the depth of "Mother-Culture" of Europe.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=260-261}} According to Yockey, Hitler set Europe toward a proper fulfillment of its destiny as a unified empire, which America sided with Russia to stop. Yockey alleged that the [[Nuremberg trials]] were "[[show trial]]s" directed by these "extra-European forces", and [[Holocaust denial|denied the Holocaust]], claiming that imagery of the Nazis' [[Gas chamber#Nazi%20Germany|gas chambers]] was faked.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=76}}<ref name=":5" /> Believing that each life phase of high culture has its unique "[[zeigeist|Spirit of the Age]]", Yockey considered [[fascism]] and [[National Socialism|Nazism]] to be expressions of this spirit in the new epoch.{{sfn|Gardell|2003|pp=51}}{{sfn|Rose|2003|pp=75-76}}{{Verification needed|date=May 2022}}
Following Spengler, Yockey saw cultures as spiritual organisms, identifying eight "high cultures" in human history: Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Aztec-Mayan, Classical, Arabian, and Western.{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}. He described a high culture as "a Life-form at the peak of the organic hierarchy of which plants, animals, and man are the lower members", and argued that high cultures go through succeeding life phases of birth, growth, maturity, fulfillment, and death.{{sfn|Gardell|2003|pp=51}} He wrote that each high culture has a soul which impresses humans into its service and determines religious expression, science, art forms, politics and morality of culture throughout its life span.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=260}}<ref name="Rose2">{{cite book |last1=Rose |first1=Matthew |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NSA3EAAAQBAJ |title=A World after Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2021 |isbn=9780300263084 |name-list-style=and}} p. 67-79</ref> He described races as "spirituo-biological" entities, raw material for cultural expression which change in accordance with its historical development.{{sfn|Maibaum|2003|pp=15}}{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=260}} He argued that civilization is not an end product of progress, but a certain phase in the life of each high culture. Yockey wrote that the West's fulfillment of its destiny was threatened by "cultural pathology", including interrelated sicknesses of "culture-parasitism", "culture-retardation" and "culture-distortion".{{Sfn|Gardell|2003|p=169}} Yockey saw the influence of non-Western cultures as corrupting to the Western soul.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |last=Reilly |first=John |date=2010-09-12 |title=Francis Parker Yockey's 'Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics' |url=http://constantinereport.com/francis-parker-yockeys-imperium-the-philosophy-of-history-and-politics/|url-status=live |access-date=2022-04-24 |website=Constantine Report|language=en}}</ref>{{Failed verification|date=May 2022}} He argued that Jews were most harmful to the West by aggravating an organic "Culture-crisis", which Yockey associated with the rise of materialism and rationalism since 1750.{{sfn|Gardell|2003|pp=51-52, 170}}{{sfn|Reilly|2010}}{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=76}}<ref>{{Cite book |last=Coogan |first=Kevin|url=https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster78/lob78-lost-imperium.pdf|title='Lost Imperium? Yockey: 20 years later.' Review of Yockey: A Fascist Odyssey by Kerry Bolton|date=2019 |publisher=Lobster Magazine|pages=6 |language=en}}</ref> He saw America as more susceptible to this distortion than any other Western nation, as a colonial offshoot of Western culture founded on ideology embodying the spirit of age of rationalism and materialism, lacking the depth of "Mother-Culture" of Europe.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=260-261}} According to Yockey, Hitler set Europe toward a proper fulfillment of its destiny as a unified empire, which America sided with Russia, which Yockey saw as a distinct culture. Yockey alleged that the [[Nuremberg trials]] were "[[show trial]]s" directed by these "extra-European forces", and [[Holocaust denial|denied the Holocaust]], claiming that imagery of the Nazis' [[Gas chamber#Nazi%20Germany|gas chambers]] was faked.{{sfn|Goodrick-Clarke|2002|pp=76}}<ref name=":5" /> Believing that each life phase of high culture has its unique "[[zeigeist|Spirit of the Age]]", Yockey considered [[fascism]] to be expression of this spirit in the new epoch.{{sfn|Gardell|2003|pp=51}}{{sfn|Rose|2003|pp=75-76}}{{Verification needed|date=May 2022}}


==Publication==
==Publication==

Revision as of 21:42, 22 May 2022

Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics
AuthorFrancis Parker Yockey
LanguageEnglish
SubjectPhilosophy of history
Political philosophy
Publication date
1948
Publication placeIreland

Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics is a Spenglerian 1948 book by Francis Parker Yockey, using the pen name Ulick Varange, that argues for pan-European fascism.[1][2][3][4] Imperium is antisemitic:[5] it asserts that the Holocaust never happened,[6][7] and Yockey dedicated it to Adolf Hitler, whom he called "the hero of the Second World War".[5]

Influences

Yockey adopted Spenglerian ideas in Imperium,[8] although Yockey's extreme antisemitism differed him from Spengler.[9] Spengler's The Decline of the West was the most important single source.[10][11] Yockey's views on the role of the state drew from the Friend–Enemy Thesis of Carl Schmitt (whom Yockey has been accused of plagiarizing[12]).[13] Yockey heavily drew on Thomas Carlyle's great man theory, seeing the creative ability of heroic individuals as a vehicle for progress.[14]

Summary

Following Spengler, Yockey saw cultures as spiritual organisms, identifying eight "high cultures" in human history: Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Aztec-Mayan, Classical, Arabian, and Western.[citation needed]. He described a high culture as "a Life-form at the peak of the organic hierarchy of which plants, animals, and man are the lower members", and argued that high cultures go through succeeding life phases of birth, growth, maturity, fulfillment, and death.[15] He wrote that each high culture has a soul which impresses humans into its service and determines religious expression, science, art forms, politics and morality of culture throughout its life span.[16][17] He described races as "spirituo-biological" entities, raw material for cultural expression which change in accordance with its historical development.[18][16] He argued that civilization is not an end product of progress, but a certain phase in the life of each high culture. Yockey wrote that the West's fulfillment of its destiny was threatened by "cultural pathology", including interrelated sicknesses of "culture-parasitism", "culture-retardation" and "culture-distortion".[19] Yockey saw the influence of non-Western cultures as corrupting to the Western soul.[20][failed verification] He argued that Jews were most harmful to the West by aggravating an organic "Culture-crisis", which Yockey associated with the rise of materialism and rationalism since 1750.[21][22][5][23] He saw America as more susceptible to this distortion than any other Western nation, as a colonial offshoot of Western culture founded on ideology embodying the spirit of age of rationalism and materialism, lacking the depth of "Mother-Culture" of Europe.[24] According to Yockey, Hitler set Europe toward a proper fulfillment of its destiny as a unified empire, which America sided with Russia, which Yockey saw as a distinct culture. Yockey alleged that the Nuremberg trials were "show trials" directed by these "extra-European forces", and denied the Holocaust, claiming that imagery of the Nazis' gas chambers was faked.[5][25] Believing that each life phase of high culture has its unique "Spirit of the Age", Yockey considered fascism to be expression of this spirit in the new epoch.[15][26][verification needed]

Publication

Yockey wrote Imperium at an inn in Brittas Bay, Ireland.[5]Imperium spanned 600 pages in two volumes.[27] In Yockey's pseudonym, Ulick Varange, Ulick was meant to be a Danish-Irish name, and Varange was a reference to Norsemen.[28]

Yockey invited the British fascist Oswald Mosley to publish Imperium in his name, but Mosley refused.[29] Publication was financed by the Mosleyites Guy Chesham, Peter Huxley-Blythe and Yockey's mistress Baroness Alice von Pflugl.[30][7] A thousand copies of the first volume of Imperium, and 200 copies of the second volume, were printed in London by Westropa Press.[7]

The American far-right activist and antisemite Willis Carto acquired the rights to Imperium from Westropa in 1948.[31][32] The 1962 edition, published after Yockey's suicide in jail in 1960, included an introduction by Carto,[32] along with Revilo P. Oliver's positive review.[33][third-party source needed]

Reception

Imperium has been called one of the most influential antisemitic books since Hitler's Mein Kampf.[32][25] It has influenced various far-right activists worldwide, including supporters of a "Eurasian" racial imperium in Europe and Russia.[6] It influenced the American neo-Nazi occultist James H. Madole, the racial Odinist Else Christensen, the fascist Christian Bouchet and the British neo-Nazi David Myatt.[34] The neo-Nazi Italian hermetic philosopher Julius Evola praised it.[28] But according to academic Jeffrey Kaplan, some others on the far right considered Imperium the "impenetrable ramblings of a madman".[35]

The book's ideology was adopted by Willis Carto for the National Youth Alliance and some members of groups such as the Liberty Lobby (founded by Carto) and the American Independent Party.[36] Liberty Lobby and its spinoffs promoted Imperium as the Mein Kampf of postwar Nazism.[27] The book was also sold for several years through the catalog of David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard.[37]

