Customer Reviews

Gobineau: Selected Political Writings (Roots of the Right)

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As philosophy:

This work is fairly bad to mediocre, at best.

First off, the entire work's pet theory of the degeneration of bloodlines has been rendered ridiculous by genentics, in hindsight.

Putting that aside though, reading Gobineau is painful in the same way Marx is. He sees everything through a very narrow lens. The thing that absolutely kills me is that just when he's finally coming up with an interesting idea, his crazy pet theory on the degeneration of the blood of races pops back up. He actually raises some good ideas regarding why civilizations fall and whether nature rather than nurture plays a role. He also has a few good points regarding the ridiculousness of descriptive equality (which as is noted in the intro forced political theorists towards "moral exhortation" and away from descriptivism). These points are few and far between, though.

Expect lots of post hoc reasoning on precisely who had more aryan blood (whoever did the conquering had it, of course), generalized racism, mingled with hysterical bitterness over Gobineau's social position and cherrypicked history lessons designed to prove a point, though not very well. Early on, for instance G cites the Aztecs to prove that fanaticism can't destroy an empire (though they were fanatical when civilization fell, right? and others couldn't question the wisdom of the god-king right?).

Another ideologue. Kind of like reading anything Marx wrote after 1844. Occassionally the guy will have an idea, but instead of inexplicably connecting it to the class struggle, it's about the regeneration or vitiation of blood lines.

For a philosophy of history, read Spengler or Hegel.

As History:

This edition works really well. I'd recommend it. It's one of the few good primary sources heavily in use during the nazi era besides Mein Kampf and tends to be difficult to find in reliable scholarly editions. The introduction, while somewhat overly apologetic, nicely contextualizes the work. It also breaks up the work into selections, which makes for easier reading and reference. Of particular interest, IMO is section 7. In something I found very odd, given Wagner and Hitler's subsequent love of G - G likes Jewish folks. A lot. I'm not being sarcastic. I suppose Hitler must've skipped that section.

This book is an invaluable primary source in terms of understanding Nazi Era Germany.

Conclusion:

So, in short, my review is mixed. If you're looking at this historically and curious where the nazis got some of their ideas from, it's great and it's not as long-winded, grandiose and wildly irrational as Rosenberg (one of the other major popular sources of ideology). If you're concerned about racism, you might want to at least read the introduction - most of these same notions continue to pop up in modern society. You should be able to rebut them.

To everyone else, Gobineau's writing and ideas are pretty awful, frequently illogical, utterly dated, and I'd avoid it. It's painful to read. The author is boring and long-winded and inclined to connect everything to his pet theory. Even the racist nutjob set will probably be disappointed. As I mentioned previously, G. likes Jewish folks.