Tag Archives: Historical Study

Discussion of Kitaro Nishida’s Philosophy – Arisaka

“The Nishida Enigma: ‘The Principle of the New World Order’” by Yoko Arisaka (PDF – 189 KB):

The Nishida Enigma – Yoko Arisaka

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Arisaka, Yoko. “The Nishida Enigma: ‘The Principle of the New World Order’.” Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Spring 1996): pp. 81-99. Retrieved from: <http://www.arisaka.org/mnipponica.pdf >.

 

Notes on further reading: Studies of Japanese philosophy can be found by researching the website known as The Japanese Philosophy Blog and also the official website of Nichibunken (see publications search), The International Research Center for Japanese Studies, which can be used for research to find numerous resources in Japanese history, culture, religion, society, etc.

In particular, we should mention that Arisaka’s article above deals primarily with Nishida’s cultural and political philosophy, and only briefly mentions his philosophy in the fields of religion, ontology, science, and ethics. For more complete information on Kitaro Nishida’s philosophy, see for example the resources listed at the Japanese Philosophy Blog: Category Nishida Kitaro.

Other posts on the New European Conservative related to Japan and Japanese thought include the following: Alexander Dugin’s “In the Country of the Rising ‘Do’,” Riki Rei’s Review of Naoki Inose’s Persona: A Biography of Yukio Mishima, Justin Raimondo’s biographical sketch “Mishima: Paleocon as Samurai”, Hoang Nguyen’s review of Natsume Soseki’s Kokoro, Kosaku Yoshino’s “Theoretical Reflections on Nationalism”, Anton L. Sevilla’s discussions of Tetsuro Watsuji’s and Nikolai Berdyaev’s ethical theories, and Alexander Dugin’s speech at Tokyo University titled “New Paradigm of Science.”

 

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Identitarianism, a Catalyst for Ethnogenesis in Europe – Solère

The Myth of Eternal Return: Identitarianism, a Catalyst for Ethnogenesis in Europa Nostra?

By Fenek Solère

 

Origin & Actions:

The European Identitarian Movement went viral with Generation Identitaire’s Declaration of War broadcast in October 2012. A groundbreaking move that very quickly achieved over 100,000 internet ‘hits’ in France alone, it’s popular message attracting adherents in Germany, Spain, Britain, Greece and Italy. Translations into other European languages soon followed. Alongside equally well-produced internet videos such as that made by Sweden’s SDU Youth Wing, which in turn stimulated further interest from as far afield as the United States, Australia and South America.

The Swedish Salute to the European Youth, which like its French predecessor was brilliantly scripted, ran as follows:

This is a salute from the Swedish youth to our European brothers and sisters.

Europe belongs to us.

Europe has given birth to strong and free nations with rich and thriving cultures. We have always held our heads up high and been proud of our heritage and history.

In just the last few decades this has all changed. The free nations of Europe are being enslaved by the EU. The politicians are giving away our sovereignty to bureaucrats in Brussels. An insane experiment with multiculturalism and mass immigration is tearing apart our previously united nations.

Europe is bleeding.

We have had enough. We are the generation that refuses to be silenced. We are the generation who loves the nation and who will defend it. Join us in the fight to regain our freedom against the European Union.

For a Europe of nations and for the freedom of all peoples.

So what was it that so captivated the imaginations of those already committed to our cause and drew hundreds more new activists into the scene? Perhaps it was the technically impressive Hi Def camera work? Maybe it was the choice of music, which proved so poignant and moving?

Or could it simply have been the laser guided missiles shooting out of the mouths of the earnest young faces of the militants staring back at us in the black and white footage, their words a rallying call to youth and a direct challenge to the enemies of Europe?

Let us take a moment to recall some of the heartfelt sentiments of the French original and the realities of the world they touched upon:

‘We are Generation Identity.

We are the generation of those who get killed for a sidelong glance, a cigarette refused, or a style that bothers someone.’

  • A 120 page report called No-Go-Zones in the French Republic: Myth or Reality? highlighted numerous French neighborhoods’ where the police and gendarmerie cannot enforce the Republican order or even enter without risking confrontation, coming under attack from projectiles, or the threat of fatal shootings.
  • A foreign television presenter trying to investigate the issue of lawlessness in the banlieues is warned ‘I do not recommend this. Not even we French dare to go there anymore. But nobody talks about this in public, of course. Nor do those who claim ‘long-live multiculturalism’ and ‘Paris is wonderful’ dare enter into the suburbs’.

‘We are the generation of ethnic fracture, of the total failure of integration, the generation of forced crossbreeding.’

  • In October 2011 a 2,200 page report entitled ‘Banlieue de la Republique’ (Suburbs of the Republic) found that Seine-Saint-Denis and other Parisian suburbs were fast becoming ‘separate Islamic Societies’ cut off from the French state, where Islamic Sharia Law was displacing French Civil Law’.
  • Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy, quoted in the Brussels Journal in 2009: ‘If the French people don’t interbreed of their own free-will, it will be necessary for the Republic to resort to even more forcible measures…’
  • In April 2013 a black immigrant to France who had deliberately targeted and violently raped fifteen white women said in his defense ‘when I came to France I was angry at white people…’ then, telling his victim, ‘I know you like it…’ He clearly stated in the courtroom, his motivation: ‘I wanted to humiliate white people…’

‘We are the doubly-punished generation: condemned to bail out a system of social support too generous with aliens to serve its own people.’

  • The long term cost of Muslim immigration to Europe is almost incalculable. It is estimated that around 80% of Muslims live on welfare in the West. Some salient points of reference are: In 1993 official French Government figures indicated that unemployment in the migrant dominated Parisian suburbs alone was running at 500,000; that in 1995 3 billion Euros were earmarked in the French Fiscal Year for ‘Urban Policy’ (a euphemism for migrant support); In Denmark, although the Muslim population is currently only 5%, they consume over 40% of the Danish Welfare Budget; the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Turks take billions more out of the German Welfare Budget than they put in; and that 50% of the Muslim population residing in the United Kingdom is considered economically inactive. Such indicators do not include the stress these migrants put on societal infra-structure like schools, hospitals, housing and the prison system. The latter of which is where they are consistently over-represented.

‘We are the generation of victims of the generation of May 68’ers – the ones which claimed to liberate us from the weight of tradition, knowledge, and authority in the schools, but which first of all liberated itself from its own responsibilities.’

  • The Soixantehuitards asserted they were motivated by issues such as equality and justice, sexual liberation, ecology, feminism and devising a new egalitarian school and university curricula. They positioned themselves against the old reactionaries of De Gaulle’s epoch but in effect hijacked the system and created positions of power for themselves. While endlessly mouthing the platitudes above, they gave France over to the most misogynistic faith on the globe, a heritage capable of stoning women for adultery, for condoning and encouraging paedophilic marriages and treating women as second class citizens.

‘We have closed your history books to find our own memory once again.’

  • Supposed intellectuals like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Henri Weber, Andre Glucksmann, Daniel Bensaid and Bernard-Henri Levy greatly influenced the post ’68 intellectual climate in France. The latter individual producing The Genius of Judaism, not so much as a philosophical system but as a guide for living, and ardently defended both Roman Polanski and Dominique Strauss Kahn in the wake of sexual scandals involving child molestation and rape.
  • In response to the New Philosophers listed above the Groupement de Recherche et d’Etudes pour la Civilisation Europenne (GRECE), founded in Lyon in 1968, have long contested the intellectual space the Left attempt to inhabit, challenging the efforts to exclude Nouvelle Droite thinkers, men like Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Jean Cau, Louis Rougier, Thierry Maulnier and Julien Freund have forced their entry into the public realm. Co-habiting, with the Left, the TV studios and newspaper columns, leading to all sorts of controversies in the ‘hot summers’ of 1979 and 1993 when the Left became apoplectic as Nouvelle Droite writers appeared in Le Figaro and when Le Monde published ‘The Appeal to Vigilance by Forty Intellectuals’ in July 1993, in order to oppose the ‘resurgence of anti-democratic currents of Far Right thought in French and European intellectual life’.
  • Over time, these so called ‘fascist’ intellectuals have been joined by populist and mainstream writers like cyber-punk science fiction author Maurice Dantec, who wrote the award winning books Red Siren (2004), Babylon Babies (2005), Grand Junction (2009) and Satellite Sisters (2012). In 2006 Dantec penned Le Sanglot de L‘Hommage blanc (Tears of the White Man) and The Tyranny of Guilt (2010) about the narcissistic and destructive sacralization of Third World peoples in the West and the mirage of multiculturalism across Europe. A theme that Michel Houellebecq was later to use in his novel Submission (2014).

‘We have stopped believing that Abdul is our brother, the planet our village and humanity our family. We have discovered that we have roots and ancestors – and thus a future.’

  • According to Lucienne-Bui Trong, a government official responsible for the Towns and Suburbs Department at the Renseignements generaux (General Intelligence), over one thousand neighborhoods including 226 in the Ile-de-France; 89 in in the Provence-Cote d’Azur; 62 in Rhone Alpes; and 69 in Nord-Pas-de-Calais are classified as ‘violent’. With over four hundred specifically identified as ‘very violent’, meaning not only that firearms are present and being used but that a systematic strategy to keep the police out is a known modus operandi of the immigrant gangs.

‘Our only inheritance is our blood, our soil, and our identity. We are the heirs of our destiny.’

  • Despite a law of 1872 that prevents the French conducting a census that makes distinctions between citizens based on ethnic background, it is known that the non-indigenous French population increased over fifty times since the end of World War Two; the birthrate of immigrants is three to four times higher than the real French; between 2006-2008, 40% of the babies born in France were of immigrant origin; the immigrant demographic under thirty doubled in the last two decades, resulting in predictions that the Muslim population will reach 16 million by 2016.

‘We have turned off the television to come out into the streets. We have painted our slogans on the walls, chanted ‘Youth Power’ into our megaphones, waved high our flags emblazoned with the lambda: the lambda, which decorated the shields of the glorious Spartans, is our symbol. Don’t you understand what it represents? It means that we will not retreat, we will not give up. Weary of your cowardice, we shall not refuse any battle, any challenge.’

  • The Identitarians have entered the public consciousness through high visibility ‘happenings’ in iconic locations such as the 20th October 2012 rooftop protest at the Grand Mosque at Poitiers, the storming of the Socialist Party headquarters in Paris and their compatriots of the Identitaire Bewegung, seizing the EU Fundamental Rights building in Vienna.
  • Within minutes of taking the Mosque in Poitiers, the Identitarians issued the following Press Statement from their operation base atop the building and simultaneously on the Generation Identitaire website:

Generation Identity calls for reconquest! A hundred youth, young men and women from all over France, have just entered the future Grand Mosque and occupied the roof. Across the front façade, facing the minaret, we have unfurled a banner with a clear message: ‘Immigration, mosque construction: REFERENDUM!’ By this, its first major act, Generation Identity intends to place itself in the front line of the fight for our identity.

Then, supplying a historical context:

It will soon be 1,300 years since Charles Martel stopped the Arabs at Poitiers following a heroic battle which saved our country from Muslim invasion. It happened on the 25th October 732. Today, we have reached 2012 and the choice is still the same: live free or die. Our generation refuses to see its nation and identity disappear amid indifference; we shall never be the Indians of Europe. From this place, symbolic of our past and of our ancestors’ courage, we launch an appeal to remember and fight!

And then their vision for the future:

We want no more non-European immigration and no more construction of Mosques on French soil. From the first waves of African immigration and from the ‘family reunion’ law adopted in 1976, our people have never been consulted about the presence of those they have been forced to live with. Mass immigration has radically transformed our country: according to the most recent study of the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, 43% of those between the ages of 18 and 50 in the Ile-de-France are of immigrant background. A nation can recover from an economic crisis or a war, but not from the replacement of its population: without the French, France will no longer exist. It is a question of survival: this is why each nation has the absolute right to choose whether it wants to accept foreigners and in what proportion.

And challenging the so-called Social Democracy of the Liberal Left:

Since this right has been refused us, and since our generation is paying the price in the street through intimidation by foreign riff-raff, we declare: enough! We shall no longer retreat! We demand a national referendum on immigration and the construction of Muslim houses of worship in France. We shall not leave until we have been heard and satisfied.

Making their Call to Arms:

Aware that our fight is only beginning, we call upon all young Europeans to become the heirs of their destiny and join the vanguard of a youth risen to its feet.

Let all Europe hear our call: here and now RECONQUEST!            

This was far from an isolated case. The movement continues to be extremely active on the internet and social networks such as Facebook and Youtube. All over Europe copy-cat events highlighting opposition to immigration have begun to spread. On 30th October, representatives of the Identitarian Movement were physically present at the inter-cultural week in Frankfurt. In early December, 50 sympathisers of the Identitarian Movement met once again in Frankfurt, this time without their French comrades, as a clear sign of their intent to begin independent activities. Actions like pork soup kitchens for the poor and destitute were set up in the street, EU flags were taken down from public buildings and protests against halal slaughter were conducted outside Muslim owned restaurants. In the Netherlands, where it is known as Identitair Verzet, the movement chained the gates to a predominantly immigrant school in Rotterdam. In Scandinavia, it operates under the title Nordiska Forbundet or Nordic Alliance. Following a visit in April 2014 to Prague by Philippe Vardon and Jean David Cattin, Identitarianism has been active in the Czech Republic, and also commenced activity in Slovakia in the same year.

On the 31st May 2015 the Austrian Identitarian movement occupied the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency in Vienna. This was quickly followed by the release of a video to promote their June 2015 Sommerfest rally with the words:

Everyone sees, hears and feels it. We are going to be strangers in our own neighborhood, our own city and our own country. The Great Replacement is going to happen. Our politicians and the elites sow the seeds for this fatal development. They demolish our identity and take away the right of feeling native in our own country. To import voters and cheap labour. Putting the politics and economic future of our people and every European people at risk. But we are defending ourselves. We are the youth that stops retreating. We will rally on the 6th June in Vienna, against the Great Replacement. And understand we are ready to fight for our future…

‘You are the “Thirty Glorious Years,” pension fund liabilities, SOS Racism, “diversity,” family reunification, sexual liberation and Bernie Kouchner’s sacks of rice. We are 25 percent unemployment, public debt, the explosion of multicultural society, anti-white racism, broken families and a young French soldier killed in Afghanistan.’

