Thread by @Ancient0History

Meditation of the day: Breaking down H. P. Lovecraft & Adolf Hitler

Doing something a little different today. I'd like to break down a fairly large passage on Hitler & the Nazis from a letter dated 12 June 1933 from Lovecraft to James F. Morton, sentence by sentence, to dissect things in microscopic detail. Buckle in, this is a long one.

A little background: Hitler had lost the 1932 election, but was appointed chancellor of Germany in January 1933. His powers were expanded after the Reichstag fire in February, and Hitler immediately began to implement an antisemitic agenda, and there were book burnings.

James F. Morton was a noted anti-racist in Lovecraft's circle. The two had been friends for more than ten years, but disagreed on racial and ethnic equality; Morton is believed to have been anti-Nazi pretty much from the beginning. HPL's letter is in reply to Morton's arguments.

1: Just now Friend Adolph is overdoing the selective anthropology a bit, yet there’s a damn sight of sense in a lot of his contentions.

"Friend Adolph" or "Der Schöne Adolph" were phrases Lovecraft picked up from newspaper articles on Hitler, and used mockingly.

2.1: While of course the demand for more than 0.75 of Aryan blood in full citizens is an excessive one except where the diluting blood is biologically inferior—as with negroes and australoids—it remains a fact that many modern nations need to take steps to preserve the integrity

2.2: of their own native cultures against shrewd and pushing alien influences.

A reference to the Mischling Test created with reference to the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums) passed in Apr 1933;

this defined as a Jew anyone that had a Jewish parent or grandparent. The reference to "Australoids" regards Lovecraft's particular prejudice against indigenous Australians; he had been influenced by certain scientific racism publications into thinking that these people were

uniquely "primitive" biologically. Nazi laws based on blood quantum took some inspiration from American laws like Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924.

Lovecraft actually thought the Nazi law went too far, but...he didn't disagree with it in spirit.

3: One must view such problems realistically—without patriotic sentimentality like Hitler's on the one hand, and without idealistic sentimentality on the other hand.

A common approach by Lovecraft, decrying "sentimentality" or "idealism" and claiming unemotional objectivity.

In reality, this approach basically gave cover for Lovecraft's prejudices; he never acknowledged his own emotional investment in his position skewed his interpretation of racism and discrimination.

4: Certainly, a dash of alien blood of a superior race (among which a large section of Jews as well as Mongols must be included) does not harm another superior stock so long as the culture is unimpaired.

"Mongols" in this case is shorthand for "Mongoloid," which is how some

scientific racism schemes categorized Asian peoples (Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid being the major groupings). Lovecraft had at this point in his life come to the conclusion of a separation of biology and culture, and was slightly more concerned with the latter than the former.

This is ultimately the result of Lovecraft internalizing arguments in favor of "assimilationism" - that immigrants to the US should forget their own cultures and embrace US language and culture, which was very popular during the early 20th century.

5: But that's where the rub comes.

It has to be remembered that Lovecraft's views on race were not static; he was constantly exposed to new ideas and information that modified his views. Yet prejudices are stubborn things, not easy to let go or acknowledge refutation.

6: When the alien element is strong or shrewd enough to menace the purity of the culture amidst which it parasitically lodges, it is time to do something.

"Shrewd" was a common adjective Lovecraft applied toward Jews, and not entirely in a positive fashion. A key aspect of

Lovecraft's antisemitism was the common idea that Jewish people were philosophically or culturally antithetical to "Aryan" (or white or English or American, etc.) culture, because Aryan/etc. culture characterized themselves by pride, strength, conquest and Jews were seen as

dispossessed, cringing, possessed of a slave mentality (sklavmoral in Nietzsche's work), etc. This wasn't true, any more than there's such a thing as "purity of the culture," but it was a popular misconception, and Lovecraft bought into it strongly.

7.1: So far as Jews are concerned, it wouldn't hurt a nation to absorb a few thousand provided they were not a physiognomically aberrant type and provided they left their culture and folkways behind them so that the new generation would hold no memories except of the dominant

7.2: racial tradition.

