Review of Krasskova’s Essays in Modern Heathenry – Living Traditions

Review of Galina Krasskova’s Essays in Modern Heathenry

By the Editor of Living Traditions

 

Essays in Modern Heathenry

Galina Krasskova

Asphodel Press 2012

 

Galina Krasskova is a heathen and academic and takes a perceptive look at trends within modern heathenism. She offers four insightful essays covering significant issues and controversies.

The first essay examines the development of culture within modern heathenism; the delicate balancing of the reconstruction of earlier Heathen practises and the demands of the modern world. Krasskova also considers the markers of heathenry including right order, hospitality, right and the integrity of the Innangard. She also discusses the sensitive issue of other cultural pre-Christian influence on heathen traditions such as the Sami which tend to be dismissed by modern practitioners.

In the second essay Krasskova considers the role of ritual and performance as central to the modern heathen movement. Many of these practises such as Seidr have led to major debates over the authority of established lore versus personal gnosis. Krasskova also discusses how ritual forms the link between the theoretical, objects and the practical and how this influences such practises as the Symbel and the blot. Issues relating to Christianity, accepting the familiar and carrying over prejudices and not acknowledging overt Christian influence on source texts is also discussed.

The third essay considers the revival of blot within modern Asatru with its different forms including animal sacrifice. She considers the nature of sacrifice, the role of the sacred king and it’s relation to Odin. Krasskova offers an excellent summary of the traditions of heathen and pagan sacrifice in history.

The volume ends with a superb essay on the demonization of Loki which offers a very well researched discussion on the most controversial figures among the Norse Gods. She examines original sources, discusses current academic theories and considers his role as a trickster, breaker of boundaries and social outcast.

Galina Krasskova is a highly respected academic bringing her not inconsiderate knowledge to the subject of heathenry, a tradition in which she is also a practitioner. This volume is challenging, thought provoking and offers an excellent balance of academia with knowledge from within our tradition.

It is available as a print edition or digital download.

 

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Living Traditions Magazine, 2012. “Review of Galina Krasskova’s Essays in Modern Heathenry.” <http://www.users.on.net/~mmellors_nbn/essays.html >.

 

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Creation of Intellectual Eurasianism – Vona

Thoughts on the Creation of Intellectual Eurasianism

By Gábor Vona

Leader of the Hungarian political party “Jobbik” (For Better Hungary)

 

“Actually, the truth is that the West really is in great need of »defense«, but only against itself and its own tendencies, which, if they are pushed to their conclusion, will lead inevitably to its ruin and destruction; it is therefore »reform« of the West that is called for instead of »defense against the East«, and if this reform were what it should be—that is to say, a restoration of tradition—it would entail as a natural consequence an understanding with the East.” — René Guénon [1]

1. Euroatlantism and Anti-Traditionalism

Today’s globalized world is in crisis. That is a fact. However, it is not quite clear what this crisis is. In order to get an answer, first we need to define what globalization means. For us, it does not mean the kind of public misconception which says that the borders between the world’s various economic and cultural spheres will gradually disappear and the planet becomes an organic network built upon billions of interactions. Those who believe in this also add that history is thus no longer a parallel development of great spheres, but the great common development of the entire world. Needless to say, this interpretation considers globalization as a positive and organic process from the aspect of historical development.

From our aspect, however, globalization is an explicitly negative, anti-traditionalist process. Perhaps we can understand this statement better if we break it down into components. Who is the actor, and what is the action and the object of globalization? The actor of globalization — and thus crisis production — is the Euro-Atlantic region, by which we mean the United States and the great economic-political powers of Western Europe. Economically speaking, the action of globalization is the colonization of the entire world; ideologically speaking, it means safeguarding the monopolistic, dictatorial power of liberalism; while politically speaking, it is the violent export of democracy. Finally, the object of globalization is the entire globe. To sum it up in one sentence: globalization is the effort of the Euro-Atlantic region to control the whole world physically and intellectually. As processes are fundamentally defined by their actors that actually cause them, we will hereinafter name globalization as Euroatlantism. The reason for that is to clearly indicate that we are not talking about a kind of global dialogue and organic cooperation developing among the world’s different regions, continents, religions, cultures, and traditions, as the neutrally positive expression of “globalization” attempts to imply, but about a minor part of the world (in particular the Euro-Atlantic region) which is striving to impose its own economic, political, and intellectual model upon the rest of the world in an inorganic manner, by direct and indirect force, and with a clear intention to dominate it.

As we indicated at the beginning of this essay, this effort of Euroatlantism has brought a crisis upon the entire world. Now we can define the crisis itself. Unlike what is suggested by the news and the majority of pub­lic opinion, this crisis is not primarily an economic one. The problem is not that we cannot justly distribute the assets produced. Although it is true, it is not the cause of the problem and the crisis; it is rather the consequence of it. Neither is this crisis a political one, that is to say: the root cause is not that the great powers and international institutions fail to establish a liveable and harmonious status quo for the whole world; it is just a consequence as well. Nor does this crisis result from the clashes of cul­tures and religions, as some strategists believe; the prob­lem lies deeper than that. The world’s current crisis is an intellectual one. It is a crisis of the human intellect, and it can be characterized as a conflict between tradition­al values (meaning conventional, normal, human) and anti-traditionalism (meaning modern, abnormal, subhu­man), which is now increasingly dominating the world. From this aspect, Euroatlantism — that is to say, global­ism — can be greatly identified with anti-traditionalism. So the situation is that the Euro-Atlantic region, which we can simply but correctly call the West, is the crisis it­self; in other words, it carries the crisis within, so when it colonizes the world, it in fact spreads an intellectual virus as well. So this is the anti-traditionalist aspect of the world’s ongoing processes, but does a traditionalist pole exist, and if it does, where can we find it?

2. Eurasianism as a Geopolitical Concept

Geographically speaking, Eurasia means the continental unity of Europe and Asia, which stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. As a cultural notion, Eurasianism was a concept conceived by Russian emigrants in the early 20th century. It proved to be a fertile framework, since it has been reinterpreted several times and will surely continue to be so in the future as well. Nicolai Sergeyevich Trubetskoy is widely considered as the founder of Eurasianism, while Alexandr Dugin is referred to as the key ideologist of the concept. Trubetskoy was one of the greatest thinkers of the Russian emigration in the early 20th century, who attempted to redefine Russia’s role in the turbulent post-World War I times, looking for new goals, perspectives, and meanings. On the one hand, he rejected Pan-Slavism and replaced the Slavophile ideology with a kind of “Turanophile” one, as Lajos Pálfalvi put it in an essay.[2] He tore Russian thinking out of the Eastern Slavic framework and found Genghis Khan as a powerful antetype, the founder of a Eurasian state. Trubetskoy says that it was the Khan’s framework left behind that Moscow’s Tsars filled with a new Orthodox sense of mission after the Mongol occupation. In his view, the European and Western orientation of Peter the Great is a negative disruption of this process, a cultural disaster, while the desirable goal for Russia is to awaken as a part of Eurasia.

So Eurasianism was born as a uniquely Russian concept but not at all for Russia only, even though it is often criticized for being a kind of Great Russia concept in a cultural-geopolitical disguise. Ukrainian author Mikola Ryabchuk goes as far as to say that whoever uses this notion, for whatever reason, is basically doing nothing but revitalizing the Russian political dominance, tearing the former Soviet sphere out of the “European political and cultural project”.[3] Ryabchuk adds that there is a certain intellectual civil war going on in the region, particularly in Russia and also in Turkey about the acceptance of Western values. So those who utter the word “Eurasianism” in this situation are indirectly siding with Russia. The author is clearly presenting his views from a pro-West and anti-Russian aspect, but his thoughts are worth looking at from our angle as well.

As a cultural idea, Eurasianism was indeed created to oppose the Western, or to put it in our terms, the Euro- Atlantic values. It indeed supposes an opposition to such values and finds a certain kind of geopolitical reference for it. We must also emphasize that being wary of the “European political and cultural project” is justified from the economic, political, and cultural aspects as well. If a national community does not wish to comply, let’s say, with the role assigned by the European Union, it is not a negative thing at all; in fact, it is the sign of a sort of caution and immunity in this particular case. It is especially so, if it is not done for some economic or nationalistic reason, but as a result of a different cultural-intellectual approach. Rendering Euro-Atlantic “values” absolute and indisputable means an utter intellectual damage, especially in the light of the first point of our essay. So the opposition of Eurasianism to the Euro-Atlantic world is undeniably positive for us. However, if we interpreted Eurasianism as mere anti-Euro-Atlantism, we would vulgarly simplify it, and we would completely fail to present an alternative to the the anti-traditionalist globalization outlined above.

What we need is much more than just a reciprocal pole or an alternative framework for globalization. Not only do we want to oppose globalization horizontally but, first and foremost, also vertically. We want to demonstrate an intellectual superiority to it. That is to say, when establishing our own Eurasia concept, we must point out that it means much more for us than a simple geographical notion or a geopolitical idea that intends to oppose Euro-Atlantism on the grounds of some tactical or strategic power game. Such speculations are valueless for me, regardless of whether they have some underlying, latent Russian effort for dominance or not. Eurasianism is basically a geographical and/or political framework, therefore, it does not have a normative meaning or intellectual centre. It is the task of its interpretation and interpreter to furnish it with such features.

3. Intellectual Eurasianism – Theories and Practice

We have stated that we cannot be content with anti-Euro-Atlantism. Neither can we be content with a simple geographical and geopolitical alternative, so we demand an intellectual Eurasianism. If we fail to provide this intellectual centre, this meta-political source, then our concept remains nothing but a different political, economic, military, or administrative idea which would indeed represent a structural difference but not a qualitative breakthrough compared to Western globalization. Politically speaking, it would be a reciprocal pole, but not of a superior quality. This could lay the foundations for a new cold or world war, where two anti-traditionalist forces confront each other, like the Soviet Union and the United States did, but it surely won’t be able to challenge the historical process of the spread of anti-traditional­ism. However, such challenge is exactly what we consider indispensable. A struggle between one globalization and another is nonsensical from our point of view. Our problem with Euro-Atlantism is not its Euro-Atlantic but its anti-traditionalist nature. Contrary to that, our goal is not to construct another anti-traditionalist framework, but to present a supranational and traditionalist response to the international crisis. Using Julius Evola’s ingenious term, we can say that Eurasianism must be able to pass the air test.[4]

At this point, we must look into the question of why we can’t give a traditionalist answer within a Euro-Atlantic framework. Theoretically speaking, the question is reasonable since the Western world was also developing within a traditional framework until the dawn of the modern age, but this opportunity must be excluded for several reasons. Firstly, it is no accident that anti-traditionalist modernism developed in the West and that is where it started going global from. The framework of this essay is too small for a detailed presentation of the multi-century process of how modernism took roots in and grew out of the original traditionalist texture of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian thinking and culture, developing into today’s liberal Euroatlantism. For now, let us state that the anti-traditionalist turn of the West had a high historical probability. This also means that the East was laid on much stronger traditionalist foundations and still is, albeit it is gradually weakening. In other words, when we are seeking out a geopoliti­cal framework for our historic struggle, our choice for Eurasianism is not in the least arbitrary. The reality is that the establishment of a truly supranational traditionalist framework can only come from the East. This is where we can still have a chance to involve the leading polit­ical-cultural spheres. The more we go West, the weaker the centripetal power of Eurasianism is, so it can only expect to have small groups of supporters but no major backing from the society.