  • SOS Racisme was set up in 1984 and has been led by black ethnic advocates such as Harlem Desir, Algerian born Malek Boutih and Dominique Sopo. It actively tries to engage the youth against French Nationalists or Identitarians by organizing rock concerts like those in the name of so-called Egalitarianism in 2011.
  • FEMEN protests like their No More Pope and A Fascist Suicide (mocking the personal sacrifice made by Dominique Venner) in February and May 2013 at Notre-Dame-de-Paris were challenged by the brave young women of the Renouveau Francais who publicly declared, Femme, Mais Pas Fem’ Haine!’  
  • Bernard Kouchner was born in Avignon to a Jewish father and a protestant mother, becoming active in the French Communist Party and spending time in Cuba fishing and drinking with Fidel Castro in 1964. He was appointed Minister of Health and later Minister of Foreign Affairs in Francois Fillon’s government in 2007. He is closely associated with Arab Spring sponsor George Soros.
  • French unemployment has risen consistently since 2012, averaging around 10% among the general population and 23% among the youth. The highest level ever recorded in the 5th
  • The French Government’s debt to GDP ratio rose 30% between 2006 and 2015.
  • The epidemic of divorce in France, especially in the urban areas runs at 55%. Although high, this compares favourably when considered alongside Belgium 71%, Portugal 68%, Hungary 67%, Czech Republic 66%, Spain 61% and Estonia 58%.
  • In July 1990, Act 90-615, known as the Gayssot Act, made it possible to enforce stiffer than normal prison sentences and more substantial fines on people who had ‘offended’ certain privileged groups or who it could be proved had been motivated to harm or insult individuals or said groups on the grounds of race, religion, nationality or sexual orientation.
  • Studies show that one in five native French have been victims of Anti-White Racism, the title of a controversial book written by Tarik Yildiz in 2012.
  • A young Generation Identitaire militant called Pierre Cassen is quoted saying, ‘The French people are increasingly living in fear. They fear the imposition of Islamic law and the organized violence against any French person including the police’.
  • French forces in Afghanistan took heavy casualties in the Uzbin Valley ambush in 2008

‘You will not convince us with a condescending glance, youth employment programs and a pat on the shoulder: for us, life is a struggle.’

  • The French government lethargically peddle youth employment schemes for the out of work and low skilled young adults. Also, on the job training and payroll subsidies in the hope of removing young people from the unemployment statistics
  • In terms of economics the Identitarians believe in appropriate economic protection, eco-friendly localism as opposed to the global free-market run by multinational racketeers. They perceive that protectionism and localism are pre-requisites for Europe’s ability to transcend the current global dichotomy with the USA on one side and China on the other.

‘We don’t need your youth policies. Youth is our policy.’

  • We are Generation Identity (Arktos 2013) opens with a quote from Georges Bernanos, a French Catholic writer: ‘The fever of youth is what maintains the rest of the world at a normal temperature. When youth grows cold, the rest of the world’s teeth chatter’.  

‘Don’t deceive yourselves: this is not a mere manifesto, it’s a declaration of war.’

  • In a speech delivered to the Identitarian Convention of Orange (Provenance) by Arnaud Delrieux, quoted in We are Generation Identity, in the section, A Force to Be Reckoned With, he says, ‘…We are the first generation to have been left to fend for ourselves in suburbs gangrened with foreign riff-raff and anti-White racism. We have also seen that the system grants us no concessions. It has placed our spokesmen under house-arrest, going so far as to forbid them from any participation in identitarian political activity. A charming lesson in democracy’.

‘We are tomorrow; you are yesterday.’

  • And again, quoting Delrieux, ‘To give youth effective political representation, Generation Identity sets itself no limits. The fight for Reconquest is everywhere, and we want everywhere to be masters in our own house.

‘We are Generation Identity!’

And who could doubt it?

So, given the above, it is hardly surprising that the ethos and energy of Identitarianism glavanised whole sections of the European Youth Movement. And this Movement is not, as per its enemies wishes, filled with hot air, or dependent on vapid spectacle. Instead, it is grounded, as we will see, on a solid, if still evolving, ideological base, rooted in tradition and born out of a coherent intellectual legacy stretching back over many years.

Instinct & Ideology:

So does the Identitarian Movement really represent an entirely new paradigm amongst the contemporary European right? Using what F. Stieger (2014) calls its ‘open source ideology’, the content of its web pages are easily copied and pasted by similar groups. It has gained identifiable support both from the soft and hard Right. Researchers working in the field of political science find it difficult to categorize the Movement within the old/new right parameters, which is a reflection of the chameleon-like metamorphosis Identitarianism undergoes in different environments.

But nevertheless the mainstream media’s nefarious narrative, is of course, a remorseless attempt to characterize the Identitarian Movement as a single issue pressure group warning of the threat of the Islamization of Europe, and this is intended to hamstring it by associating it with the most negative connotations from recent European history. Some German scholars even try to present the Identitarian Movement as a greater risk than neo-Nazism because its antidemocratic elements are hidden behind a search for identity. M. von Lupke said that ‘The public is thus able to recognize its true motives and objectives only with difficulty’ (2013).

Acknowledging that the Identitarian Movement, to a greater extent, builds upon a positive approach: a search for common identity, traditions and roots, academe insidiously suggests there is a ‘dark underbelly’, such as the claim made in 2013 by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Bremen that the Bremen branch of the Identitarian Movement was led by people with extreme right-wing leanings. And the Radical Boys Brux using the Lambda symbol on their website and Revolta was given as a justification for such a claim. This, despite the fact that public facing Identitarian members use the following slogan ‘0% racism 100% identity’.

But Identitarianism is so much more than its opponents’ worst nightmare. It is a groundswell of emotion that cannot so easily be defamed. It defends the nation at all costs, idealizing it as an organic pre-modern community based on homogeneity and exclusivity. In this regard the movement explicitly opposes the European Union’s policies in relation to mass immigration, asylum and integration. To an educated observer, it is clear that their instincts and actions are steeped in the philosophies expounded by nineteenth and early twentieth thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Ferdinand Tönnies, Friedrich List, Paul de Lagarde and Julius Langbehn. The more politically astute will also recognize the influence of German Conservative Revolutionary scholars such as Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Othmar Spann, Adam Muller, Hans Freyer, Ludwig Klages, Oswald Spengler, Edgar Julius Jung, Karl Haushofer and Werner Sombart.

The latter grouping, especially, having established a coherent integralist perspective, which emphasized a holism and cultural particularism, is a fertile source of inspiration for Identitarians. The logic of the Conservative Revolutionaries’ critique of the dangers of the individualistic liberal capitalist societies which they saw developing in the wake of the First European Civil War (1914-18) is similar to the Identitarians’ disdain of the EU Super-State.

Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, for example, said: ‘We may be victims of catastrophes which overtake us, of revolutions which we cannot prevent, but tradition always re-emerges’. And Identitarianism is indeed , tradition, re-emerging in a modern youthful form.

Anticipating the plight of Europe a century hence, Othmar Spann, it could be argued, almost wrote the precursor to Markus Willinger’s Generation Identity: A Declaration of War Against the 68’ers (2013) and A Europe of Nations (2014), rationalizing in his Der wahre Staat (The True State, 1972 ed.) that ‘Mankind can reconcile itself to poverty because it will be and remain poor forever… but to the loss of estate, existential insecurity, uprootedness and nothingness, the masses of affected people can never reconcile themselves’.

Hans Freyer, in his turn, was a strong advocate of Volksgeist (folk spirit) and author of Revolution von Rechts (Revolution from the Right, 1925). He contested that: ‘Man is free when he is part of a concrete collective will, which takes responsibility for its history… a will that binds men and endows their private existence with historical meaning’. Predicting the inevitable rise of Identitarian type organizations through time, he said: ‘A new front is forming from the Right…’ and there can be little doubt, as we have seen through their words and deeds that the Identitarians are all about ‘cleaning house’.

So, complementing the cultural pessimist prognosis of Oswald Spengler, that ‘Strong and unspent races are not pacifistic. And to adopt such a position is to abandon the future, for the pacifist ideal is a static, terminal condition that is contrary to the basic facts of existence,’ it must be stressed that Generation Identity and their affiliated groups are anything but static, but are to say the least, pro-active, mobile and opinionated in regard to the future they wish to create.

And their literature reflects this vibrancy. Works such as Generation Identity: A Declaration of War Against the 68’ers (2013), written by Markus Willinger in a succinct digestible style, with a foreword by Philippe Vardon, a veteran of Nissa Rebela, talks of the current generation as the foremost victims of the derailing of Western society by the political, journalistic and academic pseudo-elites, and how it falls upon this same generation to turn the tide.

Consistently offering a counter-balance to foreign and unnatural influences, the author, over forty one chapters, provides a fresh view of the world, free of the narrow and prejudiced constraints of the dominant mind-set of the previous seventy or so years:

Nazism was racist, so you wanted to be anti-racist. Nazism was nationalist? Naturally, you became internationalist. It was militaristic, fascistic and imperialistic and so you became anti-military, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist. If Nazism promoted a belief in the traditional family, you had to damn that as well. Your efforts to reject the extremist ideology of National Socialism led you to create your own extremist ideology. We are the first generation since 1933 to have truly overcome National Socialism. We neither define ourselves in terms of it, nor in terms of opposing it.

In a surgical indictment of big business, Identitarians accurately identify the corrosive impact of the mobility of cheap labour, or rather welfare recipients, from the Third World, and the socialist block vote it represents, which effectively means that opposition to the immigrant invasion cannot be limited to the individual nation-state but must be elevated to a joint continental response.

Predictably, their call for a unified Europe and their articulation of ideas about the national and ethnic uniqueness of all Europeans, especially in Willinger’s second text, A Europe of Nations (2014) initially gave succor to their opponents, who cat-called from their salons that the Identitarian vision of a ‘new millennium of great political blocs’, was just another expression of racism and xenophobia.

However, refusing to be silenced, from the very first sentence of Willinger’s well-circulated text, the Identitarians clearly assert their goals, and spit their contempt for the establishment’s worn-out and clichéd Orwellian Truth-Speak by demanding: ‘The European Union is Dead.’ Their subsequent description of the Union as a ‘patch-work Frankenstein’ and a ‘morbid monstrosity that its creators were attempting to breathe life into’, is reminiscent of the old Jewish legend of The Golem of Prague, and must have touched a few raw nerves among the bureaucrats of Brussels. Especially when, as in the story of the young boy who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes, the plain facts of the case are indisputable:

Europe suffers under your Union as much as we do. You seek to transform this proud continent into a second America and rob its people of their freedom.

You don’t serve Europe; your one and only master is the European Union, and that makes you the enemies of the European peoples against whom you’ve arrogantly declared war.

You hate the peoples of Europe. Recognise at last, that they stand in the way of your Union, threaten it in its entirety, and will one day bring it crashing down.

Beneath the Moloch you created, beneath your standardized bureaucracy lies the true Europe, buried in the rubble.

The Europe of freedom and diversity. The Europe of Brothers and sisters. The Europe you want us to forget, and that you try to conceal – yet it remains.

Still and quiet, it waits for the day when we free it from its chains, when it can return to its rightful place in the world.

To this Europe we are true, the Europe of our ancestors and children; we believe in it and we will fight for it.

For a free and strong Europe.

For a Europe of nations.  

In defiance of the global capitalists and the supporters of the current multi-cultural melting-pot, more reminiscent of The Tower of Babel than the image perpetuated by the output of the Hollywood Movie Moguls in blockbusters like the eponymous 1980’s Kids from Fame, the Identitarians shout starkly and loudly:

Europe is Europe…We Europeans love our identity and our individuality…We want to be and remain who we are…A European Super-State is an unnatural chimera…For millennia, we Europeans have fought one another, yet we had the strength and vitality to create a culture that is unique in the world. I am not referring to the recent decades of creeping stagnation, but rather to the legacy of the Renaissance, which was Europe’s brightest hour…The continuous competitive pressure made us Europeans great. In those days, no state could afford to be ruled over by mediocre politicians like yourselves…Weak and senile states, which have become the rule in today’s Europe, wouldn’t have survived five years back then. They would have renewed themselves or been conquered

And such defiant rhetoric is deeply imbued with the thoughts and ideas of thinkers from a range of traditions within the post ‘45 New Right. One can see the mentorship of metapolitical commentators like Armin Mohler, Karlheinz Weissmann, Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner, Pierre Krebs, Alain de Benoist, Julien Freund, Dominique Venner, Robert Steuckers, Guillaume Faye, Giorgio Locchi, Tomislav Sunic, Alexander Dugin and Sebastian J. Lorenz. Thinkers from as far afield as Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Croatia and Russia. All united in a common cause, to defend the intrinsic value of identity in the face of sterile modernity.

For, the New Right thesis, just like that of the Identitarians, is that modernity is characterized by the fact it creates shallow people who are promiscuous in their values, attitudes, political affiliations, jobs and lifestyle choices. They argue that social division and atomization of this type is being exploited by those with vested interests, the gurus of soft despotism that seek to impose a culture of self-censorship and political correctness. A classic example being the case of the Finnish Journalist Tuomas Muraja, of the Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, who contacted the friend of a Finnish rape victim, who had indicated that the assault had been done by a non- Finn, calling her a racist, bigot and criminal for making accusations against immigrants. He then threatened her with a prison sentence and warned her against making future accusations against immigrants. A not dissimilar situation to that faced by another Finnish female who was raped by five Somali men on a train station, who then received very light sentences from court officials, two of whom were not indigenous Finns, and a third, who was a native-born Finn but held well known communist sympathies.

