the emptiness of nietzschean vitalism.

failing to deliver.

I have been accused of being a Nietzschean Vitalist. To the extent that Nietzsche critiqued prudish moralism and advocated for a Pan-European alliance against Russia, he seems valuable, but I haven’t ever sat down and read one of his books. That’s just as well, since he was an aphorist, and you can catch the vibe from a few choice quotes. But I wouldn’t call myself a Nietzschean, since metaphysically, I am a Platonist.

With regard to vitalism, I always thought it referred to “healthy living,” but apparently it is a 19th century mystical rejection of materialism. As a Platonist and Schopenhauerian, I would agree that physics and chemistry are not fundamental, but undergirded by the Will and metaphysics.

But “Nietzschean Vitalism,” put together, colloquially refers to a group of pro-Putin, anti-vaccine, anti-immigration bodybuilders on Twitter. They are distinguished from the other pro-Putin, anti-vaccine, and anti-immigration rightists by a few qualities:

1. They reject Christianity for being too weak and liberal, rather than seeing it as too conservative;

2. They reject “nationalism for all peoples,” as promoted by Dugin;

3. They support genocide and eugenics;

4. They embrace capitalism as a form of Social Darwinism against the poor;

5. They see Zionists as potential allies.

Besides these ideological distinctions, Nietzschean Vitalists advertise their pedigree as elitists with connections to Silicon Valley. They claim that they are influencing Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, and JD Vance with memes and posts. These figures frequently interact with Nietzschean Vitalists, directly or indirectly, through intermediaries like Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, Michael Anton, Michael Millerman, Michael Malice, and Tucker Carlson. But who is influencing who?

Nietzschean Vitalists claim that “Conservative Inc.” is captured by religious fuddy-duddies who live in the past and care about dead issues like gay marriage or policing sexual behavior. Nietzschean Vitalism, supposedly, cuts through the distractions, and is laser-focused on reducing immigration for the racial health of the country.

Nietzschean Vitalists claim that they could care less about Israel, Ukraine, abortion, or climate change. Supposedly, they are single-issue voters on reducing immigration to preserve white demographics. They want mass deportations. They claim that their connections with wealthy, powerful, and influential members of Silicon Valley will grant them victory.

But when push has come to shove, it seems that the Nietzschean Vitalists are losing on their signature issue among their own most celebrated “secret elite supporters.” The result is panic and damage control. It is a humiliating spectacle.

The Spectacle:

Feel free to browse through this curated selection of 15 screenshots at your leisure, with analysis below.

Source: x.com/elonmusk/status/1872860577057448306

x.com/bronzeagemantis/status/1872065711058952494

Summary:

• Elon Musk artificially boosted the Nietzschean Vitalists, along with the rest of the far right, to increase turnout for Trump. After Trump’s victory, he has dumped them on their signature issue: immigration. All they can do now is impotently vacillate between complaining and coping for the next four years.

• There will be no mass deportations under Trump, so long as Elon maintains influence. As in the first term, immigration under Trump will continue in line with the historical trend. Although Hispanic immigration will probably be less than Biden’s record-highs, “high-skilled” immigration of Asians will increase.

• The Nietzschean Vitalists have nothing without Elon. His “rebellion” or betrayal shows that he has nothing to lose by insulting them. The Nietzschean Vitalists believed that “the tail wags the dog,” and they were influencing Elon, but it was the other way around. Elon used them to promote their interests, and they are now being discarded as they have lost their usefulness.

JD Vance

When I point out these basic facts to Nietzschean Vitalists, they tend to cope by suggesting that JD Vance is on their side. But JD Vance is the “good cop” to Elon’s “bad cop.” Whereas Elon just comes out and insults them, JD Vance uses slippery politician-speak to appease voters. Let’s break down his tweet:

Making it affordable for a hardworking young person to afford a family is the core of “America First.” Too many have bought the lie that the path to prosperity is to flood the nation with cheap labor. In the next administration, we’ll fight for American workers.”

Vance deftly avoids confronting the issue at hand, which is high-skilled immigration. The term “cheap labor” is a dog-whistle for Mexicans. Indians, in his coded language, are “high skilled,” while Mexicans are “cheap labor.”

