Notes on Susan Sontag's Infamous Statement: "White Race Is the Cancer of Human History"

Susan Sontag wrote:

“If America is the culmination of Western white civilization, as everyone from the Left to the Right declares, then there must be something terribly wrong with Western white civilization. This is a painful truth; few of us want to go that far…. The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al, don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone—its ideologies and inventions—which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.”

Even though her views were extreme on this matter, she wrote this in genuine sympathy with the Third World. This was when the Vietnam War was raging and when the Non-West was seeking alternative paths to development. Also, even those on the Right may recognize a kernel of truth in Sontag's characterization of the Modern West. All this talk of 'growth and more growth' at the expense of all other considerations is a kind of cancer. After all, those on the Dissident Right are sick of 'muh growth' rhetoric of the globalists, libertarians, radical capitalists, and etc. GOP is only about GDP.

Sadly, where Sontag was wrong was that this cancer could spread from white nations to non-white ones as well.

it is the white race and it alone—its ideologies and inventions—which eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads

If only it were true. Today, non-whites have joined in globalism and are taking part in the destruction of all autonomous societies. Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, under Western influence, have ended up with barren wombs and high suicide rates. They now welcome mass immigration. And Filipinos and others scramble to Japan and will demographically take over, and what had once been a unique Japanese people and culture will be lost. Hindus are all over the world taking part in globalism, from African cities to San Francisco to New York. Indeed, at this point, even if every white person were to suddenly vanish from the face of the earth, the cancer of globalism will likely spread and spread.

In a way, white 'racism' was a check on the white cancer. As long as whites offended others with supremacist attitudes, non-whites pushed against white power and influence. But then globalism came along, and the white empire was willing to welcome, extol, and promote non-whites to the highest ranks. White 'anti-racism' emboldened non-whites to join in the white-made globalist world order. (Indeed, it's likely Gandhi and others would have joined with the British Empire if it hadn't been 'racist' toward their ilk.) White 'racism' and Western nationalism posed as both the enemy and model for non-white nations. Against white 'racism', they needed their own racial identity as a weapon. And non-whites realized that the national system is most ideal for organizing modern societies. So, the struggle for 'national liberation' was also an enterprise in national formation. Some peoples, like the Vietnamese and Thais, already had a genuine sense of ethnicity, culture, and territoriality. Others, like the Indonesians and those in Middle East and especially much of Africa, had to work at creating new national identities. Still, as long as whites were in 'racist' and nationalist mode, non-whites felt compelled to emphasize their own racial-national identities as bulwark against the 'cancerous' Western Power(and, to be sure, rival non-white powers). Thus, the white cancer was limited to the white world. And maybe the New Order would have turned out poly-national after World War II. With the end of European empires, whites would have their world, and non-whites would have their own.

But the post-war story wasn't dominated by Western Europe, a fading power, but by the US and USSR that competed for Universalist Hegemony. Both were empires that claimed to be committed to 'anti-racism'. USSR was about communist brotherhood of man, comrades all around the world. US claimed to represent liberal democratic values and individual liberty applicable to all. As such, if European Empires had sought to dominate and exploit non-white colonies, US and USSR reached out with a vision of Enlightened Imperialism whereby non-whites would be treated as equals of whites. In some ways, this sounded good on paper, but it was one sure way to spread the white cancer as the white cancer cells were now willing to merge with brown cells IF the brown cells agreed to join with the white cancer.

While Sontag meant 'cancer' as damnation, there is a repressed awe of Western Civilization in her characterization. After all, cancer is no simple disease like a minor headache or sprained ankle. It isn't just a case of the flu or toothache that a dentist can fix. Cancer is a GREAT disease, an awesome disease. Until relatively recent times, it could not be cured. It started small but spread all throughout and led to sure death.

Sontag wrote:

The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al, don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world.

