Plato, White Supremacy, and Totalitarianism

The “American New Right” site counter-currents.com promotes the ethnonationalist idea that “every distinct ethnic group should enjoy political sovereignty and an ethnically homogeneous homeland.” This site published an essay using Plato to argue in support of modern fascism, which, the article claims, “shares with Classical political philosophy…an adherence to an authoritarian and hierarchical communitarianism.”

In the article Plato is said to argue that “the better should lead the worse” and to advocate “biological improvement through eugenic population policies.” The essay expands on this specific claim about Plato to argue that “all politics in the Greek city-state” were “‘totalitarian’ in comparison with modern liberalism.”  The author concludes that despite some differences “Plato and Hitler saw the sublime rays of the same glorious Sun” and that “I cannot read Plato and Aristotle’s warnings [about the dangers of egalitarianism] without thinking of the downward slide of Western culture since the 1960s, if not earlier.”

Send us your reactions at pharosclassics@vassar.edu for us to investigate and incorporate into our response.

View the post about the Plato without actually visiting Counter Currents.