Michael Rienzi, American Renaissance, February 2003

Racially-conscious whites are often frustrated that people of European descent do not understand a simple fact that others take for granted: that it is normal for an ethnic group or race to want to survive and to avoid displacement by others. Unlike people of other races, whites seem to demand some kind of objective, rather than subjective, reasons for survival. Activists have long hoped a respected academic would offer an objective, scientific justification for the defense by whites of their own ethno-racial interests. The wait is over. Dr. Frank Salter of the Max Planck Society has published just such a justification in the peer-reviewed journal Population and Environment (Vol. 24, No. 2, November 2002, pages 111-140). I believe Dr. Salter’s tour-de-force, “Estimating Ethnic Genetic Interests: Is it Adaptive to Resist Replacement Migration?”, is the single most important recent intellectual contribution to ethno-racial studies.

“Mainstream” discussions about immigration usually consider only secondary questions such as economics, crime, culture, etc. They ignore the ultimate interest of a people: genetic continuity, which is the focus of Dr. Salter’s paper. In the very first sentence he asks the central question: “Does ethnic competition over territory pay off in terms of reproductive fitness?”

Qualitative Considerations

From an evolutionary standpoint “fitness” means “reproductive fitness,” or the propagation of distinctive genes from one generation to the next. Living organisms can be seen as the vehicles by which this propagation occurs. Thus, as Dr. Salter explains, adaptive behavior “maintains or increases the frequency of one’s distinctive genes in the population.” Family or kin share many of the same distinctive genes, so a person’s fitness is increased by the survival and reproductive success of his kin.

This is true also for ethnic groups or “ethnies,” which is the term Dr. Salter prefers. Like families, members of an ethny have more distinctive genes in common with each other than they do with other populations; the same can be said of members of the same race. Although the genetic kinship of ethny members is more diluted than that of family members, ethnies are large reservoirs of genetic interests for their members. Therefore, just as a person has a great genetic interest in the well-being of his family, so does a German have for Germans, an Italian for Italians, etc. In this sense, it can be as adaptive to support one’s ethno-racial group as to support one’s family.

A defined territory is crucial for the survival of an ethny. According to Dr. Salter, “The special quality of a defended territory is that it insulates a population from the vicissitudes of demographic disturbances . . .” Acquisition and defense of territory are therefore an integral part of the tribal strategy of humans. The passionate relationship between a people and its homeland has been constant throughout history, and, as Dr. Salter points out, a people can suffer many setbacks, but as long as it retains its own territorial space, it can recover.

In the long run, only territory ensures survival, and human history is largely a record of groups expanding and contracting, conquering or being conquered, migrating or being displaced by migrants. The loss of territory, whether by military defeat or displacement by aliens, brings ethnic diminishment or destruction — precisely what is happening in the “multicultural” West today. A large part of Dr. Salter’s work in this paper is a quantitative analysis of this negative genetic impact.

Quantitative Analysis

Dr. Salter’s analysis is based on two concepts: carrying capacity and genetic kinship. Carrying capacity is the maximum population that can live in a given territory. Although technology and increased economic efficiency can increase carrying capacity, there is a practical limit above which further population growth is not possible. Many ecologists believe we are approaching, or have surpassed, the practical carrying capacity of the earth. Even if these ecologists are wrong about the earth as a whole, it is clear that carrying capacity has already been exceeded in those areas where over-population has badly damaged the environment or depleted natural resources.

Immigration undermines the interests of natives even if their territory has not reached its carrying capacity. For example, the carrying capacity of the United States is probably significantly greater than its current population. However, one day its carrying capacity will be reached, and if at that point part of the country is filled with the descendants of today’s immigrants, natives will have no room into which they can expand. In other words, even if the carrying capacity of the United States is as high as 600 million or more, if that population figure is ever reached, some portion will be the descendants of genetically alien immigrants. The presence of millions of non-whites will make the parts of the United States they occupy unavailable to whites. We may reach carrying capacity later rather than sooner, but since the earth is a “closed system,” it will happen eventually.