The other important question is why we consider traditionalism as the only intellectual centre that can fecundate Eurasianism. The question “Why Eurasia?” can be answered much more accurately than “Why the metaphysical Tradition?”. We admit that our answer is rather intuitive, but we can be reassured by the fact that René Guénon, Julius Evola, or Frithjof Schuon, the key figures in the restoration of traditionalist philosophy, were the ones who had the deepest and clearest understanding of the transcendental, metaphysical unity of Eastern and Western religions and cultures. Their teaching reaches back to such ancient intellectual sources that can provide a sense of communion for awakening Western Christian, Orthodox, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist people. These two things are exactly what are necessary for the success of Eurasianism: a foundation that can ensure supranational and supra-religious perspectives as well as an intellectual centrality. The metaphysical Tradition can ensure these two: universality and quality. At that moment, Eurasianism is no longer a mere geopolitical alternative, a new yet equally crisis-infected (and thus also infectious) globalization process, but a traditionalist repsonse.

We cannot overemphasize the superior quality of in­tellectual Eurasianism. However, it is important to note here that the acquisition of an intellectual superiority ensured by the traditionalist approach would not at all mean that our confrontation with Euroatlantism would remain at a spiritual-intellectual level only, thus giving up our intentions to create a counterbalance or even dominance in the practical areas, such as the political, diplomatic, economic, military, and cultural spheres. We can be satisfied with neither a vulgar Eurasianism (lacking a philosophical centre) nor a theoretical one (lacking practicability). The only adequate form for us is such a Eurasianism that is rooted in the intellectual centre of traditionalism and is elaborated for practical implementation as well. To sum up in one sentence: there must be a traditionalist Eurasianism standing in opposition to an anti-traditionalist Euroatlantism.

The above also means that geopolitical and geographical positions are strategically important, but not at all exclusive, factors in identifying the enemy-ally coordinates. A group that has a traditionalist intellectual base (thus being intellectually Eurasian) is our ally even if it is located in a Euro-Atlantic zone, while a geographically Eurasian but anti-traditionalist force (thus being intellectually Euro-Atlantic) would be an enemy, even if it is a great power.

4. Homogeneousness and Heterogeneousness

If it is truly built upon the intellectual centre of metaphysical Tradition, intellectual Eurasianism has such a common base that it is relevant regardless of geographical position, thus giving the necessary homoge­neousness to the entire concept. On the other hand, the tremendous size and the versatility of cultures and ancient traditions of the Eurasian area do not allow for a complete theoretical uniformity. However, this is just a barrier to overcome, an intellectual challenge that we must all meet, but it is not a preventive factor. Each region, nation, and country must find their own form that can organically and harmoniously fit into its own traditions and the traditionalist philosophical approach of intellectual Eurasianism as well. Simply put, we can say that each one must form their own Eurasianism within the large unit.

As we said above, this is an intellectual challenge that requires an able intellectual elite in each region and coun­try who understand and take this challenge and are in a constructive relationship with the other, similar elites.

These elites together could provide the international intellectual force that is destined to elaborate the Eurasian framework itself. The sentences above throw a light on the greatest hiatus (and greatest challenge) lying in the establishment of intellectual Eurasianism. This challenge is to develop and empower traditionalist intellectual elites operating in different geographical areas, as well as to establish and improve their supranational relations. Geographically and nationally speaking, intellectual Eurasianism is heterogeneous, while it is homogeneous in the continental and essential sense.

However, the heterogeneousness of Eurasianism must not be mistaken for the multiculturalism of Euroatlantism. In the former, allies form a supranational and supra-cultural unit while also preserving their own traditions, whereas the latter aims to create a sub-cultural and sub-national unit, forgetting and rejecting traditions. This also means that intellectual Eurasianism is against and rejects all mass migrations, learning from the West’s current disaster caused by such events. We believe that geographical position and environment is closely related to the existence and unique features of the particular religious, social, and cultural tradition, and any sudden, inorganic, and violent social movement ignoring such factors will inevitably result in a state of dysfunction and conflicts. Intellectual Eurasianism promotes self-realization and the achievement of intellectual missions for all nations and cultures in their own place.

5. Closing Thoughts

The aim of this short essay is to outline the basis and lay the foundations for an ambitious and intellectual Eurasianism by raising fundamental issues. We based our argumentation on the obvious fact that the world is in crisis, and that this crisis is caused by liberal globalization, which we identified as Euroatlantism. We believe that the counter-effect needs to be vertical and traditionalist, not horizontal and vulgar. We called this counter-effect Eurasianism, some core ideas of which were explained here. We hope that this essay will have a fecundating impact, thus truly contributing to the further elaboration of intellectual Eurasianism, both from a universal and a Hungarian aspect.

Notes:

[1] René Guénon: The Crisis of the Modern World. Translated by Marco Pallis, Arthur Osborne, and Richard C. Nicholson. Sophia Perennis: Hillsdale, New York. 2004. Pg. 31-32.

[2] Lajos Pálfalvi: Nicolai Trubetskoy’s impossible Eurasian mission. In Nicolai Sergeyevich Trubetskoy: Genghis Khan’s heritage. (in Hungarian) Máriabesnyő, 2011, Attraktor Publishing, p. 152.

[3] Mikola Ryabchuk: Western “Eurasianism” and the “new Eastern Europe”: a discourse of exclusion. (in Hungarian) Szépirodalmi Figyelő 4/2012.

[4] See: Julius Evola: Handbook of Rightist Youth. (in Hungarian) Debrecen, 2012, Kvintesszencia Publishing House, pp. 45–48.

 

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Vona, Gábor. “Thoughts on the Creation of Intellectual Eurasianism.” Journal of Eurasian Affairs, vol.2, no.1 (May 2014). <http://www.eurasianaffairs.net/some-thoughts-on-the-creation-of-intellectual-eurasianism/ >.

 

Intro to Feliks Koneczny – Giertych

Feliks Koneczny (1862-1949) by Rev. Wojciech Giertych (PDF – 2 MB):

Feliks Koneczny – Giertych

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Giertych, Wojciech. “Feliks Koneczny (1862-1949).” Lecture, Christendom College, Front Royal, Virgina, USA, 14 September 2012. Document retrieved from: <http://www.christendom.edu/news/2012/koneczny.pdf >.

 

Report on the Jean Parvulesco Symposium – Wyeth

Report on the Jean Parvulesco Symposium in Bucarest, 2015

By Alex Wyeth

 

A symposium on the French writer Jean Parvulesco led by Vlad Sauciuc and the Romanian branch office of the TV news channel Russia Today was held in the Hotel Crystal Palace of Bucharest on February 28th and 29th 2015.

From his Moscow apartment relayed via Skype, Alexander Dugin joined the symposium to share the memories of his friend Jean Parvulesco, whom he met in the late 1980s at the occasion of his first contacts with representatives of the French New Right. Alexander Dugin recognized the fact that the real identity of Jean Parvulesco will always remain a mystery, but added that if we were to try to define his true identity, he would think of a manifestation of the Celtic bard Talesin entrusted with a secret mission (undoubtedly in reference to Jean Parvulesco description of Julius Evola as a secret agent of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II). In his second conference, Alexander Dugin explained the core concepts of Jean Parvulesco’s geopolitical ideas, especially that of the eschatological Endkampf that would conclude centuries of occult warfare between the the Altantist order and the Eurasist order beyond the scene of world politics.

Natalia Melentiyeva, Alexander Dugin’s wife, joined the conference and, as a philosophy professor, introduced the key concepts of Neoplatonism, the true philosophia perennis common to most esoteric hermeneutics of the three monotheistic religions, in order to show how the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus can help deciphering the main themes of Jean Parvulesco’s novels. She also explain how each culture can be said to have its specific logos, which explains why each nation or ethnic ground needs to define its own Fourth Political Theory.

Jean Parvulsco’s son, Constantin Parvulsco, shed light on the mysteries of Jean Parvulesco early life: escape from the communist regime in Romania swimming across the Danube river, labor camp in Yugoslavia, escape and rescue from a mysterious virgin in Medjugorje, student life in Paris with the artistic avant-garde, armed struggle in Spain and Africa, mystical experiences, meetings with Ezra Pound, Julius Evola, Martin Heidegger, Mircea Eliade or Dominique de Roux, late literary career and militant involvement with the French New Right as well as various secret societies.

Stanislas Parvulesco, Jean Parvulesco’s grandson talked about the links between Eurasianism and South America with an inspiring speech on the resistance against globalization, and neo-liberal capitalism, with references to Peron and Chavez, as well as to the struggle of native American tribes to maintain their traditions.

As an expert on René Guénon and his Traditionalist school, Claudio Mutti talked about Jean Parvulesco’s friendship with other well-known Romanian figures, such as Jean Vâlsan, Vasile Lovinescu, Mirchea Eliade or Emil Cioran. His second speech was dedicated on Romanian sacred geography, with abundant references to Vasile Lovinescu’s book on the Hyperborean Dacia.

With his flamboyant style, Laurent James gave a very interesting speech on the influence of the French writer Dominique de Roux on Jean Parvulesco, followed by the recitation of a beautify people on Romania written by Dominique de Roux and most probably inspired or even written by Jean Parvulesco. Laurent’s second speech was fascinating compilation of Roman Catholic prophesies focused on Petrus Romanus, the last pope, who may herald the end of the papacy and a return of the Latin Church to Orthodoxy.

Finally, Alex Wyeth gave a first speech focused on Jean Parvulesco’s meetings with Julius Evola in 1968 to show that Jean Parvulesco could be seen as a true disciple of Julius Evola through three core themes that can serve as keys to decipher Jean Parvulesco’s cryptic novels, namely Tantrism (reinterpreted in a Western hermetic or Catholic frame), the Holy “Eurasianist” Empire and the Order of differentiated men leading the ultimate underground battle against the princes and principalities of dissolution. His second speech gave an example of the occult geopolitical influence of secret societies and their link to Eurasianism through the example of Martinism in Russia.

Many other fascinating topics have been discussed shedding light on Jean Parvulesco’s life and work from many different angles.

Beside conferences, the speakers have been received with the legendary hospitality of their Romanian friends, meeting fascinating people as diverse as representatives of Romanian parliament as well as the Russian embassy, Hesychasts inspired by René Guénon, National Bolshevik activists, legionaries of the Romanian Iron Guard, scholars and members of esoteric orders united by the mysterious figure of Jean Parvulesco as well as by the core principles of Eurasianism and Alexander Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory.

 

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Wyeth, Alex. “Report on the Jean Parvulesco Symposium Bucarest 2015.” Open Revolt, 8 March 2015. <http://openrevolt.info/2015/03/08/jean-parvulesco-symposium/ >.

