Jason Kessler, organizer of last year’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, has announced that he will be holding an anniversary rally in Washington, D.C. on August 12. In a recent video, Kessler expressed his intent for this year’s rally to be about white advocacy and white rights—but not Nazism: “I don’t want neo-Nazi’s at my event,” he said. And “the Alt-Right to me has become synonymous with neo-Nazism.”
Whatever these claims are worth, and whatever Unite the Right 2 winds up looking like, pro-lifers should avoid it and reject any alliance with the Alt-Right and racially divisive groups. Having a label on the political right is no guarantee of shared values. The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.
While subtle differences might exist between white nationalists, white supremacists, racists, and identitarians, all four groups share the common philosophy of dividing people along racial lines. Pro-lifers who have spent decades building an inclusive movement oriented around the idea that human life has innate value should reject any promise of unity that defines itself through racial division.
Richard Spencer, commonly credited with coining the term “alt-right,” and perhaps the most prominent figure at last year’s Unite the Right rally, rejects the title “white supremacist,” and instead refers to himself as an “identitarian.” In an interview with CNN’s W. Kamau Bell, Spencer asserted that “identity is the foundation of everything,” and that “race is the foundation of identity.” This mode of categorizing the human person, based simply on the material, leads to a sort of “materialism of blood,” as Dietrich von Hildebrand put it in his book My Battle Against Hitler: Faith, Truth, and Defiance in the Shadow of the Third Reich.
Hildebrand, a harsh critic of the national socialism that swept through Germany in the 1930s, held that people could not fully understand community if they failed to understand both themselves, and the “nature of community” itself, in terms higher than the material sphere:
The longing for authentic community and a robust culture is not an uncommon response to radically individualistic liberalism, Hildebrand observed: “They yearn for organic communities instead of merely artificial and arbitrarily constituted social structures.” This yearning, however, can develop into corruption if it is wrongly oriented.
In the same way that German nationalism did not restore community in Germany, modern identity politics and Spencer’s identitarian talk of developing ethno-states will not restore community in America. Spencer makes the same mistake that frustrated Germans made in assuming that a robust strengthening of a particular race can save culture.
Hildebrand corrects this mistake by identifying the true remedy: “Only the rehabilitation of the human being as a spiritual person and the specifically spiritual sphere in him (as opposed to the vital-psychical sphere) . . . can fulfil the longing of a humanity disappointed by liberalism—the longing for genuine community, for the organic, and for the objective.”
Asserting that the essence of man is strictly material renders true community, which is rooted in something higher than blood or genetics, impossible and leads to the abuse of the weak by the strong. Hildebrand wrote, “The National Socialist morality of the master race views the sick and the weak as ‘faulty products’ who are a tiresome burden on human society.” Spencer’s identitarian and eugenic morality appear to espouse a similar view.
In his video Why Tomi Lahren Is Right on Abortion, Spencer advocates aborting babies who are prenatally diagnosed with genetic abnormalities such as Down Syndrome: “Smart people are using abortion when you have a situation like Down Syndrome,” he says. Spencer makes his comment on selective abortion within a larger discussion of T. Lothrop Stoddard’s views on contraceptive use and eugenics. T. Lothrop Stoddard was a eugenicist who wrote The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood (formerly the American Birth Control League) promoted Stoddard’s work, and chose him as a board member for the League. In “Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” a 1919 essay published in her journal Birth Control Review, Sanger explained the following relationship between her mission of government action for birth control and the mission of her eugenist contemporaries:
Sanger was closely associated with many racial fanatics and eugenicists throughout her life. Her successor as president of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Alan F. Guttmacher, had also served as vice president of the American Eugenics Society.
Recognizing a material attribute, such as race, as the foundation of “everything” assumes a debased scheme of thought which equates physical characteristics with moral worth. As such, inherent human dignity is replaced with perverse quantifications of genetics.
Spencer concludes his vlog tribute to Lahren by openly distancing himself and the alt-right from the pro-life movement:
It is telling that Spencer would disparage the adoption of African children in the same breath as discussing eugenics and accusing the pro-life movement of being “radically dysgenic.” The unmistakable integration of these ideas points to the historic integration of thought among eugenicists, many of whom either openly supported, or at least tolerated, racially-motivated political movements.
While it is true that not all eugenicists are racist, and not all racists are eugenicists, the underlying philosophy of both movements is the same, and is the root of identitarianism: An attempt to reduce the basis of human communities, or human beings themselves, to the material sphere, while ignoring or attempting to reduce the higher truth that all people share a common dignity and form strong communities based on that shared reality of the spirit.
Richard Spencer says he intends to reclaim European culture. He will have very little luck if he fails to acknowledge that part of the human person which allows for the understanding of the “cult” in “culture.” Even if the existence of the spiritual sphere is acknowledged by an individual eugenist or identitarian, it is acknowledged as secondary, and the material or genetic is elevated as primary. Attempting to place as primary that which is secondary leads to profound hollowness and loneliness; a sort of isolation that turns the mind in on itself.
How ought one to respond? Hildebrand’s advice: “We must overcome the devaluation of the spirit. We must put the vital sphere and ‘blood’ in their proper place. And we must rehabilitate the spiritual person in his true essence and value.” Race, ethnicity, or disability is not the determining factor in a person’s identity or destiny. Without recognition of the spirit, man will always be classified in a way that fails to uphold his inherent dignity as a whole person with intrinsic and immeasurable worth.