Here’s H1Bs under Trump:

As you can see, H1Bs were generally higher under Trump, around 200k per year, than under Obama. Obama usually awarded between 85k and 172k H1Bs. Trump did not reduce the number, but kept it the same. Even if Trump cuts H1Bs in half, he will still be worse than Obama.

JD Vance’s family, on his wife’s side, are H1B immigrants. They are “high skilled,” not “cheap labor.” In the caste system of the Vance family, Mexican immigration is bad, but Indian immigration is good. This is the last heroic stand of Nietzschean Vitalism.

My Position

Having critiqued others, it would be fair for me to positively state my own position and open it to critique. Immigration is not my top issue. My top issues are:

1. Reproductive rights and freedoms;

2. Removing, banning, taxing and fining toxic pollution in the air and water;

   1. Forcing tariffs and threatening punishments on countries who refuse to adhere to these pollution standards;

3. Maximum support for aggressive, assertive American intervention in Europe, short of pre-emptive nuclear strikes;

4. Containing Chinese aggression in the Pacific;

5. Reasserting American geopolitical primacy in South America and Africa.

While immigration is not a primary concern of mine, it is indirectly impactful as follows:

1. Military morale

2. Economics

3. Pollution

4. Risk culture

5. Political stability

Military Morale

The strength of a nation is its volunteer army. Napoleon proved that when the broad masses are united in nationalistic fervor, they are capable of defeating aristocratic or mercenary armies. Napoleon’s greatest defeats occurred when the proportion of his non-French troops was highest.

When Alexander relied on Greek troops, he conquered Asia. When his successors mixed together Greek troops with native troops, the conquests stopped. Austria-Hungary, which was a menagerie of various ethnicities, was famously incompetent in WWI. Similarly, the Ottoman Empire began as a band of Turkic warlords, but its conquests led to a reliance on Janissaries who, by the 19th century, outnumbered Turks, and led to the decline of that empire.

No empire can persist if its military force does not have a cohesive ethnic core. This was also true of Rome, which won battle after battle with Roman troops, but stagnated and declined once it began to rely on Gallic and Germanic auxiliaries.

The ethnic core of America is white, and the ethnic core of the military is specifically Scots-Irish. As these two demographics decline, America will not be able to sustain traditional military victories abroad.

It is possible that the use of drones and other remotely-controlled devices can reduce the need for ethnic cohesion and national idealism. If America avoids direct confrontation, and instead funds ethnically cohesive proxies like Ukraine and Israel, it can prolong its military decline.

First-generation immigrants from non-white and non-Christian cultures, understandably, have no reason to fight or die for America. On the other end of the spectrum, white Americans feel increasingly like Kulaks, and recruitment numbers are decreasing as a result. Neither new Americans or old Americans want to fight for a country which alienates them.

Data from 2015 suggests that a growing percentage of white Americans (15%) feel that they are at the bottom of a racial communist caste system, and things have likely gotten worse in the last 10 years.

It is possible that some percentage of the “white” categories includes Jews and Arabs who feel discriminated against; but it is also possible that whites are afraid to honestly answer such surveys, out of fear of sounding racist. The figures are also likely worse if we zoom in on conservative, Republican, Christian whites, who are the backbone of the military.

The number #1 driver of feelings of anti-white discrimination is not mass Hispanic immigration, but the promotion of non-whites to positions of power. In this respect, elite immigration is aggravating to the white warrior class and undermines national morale.

Economics.

Immigration, without question, grows total GDP. However, this GDP growth comes with increasing dependence on welfare. Welfare is a tax on the productive class, since it takes from the economically independent and gives to the economically dependent. This reduces the investment opportunities of the economically independent, which reduces entrepreneurship and growth.

Source: cis.org/Report/Welfare-Use-Immigrants-and-USBorn

Consider a simple model:

• For every new immigrant, total GDP increases by $40k.

• However, welfare spending also increases by $10k.

The net increase to the total economy seems like $30k. But this is effectively a form of communism, where immigrants benefit, and native taxpayers suffer. The economy gets “larger,” but it does not become wealthier.

Consider the inverse: what if America deported everyone, citizen and non-citizen, white and non-white, who uses welfare? The result would be a “shrinking” of the GDP, but the resulting economy would be undeniably richer and have a drastically lower tax burden, which would increase innovation.