 

Manifesto of the Spanish Identitarian Solidarist Resistence

Principles of the Spanish Identitarian Circle: Resistencia Identitaria Solidarista

Translated by Daniel Macek

 

1. Europeanism. The Identitarian Solidarist Resistence is before all a European and Europeanist Comradeship. It is born with the principal objective of defending European identity. The Identitarian Solidarist Resistence considers Europe as a nation to construct in a future which is already present. The current configuration of global equilibrium makes it so that only great geopolitical blocs are capable of being protagonists of history, effective centers of power and decision, and in its turn assuring that its inhabitants be political actors and not mere obedient observers of orders and interests alien to their reality and will. Also, economically, we advocate the creation of grand self-centered and self-sufficient spaces capable of breaking the current dynamic tending towards a uniform and sole global market whose power and direction, in very few hands, also translates into the economic-political power and direction of the planet.

But beyond these considerations, we advocate the construction of a one and united Europe on the grounds of common origin and identity.

Staying within the above arguments would not end up having us exit the logic of the dominant thought, justifying European unity by circumstantial and transitory economic or political reasons. The geopolitical and economic necessities, having their importance, do not stop being valid transitory reasons here and now, but without either a larger entity or connection. On the contrary, for us the unity of Europe is based on its own essence, by way of categorical imperative, it must be a unity here and always based on immutable values and not on changing circumstances.

The unity of Europe derives fundamentally from the common identity and heritage of all the peoples and countries which compose it, all those heirs of the Indo-European peoples which, since its initial Northern European core has extended itself across our continent, and later also on others, giving itself the form and nature by which it still differs from the rest of the world. Some punctual exceptions refer also to more archaic nuclei emerging before the common home, but without doubt they also belong to the same ethnocultural reality, or certain allogenic invasions which in reality have left little more than some demonyms and languages whose true nature is still debated.

For all these reasons we define the Identitarian Solidarist Resistance as an identitarian European comradeship, whose objective is the study and dissemination of the ethnic and cultural heriatge of the European people. It advocates, as a consequence of the previous points, the construction of a united political entity of Europe from the Canary Islands to Vladisvostok.

Recovering our most ancient and complete political form, we advocate the constitution of this unity under the form of Imperium, of a superior integration of the diversity, rejecting the form of a macro-Jacobin state, and, being against the current formula of European Union which we neither want nor support, we denounce its bureaucratic and globalist drift as well as its submission to the United States and its almost total absence of political and military will in the world.

2. Religiosity. The reaffirmation of the values and principles common to all Indo-European religions. We denounce foreign values which have been introduced in Europe by religions originally from the desert regions of the Near East. This does not impede us from recognizing that Catholicism and other forms of Euro-Christianity have absorbed in many cases values and principles belonging to our heritage, and have become part of the inner religious feeling of many Europeans. Therefore, together with a purely Indo-European religiosity, in the form of its depth and origin, would be the religious possibilities which we contemplate for the Europe of the future.

We denounce the presence on our soil the religious forms with a will for political expansion and alien to our tradition and history, which have frequently served as an ideological base for the attack on our Great European Fatherland. Islam and Zionism are not religions of Europe and therefore cannot be nor should be grounded in Europe, and have their place far from our borders. In the same way, we oppose all types of current pseudo-religiosity, based simply on “personal well-being” and directed towards all types of misfits, which with the name and under the umbrella of the so-called New Age, tries to make neurotic and neutralize a growing number of Europeans.

3. Immigration. As a consequence of the current phase of capitalist development where interest prevails over all other considerations, and where individuals and peoples, previously dispossessed of their personality and idiosyncrasies, have become interchangeable commodities, we witness the current wave of people foreign to our land and our tradition. From the economic point of view, we advocate the adoption of necessary policies in the countries of origin so that these distressing would not come to be produced and each person has possibilities to develop a dignified life in their place of origin. We are sure that the vast majority of these immigrants would not be here if they would be given opportune conditions in their countries of birth. For that reason we demand the replacement of the current system of exploitation – based on the miserly interests of anonymous multinationals and decadent local elites whose combinations gives place to the chaotic political and economic situations which provoke this painful exodus – by another founded on the values of solidarity and efficacy.

In addition to its economic aspect, immigration concerns us, and very much from the perspective of maintaining the identity of Europe. Accordingly, before the threat which is posed by the exorbitant number and brutal birthrate of these foreigners on European soil, we defend the immediate adoption of measures to stop the arrival of new collectivities of immigrants, as well as the study and possible application of a program of return in the most humanitarian conditions possible.

4. Ethnicism. The Identitarian Solidarist Resistance, as a European Identitarian movement, is manifested in favor of the defense of the personalities belonging to each one of the “carnal fatherlands” which compose our grand Europe. In a world with the tendency to individualism, to forgetting the past and the reality of peoples for the benefit of the universalisation of the global personality and the single market, the Identitarian Solidarist Resistance considers any positive identitarian reaction based on ethnic realities, as we also do the identitarian reactions which are based on membership to European nation-states.

This does not absolutely mean that we support the idea that each ethnicity goes to become its own and “independent” state. Considering that independence is the capacity to exercise a role in history and in the world according to one’s own will without giving in to interests of an foreign power, we are aware that only a united Europe could be such. Today neither Spain, nor France, nor Germany, nor Italy, nor the United Kingdom are sovereign states, since in all cases their decisions ultimately depend on Washington. Much less could it be that each one of the ethnic groups become micro-states, easy prey of the international dominion.

Inspired by the traditional concepts of European politics – eclipsed with the arrival of Modernity – we demonstrate against any uniformising and centralist idea of the state, and we demand that each one adopts a deferential internal composition with the plurality that it integrates. Definitively, we demonstrate ourselves in favor of the process of European unification to be realized by each one of the existing states, and the maintenance of the personality belonging to each ethnic community.

5. For a society based on the popular community constructed upon the pillars of family-tradition. Modern society is disintegrated. In fact, it can be said that there no longer exists society as such. The word “society” is no more than a euphemism for referring to a heterogeneous set of individuals united only by mere common interest; individuals who compete between themselves to occupy the best places in that so-called “society.” Individualism leads to the separation of material interests, to the separation of the most profound interests, and as a logical consequence, to the division of the people.

For all those reasons, the Identitarian Solidarist Resistance defends the popular community as the base and foundation of the state.

The popular community, contrary to the “society,” is homogeneous and organic. It is homogeneous inasmuch as it is composed of people united not by interest, but rather by bonds forged by millennia of common history, traditions, and heritage, who share the same principles and the same fundamental aspirations, which makes it an indivisible whole. And it is organic because it is not founded on an artificial union, but rather on the bonds of common heritage and tradition, a union of individuals who by their nature tend to share their destiny.

The popular community is not founded as a type of “social contract,” but rather on the same superior bonds which make up a family, which is the basis of community. From the family, it is followed in organic order, the clan or the neighborhood, which groups together several families by affinity, to the clan, the people, or the city, from this to the region, and finally the national-popular community, an organism which encompasses all of the previous ones as concentric rings. But on the basis of all these groups, we find the common heritage as a fundamental nexus of union; a common past, which allows facing a common destiny.

6. The defense of the land trough a responsible economy against consumerism and the “welfare culture.” The Identitarian Solidarist Resistance conceives the economy as an instrument in the service of the national community and not the community as an instrument in the service of the economy, as it happens with today’s society, in which everything revolves around economic parameters.

The current market system is constructed in the form of a circle of production and consumption that must revolve indefinitely and at an increasing velocity, since otherwise the system suffers, possibly even reaching collapse. The production-consumption relationship has been closed in on itself; it no longer depends on the real needs of the community, nor on the capacity of environment to support the level of production that the system requires. One produces and consumes simply to keep the cycle of the system in movement.

The Identitarian Solidarist Resistance denounces the capitalist international and the globalisation of the economy, since under the guise of “development aid,” it transfers its centers of production to countries with cheaper labor, favoring exploitation in these countries, and a rate of artificial standstill in the communities of origin.

Globalisation is also responsible for another, even more disagreeable phenomenon: illegal immigration, which no more than another tactic to cheapen production. The phenomenon of illegal immigration consists in reality of a massive “importation” of cheap labor to industrialized countries, in conditions of genuine slavery. The Identitarian Solidarist Resistance cannot but denounce this repugnant slave trade that is hidden behind illegal immigration, and injury that this practice poses for the dignity and the rights of workers, as much local as foreign ones.

7. As a necessary consequence of all the above, we summarize that we situate ourselves in dialectical opposition to the so-called New World Order and the values and principles which this mandates and wants to impose by force on the whole globe, so that we defend the resistances to the process of planetary uniformisation. The first and most consistent defense against this New World Order is the battle for the maintenance of our identity, personality, and heritage, considering as our own any Identitarian movement emerging on European soil.

 

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Translated from: “Principios de Resistencia Identitaria Solidarista,” Resistencia Identitaria Solidarista, 21 April 2015, <http://resistenciaidentitariasolidarista.blogspot.com/2015/04/noticias-de-ris_21.html >.

 

The Sole “Anti-Fascist” Thought – Benoist

The Sole “Anti-Fascist” Thought

By Alain de Benoist

Translated from the Spanish by Lucian Tudor

 

Translator’s Note: The present article is a translation of “El pensamiento único ‘antifascista’” (originally published at El Manifesto, 9 February 2015). The Spanish version was a translation of an excerpt from the French “Les méthodes de la Nouvelle Inquisition” (“The Methods of the New Inquisition”), a speech delivered at a colloquium organized by GRECE in November, 1997. The French version was later republished as “Pensée unique, nouvelles censures” in Alain de Benoist’s book Critiques – Théoriques (Lausanne & Paris: L’Age d’Homme, 2003).

The term “pensée unique” in French or “pensamiento único” in Spanish, which is translated here as “sole thought” and “single thought,” is difficult to render in English without losing its original meaning. In French, Italian, and Spanish it refers to a form of thought which has been made obligatory or compulsory for everyone in society; so it is asserted to be the “sole thought” which is allowed.

***

Some time ago Jean-François Revel has spoken of “devotion” to qualify the opinion about an idea solely in terms of its conformity or its power of attraction in respect to a dominant ideology. We could add that devotion represents the zero degree of analysis and understanding. It is precisely because devotion dominates that today ideas which are denounced are not refuted, but rather that it suffices to declare them inconvenient or unbearable. Moral condemnation is exempt from an analysis of the hypotheses or of the principles under the prism of truth and falsehood. Now there are no just or false ideas, but rather appropriate ideas, in sync with the spirit of our time, and ideas which do not conform are denounced as intolerable.

This attitude appears even more reinforced by the strategic obsessions of the actors of the “right thought.” It matters little in this sphere whether an idea is just or false: what is important is to know which strategy it can serve, who draws upon it and with what purpose. A book can thus be denounced, even though its content corresponds with reality, with the only excuse that it runs the risk of converting ideas considered intolerable into “acceptable” ones or of favoring those which one wants to silence. It is the new version of the old slogan, “do not cause Billancourt to despair!” [Translator’s note: This is the exclamation with which Sartre hoped that he had camouflaged the truth, lest the workers of Renault of Billancourt would despair and falter in their revolutionary fervor]. Needless to say that with this approach, the place where we express ourselves is more relevant than that which we go to speak: There are admitted places and “unrecommended” places. All criticism presents itself, therefore, as an attempt for disqualification that is obtained by resorting to words that, in place of describing a reality, function like others as so many signs or operators for maximum delegitimization. Our singular strategists thus betray their own mental system, which only attributes value to ideas to the extent that they can be manipulated.