So, it is not surprising then that both the New Right and the Identitarians hold cynical views about cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. Instead, they embrace ethnopluralism, which negates any hierarchy between races. It is concept based on the acceptance of the existence of different cultures, nations or societies in the world and each one’s intrinsic value.

The concept of ethnopluralism itself has a long pedigree. For example Carl Schmitt, a major influence on de Benoist, promoted ethnopluralism as a part of identitarian democracy (identitare Demokratie). Schmitt fundamentally opposed pluralism of interests and pluralistic democracy, instead promoting a democracy based on identity. Schmitt defined himself as an opponent of the ethos of the universalism of human rights. He saw homogeneity as a perquisite for promoting the interests of the state and nation. The link to Identitarianism cannot be more clear.

Both the Nouvelle Droite and the Identitarians see themselves as rebirth movements. And I would contend that the Nouvelle Droite is the mid-wife and the Identitarians are the newborn, fresh and pure off-spring, cleansed of the Left-Liberal dogma that has led to Europe’s current decline.

They seek an alternative modernity, favouring some scientific and technical developments, but not all, whilst rejecting what they define as the negative cultural aspects of modernity, which leads to what Charles Champetier and de Benoist see as a One-World system of production and reproduction, all intrinsically part of the hyper-moralism of universal human rights, masking the underlying attack on national and regional uniqueness. They describe this situation as a loss of ‘transcendent value, meaning, or purpose’ (from La Nouvelle Droite de l’ an 2000).

Benoist goes one step further by suggesting that human beings do not exist in the form of universal and abstract entity and cannot be separated from their particular society and social groups. And that if they do will become useless and dysgenic. Modernity destroys ties of individuals with family, locality, corporative or religious communities. The reality is of course that modernity has made people more lonely and vulnerable. This can be ‘cured’ the New Right diagnose by a return to communities rooted in their culture and geographic space, in a return to communities and organic society committed to the land. Feelings we see embedded in the Identitarian principles alluded to by Willinger.

Out of this arises the notion of a post-modernist radical right which emphasizes respect to differences which must be viewed in juxtaposition of universalistic racism and also as an ‘opposite to racist anti-racism’. Here, de Benoist draws parallels between genocide caused by racially orientated actions and the current slow ethnocide by so-called anti-racists.

The above assertion reinforced by Javier Ruiz Portella and Alvaro Mutis in their El manifesto contra la muerte del espiritu y la tierra (Manifesto against the Death of the Spirit and the Land) authored in 2011, who believe that modernistic materialism is the murder weapon the ruling oligarchy has chosen for killing the spiritual rights of the people and causing what de Benoist describes in his ‘Terrorism, State of Emergency’ as the ‘disenchantment with the world’. This, according to Ernst Jünger, a literary doyen of the New Right and author of Storm of Steel (1920) is the moment of ‘greatest danger’. And that the best response to such a situation, itemized in de Benoist’s book Vu de droite (1979) was the restoration of:

  • an aristocratic conception of the human being;
  • an ethical framework founded on honour, rather than the concept of sin and shame as per the Judeo-Christian faith;
  • a heroic attitude towards the challenges of human existence;
  • the exaltation and sacralization of the world;
  • attention to beauty, the body, and health;
  • the obliteration of notions such as ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’;
  • the union of aesthetics and morality.

Alain de Benoist continues in the same vein:

What is the greatest threat today? It is the progressive disappearance of diversity from the world. The leveling-down of people, the reduction of all cultures to a world civilization made up of what is most common. It can been seen already how from one side of the planet to the other the same types of construction are being put up and the same mental habits are being ingrained. Holiday Inn uniformity and Howard Johnson are the templates for the transformation of the world into a grey uniformity. I have travelled widely, on several continents. The joy which is experienced during a journey derives from seeing differentiated ways of living which are still well rooted, in seeing different people live according to their own rhythm, with a different skin colour, another mentality-from recognizing they are proud of their difference. I believe that this diversity is the wealth of the world, and that egalitarianism is killing it. For this it is important not just to respect others but to keep alive everywhere the most legitimate desire there can be: the desire to affirm a personality which is unlike another, to defend a heritage, to govern oneself in accordance with what one is. And this implies a head-on clash with a pseudo-antiracism which denies differences and with a dangerous racism which is nothing less than the rejection of the Other, the rejection of diversity (de Benoist, Vu de droite, 1979).

Whereas de Benoist’s intellectual rival, within the Right milieu at least, Guillaume Faye, who’s written corpus includes Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post Catastrophic Age (Arktos 2010),Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance (Arktos 2011),Convergence of Catastrophes (Arktos 2012) and Sex and Deviance (Arktos 2014), adopts a more militant approach. His well-articulated world-view, from what he describes as an ‘archaic’ perspective, and by this he means from the ancient Greek etymon arche, signifying ‘starting impetus’, or ‘foundation’ and ‘beginning’, rather than archaic as in ‘ancient’, beautifully illustrates this congruity of thought. Has does his proposed solutions to Europe’s problems summed up in his work Why We Fight:

  • Europe is no longer sovereign and politically and militarily assertive;
  • It must realize that it is at ‘war’ with other civilizations, particularly the Muslim world;
  • Europe is ‘sick’, ‘occupied, and being ‘colonized’ by the USA and the peoples of the poor South;
  • Europeans should support an ‘archeo-futurist’ vision, which fuses traditional pre-modern and modern values in a post-modern mode;
  • White people should seek to restore the belief in ‘rooted’ identities world-wide as homogenization equals ‘death and sclerosis’;
  • That Identities are always in a state of flux and ‘becoming’;
  • That the politically incorrect notion of bio-politics, or a politics of survival should underpin the biological and demographic imperatives of ethnic groups;
  • We should adjust to an elitist politics as an antidote to the ‘unjust’ selection of the capitalist ‘law of the jungle’;
  • Europe should adopt a revolutionary tone, recognizing that the current period is an interregnum. Whereby we rise like a Phoenix from the ashes’;
  • Recognize that only ethnic civil war will resolve Europe’s problems of Third World colonization;
  • A revolution will take place led by an activist minority. It will lead to a ‘re-evaluation of all values’ and a radically new society along Nietzschean lines. Nietzsche rather than Marx (Faye insists) is the real revolutionary of our times;
  • The creation of a new, noble aristocracy, one that serves the people through war is the pragmatic approach to the current situation;
  • The notion of the Nietzschean ‘will to power’ is the driving force of history.

And I cannot imagine the intellects behind Identitarianism, or indeed their rank and file militants and members, contradicting much of the above. This justifies to my mind that the movement in general is ideologically aligned with the broader New Right, Traditional and New Wave Nationalist schools of thought, shorn of the swastika and unencumbered by neo-Nazi baggage.

Conclusion:

So Identitarians give voice to the concerns of many young and ‘awakened’ indigenous Europeans. Their clarion call for a renewal of European national identities echoes through the streets of towns and cities as far apart as Lviv and Derry. Through the winding alleys of the ancient villages of the Pyrenees. Across the valleys and wide flat steppe to the suburbs of the cities of the East. But they also back up their grand-eloquence with pragmatism. They sponsor various training camps, where they receive lectures on historical subjects with particular relevance today, like the Siege of Malta by the Ottomans in 1565. They organize sports clubs, cultural organizations, charity associations, rock bands and publishing houses. The French movement has endeavored to establish ‘bastions’ that showcase their Movement. In Nice, for example, in a district where Identitarians live, they have opened shops and started local institutions developing a form of neighborhood autonomy, parents’ associations and retailers’ associations. And they extended this further by forming Solidarite Identities (SOLID) which is a humanitarian organization providing aid and support to nations in their struggle for survival, maintaining culture and safeguarding identity. It collects funds and materials and goes to areas where local inhabitants need help. SOLID’s activity helps support the freedom of nations who wish to be autonomous and rooted in their land. For this reason it helps the Serbian minority in Kosovo and the Boers in South Africa. The common denominator is a will to live in the country of one’s forebears, according to one’s own rules, laws and traditions. The major enemy from their perspective is capitalism, which destroys ethno-cultural eco-systems.

The Idendititarians have also called out traitors and collaborators alike, recognizing just like Marcus Tullius Cicero, that:

A nation can survive its fools and even their ambitions. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor, he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the souls of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

And do we not see the Curriculum Vitaes of Merkel, Hollande, Sarkozy, Blair, Cameron, Van Rompuy, Barroso, and Johansson in Cicero’s description? Make no mistake, these people are in the pay of higher forces than the democratic institutions they claim to represent.

But as we have seen from the ‘happenings’ highlighted across Europe, the support for Identitarian ideals are growing and are transnational, reflecting the youth’s scorn and rejection of the liberal power-structure. And their ‘fighting community’, as they define it, is focused on winning the political battle they have begun.

The Movement has meeting houses and training camps from Nice to Bordeaux and from Parigi to Paris. Strong links have been forged with youth groups of similar dispositions in Flanders, Catalonia, Northern Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. Generation Identitaire’s spokesman Alban Ferrari said in an interview in October 2012, following the overwhelming success of the Declaration of War video,

From Paris to Bucharest, from Stockholm to Athens, young people, heirs of a tremendous common civilizational background, are inevitably looking in the same direction. It is simply a question of survival… As the vanguard of European youth, we are in the front lines facing the ravages of immigration, which has partly been a consequence of the galloping globalism of the last forty years. The rise of Islam in France is the logical consequence of this population flow, which was never desired by the people but encouraged by the internationalist Left and big business… We are young people living in the real world, to borrow a religious expression, who have chosen the love of our people and our neighbours as our vocation. We are secondary school and university students and young working people integrated in this society by force of circumstance. We wish to be together, of course – but without them.

And what could be more natural? Identitarianism is essentially a grass roots movement, committed to a unified Europe, ‘But a different Europe. A Europe in which every people can choose its own path without Brussels giving it orders on how to live…’ They want a Europe ‘where the lazy and corrupt politicians and governments aren’t subsidized, but rather thrown out of their offices…’

It is time, they demand, for the decadents of Brussels and Strasbourg to step aside and ‘make way for a new Europe. For a Europe of nations…’ As opposed to the Janus faced Europe the Soixantehuitards created in homage to Richard Coudenhove-Kalgeri, who put in place the founding principles of European Union, writing in his book Praktischer Idealismus: ‘The man of the future will be of mixed race. The races and classes of today will gradually disappear due to the elimination of space, time and prejudice. The Eurasian Negroid race of the future, similar to the ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples and the diversity of individuals. Instead of destroying Judaism, Europe, against its will, refined and educated these people, driving them to their future status as leading nation, through the artificial revolutionary process. It is not surprising that the people who escaped the ghetto prison became the spiritual nobility of Europe’.

In the face of such a despicable, cowardly and silent genocide, what are Europeans supposed to do? Well Generation Identitaire have an answer. Underpinning the Identitarian ideological viewpoint is the notion that ‘Europe’s people are at war, a clandestine and undeclared war’, but a war nonetheless. They maintain ‘this war is more important for determining Europe’s fate than any other conflict this continent has ever seen. It is a struggle for Europe itself, for Europe’s cities, streets, and homes, for our meadows, mountains, and lakes. It’s a struggle for our homeland and they claim we’re losing…’ And they are right!

So was our future foretold in the fictionalized account of Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints (1973)? To return to Willinger’s A Europe of Nations:

Every day, Africans pour across the Mediterranean. Every day, Arabs and Asians pass through the Greek border; airplanes land hourly in our cities, bringing in even more…Europe is being over-run bit by bit. Bit by bit, our continent is being robbed of its identity and is being turned into an extension of Africa and Asia. Bit by bit, we Europeans are becoming a minority in our own cities and nations…

And in identifying the parasitic entities that have fed and are now killing their host, they say:

You’ve committed many errors during your years of rule, some out of greed, others out of naivety, and some out of stupidity. But for your worst wrong-doing there is no excuse: you opened Europe’s borders and not only tolerated, but actively promoted the mass immigration of Africans and Asians into our countries. This is unforgivable. Yet there can be no doubt that you were fully aware of the consequences of your actions.

And that goal, openly admitted by Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack straw and David Blunkett, the hierarchy of the former British Labour government, was nothing less than the replacement of the British population. The intention was, to quote Neather in a 2009 interview with the Home Affairs Editor of the Telegraph, Tom Whitehead, to ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’. And of course, similar approaches were in play, and still are, all across the European Union, in order to fulfill Coudenhove-Kalgeri’s New Morgenthau Plan, extended beyond post-war Germany, and now intended to apply to the whole of Europe.

For this crime, there can only be one punishment. And it is simultaneously ironic and fitting that it should be conducted in the time-honoured French tradition. A lonely walk, accompanied by a drum roll, while the guilty wait in line for the cold caress of Madame Guillotine.