Nearly 30 years ago Garrett Hardin (BioScience, October 1974) wrote that over-population will limit population growth (as we see today in China), and he also pointed out that the cost of immigration falls “most heavily on potential parents, some of whom would have to postpone or forgo having their (next) child because of the influx of immigrants.” Immigration may not limit your decisions about having children, but some day it will limit the choices of your descendants.

Dr. Salter notes that immigrants can change the carrying capacity of their new nation. Intelligent, hard-working immigrants could in theory raise the carrying capacity by increasing the efficiency at which resources are used (though there is still a cost to natives, as we will see below). Incompetent immigrants are a drain on resources, and lower the carrying capacity. Readers can judge for themselves which kind of immigrants are arriving in the West.

The other concept central to Dr. Salter’s paper is genetic kinship. Even though all humans share many genes, kinship is a measure of the genetic similarities and differences above and beyond this general gene sharing; it measures the relative frequencies of ethnically distinctive genes. Kinship values can be either positive or negative. If individuals (or groups) share more genes than is typical of a population, then the kinship is positive; if they share fewer genes than average, kinship is negative. Genetic kinship can be mathematically derived from studies of the genetic variation, or distance, between populations.

The genetic data that form the basis of Dr. Salter’s quantitative analysis are from the work of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s 1994 book The History and Geography of Human Genes, which examined the frequencies of genetic variations in a broad range of human populations. In general, the data are sound, and show the genetic distances between different populations. They can also be used to measure the extent of the damage alien immigration does to the genetic interests of natives.

For the sake of simplicity, Dr. Salter assumes immigrants have no effect on carrying capacity, and that they have the same birthrates as natives — very conservative assumptions. Dr. Salter then asks: What is the genetic effect of displacing 10,000 natives by 10,000 immigrants? What happens to the frequencies of ethnic-specific genes? Given that members of an ethny want their nation to be composed of their people, and to leave behind, after they die, as many copies of their ethnic-specific genes in the population as possible, how much genetic damage does immigration cause?

It is important to note that Dr. Salter treats the arrival of immigrants, not as a simple addition to the population, but as a one-for-one displacement of natives. This is methodologically correct, because when a nation reaches its carrying capacity, it is the presence of immigrants and their descendents that makes it impossible for natives to increase their numbers. What may not appear to be one-for-one displacement today will, in retrospect, be seen to be precisely that.

Dr. Salter expresses the loss of genetic ethnic interest in units he calls “child-equivalents.” In other words, Dr. Salter is asking: For any given member of the native population, what is the number of lost children that would equal the loss of his ethnic genetic interests caused by the arrival of a certain number of aliens? Note that we are not talking about actual children, but gene equivalents put into the form of the genetic parent-child relationship. Put differently, the arrival of immigrants from other ethnies will change the genetic character of a population, and make it more alien to every member of the native ethny. The amount of genetic change, from the point of view of any given member of the native ethny, can be calculated as the equivalent of the number of children not born to that person.

An example will make this clearer. Dr. Salter begins by considering the English as the native population, and examines the effects of the immigration of 10,000 Danes, an ethny that is genetically very close to the English. Replacing 10,000 Englishmen with 10,000 Danes changes the genetic characteristics of the population so much that the resulting “post-displacement” population differs from the undisturbed population by the equivalent of an Englishman (or woman) “not having had” 167 children! Again, we are not talking about actual children, but of the genetic equivalent.

Let us consider other examples. What if the immigrants were Bantus — a population very genetically distant from the English — rather than Danes? Here the genetic cost to any given Englishman of the arrival of 10,000 Bantus is the equivalent of 10,854 lost children! Clearly, the extent of the genetic transformation of a population depends on the genetic distance between the native and immigrant populations.

What if the level of immigration were larger, and more in keeping with the massive displacement of Western peoples we see today? The English population is roughly 50 million. If 12.5 million were replaced by an equal number of Danes, the genetic loss to an Englishman would be the equivalent of 209,000 children not born; if the immigrants were from India, the loss would be 2.6 million children; if the immigrants were Bantus, 13 million. These figures are not guesses or estimates; they are objective, mathematical results based on genetic data accepted by the scientific community. Of course, all these numbers would apply in the reverse as well — genetic damage to Bantus or Indians if Englishmen were to come to live among them in large numbers — but immigration does not flow in that direction.