Imagine if we deported every retiree — shipped all the old white folks to Jamaica. The economy would be smaller, since it would eliminate the need for all the retirement homes and butt-wiping nurses. But productive taxpayers would immediately gain back 12.4% of their income. That’s the difference between being able to start a business now and being forced to “save up a few more years.” Delayed entrepreneurship hurts the economy since agism is justified.

People who use welfare at greater rates, like retirees and legal immigrants, are a drain on innovation, because increasing the tax burden is a transfer of wealth away from young, productive, and dynamic individuals. Higher taxes mean that young men with bright ideas must spend more of their youth “saving up.” Lower taxes mean young men can save up faster, which means they can take more risky decisions and start business faster.

Immigration would be a greater economic benefit if America adopted a UAE-type system, which some have called a form of slavery, where immigrants are denied any rights to welfare or citizenship. But that does not seem likely. As a result, increased immigration will grow the economy on paper, but will also suppress net innovation by increasing the tax burden.

Australia, Britain, and Canada have proven that merit-based systems do not outperform America’s “open borders” system.

Source.

In 2008, the United States, Australia, Canada, and the UK were all equivalently wealthy. The non-American Anglosphere countries then adopted mass merit-based immigration policies, and their wealth has declined, while American wealth has increased.

In my opinion, this vindicates the policies of Bush, Obama, and Biden in opening the southern border with Mexico and allowing a vast flow of cheap labor into the country. This makes Americans wealthier. Merit-based immigration, on the other hand, slows growth.

This seems counter-intuitive, but there are a few possible explanations:

• Maybe the system for selecting based on merit (test scores, degrees) is flawed.

• Maybe we have “elite overproduction,” and what the economy needs is more laborers, not engineers.

• Maybe “high skilled immigrants” are overrepresented in nearly-illegal financial schemes, which end up slowing growth.

• Maybe merit-based immigrants are nepotistic, and hoard the wealth they generate among their cousins, or send it home via remittances.

It’s also possible that open-borders, low-skilled, “cheap labor” immigration is a worse system than merit-based immigration, but that America is superior to the Anglosphere in so many other ways that it compensates for this deficit.

It is possible that the Republican position is the worst of both worlds. It allows elite immigration, which increases structural nepotism, while prohibiting Hispanic immigration, which is either beneficial or neutral.

Pollution

In terms of pollution, immigration is a disaster. The only way to compensate for this is to slap a “green tax” on all immigrants. Every immigrant increases congestion; the trash on the street; mercury and plastic proliferation. The cost is enormous.

Ideally, before coming to the United States, each immigrant would be forced to pay for the additional cost of building more infrastructure, environmental cleanup, and increased toxic regulation.

Pollution scales with population. If you have a small town of 100 people, and one person spills the mercury from a thermometer into a lake, it’s not a big deal. If you have 1,000,000 people, and 10,000 of them spill mercury thermometers into the same lake, you now have a toxic wasteland. Of course, mercury thermometers are just a metaphor for everything: plastic production, trash burning, forever chemicals.

How much trash does a person generate during their lifetimes? How much pollution?

Each American produces, per year:

• 72.99lbs of durable plastic;

• 6.75lbs of plastic plates and cups;

• 6.5lbs of plastic trash bags;

• 17.77lbs of PET plastic bottles and jars,

• 8.98lbs of HDPE bottles;

• 0.25lbs of PVC containers;

• 0.25lbs of LDPE containers;

• 1.78lbs of PP containers;

• 0.51lbs of PS containers,

• 24.27lbs of plastic bags and wraps,

• 28.98lbs of plastic packaging,

• and 28.22lbs of other plastics,

• in addition to 19.24lbs of synthetic rubber tires

• and 22.29lbs of other synthetic rubbers.

That’s 238.78lbs of plastic or rubber per person per year. What is the cost of that?

Currently, it costs $11 billion to clean up litter for 335 million Americans, which comes out to $32.84 per American per year. Children don’t produce as much waste as adults, so most of this waste is concentrated in adult years. In this sense, immigrants who come as adults contribute more litter than native-born Americans, due to the effect of age on pollution.