Yet, the implication is that THOSE THINGS are part of the cancer. Indeed, what is the nature of cancer? It strives for total domination. It is obsessive, unrelenting, aggressive, expansive, maniacal, and totalizing. It must express itself to the fullest extent, and that means spreading all throughout the body EVEN IF it means death for the body. In one of her essays, Sontag associated sex with death. Sex(and orgasm), in its striving for the fullest sensuality and pleasure, takes the body to the furthest limit, beyond which lays death. It's no wonder Sontag had a special thing for Yukio Mishima who was also obsessed with sex and death. The boy who got his first orgasm staring at a picture of St. Sebastian shot full of arrows ultimately died in much the same way albeit with a blade. Cancer is like the Terminator. You can't bargain with it. It seeks total and ruthless domination, and nothing better stand in its way.
But that very mindset is at the heart of Mozart, Pascal, Shakespeare, Newton, Kant, Marx, Western Arts, Western Ideologies, and etc. Western Artists, more than those of other cultures, were most powerful in individuality, egoism, vanity, and even megalomania. Mozart did it his way, even truer of Beethoven and Wagner. Western scientists insisted on pushing further and further without end to get closer to the stars and atoms. Western explorers and discoverers searched further and further, even out into space. Western ideologies have sought to arrive at the ultimate truth, emancipate all of mankind or liberate every individual soul. Whether communism, capitalism, libertarianism, or feminism, they are about more liberation, more freedom, more justice, or the Permanent Revolution. So, even if one might find much that is good about them, they are essentially 'cancerous' in that they know of no limits. They must keep pushing further and further, even when it appears all possibilities have been exhausted.

However, the reason why the West became especially 'cancerous' was due to the stabilizing influence of Jewish Culture via Christianity. Western drive toward super-competitive excellence via individualism and universalism may have begun with the Greeks, but such extremes of ambition tend to burn themselves out. Thus, the West, like the Rest, went through cycles of rises and falls. Like the Tower of Babel, the pagan West rose high but fell to earth again. But then, Christianity came along and provided an emotional, moral, and spiritual gyroscope to Westernism. Christianity's powerful moralism emphasizing humility and devotion could be heavy and repressive, thereby suppressing individual expression and excellence, but it also had a stabilizing effect on the Western pagan drive for no-limit exploration, discovery, conquest, and experimentation(the biting into the Forbidden Fruits). It provided a humble heart to the egotism of pagan pride. Thus, a kind of balance was formed between the liberal will to explore and conservative desire to preserve.

Paradoxically, the Christian element that dampened the pagan spirit of individuality actually made the Western Light burn brighter in the long run. It's like an overly ambitious person may feel resentful about being told to get some rest, take it easy, spend time with family, and go on vacation. So obsessed with winning, he may want to work 24/7. And yet, that is a good way to burn out... as Alexander the Great did. But in being forced to balance his drive for excellence with some time set aside for peace of mind, his energy will actually last longer. It's like an athlete who plays too hard all the time won't last long in the ring or field. And Christianity, a religion originating from heretical Jews, provided a kind of balance to the highly aggressive Western pagan spirit for excellence. Many scholars see this Hebraic influence as having set back European advancement, and that is partly true. In the Muslim world, Islam did end up holding back progress. And Christianity in the Byzantium was too heavy and stifling of innovation and individuality. But in the Renaissance West, a balance was reached between hunger and humility. This way, instead of civilization as short bursts of sprints that soon peter out, the West set upon a long-term marathon of advancement with Christian humility serving as a stabilizing force to Pagan hunger. So, the West broke out of the cycles of rises and falls and embarked on a long journey of progress to more progress to more progress. (But in the post-Christian age, we are witnessing how the drive for more experimentation, more freedom, more power, and more wealth WITHOUT the stabilizing force of some great spiritual-moral counter-force is leading to the Great Fall. The Post-Christian West seems to intuit this danger on some level and grasps for new spiritual truths, but worship of the Super-Jew, Holy Homo, and Magic Negroes just doesn't cut it.)
It was that combination of Hellenistic drive and Hebraic spirit that made the West truly 'cancerous'. It led to endless rise and rise and more rise, and more expansion and more growth and etc. Though, as the story of Galileo tells us, the influence of religion often held back the power of reason, it also prevented the secular forces from growing too vain, arrogant, adventurous, impatient, and reckless. When religion mattered in the West, homo artists made the great works of the Renaissance. But in our time, homos just celebrate their degeneracy without shame, and such narcissism is promoted as the new spirit of the times. The moral rot from this in times to come will be incalculable. Generations raised with drag queen story hour. Churches festooned with sodomy-glorifying banners. Maybe, in some ways, this is a good thing in the long run. Maybe it is time for Western Civilization to fall to ruin and start again. Maybe the Hellenic-Hebraic cancer had a great long run, and now must end.

