Identity & Difference – Benoist

Identity and Difference

By Alain de Benoist

Translated from the Spanish by Lucian Tudor

 

* This was translated into English from the Spanish version titled “Identidad y Diferencia,” published in the digital journal Elementos: Revista de Metapolítica para una Civilización Europea, No. 47 (May 2013): 3-10. The Spanish text was the translation and combination of the original French articles titled “Le droit à la différence” and “Qu’est-ce que l’identité? Réflexions sur un concept-clef,” published in Eléments, No. 77 (April 1993): 24-25 & 44-47. The translator wishes to thank Daniel Macek for reviewing the translation and Alain de Benoist for approving of the translation.

Difference

The debate about immigration has raised in a sharp manner the questions of the right to difference, the future of the mode of community life, of the diversity of human cultures and of social and political pluralism. Questions of such importance cannot be treated with brief slogans or prefabricated responses. “Let us, therefore, oppose exclusion and integration,” writes Alain Touraine. “The first is as absurd as it is scandalous, but the second has taken two forms that need to be distinguished and between them there must be searched for, at least, a complementarity. Speaking of integration only to tell the new arrivals that they have to take their position in society as such and what it was before their arrival, that is much closer to exclusion than of a true integration.”[1]

The communitarian tendency began to affirm itself in the early eighties, in liaison with certainly confusing ideological propositions about the notion of “multicultural society.” Later it seemed to be remitted due to critiques directed against it on behalf of liberal individualism and “republican” universalism: the relative abandonment of the theme of difference, considered as “dangerous,” the denunciation of communities, invariably presented as “ghettos” or “prisons,” the over-valuation of individual problems to the detriment of the groups, the return of a form of purely egalitarian anti-racism, etc. The logic of capitalism, which, to extend itself, needs to make organic social structures and traditional mentalities disappear, has also had weight in that sense. The leader of immigrant minorities, Harlem Désir, sometimes accused of having inclined towards “differentialism,”[2] has been able to boast of having “promoted the sharing of common values and not the identitarian tribalism, the republican integration around universal principles and not the construction of community lobbies.”[3]

All the critique of the mode of community life is reduced, in fact, to the belief that difference obstructs inter-human understanding and, therefore, integration. The logical conclusion of that approach is that integration will remain facilitated with the suppression of communities and the erosion of differences. This deduction is based on two assumptions:

• (1) The more “equal” are the individuals who compose a society, the more they will “resemble” each other and the less problematic their integration will be;
• (2) Xenophobia and racism are the result of the fear of the Other. Consequently, to make otherness disappear or to persuade each one that the Other is a small thing if compared with the Same, it will result in its attenuation and even its nullification.

Both assumptions are erroneous. Without doubt, in the past racism has been able to function as an ideology that legitimized a complex — colonial, for example — of domination and of exploitation. But in modern societies, racism appears rather as a pathological product of the egalitarian ideal; that is to say, as a door of obliged departure (“the only way to distinguish oneself”) in the bosom of a society that, adhering to egalitarian ideas, perceives all difference as unbearable or as abnormal: “The anti-racist discourse,” writes Jean-Pierre Dupuy in this respect, “considers as an evidence that the racist depreciation made of the other goes on par with a social organization that prioritizes beings based on the function of a criterion of value. […] [But] these presuppositions are exactly contrary to what we learn from the comparative study of human societies and of their history. The most favorable medium for mutual recognition is not the one which obeys the principle of equality, but rather that the one which obeys the principle of hierarchy. This thesis, which the works of Louis Dumont have illustrated in multiple ways, can only be comprehended with the precondition of not confusing hierarchy with inequality, but rather, on the contrary, by opposing both concepts. […] In a true hierarchical society, the hierarchically superior element does not dominate the inferior elements, but is different from them in the same sense in which all the parties are encompassed, or in the sense in which one party takes precedence over another in the constitution and in the internal coherence of the whole.”[4]

Jean-Pierre Dupuy also notes that xenophobia is not defined solely by fear of the Other, but, perhaps even more, by fear of the Same: “What people are afraid of is the indifferentiation, and this because indifferentiation is always the sign and product of social disintegration. Why? Because the unity of the whole presupposes its differentiation, that is to say, its hierarchical conformation. Equality, that principle that denies differences, is the cause of mutual fear. People are afraid of the Same, and there is the source of racism.”[5]

The fear of the Same raises mimetic rivalries without end, and egalitarianism is, in modern societies, the motor of those rivalries in which each seeks to become “more equal” than the others. But, at the same time, the fear of the Other is added to the fear of the Same, producing a game of mirrors which prolongs itself to infinity. Thus, it can be said that the xenophobic ones are just as allergic to the other identity of the immigrants (real or imagined otherness) as, conversely, to how much in these is not different, and that xenophobia is experienced as a potential threat of indifferentiation. In other words, the immigrant is considered a threat at the same time as an assimilable person and as a non-assimilable person. The Other is thus converted into a danger to the extent that it is a carrier of the Same, while the Same is a danger to the extent that it pushes the recognition of the Other. And this game of mirrors works all the more as how much atomized the society is, composed of increasingly isolated individuals and, therefore, increasingly vulnerable to all conditions.

Thus one can better understand the failure of an “anti-racism” that, in the best of cases, does not accept the Other more than to reduce it to the Same. As much as it erodes the differences with the hope of facilitating integration, the more it in reality makes it impossible. The more it thinks to battle against exclusion by desiring to make immigrants uprooted individuals “like everyone else,” the more it contributes to the advent of a society where mimetic rivalry culminates in exclusion and generalized dehumanization. And finally, the more the “anti-racism” is believed in, the more it appears like a racism classically defined as the negation or radical devaluation of group identity, a racism that has always opposed the preeminence of a single obligatory norm, judged explicitly or implicitly as “superior” (and superior because it is “universal”) over the differentiated modes of life, whose mere existence seems incongruous or detestable.

This anti-racism, universalist and egalitarian (“individuo-universalist”), extends the secular trend that, under the most diverse forms and in the name of the most contradictory imperatives (the propagation of the “true faith,” the “superiority” of the White race, the global exportation of the myths of “progress” and “development”), has not stopped practicing the conversion seeking to reduce diversity everywhere, that is to say, precisely, trying to reduce the Other to the Same. “In the West,” observes the ethno-psychiatrist Tobie Nathan, “the Other no longer exists in our cultural schemas. Now we only consider the relation with the Other from the moral point of view, meaning, not only in an inefficient way, but also without procuring ourselves the means to understand it. The condition of our education system is that we are to think that the whole world is alike […]. To say ‘I must respect the other’ is something that makes no sense. In the everyday relation, this kind of phrase has no sense if we cannot integrate our schemes to the fact that naturally, the function of the Other is precisely to be Other. […] France is the most insane country for that. […] The structure of power in France seems unable to integrate even those small fluctuations which are the regional languages​​. But it is exactly from this conception of power from which humanistic theory was constructed, up to the universal Declaration of human rights.” And Nathan concludes: “Immigration is the real problem at the foundation of our society, which does not know to think of difference.”[6]

It is time, then, to recognize the Other and to remember that the right to difference is the principle that, as such, is only worth its generality (nobody can defend their difference except to the extent that they recognize, respect, and defend also the difference of the other) and whose place is in the broader context of the right of the peoples and of ethnic groups: The right to identity and to collective existence, the right to language, to culture, to territory and self-determination, the right to live and to work in their own country, the right to natural resources and to the protection of the market, etc.