While plunging birthrates may be genetically damaging for European-derived peoples, their replacement by genetically alien immigrants is much worse. A falling birthrate reduces the population but does not transform it genetically, and a future increase in birthrates can always make up for the loss. Once immigrants have established themselves in a native territory their genes are a permanent addition. From the standpoint of genetic ethnic interests, the idea that “immigration makes up for low native birthrates” is pathological.

Why does immigration cause such large genetic losses? Dr. Salter writes: “Random members of an ethnic group are concentrated stores of each other’s distinctive genes, just as children and cousins are concentrated stores. Some ethnies are so different genetically that they amount to large negative stores of those distinctive genes. Also, as described above, migration has a double impact on fitness, first by reducing the potential ceiling of the native population, and secondly by replacing those lost individuals’ familiar genes with exotic varieties.”

Dr. Salter also stresses that this loss is not somehow reduced by being spread over the entire native population. The loss in terms of genetic equivalents (e.g., 167 child-equivalents in the English-Danish example) reflects the change in population from the point of view of every member of the native populace. Dr. Salter writes: “For a native woman it is equivalent to the loss of her children and grandchildren, for a native man it is equivalent to the loss of hischildren and grandchildren, though on a much larger scale” (emphasis in original).

Dr. Salter has calculated the number of immigrants of any group necessary to reduce the genetic interests of a random member of a native group by one child-equivalent. (See table below, taken from Dr. Salter’s paper.) For Europeans, an average of only 1.1 African, or 1.7 Northeast Asian immigrants is sufficient for the loss of one child-equivalent.

Charity and Heroism

It is well understood that within-group charity is potentially adaptive because it encourages the survival of kindred genes. Dr. Salter explains that self-sacrificial “heroism” that preserves one’s group genetic interests can also be adaptive. For example, Dr. Salter points out that “an act of charity or heroism” performed by an Englishman that prevented 10,000 Danes from replacing 10,000 Englishmen would be worthwhile genetically even if the Englishman sacrificed his life and with it the potential of having up to 167 children! Preventing replacement by Bantus would justify an even larger sacrifice, given the greater potential loss of genetic interests. It is clear that pro-white activism intended to avoid displacement is normal and adaptive, and justified by rational analysis. It is multicultural surrender that is pathological, as all peoples in all periods of history (except for whites in the 20th century) have instinctively known. Men have not had to be taught to die for their countries; the preservation of their land and people has been more important to them than life itself.

What are the genetic costs of immigration and displacement among whites? In general, as one would expect, Europeans are genetically closer to each other than to non-Europeans since Europe is, as Dr. Salter writes: “a generally racially homogenous region.” Within Europe, geographically close populations tend to be even more similar. The table below shows, for 26 European ethnies, the number of immigrants from other ethnies required to reduce the genetic interests of a native by one child-equivalent. The greater the genetic similarity, the larger the number of immigrants required to reduce genetic interest, and these data are consistent with what one would expect.

Germans and Swiss are closely related, so it would take 125 Swiss immigrants to reduce a German’s genetic interests by “one child.” The same effect will occur with 83.7 Belgians, 78.5 Dutch or Danish, 57.2 Englishmen, 33.3 Italians, 18.5 Spaniards, or 9.1 Greeks. Italians are more similar to, and less damaged by, French (37.1) or Germans (33.3) or Spaniards (20.9) than they are by Danes (17.7) or Swedes (13.5).

There is a tendency for European ethnies from islands (e.g., Sardinians and Icelanders, but not the English) to be somewhat more genetically distant from other European populations than might be expected. This is probably because of genetic drift in these small, relatively isolated populations rather than the admixture of non-European genes. Also, Europeans from southeast Europe seem slightly more distant, as are other specific groups, such as Finns and Basques. However, even these more outlying groups are within the European range. Dr. Salter concludes: “Immigration between ethnies of the same race can still be maladaptive for the receiving population, but the threshold is typically 10 to 100 times that of inter-racial immigration.”