References

  1. ^ Potok, Mark (2018-08-22). "To Russia With Love: Why Southern U.S. Extremists Are Mad About Vladimir Putin". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2022-04-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link): "In 1948, an American ideologue named Francis Parker Yockey wrote a book promoting pan-European fascism that saw the Soviet Union as less of a threat to Europe than the United States was. By the late 1950s, Yockey was suggesting the USSR could help "free" Europe from U.S. domination, according to Shekhovstov’s new book, Russia and the Western Far Right."
  2. ^ Mostrom, Anthony (2020-08-08). "America's "Mein Kampf": Francis Parker Yockey and "Imperium"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2022-01-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  3. ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 75.
  4. ^ Kaplan, Jeffrey (2000). Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-7425-0340-3.
  5. ^ a b c d e Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 76.
  6. ^ a b Mostrom, Anthony (2017-05-13). "The Fascist and the Preacher: Gerald L. K. Smith and Francis Parker Yockey in Cold War–Era Los Angeles". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2022-05-01.
  7. ^ a b c Lee, Martin A. (2000). The Beast Reawakens: Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists. New York. pp. 94–98, 157. ISBN 978-1-135-28124-3. OCLC 858861623.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ^ Reilly 2010
  9. ^ Lee 2013, p. 96.
  10. ^ Reilly 2010
  11. ^ Mulhall 2020, pp. 110
  12. ^ Coogan, Kevin (1999). Dreamer of the day : Francis Parker Yockey and the postwar fascist international. Mazal Holocaust Collection. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia. ISBN 1-57027-039-2. OCLC 38884251.
  13. ^ Mulhall, Joe (2020). British Fascism After the Holocaust: From the Birth of Denial to the Notting Hill Riots 1939–1958. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780429840258. p. 111
  14. ^ Rose 2021, p. 67-79.
  15. ^ a b Gardell 2003, pp. 51.
  16. ^ a b Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 260.
  17. ^ Rose, Matthew (2021). A World after Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right. Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300263084. p. 67-79
  18. ^ Maibaum 2003, pp. 15.
  19. ^ Gardell 2003, p. 169.
  20. ^ Reilly, John (2010-09-12). "Francis Parker Yockey's 'Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics'". Constantine Report. Retrieved 2022-04-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  21. ^ Gardell 2003, pp. 51–52, 170.
  22. ^ Reilly 2010.
  23. ^ Coogan, Kevin (2019). 'Lost Imperium? Yockey: 20 years later.' Review of Yockey: A Fascist Odyssey by Kerry Bolton (PDF). Lobster Magazine. p. 6.
  24. ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 260–261.
  25. ^ a b Atkins, Stephen E. (2009). Holocaust denial as an international movement. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-313-34539-5. OCLC 624337327.
  26. ^ Rose 2003, pp. 75–76.
  27. ^ a b Lee, Martin A. (2000). The Beast Reawakens: Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists. New York. pp. 94, 157. ISBN 978-1-135-28124-3. OCLC 858861623.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  28. ^ a b Steiger, Brad and Steiger, Sherry Hanson (2006). Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier. Canton Township, Michigan: Visible Ink Press. p. 511. ISBN 978-1-57859-174-9.
  29. ^ Sonabend, Daniel (2019). The 43 Group. Verso. ISBN 978-1-78873-327-4. OCLC 1129451450.
  30. ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 77: "In 1949 Yockey's Mosleyite circle included Guy Chesham, Peter Huxley-Blythe and Baroness von Pflugl, who financed the publication of Imperium."
  31. ^ Durham, Martin (2007-11-13). White Rage: The Extreme Right and American Politics. Routledge. pp. 25, 26. ISBN 978-1-134-23181-2.
  32. ^ a b c Mostrom, Anthony (2020-08-08). "America's "Mein Kampf": Francis Parker Yockey and "Imperium"". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 2022-01-05.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  33. ^ Oliver, Revilo P. (1962). "Revilo P. Oliver › Introduction to Imperium". Noontide Press. Archived from the original on 21 November 2018. Retrieved 2022-01-05.
  34. ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 5, 74, 76, 216, 221, 223, 226, 261.
  35. ^ Kaplan, Jeffrey (2000). Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 42. ISBN 978-0-7425-0340-3.
  36. ^ Maibaum 2003, pp. 17
  37. ^ "John William King Quotes Francis Parker Yockey in Statement About Hate Crime". Southern Poverty Law Center. June 13, 2000. Retrieved 2022-05-05.

Sources

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