2500 words
Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past two years, you should have come across the Alt-Right movement somewhere on the Internet. What is driving the rise of the Alt-Right and Nationalism in the West? Simple answer: Selfish Genes. We are, at the end of the day, bags of meat trying to replicate our genes and have more children as to increase our genes’ copies of themselves. This rise in the Alt-Right is due to continued demonization of whites. For instance, a Rutgers professor was quoted as saying “All white people are evil, some are only ‘less bad’ than others“. Statements of this nature, said over and over again towards a population that’s about to become a minority (I won’t use any of the estimates as the TFR for populations constantly changes, but it will happen eventually) will eventually have the open-minded ones become sick of what is occurring to people who look like themselves. I hypothesize that more ethnocentric people have higher levels of the brain peptide oxytocin, which in turn leads to higher rates of ethnocentrism. From the article:
Human ethnocentrism—the tendency to view one’s group as centrally important and superior to other groups—creates intergroup bias that fuels prejudice, xenophobia, and intergroup violence. Grounded in the idea that ethnocentrism also facilitates within-group trust, cooperation, and coordination, we conjecture that ethnocentrism may be modulated by brain oxytocin, a peptide shown to promote cooperation among in-group members.
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Results show that oxytocin creates intergroup bias because oxytocin motivates in-group favoritism and, to a lesser extent, out-group derogation. These findings call into question the view of oxytocin as an indiscriminate “love drug” or “cuddle chemical” and suggest that oxytocin has a role in the emergence of intergroup conflict and violence.
Oxytocin is known as ‘the love drug’. We can then stretch this to ‘love of one’s race/ethny’. Since political beliefs are heritable (though environment is “still key”, we know that we make our environments based on our genes), I hypothesize that those who are genetically more prone to leaning conservative and ALSO have higher levels of brain oxytocin would be more likely to be ethnocentric and follow a movement such as the Alt-Right. Conversely, people who are genetically more prone towards liberalism (neo-liberalism, not old-fashioned real American liberalism) also have higher levels of oxytocin, except instead of directing their altruistic behaviors towards genetically similar co-ethnics, they direct their altruism towards the out-group. Oxytocin as well as which political ideology one is genetically disposed to, can more than likely be the culprit for these current phenomena that we see in America with both right-wingers and left-wingers.
Some excerpts from my article from earlier in the year Altruism and Ethnocentrism:
We can see ethnocentrism in action in our very own society today. Black Lives Matter is one (extreme) definition of ethnocentrism. La Raza is yet another extreme example. The KKK is another. We can see that in these groups, the motivation to be altruistic to one’s own kind far outweighs being altruistic to those of a different race/ethnicity. Altruism/ethnocentrism is a huge part of the woes of America today.
Which finally brings me to this: why exactly do whites in America not have this same altruistic/ethnocentric behavior towards their own?
Rushton answers this question in one of his AmRen talks: Genetic Similarity Theory and Ethnic Nationalism.
He says that he has really thought about it before and has no definitive answer. But, we are a species who ‘follows the leader’ so to speak. He says to look at individual psychology and not anything to do with being more spineless. That we want to be liked and not disliked. We learn many of our social attitudes (social learning). So we look to people who are similar to ourselves (names some Presidents and others), and that those people tell us things, and since they are high status, we believe it. It’s difficult to go against what those at the top of our society say.
He says what is right and wrong is basically what our neighbors are doing. One outstanding example he gives is how when those at the top say “open your borders and allow more immigrants in” since we are social animals we take to it and want to do it because we ‘follow the leader’. With the majority though right now in America (liberalism/leftism/Marxism), that is the ‘societal norm’ for the country. Therefore, everyone follows that one societal norm, for the most part.
The mass media plays a huge role in this, as I have noted in my previous article on what is going on in Europe and why. Telling whites to hate themselves, that whites are the cause of all evils in the world, makes one begin to hate themselves, their families and, of course, their race/ethnic group. Rushton says many people have said that the media is the cause for many whites with the self-hate that they have. He says back in earlier times, the Jews were self-hating in their identity, because they have assimilated some of the disdain for the wider community. He says the black groups have historically hated themselves because they identified with the conception they have of themselves of the white slave masters/white majority have of them.