In the past, this work of delegitimization was carried out to the detriment of the families of more diverse thought – we think, for example, about the grotesque campaigns in the times of McCarthyism. But currently it is being done, without doubt, in a single direction. It has to do with crossing out as illegitimate all thought, all theory, all intellectual construction that contradicts the philosophy of the Enlightenment which, with all the shades that one wants, constitutes the support on which current societies are legitimized. For that, politically correct thought essentially resorts to two impostures: anti-racism and anti-fascism. We will say a few words regarding these two.

Racism is an ideology which postulates the inequality between races or which attempts to explain the whole history of humanity based solely upon the racial factor. This ideology has practically no defense nowadays, but we pretend to think that it is omnipresent, assimilating to it xenophobia, attitudes of rejection or distrust in respect to the Other, and even to a simple preference for endogamy and homofiliation. “Racism” is presented as the emblematic category of residual irrationalism, rooted in superstition and prejudice, that which would impede the emergence of a society which is transparent before itself. This criticism of “racism” as fundamental irrationality simply and plainly recycles the liberal fairytale of a pre-rational world which is the source of all social evils, as was demonstrated now more than half a century ago by Adorno and Horkheimer in saying that it reflects the ineptitude of modernity to face the Other, that is, difference and uniqueness.

Denouncing “racism” as a pure irrationality, that is, as a non-negotiable category, the New Class betrays at the same time its distance in respect to reality, but also contributes to the neutralization and the depoliticization of social problems. In effect, if “racism” is essentially a “madness” or a “criminal opinion,” then the battle against racism has much to do with courts and psychiatrists, but, however, it now has nothing to do with politics. This allows the New Class to forget that racism itself is an ideology resulting from modernity by the threefold bias of social evolutionism, scientistic positivism, and the theory of progress.

“Anti-fascism” is a completely obsolete category to the same extent as is “fascism,” to which it intends to oppose itself. The word is today a catchall term without any precise content. It is an elastic concept, applicable to anything, employed without the least descriptive rigor, which ends up being declined into “fascistic” and even into “fascistoid,” which allows itself to be adapted to all cases. Leo Strauss has already spoken of Reductio ad Hitlerum to qualify this purely polemical form of discrediting. The manner in which, nowadays, any non-conformist thought is crossed out as “fascist” on the part of censors who themselves could hardly define what they understand by that term, forms part of the same discursive strategy.

“There is a form of typically European political correctness which consists of seeing fascists everywhere,” observed Alain Finkielkraut on this point. “It has become a habitual procedure for a cohort of whistleblowing scribblers,” added Jean-François Revel, “to throw to Nazism and revisionism all individuals whose reputation they want to besmirch.” One can observe the consequences of that every day. The most trivial incident of French political life is judged today under the prism of “fascism” or the Occupation. Vichy “becomes an obsessive reference” and is converted into a phantasm which allows maintaining a permanent psychodrama, and given that they prefer the “duty of memory” to the duty of truth, this memory is regularly appealed to for justifying the most dubious comparisons or the most grotesque understandings. “This everlasting incrimination of fascism,” wrote Jean-François Revel, “whose excess is so shocking, which ridicules its authors in place of discrediting its victims, reveals the hidden motive of political correctness. This perversion serves as a substitute for the censors, for those left orphaned by the loss of that incomparable instrument of spiritual tyranny which was the Marxist gospel.”

Revealing of these effects is the outbreak of hostilities provoked by the exploitation of the Kremlin archives, which began to cause the breakdown of some statues of legendary “heroes.” Equally revealing is the result of observing in what manner the simple verification that the Communist system had ended the lives of more people than any other system in history (a hundred million dead!) today raises the virtuous indignation in milieus that “do everything to conceal the magnitude of the catastrophe” – as if this verification is equivalent to the trivialization of Nazi crimes which are by definition incomparable with anything, as if the horror of the crimes of Communism could be attenuated by the supposed purity of its original intentions, as if the two great totalitarian systems whose rivalry and complementarity characterized the 20th Century would not be inscribed into a relationship out of which one or the other would become unintelligible, as if, in the end, some dead weigh more than others.

But we must also emphasize that contemporary “anti-fascism” – which, paraphrasing Joseph de Maistre, we could qualify not as the opposite of fascism but rather as fascism in the opposite sense – has totally changed in nature. In the 1930s, the theme of “anti-fascism,” exploited by Stalin on the margins of the authentic fight against true fascism, would serve the Communist parties for questioning capitalist bourgeois society, accused of serving as the breeding ground of totalitarianism. It was then about showing that the liberal democracies and the “social traitors” were objectively potential allies of Fascism. However, currently it is exactly the opposite. Today, “anti-fascism” serves before all as an alibi for those who have vigorously joined the single thought and the system. Having abandoned all critical attitude, having succumbed to the advantages of a society which would offer them sinecures and privileges, they want, embracing the “anti-fascist” rhetoric, to give the impression (or make the illusion) of having remained loyal to themselves. In other words, the “anti-fascist” posture permits the Penitent, the central figure of our time, to forget his retractions by employing a wildcard slogan which does not cease to be a commonplace one. Yesterday’s strategic tool with which mercantilist capitalism was attacked, “anti-fascism,” has been converted into a mere discourse in its service. Thus, while the forces of potential opposition are prioritarily mobilized against a phantasmagoric fascism, the New Class which exercises the reality of power can sleep soundly. Making reference to a value which it not only no longer supposes to be a threat for current society, but rather which, on the contrary, reinforces what it is, our modern “anti-fascisms” have been converted into its watchdogs.

It is so true that for politicians, the denunciation of “fascism” is today an excellent way to remake a reputation for oneself. The most corrupt use and abuse it to minimize the importance of their malfeasances. If “fascism” is the absolute evil, and they denounce it, that means that they are not entirely bad. False accounts, unfulfilled electoral promises, grafts and corruptions of all sorts become lamentable faults but, in short, secondary ones in relation to the worst. But not only the Left or politicians need a nonexistent “fascism” that embodies absolute evil. Also, all of modernity on the decline needs a bête noire that allows it to make the social pathologies which it itself has engendered acceptable, under the pretext that however bad things go now, they would never have a point of comparison with those things that took place in the past.

Modernity is thus legitimized by means of a phantasm of which, paradoxically, we are told at the same time that it is “unique” and that it can return at any time. Confronted with its own emptiness, confronted with the tragic failure of its initial project of human liberation, confronted with the counter-productivity that it generates everywhere, confronted with the loss of references and with generalized senselessness, confronted with nihilism, confronted with the fact that man becomes increasingly more useless from the moment in which his abstract rights are proclaimed, modernity is left no other recourse than to divert attention, that is, to wield nonexistent dangers to impede the rising awareness of the truth. The recourse to the “absolute evil” functions then as a prodigious means of forcing the acceptance of the evils which our contemporaries are faced with in their daily lives, evils which, in comparison to this absolute evil, become contingent, relative, and, in the last instance, accessories. The exacerbated opposition to the totalitarianisms of yesterday, the unending tiresomeness about the past, prevents analyzing the evils of the present and the dangers of the future, at the same time that they make us enter into the 21st Century with a strong hindrance, with an eye fixed on the rearview mirror.

It would therefore be an error to believe that the current “anti-fascism” represents nothing. On the contrary, it poses a negative legitimization which is fundamental for a society that no longer has anything positive to include in its balance sheet. “Anti-fascism” creates the identity of a New Class that cannot exist without invoking the scarecrow of the worst thing so that it is not reduced to its own emptiness. In the same manner that some do not find their identity any more than in denouncing immigrants, the New Class only finds its own in the virtuous denunciation of an absolute evil, whose shadow hides its ideological vacuity, its absence of references, its intellectual indigence, in the last analysis, that it simply no longer has anything more to contribute, neither original analyses nor solutions to propose.

Therefore, it turns out to be vital for the central core of the “right-thinking” [biempensante] to prohibit all questioning of the fundamental principles which constitute their support of legitimacy. For if things were otherwise, it would be necessary that the dominant ideology accepts being questioned. But it would not consent to that, since it shares the conviction with the greater part of grand messianic ideologies that if things go badly, if the anticipated success is not attained, it is never because the principles were bad, but, on the contrary, because they had not been sufficiently applied. Yesterday they told us that if Communism had not attained paradise on earth, it was because it had not yet eliminated a sufficient number of its opponents. Today they tell us that if neoliberalism is in crisis, if the process of globalization entails social disorders, it is because there still exist too many obstacles which obstruct the proper functioning of the market.

To explain the failure of the project – or to reach the desired objective – a scapegoat is needed. There need to be nonconforming opponents, deviant or dissident elements: yesterday, the Jews, the Freemasons, the lepers, or the Jesuits; today, the supposed “fascists” or “racists.” These deviants are perceived as disturbing, bothersome elements which obstruct the advent of a rational society, so that it is necessary to purge the social body by means of an appropriate prophylactic action. If, for example, xenophobia exists in France today, it is not due to any case of a badly controlled immigration policy, but rather to the existence of “racism” in the social body. In a society whose components are increasingly more heterogeneous, it is made essential to establish a kind of civil religion designating a scapegoat. The shared execration serves then as nexus which, while fighting an enemy, even if it be only a mirage, it allows the maintenance of a semblance of unity.

But there exists, in addition, another advantage to moral denunciation, and it is that against the “absolute evil” all means valid. Demonization, indeed, has not only had the consequence of the depoliticization of conflicts, but has also caused, likewise, the criminalization of the adversary. This becomes an absolute enemy which must be eradicated by all existing means. One then enters into a kind of total war – and it is so much so that it is claimed to be carried in the name of humanity. To fight in the name of humanity leads to placing one’s adversaries outside of humanity, that is, to practice the negation of humanity. From this perspective, the apology for murder and the call to lynching are also found to be justified.

Finally, what should be noted is that the disqualifying labels manipulated today in the name of political correctness are never claimed labels, but rather attributed labels. Contrary to what happened in the 1930s, when the Communists and Fascists openly claimed their respective denominations, today nobody reclaims the qualifications of “fascist” and “racist.” Their nomination thus has no objective, informative, or descriptive value, but rather a purely subjective, strategic, or polemical value. The problem that arises is to know what the legitimacy of their attribution is. As this legitimacy is always to be tested, it is deduced that the “test” is always derived from the very possibility of attribution.

The psychoanalyst Fethi Benslama wrote that “today fascism is no longer a bloc, an easily identifiable entity embodied in a system, in a discourse, in an organization which can be demarcated,” but that it “rather assumes fragmentary and diffuse forms inside the whole of society […], a form such that no one is sheltered in a worldview, guarded from this disfiguration from the other which makes it arise as a boisterous, joyful body, secretly expanded body all over the place.” Such declarations are revealing: if fascism is “secretly expanded all over the place,” “anti-fascism” can evidently accuse anyone.

The problem is that the idea according to which evil is all over the place is the premise of all inquisition and, likewise, the premise upon which conspirationist paranoia is supported, as it had inspired in the past the witch-hunts and the justifications of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Just as the anti-Semites saw Jews everywhere, the new inquisitors see “fascists” everywhere. And as the supreme cunning of the Devil is to make people believe that he does not exist, protests are never heard. Topping it off, a popular psychoanalyst is permitted to interpret the denial or the indignant rejection to put on the uniform that they try to offer us with such complacency, just like so many other supplementary confirmations: the refusal to confess is the best proof that one is guilty.