 

Additional Notes:

  • The Swedish Democrats gained 5.7% of the votes in the 2010 elections, succeeding in gaining representation in the Swedish parliament;
  • Some commentators argue that Muslim men think of themselves as a conquering army and that white women are their ‘war-booty’. According to a 2014 Report there were between 5000 and 7000 gang rapes a year in the Parisian banlieues. These involve ‘tournantes’ meaning ‘pass-arounds’ . Two girls in Fontenay-Sous-Bois were subjected to a rape involving up to 50 boys at a time. 77.6% of rapes in Sweden are committed by immigrant Muslims. 2 out of three rapes in Oslo are committed by Muslims. Child-rape in the immigrant infested city of Malmo increased significantly since 2005. The overwhelming number of rapes in Stavanger in Norway in the last 3 years have been committed by Muslims. Despite this, feminists like cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian, remain silent on what is clearly a ‘rape epidemic’ stretching from Rotherham in the North of England to the suburbs of Rome;
  • The most conservative official estimates agree that the Muslim population of Europe will be at least 10% by 2050;
  • In 1968 Paris was overtaken by mass protests including agitating students, sympathetic locals, celebrated intellectuals and factory workers. ‘Our generation enjoyed an unprecedented optimism,’ said Henri Weber, a socialist member of the European parliament, ‘We were Promethean!’;
  • Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a sociology student at the University of Nanterre, is now a Green Party member of the European Parliament;
  • Henri Weber, is a Socialist Party representative for North-West France;
  • Andre Glucksmann,is a philosopher and writer;
  • Daniel Bensaid, leader of the Trotskyite Movement in France;
  • Bernard-Henri Levy, media personality known as BHL, and author;
  • The Research and Study Group for European Civilization (GRECE): the principal Think Tank of the French Right founded to promulgate theoretical and cultural issues such as ethno-pluralism, the preservation of the Indo-European legacy and the philosophy of Conservative Revolutionary thinkers;
  • Alain de Benoist, Founder member of GRECE and acclaimed leader of the Nouvelle Droite;
  • Guillaume Faye, journalist and writer. Linked to GRECE until 1986 when he split from de Benoist and is now more actively associated with Piere Vial’s Terre et Peuple;
  • Jean Cau, former secretary to Jean Paul Satre, turned pagan, heavily influenced by Durer and Wagner and the writings of Paul Morand;
  • Louis Rougier, French philosopher and epistemologist;
  • Thierry Maulnier, journalist, essayist and dramatist;
  • Julien Freund, influenced by Carl Schmitt and author of numerous works including Political Essence (1965);
  • In July 1979 Left leaning writers such as Thierry Pfister in Le Monde raised the alarm about the fact that the Nouvelle Droite had begun to gain traction in the media. Within weeks over 500 articles by people like Raymond Aron condemning this development began to appear. Anti-racist and Jewish groups such as the Mouvement Contre le racisme et l’ amite entre les people, refused to share a platform with de Benoist and his ilk. This was repeated in the summer of 1993. The left claiming the New Right were undertaking ‘a big seduction campaign targeting democratic personalities, some of whom are known as leftists’. More than 1500 ‘intellectuals’ throughout Europe signed the appeal;
  • Maurice Dantec, is a writer and musician living in Montreal;
  • Michel Houellebecq, award winning author, film-maker and poet. Most intriguingly he wrote a critically acclaimed biographical essay on H.P. Lovecraft;
  • The Mayor of Marseilles called upon the French Government to have the army come into his city to deal with immigrant gangs, where two thirds of the homicides committed in France occur;
  • Within the last few weeks Albanians have been seen to be financially exploiting Africans clambering on to lorries heading for the Channel Tunnel;
  • The Lambda flag was taken from the blazon painted on the shields of the Greek Hoplites;
  • Identitaire Bewegung, conduct ‘hard-bass’ actions and are the subject of a typical academic case study by Brigit Sauer and Stephanie Mayer, sponsored by the EU, entitled: ‘A European Youth against Europe? Identity and Europeanes in the Austrian Identitarian Discourse’ (University of Leicester, 2014);
  • Renaud Camus, originally coined the phrase the Great Replacement and since 2010 has campaigned against immigration;
  • Dominique Venner, French historian, journalist and essayist with close links to the anti-Gaullist OAS, Jeune Nation (Young Nation) and later GRECE. He committed suicide to draw attention to the threat posed by modernity to the Occident in Notre-Dame-de-Paris on the 21st May 2015;
  • Renouveau francais, a Catholic nationalist movement which faced down FEMEN and Gay Pride marches in Paris;
  • George Soros, like Nicholas Sarkozy is a Hungarian Jew. He is a business magnate, founder of the Open Society Foundation and paymaster for the various Colour Revolutions across the Arab world and the attempted Orange revolution in Ukraine;
  • The Gaysott Act was enacted to make it impossible to deny The Holocaust and to remove scholar Robert Faurisson from his university Chair;
  • Georges Bernanos, author and soldier of a Catholic and Monarchist disposition, his most famous novel being Under Satan’s Sun (2012 ed.)
  • Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher, cultural critic and author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, beyond Good and Evil and the Antichrist;
  • Ferdinand Tönnies, sociologist and philosopher who wrote books on community and civil society;
  • Friedrich List, developed the National System of Innovation and author of the National System of the Political (1837);
  • Paul de Lagarde, polymath, biblical scholar and orientalist who tried to establish a German religion. He wrote: ‘Germany is the totality of all German feeling, German thinking, German-willing Germans, every one of us is a traitor if he does not consider himself personally accountable in every moment of his life for the existence, fortune and future of the Fatherland, and each is a hero and a liberator if he does’;
  • Julius Langbehn, Far right art historian and poet who published 40 Lied in 1891;
  • Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, admirer and translator of Dostoevsky, he was a major influence on the Jungkonervativen (Young Conservatives) and author of Das Recht der Jungen Völker, (The Right of Young Nations, 1918) and Das Dritte Reich (1923);
  • Othmar Spann, Austrian conservative philosopher, sociologist and economist of anti-liberal and anti-socialist persuasion. He argued for a corporate state and joined the Militant League for German Culture in 1928;
  • Adam Muller, a publicist, political economist and state theorist, and part of the German counter-enlightenment;
  • Hans Freyer, author of Der Staat (1926). He held similar views to Spann in opposition to the Enlightenment;
  • Ludwig Klages, philosopher and psychologist, heavily involved in the Mystic Circle of Alfred Schuler and the poet Stefan George;
  • Oswald Spengler, famous historian and philosopher of history itself. He wrote, Prussianism and Socialism (Arktos, 2012 ed.) which described an organic nationalist brand of socialist authoritarianism;
  • Edgar Julius Jung, lawyer and leader of the Conservative Revolutionary movement and opponent of the Nazis. His body was found in a ditch on the outskirts of Oranienburg in July of 1934;
  • Karl Hausofer, German military commander, geographer, geo-politician and mentor to Rudolf Hess;
  • Werner Sombart, an economist and social activist, one of the leading social scientists in Europe in the early decades of the 20th Century;
  • The Tower of Babel, being the biblical legend from the Book of Genesis which explains the origin of different languages;
  • The Kids From Fame, an American movie and TV serial which advocated   multiculturalism predominantly between 1982-87;
  • Armin Mohler, Swiss born author of the Conservative revolution in Germany 1918-32;
  • Karl-Heinz Weissman, a leading figure of the German New Right;
  • Gerd-Klaus Kaltenbrunner, educated at the University of Vienna, conservative publicist, writer and expert on Prester John and Meister Ekhart. He won the Konrad Adenauer prize of the German Foundation;
  • Pierre Krebs, graduate of Law from Montpellier and founder of the Thule Seminar;
  • Robert Steuckers, Belgian former student of Armin Mohler, widely recognized as an authoritative voice of the intellectual European Right;
  • Giorgi Locchi, essayist and journalist influenced by Faye and Krebs;
  • Tomislav Sunic, diplomat, professor and writer of Croatian origin. His well-respected works, Homo Americanus: Child of the Post-Modern Age (2007) and Against democracy and Equality (1990, 2002, and 2011 editions) are considered core texts within the New Right;
  • Alexander Dugin, Russian academic, poet, New Right Eurasianist, author of The Fourth Political Theory (Arktos 2012), Putin Versus Putin (Arktos 2014), and Last War of the World Island: The Geopolitics of Contemporary Russia (Arktos 2015);
  • Sebastien J. Lorenz, Spanish contributor to the Nueva Derecha;
  • Carl Schmitt, jurist and political theorist. Author of The Concept of the Political (1996 ed.), Constitutional Theory (1928) and The Theory of the Partisan (1963);
  • Javier Ruiz Portella, Editor of Iconoclast;
  • Alvaro Mutis, Latin American committed to white Christianity;
  • Ernst Jünger, warrior, writer and intellect. Holder of the Iron Cross for service in The First European Civil War and author of books like The Marble Cliffs (1939) and The Glass Bees (1957);
  • Cicero, lawyer, orator philosopher and political theorist, called the ‘righteous pagan’;
  • Chancellor Angela Merkel, leading figure in German politics since 2005;
  • Francois Hollande, President of France and leader of the French Socialist Party;
  • Francois Sarkozy, former president of France between 2007-12;
  • Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997-2007. Now a controversial figure, resulting from his dubious role in involving the UK in the Iraq War, his pursuit of bureaucratic positions in the EU and the Middle-East and advancing his Foundation’s interests in highly questionable ways;
  • David Cameron, current British Prime Minister who claims direct descent from Emile Levita, a German Jewish financier;
  • Herman Van Rompuy, a Belgian Prime Minister and the first President of the European Council;
  • Jose Manuel Barroso, former Maoist activist in Portugal who went on to be the President of the European Commission;
  • Morgan Johansson, Swedish Minister for Justice and Migration. He said: ‘All societies can create freedom for a minority. But freedom for the majority can only be realized in an equal society’;
  • Richard Coudenhove-Kalgeri, Founder and President for 49 years of the pan-European Union. He also supported Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points;
  • Jean Raspail’s fictional work Camp of the Saints is now a considered a prophetic text in right wing circles;
  • Jack Straw, former British Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary under Tony Blair’s Labour government. He is famous for saying ‘the English have no culture’;
  • David Blunkett, British Home Secretary after Jack Straw;
  • The Morgenthau Plan was proposed by the US Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau. It was to be imposed on Germany after its capitulation in 1945. It was pre-figured on partitioning Germany, destroying its industrial base, rapid de-population, encouraging miscegenation and preventing Germany from ever rising to power again. Franklin D. Roosevelt said of the Plan: ‘Too many people here and in England hold the view that the German people as a whole are not responsible for what has taken place. That it was only the Nazis that are responsible. That unfortunately is not based on fact. The German people must have it driven home to them that the whole nation has been engaged in a lawless conspiracy against the decencies of modern society’.

 

Indicative Reading in Print:

T. Bar-On, ‘The French New Right’s Quest for Alternative Modernity, Fascism’, Journal of Contemporary Fascist Studies 1(1), pp.18-52 (2012)

T. Bar-On, ‘Fascism to the Nouvelle Droite: The Dream of Pan-European Empire’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies 16 (3), pp. 327-45 (December, 2008)

T. Bar-On, Rethinking the French New Right: Alternatives to Modernity (Routledge, 2013)

T. Bar-On, Where Have All the Fascists Gone? (Ashgate, 2007)

Z. Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge, 2000)

L. Bell & C. Flood (Editors), Political Ideologies in Contemporary France (London, 1997)

A. de Benoist, Vue de droit (Copernic, 1979)

A. de Benoist, Carl Schmitt Today: Terrorism, “Just” War, and the State of Emergency. Translated by A. Jacob. Edited by T. Ridderdale & J.B. Morgan (Arktos, 2013)

A. de Benoist, Beyond Human Rights: Defending Freedoms. Translated by A. Jacob (Arktos, 2011)

A. de Benoist, On the Brink of the Abyss: The Imminent Bankruptcy of the Financial System (Arktos, 2015)

A. de Benoist, Beyond Human Rights: Defending Freedoms (Arktos, 2011)

A. de Benoist & A.C. Champetier, Manifesto for a European Renaissance. Translated by M. Bendelow & F.J. Greene (Arktos, 2012)

A. de Benoist. ‘What is Sovereignty’ (Telos no. 14, 1999)

H. Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (New York, 1994)

M. Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air (New York, 1982)

N. Bissoondath, Selling Illusions: The Myth of Multiculturalism (Penguin, 2002)

M. Blinkhorn (Editor), Fascists and Conservatives: The Radical Right and the Establishment in Twentieth Century Europe (London, 1990)

S. M. Borthwick, ‘Historian of The Future: An Introduction to Oswald Spengler’s Life and Works for the Curious Passer-by and the Interested Student’ (The Institute for Oswald Spengler Studies, 2011)

M. Caiani, D. della Porta, C. Wagemann, Mobilizing on the Extreme Right: Germany, Italy and the United States (Oxford University Press, 2012)

L. Cheles, R. Ferguson and M. Vaughan (Editor), The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe (Longman, 1995)

L. Cheles (Editor), The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe (Longman, 1991)

N. Chomsky, The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (Berkley, 1994)

G. Cohen, The New Right: Image and Reality (Runnymede Trust, 1986)

K. Friedrich, ‘A Conservative Revolution Against Hitler: Edgar Julius Jung’s Analysis and Criticism of the Total State’ (in Totalitarianism and Challenge of Democracy, edited by A. Jablonski & W. Piasecki, 1992)

G. Faye, Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post Catastrophic Age (Arktos, 2010)

G. Faye, Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance (Arktos, 2011)

G. Faye, Convergence of Catastrophes (Arktos, 2012)

H. Freyer, Theory of the Objective Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Culture (Ohio University, 1998)

A. Giddens, Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics (Stanford University, 1994)

P. Gottfried, Carl Schmitt: Politics and Theory (New York, 1990)

R. Griffin, Fascism’s New Faces (and new facelessness) in the ‘post-fascist’ epoch, Deliberation, Knowledge (2004)

J. J. Haag, Othmar Spann and the Politics of Totality: Corporatism in Theory and Practice (PhD Thesis, Rice University, 1969)

J. Habermas, The Historians’ Debate and the New Conservatism (Boston MIT Press, 1989)

M. Heidegger, Basic Writings (New York, Harper Collins, 1993)

J. Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1984)

P. Ignazi, The Extreme Right Parties in Western Europe (Oxford University Press, 2006)

L. E. Jones, ‘Edgar Julius Jung: The Conservative Revolution in Theory Practice’ (American Historical Association, 1988)

E. Jünger, The Storm of Steel. From the Diary of a German Storm-troop Officer on the Western Front. Translated by B. Creighton (Chatto & Windus, 1929)

E. J. Jung, ‘Germany and the Conservative Revolution’, in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, Edited by Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg (University of California Press, 1995)

E J Jung, ‘People, Race, Reich’ in Europa: German Conservative Foreign Policy 1870-1940. Edited by Alexander Jacob (University of America Press, 2002)