Though there is a genetic desire to construct (hi social constructs. =^) ) an identity, the positive cues of that identity has to be picked from the culture (notice anything?).
Finally, David Duke asks Rushton “How would one increase ethnic solidarity and ethnic nationalism”. He says it’s common sense when Goebbels had complete control of the media in Germany, ethnic nationalism shot up, ethnic solidarity increased, out-group hatred increased and the German birth rate shot up. He said the images being displayed on television is the cause for the rise in the aforementioned points. He says, for instance, if you show a lot of blonde haired, blue eyed white babies and women being happy with those white babies in the media, showing women that are happy being stay at home mothers and not working in turn, more women will want to go out and have more babies and be stay at home mothers. He says what you see portrayed on TV, what is portrayed by people who look like you in the media, will make you take to it more.
How is our media today? I noted, very briefly in my previous article, that the media is anti-white. Showing things to bring down the morale of American whites is a huge cause of the lack of altruism and ethnocentrism in American whites.All of these anti-white articles you see in the media daily, all of the anti-white things you see on TV every day, all compound to have what we have in our society today: Marxist whites who go along with groups such as BLM, going completely against their genetic interests, because of media socialization.
Rushton’s AmRen talk on ethnic nationalism should be on your list to view. Media socialization plays a huge part in the self-denigration of whites in America. Being told you’re ‘racist’ just because of your ancestry, to being told that you should be “so sorry” for things that transgressed hundreds of years ago (never mind the fact that the chance that a white person who currently lives in America today most likely has no familial ties of any type of slavery that occurred in the beginnings of this (once great) country. Things like this, when told to someone over and over again, will eventually have them embrace ”’radical”’ ideologies (radical in this sense being far outside of the American norms).
This rise in ‘identity politics’ (hate that phrase, both sides do it) has led to the rise of both the far-left and far-right. But, when you really think about it, ‘identity politics’ is a way to show altruistic behaviors towards genetically similar others. Rushton’s genetic similarity theory (based off of Dawkins’s (1976) theory of selfish genes) explains why these differences how our altruistic acts manifest themselves physically. According to Rushton’s theory, we are more likely to help others who share a similar set of genes. That’s not to say that liberals showing altruistic behavior towards non-co-ethnics refutes the GST theory; on the other hand, it strengthens it.
Americans of mixed ancestry made up for ethnic dissimilarity by matching up on the more heritable traits, whereas the correlation is lower for those traits that are more influenced by the environment. Since the correlation is higher for heritable traits, i.e., BMI, personality, alcoholism, aggressiveness, criminality, psychiatric disorders and so on. Since the correlations are higher than in the environmentally mediated traits and since mixed-race couples match on more heritable traits than on the traits more influenced by the environment, this shows us that even though they are marrying outside of their race/ethnicity, they still match up on the more heritable traits and not the traits more influenced by the environment. So even a liberal’s altruistic actions towards non-co-ethnics shows that GST is still in effect.
The main point is this: our genes are selfish AND they want to produce similar genes. Who is more likely to be genetically similar to yourself? A co-ethnic. This is why nationalism is rising—it works!! Nationalism is rising because the people themselves—the vast majority of ‘vehicles’—are in danger of not being able to ‘replicate’ (their genes). So since the ‘vehicle’ is in danger, the ‘replicators’ have one be more altruistic/ethnocentric to a co-ethnic; oxytocin is the mediator of ethnocentrism as a whole. I’d love to see a study conducted on ethnocentrists and non-ethnocentrists to see what the average level of oxytocin in each group is. I’d bet a large sum of money that the ethnocentrists have higher levels of brain oxytocin while the non-ethnocentrists have a statistically lower amount.
Some of the most distinct genes of individuals will, of course, be found in close family—mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers, first cousins, etc. However, against the worldwide variance, the average similarity between people within a single population is on the magnitude of second cousins, so I posit that those with higher levels of brain oxytocin will be more likely to be ethnocentric over others with less of this hormone. See, there is a reason for so-called ‘racist’ (ethnocentric) behavior: since the average similarity between people within a single population is on the magnitude of second cousins against the worldwide variance, this shows why ethnocentric behavior arises.
The rise of nationalism in Europe follows these same patterns. When looking at diversity in the social context, we can see the negative effects of said diversity in neighborhoods (net negative effect, even with the positives that Putnam cites). Knowing the effects of diversity within a homogenous population, we can see the exact cause for the rise of the Alt-Right.
