AristocroaksLovecraft

In another essay in the July 1919 Conservative, “Bolshevism,” Lovecraft worries about the “alarming tendency observable in this age . . . a growing disregard for the established forces of law and order.” Some of this disregard is caused by the “noxious example of the almost sub-human Russian rabble,” but other factors are closer to home: . . . long-haired anarchists are preaching a social upheaval which means nothing more or less than a reversion to savagery or mediaeval barbarism. Even in this traditionally orderly nation the number of Bolsheviki, both open and veiled, is considerable enough to require remedial measures. The repeated and unreasonable strikes of important workers, seemingly with the object of indiscriminate extortion rather than rational wage increase, constitute a menace which should be checked. All one can say about something like this is that Lovecraft changed his tune considerably—indeed, antipodally—in a decade. It is unlikely that he himself had any personal knowledge of any “Bolsheviki,” either open or veiled; and as someone not in the workforce, he could of course have no conception of the appalling working conditions prevailing in many key industries at this period, and he is parroting many right-wing commentators in accepting the fantasy that labour unrest was largely led by foreign socialists. Once again, Lovecraft as an armchair political analyst proves himself to be naive, prejudiced, and fundamentally ignorant of the actual state of affairs in the nation. The remark about a “reversion to savagery” suggests the basic tenet of Lovecraft’s entire political philosophy at this juncture, one that was perhaps maintained throughout his life even if expressed slightly less hyperbolically. Lovecraft’s statement in 1929—“All that I care about is the civilisation—the state of development and organisation which is capable of gratifying the complex mental-emotional-aesthetic needs of highly evolved and acutely sensitive men”[4]—could serve as the core of his entire political thought. It may be true that his idea of a “civilisation” was a state of society that would make things comfortable for people like him; but most philosophy and politics tend to be self-serving, so that Lovecraft is not unique on this point. His prime concern was to prevent a collapse of civilisation, a concern that became very keen in the period directly following the world war, especially given his low view of humanity. The fact is, as Lovecraft states in “At the Root” (United Amateur, July 1918), we have not advanced very far from primitivism at all: “We must recognise the essential underlying savagery in the animal called man, and return to older and sounder principles of national life and defence. We must realise that man’s nature will remain the same so long as he remains man; that civilisation is but a slight coverlet beneath which the dominant beast sleeps lightly and ever ready to awake.” Many things—liquor; war; Bolshevism—could bring about a collapse, and society must be constituted in such a way as to prevent a collapse from occurring. For Lovecraft, at this period (and, really, for his entire life, even during and after his conversion to moderate socialism), the answer was aristocracy. I shall examine this branch of his thought later.Read more at location 6349   • Delete this highlight
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Right now we can tie in Lovecraft’s racism into the picture, since he manifestly regarded the influx of foreigners—who, to his mind, could not maintain the cultural standards he valued—as a threat to the dominant Anglo-Saxon civilisation of New England and the United States as a whole. The essay “Americanism” (United Amateur, July 1919) embodies this conception. For Lovecraft, Americanism is nothing more than “expanded Anglo-Saxondom”: “It is the spirit of England, transplanted to a soil of vast extent and diversity, and nourished for a time under pioneer conditions calculated to increase its democratic aspects without impairing its fundamental virtues. . . . It is the expression of the world’s highest race under the most favourable social, political, and geographical conditions.” None of this is, as we have already seen, especially new or unusual for someone in Lovecraft’s socioeconomic position. Nor, indeed, is the complete rejection of the “melting-pot” idea: Most dangerous and fallacious of the several misconceptions of Americanism is that of the so-called “melting-pot” of races and traditions. It is true that this country has received a vast influx of non-English immigrants who come hither to enjoy without hardship the liberties which our British ancestors carved out in toil and bloodshed. It is also true that such of them as belong to the Teutonic and Celtic races are capable of assimilation to our English types and of becoming valuable acquisitions to the population. But from this it does not follow that a mixture of really alien blood or ideas has accomplished or can accomplish anything but harm. . . . Immigration cannot, perhaps, be cut off altogether, but it should be understood that aliens who choose America as their residence must accept the prevailing language and culture as their own; and neither try to modify our institutions, nor to keep alive their own in our midst. I repeat that this statement—offensive as it may be to many—was not in any way unusual amongst Yankees of Lovecraft’s class. Let us bypass the flagrant untruth that immigrants have somehow come here merely to enjoy the “liberties” carved out by those sturdy Saxons: again Lovecraft’s complete ignorance of the hardships willingly endured by immigrants to establish themselves in this country has betrayed him into clownish error. The critical term here is “assimilation”—the idea that foreign culture-streams should shed their own cultural heritage and adopt that of the prevailing (Anglo-Saxon) civilisation.