E. J. Jung, The Rule of the Inferiour (New York, 1995)

L. Klages, The Biocentric Worldview (Arktos, 2013)

K. von Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism: Its History and Dilemma in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press, 1968)

P. Krebs, Fighting for the Essence: Western Ethno-suicide or European Renaissance? (Arktos, 2012)

R. Levitas (Editor), The Ideology of the New Right (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1986)

S. M. Lipset, Political Man: The Social Bases of Political Movements (New York, 1960)

A. Mammone, ‘The Transnational Reaction to 1968: Neo-Fascist Fronts and Political Cultures in France and Italy’, Contemporary European History 17, pp. 213-36, (2009)

T. McCulloch, ‘The Nouvelle Droite in the 1980s and 1990s: Ideology and Entryism, the Relationship with the Front National’, French Politics and Society 4, pp. 158-78, (2006)

M. Minkenberg, Trends and Patterns of the Radical Right in Europe: East and West (Workshop on International Developments in Right Wing Extremism, Southern Poverty Law Centre and Friedrich Ebert Stifung, Montgomery, Alabama, 30th April – 2 May, 2012)

M. van den Bruck, Germany’s Third Empire. Translated by E.O. Lorimer (Arktos, 2012)

C. Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

J. Z. Muller, The Other God that Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism (Princeton, 1988)

E. Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1965)

M. O’Meara, New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe (Bloomington, 2004)

P. Piccone, ‘Confronting the French New Right: Old Prejudices or a New Political Paradigm?’, Telos 98-9, Winter/Spring pp. 3-23, (1993/94)

R. B. Pippin, ‘Nietzsche’s Alleged Farewell: The Pre-modern, Modern, and Postmodern Nietzsche’, in Higgins and B. Magnus (Editors), Idealism as Modernism: Hegelian Variations (Cambridge University Press, pp. 252-78, 2004)

K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Routledge and Kegan, 1962)

K. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890-1933 (University Press of New England, 1990)

C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition (Chicago, 2007)

W. G. Simpson, Which Way Western Man? (Noontide Press, 1986)

W. Sombart, Economic Life in the Modern Age (New Brunswick, 2001)

O. Spann, Der wahre Staat (1921)

O. Spann, Types of Economic Theory (George Allen & Unwin, 1930)

O. Spengler, The Decline of the West, 2 Volumes (New York 1928)

O. Spengler, Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Life (New York 1963)

A. Spektorowski, ‘Ethno-regionalism, Multicultural Nationalism and the Idea of a European Third Way,’ Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 7, pp.41-61 (2007)

F. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (University of California, 1974)

Z. Sternhell, Neither Right Nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France, translated by David Maisel, (Princeton, 1996)

M. Steyn, ‘Why the Fascists Are Winning in Europe’, Maclean’s (22nd June) , pp.28-30 (2009)

W. Struve, Elites Against Democracy: Leadership Ideals in Bourgeois Political Thought in Germany, 1890-1933 (Princeton, 1973)

T. Sunic, Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right, 3rd Edition (Arktos, 2011)

P. Taguieff, ‘The New Right’s View of European Identity’, Telos 98-99, Winter/Spring pp. 34-54 (1993-4)

C. Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity (Ontario, 1991)

F. Tönnies, Community and Society (London and New York, 2002)

L. Tudor, From the German Conservative Revolution to the New Right: A Collection of Essays on Identitarian Philosophy (Identitas/Círculo de Investigaciones PanCriollistas, 2015)

A. Umland, ‘The European New Right: Neo-or – Fascist?’, Patterns of Prejudice 43 (2009)

We are Generation Identitaire, translated by F. Roger Devlin and Edited by John B. Morgan (Arktos, 2013)

M. Willinger, Generation Identity: A Declaration of War Against the 68’ers (Arktos, 2013)

M. Willinger, A Europe of Nations (Arktos, 2014)

R. Woods, The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic (New York, 1996)

R. Woods, Germany’s New Right as Culture and Politics (Routledge, 2007)

 

Online Reading:

Warren, I.B. ‘The European New Right: Defining and Defending Europe’s Heritage – An interview with Alain de Benoist’, Journal of Historical Review 14 http://www.vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/14/2/warren28.html#ref12

Johnson, M. R. (n.d.) ‘The State as the Enemy of the Ethnos’. http://www.freespeechproject.com/807.html

New Imperium – Altermedia – http://uk.altermedia.info/general/new-imperium_177.html

N. Fligstein, A. Polykova, W. Sandholtz, W. ‘European Integration, Nationalism and European Identity’. Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 50. No. S1, pp. 106-122B (2014)

Brenakedislam.com (2013) GENERATION IDENTITAIRE Movement: First France, then Germany and the Netherlands. Accessible at: http://www.barenakedislam.com/2013/06/22generation-identitaire-movement-first-france-then-germany-now-in-the-netherlands

Generace Identity (Czech Republic). Official website: http://generace-identity.cz/

D. Halikiopoulou, K. Nanou, S. Vasilopoulou, ‘The Paradox of Nationalism: The Common Denominator of the Radical Right and Radical Left Euroscepticism’. European Journal of Political Research, 51, pp. 504-539 (2012). http://extremisproject.org/2012/11/the-paradox-of-nationalism-the-common-denominator-of-radical-right-and-radical-left-euroscepticism/

F. Steiger, ‘Die Identitaire Bewegung – Open Source – Ideologie aus dem Internet’. Accessible at: http://www.netz-gegen-nazis.de/artlike/die5E2%80%9Eidentit%C3%Are-bewegung%E2%80%9C-open-source-ideolie-aus-dem-internet-9343

B. Balibar, ‘Europe Is a Dead Political Project’, The Guardian (25th May) http://ww.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/25/eu-crisiscatastrophic-consequences

 

Websites: 

 

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Note: This article has been personally provided for original publication on the New European Conservative by the author.

 

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The Logic of Capitalism – Benoist

The logic of capitalism; the unemployed and the superfluous

By Alain de Benoist

Translated from the French by Tom Sunic

 

Below is the interview A. de Benoist gave recently to Boulevard Voltaire.

Q: Despite repeated promises of politicians, both from the right and the left, nothing seems to be stopping the rise in unemployment. Is it something inevitable?

A: Officially, there are 3.5 million unemployed in France, which means that the unemployment rate stands today at 10.3%. This figure, however, varies depending on how it is being computed. The official statistics take into account only the category “A”, i.e. those who are unemployed and who are actively looking for a job, while leaving out the categories “B”, “C”, “D” and “E”, i.e. those looking for a job although having had some reduced work activity as of lately; those who have stopped looking for a job but are still unemployed; those receiving training; those in traineeship; those working under “subsidized contracts”, etc. When adding together all these categories, one reaches the real unemployment rate of 21.1% (more than double the official figure). If we refer to the overall rate of the inactive population of working age, then we arrive at 35.8%. Moreover, if we were to take into account insecure, part-time, or short-term jobs, as well as the number of the “working poor”, etc., then this figure keeps getting higher.

Undoubtedly, changes in unemployment depend on the official policies—but only to some extent. Today’s unemployment is no longer of a cyclical nature, but primarily structural, something many have not fully understood yet. This means that work is becoming a scarce commodity. The jobs that have been lost are less and less being replaced by other job openings. Of course, the expansion of the service sector is real; yet the service sector does not generate capital. Moreover, twenty years down the road almost half of those service sector jobs will be replaced by networked machines. To imagine, therefore, that someday we shall return to full employment is an illusion.

Q: There are people who live in order to work and others who work in order to live. Aren’t those who refuse to lose their lives in order to earn it part and parcel of some ancestral wisdom? Is work really a value in itself?

A: What needs to be pointed out is that what we call “work” today has no relationship whatsoever with what used to be productive activity of the past centuries, namely a simple “metabolization” of the nature. Neither is work a synonym of activity, nor of employment. The near universal spreading of wage labor was already a revolution of sorts to which the masses remained hostile for a very long period of time. The reason for that is that they had been accustomed to the consumption of the assets of their own labor only and never viewed labor as means of acquiring the assets of others, or in other words, to work in order to purchase the results of the labor of others.

Labor has a dual dimension; it represents both concrete labor (its metabolizing purpose) and abstract labor (energy and time spent). In the capitalist system what counts is abstract labor only, because this kind of labor, being indifferent to its own content, being also equal for all goods for which it provides a basis of comparison, is the sole factor that transforms itself into money, thus acquiring a mediating role in a new form of social interdependence. This means that in a society where commodity is the basic structural category, labor ceases to be socially distributed by traditional power structures. Rather, it performs itself the function of those ancient relationships. In capitalism, labor constitutes itself the dominant form of social relationships. Its by-products (commodity, capital) represent simultaneously concrete labor products and the objectified forms of social mediation. Hence, labor ceases to be a means; it becomes an end in itself.

In capitalism value is made up of the time spent working and represents therefore the dominant form of wealth. Capital accumulation means accumulating the product of the time spent in human labor. This is why the enormous productivity gains generated by the capitalist system have not resulted in any significant decrease in working hours, as one might have expected. On the contrary, based on the trends of unlimited expansion, the system keeps imposing always more work. And it is right there that we can observe its fundamental contradictions. On the one hand capitalism seeks to extend working hours, since it is only by having people work more and more that it can achieve capital accumulation. On the other, productivity gains allow from now on the production of more and more goods with less and less men. This makes the production of material wealth more and more independent from the time spent on working. In this respect the unemployed have already become the superfluous people.

Q: You are known to be a workaholic. Do you ever miss watching the grass grow and fondle some of the cats in your household?

A: I work 80-90 hours a week simply because I like doing what I do. This does not make me an adept of the ideology of work. Quite the contrary. In the Genesis (3: 17-19) work is depicted as a consequence of the original sin. Saint Paul says: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat” (II Thessalonians 3:10).This moralistic and punitive view of the work is just as alien to me as the Protestant redemptive work ethic, or for that matter the exaltation of the value of work by totalitarian regimes. Yes, I am aware of the fact that the word “travail” (work) comes from the Latin tripalium, a word which originally used to designate an instrument of torture. Therefore, I try to sacrifice to the requirements of “free time,” which is “free” insofar as it is freed from work.

 

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De Benoist, Alain. “The logic of capitalism; the unemployed and the superfluous.” Interview by Boulevard Voltaire. The Occidental Observer, 25 July 2015. <http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/07/the-logic-of-capitalism-the-unemployed-and-the-superfluous/ >.

 

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Femmes Fatales – Solère

Sisters of Salome: Femmes Fatales, Left & Right

By Fenek Solère

 

Left/Right dichotomies in the representation of female militants in the movies The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) and A Student named Alexander (2011).

‘Although typically villainous, or at least morally ambiguous, and always associated with a sense of mystification and unease, femme fatales have also appeared as heroines in some stories . . .’ — Mary Ann Doane

From the Levantine Lilith to the Celtic Morgan Le Fay; and from Theda Bara’s vamp in Hollywood’s A Fool There Was to Eva Green in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, the notion of the fille d’Eve tantalizes us. In sociological terms the notion of diabolic women is potent with misogyny, witchcraft and the negative aspects of anima, how woman appears to man, from the Jungian viewpoint. To take the cinematic angle, licentious dames mean box office receipts, plain and simple. Roger Vadim’s And God Created Woman (1957), starring starlet Brigitte Bardot and Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Betty Blue (1986) with Beatrice Dalle being just two cases that prove the point.

Stereotypes range from enchantress to succubus, haunting our consciousness in different guises, such as the spectral Cathy from Emily Brontë’s classic Wuthering Heights (1847) or the more malign character of Rebecca in Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 book of the same name. As Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) (1), Once mused, ‘The strange thing about woman — her pre-ordained fate — is that she is simultaneously the sin and the Hell that punishes it’. Indeed, a whole academic industry has grown up deconstructing such iconography with writers like Toni Bentley’s Sisters of Salome (2002); Bram Dijkstra’s Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (1986); and Elizabeth K. Mix’s Evil by Design: The Creation and Marketing of the Femme Fatale in 19th-Century France (2006) leading the way.

Baudelaire’s own magnum opus Les Fleurs du Mal (1857) epitomizes the dichotomy perfectly. The schizophrenia embodied in his poetic creations, Jean Duval (Black Venus) and Apollonie Sabatier (White Venus), both mirroring and reinforcing some male fantasies about women’s sexuality in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. The dialectics of Serpent Culture and Snake Charmer sensuality, so beautifully carved in Auguste Clesinger’s (2) writhing milk white statue Woman Bitten by a Snake (1847), a representation of Apollonie Sabatier currently on display in the Musée d’Orsay, raises the question, is she squirming in agony or riding a paroxysm of pleasure from the venomous bite?

Moving beyond the arts, literature and film to the political milieu? What evidence do we have for Femme Fatale’s within the Left/Right dichotomy? There is certainly a colorful cast of charismatic characters to choose from: Inessa Armand, Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, Jiang Quing, Bernardine Dohrn, and Angela Davis to name but a few on the left-side. Unity Mitford, Savitri Devi, Alessandra Mussolini, Beate Zschape, Yevgenia Khasis, and Marine Le Pen, as examples from the right side of the aisle.

It is my intention to dismiss empathetic documentaries like Confrontation Paris, 68, The Weather Underground (2002) and hatchet-job investigative journalism like Turning Point’s Inside the Hate Conspiracy (1995) about America’s The Order without further comment. Instead arguing that there are few, if any, historically accurate, unbiased and insightful fictional or factional celluloid representations of female (or for that matter male) political militants in circulation. Instead, what we are served up are predictable stereo-types and clichéd cartoonesque parodies, completely aligned with the liberal left Euro-68 ethos, wherein, a mélange of well-meaning but misguided (and always attractive) socialist idealists try to change society for the better, juxtaposed with psychopathic rightist harridans, or male sexual inadequates, portrayed as vacuous outsiders, decidedly uncool and devoid of social capital.