The positive attitude will be, to reference the terms of Roland Breton, “that which, starting with the recognition of the right to difference, admits pluralism as a fact which is not only ancient, durable, and permanent, but also positive, fertile, and desirable. The attitude that resolutely turns its back to the totalitarian projects of the uniformization of humanity and of society, and which does not see in the different or deviant individual one who must be punished, nor as a sick one who must be cured, nor as an abnormal one who must be helped, but rather another self, simply provided with a set of physical traits or cultural habits, generators of sensibility, of tastes, and of aspirations of their own. On a planetary scale, it is tantamount to admitting, after the consolidation of certain sovereign hegemonies, the multiplication of independencies, but also of interdependencies. On the regional scale, it is tantamount to recognizing, against centralisms, the processes of autonomy, of self-centered organization, of self-management. […] The right to difference supposes the mutual respect of the groups and of the communities, and the exaltation of the values of each one. […]To say ‘long live the difference’ does not imply any idea of superiority, of domination and of contempt: the affirmation of oneself is not the lowering of the other. The recognition of the identity of an ethnicity can only subtract from others what they have unduly monopolized.”[7]

The affirmation of the right to be different is the only way to escape a double error: that error, very widespread in the Left, that consists of believing that “human brotherhood” will be realized on the ruins of differences, the erosion of cultures, and the homogenization of communities, and that other error, widespread in the Right, which consists of the belief that the “rebirth of the nation” will be achieved by inculcating in its members an attitude of rejection towards others.

Identity

The question of identity (national, cultural, etc.) also plays a central role in the debate about immigration. To begin, two observations must be made. The first is that there is much talk of the identity of the host population, but, in general, there is much less talk of the identity of the immigrants themselves, who nevertheless seem, by far, the most threatened by the fact of immigration itself. Indeed, the immigrants, insofar as they are the minority, directly suffer the pressure of the modes of behavior of the majority. Pulled to disappearance or, inversely, exacerbated in a provocative way, their identity only survives, frequently, in a negative (or reactive) manner by the hostility of the host environment, by capitalist over-exploitation exerted on certain workers uprooted from their natural structures of defense and protection.

The second observation is the following: It is striking to see how, in certain ways, the problem of identity is situated exclusively in relation with immigration. The immigrants would be the principal “threat,” if not the only one, that weighs on French identity. But that is tantamount to overlooking the numerous factors that in the whole world, both in the countries with a strong foreign labor as in those without it, are inducing a rapid disintegration of collective identities: the primacy of consumption, the Westernization of customs, the media homogenization, the generalization of the axiomatic of self-interest, etc.

With such a perception of things, it is too easy to fall into the temptation of scapegoating. But, certainly, it is not the fault of the immigrants that the French are apparently no longer capable of producing a way of life that is their own nor to offer to the world the spectacle of an original form of thought and of being. And nor is it the fault of the immigrants that the social bond is broken wherever liberal individualism is extended, that the dictatorship of the private has extinguished the public spaces that could constitute the crucible in which to renew an active citizenry, nor that individuals, submerged in the ideology of merchandise, turn away more and more from their own nature. It is not the fault of the immigrants that the French form a people increasingly less, that the nation has become a phantasm, that the economy has been globalized nor that individuals renounce being actors of their own existence to accept that there are others who decide in their place from norms and values that they no longer contribute to forming. It is not the immigrants, finally, who colonize the collective imagination and impose on the radio and on the television sounds, images, concerns, and models “which come from outside.” If there is “globalism,” we say too with clarity that, until proven otherwise, where it comes from is the other side of the Atlantic, and not the other side of the Mediterranean. And let us add that the small Arab shopkeeper contributes more to maintain, in a convivial way, the French identity than the Americanomorphic park of attractions or the “shopping center” of a very French capital.

The true causes of the disappearance of French identity are, in fact, the same that explain the erosion of all other identities: The exhaustion of the model of the nation-state, the collapse of all traditional institutions, the rupture of the civil contract, the crisis of representation, the mimetic adoption of the American model, etc. The obsession with consumption, the cult of material and financial “success,” the disappearance of the ideas of common good and of solidarity, the dissociation of the individual future and collective destiny, the development of technology, the momentum of the exportation of capital, the alienation of economic, industrial, and media independence, these have destroyed by themselves the “homogeneity” of our peoples infinitely more than what has been done up to today by some immigrants who, by the way, are not the last to suffer the consequences of this process. “Our ‘identity’,” emphasizes Claude Imbert, “remains much more affected by the collapse of civility, more altered by the international cultural arm of the communication media, more eliminated by the impoverishment of language and of concepts, more damaged overall by the degradation of a previously centralized, potent and normative State which founded among us that famous ‘identity’.”[8] In brief, if the French (and European) identity falls apart, it is before all due to a vast movement of techno-economic homogenization of the world, whose principal vector is the transnational or Americano-centric imperialism, and which generalizes everywhere the loss of sense, that is, a feeling of the absurdity of life which destroys organic ties, dissolves the natural sociality and each day makes people be more as strangers to one another.

From this point of view, immigration plays much more a revelatory role. It is the mirror that should permit us to take the full measure of the state of latent crisis in which we find ourselves, a state of crisis in which immigration is not the cause but rather a consequence among others. An identity feels more threatened when it is known how much more vulnerable, uncertain, and undone it is. That is why such an identity is in its depth no longer able to become capable of receiving a foreign contribution and include it within itself. In this sense, it is not that our identity is threatened because there have been immigrants among us, but rather that we are not capable of facing the problem of immigration because our identity is already largely undone. And that is why, in France, the problem of immigration is only discussed by surrendering to the twin errors of angelism or of exclusion.

Xenophobes and “cosmopolitans,” on the other hand, coincide in believing that there exists an inversely proportional relationship between the affirmation of national identity and the integration of immigrants. The first believe that the greater care or greater conscience of the national identity allows us to spontaneously rid ourselves of the immigrants. The second think that the best way to facilitate the insertion of the immigrants is to favor the dissolution of national identity. The conclusions are opposites, but the premise is identical. Both the one and the other are wrong. What hinders the integration of immigrants is not the affirmation of national identity but rather, on the contrary, its erasure. Immigration becomes a problem because the national identity is uncertain. And conversely, the difficulties linked to the reception and integration of recent arrivals can be resolved thanks to a newfound national identity.

Thus we see to what point it is senseless to believe that it will suffice to invert the migration flow to “get out of the decadence.” The decadence has other causes, and if there would be not one immigrant among us, due to that we would not stop finding ourselves confronted with the same difficulties, although this time without a scapegoat. The obscuration of the problem of immigration, making immigration responsible for everything that does not work, obliterates in the same strike many other causes and other responsibilities. In other words, it carries out a prodigious diversion of attention. It would be interesting to know for whose benefit.

But there must yet be more questioning of the notion of identity. Raising the question of French identity, for example, does not fundamentally consist of asking who is French (the response is relatively simple), but much more in asking what is French. Before this question, much more essential, the singers of the “national identity” are limited in general to responding with commemorative memories or evocations of “great personalities” they consider more or less founders (Clovis, Hugh Capet, the Crusaders, Charles Martel, or Joan of Arc), ingrained in the national imagination by a conventional historiography and devotion.[9] Now this little catechism of a species of religion of France (where the “eternal France,” always identical to itself, is found in all moments ready to confront the “barbarians,” such that what is French ends up defining itself, in the end, without a further positive characteristic of its non-inclusion in the alien universe) bears no relation to but rather is very far away from the true history of a people whose specific trait, in its depth, is the way it has always known to tackle its contradictions. In fact, the religion of France is today instrumentalized to restore a national continuity stripped of all contradiction in a Manichean view where globalization (the “anti-France”) is purely and simplistically interpreted as a “plot.” The historical references thus remain situated in an ahistorical perspective, an almost essentialist perspective that does not aspire so much to tell the story as to describe a “being” that will always be the Same, which will not be defined as any more than resistance to otherness or the rejection of the Other. The identity is thus inevitably limited to the identical, to the simple replica of the “eternal yesterday,” of a past glorified by idealization, an already built entity which only remains for us to conserve and transmit as a sacred substance. In parallel, the national sentiment itself remains detached from the historical context (the appearance of modernity) which had determined its birth. The history then becomes un-broken, when the truth is that there is no history possible without rupture. It is converted into a simple duration which permits exorcising the separation, when the truth is that the duration is, by definition, dissimilarity, the separation between one and oneself, the perpetual inclusion of new separations. In brief, the national catechism serves itself by the history to proclaim its closure, instead of finding in it a stimulus to let it continue.