This is assimilationism, essentially, but this is also Lovecraft pushing the idea that there existed racially heterogenous populations of Jews. This was an idea he seems to have picked up in New York, and is basically the Khazar myth, which argued that

some Jews (especially from Eastern Europe) were really of Central Asian ancestry. This reinforced the idea that Jews were "other" and also allowed someone like Lovecraft to argue that "assimilated" Jews he liked were different from the Jews he didn't.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hy…

8: Palgrave's Golden Treasury is no less golden because of the anthropologist's old man was an ex-Cohen.

The Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrics. "Cohen" from "Kohen"/"kohanim." Still used as slang term for Jews today in some parts.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohen

9: So far, Hitler is wrong.

One of the characteristics of Lovecraft's relationship with Hitler and the Nazis is that he very emphatically didn't agree with everything they said and did. But...

10.1: But—when a clique of sharp, pushing Yids get hold of the professional & cultural life of a nations, become its ostensible mouthpiece, & begin putting across their alien psychology & folkways under the pretence of representing the national-racial culture they prey upon .....

10.2: then, by god, it’s time to get the fancy principles & do something to restore control & expression to the real population of the nation concern’d!

One of Hitler's claims was that Jews had an outsized influence on Nazi Germany's government bureaucracy, law practices, etc.

As with similar claims in the United States about outsized Jewish influence on banking, publishing, etc., the facts don't support these conspiracy theories. Jews were a minority in every country, and many of them were poor or middle-class. Lovecraft bought into the conspiracy

theories of outsized Jewish influence - and when combined with his prejudices regarding the antithetical nature of Jewish and "Aryan" culture, this convinced him that Jews were a genuine threat. Or at least, that was Lovecraft's argument, his rationalization of his antisemitism.

"Real population" is a key phrase here. Like many people, Lovecraft did not see Jews - even if they were citizens of the United States - as "Americans" in the same sense as himself. While the US has always been a nation of immigrants, there were and are strong prejudices about

ethnicity and heritage tied to race, with the idea that "Old Americans" (primarily meaning those of English or British ancestry tied to the original colonies) represented a distinct people with a superior claim to citizenship than later immigrants.

11: On that point I’m a red-hot Nazi ..... Heil, Hitler! 卐!! Deutschland über Alles …… (until it begins to encroach on Anglo-Saxons, & then to hell with the whole lousy continent & its worn-out attitudes. God Save the King!!!)

Yes, Lovecraft drew a swastika. This is the kind

of quote which is easy to mine and take out of context, although as you can see IN-context Lovecraft's views on Hitler and the Nazis were a lot more nuanced. The part in parentheses is representative of Lovecraft's lifelong Anglophilia; he also opposed Germany during WWI.

I should add that the term "Anglo-Saxon" is falling out of favor in history scholarship as the term is a misleading one for Old English peoples, and adopted to support racialist paradigms and has been co-opted by racists.

smithsonianmag.com/history/many-m…

12: Well—to make a long story short, I think the Yids had the beginnings of a real strangle-hold on German professional & cultural life, hence I’m glad to see some sort of curb applied.

Lovecraft believed Nazi propaganda. Part of this was prejudice in willing to believe bad

things about Jews (as we'll see in following sentences), but another part was an unwillingness to believe anti-Nazi articles because he believed they were written by Jews - who would, by Lovecraft's logic, be biased and "sentimental." Antisemitism gets him coming and going.

13: The proportion of Jew lawyers in Berlin was a whole epic expressed in simple arithmetic.

Lovecraft was getting his numbers from newspaper articles like this one (Macon Chronicle-Herald, 10 Apr 1933, page 1):

14: It was time to weed out the strongly & obviously foreign—even tho’ Charlie Chaplin Jr. is going a bit too far.

Lovecraft was an associate of Wheeler Dryden, Charlie Chaplin's half-brother. HPL believed Chaplin was partly Jewish, as did the Nazis.

15.1: When the legal (or educational or literary or theatrical &c.) machinery of a nation gets concentrated in the hands of a group whose inherited & openly perpetuated system of values & psychological reactions differs perceptibly from that of the nation itself, there is no time

15.2: for highfalutin babble.

