Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein

(There's been speculation part of this antipathy to Jewish publishers in New York was driven by the multiple rejections Lovecraft suffered when he submitted work for publication. As far as I can tell there's no direct evidence of this, but it's not an untenable hypothesis.)

19.2: whilst the profound Semitism of New York is affecting the "intellectuals" who flock there & creating a flimsy & synthetic body of culture & ideology radically hostile to the virile American attitude.

19.1: Our literature & drama, selected by Jewish producers & great Jewish publishing houses like Knopf, & feeling the pressure of Jewish finance & mercantile advertising, are daily getting farther & farther from the real feelings of the plain American in New England or Virginia or Kansas;

18: We really face the same problem in America—where the city of New York is virtually lost to the national fabric through its tragic & all-pervasive Semitisation.

The stress of Lovecraft's period in New York exacerbated some of his prejudices, and the hatred of NYC remained all his life.

17: But it is not absurd to feel that something ought to be done to keep expression true to the real psychology of the nation involved.

"True," "pure," "uncorrupted" - terms like these suggest a homogeneity which in practice does not exist.

16: It is absurd to think that a man of complete Aryan culture ought to be squelched because he has a quarter-share of Semitic blood, or anything like that.

This is the crux of Lovecraft's disagreement with Hitler's antisemitic policies.

15: Of course, this does not mean that the crudities of Hitlerism are to be copied.

14: Chinamen ought not to let American missionaries dictate & interpret their policies-& by the same token Aryans ought not to leave their guidance & interpretation to persons of an irreconcilable Semitic culture.

Not sure "Chinaman" was the word HPL originally used here; the letters were edited.

13.2: & feeling of those nations.

Lovecraft went from being an economic conservative to a New Deal socialist c. 1930, and in general approved of the centralization of authority, which was part of his initial interest in fascism.

13.1: In my opinion, all nations ought to take quiet & moderate steps to get such pivotal forces as education, large-scale publishing, legal interpretation, criticism, dramatic management, artistic control, &c. into the hands of those who inherit the respective mainstreams of thought

12: If a minority-overridden culture has any vitality at all, it will revolt in the end—& of course crudely at first.

11: To say nothing ought to be done about this is rash.

Lovecraft would meet some actual Germans who had lived in Nazi Germany, but that wasn't until near the end of his life.

10: In books, education, drama, art, philosophy, etc., the voice of real Germany was almost drowned out by a voice which pretended to be German but was not.

Lovecraft was getting all this 3rd-hand through newspapers, etc. The Nazi party line jived with what HPL thought was happening in NYC.

9: The loudest cultural voices were those of persons whose basic ideals & sense of values were not German.

8: In Germany I rather think such a state of things had almost come about.

7: If such control be gradually seized by a culture-group profoundly foreign to the natural culture-stream of the nation, the result is bound to be tense, awkward, & finally intolerable.

Keeping in mind at this point that Lovecraft hated New York and thought it an alien city in the US.

6.2: types of art shall receive preference in presentation to the public & in treatment by critics, & what attitudes shall receive official recommendation.

This was probably in part driven by more accurate reporting & progressive/anti-Nazi editorials in New York papers.

6.1: It is needless to point out that a nation's literary & artistic utterance depends very largely on those who control the periodicals, schools, colleges, publishing houses, galleries, theatres, & so forth—this control largely determining what works &

5.2: & perspectives through a gradual & imperciptible Semitic control of all the avenues of utterance.

This is partially based on Lovecraft's assertion that Jews in New York held an outsized influence on media publishing in NYC. Closest he ever got to an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

5.1: The question is whether an enormous Aryan nation, with all the innate feelings & perspectives of Aryan culture, is going to allow its formulated expression (literary models, art, music, &c) to bely & embarrass it by reflecting an altogether different & sometimes hostile set of feelings

4: In such a case it is foolish to quibble about "rights" & "principles".

3.2: & using its keen mentality & ruthless enterprise to secure a disproportionate hold on the mental & aesthetic life of a nation.

Lovecraft never makes reference to the PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION, but he does seem to have bought into Nazi propaganda re: Jewish influence in Germany.

3.1: But after all, there is a very real & very grave problem in the presence of an intellectually powerful minority springing from a profoundly alien & emotionally repulsive culture-stream, defying assimilation as a whole,

2: That is generally conceded.

That's very white of you, Mr. Lovecraft.

1: Of course it is silly to ban Jewish books, to impose disabilities on Germanically cultured Jews, or to assume that—biologically speaking—a dash of Semitic blood unfits one for Aryan citizenship.

0: As for his much-advertised & hysterically condemned Jew policy—there is something to be said for one phase of it.

...HPL had spent considerable mental energy making allowances for his Jewish friends and determining that not all Jews were bad.

Which brings us to a letter from H. P. Lovecraft to J. Vernon Shea, 29 May 1933, after Hitler has taken power:

This is why when the Nazis rolled into power a couple of years later, Lovecraft had such a difficult time. He still had most of his antisemitic prejudices, and didn't oppose the Nazis philosophically - hadn't he spent most of his adult life saying Jewish culture couldn't mix? But biologically...

This was a considerable change from his teenage years in terms of the specifics of what he believed, but the fundamental prejudices hadn't so much changed as he had carved out categories to allow him to interact with & treat his friends and loved ones as equals while still holding onto older ideas.

Lovecraft by 1930 had managed to convince himself of a racial or ethnic divide within the Jewish population that conformed to his antisemitic and racial prejudices on the other hand, and allowed for his Jewish friends (and wife) to be accepted as racially & culturally white on the other.