nigourath: As always, your post is interesting, though I'm afraid I'm having some trouble following you here on some points -- the language barrier, I think. There are, however, some points which (if I've understood them correctly) I'd like to address:
While Lovecraft was a follower of Darwin, his views on race were informed by a pseudoscientific view of Darwinian evolution; they were views which were already becoming quite outmoded in science by the time he wrote most of these screeds. As noted, the problem I have with this is that this is the one area where he simply refused to consider contrary evidence -- and there was a lot of it about and seeing popular exposure -- at precisely the time he was was issuing his rants (and yes, that is, unfortunately, what many of them are). For someone who prided himself on his scientific awareness and willingness to change views based on current evidence, in this case HPL failed to apply that considerable intelligence, based entirely on irrational prejudice -- a thing which he himself often criticized. Furthermore, when questioned he attempted to defend these views using such outmoded science, turning to scorn and ridicule when his opponents (apparently, from what evidence there is) used the sounder findings of the time. This, too, is failing on his part to follow his own stated guidelines, and it does him no credit.
I don't refer to his support of Hitler -- many people in many countries felt much as he did until (as in his case), the truth about what was going on in Germany concerning the Jews began to come out. Then he was horrified as (despite his verbal outpourings) at the core he
was a deeply humane man. And his change on this issue came about long before our (open) involvement in the European situation came about.
As for the currency of such views -- yes, many people still hold them, to one degree or another. This does not excuse them nor make them any more palatable, any more than is the case with those who still believe it is good and proper to kill those one suspects of being a witch.
(Incidentally... I don't quite follow you on the entire "Darwinian" point... while classical Darwinian evolution has been superceded, the core of Darwin's work remains solid, and much of it remains at the core of our understanding of how evolution has progressed and continues to work; it has merely (as with all scientific knowledge) been refined and modified, not discarded. The more we learn, the more we learn that Darwin was onto something here, and that he very much deserves his place of recognition, rather than otherwise....
On the idea that HPL "discredited the mixture of various cultural different cultural influences, especially those that stood farther from the "New English" cultural background"... well, there is a certain truth to that, but it is limited. In fact, in many of his letters, some of his essays, and even (occasionally) in his fiction, he would address this topic. He was quite knowledgeable about history, and knew well the importance of such cross-cultural influence (read his "The Literature of Rome", for instance, which addresses both the pros and cons of the influence of Greek culture on Roman; and keep in mind that, while he very much favored Rome, he was also wont to note that we shouldn't be surprised at any of the amazing things the Greeks managed to do, as they were "a super-race"... even though he also felt they were decadent and morally corrupt). He tended to simply have irrational prejudices on the matter of which cultures were superior and which were inferior, and bolstered these with (again) pseudoscientific babble at times. In many cases, he
did seriously modify these views in later life, but it took him an
awful long time. However, he never left behind the idea that the cultures as they stood at his favorite period were at their height, and that such influence needed to be carefully regulated, his ideal being that "the Germans be
more German; the French be
more French", etc., by largely keeping the cultures separate being, of course, a wish to simply halt the very forces which produced those cultures as he thought of them in the first place. Again, with this, there's nothing particularly wrong with such a preference, but to defend it as scientific was disingenuous, to say the least.
Moreover,on his negative views about the immigrants i believe he feared more the cultural impact on a given environment than the fact of their lower quality as a biological existence.
With some, this is more true than is the case with others. With certain immigrants, however (especially those of Jewish, black, Indian, etc., origins), he genuinely did feel they were biologically inferior and would inevitably corrupt the biological stock of the other races. Blacks he simply saw as much closer to the ape than most other races; the same went for the Australian aborigines; and his thoughts on the populace of India were scarcely any better. Again, though, these ideas were abstract rather than personal -- which doesn't make them any less wrong-headed or ugly, it simply denotes that, when push came to shove, he could be (and was) as kind to members of these ethnoi as he was to any... and that is saying considerable.
For example the theory that came out recently ,that the moon was part of the earth before it became its satellite ,would be incomprehensible only 2 decades go...Still would we consider it a pseudoscientific view??I dont know....
The view that the moon was wrenched from the earth has been fairly common off and on (the general area chosen is the Pacific, iirc). Lunar theory -- that is, the origins of the moon -- continue to be debated as the evidence favors one aspect or another....
Your hint here i think is Lovecraft"s denial towards anything ,that could prove the equality of others races or nations, even if they were absolutely and scientifically proven,meaning ofcourse ,that he had a clear inclination towards racism.Well ,i cant speak with such certainty about that and i think neither would ....only the writer himself could and ofcourse in the face of irrefutible evidence, after carefull decoding of the role of every gene or dna sequence,which today we are approaching ,with our technological advancement...
I do not mean "equality"... that is a meaningless term in most senses regarding this sort of thing. But the idea that an entire "race" or ethnos is "inferior" or "superior" has been very much blown to smithereens. There is simply no evidence to support such a claim; and even in his day, as I noted earlier, biology had mounted enough evidence to seriously challenge such a view... and Lovecraft chose to simply ignore it. Not refute it, but ignore it, as it if didn't even exist.
That is a classic example of denial; hence I think my statement stands.
One other thing... please refrain from using the "n" word -- even though I realize you are using it in the context of Lovecraft's own thinking -- as this is a very sensitive topic, and the word itself is loaded with very hurtful negative connotations for most....