“A man is not what he hides, but rather what he does,” said André Malraux. Believing that “fascism” is all over the place, meaning nowhere, the new inquisition affirms on the contrary that men are before all what they hide – and that it aims to uncover it. It boasts of seeing beyond the appearances and of reading in between the lines, to better “confuse” and “unmask.” It is in this way that the presumption of guilt knows no limits. What is “unsaid” is decrypted, decoded, and detected. Speaking clearly, authors are denounced, no so much for what they had written, but for what they had not written and what it is assumed they had intended to write. The content of their books is not boycotted, content which is never taken into consideration, but rather the intentions which are believed to have been divined. The police of ideas then becomes the police of ulterior motives.

 

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De Benoist, Alain. “The Sole ‘Anti-Fascist’ Thought.” Tankesmedjan Motpol, 13 April 2015. <http://www.motpol.nu/lucian/2015/04/13/the-sole-anti-fascist-thought/ >.

 

Interview with John Morgan – Leonard

A Blaze through the Gloom; an Interview with Arktos Media’s John Morgan by Nathan Leonard

 

Introductory Note: One of the byproducts of living in this highly technological age is that we are so constantly flooded with information from such a variety of media around us that we often become confused. Although our ability to communicate ideas has developed a phenomenal reach, when we stop to examine much of the information that takes up our time, we find that it is composed of fleeting ideas which are designed for short-term consumption of passing fads in which we get caught up for a short time and then remember later with nostalgia and a dash of ironic disdain. Much of what is promoted to us is a commercial transaction in some form or another. This is why it doesn’t last. Yet, part of our identity becomes intrinsically tangled in every shallow trend that sweeps us away.

John Morgan is Editor-in-Chief of Arktos Media, which publishes books that ask deeper questions about our identity and that challenge us to think differently about our role in history. Arktos has utilized innovations of globalism to provide information much different than what usually bombards us on a daily basis; ideas that cannot be blown away by winds of change for they are established in the very nature of life itself. We were fortunate to conduct the following interview with Mr. Morgan by way of email correspondence. – Nathan Leonard (from Heathen Harvest), 7 July 2014.

***

Heathen Harvest: Thank you for accepting this interview, John. To start, what does the name “Arktos” mean, and how does it relate to the types of books Arktos publishes?

John Morgan: Arktos is a centaur in Greek mythology. It is also the Greek word for bear, and was additionally the Greek name for the constellation of Ursa Major (Ursa is Latin for bear), which contains the Big Dipper, and which can guide one toward the North Star. Arktos was also the root of the word “arctic”. We wanted a name that was evocative of the ancient European tradition and also of “northernness”, to borrow a term coined by C. S. Lewis to describe Wagnerian art. While in Arktos we are interested in all traditional cultures, we do see ourselves as being primarily rooted in our own European heritage, and we could think of nothing more poetic than Arktos to convey that. Also, it is much less of a mouthful than Integral Tradition Publishing, which was the name of the company some of my colleagues and I had previously! As one can see from perusing the sorts of books we have published to date, many of them deal with aspects of myth and tradition, both European and otherwise.

HH: Arktos will be co-sponsoring the 2014 Identitarian Congress in Budapest this October. What is this event going to be about?

JM: We’re still working on the overall theme, as we haven’t confirmed all the speakers and participants yet. Essentially, we want to discuss the issues that unite all traditionalists, nationalists and identitarians across North America and Europe. There are so many groups, movements and thinkers across the world that are pursuing similar goals, but they rarely have the opportunity to gather in one place to compare notes and ideas, and simply to network. So, our event will be an attempt to fill that need. We also want to explore the idea of Europe as something beyond the petty nationalisms of the past, which led to the tragedy of 1914 (among others), the consequences of which are still being seen today, and also beyond the type of liberalism that has been imported here from the United States. All of our speakers will be addressing these issues, albeit in very different and unique ways.

HH: Why is Budapest the location for the conference? Is it related to your living there? Is there a movement toward traditional thinking there?

JM: The fact that Arktos is now based here was certainly a factor, yes, since it means that my colleagues and I can take care of some of the advance logistical work involved. However, on a broader level, Budapest, and Hungary more generally, is an ideal location for a gathering of traditionalists and nationalists, since Hungary is probably the country with the most vitality in relation to those fields at the present time, and certainly in Europe. Ideas that are often dismissed out of turn in other Western countries are still being openly discussed and taken seriously here. Not to mention the fact that Budapest is one of the most beautiful capital cities in Europe. So, in every way, this was really the ideal location for an event of this nature.

HH: How did you first get into publishing?

JM: For a long time, I had realized that there was a great need for someone to provide an outlet for ideas such as those of the European New Right, the Conservative Revolution, and traditionalism, among others, in English. Prior to Arktos, such resources were few and far between, and often hard to find. In 2006, some friends who felt the same need managed to raise some capital, which allowed us to start our first venture, the aforementioned Integral Tradition Publishing, at the end of that year. We merged Integral Tradition Publishing into Arktos at the end of 2009, as part of a continuation of our goals. It wasn’t really something I had imagined happening, much less being a part of, prior to that time, so the fact that we were able to get this project off the ground and make it work, and that I’ve been able to dedicate most of my time to it over the past five years, is something I’m quite proud of.

HH: Are there any specific writers that inspired you in the establishment of Integral Tradition Publishing or Arktos, perhaps because you wanted them to have a wider exposure or to be introduced to English language audiences?

JM: Certainly. Going into it, we very much wanted to see more of Julius Evola’s works in English, as well as books by Alain de Benoist (only one of his books had been translated prior to Arktos), Guillaume Faye, and Alexander Dugin (the latter two of which were completely untranslated before we started). All of those authors are now in our catalog. There was already quite a bit of Evola in English before Arktos, but there was still a great deal of material left to do, particularly his political writings, which were largely unavailable before we went to work. As for Benoist, Faye and the other thinkers of the European New Right, I find it unbelievable that no one had attempted to translate them before. Benoist in particular – he’s been writing for half a century, and it’s amazing that no one got to him before us. I strongly suspect it’s due to him being called a “Rightist” (a label he rejects). If he had been a French Marxist, I’m sure everything down to his grocery lists would have been translated long ago.

HH: Are you personally a writer? If so, do you plan to publish any books in the future?

JM: I sometimes enjoy writing, although I haven’t published much apart from a short story that I wrote many years ago. I’ve occasionally written essays for Counter-Currents and a few other websites. I would like to write something more substantial in the future, yes, although my Arktos work takes up a lot of my time and energy as it is. But one of these days, yes, I would like to do something of my own.

HH: The recent election results of Members of European Parliament were described as “a political earthquake” because some members of nationalist or “Euroskeptic” parties gained seats. Do you think this represents a major shift in European thinking? What will the impact of the elections be?

JM: It’s a positive sign, to be sure, but no, I don’t think this indicates a “major shift”. If you look at most of the parties that did well – the National Front in France, Wilder’s Freedom Party, UKIP – these are liberal parties that merely have a degree of “acceptable” nationalism and anti-immigrationism as part of their platform. They don’t represent the values of the “true Right”, as Evola phrased it. Plus, as others have observed, Euroskeptic parties have a tendency to do better in the European elections than they do in the national ones, since everyone knows that the European Parliament has little in the way of real power, so they feel more comfortable doing “protest voting” in it. It’s doubtful you will see these parties do as well in their respective national elections. A French friend of mine told me that he is sure that most of the people who voted for the National Front did so as a protest vote rather than out of a real passion for their platform. So, yes, it’s good that Europeans decided to send a message of discontent to Brussels, but I’m wary of getting too excited about this just yet.

The party I find the most relatable to my own perspective in Europe today is Jobbik. They did manage to get 15% of the vote here in Hungary, but that’s actually down from the 20% they got in the national elections just last month, no doubt because part of their platform is to get Hungary out of the EU and thus many of their supporters don’t bother voting. But still, they will be sending three MEPs to parliament again, which is good.

HH: Along these same lines, are you aware of any emerging artistic movements in Europe (literary, musical, visual, or otherwise) characterized by traditionalist, nationalist, or identitarian sentiments?

JM: Unfortunately, no, not many, although that doesn’t necessarily mean there aren’t any, but just that I don’t know of any. If there’s something in a language other than English, I may just not know about it. There certainly isn’t much in English, as I’ve looked. The Mjolnir magazine from the UK, which just released its inaugural issue, which contains fiction, poetry and art consistent with our principles, is a step in that direction. Apart from that, no, I can’t think of anything. There are some individual artists and bands working here and there, of course, like Michael Moynihan and Annabel Lee in the U.S., but I wouldn’t call that a movement, and I think that’s a problem. People on the Right are very good at complaining, and of coming up with brilliant critiques of the world as it is, but they aren’t very good at proposing alternatives or of describing exactly what it is they want. A thriving alternative culture could provide that. I always find it discomforting when I go to a Rightist Website and find photos of the “great White men” of the past, which usually includes people such as Goethe and Beethoven, but it always consists entirely of people who are dead. Where are the great artists of our movement today? They are few and far between, and those that there are are shrouded in obscurity. (The American novelist Tito Perdue, who has been published by Arktos, is one of them, in my opinion.) We shouldn’t seek to turn our culture into a museum piece, where we just talk about how great our forefathers were. We need to get creative and produce new and original visions, and that’s something I hope to continue to provide an outlet for through Arktos.

HH: Liberalism controls the arts. I have met some artists who downplay their non-liberal political or philosophical leanings for fear of potential negative consequences. To what extent do you think a traditionalist art movement is stifled by the dominant ideologies of today? Do you think there are historical examples comparable to the present situation that may be instructive in undermining these systems of control?

JM: It depends on what you mean by “traditionalist”. If you’re using it in the sense of the school of Guénon and Evola, then no, I see nothing obstructing artists from utilizing those forms, ideas and symbols. The recently-deceased Sir John Tavener, who produced several works of music openly based on the writings of Frithjof Schuon and René Guénon, as well as works derived from the Orthodox Christian tradition, and who is one of the most highly regarded modern composers in the world, indicates that there is no inherent bias in the “establishment” against that sort of traditionalism. However, if you’re using the word “traditionalist” in the broader sense which also includes things related to conservatism (in the best sense of that term) and the political Right, then yes, I don’t think it’s news to anyone that there is a strong bias against them in the mainstream artistic establishment.

The recent debacle involving the artist Charles Krafft is a reminder of that, as if we needed one. But my response to that is, so what? We’re living in an age in which putting up a website or self-publishing a book are only a few mouse-clicks away. It’s obvious that, because of innovations in technology, everything is becoming much more decentralized and that the “authorities” in the various fields have become much less important in deciding what gets disseminated or what becomes popular. There’s no reason why anyone who has a particular idea or vision can’t get it out there somehow. That’s one of the few advantages, for people of our mentality, in living in a time like this. You can put just about anything out there and find an audience. Even the aforementioned Charles Krafft has said that his business has actually gone up since the “scandal” erupted, since his new-found notoriety has gotten him a customer base he never would have had otherwise. So, no, you may not see million-dollar grants from foundations going to artists who embrace unpopular forms and ideas anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many, many other avenues and opportunities for expression open to people, if they only want to make use of them. I think the only problem is a lack of creative people in “the movement”, such as it is, or at least of creative people willing to engage with it in a substantive manner. There are some exceptions, of course. If you want to “undermine the systems of control”, there’s nothing stopping you. Technology has already given us that ability.