The median age of each new immigrant is 28. Assuming that immigrants live to be 77 years old, they have 49 years to pollute America, which means they contribute $1,609.16 to litter. Litter is the trash that ends up on the street, which isn’t properly disposed of. It doesn’t cover the costs of normal disposal.

For plastic alone, the cost of normal disposal is $32 billion, which comes out to $95.52 per person per year, or $4,680.48 over the lifetime of an immigrant. That’s just plastic — not everything else.

The World Wildlife fund estimates that plastic costs $185,000 per ton, or $92.50 per pound. That may sound extremely expensive — and it is — but consider that it takes around 24 small plastic bottles to add up to a pound. Still, that means each small plastic bottle costs around $3.87. The cost to produce plastic is very small, which is why companies keep packaging things in plastic, but the cost to mitigate the harmful effects of plastic is enormous. If governments began to tax plastic in accordance with the harm caused, it would disappear and be replaced by glass or cardboard overnight.

If plastic costs $92.50 per pound per year, then the average American is introducing a burden of $22,087.15 in plastic, per year.

Over 49 years, that comes out to $1,082,270.35. Each immigrant costs a million dollars over their lifetime in plastic pollution. It’s an incredible figure, but makes sense when you consider the hormonal, psychological, environmental, and aesthetic cost of plastic. Plastic toxicity is epigenetic, meaning that it destroys our genetic code, passing on diseases to future generations. Plastic leads to infertility, destroying our ability to create life. It is the greatest evil of the modern world, and permitting the proliferation of plastic is an attack on reproductive rights.

In order to mitigate the effects of plastic pollution, a plastic tax of $92.50 per pound (roughly $3.87 for a small bottle, $0.82 for a plastic grocery bag) would eliminate its use in disposable food containers, and only preserve it in particular industrial applications where it is necessary. Until this occurs, each immigrant is costing over $1 million dollars to America by adding plastic pollution to our environment.

Risk Culture

America has one of the most risky cultures in the world. Americans love fast cars, drinking, drugs, guns, gambling, MMA, and other extreme sports. This is good, because a risky culture is more likely to be inventive than a risk-averse culture.

Unfortunately, most cultures in the world are less risky than American culture. This means that by importing “high skilled” immigration, America is suppressing its own innovative potential, from the top down. This is especially true for Asian cultures, which are the most risk-averse in the world.

Importing millions of Hispanics to do construction labor doesn’t lower the national risk profile at a structure level, because Hispanic laborers don’t make decisions. CEOs and executives do. If Asians take over the American economy from the top down, you can expect less innovation, and more downsizing.

H1B begets H1B. The H1B program is modern day slavery. It forces employees to work for a single employer, without freedom to quit or find another job. If the employee acts up, they get immediately deported. Imagine being in America on an H1B visa, and having a girlfriend, and losing her because you lost your job and were deported. Along with all your friendships and connections. It is a form of emotional terrorism against workers.

CEOs who want ever-greater control over their workers love H1B, because it serves as a huge threatening stick to beat their workers into submission. Americans won’t put up with that treatment. Control seeking behavior is linked to risk-aversion. This creates an endless cycle where risk-averse Asian CEOs lobby for more H1Bs, which imports more Asians, who lobby for more H1Bs. The result is the recreation of a slave culture, which Americans fought to end in our Civil War. It is an insult to those who fought and died.

Political Stability

Political stability and military morale are deeply interrelated. You can’t have a country that is politically stable without a sense of common identity. Empires with large unassimilated divisions are prone to civil war, gridlock, corruption, and inefficiency.

It is better to make a bad decision than no decision.

Cultures which are divided by identitarian or sectarian distinctions have difficulty making decisions. But this isn’t an argument for white nationalism. Masses don’t make decisions — elites make decisions. Masses might influence the elite, or pressure them, but masses can only support one group of elites over another.

Even if the masses are divided into different racial or ethnic groups, if elites are united, the risk to political stability is low. For example, during the Civil Rights struggle, many rednecks and low-class whites in the south opposed integration. Even in Boston, working-class Irish and Italians opposed integration. But because elites were united behind integration, they were able to overcome the concerns of the masses.