Problems of Multiculturalism

Dr. Salter notes that Americans of European descent are a declining proportion of their nation’s population, and that this is a clear and serious threat to their genetic interests. Miscegenation only makes matters worse. Dr. Salter points out that miscegenation may benefit the genetic interests of non-white immigrants, for they are diluting the native gene pool while the gene pools of their own racially-exclusive homelands remain intact. As regards genetic dilution, a biracial child contains and reproduces fewer of the distinctive genes from any one of its parents than does a monoracial child. In other words, a child born to a man and women of the same ethny is genetically closer to its parents than is a mixed-race child, because the parents have many distinctive genes in common, and the child is therefore a combination of genes that make it close to both parents. A mixed-race child is genetically more distant from both parents because half its genes come from a parent from a different — and genetically distant — ethny.

The relationship can be understood this way. A parent has a certain base-line kinship with his child no matter who the other parent is, but is genetically closer to his children if he marries within his ethny. This gain in parental kinship is foregone to some extent when the other parent is of a different race or ethny. An average European white who has a child with a typical African foregoes 66 percent of the parental kinship he would have gained if he had had the child with another European. An Englishman who picks a Danish rather than an English spouse loses only one percent of the parental kinship to be gained from an English spouse. Choosing a Bantu mate would mean the loss of 92 percent of the parental kinship that would have been gained with an English mate. This figure, which is close to 100 percent, raises the theoretical possibility that if an Englishman has a mixed, English-Bantu child, the child will receive so many non-European genes from the Bantu parent that the Englishman is only slightly more genetically related to his own child than he is to a random stranger from his own ethny.

The table below shows the amount of parental kinship that would be gained by endogamous marriage as opposed to the mixed marriages depicted in the table. Africans and Pacific Islanders are so genetically distant that cross-marriages between these groups lose 100 percent of the kinship gain achieved through endogamy. European Caucasoids who mate with Northeast Asians lose 38 percent of the kinship they would have gained through same-race marriage.

Dr. Salter notes for the record that this analysis ignores potential benefits from so-called “hybrid vigor.” I see no evidence of such benefits in mating across wide racial divides; I see no increase in intelligence, health, or creative ability in the mixed-race populations of, say, Latin America or Central Asia as compared to original Europid or Mongolid stocks. And there is absolutely no evidence for any “vigor” which could make up for a 66 percent or 92 percent decrease in paternal kinship. This is a powerful argument in favor of racially endogamous mating: You are biologically closer and more similar to a child if your mate is of the same race than if your mate is from a different race.

Dr. Salter notes that the genetic damage done by the post-1965 immigration to America “has decreased white genetic interests more than all American war losses combined.” Why does it continue? Why does the white population allow it, while non-white peoples of other nations forbid immigration and preserve their group interests? Dr. Salter rejects the notion that white Americans want to be displaced; they may not actively resist displacement, but they surely do not welcome their own dispossession.

Perhaps the economic benefits of immigration raise carrying capacity and outweigh the costs. Dr. Salter notes that there are heavy economic costs to immigration, of which immigration-control activists are well aware. He also points out that even if there were economic benefits, the economic argument can be stretched to absurdity: If immigrants benefit natives by boosting the economy and raising the carrying capacity, why not maximize economic gain by replacing all natives with immigrants? Dr. Salter asks: “Is an economy meant to serve people or be an end unto itself?” If natives are being displaced, do they benefit from economic growth?

Dr. Salter asks us to imagine American Indians of the year 1600 being given a choice between mass European immigration and fast economic growth, coupled with eventual displacement by Europeans; or keeping America for themselves with much slower economic growth. The choice is obvious. Nothing can take the place of having a continent for one’s posterity; nothing can replace the loss of a people’s territory. Thus, economic explanations fail.