Taken by itself, without the context that Lovecraft was talking specifically about Jews, many folks might agree with this sentiment. That's the part of the problem with prejudice; it subordinates ideas and twists them to its purpose.

16.1: Without the least bit of malice, & with no reflections at all on the qualitative status of the aliens concerned, steps must be taken to restore the alienated machinery to people (whether or not of 100% pure blood) who inherit & wish to perpetuate the nation’s own traditions

16.2: & systems of values.

There's no evidence Lovecraft was aware of the Final Solution; Hitler and the Nazis had spoken about establishing concentration camps before this (and actually founded the first shortly after coming to power), but in the context of the 1930s these

would have looked like the enemy alien camps of World War I. Lovecraft never knew of the mass murder of the Jews & other peoples by the Nazis, never saw where his "Without the least bit of malice" argument would lead.

We, of course, do know.

17: It would be silly to assume that Jews & near-Jews like Ludwig &c. really represent the German nation.

I think this was Emil Ludwig.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Ludw…

18: While it is silly to suppress their books, something must be done to emphasise their non-Germanism.

In reference in part to Nazi book-burning and other efforts. Lovecraft disliked such spectacles, and generally decried censorship, but antisemitism made exceptions.

19: And certainly, German natives ought not to be judged in courts where decisions rest with men having non-German instincts & sympathies & traditions.

Lovecraft had basically no experience of the legal system, and it shows.

20: So there I pat Handsome Adolf on the back!

Handsome Adolf / Der Schöne Adolf was, as I said, a thing in the newspapers Lovecraft picked up, e.g. Raleigh, NC News and Observer, 22 Oct 1933, p4:

21: (His lip-bot is the only really unforgivable thing about him … oh, if I could only take a Gillette to him & Sonny Belknap!)

Lovecraft was not keen on moustaches, and especially derided Hitler's. "Sonny Belknap" was Frank Belknap Long, Jr, who also affected a thin mustache.

22: What this bimbo ought to do is to use a sense of proportion.

"Bimbo" in the older sense of "idiot," without relation to gender, ultimately from the Italian "bimbo" (fellow, chap). I guess the contemporary equivalent would be "dude."

23.1: A man brought up in the real German tradition, with early impressions confirming the virile pagan and Protestant psychology which belongs to the nation and excluding any of the hereditary teachings peculiar to another culture, ought certainly to be a full citizen and

23.2: potential officeholder even if 1/4, 1/2 or fully Jewish in genealogy.

Lovecraft's romanticism can be seen in the phrase "virile pagan and Protestant psychology;" the Nazis would seek to emphasize these romantic notions of Pagan Germany.

24: But no man who inherits Jewish feelings and perspectives ought to hold a pivotal post in an Aryan nation.

The terrible thing isn't that Lovecraft wrote this, it's that this was a common sentiment that HPL put into fancier speech. Antisemitism was incredibly commonplace.

Nazi propagandists would, for example, push the idea that president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was actually a closeted Jew named Rosenfeld and that he had many Jews in his cabinet. You can still find right-wing pundits complain about Jews in the American government today.

25: That's no insult to intellectual Jews—it's simply commonsense.

"Commonsense" is another of Lovecraft's efforts to rationalize his prejudices; if it makes sense to him, it's commonsense.

26: If the Jews had a nation of their own, (as they would if they had our guts and self-respect) I'd be the first to insist that it be kept free of Aryan influences.

I have a whole thread on Lovecraft & the Mandate of Palestine & Zionism:

https://twitter.com/Ancient0History/status/1393224005981704193

In general, Lovecraft did actually argue that various nations should be allowed to follow their own course without interference - he regretted, for example, that Japan's Westernization would mean the loss of its traditional culture. However...

...Lovecraft still had a lot of colonial-era sympathies. So, for example, he didn't like the idea of the British Empire allowing self-rule in Ireland or India, or the Americans allowing self-rule/giving up the Philippines as a colony.

27: As it is, I honestly regret the Aryan taint (any infusion is a "taint" if it's where it doesn't belong) in the noble and ancient culture of Japan.

Lovecraft didn't know a lot about Japan, but he did like what little he did know - mostly Hokusai prints & Lafcadio Hearn.

28: Hitler merely applies the wrong test.