But identity is never one-dimensional. It has not always only associated circles of multiple belonging, but combines factors of permanence and factors of change, endogenous mutations and external contributions. The identity of a people and of a nation is also not solely the sum of its history, of its customs and their dominant characteristics. As Philippe Forget wrote, “a country may appear, at first sight, as a set of characteristics determined by customs and habits, ethnic factors, geographical factors, linguistic factors, demographic factors, etc. However, those factors can apparently describe the image or social reality of a people, but not realize what the identity of a people is as an original and perennial presence. Consequently, the foundations of identity need to be thought of in terms of the openness of sense, and here is the sense which is nothing other than the constitutive bond of a man or of a population and its world.”[10]

This presence, which means the opening of a space and time, continues Phillipe Forget, “should not refer to a substantialist conception of identity, but rather a comprehension of being as a game of differentiation. This is not to apprehend identity an immutable and fixed content, liable to be encoded into a canon … Contrary to a conservative conception of tradition, which conceives it as a sum of immutable and trans-historical factors, tradition, or better, traditionality, should be here understood as a weft of differences which are renewed and regenerated in the soil of a patrimony consisting of an aggregate of past experiences, and which are put to test in their own surpassing. In that sense, the defense cannot and should not consist of the protection of forms of existence postulated as intangibles; they should better be addressed to protect the forces that permit a society to metamorphose itself proceeding from itself. The repetition of the identical of a place or the action of ‘living’ in according to the practice of another lead equally to the disappearance and to the extinction of collective identity.”[11]

As it occurs with culture, identity is also not an essence that can be fixed or reified by speech. It is only determinant in a dynamic sense, and is only possible to be apprehended from the interactions (or retro-determinations) both of the personal decisions as from the denials of identification, and of the strategies of identification which underlie them. Even considered from the point of origin, identity is inseparable from the use which was made — or which was not made — of it in a particular cultural and social context, that is, in the context of a relation with others. That is why identity is always reflexive. In a phenomenological perspective, it implies never dissociating its own constitution and the constitution of the others. The subject of collective identity is not an “I” or a “we,” a natural entity constituted once and for all, an opaque mirror where nothing new can come to be reflected, but rather a “self” which continually appeals to new reflections.

We will recuperate the distinction formulated by Paul Ricoeur between idem identity and ipse identity. The permanence of the collective being through ceaseless change (ipse identity) cannot be limited to what pertains to the order of the event or of the repetition (idem identity). On the contrary, it is linked on the whole to a hermeneutics of the “self,” to the whole of a narrative work destined to make a “place” appear, a space-time which configures a sense and forms the same condition of the appropriation of the self. Indeed, in a phenomenological perspective, where nothing is given naturally, the object always proceeds from a constituent elaboration, from a hermeneutic relation characterized by the affirmation of a point of view which retrospectively organizes the events to give them a meaning. “The story builds the narrative identity constructing the history by constructing that of the story told,” says Ricoeur. “It is the identity of the history that makes the identity of the personage.”[12] To defend one’s own identity is not, then, to be content with ritually listing historically foundational points of reference, nor to sing of the past to better avoid confronting the present. To defend one’s own identity is to understand the identity as that which remains in the game of differences – not as the same, but rather as the always singular way of changing or not changing.

It is not, then, to choose the idem identity against the ipse identity, or vice versa, but rather to apprehend both in their reciprocal relations by means of an organizing narrative that takes into account both the understanding of the self as well as the understanding of the other. To recreate the conditions in which it returns to being possible to produce such a story which constitutes the appropriation of the self. But it is an appropriation which never stays fixed, for collective subjectivation always proceeds from an option more than from an act, and from an act more than a “fact.” A people is maintained thanks to its narrativity, appropriating its being in successive interpretations, becoming the subject by narrating itself and thus avoiding losing their identity, that is, avoiding becoming the object of the narrative of another. “An identity,” writes Forget, “is always a relation of self to self, an interpretation of itself and of the others, by itself and by others. Ultimately, it is the story of itself, elaborated in the dialectical relation with the others, which completes the human history and delivers a collectivity to history. […] The personal identity endures and reconciles stability and transformation through the act of narration. The personal identity of an individual, of a people, is built and maintained through the movement of the story, through the dynamism of the plot which underpins the narrative operation, as Ricoeur said.”[13]

Finally, what most threatens national identity today possesses a strong endogenous dimension, represented by the tendency to the implosion of the social, that is, the internal deconstruction of all forms of organic solidarity. In this respect, Roland Castro has been able to justly speak of those societies where “nobody any longer supports anyone,” where everyone excludes everyone, where every individual has become potentially foreign for every individual. To liberal individualism one must attribute the major responsibility in this regard. How can one speak of “fraternity” (in the Left) or of “common good” (in the Right) in a society where each have been submerged in the search for the maximization of their own and exclusive interests, in a mimetic rivalry without end which adopts the form of a headlong rush, of a permanent competition devoid of all purpose?

As Christian Thorel had emphasized, “the re-centering on the individual over the collective leads to the disappearance of the look towards the other.”[14] The problem of immigration runs the risk, precisely, of obliterating this evidence. On the one hand, that exclusion of immigrants of which the immigrants are victims can make us forget that today we live increasingly more in a society where exclusion is also the rule between our own “autochthonous people.” How to support the foreigners when we support ourselves increasingly less? On the other hand, certain reproaches crumble by themselves. For example, the young immigrants that “have hatred” have been frequently told that they must respect the “country which hosts them.” But why must the immigrant youths by more patriotic than some French youth who are not? The greatest risk, finally, would be to believe that the criticism of immigration, which is legitimate in itself, will be facilitated by the increase of egoism, when in fact it is that increase which has more deeply undone the social fabric. There is, on the other hand, the whole problem of xenophobia. There are some who believe in strengthening the national sentiment by basing it on the rejection of the Other. After which, having already acquired the habit, it will be their own compatriots who they will end up finding normal to reject.

A society conscious of its identity can only be strong if it achieves placing the common good before the individual interest; if it achieves placing solidarity, conviviality, and generosity towards others before the obsession for the competition of the triumph of the “Me.” A society conscious of its identity can only last if rules of disinterest and of gratuity are imposed, which are the only means to escape the reification of social relations, that is, the advent of a world where man produces himself as an object after having transformed everything surrounding him into an artifact. Because it is evident that it will not be the proclamation of egoism, not even in the name of the “struggle for life” (the simple transposition of the individualist principle of the “war of all against all”), that we can recreate that convivial and organic sociality without which there is no people worthy of the name. We will not find fraternity in a society where each has the sole goal to “win” more than the others. We will not reinstate the desire to live together by appealing to xenophobia, that is, to a hatred of the Other by principle; a hatred which, little by little, ends up extending itself to all.

Notes

[1] “Vraie et fausse intégration,” Le Monde, 29 January 1992.

[2] “La timidité en paie jamais,” Le Nouvel Observateur, 26 March 1992, p.15.

[3] About the critique of “differentialist neo-racism,” based on the idea that “the racist argumentation has shifted from race to culture,” cf. especially Pierre-André Taguieff, La force du préjugé. Essai sur le racisme et ses doubles, Découverte, Paris, 1988, and Gallimard, París, 1990. Taguieff’s critique rests, in our judgement, on a double fallacy. On the one hand, it forgets that the right to difference, when it lays itself down as a principle, it necessarily leads to also defending the difference of others, so that it could never legimitize the unconditional affirmation of an absolute singularity (there is no difference but in relation with that one to which it is deferred). On the other hand, it ignores the fact that cultural differences and racial differences are not of the same order, so that way they cannot be instrumentalized by the same one: that would amount, paradoxically, to the assertion that nature and culture are equivalent. For a discussion on this issue, cf. Alain de Benoist, André Béjin and Pierre-André Taguieff, Razzismo e antirazzismo, La Roccia di Erec, Florencia, 1992 (partial translation of André Béjin, Julien Freund, Michael Pollak, Alain Daniélou, Michel Maffesoli et al., Racismes, antiracismes, Méridiens-Klincksieck, 1986).