Dr. Salter observes that white Americans have, in the name of multiculturalism, engaged in a “unilateral withdrawal from ethnic competition,” with devastating results for their genetic interests. The majority also suffers from minority “free-riding” of two kinds. Minorities that cluster at the bottom of the social scale form an underclass that increases its reproductive fitness by absorbing resources and welfare from the majority, making the majority pay for its own genetic dispossession and loss of fitness. At the same time, more competitive minorities can manipulate public policy in their ethnic favor and against the interests of the majority.

What does Dr. Salter suggest as a possible solution? He proposes ethno-racial states in which shared ethnicity is a requirement for citizenship and in which the state “unambiguously serves the ethnic interests of the majority.” This is completely opposed to the current fad of “constitutional patriotism,” or the nation as an “idea” or “community of values.” Dr. Salter rightly sees such aracial “patriotic” schemes as “a formula for reconciling ethnic majorities to their own demise,” while serving minority and elite interests. Particularly damaging to majority interests is the fusion of “constitutional patriotism” with “multiculturalism,” as in today’s America, where majority displacement is thought to be of no importance as long as “freedom and democracy” are maintained. Such ideas are now being promoted in Europe as well, where some promote the view that Germany and France are “idea nations”!

Ethno-racial states are the only way for Western majorities to promote their ethnic interests. But what is the optimal size of an ethno-state? From the standpoint of maximizing and preserving ethnic genetic interests, smaller populations would have a “higher concentration of distinctive genes.” On other hand, economic and military necessities probably require something larger, so there must be a balance between ethnic interests and national viability. What to do with minorities living in such states? Assimilation is one possibility, but Dr. Salter notes that for the minorities this is an “evolutionarily uncertain” proposition. I might also add that it dilutes the majority gene pool. A better option would be federalism, in which concentrations of minority populations have local autonomy. Best of all is to prevent the minority problem to begin with by restricting immigration. Of course, if minorities have their own completely separate nation-states, they are no longer minorities.

Needless to say, there are different kinds of “minority.” Blacks are a minority in the USA, as Russians are a minority in the Baltic states, but the relative genetic distances are very different. Assimilation may be possible when numbers and genetic distances are small.

Another problem is the possibility of majority-majority “free-riding,” whether that of a welfare-dependent underclass or a privileged elite. Dr. Salter stresses the need for a bio-social contract between classes of an ethny, a contract that balances normal individual competition with the need for cooperation in defending larger ethnic interests. Dr. Salter theorizes a state in which ethnic genetic interests are considered a “collective good” that the state manages as part of a group’s “evolutionary strategy.” This would require protections against free-riding elites who may distort policy for their own narrow class interests.

Dr. Salter’s paper can be summarized as follows. Ethnies (and races) are large reservoirs of genetic interests for group members. Ethnic genetic interests are real and vitally important. Genetic kinship can be calculated, and the harm to any person’s (or group’s) ethnic genetic interests resulting from alien immigration can be quantified. Immigration of even closely-related groups has a negative impact on genetic interests, and this detrimental influence increases rapidly with greater genetic distance. Putting this detrimental impact in the form of “child-equivalents” is a particularly powerful way of demonstrating these effects. If people of European descent understood that every non-white face they see is diminishing their personal and group interests they might begin to understand they are being ill-served, at a fundamental genetic level, by non-European immigration and the ideology of multiculturalism.

Finally, Dr. Salter’s paper stands as an objective, scientifically sound justification for the activist pursuit of ethnic and racial interests. Liberals cannot deny the facts discussed here, nor can they deny that they point to the necessity of European ethno-racial nationalism. The formation of ethnic-based national states is the most efficient way of safeguarding ethnic genetic interests.

Ecologically-minded liberals should also heed Dr. Salter’s work, for only when Third-World populations are made to bear the consequences of their own reproductive irresponsibility will they, and the world as a whole, establish population policies that protect the environment. Closing off the “safety valve” of Third-World immigration to the West should be as attractive to the sincere left as to the racial right.

Dr. Salter’s work must be widely disseminated among thinking whites. He will soon be publishing a monograph that discusses the political and social consequences of these ideas at greater length. Publicizing this information will be of paramount importance.