The "test" in this case being the blood quantum portion of the German law restricting Jewish participation in government & law.

29: A real colour-line needs to be drawn only against certain definitely alien physical types—chiefly the biologically underdeveloped black races.

Segregation was the rule of law in the United States throughout Lovecraft's life, and it cannot be overemphasized how absolutely

vital this was to understanding his prejudices. He grew up with the "color-line," with people defending and justifying it, and held to the idea rigidly thoughout his life. Such race laws also made American opposition to Nazi race laws ideologically...a bit hypocritical.

30: Within the truly Caucasian race the test ought to be cultural—depending on each individual's personal history and natural reactions, as determined by proper psychological and other investigations.

Lovecraft's hypothetical politics are idealistic - although often variations

of Enlightened Despotism or meritocracy with eugenic overtones. Some of these ideas eventually found fictional expression in the alien cultures of "The Mound" and "At the Mountains of Madness."

31: If any undoubted Caucasian thinks and feels like an Aryan, then let him hold office in an Aryan nation.

Lovecraft didn't start out his life going on about "Aryans," the idea of "Aryan" as a term for "white" rose to prominence in the early 20th century and was widely accepted

and pushed by the Nazis and other groups. The reason for the label is that there IS no such thing as "white culture," no one group that encompassed all the "white" peoples of Europe satisfactorily to racialists. So they were left with inventing one.

32: This would not only cut down the unpleasant foreign percentage in power, but would step up the assimilation of the whole alien element.

I want to emphasize that while this is really racist, it wasn't Lovecraft being uniquely racist. Assimilationism was standard in the '30s.

33: (Of course, no new members of an alien culture ought to be admitted to a nation except in small quantity.)

Lovecraft is implicitly referring to curtails on immigration in the US like the Immigration Act of 1924, which implemented tight quotas on immigration based on race.

It was popularly known as the "Asian Exclusion Act" or the "Asiatic Barred Zone Act" for its specific provisions for excluding Asian immigration, particularly Japanese, Korean, etc. (China was already barred).

This legislation wouldn't be replaced until 1965.

34-35: A hideous example of what Hitler is honestly—if crudely—trying to prevent is the stinking Manhattan pest zone. Faugh!

Lovecraft's time in New York profoundly exacerbated his antisemitism, and he continued to attack the city & its inhabitants for the rest of his life.

36: Everything gone Yiddish—radical, effeminate psychology dominant—stage & press Jew-ridden—publishing houses (which determine what books shall be publish’d) gobbled by squint-eyed, verminous [k-word]—books review’d (which guides publick taste) by flea-whiskered Talmudists—hell!

There's a lot to unpack there, but this definitely gives the flavor of how strongly memories of New York affected Lovecraft even years later. The emphasis on "effeminate" should be understood as part of HPL's prejudice of Jews as cringing (i.e. unmasculine). There's a bit of a

crisis of masculinity subcurrent in a lot of antisemitism and racism. "Radical" refers to the popular idea of Jewish involvement in communist organizations - partly true as many early labor union organizers were Jewish, but in this sense it refers also to the myth that Jews were

leaders of the Bolshevik revolution. Lovecraft, like many in the US and abroad, was against communism - although he would come to accept and embrace New Deal-style socialism. His opposition to Jewish involvement in publishing might in part have been a result of his difficulties

getting his own works published, although this is a bit ambiguous, and more likely it's an idea Lovecraft picked up and embraced, with selective picking of facts to support his prejudices.

37: There’s an Augean stable for the future Nazis of America!

It's probably worth pointing out that Lovecraft only wrote this way to Morton because they were old friends and knew each other's positions, more or less. HPL did not talk about Nazis this brazenly to most others.

This is, for better or worst, Lovecraft with fewer filters in place, more open and arrogant in his positioning because he knew he was talking to someone who would argue back (and had heard some of it before, in different contexts.)

38: This crime of neglect has spawned a new & degenerate branch of Semitic culture masquerading as a branch of Aryan culture—the international, radical Greenwich-Village-Union-Square sort of thing which today distinguishes New York from America.