[4] “La science? Un piège pour les antirracistes!,” Le Nouvel Observateur, 26 March 1992, p.20.

[5] Ibid., p.21.

[6] L’Autre Journal, October 1992, p.41.

[7] Les Ethnies, 2^nd ed., PUF, París, 1992, pp.114-115.

[8] “Historique?,” Le Point, 14 December 1991, p.35.

[9] Cf. in this respect the strongly demystified works of Suzanne Citron, Le Mythe national. L’Histoire de France en question (éd. Ouvrières-Études et documentation internationales, 2ª ed., 1991) and L’Histoire de France autrement (éd. Ouvrières, 1992), which frequently fall into the opposite excesses of those they denounce. Cf. also, for a different reading of the history of France, Olier Mordrel, Le Mythe de l’Hexagone, Jean Picollec, 1981.

[10] “Phénoménologie de la menace, Sujet, narration, stratégie,” Krisis, April 1992, p.3.

[11] Ibid., p.5.

[12] Soi-même comme un autre, Seuil, Paris, 1990, p.175.

[13] Art. cit., pp.6-7.

[14] Le Monde, 17 August 1990.

 

——————-

De Benoist, Alain. “Identity and Difference.” The Occidental Observer, 13-14 September 2014. < http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2014/09/identity-and-difference-part-1-difference/ >, < http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2014/09/identity-and-difference-part-2-identity/ >. (See this essay in PDF format here: Identity and Difference).

 

Advertisements

The Real Dugin – Tudor

The Real Dugin: Alexander Dugin’s Political Theories and his Relevance to the New Right

By Lucian Tudor

 

Translations: Čeština, Español, Português

Alexander Dugin is by now well-known in “Right-wing” circles of all sorts across the world—whether we are speaking of nationalists, Fascists, traditionalists, cultural or national conservatives, or New Rightists (also known as Identitarians). Upon the translation of his book The Fourth Political Theory in 2012, Dugin has received a significant amount of international attention from anyone interested in Right-wing or Conservative theory. Since then, a number of other essays by Dugin on the topics of Eurasianism (also spelled “Eurasism”) and also the Theory of the Multipolar World (both of which are interconnected with each other and with what he calls the Fourth Political Theory) have been translated into English, among other languages, allowing us a better view into his thought.

There is no need to discuss Dugin’s theories in any depth here, since his own essays achieve that sufficiently. However, a problem has arisen among Right-wingers in the West in regards to Dugin: while many have appreciated his works, a large number have completely dismissed or attacked him and his theories largely on the basis of misunderstandings or propaganda from Dugin’s political enemies. The situation is certainly not helped by the fact that well-known Identitarian writers such as Greg Johnson, Michael O’Meara, Domitius Corbulo, and some others in Europe have denounced Dugin with reasoning based upon such misunderstandings. Personally, I had once considered these critiques as being essentially valid, but upon a more thorough investigation of Dugin’s writings and thought, I concluded that these critiques were based on flawed premises and assumptions. My intention here is to point out what the most common reasons for denouncing Dugin have been and why they are based on misconceptions and propaganda rather than reality.

Position on Race

First, one of the most difficult issues is the claim that Alexander Dugin believes that race has no substantial reality, that it is a “social construct” and must be completely abandoned as a harmful product of modern Western society. Certainly, he critiques racialist theory, but this is not the same as rejecting race entirely (since one can assert the importance of race without resorting to “racism.” See my essay “Ethnic and Racial Relations”). It must be admitted that Dugin has not taken a clear stance on the matter of race, and occasionally makes statements which imply a dismissal of race (although it is significant that, for the most part, he leaves it an open question). On the other hand, he has also made statements implying an appreciation for racial identity to some extent, such as when he wrote the following:

Being White and Indo-European myself, I recognize the differences of other ethnic groups as being a natural thing, and do not believe in any hierarchy among peoples, because there is not and cannot be any common, universal measure by which to measure and compare the various forms of ethnic societies or their value systems. I am proud to be Russian exactly as Americans, Africans, Arabs or Chinese are proud to be what they are. It is our right and our dignity to affirm our identity, not in opposition to each other but such as it is: without resentment against others or feelings of self-pity. (quoted from “Alexander Dugin on ‘White Nationalism’ & Other Potential Allies in the Global Revolution”)

However, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Dugin truly does believe that race is a “social construct”, as some have assumed. Would this be enough reason to declare Dugin a subversive intellectual in the Right? If this was the case, it would follow by the same reasoning that any past Right-wing intellectual who did not believe in the importance of race (or at least the biological form of race) must also be denounced. This would include such notable thinkers as Oswald Spengler, Francis Parker Yockey, Othmar Spann, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Oswald Mosley, and numerous other Fascist or nationalist intellectuals and leaders who did not place much importance upon physical race. Yet, paradoxically, many of those we see denouncing Dugin today would not do the same for such thinkers. This is not to imply that previous Fascist or nationalist intellectuals are entirely agreeable for us today (in fact, most New Rightists reject Fascism and old-fashioned nationalism), it is only to point out the self-contradiction which has gone unnoticed.

Furthermore, it is important to remember that Dugin clearly believes in the importance of ethnicity and culture and advocates ethnic separatism. Similarly to German Revolutionary Conservative and Völkisch thinkers, Dugin has unmistakably placed the Volk or ethnos as one of the highest values of his philosophy: “The subject of this theory [the Fourth Political Theory], in its simple version, is the concept ‘narod,’roughly, ‘Volk’ or ‘people,’ in the sense of ‘peoplehood’ and ‘peoples,’ not ‘masses’” (quoted from “The Fourth Estate: The History and Meaning of the Middle Class”). Thus, it is clear that even if he does not value race, Dugin certainly does value ethno-cultural identity. Of course, this is not to say that rejecting the reality of race is not at all problematic, only that it is not enough to denounce a philosopher. However, those who like to claim that Dugin dismisses race as a “social construct” are reminiscent of those who say the same thing about Alain de Benoist, whereas it is clear that Benoist asserts the reality of race and advocates racial separatism–specifically from a non-racist standpoint–in many of his writings, one of the most notable in English being “What is Racism?”.

Empire vs. Imperialism

The second problematic notion about Dugin is that he is an advocate of a type of Russian imperialism, usually suggested being of a Stalinist and Soviet type. However, this claim has no basis in fact, since he has renounced Soviet imperialism and has also distinguished between true empire and imperialism (which also made by Julius Evola and many other Traditionalist and New Right authors). In his essay “Main Principles of Eurasist Policy,” Dugin has asserted that there are three basic types of policy in modern Russia: Soviet, pro-Western (liberal), and Eurasist. He criticizes the Soviet and Liberal types while advocating the Eurasist policy: “Eurasism, in this way, is an original ‘patriotic pragmatism’, free from any dogmatics – be it Soviet or liberal… The Soviet pattern operates with obsolete political, economic and social realities, it exploits nostalgia and inertness, it lacks a sober analysis of the new international situation and the real development of world economic trends.” It should be clear from Dugin’s analysis of different forms of political approaches that his own viewpoint is not based on the USSR model, which he explicitly rejects and critiques.

Moreover, it is often overlooked that when Dugin advocates a Eurasian empire or union, there is a distinction between a true empire—in the traditionalist sense—and imperialism, and thus an empire is not necessarily an imperialistic state (for a good overview of this concept, see Alain de Benoist’s “The Idea of Empire”). Unlike domineering and imperialistic states, the Eurasian Union envisioned by Dugin grants a partial level of self-government to regions within a federalist system:

The undoubted strategic unity in Eurasist federalism is accompanied by ethnic plurality, by the emphasis on the juridical element of the “rights of the peoples”. The strategic control of the space of the Eurasian Union is ensured by the unity of management and federal strategic districts, in whose composition various formations can enter – from ethno-cultural to territorial. The immediate differentiation of territories into several levels will add flexibility, adaptability and plurality to the system of administrative management in combination with rigid centralism in the strategic sphere. (quoted from “Main Principles of Eurasist Policy”)

Of course, it must also be remembered that Dugin’s vision needs to be differentiated from the policies of the present Russian state, which, at this time, cannot be said to adequately represent the Eurasists’ goals (despite the influence of Eurasism on certain politicians). Furthermore, it should be mentioned that while Dugin currently supports president Putin, it is clear that he does not uncritically accept all of the policies of Putin’s government. Therefore, a sound analysis of Dugin’s proposed policies will not equate them with those of the Russian government, as some of his critics have erroneously done.

