"I'm not racist, but..."

 What is racism in it's purest form? If you distill it to its most basic concept, what is it? If you ask one person, you hear that it's discrimination based on skin color. (Part of it, but a minimization of the concept). If you ask another: "it's negative hateful stereotyping by the more powerful group." Others say that only those who suffer from its effects have permission to talk about such a thing. Almost everyone is convinced they know what it is when they see it or hear it, even if they can't precisely explain what it is. Today even racists who proudly proclaim the supremacy and excellence of "Western Civilization and values" and who praise ethnic homogeneity (that is, racial purity) as one of their highest values are offended by being called a racist.

Racism is the idea that there are simply different kinds of people in the world who must be ranked and treated according to their place: There are high quality people and low quality people. It is virtuous to sort the good people from the bad; to treat the good quality people differently from the bad quality people. The good must be rewarded, the bad punished. 

Racism is a kind of morality. This is a scandalous way of putting it to the ears of anti-racists because they have the moral judgement that all racists are lowly evil criminals. And even racists agree with them! Which is precisely why they are also so offended by being called a racist. 

If you notice that this moral sorting is exactly what racism consists in (think of the crude remark: "there's black people, and then there are n*gg*rs; Some people are good, others are just ignorant criminals!" -- a statement everyone has heard uttered a million times), then you will also notice that meritocracy, judging people according to their character/talent, calculating about their worth to society, wanting everyone to have a fair chance at proving their mettle through competition -- none of it criticizes the racist thinking in its most basic (il)logic. 

This is why you can have people who honestly think of themselves as not being racist, as liberal moderns, feeling enthralled when they are taught Plato's ideas about the "myth of three metals" in the Republic (some are made of gold, others silver, others brass) or Heidegger's ideas that the world is split into different embodied dispositions that belong to totally different "ways of being" (language, blood, geography, religion, philosophy, culture). If you criticize class society, then you will immediately hear the refrain: 'That's a hopeless ideal, a fantasy, a heaven with no basis in reality (biology, anthropology, history -- the "real" is simply an obvious given, it is the existing class society and can be measured turned into an unquestionable ideal. Unquestionable because it's point of reference is the circularity of its own construction). It is simply human nature that some are at the top, others at the bottom; that some are masters (leaders) others slaves (those who take the orders).'

Take a step back, to think about the denial of racism from the crude layman: "I'm not racist, there are blacks and n*gg*rs, I don't have a problem with the good blacks who assimilate to American culture and obey the laws, but those who run around dressing weird, talking weird, or acting like criminals... They must be punished. There are people like the latter in all races, so I'm not racist because I believe there are n*gg*rs (bad people, parasites, useless, criminal) in all races, and there are also good quality people too. It's just a matter of averages of the individuals." 

On other words, they don't see themselves as racist because they have an egalitarian starting point and criteria for the sorting of the races.

Liberals will quickly denounce this person as a disgusting filthy rabble, a redneck deplorable. But they too share this criteria, but prefer to put it in polite terms. 

Maybe they express it this way: "I am not racist because I’ve met just as many white wankers as black ones. It doesn’t matter what color you are, it’s what inside that counts." (David Vincent, Morbid Angel)

You can hear this kind of attitude from the lowest grocery store clerk, or from an unemployed plumber, all the way up to a judge, policeman, politician, or prosecutor. It's a common place. Using the derogatory word is, of course, taboo and looked down upon-- in total abstraction from how it is used and what is said. The attention turns to WHO says it and whether they have a right to use the word according to their skin color or oppression status. The word itself is supposed to be a masterkey to discern whether someone is a racist or not. So, while people denounce the utterance of the word, the reasoning expressed is widespread and celebrated and it gets by without criticism. A racism without racist words, coffee without caffeine. 

“I just believe in mingling with my own type. I wouldn’t think of wanting to be a part of any other culture, so I think you should have the free right of association.

“That’s the whole point: any time you have people of different cultures forced to come together, there’s conflict.” (David Vincent, Morbid Angel)

This is why Tipper Gore and Hillary Clinton can express this exact same racist thought using the words "inner city criminal super predators" and no one suspects racism is involved. Everyone knows who is being referred to -- mainly black and Hispanic people -- but the judgement is supposed to apply to characteristics that don't belong to people as a crude biological feature, but "culturally". Therefore, It's not seen as racist to demand the brutal treatment of criminals (all the people referred to by the prohibited slurs) because law and order is perfectly egalitarian in how it sorts its human materials. It isn't the skin color looked at, but whether the law has been obeyed. In this way, the need to analyze what law and order actually is does not arise because it is assumed from the very start as something good without investigation. This is helped with a specious comparison, a mental construction: Law and order is assumed to be the pure opposite of violence and domination. A lack of law and order would mean anarchy, chaos, the law and order of whichever gang takes control. It would be "the law of the jungle". (Who lives in the jungle?) The irony is this is exactly how the really existing law and order came to power in the stages of primitive accumulation ("soaking from every pore with blood and filth") e.g. the taming of the Wild West or the subjection of various colonized peoples. 

Even the leaders of neo-nazi organizations or the KKK have realized that today they won't get a hearing for their racist ideas if they use slurs. They know that the logic of their racist thinking is considered rather respectable insofar as they do not say the dirty word. And so, they drop the SS uniforms and white pointy hoods and put on suits and ties or even, especially today, goth and punk alternative clothing, which is trendy. "Yeah, put those extremist degenerates in jail, but we aren't far-right extremists, we are reasonable centrists, not brutes!" What distinguishes them? Not their ideas, but that one wants the legitimacy of state power before carrying out its terror, and the other is so convinced everyone already agrees with their fanaticism that formalizing "the people's justice" as law is superfluous. 

What one notices, is that crude biological racism is rejected for what the fascist philosopher Julius Evola called "spiritual racism" or "spiritual aristocracy". The idea, again, is what I have pointed out at the start. Evola says, to paraphrase, "an African king can be more dignified, spiritually superior to an Aryan street sweeper in Germany. And the African kingdom might be superior in some ways (e.g. the Asiatic/Islamic brute "rules better" because he isn't uninhibited about beheading enemies in the street. Law and order is absolute and there's no ambiguity about who rules and what the rules are.), but overall, all Western culture lovers can agree: the West is best!" 

You might, at first, think this idea of "spiritual aristocracy/meritocracy" therefore isn't racist, but it is embracing the logic of domination and subservience in its purest form. It is a purification of racism down to its most spartan features: sorting people into who belongs and who doesn't, who has a right to rule and who has the obligation to serve, who has this or that monopoly on violence. Evola's elitism prides itself on being esoteric, above the common herd with their dirty hands, but at the end of the day it is a common place of class society, of nationalistic world competition, of the very material competition for money and power they denounce as crass in their self-professed idealism for "higher purposes/values". It might deal in obscure spiritual teachings and abstract philosophical phrases, but at the end of the day, it is the banal content of rule that is the "gold standard" in democracy today.