The use of Greenwich Village is

interesting in this case because it was, even then, a nucleus of gay culture in the US. It isn't entirely clear if Lovecraft knew that, or if he just knew it as a kind of Bohemian enclave that supported atypical political ideas.

39: Decadent—vulgar—cowardly—visionary—anti-American—incomprehensible—feminine—value-destroyed ……. & this kind of things is so gangrenously contagious that it ropes in thousands of Aryans as well.

This kind of word-association style crops up in Lovecraft's letters, especially

when he's getting excited; it's as close as he gets to stream-of-consciousness, and Morton would be familiar with it. Really just Lovecraft getting so worked up he can't even formulate coherent arguments, nor does he feel the need to.

Skipping a bit here to get to one of the uglier and more important parts of this particular letter. So:

[...]

40: I’d like to see Hitler wipe Greater New York clean with poison gas—giving masks to the few remaining people of Aryan culture (even if of Semitic ancestry).

Lovecraft is being hyperbolic here - referencing the use of poison gas in World War I, his reference to New York as

"the Pest Zone," and the use of chemical agents in pest control. Unfortunately, he managed to accidentally predict the use of Nazi Germany's poison gas during the Holocaust, so this bit of rhetoric looks even worse than it already is. Nor does it get better.

41-42: The place needs fumigation & a fresh start. (If Harlem didn’t get any masks, I’d shed no tears ..... & the same goes for the [d-word] slums!)

Morton, it should be remembered, used to live in Harlem, where Lovecraft would visit him.

In other letters Lovecraft would emphasize that he didn't advocate for mass murder, and again, he had no idea that the genocide of Jews & others under the Nazi regime was being set up even as he wrote, but it's still a hard read, even if Lovecraft was joking.

43: Incidentally—all these newspaper discussions of recent months miss the one great point of the age-long and ineradicable Jew-Aryan line of cleavage.

Lovecraft means all the pro-Nazi/anti-Nazi articles that ran in newspapers in 1933 after Hitler took power.

44: It isn't religion—all religion is a negligible factor today.

It should be emphasized Lovecraft knew practically nothing about Jewish religion, and wasn't shy to admit that. HPL also was essentially an atheist, though his religious background was Christian Protestant.

One of the characteristics of many of Lovecraft's arguments is taking his experience to be near-universal. So because religion wasn't important to him, he would argue it wasn't important at all. However, much antisemitism was actually religious as well as cultural & racial.

45: It is only slightly race—half of the Jews in existence are of very superior stock, as their ability to undermine our culture shews; and only a fraction are more-physically repulsive than many races whom we hate less.

Again, Lovecraft's Jewish race stereotyping.

46: The real, impassible barrier is cultural.

There are deep roots to this statement, but the important thing is that while Lovecraft saw culture closely entwined with race, he came to see them as separable - in part because of arguments with friends like Morton over his racism.

47.1: Our whole system of values differs utterly and irreconcilably from the Jewish system, even though (and this is what obscures the real problem) our absurd pretence at harbouring the silly, alien, decadent Jewish by-product called Christianity makes us pretend to endorse the

47.2: Hebrew slave-psychology.

Lovecraft parroting or referencing Nietzsche here. HPL really didn't read much of Nietzsche before 1919 or so, but in his works HPL found a philosophical framework to support the antisemitic prejudices that Lovecraft already had inherited or

developed from his family and community, and Nietzsche's works were critical in directing the shape of Lovecraft's antisemitism. HPL would almost certainly still have been antisemitic without Nietzsche, but not in the same way.

Another little break here, I want to get the last few sentences out and then go for lunch.

[...]

48: What we can't forgive in the Jew is not the tone of his prayers or the size of his nose, but the fact that he is willing to survive under the conditions he accepts.

Lovecraft directly referencing antisemitic stereotypes and caricatures here. Which are sadly still around.

49: Being weak may not have been his fault—but it is his fault that he is alive and not free and dominant.

This is getting back into the idea that Jews were a "nation without a state," which Lovecraft and others held as an innate flaw and in stark contrast to "Aryans."

Which is a highly inaccurate and selective reading of history, but the logic is somewhat cyclical in white supremacy and antisemitism.