HH: Can you explain more fully the distinction between traditionalism as a school of Guénon and Evola versus traditionalism in the broader sense of conservatism and the political Right? For instance, you mentioned earlier that Alain de Benoist rejects his characterization as a Rightest, so how is he to be classified? On the other hand, in what sense should we understand Evola’s “Fascism Viewed from the Right”?

JM: This is something that should be readily apparent to anyone who has read either Guénon or Evola, but I’ll attempt to summarize. There can be no connection between modern-day party politics and Tradition in the sense in which Guénon and Evola understood it. For a traditionalist, only one form of government can be traditional: a monarchy in tandem with a traditional priesthood (traditional meaning from a legitimately revealed source). This, of course, was how all civilizations everywhere in the world were governed prior to 1789, but there can be nothing traditional about any other form of politics, even if elements of it can be utilized. So, conservatism, as it’s understood in the United States today, has no connection to traditionalism, even if here and there we might find some overlap, such as in a concern over certain values. As for the Right, it depends on which Right we’re talking about. When it comes to the “Right” of Republicans and libertarians, of course not, since they are the opposite of everything traditional. Even the European New Right is in no way a “traditionalist” movement, even though its thinkers have derived some inspiration from the traditionalists.

Evola himself sometimes used the term “true Right” to describe his own views, which he once defined as being those principles which were considered correct and normal everywhere in the world before 1789. Guénon, for his part, was completely uninterested in the politics of his day, and there’s no indication that he ever engaged with politics in any way, since he regarded everything of modern extraction to be unworthy of anything apart from rejection to the furthest extent possible. Evola, as is well-known, was a critic of Italian Fascism during its reign, although he himself was never a Fascist, and both during and after the Fascist period he always said that he had only ever supported Fascism insofar as it represented traditional principles – which he felt it largely failed to do. In Evola’s later life, of course, he held that apoliteia was the only sensible course – complete disengagement from the political world, except insofar as how it might be beneficial to an individual’s self-development, by engaging in a manner that was disinterested in any result that might follow from such activity. So, in Evola titling his book Fascism Viewed from the Right, he was making it clear that he was analyzing Fascism from the perspective of the “true Right”, not from that of the Right of our time – a point he makes quite clear in the book itself.

I myself am not advocating this position, as I don’t consider myself to be a traditionalist in the same sense as I described above. However, I always make this distinction because I think there is a lot of confusion about the term, and people often use it in a muddled or confused way these days. There are other perfectly valid uses of the word “traditionalism”, of course, but if one is attempting to use it in the sense that Guénon or Evola did, one must keep what I have just reiterated in mind in doing so.

As for Benoist rejecting the Rightist label, it is factual that the name “New Right” has never been applied by Benoist’s Groupement de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne to itself, but was foisted upon them by hostile French journalists during the 1970s. Benoist himself has written that he regards himself as being, not neither Left nor Right, but rather both Left and Right. Which makes sense, because he has derived a great deal of inspiration from Marxist and other Leftist intellectuals, as well as from the Rightist tradition. I think it’s important for those who oppose civilization as it is currently constituted to bear in mind that there is just as much opposition to liberalism on the radical Left – among some Marxists, anarchists, ecologists, and postmodernists – as on the radical Right. One shouldn’t limit oneself by imposing artificial barriers to thought and ideas based solely on labels.

HH: Earlier you mentioned Charles Krafft as an artist affiliated with the Right, yet Krafft’s style could be called Pop Art or Post-modern, which seems contradictory to the ideals of traditionalism. Another example might be the paintings of the late Jonathan Bowden. Similarly, I’ve thought it paradoxical that industrial music and noise seem to open a door to martial imagery and “old” values like courage and honor. Do you have an opinion about how this almost hypermodern art relates to the “New Right” and anti-modernism? How would you define great art?

JM: I would agree about Charlie’s style, although to my knowledge he’s never called himself a traditionalist. I don’t even know if he would call himself a “Rightist”, for that matter. I cited him as an example since what happened to him shows what can happen if you use themes or motifs in your art that are not officially sanctioned by the establishment’s critics (unless “ironically”, of course), and most especially if you have disapproved friends or affiliations, as Charlie does. But no, it would be ridiculous to call Charlie’s art “traditionalist”, although he does sometimes incorporate traditional elements into his work, from Buddhism and Hinduism in particular. The same goes for Bowden’s art (and I like some of it). At the same time, personally I am not someone who thinks that we have to see Tradition as a static thing that has to be constantly reiterated in the same way and in the same style as it has before. Artistic forms, like reality itself, are constantly evolving and changing, and we shouldn’t always fear the new (although neither should we accept it unreservedly). For example, two of the greatest traditionalist (in a non-doctrinal sense) artists of recent decades for me would be the filmmakers Andrei Tarkovsky and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. They were operating in a medium which is entirely a product of modernity in every way, and which, let’s face it, 99% of the time is used for degenerative purposes. And both of them, Syberberg in particular, are not only filmmakers, but avant-garde filmmakers who used highly unorthodox methods of a style that were often similar to that of the heights of “liberal” cinema (Surrealism, the French New Wave, and so forth). And yet for me, Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Nostalgia, and The Sacrifice, as well as Syberberg’s Parsifal, rank as some of the most spiritual works of art I have ever experienced. I think they communicate the essence of what Tradition is, even though they are entirely modern in conception and assume a form that is non-traditional. If something can convey such an experience of meaning, or open up new vistas of meaning and new ways of viewing reality, then it’s good in my judgment, even if it may be unorthodox. The modern itself can be used to undo, or perhaps alter is more accurate, itself.

HH: What types of books has Arktos been publishing recently? Are there any that you believe to be particularly noteworthy?

JM: Arktos has been a bit slow the past few months, although that’s about to pick up dramatically. Of recent titles, The Dharma Manifesto is quite interesting. This is an attempt to apply Vedic principles to the political situation in America today by a noted Hindu teacher, Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya, and is unique of its kind. We also reprinted the complete run of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Conservative, a political and cultural journal he edited and contributed to that’s not very well-known and has been unavailable for a long time. We’ve been issuing editions of Markus Willinger’s Generation Identity in other languages, as that was one of our most popular books in English and German last year. We also have published a number of books by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar through an agreement with his Art of Living Foundation. Sri Sri is one of the most popular gurus in India at present, and we are pleased to be able to make his books more accessible in the West. Also, my friend Brian’s book Zombology: Zombies and the Decline of the West (and Guns) will be out soon. That’s a study of the sociopolitical implications of the zombie phenomenon, what it says about our contemporary culture and how it has manifested, particularly in relation to American gun culture. We also have new books by Alexander Dugin (Putin vs. Putin, his critique of Putin as a leader), Alain de Benoist (On the Brink of the Abyss, his book on the 2008 financial crisis), Guillaume Faye (Sex and Perversion, his study of modern sexuality), and some titles by the well-known writer on Paganism, Richard Rudgley, among many others, coming out soon.

HH: We look forward to reading some of those. Thank you for the interview.

JM: Thanks for having me. We’re doing this work for people like you!

 

—————-

Morgan, John B. “A Blaze through the Gloom; an Interview with Arktos Media’s John Morgan.” Interview by Nathan Leonard. Heathen Harvest Periodical, 7 July 2014. <http://heathenharvest.org/2014/07/07/a-blaze-through-the-gloom-an-interview-with-arktos-medias-john-morgan/ >.

 

Stachniuk & the Spirit of the World – Bielawski

Jan Stachniuk and the Spirit of the World

By Paweł Bielawski

 

Jan Stachniuk was born in 1905 in Kowel, Wołyń (in what is today Ukraine). In 1927, he began his public activity in Poznań, where he studied economics. There, he became active in the Union of Polish Democratic Youth and published his first books: Kolektywizm a naród (1933) and Heroiczna wspólnota narodu (1935). Beginning in 1937, Stachniuk published the monthly magazine Zadruga, which gave birth to a new idea current of the same name. In 1939, two additional books were published: Państwo a gospodarstwo and Dzieje bez dziejów (“History of unhistory”). During the Second World War, he inspired the ideology of the Faction of the National Rise (Stronnictwo Zrywu Narodowego) and the Cadre of Independent Poland (Kadra Polski Niepodległej). In 1943, Stachniuk published Zagadnienie totalizmu (with the help of the Faction). He fought in the Warsaw Uprising and was wounded. After the war, he failed to resume publishing Zadruga, but before the Stalinists attained power in the country, he managed to publish three more books: Walka o zasady, Człowieczeństwo i kultura, and Wspakultura. In 1949, Stachniuk was arrested and sentenced to death in a political show trial. The sentence was not carried out, and he got out of prison in 1955, but he was no longer able to perform any kind work. He died in 1963 and was buried in the Powązki Cemetery.

Stachniuk is the creator of the philosophical system known as “Culturalism” or “Evolutionary Pantheism,” which in its axiological plane is based on the spirituality of the ancient Slavs. The influence of Frederick Nietzsche, Max Weber, Georges Sorel, and Stanisław Brzozowski are also evident, but nevertheless Culturalism, when compared to other currents of European philosophy and humanities, is one of a kind. If we had to compare it to something, then, in my opinion, the closest analogue would the philosophy of Vedanta.

Cosmology and philosophical anthropology

Man is the vanguard of the creative world evolution, the most perfect expression and tool of the Creative Will, active in the world; he struggles to be something greater than he is. This process of exponentiation of the human power over nature and the elements of his own nature is culture. The cessation of this process, for whatever reason, passively submitting to the laws of bare biology and the charms of pure vegetation—this is the opposition of culture; this is back-culture (“wspakultura”).[1]

The world is a will. It strives for more and more complex and higher forms.”[2] “The world is a living organic unity, developing towards perfectness. […] The vanguard of the world-in-creation is man. […] The development ability of man relies on his capability of creatively re-creating the existing natural order into a new form of power, which is the objective world of accomplishments of culture. On a biological level, man is part of the natural world order. We are born; we multiply; we feed like all mammals; but we are distinct from this level by an enigmatic capability of binding nature’s energy into a new form of cultural power.[3]

Every species of animals that exists on this world struggles to survive. In opposition to dead matter, animals try, by different means, to “manage” the environment in which they live—they hunt, defend their turf, create a herd with its own hierarchy, and so on. In a way, animals fill the world with themselves, by managing the environment—they struggle to fulfill their needs; they struggle for an existential optimum (“biovegetation” in Stachniuk’s terminology). This “optimum of biovegetational existence” Stachniuk calls “physiological happiness.” Everything that lives, including humans (as biological entities), struggles for “physiological happiness.” The essence of biovegetation is the “eternal turn”[4]—during millions of years of evolution, the lives of mammals and insects does not change significantly; they all live more or less the same way. They are constantly in the confines of “biovegetation.”