For some people, diversity decreases social trust (this is my opinion) because they see how the out-group acts: increased crime, not assimilating fully to native culture, how many benefits the out-group receives, etc. Then, since it’s drilled into them that ‘we are all the same in the brain no matter where our ancestors evolved for tens of thousands of years’, that all genetically isolated groups must act the same on average. This then causes what Putnam calls ‘hunkering down’—avoiding engagement with the community. This ‘hunkering down’ leads to less social interaction with neighbors and the community as a whole, causing the social trust that Putnam found in his research. Since one of the ways we match on genetic similarity is by culture, when out-groups move in and begin changing the native culture, the ‘hunkering down’ begins to lessen the one way that population propagates its genes—by masking the native culture—which arose for the sole reason of ensuring that the gene made copies of itself with genetically similar others. The increased diversity changes the average person’s perception of their own people since it’s drilled into them that we all have the same mental capacities and behaviors on average (with deviations from said average due to average individual variation; not any inherent genetic racial/ethnic differences).
On the other hand, for one who is more predisposed to lean right who has a higher amount of brain oxytocin on average, sees the negative effects of diversity along with their countrymen getting hurt, negative (natural) feelings then arise. Moreover, seeing how sections of formerly once nice neighborhoods deteriorate when the out-group moves in further drives these feelings. This is one small example from Putnam’s data that shows how diversity negatively affects societies. I’d be interested in a study on racial/ethnic diversity in third-world countries/the East.
This rise we have seen in the Alt-Right is due to the increase of mass immigration to third-world countries. We want to be around genetically similar others—to propagate copies of our genes. With the gene being ‘selfish’, it wants to make copies of genes like itself. Who’s more likely to share similar genes? Parents, brothers, uncles, sisters, brothers, grandparents, first cousins, second- cousins, and third cousins. Since we are related to co-ethnics on the magnitude of second cousins, this shows how and why ethnocentrism evolved. It was beneficial to be more altruistic towards your ‘clan’, and to derogate the out-group since they are genetically dissimilar. This then extends to today in regards to out-groups being derogated—no matter if they’re genetically similar others or if they share the same personalities or hobbies. We want to be around people like ourselves, to better help out members of the ‘team’. The ‘team’ can be anything from race, ethnicity, baseball team, basketball team, football team, hockey team, etc. To understand ethnocentrism, we must understand human evolutionary history. That’s how you understand the rise of far-right or left politics. Genetic similarity theory is that road map to discovering how and why we act the way we do in regards to out-groups.
Any organism strives for the betterment of its group. Any organism will defend that group. Genes cause people to construct ideologies to improve genetic fitness. That one sentence pretty much sums up the rise of the Alt-Right, and along with the negative effects of diversity, you have the recipe for a new right-wing movement.
This growth of “white survivalism” and militant “Christian Identity” groups such as the Aryan Nations, and the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, represent a more extreme response to these perceived threats to the AngloSaxon gene pool. If this overall analysis is correct, one might expect similar correlations in deviations from both genetic and ideological norms in other groups. Preserving the “purity” of the ideology might be an attempt at preserving the “purity” of the gene pool. Are ideological “conservatives” typically more genetically homogeneous than the same ideology’s “liberals”?”
The rise of the Alt-Right shows, in my opinion, one of the main facets of human nature—ethnocentrism. It’s seen with the Ashkenazi Jews and Arabs, to Europeans, Africans, and the pretty much isolationist East Asians. The world is beginning to become more ethnocentric—and selfish genes are in the driver’s seat.
NotPoliticallyCorrect 
” bags of meat trying to replicate our genes and have more children”
We are not trying to have children, we are being driven to certain behaviors by our sex drive, men and women.
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Yes we are trying to have children, to pass on our genetic information to the next generation. That’s the point of life. Sex drive is also influenced by genetic factors as well. When you break everything down, at the end of the day we’re busy of meat, bones and genes trying to make other bags of meat, bones and genes.
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There is no biological drive to “have children.” There is a biological drive to have sex.
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If there is a biological drive to make more copies of your genes and have sex, then there is a biological drive to have children. Therefore, the biological drive to have sex is to make more copies of your genes—conceiving children.