50: If we were as weak as he, and could not fight our way to self-respect, we would perish utterly—taunting our foes, virile and unbroken, as the last man fell.

"We" in this case being Aryans/white people/Anglo-Americans. Lovecraft says "we" to distinguish he means both himself

and Morton; one of the things that strongly distinguished Morton from Lovecraft's other correspondents is that they came from such similar backgrounds but disagreed fundamentally on racism. This was a problem for Lovecraft, who didn't understand why.

51: That unbrokenness is all that matters to us.

This was more than just an expression of Lovecraft's Aryan ideal - it was a personal expression that he himself was "unbroken." Whatever his circumstances, HPL at least had his pride - and if he had nothing else to be proud of,

Lovecraft could at least take comfort in his racial identity. This is an aspect of the appeal of racism that is sometimes overlooked: Lovecraft could content himself that at least he wasn't Jewish. Although he never explicitly puts it in those terms.

52: Good Jew-Aryan relations can come only after these plain truths are recognised on both sides.

Yes, Lovecraft was literally "both sides" in 1933. It has to be understood what he is adopting here is essentially a Centrist position, not entirely agreeing with the Nazis but also

not willing to concede that they are totally and irrevocably wrong. Except, of course, they are fucking Nazis. When you see people decrying how the Democrats and Republicans, or the Tories and Liberals, are more similar than they are alike or that they both have valid points...

...it is a very dangerous political position to accept as given that both sides have some validity to their position. They don't. Some people are just wrong, and if you try to accommodate them you're complicit in the deaths that follow.

53: In the end, there will have to be a separation of the cultural Jew from the body politic, plus a complete absorption—with abandonment of hereditary traditions—of thousands of other Jews.

Ultimately, Hitler found extermination preferable. Lovecraft didn't live to see that.

54: That will call for concessions on both sides—the Jews will have to realise that they can't drag their folkways into our national patterns, while we will have to abandon the tight race-lines of the Hitlerites.

This also did not happen.

55: That ought not to be a hardship either way.

Again, Lovecraft's future-politics scenarios tend to be ideals. He had no practical experience in politics and little idea how governments actually work. This is viewing the future through rose-tinted racist spectacles.

56: The Jews are used to subordinate positions, and good governments need impose no hardships on their unassimilable faction.

Again consider that Lovecraft lived in a segregated country, but in a part of it that was far from the Jim Crow South. He could write this without irony.

57: And on the other side—Aryan nations have taken on varying doses of Semitic blood in the past (Spain has oceans of it; England and America since Cromwell's time have absorbed a trickle) without any unfavourable results whatsoever.

Lovecraft, through his Jewish friends & wife

had come to accept that not all Jews, or those with Jewish heritage, were bad. He was still antisemitic. You can have Jewish friends and still be an antisemite. What Lovecraft did was make them exceptions and adapt his understanding of Jewishness to accommodate his friends while

still holding onto his prejudices. That too is very common. People tend to be highly resistant to change.

58: Give or take.

59: But if any damn Yid expects to produce a permanent dent in our civilization, he might as well measure his behind for the toe of a well-directed Aryan brogan!

H. P. Lovecraft to James F. Morton, 12 Jun 1933, Letters to James F. Morton 322-326

There's more to the letter...

...but I think that makes all the point I want to make. Anyone that says Lovecraft was not racist or that his marriage to his wife helped him overcome his prejudices should read Lovecraft's letters. HPL didn't magically get better just because he got laid.

There's a lot of prejudice packed into those 59 sentences - but a lot of nuance and context too. You can see how it might be easy to take one or two lines out of this letter and argue that Lovecraft was the most ardent Nazi on the planet or that he became less racist over time.

You need a good bit of background to unpick not just what he's saying but why he's saying it, and how this reflects against the rest of his thought and experiences in life. It's letters like this which make me mislike the overly simplistic "low hanging fruit" approach to decrying

Lovecraft's racism, like the name of the cat in "The Rats in the Walls." Because there's so much more material out there, where he goes into so much detail and it's clear that Lovecraft is dealing with many more influences and putting more thought into it than just the n-word.

Anyway, this has been a long and terrible thread, and this is the stuff I've been studying in detail for my next book. It's gonna be a doozy.