The “West” as the Enemy

Another common misconception is that Dugin is hostile to Western European civilization and even advocates its complete destruction. It is important to recognize that Dugin’s conception of the “West” is similar to that advocated by the European New Right (in the works of Pierre Krebs, Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Tomislav Sunic, etc.). The “West” is not a reference to all of Western-European civilization, but rather to the specific formulation of Western-European civilization founded upon liberalism, egalitarianism, and individualism: “The crisis of identity […] has scrapped all previous identities–civilizational, historical, national, political, ethnic, religious, cultural, in favor of a universal planetary Western-style identity–with its concept of individualism, secularism, representative democracy, economic and political liberalism, cosmopolitanism and the ideology of human rights.” (quoted from the interview with Dugin, “Civilization as Political Concept”).

Thus, Dugin, like the New Right, asserts that the “West” is actually foreign to true European culture—that it is in fact the enemy of Europe: “Atlanticism, liberalism, and individualism are all forms of absolute evil for the Indo-European identity, since they are incompatible with it” (quoted from “Alexander Dugin on ‘White Nationalism’ & Other Potential Allies in the Global Revolution”). Likewise, in his approving citation of Alain de Benoist’s cultural philosophy, he wrote the following:

A. de Benoist was building his political philosophy on radical rejection of liberal and bourgeois values, denying capitalism, individualism, modernism, geopolitical atlanticism and western eurocentrism. Furthermore, he opposed “Europe” and “West” as two antagonistic concepts: “Europe” for him is a field of deployment of a special cultural Logos, coming from the Greeks and actively interacting with the richness of Celtic, Germanic, Latin, Slavic, and other European traditions, and the “West” is the equivalent of the mechanistic, materialistic, rationalist civilization based on the predominance of the technology above everything. After O. Spengler Alain de Benoist understood “the West” as the “decline of the West” and together with Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger was convinced of the necessity of overcoming modernity as nihilism and “the abandonment of the world by Being (Sein)” (Seinsverlassenheit). West in this understanding was identical to liberalism, capitalism, and bourgeois society – all that “New Right” claimed to overcome. (quoted from “Counter-hegemony in Theory of Multi-polar World”)

While Dugin attacks the “West” as modern liberal civilization, he simultaneously advocates the resurrection of Europe in his vision of the multipolar world: “We imagine this Greater Europe as a sovereign geopolitical power, with its own strong cultural identity, with its own social and political options…” (quoted from “The Greater Europe Project”). Similarly to the previous statements which we have quoted, he asserts here that European culture has multiple ideological elements and possible pathways in its history which are different from the liberal model: “Liberal democracy and the free market theory account for only part of the European historical heritage and that there have been other options proposed and issues dealt with by great European thinkers, scientists, politicians, ideologists and artists.”

Domitius Corbulo has argued, based on statements Dugin made in The Fourth Political Theory that liberalism and universalism are elements which run throughout Western civilization, that Dugin condemns Western-European culture in its entirety. However, it is important to recognize that these arguments are largely borrowed from Western-European authors such as Spengler, Heidegger, and Evola. These authors also recognized that anti-universalist, anti-liberal, and anti-materialist elements also exist in Western-European culture, and thus that there have always been other paths for the destiny of this culture. It is evident that Dugin would assert the same fact from his essays which we have cited here (as well as books not yet available in English, such as ¿Qué es el eurasismo?, Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire, or in Russian in Четвертый Путь, among others). It is important to remember here that The Fourth Political Theory is not a complete and perfect statement of Dugin’s thought, and that what he says there must be balanced with what he says in his other works.

It is often assumed that, considering his hostility to the liberal “West,” Dugin also advocates a complete destruction of the United States of America, which is seen as the epitome of the “West.” However, the very essence of his theory of the multipolar world is the idea that each civilization and nation must be granted the right to live and to determine its own destiny, political form, and way of life. For this reason, Dugin advocates the global combating of American cultural and economic imperialism, which denatures non-Western cultures. However, in the multipolar scheme, the United States also has the right to exist and to choose its own path, which means allowing the American people the right to continue the liberal model in the future, should they desire to do so. Of course, the liberal model would naturally be discouraged from abroad and be limited in its influence. This position can be drawn from Dugin’s key essays explicating the Theory of the Multipolar World: “The Multipolar World and the Postmodern” and “Multipolarism as an Open Project”.

The Fourth Political Theory vs. Reactionary Traditionalism

Some writers, such as Kenneth Anderson (“Speculating on future political and religious alliances”), have interpreted Alexander Dugin’s thought as a form of Radical Traditionalism (following Julius Evola and Rene Guenon) which is completely reactionary in nature, rejecting everything in the modern world–including all technological and scientific development–as something negative which needs to be eventually undone. This interpretation can be easily revealed to be incorrect when one examines Dugin’s statements on Traditionalism and modernity more closely. It is true that Dugin acknowledges Traditionalist thinkers such as Evola and Guenon among his influences, but it is also clear that he is not in full agreement with their views and advocates his own form of conservatism, which is much more similar to German Revolutionary Conservatism (see The Fourth Political Theory, pp. 86 ff.).

Unlike some Traditionalists, Dugin does not reject scientific and social progress, and thus it can also be said that he does not reject the Enlightenment in toto. When Dugin criticizes Enlightenment philosophy (the ideology of progress, individualism, etc.), it is not so much in the manner of the Radical Traditionalists as it is in the manner of the Conservative Revolution and the New Right, as was also done by Alain de Benoist, Armin Mohler, etc. In this regard, it can be mentioned that critiquing the ideology of progress is, of course, very different from rejecting progress itself. For the most part, he does not advocate the overcoming of the “modern world” in the Traditionalist sense, but in the New Rightist sense, which means eliminating what is bad in the present modern world to create a new cultural order (“postmodernity”) which reconciles what is good in modern society with traditional society. Thus Dugin asserts that one of the most essential ideas of the Eurasist philosophy is the creation of societies which restore traditional and spiritual values without surrendering scientific progress:

The philosophy of Eurasianism proceeds from priority of values of the traditional society, acknowledges the imperative of technical and social modernization (but without breaking off cultural roots), and strives to adapt its ideal program to the situation of a post-industrial, information society called “postmodern”. The formal opposition between tradition and modernity is removed in postmodern. However, postmodernism in the atlantist aspect levels them from the position of indifference and exhaustiveness of contents. The Eurasian postmodern, on the contrary, considers the possibility for an alliance of tradition with modernity to be a creative, optimistic energetic impulse that induces imagination and development. (quote from Eurasian Mission, cited in Dugin, “Multipolarism as an Open Project”)

It should be evident from these statements that Dugin is not a reactionary, despite his sympathy to Radical Traditionalism. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that Dugin also supports a “Third Positionist” form of socialism as well as a non-liberal form of democracy. In regards to socialism, he has written that the “confusion of mankind into the single global proletariat is not a way to a better future, but an incidental and absolutely negative aspect of the global capitalism, which does not open any new prospects and only leads to degradation of cultures, societies, and traditions. If peoples do have a chance to organize effective resistance to the global capitalism, it is only where Socialist ideas are combined with elements of a traditional society…” (from “Multipolarism as an Open Project”). Whereas some have accused Dugin of being anti-democratic, he has plainly advocated the idea of a “democratic empire”: “The political system of the Eurasian Union in the most logical way is founded on the ‘democracy of participation’ (the ‘demotia’ of the classical Eurasists), the accent being not on the quantitative, but on the qualitative aspect of representation” (quoted from “Main Principles of Eurasist Policy”; see also the comments on democracy in his “Milestones of Eurasism”).