Indicative examples of the genre being, from the left: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975), The Underground (1976), Running on Empty (1988), What to Do in Case of Fire (2002), Baader (2002), The Dreamers (2004), Guerilla — The Taking of Patty Hearst (2005), Regular Lovers (2005), Mesrine: Killer Instinct (2008), Che (2008), The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008), The Company You Keep (2012) and Something in the Air (2013). As opposed to the more objectionable characterizations of rightists in productions like The Day of the Jackal (1973), The Odessa File (1974), The Boys from Brazil (1978), Betrayed (1988), Siege at Ruby Ridge (1996), Brotherhood of Murder (1999), and A Student named Alexander (2011).

For the sake of argument I have been deliberately selective and will focus specifically on Uli Edels’s Baader Meinhof Complex and Enzo De Camillis’s fifteen minute short A Student named Alexander. Risking the approbation of cultural commentators by possibly extrapolating too general a hypothesis from too limited a sample, I nevertheless press my case, that the content, reaction and intent of both these films exemplify the paradox of Left/Right caricatures in the entertainment media.

Recipient of 6.5 million euros from various film boards and Golden Globe and Oscar nominee in the Best Foreign Film category, The Baader Meinhof Complex, rode the wave of resurgent seventies retro, a movie filled with baby boomer nostalgia for the late sixties and early seventies. Simpler times, when idealism meant Sartre, anti-Vietnam protest, Che Guevara posters, and smoking pot in bedsits listing to the sitar music of Ravi Shankar.

The movies all-star cast includes Martina Gedeck as Ulrike Meinhof, Moritz Bleibtreu as Andreas Baader, Johanna Wokalek as Gudrun Ensslin, and Alexandra Maria Lara as Petra Schelm. All of whom had already or were soon to appear in mainstream feature films like: The Lives of Others, Run Lola Run, The Good Shepherd, Pope Joan, North Face, Control, and Downfall.

The action begins with the 1967 Schah-Besuch mass street protest in Berlin against the Shah of Iran. Mohamed Reza Pahlavi’s supporters are depicted launching an unprovoked attack on the anti-Pahlavi elements, resulting in running battles and the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg in Krumme Strasse 66, by what appears to be a reactionary police officer, Karl-Heinz Kurras, but who was in reality a card-carrying member of the Communist Party acting as an undercover operative for the East German Stasi.

We are then treated to scenes where Maoist students hold packed meetings, intercut with footage of American warplanes strafing and bombing Vietnamese peasants. Rapidly followed by ‘Red’ Rudi Dutschke (3) of 2nd June Movement fame (named after the aforementioned riot) raising his clenched fist, the Messianic leader of the Gramscian ‘Long March through the Institutions’.

Dutschke is elevated to intellectual martyr status when he is mercilessly gunned down in the street by Josef Bachmann, portrayed by actor Tom Schilling, whose cinematic appearance is clearly meant to conjure images of a Hitler Youth or a die-hard Werewolf with a chronic nervous disposition. Which is ironic given that the Baader Meinhof gang and the various later incarnations of the Red Army Faction relied so heavily on a group linked to Heidelberg University, the Sozialistisches Patientiv Kollektiv (Socialist Patient Collective), an organization that sought to convince neurotics and the insane that they were not wrong, it was the system that was wrong, and social revolution was the cure.

‘Shooting is like fucking,’ screams Baader as Bernd Eichinger’s screenplay and Rainer Klausman’s hypnotic lens combine to present a seductive and fast paced cine-orgasm of free love, role model women for Second Wave feminism, cool people smoking cigarettes in coffee shops debating Marxist dialectics, driving around in BMWs, burning department stores, shooting up road signs, Robin Hood bank robbers sunning themselves topless in PLO training camps, liberating captives in a back glow of exploding gelignite and the swashbuckling rat-a-tat of 9mm shells.

Even the capture of Baader, Ensslin, and Meinhof for their egregious crimes are contextually ambiguous. Baader, in a scene more reminiscent of the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) than the original television footage of his stand-off with police; Meinhof, kicking and screaming in outrage, rather than the deflated, depressed, and played-out fantasist she was; and Ensslin, by pure chance, when a shop assistant notices a gun in her handbag. Another martyr is then injected into the story as Holger Meins (4) is depicted a la Bobby Sands (5), going on hunger strike and the subsequent trial in Stammheim (6), more Monty Python farce than a serious attempt to enact justice.

One is left in doubt as to where the audience’s sympathy is meant to lie. Especially, with our ever heroic protagonists making fun of the trial judges and gaining increasing support from those in attendance with their witty quips and stunning mind-games. Even The movie’s ending perpetuates the on-going myth that the ‘night of death’ was not triggered by the failure of the Mogadishu hijack (7) to negotiate their release but was in fact a pre-arranged multiple state murder made to look like simultaneous suicide. The movie culminating in a defiant cadre of young stern faced acolytes holding a graveside vigil, determined eyes set on continuing the struggle.

As a consequence, Christina Gerhardt writing in the Film Quarterly describes the movie thus: ‘During its 150 minutes, the film achieves action film momentum, bombs exploding, bullets spraying and glass shattering’. While Christopher Hitchens commenting in Vanity Fair refers to the movie’s ‘Uneasy relationship between sexuality and cruelty . . . an almost neurotic need to oppose authority’. A theme implied by Michael Bubach, son of Siegfried Bubach, the former Chief Federal prosecutor assassinated by the Red Army Faction in 1977, who’s summation of the feature pointed to the fact that the film ‘concentrates almost exclusively on portraying the perpetrators, which carries the danger that the viewer will identify too strongly with the protagonists’.

Examples of how this claim can be justified are so numerous that they would prove tedious to list. However, two personifications, beyond the central characters, stand out in particular, the first involving a chase sequence where Petra Schelm, portrayed by the beautiful Alexandra Maria Lara, is cornered and dies defiantly in a shoot-out with a horde of drone-like cops. The second is the murderous Brigitte Mohnhaupt, depicted by the stunning Naja Uhl, who is shown bedding Peter-Jurgen Boock, played by the teenage heart-throb actor Vinzenz Kiefer, before cold bloodedly slaughtering Siegried Bubach in his own home, organizing the ‘hit’ on Jurgen Ponto, Chairman of the Dresdner Bank of Directors, and the kidnap and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer. Mohnhaupt, the leader of the second generation of the urban guerillas was also implicated in the 1981 attempt to kill NATO General Frederick Kroesen with a PRG-7 anti-tank missile. In fact, just the sort of unrepentant femme fatale we meet in her polar-opposite, the rightist Francesca Mambro in A Student Named Alexander, but who is treated in the diametrically opposite way.

In Enzo De Camillis’s 15 minute silver ribbon winning short, shown at the Roma Film Fest and lauded for its journalistic quality, the much maligned Mambro is portrayed by Valentina Carnelutti (8), who at least partially resembles Mambro. De Camillis, a blood relative of the Alexander in question, (so no conflict of interest there?) indicated his intent in making the movie was to ‘show young people what they do not know, to reflect on a period of history that should not be repeated’. So, following a showing at The House of Cinema to an audience of impressionable students, a discussion is initiated, moderated by Santo Della Volpe (9), who declares at the outset, that ‘The goal of the short is not to re-open old wounds or discussions on the years of lead (10), but to bring to light the issue of the victims that are set aside, of which we no longer speak’.

Really? Well, that is somewhat convenient given the long list of crimes committed by the Italian Brigate Rosse during the period in question. The most notorious being the ambush at Via Fani on the 16th March 1978 and the kidnap and murder of the President of the Christian Democrats, Aldo Moro. But it should also be remembered, especially given the context of De Camillis’s film, that the Left also killed activists from the right wing Italian Social Movement (MSI) and the University National Action group, like Miki Mantakas, murdered in Via Ottaviano in Rome in 1975, and Stephan and Virgilio Mattei, the sons of the MSI party District Secretary for Prati.

It is also a disingenuous claim given the vociferous presence of the Association of Families of victims of the massacre at Bologna train station of 2nd August 1980, whose demands echo down the decades through documentaries and dramas. The latter being the main event used to demonize Mambro and her then lover, now husband, Valerio Fioravanti (11). Although, they have long denied involvement in the Bologna attack, though freely admitting, like their Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Nuclei) NAR accomplices to other political killings, such as, the assassination of Judge Vittorio Occorsio (12) in 1976 and Magistrate Mario Amato (13) in 1980.

Fioravanti maintains that the bombing was the work of Libya, but the Italian government were reluctant to pursue that line of enquiry because of the state’s dependence on Libya’s oil and blamed neo-fascists instead. Mambro and Fioravanti also confessed to planning an attack on the then Prime Minister Francesco Cossiga (14), so one can hardly accuse them of hiding their intentions. When the initial 16 year prison term for Mambro was converted into house arrest in 1998, the Bologna Association’s President Paolo Bolognesi, described Mambro’s parole as ‘A disgrace. It is outrageous that this parole was granted to a terrorist who does not have the requirements, who was sentenced and has never expressed any feelings of detachment from her past’. This, despite the fact that the NAR, never claimed responsibility for the incident and there is substantive cause to believe that the Mafia Banda della Magliana gang (15) and prominent politician Licio Gelli’s (16) secretive Masonic Propaganda Due P2 Lodge (17) linked to the NATO’s Cold-War Operation Gladio architecture (18) had a hand in the incident.

The prosecution’s main witness against Mambro’s partner Fioravanti, Massimo Sparti, of the banda della Magliana, was even contradicted by his own son. ‘My father has lied about his part in the Bologna history’, he declared. Similarly the sinister presence of German terrorists Thomas Kram and Margot Frohlich, closely linked to both the PLO and Carlos the Jackal, who were in Bologna that very same day was never properly investigated. Coincidences like this and the possible link to the Ustica Massacre (19), when Aerolinea Itavia flight 870 was brought down by a missile, gave President Francesco Cossiga pause for thought, leading him to state on the 15th March 1991 that he felt the attribution of the Bologna Massacre to fascist activists may be based on misinformation supplied by the security services.

Returning to A Student named Alexander, unlike the Baader Meinhof Complex, the detail is nearly entirely on the victim, showing his cluttered bedroom, his journey by car to the art school in Piazza Risorgimento. No context is provided as to why Mambro and the NAR are robbing the Banca Nazionale on the 5th March 1982. Neither is reference made to the murder of her fellow MSI activists Franco Bigonzetti and Francesco Ciavatta, gunned down in the Acca Larentia by Left extremists, the Armed Squads for Contropotere Territorial, despite the fact that this led Mambro and her cohort to confront both their political opponents and the police in three days of shootings, stabbings and torching cars across Prenestino:

‘A few of us knew what this meant. Francesco Ciavatta was in our small circle. Our immediate reaction was shock, as if a relative had died. We looked at each other not knowing what to do. All around the city young militants flocked to us. The Italian Social Movement did not react. Kids like us were being used to keep order at meetings of Giorgi Almirante (20) , ready to take the blows and hit back . . . Acca Larentia marked the final break with the MSI . . . It could no longer be our home. For three days we shot at police and this marked the point of no return . . .’ — Francesca Mambro

Even, the circumstances of Alexander’s death are disputed. The movie depicts Mambro standing over the boy, firing into his head execution style, apparently mistaking him and his small umbrella for an armed plain clothes policeman. The counter argument is that he was killed in cross-fire as the NAR broke out of a police encirclement. A shoot out in which Mambro did not have in her possession the gun that was identified as the murder weapon and was herself very seriously wounded in the abdomen. She later recalls, hiding out in a garage, where a young doctor visits her and confirms ‘that it is only a matter of time . . . saying I could die . . .’

A discussion followed as to whether or not her compatriots should kill her there and then because she may talk under anesthetic but instead the NAR cell, led by Giorgio Vale (21), who went on later to found Terza Posizione (22), deposited her on the roadside outside an Emergency room.

When Mambro’s Rome based lawyer Amber Giovene challenged the authenticity of the way Mambro is depicted in the movie, claiming it ‘harmed her image’ she was met with a barrage of criticism. The case, overseen by prosecutor Barbara Sargent, was opened three months after the film opened and came like a bolt from the blue to the self-righteous director and the cultural association School of Arts and Entertainment. People in Bologna were whipped up into a state of frenzy, signing a petition in support of the film, which had already received a letter of commendation from the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano. Expressions like censorship and statements like ‘You cannot stop a cultural work, you cannot stop history’, were bandied around with the usual air of moral indignation.

The 2013 Appeal notes relating to the accusation of defamation of Mambro’s character read: due to the benefit of the law, Francesca Mambro, who has never repented of her criminal and terrorist past, nor as ever wanted to work together to build the truth about serious events like the Bologna Massacre, will remain free. The request for the seizure of the short film is extremely serious because it sets a precedent on the freedom of cultural expression, journalism and news, and also because it opens the door to dangerous revisions and attempts to wipe clean historical memory’. The account continues: ‘A country without memory will never understand the present or the future’.

The double standards and contradictions exemplified in the differing responses to A Student Called Alexander and The Baader Meinhof Complex cannot be more stark. Memorialization of such actions are to be glamorized and mythologized if of the Left and censored and misrepresented if of the Right. The word revision is of itself loaded, implying an attempt to challenge supposedly known historical facts and is a term usually reserved for historians deviating from the legend of the Jewish Holocaust. Indeed, it seems that anything that transgresses the Left’s self-serving narrative is to be expunged, cast down the Orwellian memory hole, or twisted beyond all recognition.

Roberto Natale, the auteur of such movie classics as Kill Baby Kill and Terror Creatures from the Grave, also reiterated before his recent demise, that ‘there is a right and duty to tell. Art strengthens the record and citizens need to know. We journalists are on the side of those who stubbornly continue to speak against the custom in our country to silence uncomfortable voices, instead of being willing to speak. This short film has to circulate and be seen in schools, but not only in Rome’.