But when elite opinion is divided, as during the American Civil War, the threat to the country is great. If America imports a new Asian leadership class, this class will have a different sense of religion, history, and identity from America’s previous elites.

The conflict between Jewish, Catholic, and WASP elites directly led to the disruptive reforms of FDR. The greater the identitarian divisions between elites, the greater the political friction. If this is true for Jews, Catholics, and WASPs, it could be even greater when comparing white elites and Asian elites.

I am not suggesting that white and Asian elites will start a civil war, but that Asian elites will have different ideas about how to rule the country. These disagreements will make it harder for elites to come to unanimous decisions. A bad decision is better than no decision.

The disaster in Ukraine is due to the hesitancy on the part of Biden to support Ukraine. This is because America elites are divided on Ukraine. Some, like Musk, want to support Russia, while others, like Bloomberg, want to support Ukraine. If all elites were like Musk, America would have a coherent anti-Ukraine, pro-Russian policy. Or, if all elites were like Bloomberg, America would have a coherent pro-Ukraine, anti-Russian policy. But when elites are divided, the country can only proceed by half-measures, which is the worst of both worlds.

Conclusion.

There are a few possible solutions to immigration:

• Remove the possibility of citizenship and welfare for immigrants;

• Tax immigrants in proportion with their contribution to pollution ($1 million);

• Cap the number of immigrants per country at 10,000 each, to mitigate the scale of nepotistic collusion;

• D, all of the above.

Personally, I would prefer that America invade Mexico and add its 31 states to the union, so we could enjoy the increased economic benefits of a larger population, while reducing the infrastructure and pollution burden of northward migration. But none of these fanciful solutions are likely to occur under Republicans or Democrats, so I don’t see this as a reason to support one party over the other.

In proportionate terms, Biden decreased Asian immigration by increasing Hispanic immigration. This may have had positive effects on the economy, by increasing the supply of cheap labor, while reducing the negative cultural effects of Asian immigration, which include risk-averse thinking, anti-white nepotism, ethnocentric elite nepotism, and scam-onomics.

Source: x.com/arctotherium42/status/1873041224430698763

Immigration is not my top concern, and I think America can survive as a white-minority country. My intention is to undermine the Republican Party, which relies on a populist appeal to white Americans, while reneging on those promises and delivering elite non-white immigration.

Democrats who support globalism, sexual freedom, and education should become more restrictive on immigration to win elections. The 2024 election demonstrated that non-whites are moving toward Republicans, so it doesn’t make sense as an electoral strategy for Democrats to continue to promote open borders.

Nietzschean Vitalists, in overestimating their influence on Silicon Valley (some by knowingly scamming their audience, others LARPing as éminences grises) have proven their pathetic impotence. They were useful in getting Trump elected, but will not have any influence on policy.

This doesn’t mean that their diet advice is wrong, or that Nietzsche is stupid. Nietzschean Vitalism appropriates good ideas, like working out and reading the Iliad, and uses them to prop up the Republican Party, which is lame and backwards. I hope that some young Nietzschean Vitalists wake up from the scam and become more politically pragmatic and less one sided. Kamala Harris isn’t going to be memed as a secret white nationalist, which means that Democrats have to offer real benefits to win voters rather than dog whistles. Republicans only offer racist dog whistles and conspiracy theories.

I don’t even know what Straussianism is, but if it means “decoupling the exoteric from the esoteric, and understanding the difference between the two,” then perhaps a Straussian analysis is the best way to defeat Nietzschean Vitalism. If posting Swastikas on Twitter gets you a “posted it again award” and a dressing down by Vivek Ramaswamy on the supposed inferiority of jock culture, then perhaps you are being taken for a ride. Maybe you could better avoid being humiliated by promoting real Social Darwinism for a change. If the left is destroying the family, isn’t that a good thing? Isn’t that the Nietzschean position?

The reason I am hopeful for many individual Nietzschean Vitalists is because they are intelligent, they reject petty moralism, and they recognize the importance of risk-taking, physical health, and martial culture. These values are good and correct. However, undue fear of Hispanic immigration is being weaponized by Republicans to sneak Asians in through the back door, which is worse than open borders. If Nietzschean Vitalists can learn to stop fearing or hating Hispanic immigrants, they might find that the Democratic Party offers certain advantages.