Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage-the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical forces beyond his control. This is the caveman's version of the doctrine of innate ideas -or of inherited knowledge- which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attibute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man's life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination.

The respectable family that supports worthless relatives or covers up their crimes in order to "protect the family name"(as if the moral stature of one man could be damaged by the actions of another)- the bum who boasts that his great-grandfather was an empire builder, or the small town spinster who boasts that her maternal great-uncle was a state senator and her third-cousin gave a concert at Carnegie Hall (as if the achievements of one man could rub off on the mediocrity of another)- the parents who search genealogical tress in order to evaluate their prospective son-in-law- the celebrity who starts his autobiography with a detailed account of his family history--all these are samples of racism, the atavistic manifestations of a doctrine whose full expression is the tribal warfare of prehistorical savages, the wholesale slaughter of Nazi Germany, the atrocities of today's so-called "newly emerging nations."

The theory that holds "good blood" and "bad blood" as a moral-intellectual criterion, can lead to nothing but torrents of blood in practice. Brute force is the only avenue of action open to men who regard themselves as mindless aggregates of chemicals.

Modern racists attempt to prove the superiority or inferiority of a given race by the historical achievements of some of its members. The frequent historical spectacle of a great innovator who, in his lifetime, is jeered, denounced, obstructed, persecuted by his countrymen, and then, a few years after his death, is enshrined in a national monument and hailed as a proof of greatness of the German(or French or Italian or Cambodian) race--is as revolting a spectacle of collectivist expropriation, perpetrated by racists, as any expropriation of material wealth perpetrated by communists.

Just as there is no such thing as a collective or racial mind, so there is no such thing as a collective or racial achievement. There are only individual minds and individual achievements- and a culture in not the anonymous product of undifferentiated masses, but the sum of the intellectual achievements of individual men.

Even if it were proved-which it is not-that the incidence of men potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would still tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one's judgement of him. A genius is a genius, regardless of the numbers of morons who belong to the same race- and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin. It is hard to say which is the more outrageous injustice: the claim of Southern racists that a Negro genius should be treated as inferior because his race has "produced" some brutes- or the claim of a German brute to the status of a superior because his race has "produced" Goethe, Schiller and Brahms.

These are not two different claims, of course, but two applications of the same basic premise. The question of whether one alleges the superiority or the inferiority of any given race is irrelevant; racism has only one psychological root: the racist's sense of his own inferiority.

Like every other form of collectivism, racism is a quest for the unearned. It is a quest for automatic knowledge-for an automatic evaluation of men's characters that bypasses the responsibility of exercising rational or moral judgement-and, above all, a quest for an automatic self-esteem (or pseudo-self-esteem).

To ascibe one's virtues to one's racial origin, is to confess that one has no knowledge of the process by which virtues are aquired and, most often, that one has failed to aquire them. The overwhelming majority of racists are men who have earned no sense of personal identity, who can claim no individual achievement or distinction, and who seek the illusion of a tribal "self-esteem" by alleging the inferiority of some other tribe. Observe the hysterical intensity of the Southern racists; observe also that racism is much more prevalent among the poor white trash than among their intellectual betters.

Historically, racism has always risen or fallen with the rise or fall of collectivism. Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group (to"society", to the tribe, the state, the nation)and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force- and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.

The absolute state is merely an institutionalized form of gang rule, regardless of which political gang seizes power. And-since there is no rational justification for such rule, since none has ever been or can ever be offered- the mystique of racism is a crucial element in every variant of the absolute state. The relationship is reciprocal: statism rises out of prehistorical tribal warfare, out of the notion that the men of one tribe are the natural prey for the men of another-and establishes its own internal sub-categories of racism, a system of castes determined by a man's birth, such as inherited titles of nobility or inherited serfdom.

It is not man's ancestors or relatives or genes or body chemistry that count in a free market, but only one human attribute: productive ability. It is by his own individual ability and ambition that capitalism judges a man and rewards him accordingly.

In conclusion, I shall quote from an astonishing editorial in the N.Y. Times of August 4, astonishing because ideas of this nature are not typical of our age:

"But the question must be not whether a group recognizable in color, features or culture has its rights as a group. No, the question is whether any American individual, regardless of color, features or culture is deprived of his rights as an American. If the individual has all the rights and priviledges due him under the laws and the Constitution, we need not worry about groups and masses- those do not, in fact, exist, except as figures of speech."

excerpts from "Racism" by Ayn Rand
(an article published in the September, 1963 issue of The Objectivist Newsletter and included as a chapter in the book, The Virtue Of Selfishness)

Ayn Rand makes sense to me.

Indeed 'collectivism'

Quite appropriate, this, in the light of the mirror site of the sad and pathetic.

BIG PURRR 2 ya, Mox.

(((MOXY)))

Funny how Teller, Icenine and myself are big Ayn Rand fans. We are the farthest from Collectivists you will ever find. Maybe we just find ourselves superior and not our race...

TheRhythmTheRebel said:

I might have reacted to the racist threads and remarks and the fag bashing on the site you hold so high in esteem, sorry mate.

You got what you wanted though; we're all talking about it. You must be real proud.

ANd from now on I will refrain from comments, you have had more than the attention you deserve from me.

gooeythehamster said:

Exactly how can it be "fag bashing" when Supa and Aaron, two openly gay men, were participating? Ice and I were calling each other "gay" in our flame war, but again, we are two straight men, mocking each other. I fail to see how this could be construed as homophobic. If this is the case, then you are just as guilty for using the term "fag".

JediMaster said:

easily... you are calling each gay in a flaming manner, meaning that you are equating gay with something negative... thus, it is homophobic...

this ain't rocket science, pedimaster...

JediMaster said:

Just walk away Gilman, walk away...

JediMaster said:

You haven't been reading much of the other posts, now have you, pedomaster...

Moxy said:

The site is down

Moxy said:

First of all, for this thread.


I've often observed this. I once talked to Muse about IceNine, and I made some observations about his manners. She then said "he's brilliant, he just doesn't have any social skills." Ain't THAT the biggest understatement of all time.


Well done, all of us


Worship edit.
[This message was edited Tue Feb 3 11:34:16 PST 2004 by Teacher]

Although I'm straight and I'm catholic, I always respect
other people and accept them just the way they R, no matter wat race they R, wat sexuality they R, creed, religion, rich or poor, et cetera, et cetera. I don't like racism and I don't stand up 4 racist people, either.