So, is the movie meant to educate or perpetuate the questionable conviction of Mambro for that specific crime? Be re-assured De Camillis states:

I tell you a story, I do not give you a political speech. I want to get out of games of this type. The short film I made for a number of reasons that I think are important. It is a warning to our politicians. Right now, if you do not listen to the needs of young people, you risk terrorism, perhaps we have already. We remember the riots in San Giovanni in Rome in October (23), the bullets that came in envelopes and the letter bombs.

Then specifically commenting on the release of Francesca Mambro, but of course not being invested in any way, De Camillis adds:

I will not even enter into legal issues because one relies on the judgment of the judiciary already formulated in 1985. But a citizen reflecting on the penalties imposed on others for far less serious offenses fully expatiated are still in prison. Mambro was guilty of 97 murders and was sentenced to nine life sentences. Yet, she walks outside, lives 400 meters from my house, and I may happen across her path by accident. There is a whisper that this story has resurfaced because of my family bonding and friendship with Alexander . . . Who was Alexander Caravillani? He was a boy of 17, he ran with the times, had a girlfriend, and harbored all the fantasies of a 17-year-old. He was not political, nor left or right. He passed in front of the bank, was simply crossing the street, going to school when he was shot, his short umbrella tumbling from his jacket, leading Mambro to believe he was a plain clothes policeman. Then she came back and put a bullet in his head. For that, she was sentenced to life imprisonment.

This is a story, he insists once again, to preserve the history of the years of lead.

And if that is indeed the case, why not tell the story of one of the murdered MSI Youth Front members, Sergio Ramelli, 18; Francesco Cechin, 19; and Paolo Di Nella, 20, contemporaries of Alexander Caravillani and Mambro, who met their deaths by beating, shooting, and stabbings from Leftist brigands like the Autonomus Workers in the late ’70s and early ’80s? But of course, that will never happen. It does fit their agenda.

On February 11th 2012, De Camillis in direct contradiction to his supposed non-political stance is quoted, ‘Today, the city of Rome is right’, referring to the ‘post fascist’ Mayor Gianni Alemanno (24), MSI Youth Front veteran and graduate of Campo Hobbit (25), who was elected in April 2008 to the sound of Fascist-era songs and shouts of ‘Duce’. ‘Who are those who have called me to present the short film?’ asked Camillis, ‘They are Alemanno’s allies, Berlusconi’s Il Popolo della Liberta (26) . . . When it all came out I was in silence and I decided to just promote it, as I always do. But in the face of this attack, I mean to defend it at all costs. It is a ‘cultural action’ like opposition to gagging journalists. This is a way to silence not only the news but also the authorship of the image’.

There is clearly no intention of admitting even the possibility of bias or inaccuracy. De Camillis and his people are intent on staking their claim to the moral high ground. The following day, Mambro’s lawyer responded: ‘I write in the name and on behalf of the my client Francesca Mambro about the article published yesterday . . . I understand the presentation of the short film flatters the author. But I do not understand the claim that Mambro came back and shot him in the head. I do not know if Mr. De Camillis’s draws from insider sources? Caravillani, unfortunately died in the firefight because a bouncing bullet caused his immediate death. A bullet from an assault rifle that Mambro had never had in her possession, either as she entered the bank or as the NAR shot their way out. The scene is constructed in a way that will definitively condemn Mambro’. When Caravillani was struck, the judges concluded, it was because the young man, after he had run, suddenly found himself in the trajectory of shots fired between the various agents . . . Unfortunately, even the trailers of the short graphically depict Mambro in the disputed manner, astride a guy lying on the ground, shooting the coup de grace . . . I am sure, that in the name of the need to preserve the memory of the years of lead, both you and the newspaper for which he writes would give an account of this correction’. My personal advice is not to hold your breath for a retraction. Smear and distortion is their modus operandi.

Sentenced, for the killing of 9 individuals between May 1980 and March 1982, and the alleged involvement in the massacre of the Bologna bombing on 2nd August 1980, Mambro served 16 years in prison. Sometimes sharing a cell with Anna Laura Braghetti (27), of the Brigate Rosse, then after 1998 home detention until the 16th September 2008 when she was granted parole on the basis of ‘repeated and tireless dedication to reconciliation and peace with the victims’ families (28). Parole was ended on September 16th 2013 when the sentence was disposed of . . .’

So to end has I began with a quote from a French man of letters, Alexandre Dumas (29), author of The Three Musketeers, ‘she is purely animal; she is the babooness of the Land of Nod; she is the female of Cain: Slay her!’ Or at least besmirch her reputation and disparage her cause so that no one will want to emulate her.

Notes

  1. Along with Edgar Allan Poe, Baudelaire identified counter enlightenment philosopher Joseph de Maistre as his maître a penser and adopted aristocratic views. He argued ‘There are but three things worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create . . .’
  2. Auguste Clesinger (1814-1883), French sculptor who created Bacchante, the Infant Hercules Strangling Snakes, Nereid, and Sappho, was an Officier de la Legion d’honneur.
  3. Rudi Dutschke (1940-1979), disciple of Rosa Luxemburg and critical Marxist, survived Josef Bachmann’s attack, but drowned as consequence of having an epileptic fit in the bath.
  4. Holger Meins, seized with Baader and Jan Carle-Raspe on the 1st June 1972, went on hunger strike, dying a mere 39kg in weight. He is a central character in the movie Moses und Aron by Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet (1974). Followed by a documentary about Meins called Starbuck — Holger Meins by Gerd Conradt (2002).
  5. Bobby Sands (1954-81), a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) died whilst on hunger strike in HM Maze Prison. During the course of his protest he was elected to the British Parliament as an Anti-H Block candidate. He has been depicted in various films including Some Mother’s Son (1996) and Hunger (2008) and is celebrated in songs like Christy Moore’s The People’s Own MP’.
  6. Stammheim is a high security prison in Stuttgart.
  7. Four militants of the Commando Martyr Halime hijacked Lufthansa flight 181 on the 13th October 1977. The plane was stormed in Somalia by GSG-9 elite counter-terrorism units in an operation code-named Feuerzauber (Fire Magic).
  8. Valentina Carnelutti was trained at the Theatre Active in Rome and the Mime Theatre Movement. She has also appeared in the movies Martina Singapore (1995), Ridley Scott’s Hannibal (2001) and The Best of Youth (2003).
  9. Santo Della Volpe is a professional journalist who covered the first Gulf War and is a managing editor on Italy’s TG3.
  10. The term “Years of Lead” was used to describe the socio-political turmoil in Italy between the 1960s to the 1980s. It is thought that the reference originated from a movie called Marianne and Julianne by Margarethe Von Trotta. The Italian title was Anni di Piombo, literally years of lead. A later linked feature called The German Sisters (1981) became a classic of new German cinema, sympathetic to Gudrun Ensslin and dedicated to women’s civil rights.
  11. Born in 1958, Giuseppe Valerio ‘Giusva’ Fioravanti, was a former child actor, who became a leader in the NAR and has been romantically linked with Mambro since 1979. While serving his prison sentence he made a documentary on Rome’s Rebibbia prison, Piccoli Ergastoli, Little Life Sentences (1997).
  12. Occorsio Vittorio (1929-1976) oversaw the trial of those indicted for the Piazza Fontana bombing.
  13. Maria Amato was an Italian magistrate assassinated by NAR member Gilberto Cavallini in 1980.
  14. Francesco Cossiga, Italy’s 42nd Prime Minister and 8th President between 1985-1992.
  15. The Banda della Magliana was a criminal network operating out of Lazio, named after the district from where most of their leaders originated. Their activities included the murder of the banker Roberto Calvi, the kidnapping of Emanuela Orlandi and the attack on John-Paul II.
  16. Licio Gelli, an Italian financier, heavily involved in the Banco Ambrosiano scandal and the venerable master of the P2 Lodge.
  17. The Propaganda Due (P2) Lodge was under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Italy implicated in numerous crimes and mysteries, often referred to as a ‘state within the state’.
  18. Operation Gladio was the code-name for NATO’s ‘stay behind’ activity should the Warsaw Pact mount an invasion of western Europe. The name Gladio came from the word gladius, a type of short Roman sword.
  19. The Ustica Massacre is still a subject of some controversy. Whether or not a French naval aircraft brought the plane down with a missile, or a bomb was set off in the toilet as evidenced by forensic experts, it is known that the Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi was in the same airspace at the time. Linking the Ustica and Bologna incidents became common in some conspiracy circles.
  20. Giorgio Almirante (1914-1988) studied under Giovanni Gentile, the eminent pro-Fascist philosopher and wrote for the Rome-based fascist journal Il Tevere. He once described Julius Evola as ‘Our Marcuse, only better’. Almirante was suspected of safe-housing Carlo Cicuttini, a MSI leader in the Monfalcone area and later a member of the Ordine Nuovo, a suspect convicted in absentia for his part in the Peteano di Sagrado killings. Almirante and his rival Pino Rauti often clashed bitterly on the tactics and methodology used by the Italian Right.
  21. Giorgi Vale was killed in a shoot-out with police.
  22. The Terza Posizione emerged from the national student’s movement under Roberto Nistri, who was imprisoned from 1982 to the early 2000s.
  23. The San Giovanni Riots of the 15th October were violent street protests by Black Bloc Left extremists.
  24. Gianni Alemanno was born in Bari in 1958. He is a former secretary of the MSI’s Youth Wing, who entered the Chamber of Deputies representing Lazio, serving as Rome’s 63rd Mayor between 2008-2013 and a Minister of Agriculture under Silvio Berlusconi. He is married to Isabella Rauti, the daughter of Pino Rauti.
  25. Campo Hobbit was named after Catholic writer J. R. R. Tolkien’s first novel. It was an alternative cultural and musical ‘happening’ linked to Elemire Zolla who wrote The Arcana of Power 1960-2000. Held in various locations, the first in Montesarchio, it boasted its own Manifesto and became a ‘field school’ for the Italian New Right and thinkers like Pino Rauti and Marco Tarchi.
  26. Berlusconi’s Il Poplo della Liberta was closely aligned with Gianfranco Fini’s conservative National Alliance and Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord.
  27. Anna Laura Braghetti owned the apartment where Aldo Moro was imprisoned. She is also the subject of her own book Prisoner which influenced Marco Bellocchio’s film Good Morning, Night (2003).
  28. Mambro currently works for the Italian NGO Hands off Cain, an association campaigning against the death penalty linked to the Libertarian Radical Party.
  29. Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870). It was said of Dumas, that his ‘tongue was like a windmill — once set in motion, you never knew when it would stop, especially if the theme was himself’ — Watts Phillips, English illustrator, playwright and novelist.

 

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Solère, Fenek. “Sisters of Salome: Femmes Fatales, Left & Right.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 7 May 2015. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/05/sisters-of-salome/ >.

 

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Practices of Ethnic Separatism – Tudor

Practices of Separatism

(Excerpt from “The Philosophy of Identity”)

By Lucian Tudor

 

Introductory Note: The following text is an excerpt from a larger essay titled “The Philosophy of Identity: Ethnicity, Culture, and Race in Identitarian Thought.” While this discussion of types of separatism can stand on its own, we believe it is important for readers to have some awareness of the context in order to not have misunderstandings. In earlier parts of “The Philosophy of Identity,” Lucian Tudor discussed the forms and importance of ethno-cultural identity, the necessity of having ethno-cultural groups live in distinct areas in order to maintain their cultural integrity and traditionality (thus rejecting “multiculturalism” and the “melting pot”), and why doing so is not in and of itself “racist” or “xenophobic.”

It is important to realize, in this regard, that the term “separatism” here is used in a very general sense, referring to any form of systematic or structural separation of ethnic and racial groups. It does not necessarily imply any form cultural or ethnic isolationism, for Tudor had already discussed the importance of inter-cultural dialogue and contact, and we can add to that also that foreigners visiting one’s country and having areas of inter-ethnic contact are acceptable as well. What really counts in the case of separatism is that there is no massive mixing which will threaten the existence of distinct ethno-cultural groups, that the various ethno-cultural groups have their own territory to exist in – which is the exact opposite of the Western-style multicultural system.

Finally, we can say that Tudor’s discussion of types of separatism is useful in understanding why the New Right rejects old-fashioned nationalism in favor of the imperial or federalistic model of separatism. While nationalists claim that their model is the only valid way to maintain ethno-cultural integrity, there have been many successful examples of the imperial-federalist model throughout history where multiple ethnic groups lived in the same country in relative harmony or were able to cooperate. Even in the present day, one can see successful examples of multi-ethnic states using the ethno-federalist or ethno-regionalist (also communitarian in many localities) structure in Switzerland, Kazakhstan, Russia, and China. – Daniel Macek (Editor of the “New European Conservative”)

***

1. The Class and Caste System

Evidently, racial and ethnic separatism has taken on a variety of forms throughout history. The first and commonly recognized form of separatism is the creation of a class or caste system, where a social order composed of multiple races or ethnic groups separates the population into different classes or castes. Belonging to a class or caste is determined in such societies by racial, ethnic, or cultural background. Class systems based only on ethnocultural background can be seen frequently in history wherever one people conquers others, although of course it should not be assumed here that conquest necessarily results in a hierarchical class system.

A class or caste structure of racial separation, likewise being typically the result of conquest, can be seen in Greco-Roman civilization, in certain ancient Near Eastern civilizations (such as Egypt or Persia), and in many parts of Central and South America after European colonization. Similar systems have also been developed in apartheid states during and after the Colonial Era. [38] Such class or caste systems are often seen as being essentially negative because they involve domination and the subjugation of one or more races by another. However, they also had the positive effect of preserving the racial types which have formed, even after miscegenation (the new, mixed racial types; mulattos and mestizos), due to the fact that they discouraged race mixing by class separation.