References to Leftists and Cultural Marxists

Finally, one of the most recent attacks on Alexander Dugin is based on his reference to Cultural Marxist and “Leftist” philosophers, which is seen by some as an indicator that Dugin himself is sympathetic to Cultural Marxism (see Domitius Corbulo’s “Alexander Dugin’s 4th Political Theory is for the Russian Empire, not for European Ethno-Nationalists”). However, Dugin has clearly pointed out that while he uses ideas from Marxist and “Leftist” theorists, he rejects their ideologies as a whole: “The second and third political theories [Fascism and Marxism] must be reconsidered, selecting in them that which must be discarded and that which has value in itself. As complete ideologies… they are entirely useless, either theoretically or practically.” (quoted from The Fourth Political Theory, p. 24).

If one notes that Dugin occasionally makes use of Marxist thinkers, then it should not be overlooked that he places even more importance on Right-wing thinkers, who clearly form the greater influence on him; the intellectuals of the Conservative Revolution (Heidegger, Schmitt, Moeller van den Bruck, etc.), the Traditionalist School (Evola, Guenon, Schuon, etc.), the New Right (Benoist, Freund, Steuckers, etc.), and the conservative religious scholars (Eliade, Durand, etc.). Furthermore, Corbulo objects to Dugin’s use of Claude Levi-Strauss’s work, yet respected New Right thinkers like Alain de Benoist and Dominique Venner (see Robert Steuckers, “En souvenir de Dominique Venner”, citing Venner’s Le siècle de 1914) have also referenced the ideas of Levi-Strauss on matters of culture and ethnicity, among other authors that Dugin uses, such as Jean Baudrillard.

In a recent interview, Dugin has clearly agreed with the European Right’s position on immigration (which advocates the restriction of non-European immigration), mentioning the threat that liberal cosmopolitanism brings to European culture: “The immigration changes the structure of European society. The Islamic people have very strong cultural identity. The European people weaken their own identity more and more in conscious manner. It is human right and civil society individualistic ideological dogma. So Europe is socially endangered and is on the eve to lose it identity” (quoted from “The West should be rejected”). Thus, when we take a less biased view of Dugin’s writings and statements, it is clear that his overall position is very far from that of the Cultural Marxists and the New Left.

From our examination thus far, it should be obvious that there are too many misconceptions about Alexander Dugin’s thought being circulated among Right-wingers. These misconceptions are being used to dismiss the value of his work and deceive members of Right-wing groups into believing that Dugin is a subversive intellectual who must be rejected as an enemy. Many other important Right-wing intellectuals have been similarly dismissed among certain circles, due to practices of a kind of in-group gleichschaltung, closing off any thinker who is not seen as readily agreeable. It is important to overcome such tendencies and support an intellectual expansion of the Right, which is the only way to overcome the present liberal-egalitarian hegemony. People need to take a more careful and unbiased look at Dugin’s works and ideas, as with other controversial thinkers. Of course, Dugin is not without flaws and imperfections (nor is any other thinker), but these flaws can be overcome when his thought is balanced with that of other intellectuals, especially the Revolutionary Conservatives and the New Rightists.

 

————–

Tudor, Lucian. “The Real Dugin: Alexander Dugin’s Political Theories and his Relevance to the New Right.” Radix Journal, 30 August 2014. <http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2014/8/30/the-real-dugin >.

Note: On the issue of bias and hostility towards Dugin and Russia in general, see Michael McGregor’s “Bipolar Russophobia”: <http://www.radixjournal.com/blog/2014/9/13/bipolar-russophobia >.

For an overview of the vision of a Multipolar World from an Identitarian perspective, see also Lucian Tudor, “The Philosophy of Identity: Ethnicity, Culture, and Race in Identitarian Thought,” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Fall 2014), pp. 83-112.

 

Regenerating History – Benoist

Regenerating History

By Alain de Benoist

What is the greatest threat today? It is the progressive disappearance of diversity from the world. The levelling down of people, the reduction of all cultures to a world civilization made up of what is the most common. It can be 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 engrained. Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson are the templets 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 living according to the own rhythm, with a different skin colour, another culture, another mentality – and that 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 any other, to defend a heritage, to govern oneself in accordance with what one is. And this implies a head-on clash both 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.

We live today in a blocked society. Globally speaking we are only now beginning to become aware of ways to break out of the order established at Yalta. Nationally speaking there has never been such marked divisions between various political factions in peace-time. Philosophically and ideologically, we oscillate constantly between different extremes without managing to find a balance. The cause and remedy for this situation is to be located within man. To say that our society is in crisis is just a platitude. Man is a crisis. He is a tragedy. In him nothing is ever definitively said. Man must constantly find within himself the theme of a new discourse corresponding to a new way of being in the world, a new form of his humanity. Man is in crisis through the very fact that he exists. The originality of our age does not lie in this fact. The originality – the sad originality – of our age lies in the fact that for the first time man is retreating in the face of the implications which flow from would instinctively be his desire and will to resolve the crisis. For the first time man believes that he is overwhelmed by the problems. And indeed they do overwhelm him in as far as he believes they do, when in fact they originate within him, and fall within the range and scope of the solutions which he carries within himself. […]

The old right in France has always been reactionary. […] It is a type of attitude which has always proved sterile. History repeats itself but never serves up the same dish twice. It offers a wealth of lessons not because it allows us to know what will happen, but because it helps us rediscover the spirit which has produced a certain type of event. This what Nietzsche meant when, in the very moment he was preaching the eternal return, he declared “it is impossible to bring back the Greeks”. To spell this out: the Greek miracle cannot be repeated, but by allowing the spirit which produced will perhaps enable us to create something analogous. It is what we could define the regeneration of history. […]

If egalitarianism is reaching its “final stage of affirmation,” what will succeed it will necessarily be something different. Moreover, if the present world is the materialization of the end of a cycle, it is equally clear that the only possible source of inspiration possible for what must be born can only be something which has preceded what has just occurred. The projective force for the future resides in the spirit of the remotest past. The “positive nihilism” of Nietzsche has only one sense: one can only build on a site which has been completely cleared and levelled. There are those who do not want to construct (a certain kind of left) and do not want to rise to the ground (a certain right). In my view both these two attitudes are to be condemned. If a new right is to be brought into being we have to start from scratch. And given the time which has to be made up it will need about a century to succeed. Which means there is not a minute to lose.

—————

Translated from: De Benoist, Alain. Le idee a posto. Akropolis, Naples, 1983, pp. 76-81. (this book is the Italian translation of Les idées à l’endroit [Albin Michel, Paris, 1980]). Translator not specified. Text retrieved from: <http://www.amerika.org/texts/alain-de-benoist-regenerating-history-c-g/ >.

 

Eliade’s Religious Thought – Durac

Mircea Eliade: The hermeneutics of the religious phenomenon

By Livia Durac

“The only purpose of existence is to find a meaning for existence.” (Mircea Eliade)

General Considerations

On February 28th, 1907 in the capital of Romania was born the man who was going to become the worldwide-known scientist and writer whose Renaissance-like personality has built the background of his becoming. When we speak of Mircea Eliade we think of the historian of religions, the Orientalist, the ethnologist, the sociologist, the folklorist, the essay, short story, novel and memoirs author, the playwright Mircea Eliade, if we are to stop at enumerating the defining dimensions of his monumental activity. He became an outstanding specialist in the history of religions in 1925-1926, an obviously early stage of his life for such a bold enterprise; topics such as orthodoxy, Taoism, Buddhism, Orphism, Tantrism have been a concern even since before the “Indian experience” that systematized and deepened his knowledge. For this great Romanian thinker, the history of religions is a complete discipline, which he places in the foreground of cultural life; linguistics, literature, etymology, ethnology, the philosophy of history, esthetics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, all combine in harmony, synchronically, to complete the field of the history of religions.