In a way, life itself is like a cancer. Like cancer, life seeks to grow and grow. Any organism is 'cancerous' in multiplying without limit to take over the whole world. But life could not be cancerous because organisms all balanced each other out. Countless plants and countless animals all canceled out one another. So, even if one organism wanted to take over everything, it couldn't as it was balanced by or depended on other organisms. The first truly cancerous organism arrived with mankind. (When rabbit population explodes and eats up the vegetation, rabbits begin to starve and nature restores the balance. When predators eat up most of the prey animals, they begin to starve and the natural balance is restored. But mankind, in creating agriculture and cattle-farming, could destroy/transform so much of nature yet still keep growing in numbers and power. They broke free of the natural balance, and then, the white race took it to the next step by means of uniting all the world under their hegemony.) When Sontag wrote her piece, she probably had no idea how destructive even primitive man was upon the Earth. Archaeologists now believe that the migration of prehistoric men led to the extinctions of most mammal species in all five continents. So, humans were cancerous before the arrival of the white race. But among the human races, the white race became the most cancerous of them all.
Again, by 'cancerous', it's as much a compliment as an epithet because cancer is a great awesome disease. While all human groups built empires and conquered and killed many — Huns, Aztecs, Mongols, Ottomans, etc — , it took the white race to finally conquer every piece of land on Earth, split the atom, and send men into space. While non-white races were also ruthless, aggressive, and cruel, their 'cancerousness' was limited. Mongols conquered so much but couldn't expand further and couldn't sustain their pace and then soon faded. Ottomans seemed to be on the verge of conquering and overtaking Christendom but reached their peak and then began the long decline. They remained locked in cycles of rises and falls experienced by most civilizations. (To be sure, the Muslim world, like the Christian world, experienced a long continuity due to the stabilizing power of the words of the Prophet. But Islam was bound to be more stifling of innovation and progress for one crucial reason. Whereas Christianity developed as a universal religion by dumping the narrow tribal laws of the Jews, Islam combined universalism with the local customs of Arabs & Judaic laws. Christianity dropped the particularity of culture and emphasized the universality of spirit whereas Islam attached Arab-Judaic customary particularism to a universalist creed. As such, there was too much cultural baggage in Islam for it to allow much in the way of creativity and innovation.)

When Sontag wrote her piece, the white world seemed distinct from the non-white world. Also, whites were clearly in control of the white world. Jews didn't control the US or Europe, though they were clearly influential. So, one could speak of the West vs the Rest. But over the yrs, whites cucked to Jews and even cucked to blacks. And whites now cuck to Diversity, or mass migration-invasion.
As such, it's no longer the case that whiteness is the cancer of humanity. It is no longer whiteness or white power or white ways that are threatening to control all the world. Rather, whiteness is now like a cuck-cancer bridge to Jewish cancer, black cancer, and homo cancer. Whites are now like the god Atlas. It is no longer the active god of the world but the supportive and servile god. White managerial shoulders now serve as the bridge of Jewish supremacist cancer that spreads wars, predatory capitalism, hegemonism, and genocides(especially against Arabs and Muslims). But under the control of Jews, white shoulders also serve as the bridge for non-white invasion of white lands. Billy Boy Clinton and Joe Biden welcome the browning of the West. Even Donald Trump who ran on border controls says he wants more legal immigration. Brexit led to shutting UK to other Europeans but welcomes more blacks and browns. On the bridge of white shoulders, the Jewish cancer spreads all over, and of course, Jews spread globo-homo cancer as their proxy disease all around the world. Jews figure homos in each nation will make the best collaborationist agents for Jews. And whiteness also serves as bridge for the spread of Afromaniacal cancer all over the world. Would there be blacks outside Africa if not for the white bridge? White folks used to spread white power around the world. Now whiteness as cuck-cancer spreads Jewish power, Negro might, and homo sickness around the world. What do Chinese boys worship most? Negroes in the NBA.
That is why, if whites cannot bring about white liberation from Jewish supremacism and black monstrosity, it would be better if the white race just vanished from Earth. In our times, whiteness is most dangerous not because of 'white supremacism' but because of white cuck-ism that helps to spread Jewish supremacism, black ghastliness, and homo degeneracy all around the world. Does the world really need to worship BLM and 'Muh Israel'? Does the world really need to be instructed by fruits and trannies whose main mode of being is tooty-toot-toot vanity?

Cancer isn't infectious, but it seems as though the white cancer came to submit, serve, and transmit the Jewish cancer, black cancer, and homo cancer as the hegemonic forces to every corner of the world. BLM protests even in Iceland? Huh? But then, with Hollywood as the new vatican, the new faiths are the Wonder Jew, Magic Negro, and Holy Homo.