The factor that distinguishes man from other living species is his capability of creation, the enigmatic creative element. Only man is capable of progress, of development, of creating ever more perfect and better forms, to material, social and spiritual life.[5]

As we all know, man is the only species that managed to lift itself above and beyond pure biology. He created cities, states, law, culture, art, science, technology, civilization. Man forced himself out of the eternal turn of biovegetation. How? According to Stachniuk, man remains an animal and part of the world of biology, “but in his essence there was a breach. This breach is the ability of creation, the creative genius. It is an over-biologic plane. From its nozzles, the humanistic world opens up.”[6]

The creative evolution is perpetrated by another bearing, on another level. The cosmic will has forgone its prime intent and instead strives towards recycling the world into a pulsating organism of concentrated cultural power, of which man is the core. […] [E]very one of us is a very tragic being, because we belong simultaneously to two levels of existence: biovegetational and creative-humanist.[7]

The nature of man is then dualist. On the one hand, man is an animal and a part of biovegetation. On the other hand, he is something over-biological, something beyond an animal; he has a spiritual element and the capability to create. He is the creator of “culture.” Man, as a type of being “flounces” between two levels of existence.

The moment when the emotional element was able to vanquish its internal inertia and induced man do the first cultural action is the birth of the creative will.[8]

According to Stachniuk, the fullness of humanity—panhumanism—is reached when man, with all of himself, submits to the creative will and embraces his mission, i.e., when he creates “culture.” Panhumanism can be defined as man’s will and capability to mold being according to his ever more magnificent visions, as well as the awareness and readiness of man to fulfill his leading role in the creative world evolution. Man has the capability to process the energy of the world into objective works of culture, which, in turn, serve to intensify the process of culture itself. This is his mission—it manifests itself in action and is the process of building the process of culture.

All of this is possible thanks to the “organ of man’s genius.”

It is not a bio-morphological organ, but has consisted of our whole physiological apparatus. […] The intangible organ in our bio-physical organism transmutes the normal course of physiological processes into dispositions of creation. This is why we speak of the organ of man’s genius.[9]

The primal biological energy, which in the animal-plant world is directed towards unlimited biological expansion, is transmuted, in man, into man’s genius, that is, the creative will. It, in turn, leads to an unlimited development of the instrumentarium as a tool of its mission.

The creative will is what enables man to pull himself out of the vicious circle of the “eternal turn,” thereby attaining a higher mode of existence, which enables the fulfillment of man’s mission, by building culture—which manifests itself by creating ever new “culture-creations” or the “instrumentarium of culture.”

The full and proper life of a human depends on overcoming the inertia of the biological level of existence and transforming the elemental life energy of our bodies into the creative will, which, in turn, should most fruitfully manifest itself in the development of an “instrumental will.”[10]

The organ of man’s genius enables him to experience being and life in a specific way, namely in feeling the organic unity of the world, ever evolving into ever higher forms. This way of sensing the world is (evolutionary) pantheism. It is the creative will that is the factor that distinguishes man from the rest of the animals. “Our contingent biological shell is a bearing, by which the creative will flows by divine stream; our psycho-physical personality is a contingent tool; by humbly submitting to this will, we can perform the most profound, the most burdened transmogrifications in the world.”[11]

Humanity, in Stachniuk’s eyes, is a process of creation that consists of three elements: a) human biology, b) creative will and c) instrumental will. These are the three elements of “panhumanist man.”[12] Human biology—that is, our organisms, our physical potential, our muscles, and the work of our hands. Creative will is our “inborn direction of emotion and drives in man”; it is the subject of the humanist world.[13] The third element is the instrumental will, in other words the ability of binding the energy of the natural world into a form of cultural power.

Man is seen as a being eternally developing himself by his creations, and this work is a process that is constant throughout generations. In the light of the philosophy of Culturalism, man is not an individual, a monad existing in a void or a set of individuals, but a string of generations. Humanity is perceived by Stachniuk as the process of creating and re-creating the world, constantly perfecting it, while dismissing it means—ultimately—the rejection of humanity itself.

The philosophical anthropology of Culturalism is very much interconnected and intertwined with its theory of culture as meta-narration.

Theory of Culture as Meta-narration

Stachniuk’s theory of culture makes up the core of his philosophy. It is really the backbone of Culturalism. Every current in Stachniuk’s thought springs from it.

The sensation of the creative pressure, the feeling of the cosmic mission of creation, the desire to contribute to the creative world evolution by man is, in the lens of Culturalism, a sign of health and moral youth. According to Stachniuk, this is normal, the way it should be. Human history is the eternal antagonism of two, contradictory, directions—“the first one is the blind pressure of man towards panhumanism, the second is the escape into a solidified system.”[14]

The axis of human history on the globe is not the struggle between Spirit and Matter, egoism and altruism, God and Satan; it is also not the class struggle or race struggle, but the struggle of culture and back-culture [wspakultura] for the power over humanity […] Each of us is a warzone between the culture current and the back-culture current. […] The current of culture is the process of becoming of the force and power, the richness and dynamism of life.[15]

What is “culture”? It is the “process of binding the energy of the field of the elements.”[16] For Stachniuk, culture is not something meant to tackle or inhibit nature, it is a process of reforming it. Culture is something that emerges from nature and is its higher level. A human of “panhumanism” acts as a transformer of energy—the energy of the elements—that produces “culture-creations.” What are culture-creations? Examples are law, the state, poetry, technology, music, philosophy, a factory, and the Internet. Humanity is thus (in its ideal state) an interconnected web of energy transformers, constantly updating and perfecting the world and humanity, producing culture-creations that are, in turn, used as fuel for even more powerful culture-creations. Culture—the process of reorganizing the field of the (natural) elements—is the ultimate mission of humanity.

It is, of course, clear as day that we don’t live in a world full of conscious “panhumanists.” Why is that? As I mentioned earlier, the nature of human is dualistic—there is the bio-vegetational level and the creative-humanist level. A human being is a warzone of the battle between culture and back-culture. What is back-culture? It is the cessation of the process of culture; the passive yielding to the laws of bare biology and appeal of pure vegetation. It is passiveness, inertia, standstill. It is the “cosmic illness.”

The effects of back-culture in the world of man can be seen as the “unhistoric” attitude and the desire to free oneself from the requirement of creation. It is the degrading of oneself to the primitive, primordial, animal level by directing oneself towards passive consumption of culture-creations. The defective human, who is under the influence of back-culture, sees culture only as something to be consumed. He does not see culture as a fertile field than can be farmed in order to raise crops of culture-creations. Culture is seen purely as a thing for pleasure, for individual gratification, something that helps the individual attain “physiological happiness,” not as a mine of mighty energy capable of recreating the world as we know it.

Prime examples of back-culture are, according to Stachniuk, universalist world religions like Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism, which show “contempt for creativeness.” They reduce human life to a place to score points for the “other life” or the “other world.” They show an anti-humanist and anti-creative attitude. This is why the creator of Zadruga dismisses them and looks to Paganism instead.

The wave of total back-cultures (…) in the last three thousand years has extinguished the dawn of the creative actions of man. The first sparks of the fire have been covered with darkness. The just barely ignited fire of India has been quickly extinguished under the shroud of Brahmanism, and then different types of Buddhism. The procession of the cross extinguished the march of Hellenic culture. In other places, Buddhism and Islam have acted similarly. On the once fertile fields poisonous weeds have spread. We know them: Brahmanism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, and countless other forms of elements of back-culture. They captured enormous pieces of humanity. All bigger human congeries were its victims. India, China, almost all of Asia is to this day paralyzed. After a magnificent blooming of the Greco-Roman culture, lasting only a few centuries, it seemed that it has fallen into the eternal darkness of unhistory [bezdzieje]. They’ve lasted one and a half thousand years. After this period, an unbelievably lively mixture of European peoples freed themselves partially, creating modern culture. It would be disingenuous to think that all of Europe took part in its creation. All the Slavic east and almost all Romantic nations have been deeply paralyzed by Christian back-culture. The world in its overwhelming mass is immersed in the darkness of this or another total back-culture. Generally speaking, it rules over 90% of humanity.[17]

One may ask, of course: “How can you say that medieval Europe was decadent if it was then united and powerful? How can you call Christianity a destructive force considering the whole of European Christian culture?”

Stachniuk provided an answer for that. In a situation where back-culture cannot totally break down the fire of culture, it starts acting like a parasite. It uses the lively energy of the process of culture to preserve itself and not let culture free itself completely. This is what happened in the case of Europe.

Kindly, sweet, and humble Christ, who ordered us not to resist evil, made some exceptions, major ones. Where the matters of faith were involved, he used “vain” and “fading” means and used them with feelings that cannot be described as “love.” When he saw tradesmen trading in the house of prayer, he burst with feelings not at all “sweet.” […] We have here a flash of a principle, which can be described like this: Everything is vanity, everything should be forsaken and disdained, except the situation in which this vanity can be used to strengthen the “truth.” Anger is evil, the sword and the whip are tools of evil, but if through anger, the sword, or the whip we clear the path for the Church, then anger, the sword, and the whip and all that is vain becomes worthy. This is the principle that we call the perverse instrumentalism of back-culture[18]

This mechanism is actually the creator of the medieval order of Europe. Rome, undermined and its true essence destroyed by Christianity, was gradually overwhelmed by lively Germanic warrior tribes, ready to fight, conquer, and plunder. Of course, the primitive Germanic tribes were impressed by the refined and sophisticated traditions of Rome. What they didn’t recognize was that this was not the true Rome but a fleeting shadow of what it once was. Nonetheless, the Germanic people were presented with an opportunity: “Do you want to take over the Roman legacy? If you so desire, just let us baptize you.”

That said, not all went as planned. The Germanic people were, in fact, conquerors. Christianity could not just do whatever it wanted with them; it had to make a compromise.

The youthful dynamism of fresh peoples was harnessed to realize the grand project of making all European peoples sick, subjecting them to the domination of the back-culture of the cross. All Europe was becoming a field to broaden “the vineyards of the Lord.” The Germanic peoples, adapting to their new role, spread the sickness of the cross on the whole continent. They were appointed to that task because, thanks to their position of conquerors, they did not submit to the appeal of Christian mysticism, while simultaneously taking the political goals of Christianity—the creation of a universal empire—as their own. […] This is how the concept of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation was born.[19]

This is how the “perverse instrumentalism of back-culture” works in practice. It harnesses the youthful energy of culture (which could be much more powerful on its own) to further spread its disease. After this single “compromise,” the next one was not necessary. Christian back-culture could now, with the might of the German sword, attempt to fully Christianize the Slavs—no punches pulled, no compromises. The cross, along with the German sword, could now completely destroy the original, Pagan, Slavic culture. Slavdom became a Christian colony in the full sense of the word. Everything that was not subject to the believers of the cross was destroyed. The original tradition was severed.

Although Stachniuk was and still is considered very much anti-clerical and anti-Christian, it would be a misinterpretation to reduce him to such. He knew full well that simple “secularization” is not the answer. The reason for this is that back-culture does not come only in the form of religion; there is also “secular back-culture”—simplistic rationalism, “free-thought,” pacifism, “human rights” ideology, or crude hedonism. Secular back-culture (also called “unhistoric rationalism”), just like Christianity, forsakes the building of culture, the great mission of empowering man, and the creative world evolution. It also fails to recognize the difference between Christian spiritualism and the creative world evolution. Anything that goes beyond pacifism, hedonism, and physiological happiness seems suspect and often outright “fascist.” But in reality, it is yet just another form of back-culture.