From his concerns with the field of the history of religions could not miss the “working” coordinates necessary to the specialist in the mentioned field. Therefore, the historian of religions must recompose, first of all, the history of religious forms, and only afterwards develop the social, political and cultural context of each of these forms. Without exaggerated claims, we can state that the historian of religions is, from certain points of view, an anticipator in the field, since he observes the results of the research of Orientalists and ethnographers, as the great Asian religions or the religions of people without a writing system represent important sources for the culture of humanity. Religious phenomenology must be placed outside the sphere of the specialist’s concerns with the history of religions, and we refer to the phenomenology of the sacred, and respectively with enlarging the research sphere from the known important religions to archaic religions.

Another significant specific element that characterizes a historian of religions is the fact that he has to place the religious phenomenon within the spiritual field, identifying that “something” that the religious act denotes as trans-historic. This clearly refers to hermeneutic research that consists, on the one hand, in the understanding of the message by the religious person, a witness to the hierophantic experience, and on the other hand in the message that the religious person transmits to modern world. Explaining the encounters of man with the sacred, starting from pre-history until present – as a way of solving the requirements promoted by contemporary history – the cultural and spiritual invigoration of the peoples of Australia, Africa and Asia, all are included in the subject field of the history of religions.

The Hermeneutic Perspective of the Renewal of the Religious Phenomenon

In a work published in Paris in 1971, Mircea Eliade tells us that the religious phenomenon should use complete hermeneutics. He considers necessary for the activity of the historian of religions to be based on both the phenomenological and the hermeneutical approach: “Concerned with, and often overwhelmed by collecting, publishing and analyzing religious data, a work without any doubt both urgent an indispensable, scientists have often forgotten to study their meaning. But this data is the expression of varied religious experiences; in a final analysis, they represent positions and situations assumed by man during his history. Whether he likes it or not, the historian of religions has not completed his work after having retraced the history of a religious form or after having determined its sociological, economical or political context. Apart from all these, he must understand his own meaning – in other words – identify and clarify the situations and positions that made possible his appearance or triumph in a specific moment of his history”. [i] The fact that the author adopts such explicit positions places him in favor of a unitary approach, and within this frame, phenomenology fulfills one of the most important functions.

The author believes in the necessity of renewing the religious phenomenon from a hermeneutical perspective; although he does not minimize any of the scientific fields accessory to religion, acknowledging the applicability of each of them, Eliade states however that, irrespective of the nature of the information provided by one or another of these fields, it cannot account for the religious phenomenon as a whole. Therefore, a hermeneutic of the religious phenomenon would be characterized mainly by the fact that, by studying the variety of religious aspects, the discipline of religions must identify the universal religious configurations whose action frame is represented by unique facts. It is necessary to mention that Eliade’s attempt to present the morphology of the sacred takes place beyond the religious phenomenon. Considering the efforts to grasp and understand meanings, Mircea Eliade’s exegesis intensifies, including the forms characterized by permanence and constancy, brought “to light” through myths and symbols. Eliade’s hermeneutics acquires a creative dimension as it allows speaking of a structure of the forms of religious expression; this poses the problem of presenting the stages in the individual’s trans-conscience, which “exhales” forms of religious expression. Actually, we can speak of a tremendous interest of the author in seeing and knowing homo religiosus. Starting with the Paleolithic until nowadays, symbols have offered to the religious person – who has lived the sacred dimension of his existence during all this time – an openness towards the trans-historical world, connecting him with the transcendent dimension. Moreover, Eliade considers that myth is a universal phenomenon on which reality is structured, detailing – at the same time – the existence of supernatural creatures.

Eliade faces the individual, as a subject of the religious experience, with the object of this experience, a context in which he speaks of hierophany or the manifestation of the sacred. The place of encounter of the religious person with the sacred is directly determined (conditioned) by the behavior of the religious persons themselves.

Julien Ries noted that all hierophany is based on three important elements: the natural object, placed (and mentioned) in its normal context; the invisible reality that forms the presented contents; the mediator, which is nothing else but the object consecrated through a new dimension, the sacred. [ii]

“1) The sacred is qualitatively different from the profane, however it can appear anytime anyhow in the profane world, with the power to transform any cosmic object into a paradox through hierophany (meaning that the object stops being itself as a cosmic object, but still remains apparently unchanged);

2) This dialectics of the sacred is valid for all religions, not only for the so-called “primitive forms”. This dialectics is verified both in the “worship” of stones and trees and in the scientific view on Indian metamorphoses or in the supreme mystery of incarnation;

3) Purely elementary hierophanies are impossible to find (…), they are combined with religious forms considered, from the evolutionary perspective, superior (Supreme Beings, moral laws, mythologies, etc.);

4) We can find everywhere, even outside these superior religious forms, a system in which elementary hierophanies are ordered.”[iii]

Douglas Allen believes that Mircea Eliade’s methodology is characterized by two essential ideas: “the dialectics of the sacred and the profane and the dominant character of symbolism or of symbolic structures.”[iv]

In his paper Introduction to the phenomenon of religion, the Spanish author J. Martin Velasco, referring to what is called interpretation, from the point of view of the analysis of the religious phenomenon, considers that a structure cannot be conceived if it is not evaluated, interpreted – and especially – understood from the inside. Therefore, phenomenological research has, implicitly, a hermeneutic component or dimension. Together with renown representatives such as J. Wach and G. Van der Leeuw, Eliade will contribute to enriching this approach: considering himself both a historian and a phenomenology researcher of religions, we can speak of a combination of the two perspectives, which defines the originality of his contribution to a fascinating field such as that of religions.

The Primordial Dimension of the Sacred in the Becoming of the
Human Being

The approach of religious phenomenology is, in its essence, a meditation as well as a reference to the idea of the time factor. We will find this meditation on time specific to Eliade in most of the work of the Romanian scientist, as the holistic reach o the meanings of the religious depends on it. Indeed, we can say that the problem of time dominates Eliade’s creations.

As we will demonstrate later, human objects and actions can represent hierophanies (ontophanies); what we wish to mention here is that not only they can acquire such an attribute, but also even space and time receive the valences of the sacred. For the man in archaic cultures, space is not homogenous, as it is the case for the space in which the modern scientific man lives, meaning that certain areas of this space differ from one another from a qualitative point of view. Sacred spaces exist and, therefore, there also exist significant non-sacred amorphous spaces, lacking structure and consistency. Moreover, this lack of spatial homogeneity determines the religious person to experience an opposition between the sacred, unique, real space, with a significant existence, and the completing amorphous ambient around it: “We will see to what extent the discovery, that is, the revelation of the sacred space has existential value for the religious person: nothing can start without a prior orientation, and any orientation implies setting a fixed point. This is why the religious persons strive to set themselves at «the Center of the world».”[v] The condition for us to be able to live in a world must be created, “and no world can be born in the «chaos» of homogeneity and relativity of the profane space. Discovering or designing a fixed point – «the Center» – means Creating the World.”[vi]

The phenomenological premise according to which the sacred is irreducible characterizes the work of Mircea Eliade, for whom the sacred imposes itself both as an explanatory principle of religion and as an absolute concept of a unique ontology, which we can also find in the religious act, irrespective of its nature: “But it is maybe too late to look for another word, and «religion» can still be a useful term, with the condition that we always remember that it does not necessarily imply the belief in a God or in spirits, but it refers to the experience of the sacred and is therefore related to the ideas of being, sense and truth.”[vii] Speaking in terms of the position of the sacred as an ontological basis, Eliade explains: “Through the exception of the sacred, the human spirit has apprehended the difference between what proves to be real, strong, rich and significant, and what does not have these qualities, that is, the chaotic and dangerous flow of things, their random and meaningless appearances and disappearances.”[viii]

All this leads to the idea that, if in the becoming of the human being, there is something with a primordial character, that “something” is, without a doubt, the appearance of the sacred; therefore, the sacred proves to be an immense force and its act, its manifestation, is included in the term hierophany. Actually, the evolution of the history of religions – from the most rudimentary to the most advanced ones – is made up of a large sum of hierophanies, that is, of manifestations of the sacred reality.