Sex is how we conceive children.
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There is no drive to make copies, there is no drive to have children the drive is to have sex. As a result of the drive to have sex many children are created and have copies of our genes. People have sex everyday and all day and never have children and don’t think about children. “Wanting” to have children is cultural.
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Dawkins, Rushton et al say otherwise. It makes perfect sense. Of course there is a biological drive for the genes to replicate. The replicators do whatever possible to replicate, thus the term ‘selfish genes’.
What is the purpose of having sex? Why does sex feel good to us? So we can procreate our genetic information and those who are more genetically similar—co-ethnics share the most genes with you.
What drives us to have sex? Genes and hormones, in concert. Though fertility rate is strongly dictated by the environment, as is shown in the CLASH model.
And they will be genetic dead-ends, not passing their genetic information to the next generation. Natural selection weeds out deleterious alleles, making that population more fit in the process.
Please either provide citation or explain your reasoning because what you said sounds ridiculous. So what drove us to have children before the advent of human behavioral modernity?
Wanting to have children is a biological trait. Those who don’t want children will have their genes weeded out of the gene pool.
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“So what drove us to have children before the advent of human behavioral modernity?”
Same thing that drives chimps, apes and other mammals.
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Right, the drive to procreate through sex. There is a biological drive to have children. As well as a biological drive to not have children. When one has a biological drive to not have children, their genes are selected out of the gene pool. We are drive to have sex so we can spread our genes. It’s that simple.
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I think iffen is getting confused. Sex today is different when you have a world with things like birth control technology.
Why is sex great? Well Image today if with the amount of sex if there was no birth control, condoms or abortions. How many women would end up pregnant?
For most of human’s history, they did not have a way of having sex without the risk of pregnancy. For individuals in the past if sex was not great, then the chance of those genes passing on would be less since you are then just forcing yourself to have sex just for breeding.
If it feel’s like work and not fun then you are probably not going to do as much as someone who loves it. And also the change of your partner cheating would probably be higher.
Also for those that enjoy sex or want sex, it is a great motivator for one to make yourself better to win the opposite sex of your dreams. Although for females it made be so much about the sex than the emotional closeness that comes from a relationship.
This can also be easily explain by the fact that women that were only drawn to sex would risk having many children with different men but not being able to have one man stay around to support her and her offsprings. These genes though still around would be in fewer females due to history of needing both parents to survive.
The fact that today we can reduce the chance of a woman getting pregnancy to almost zero when having sex does not change the whole of human history and the genes that survive to be pass on.
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Good comment.
Exactly. This is a modern phenomenon. Liberals are the ones that forgo children while conservatives have more children (and have them younger), signifying some r-selection.
But sex is to procreate make children so that other bags of meat can pass your unique genetic code down the lines. That’s all life really is; genetically similar bags of meat replicating their selfish genes into new vehicles (the replicator and vehicle analogy).
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It also got me thinking about things such as obsessive and availability of food and the lack of energy required for work. Being overweight today is also a change to that of most of human history. Getting resources without much physical work was rare up until the 20th century.
The one of reason we neef things like gym or other sports is because we need to simulate physical work that we as human would of done normally in the past. The extra time we have now is rare thing in all of history. And also diets is only needed now in todays world becausr of the over supplies of food. In the past humans would of breed to their resource limts. Now with birth control and/or a population that delays sex, with all this food requires a smarting people who can delays gratification. Dieting is a modern thing.
Anyway thank you for ypur articles, i learn something almost everytime i log on.
By the way any books you can recommend me read for how human evolved differently and also any books or articles on neanderthal. I have read the 10,000 year explosion, and i enjoy your article on iq on ancient humans.
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Yes. You get it. I touched on this point briefly in my most recent article on exercise, but I’m going to devote a whole article today on the evolution of our diet, how we evolved to eat and how our genome is adapted for our ancestral one—causing an evolutionary mismatch between our current obesogenic environment and our paleolithic genomes.
This I agree with. However, exercise does not induce weight loss. Read this article by Gary Taubes.
Well, our diet is what we eat every day. When people say they’re ‘going on a diet’ they mean they are going to reduce their kcal consumption.
However traditional dieting also doesn’t work.