It should also be mentioned here that another very well-known example of a caste system which included racial separation into its principles is the one established in ancient India. However, in the case of India, it is interesting to note that Alain Daniélou has argued that its caste system cannot be seen as “racist” (involving unfair subjugation), but rather that it is a natural and just racial ordering; thus the racial aspect of the Indian caste system is not racist because, unlike racist systems, it is not based on subjugation and supremacism but on a harmonious and organized coexistence which involves separation.[39]

2. Nationalism

Another form of separatism is what is commonly recognized as ethnic “nationalism,” which has its primary basis in ethnocultural identity, although it is often accompanied by racial identity where interracial contact exists. Nationalism is defined, in the most simple terms, as the belief that ethnic groups or nationalities (in the cultural sense) are the key category of human beings and that they should live under their own independent states. It implies complete and total separation of ethnic groups into separate nations. Nationalism is often associated with ethnic chauvinism, inter-ethnic hostility, imperialism, and irredentism, although it is important to remember that there have been certain select forms of nationalism throughout history that were not at all chauvinistic and imperialistic, so it is erroneous to assume that it always takes on these negative features.

Concerning the issue of “ethno-nationalism,” one must be careful to distinguish between “racial nationalism,” on the one hand, and actual ethnic nationalism, in which race plays a role but in which it is not the primary element. For some theories of racial nationalism, the biological race is seen as the foundation of the nation, and any ethnocultural factors are regarded as being mere emanations of the race or as being secondary and unimportant when compared with the racial factor (thus it commits the biological reductionist or determinist error; more specifically, it can be said to be racial reductionist). [40] Ethnic nationalism in the proper sense, on the other hand, regards the ethnocultural factor as primary, but still acknowledges that the ethnic group’s identity is linked to race to some extent, and that thus the racial type must be maintained if the ethnos is to survive.[41]

However, we should note that “nationalism” is a problematic term because it has been defined in different and sometimes contradictory ways. In one, very generic sense, nationalism means simply the desire of a people to live separately from others, under its own state and by rule of leaders of its own ethnic background—in essence, a basic ethnic separatism and desire for independence. In this sense, nationalism is a very ancient idea and practice, since all across history one can find many cases where a people of one particular ethnic background desired to be independent from the rule of another different people and fought for this independence.

This is not, however, the way nationalism is always defined, and aside from the fact that it is sometimes defined as being necessarily chauvinistic, it is also often defined in a certain manner that makes it particularly an early modern phenomenon.

In particular, many Identitarian (or New Right) as well as Traditionalist authors have defined nationalism as a form of state in which the “nation” is politically or culturally absolutized, at the expense of smaller local or regional cultural differences, and regarding other nations as completely foreign and of lesser value. This form of “nationalism” is exemplified by the Jacobin nation-state and form of sovereignty (since the French Revolution was a key force in initiating the rise of this state form), and is identified by the elimination of sub-ethnic differences within its borders and the regard for differences with other peoples or nationalities as absolute. Naturally, this form of nationalism has the consequence of creating hostility and conflict between nations because of these ideological and political features. [42] Thus, Benoist, in a statement which summarizes the Identitarian position on this matter, rejects nationalism and proposes in its place a view which reconciles patriotism with the idea of a right to difference: “The identity of others is no longer in principle a threat to mine. I am ready to defend my identity because this defense is a general principle, whose legitimacy I also recognize for others. In other words, if I defend my ‘tribe,’ it is also because I am ready to defend those of others.” [43]

3. Traditionalist Imperial Federalism

The Perennial Traditionalists propose a form of ethnic separatism based on the model of the traditional imperial state, which has manifested itself numerous times across history, including well-known examples such as the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Russian Empire. In the imperial system, peoples and ethnic groups (“nationalities”) are generally organized in a federation in which each people lives in its own region within the empire. The traditional empire is therefore incompatible with nationalism because it is organized as a supranational federalistic union with a central spiritual authority.

Furthermore, the empire in the traditional sense must not be assumed to be imperialistic, for the traditional empire unified peoples without destroying their particular cultures and ethnic characters. [44] According to Evola,

The scheme of an empire in a true and organic sense (which must clearly be distinguished from every imperialism, a phenomenon that should be regarded as a deplorable extension of nationalism) . . . safeguarded the principles of both unity and multiplicity. In this world, individual States have the character of partial organic units, gravitating around . . . a principle of unity, authority, and sovereignty of a different nature from that which is proper to each particular State . . . due to its super-ordained nature, would be such as to leave wide room for nationalities according to their natural and historical individuality. [45]

In the imperial state, which Evola asserts is the true traditional model of the state, ethnic or national groups are thus separated federally; different peoples live under the same state and serve the same ultimate monarchical authority, but they live in separate parts of the kingdom or empire. To quote one of his key works: “The Middle Ages [and also certain ancient civilizations] knew nationalities but not nationalisms. Nationality is a natural factor that encompasses a certain group of common elementary characteristics that are retained both in the hierarchical differentiation and in the hierarchical participation, which they do not oppose.” [46]

It is worth noting that many Perennial Traditionalist authors such as Julius Evola and Frithjof Schuon reject nationalism as an anomaly—a deviation from valid state forms—not only because they are proponents of the imperial model, but also because they regard ethnicity and race (in the biological sense) as secondary qualities in human beings. [47] That is to say, although they are still acknowledged as having some level of importance, they are insignificant when compared to the values of religious type, elitism, aristocracy, or caste (in its spiritual sense; the racial aspect is still acknowledged but regarded as secondary). Furthermore, Evola has argued that “the notions of nation, fatherland, and people, despite their romantic and idealistic halo, essentially belong to the naturalistic and biological plane and not the political one; they lead back to the ‘maternal’ and physical dimension of a given collectivity.” [48]

However, it should be noted here that many ethnically and racially conscious authors have argued that some conservative scholars have pointed out that race, nationality, and people were regarded in many ancient and traditional societies as possessing a character which surpassed the material plane. According to the studies of conservative scholars of religion such as Mircea Eliade, the religious view of archaic and traditional societies often endowed ethnicity and culture with a spiritual (in the religious sense), mythical, and transcendent dimension. [49] Thus, the traditional view in general cannot be confined to that of well-known Traditionalists such as Evola, Guénon, or Schuon.

4. Identitarian Separatism

The New Right and the Identitarian movement is influenced by Perennial Traditionalist thought, especially in regards to the idea of empire in the traditional sense; Identitarians, for the most part, also support the idea of a federalist empire as their primary model of the state and of ethnic separatism. However, there are a number of key differences between the two groups. First, Identitarians naturally regard the depreciation of ethnic identity by certain Traditionalists such as Evola to be an error. Identitarianism regards ethnic, racial, and cultural identity to be an important part of human existence, not only on the material plane (which is not as demeaned by them to the extent we see among Traditionalists), but also—in accord with Eliade and other conservative religious scholars—on the mythical and spiritual plane.[50]

Of course, there are various other philosophical issues on which there are disagreements—particularly in regards to religious doctrine, the structure and form of polity, and the importance of feminine values—but this is no place to discuss those in depth. [51] The most important point of disagreement which we must recognize here is with the particular construction of the imperial federalist state, which becomes evident when we look at the details of the Identitarian ideal in this regard.

The concept of federalism in Identitarian thought proposes the idea of a federation or confederation which is based upon the principle of subsidiarity, whereby decision-making power is granted to the lowest authorities. In this system, local and regional political structures hold the power that is due to them, while the central authority rules primarily when decisions affecting the whole state must be made. This form of state and sovereignty “implies plurality, autonomy, and the interlacing of levels of power and authority.” [52] Of course, the Traditionalist concept of the empire also involves the practices of subsidiarity and allowing decisions to be made at lower levels. However, for Traditionalists, subsidiarity is more limited in practice, and their concept of sovereignty leads them to assert the importance of the ultimate authority of the sovereign (the central ruler) far more.

The Identitarian conception of the federal state is accompanied by the juridical element of the “right of the peoples.” Hence the fact that, according to this conception, ethnocultural groups of all levels and types have the right to live with freedom and separately from others in different states and territories in the federation. Thus, while the traditional imperial state is used as a reference for the ideal political organization of peoples, in this scheme it is also accepted that “each nation or region, in conserving its freedom, has the right to leave the Federation at any moment.” [53] Furthermore, the Identitarian vision of the empire can also be said to be a “democratic empire” because it involves practicing what is known as organic democracy.

Notes:

[38] On the matter of historical examples, see Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity and Elav-Feldon, Isaac, and Ziegler, The Origins of Racism in the West. On the race-based caste and class systems in Central and South America, one classic mainstream resource is Magnus Mörner, Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).

[39] See Alain Daniélou, India: A Civilization of Differences. The Ancient Tradition of Universal Tolerance (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2003). On race in the Indian caste system, see also the preface to Arvind Sharma, Classical Hindu Thought: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

[40] See, for example, the commentaries on race and biological breed in William Gayley Simpson, Which Way Western Man? (Costa Mesa, CA: Noontide Press, 1986).

[41] For a commentary on this matter, see for example Tomislav Sunic, “Culture: The Missing Link in Euro-American Nationalism,” The Occidental Observer, July 20, 2009, http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2009/07/sunic-euro-american-nationalism/.

[42] See Alain de Benoist, “Nationalism: Phenomenology and Critique,” Counter-Currents Publishing, May 16, 2012, http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/nationalism-phenomenology-and-critique; Michael O’Meara, New Culture, New Right, 228ff.; Edgar Julius Jung, “People, Race, Reich,” in Europa: German Conservative Foreign Policy 1870–1940, ed. and trans. Alexander Jacob (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2002). See also the overview of Evola’s position in the chapter “Nations, Nationalism, Empire and Europe” in Paul Furlong, Social and Political Thought of Julius Evola (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2011).

[43] Benoist, “Nationalism.”

[44] See Alain de Benoist, “The Idea of Empire,” Telos, no. 98–99 (December 1993): 81–98.

[45] Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2002), 277.

[46] Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, 338–39.

[47] See Frithjof Schuon, Castes and Races (Bedfont, Middlesex, UK: Perennial Books, 1982).

[48] Evola, Men Among the Ruins, 127.

[49] See for example Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 1987); The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); Myth and Reality (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1998). Other scholars who could be mentioned in this regard are Georges Dumézil, Rudolf Otto, Gilbert Durand, and Alexander Dugin.

[50] See for example Alain de Benoist, On Being a Pagan (Atlanta: Ultra, 2004), and the entry “Paganism” in Faye, Why We Fight, 205ff. Of course, it should be noted here that not all Identitarians are pagans; there are, in fact, many Christians with similar views among the Identitarians. Furthermore, many Identitarians recognize that Christianity and paganism can in fact be reconciled; they are not necessarily in complete conflict. These facts have been pointed out, for example, in the discussion of the New Right’s position on religion in Rodrigo Agulló, Disidencia Perfecta: La Nueva Derecha y la batalla de las ideas (Barcelona and Madrid: Áltera, 2011). In this regard, we can also mention that there have been historical examples of pagan ideas and values being reconciled with Christianity, as has been shown in many scholars’ works, including Eliade’s.

[51] For an in-depth critique from the Identitarian perspective of Radical Traditionalist thought, specifically that of Julius Evola, see especially Alain de Benoist, “Julius Evola, Reaccionario Radical y Metafísico Comprometido: Análisis crítico de su pensamiento político,” Elementos: Revista de Metapolítica para una Civilización Europea, no. 16 (June 2011): 25ff. http://issuu.com/sebastianjlorenz/docs/elementos_n__16. In this analytical work, Benoist establishes that he agrees with some of Evola’s ideas, such as his critique of nationalism, the support of the imperial idea, the basic anti-egalitarian idea, and certain ethical principles. However, Benoist also criticizes and rejects a number of other ideas and attitudes in Evola’s thought, including many (although not all) of his metaphysical and religious principles, his rigid elitism, his contempt for social and popular principles, his rejection of the value of collective identities (such as ethnicity), his lack of true organicism and rejection of the value of community solidarity (in the anti-individualist sense), and his hostility to feminine values. (Benoist, like other Identitarians, advocates a gender differentialism, as opposed to Evola’s position, which can truly be described as sexist.) Benoist acknowledges Evola as an intellectual worthy of study, but emphasizes that his thought must be examined critically.

[52] Alain de Benoist, “What is Sovereignty?,” Telos, no. 116 (Summer 1999): 114. Benoist has also explicated his views on these matters in “The Idea of Empire” and “The First Federalist: Johannes Althusius,” Telos, no. 118 (Winter 2000): 25–58. Other notable studies of sovereignty and federalism from the Identitarian perspective can be found in the following works: the entries “Empire” and “Sovereignty” in Faye, Why We Fight, 130–32 and 247; the chapter “Imperium” in O’Meara, New Culture, New Right; the articles in Sebastian J. Lorenz, ed., Elementos: Revista de Metapolítica para una Civilización Europea, no. 37, “Federalismo Poliárquico Neoalthusiano” (November 2012). http://issuu.com/sebastianjlorenz/docs/elementos_n__37_federalismo.

[53] Faye, Why We Fight, 131.

 

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Excerpt from: Tudor, Lucian. “The Philosophy of Identity: Ethnicity, Culture, and Race in Identitarian Thought.” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Fall 2014), pp. 99-106. This essay was also republished in Lucian Tudor’s book, From the German Conservative Revolution to the New Right: A Collection of Essays on Identitarian Philosophy (Santiago, Chile: Círculo de Investigaciones PanCriollistas, 2015).

See also: The other excerpts from Lucian Tudor’s essay titled “Identity and Politics: Organic Democracy” and “The Vision of a Multipolar World.”

 

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Critical Analysis of Evola’s Thought – Benoist

“Julius Evola, Radical Reactionary and Committed Metaphysician” by Alain de Benoist (PDF – 366 KB):

Julius Evola, Radical Reactionary and Committed Metaphysician

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De Benoist, Alain. “Julius Evola, Radical Reactionary and Committed Metaphysician: A Critical Analysis of the Political Thought of Julius Evola.” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring 2015), pp. 17-62. Document retrieved from: <http://files.alaindebenoist.com/alaindebenoist/pdf/julius_evola_radical_reactionary.pdf >.

 

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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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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 >.

 

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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/ >.

 

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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.

 

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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 >.

 

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