Conclusion

Jan Stachniuk was a man ahead of his time. His concepts were often either harshly criticized or ignored during his life. He was a man that advocated embracing dynamic progress, science, and technology, whereas mainstream “national radicals” were thrilled by Nikolai Berdyaev’s static “New Middle Ages.” You could even say that his combination of embracing advanced technology and simultaneously appealing to the values of the ancient world anticipated Guillaume Faye’s concept of “Archeofuturism.”

The author of “History of unhistory” was also instrumental in reviving the pre-Christian religion of the Slavs in Poland. He is a cult figure among many contemporary Polish Rodnovers. His memory not only lives on, but proves to be an inspiration nowadays for religious organizations, (meta-)political organizations, and music bands alike.

Jan Stachniuk is an ethical maximalist and a firm believer in human potential. It is worth to note that, unlike Nietzsche, he did not advocate attaining power for its own sake. A man of panhumanism should not see other people as tools for his own advancement. His goal should be becoming a hero to his community. Stachniuk’s ideal is not a single Übermensch, but a great and heroic community. His goal was creating a myth; a myth of the “national creative community.”

I am human; therefore I am fulfilling the goal of the world. […] It is through the human, through his cultural work, that the creative world evolution takes place. […] The human is not a boring creature looking for satisfaction, peace, lyrics of digestion, and caramel sensation of the mind on the basis of physiological happiness, like the secular unhistory or “eternal virtues” and communing with the “truth” revealed by various “redeemers.” The human is a boiling cosmic energy, looking for ever greater ways of expression in culture creations charged with tragic creativeness. […] The desire to live a valuable life today means to push forward the birth of the myth of the creative community, to boldly head into the fire of the coming change.[20]

Notes:

1. Stachniuk, Droga rewolucji kulturowej w Polsce, Toporzeł, Wrocław 2006, 5
2. Stachniuk, Człowieczeństwo i kultura, Toporzeł, Wrocław 1996, 18
3. Stachniuk, Droga, op. cit., 8
4. This term should not to be confused with Nietzsche’s “eternal recurrence of the same,” which is a different concept altogether.
5. Stachniuk, Człowieczeństwo, op. cit., p. 10
6. , p. 21
7. , p. 22
8. Ibid, p. 24
9. Stachniuk, Chrześcijaństwo a ludzkość, Toporzeł, Wrocław 1997, 11
10. Stachniuk, Droga, op. cit., 9
11. Stachniuk, Człowieczeństwo, op. cit., 24
12. Stachniuk, Droga, op. cit., 9
13. , 23-24.
14. Stachniuk, Chrześcijaństwo, op. cit., 15
15. Stachniuk, Człowieczeństwo, op. cit., 117
16. , 27
17. , 119.
18. Stachniuk, Chrześcijaństwo, op. cit., 137.
19. , 179.
20. Stachniuk, Człowieczeństwo, op. cit., 254.

 

——————–

Bielawski, Paweł. “Jan Stachniuk and the Spirit of the World.” Radix Journal, 6 March 2015. <http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2015/3/6/jan-stachniuk-and-the-spirit-of-the-world >.

 

Huntington, Fukuyama, & Eurasianism – Dugin

Huntington, Fukuyama, and Eurasianism

By Alexander Dugin

Translated from the Spanish by Lucian Tudor

 

The Anti-Americanism typical of the “Russian structure” is a continuation of the intellectual of the Slavophiles. These latter thought that one cannot fully assume Russian identity more than by getting rid of the footprint of the West, liberating oneself of this European [i.e., Western-European] manner of viewing oneself which became the norm after Peter the Great. But Europe today is no longer the Europe of the epoch of the Slavophiles, nor of the first Eurasianists. Europe is distinct from the West, that is, from the sphere of influence of the United States. Becoming Russian, today, is to liberate oneself at all levels from Western and American influence. Westernism is not solely an intellectual position, but simultaneously a contagious disease and a betrayal of the fatherland. It is for that reason that we must restlessly fight the West. In fighting against the West, the Russians affirm themselves as Russians, belonging to Russian culture, to Russian history, to Russian values.

Samuel Huntington described in a realistic manner the obstacles which inevitably face the supporters of a Unipolar World and the fanatics of the End of History. When the last formal enemy of the United States, the Soviet Union, disappeared, some imagined that the West had reached the conclusion of its liberal-democratic development and that it was going to access the “earthly paradise” of the techno-mercantile society. That was the idea of Francis Fukuyama when he wrote his famous piece about the End of History. Huntington had the merit of showing all that which contradicted the optimism then professed in the medias of globalist communication. Analyzing these phenomena, he arrived at the conclusion that they could be included under a single denomination: civilizations. This is the key word.

But that word also means the reappearance of a premodern concept in a postmodern form. The Islamic civilization, for example, existed before modernity. But in the modern epoch, colonization and secularism delegitimized the use of this term; now only Muslim “ethnic groups” were recognized. After decolonization, nation-states appeared which had a “Muslim population,” but it is only with the Iranian Revolution (where we find some traits characteristic of Traditionalism and of the Conservative Revolution) when the emergence of a Muslim state properly speaking was seen, where Islam was politically recognized as the source of power and law. Theorizing about the transition from State to Civilization, Huntington formulated a new political-scientific concept, named to thus implicitly take (and draw attention to) a new dimension of international politics which was born after the demise of the USSR. Following that, the Atlanticist milieus discovered that they would face an enemy which, unlike the Soviet Union, is not based on an explicitly formalized ideology, but which nonetheless has begun to question and undermine the foundations of the liberal and Americano-centric “New World Order.” The enemy is now the civilizations, and no longer only countries or states – a turning point.

Among all civilizations, only the Western civilization has presented itself as universal, pretending to be in this way “the civilization” (singular). In formal terms, now nobody replicates it, rather in reality the great majority of men and women who live outside of the European or American space reject this dominion, and continue to be rooted in different historical-cultural types. This is what explains the current resurgence of civilizations. Huntington concluded, concerning that, that the planetary dominion of the West will face new challenges. He advised being conscious of this danger, to prepare oneself for the reappearance of certain premodern forms in the postmodern era, and to try to protect oneself against them to guarantee the security of Western civilization.

Fukuyama was a globalist optimist. Huntington is a globalist pessimist, who analyzed the risks and measured the dangers. We can draw out a Eurasianist lesson from his analysis. Huntington was right when he said that civilizations will reappear, but he was wrong to be upset by it. In contrast, we should rejoice about the resurgence of civilizations. We should applaud it and support it, preparing the catalysts of this process and not passively observing it.

The clashes between civilizations are almost inevitable, but our task must consist of reorienting the hostility, which will not stop growing, against the United States and Western Civilization, instead of against neighboring civilizations. We must organize the common front of civilizations against one civilization which pretends to be the civilization in singular. This prioritary common enemy is globalism and the United States, which is now its principal vector. The more the peoples of the Earth will be convinced of that, the more the confrontations between non-Western civilizations can be reduced. If there must be a “clash” of civilizations, it has to be a clash between the West and the “rest of the world.” And Eurasianism is the political formula which suits this “rest.”

There is another point which, obviously, we cannot follow Huntington on: when he calls for the strengthening of transatlantic relations between Europe and the United States. The new generation of European leaders has already responded positively to this call – something which we may lament. The destiny of Europe is not on the other side of the Atlantic. Europe must clearly establish itself as a distinct civilization, free and independent. It has to be a European Europe, not American and Atlanticist. It must construct itself as a postmodern democratic empire, through the reclaiming of its cultural and sacred roots, as a part of its future as well as something residing in its past. A Europe which does not also rise up against the United States would betray its roots at the same time that it would condemn itself to not having a future. Europe also does not belong to the Eurasian space. Certainly, it can and should even be Eurasianist to the extent it adheres to this “universal idea that there is no universal civilization,” but it does not have to integrate itself into the geographic space of Eurasia. What Russians desire most is simply that Europe be itself, that is, European. Eurasianism does not consist of imposing its identity on others, but rather to help all the different identities to affirm themselves, to organically develop themselves, and to prosper. The Russian philosopher Konstantin Leontiev said that we must always defend the “flourishing multiplicity.” This is the preferred motto of the Eurasianists.

 

Translated from: “Huntington, Fukuyama y el Eurasismo,” Página Transversal, 6 January 2015.

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Dugin, Alexander. “Huntington, Fukuyama, and Eurasianism.” Tankesmedjan Motpol, 4 April 2015. <http://www.motpol.nu/lucian/2015/04/04/huntington-fukuyama-and-eurasianism/ >.

The Nation-State & the Multipolar World – Dugin

The Nation-State and the Multipolar World

By Alexander Dugin

Translated from the Spanish by Lucian Tudor

 

One of the most important points of the Theory of Multipolarity refers to the nation-state. The sovereignty of this structure has already been challenged during the period of ideological support for the two blocs (the “Cold War”) and, in the period of globalization, the issue acquired a much sharper relevance. We see the theorists of globalization also talk about the complete exhaustion of the “nation-states” and about the necessity of transferring them to the “World Government” (F. Fukuyama, before), or about the belief that nation-states have not yet completed their mission and must continue existing for a longer time with the purpose of better preparing their citizens for integration into the “Global Society” (F. Fukuyama, later).

The Theory of Multipolarity demonstrates that nation-states are a Eurocentric and mechanical phenomenon, on a larger scale, “globalist” in their initial stage (the idea of individual identity, normative in the form of civility, prepared the ground for the “civil society” and, correspondingly, for the “global society”). That the whole of world space is currently separated into territories of nation-states is a direct consequence of colonization, imperialism, and the projection of the Western model over all of mankind. Therefore, the nation-state does not carry in itself any self-sufficient value for the Theory of Multipolarity. The thesis of the preservation of nation-states from the perspective of the construction of the Multipolar World Order is only important in the case that, in a pragmatic way, that impedes globalization (and does not contribute to it), and hides in itself a more complicated and prominent social reality. After all, many political units (especially in the Third World) are nation-states simply in a nominal form, and virtually represent diverse forms of traditional societies with more complex systems of identity.

In this case, the position of the defenders of the Multipolar World is completely the opposite of that of the globalists: If a nation-state effectuates the homogenization of society and assists in the atomization of the citizens, that is, implements a profound and real modernization and Westernization, such a nation-state has no importance, being merely a kind of instrument of globalization. That nation-state is not being preserved worthily; it does make any sense in the Multipolarist perspective.

But if a nation-state serves as an exterior support for another social system – a special and original culture, civilization, religion, etc. – it should be supported and preserved while it actualizes its evolution towards a more harmonious structure, within the limits of sociological pluralism in the spirit of Multipolar Theory. The position of the globalists is directly opposite in all things: They appeal to eliminate the idea by which the nation-states serve as an external support of something traditional (such as China, Russia, Iran, etc.) and, conversely, to strengthen the nation-states with pro-Western regimes – South Korea, Georgia, or the countries of Western Europe.

 

Translated from: El Estado nacional y el Mundo multipolar, Página Transversal, 25 January 2015.

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Dugin, Alexander. “The Nation-State and the Multipolar World.” Tankesmedjan Motpol, 29 March 2015. <http://www.motpol.nu/dugin2014/2015/03/29/the-nation-state-and-the-multipolar-world/ >.