Yes. This goes back to Kanazawa’s Savanna Hypothesis. Smarter people are better able to deal with evolutionary novel situations (in this case, processed foods and carbs) while those who aren’t as intelligent can’t deal with evolutionary novel situations. The Savanna Hypothesis has great explanatory power.
You’re very welcome. This is why I started this blog a year and a half ago. I want people to realize the truth about HBD, racial differences and a few other things (that have to do with science and evolution, keeping up with the theme of this blog) that I’m very interested in.
Yea.
How we evolved:
The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brains Became Remarkable
The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
For books on Neanderthals:
Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
Neandertal Demise: An Archaeological Analysis of the Modern Human Superiority Complex
I’ve just been recently reading into ancient human evolution. When I read The Human Advantage, I realized how much nutrition drove our evolution. Since that’s my field, I’m very interested in how diet shaped our evolution.
No fire? No big brains. No meat? No big brains. Etc etc. Without fire, without cooking meat, we wouldn’t be here today. Diet and nutrition explains how we are here today.
And I’ll be writing a lot more on ancient hominin evolution—especially in regards to evolution and diet. It’s fascinating.
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“Results show that oxytocin creates intergroup bias because oxytocin motivates in-group favoritism and, to a lesser extent, out-group derogation. These findings call into question the view of oxytocin as an indiscriminate “love drug” or “cuddle chemical” and suggest that oxytocin has a role in the emergence of intergroup conflict and violence.”
Hey RaceRealist,
How much of it would also have to do with the different sizes of the Anterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala? I mean the amygdala is the threat assessment and so much more. Conservatives tend to have an larger Amygdala which could help explain with the added of Oxytocin why you now have groups like the Alt Right.
But my question for you is if Oxytocin is smaller for say people who may be more openly in support mass immigration, taking in refugee or opening up the borders then i.e Altruist to outsider than Ethnocentric.
Then why is that the rich and successful white liberals that support things like this live in majority white neighborhoods?
Kind of like how Al Gore and Leonardo dicaprio who goes out in public for things like Global Warming but yet fly private jets (producing more CO2) and have many houses on beaches and near the ocean (if it is a real threat than why not have more hosues in the middle of America?)
Is it that they don’t see the danger and yet still have emotional drive to want to be around people like themselves. Or maybe as you wrote in your article of what Rushton said
“…He says what is right and wrong is basically what our neighbors are doing. One outstanding example he gives is how when those at the top say “open your borders and allow more immigrants in” since we are social animals we take to it and want to do it because we ‘follow the leader’. With the majority though right now in America (liberalism/leftism/Marxism), that is the ‘societal norm’ for the country. Therefore, everyone follows that one societal norm, for the most part.”
So maybe they are just virtue signalling on what they think people will like
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I’d figure a lot. Political beliefs are heritable in nature. Along with experiences, I wouldn’t doubt that conservatives are more xenophobic due to larger ACC/amygdala.
It is a huge hunch I have and I’d love to see if it’s right. It makes sense.
I theorize that high levels of oxytocin combined with the heritability of political beliefs, a person will support either mass immigration or isolationism due to high levels of oxytocin and the brain structure for that political belief. I’d love to see this tested (if it hasn’t been already).
(Also read: Biology and ideology: The anatomy of politics From genes to hormone levels, biology may help to shape political behaviour.)
Also, to answer your question about libs living in rich areas, I agree that it’s a form of ‘signaling’ (for lack of a better term). I’m sure they know the crime disparities between minorities; however, it makes them feel good and strokes their genetic ego when they rally for these causes. This is where political beliefs come into play.
Yessss. You get it. That AmRen talk by Rushton is outstanding and really explains what is going on at this moment in the West. Any readers, watch the talk. It is great. And to any readers, read Altruism and Ethnocentrism.
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Looking at genetic similarity theory in comparison with Satoshi Kanazawa’s explanation for conservative and liberal views is interesting. If Kanazawa is correct, then only sharing resources with co-ethnics may be due to lower intelligence, because this behavior is not evolutionarily novel. However, there are counterexamples to this idea in the Ashkenazi Jews and East Asians. This has led me to think that ethnocentric conservatism, as the genetic similarity theory might suggest, is not (completely) IQ dependent, or that IQ only increases non-ethnocentrism if other conditions are met.
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You can recommend books on races
Thank you
Friendly
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