In this entire frame, what would be the role of phenomenology? Julien Ries offers a possible explanation according to which this role is played in understanding the religious structures and phenomena, in interpreting the meaning of each hierophany, as well as in extracting the revealed meaning and the religious sense.[ix] Anything that existed or still exists can be a receiver of the sacred: “After all, we do not know if there is anything – object, gesture, physiological function or game, etc. – that has never been transformed into hierophany, somewhere, during the history of mankind.”[x]

In the conception of Eliade, religious imaginary is wide open for any object of the cosmos or of human life, with the necessary and only condition that, during its evolution, it had been transformed into hierophany.

The religious person can become, systematically, contemporary with the gods, through myths and rituals; this occurs if the person is able to update the primordial Time when the divine works took place. We must remember that this rhythmical return to the sacred Time of origins does not represent a refuse of the concrete world, as it is neither an escape from dreams and imagination but, on the contrary, it is what Mircea Eliade pointed out as an essential characteristic of man in primitive and archaic societies, using the phrase ontological obsession.

If we start from the basic idea that everything comes down to an archetypal model, which appears in different avatars, the natural consequence is to compare these manifestations of the sacred. Hence we witness the creation of a structure based on this exact comparison as well as on the common elements with a repetitive character. For Eliade, structure is not the final consequence in the analysis of the religious fact; it is formed based on this comparison and is prior to the meaning that results from it. The meaning of hierophanies in the world has a transhistorical character; that is why, for the Romanian scientist, the primary role is played by meaning, which transcends time and history seen as an existential level of man, as well as a structure. Therefore, we can say that everything starts from historic facts, which are manifestations with a much deeper significance than a simple common apparition. We must also mention that history does not contradict the idea of reversibility, as the comparative approach sends us to very different moments from a chronological perspective. If we were to analyze the “consequences” of such a fact, we could state that the methodological dimension is actually manifested in a scenario of a real spiritual adventure. The ability to decipher a hierophany is beyond history, acquiring – in the case of Mircea Eliade – connotations that surpass habitual research. We should remember that the problematic of time is immanently related to the system of deciphering the meaning of all religious phenomena. In other words, meaning is – as the author himself explains – beyond time, and not in the actual historical time. In what concerns the historian of religions, this is just a starting point, and not a final result.

The aspiration of integration in the origin time is perfectly comparable to the aspiration of recovering a strong, ideal and ingenuous world, the world of illo tempore. Therefore, religious imagination is inspired from the thirst of being, from the ontological dominant of the archaic man, which determines the latter to sanctify religiously the entire universe, modeling its structure and symbolic consistency in a strict relation with the personal ontological need and to a re-dimensioning of space and time. But man does not ontologically sanctify only the universe, but equally himself, or some of his fellows.

Myth, a Connection between Present and Primordial Time

A good knowledge of myths and hence an exemplary accomplishment of rituals places the religious person at the beginning of time. The function of myth is of enthronement, as it makes a connection between the present and the primordial time, showing how present behavior should reanimate the primordial event. As Julien Ries pertinently states, Mircea Eliade “has truly renewed the study of myth”[xi].

Trying to define myth, Eliade says: “From my point of view, the definition that seems the least imperfect, since it is the broadest, is the following: myth tells a sacred story; it speaks about an event that took place in the primordial time, a fabulous time of the «beginning». In other words, myth tells about how, thanks to the actions of supernatural beings, a reality was born, either a complete reality, the Cosmos, or mere fragments: an island, a vegetal species, a human behavior, an institution. Therefore, it is always the story of a «birth»: we are told how something was produced, how it started to exist. Myth only tells about what has been completed. The characters of myths are supernatural beings. They are known especially because of what they did in the prestigious time of the «beginning». Consequently, myths present their creative activity and the sacred (not only «supernatural») character of their work. Actually, myths describe the various and sometimes dramatic bursts of the sacred (or supernatural) into the world. This very burst of the sacred is in fact the basis of the world and makes it what it looks like today. What is more: precisely as a result of the interventions of supernatural beings, man is what he is today, a mortal sexed and cultural being.”[xii]

The universe is compared to an aging organism that loses its vitality and becomes senile; this is the moment that demands destruction in order to be able to be born again as a young vigorous world. In this context we can point out the idea of a cyclic time previously mentioned by Eliade and related to other aspects that characterize archaic thought.

A significant part is played in this context by the ritual of initiation, which consists in the experience of death (be it that of the shaman or of the individual arrived at puberty, an experience followed by that of the rebirth at a new higher ontological level. For boys (and sometimes even for girls), puberty rituals presuppose completing an initiating period; this implies assuming death and requires the presence of signs that indicate the fact that they are dead: they live inside a forest, which is by definition a land of death and darkness, they paint their bodies using colors specific to corpses, or they are not allowed to speak or use their hands to eat, and in winter time they are willingly forgotten by their friends and families. Death is followed by rebirth at a new higher level. What is the role of this complex process, and especially why must the individual tend towards completing the initiation process, towards its end? Because, during initiation, the beginner has the chance to discover myths, respectively the sacred history of the world and of the community he lives in, of the origin of institutions and behaviors, discovers names of gods, and sometimes his own secret name.

An important result of the efforts made by the Romanian scientist in the direction of “perfecting” the field of the history of religions is to be found at the highest point of his career, between 1976-1983, when the author published in Paris, in three volumes, the work entitled Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses (The History of Religious Beliefs and Ideas). It represents a synthesis of the main actions of the religious person, starting from pre-history until present, and its incontestable originality resides precisely in its approach and in the perspectives it offers. Dedicated to the analysis of what represents the fundamental unit of religious phenomena, Mircea Eliade draws the reader’s attention to the infinite indivisibility of the expressions included in them. The famous historian of religion suggests a new mentality that explains the message based on the sacred and perceived through symbols and myths, and following this “path” he gets to the understanding of the religious person.

Mircea Eliade is the only historian of religions of his predecessors who wrote a history of religious ideas and beliefs. What differentiates him from the rest is that he makes a distinction between a history analysis lacking a generalizing perspective and a history of religious ideas, although we should remember that he was once criticized for being an anti-historian. The Romanian scientist, unlike his predecessors in the field, used a more detailed approach of history and therefore of time, far from satisfied with their being placed in parentheses and considering that this way he has fulfilled his complex mission. Eliade considers that it is not at all normal for the time when religious phenomena appeared to be ignored; on the contrary, the identification of the structures and meanings specific to religion requires them to be correctly placed in time and space. Adrian Marino’s work Hermeneutica lui Mircea Eliade (The Hermeneutics of Mircea Eliade) includes a very detailed analysis of Mircea Eliade’s relation to history. A. Marino stresses the hermeneutic character of Eliade’s approach, placing him on the orbit of the best known hermeneutic scientists.

***

As it happens with any representative name in a field, Eliade could not have stayed in the readers’ “reserve”. They have always existed and definitely will always exist; in the end nobody denies their value and usefulness. All in all, with criticisms and appreciations, Mircea Eliade’s work is one of reference for the science of religions, and his contribution to investigating the religious imaginary is – without a doubt – remarkable. We mention only Gilbert Durand, who, discussing the exceptional personality of the Romanian scientist, compared him to Henry Corbin: “The difficulty of historicist explanations of the sacred determined in the first years of our century an entire flow of «phenomenological» analyses of the sacred (that is, sticking to «the thing itself », to the object specific to homo religiosus). To this trend belong two of the main restorers of the role of imagery in religious apparitions / «hierophanies» in human thought: the Romanian Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) and the French Henry Corbin (1903-1978). [xiii]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Allen, Douglas, L’analise phénoménologique de l’experience religieuse in Les Cahiers de l’Herne – Mircea Eliade, Editions de l’Herne, Paris, 1978.
2. Durand, Gilbert, Aventurile imaginii. Imaginatia simbolica. Imaginarul, Nemira Publishing House, Bucharest, 1999.
3. Eliade, Mircea, Tratat de istorie a religiilor, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1992.
4. Eliade, Mircea, Nostalgia originilor, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1994.
5. Eliade, Mircea, Le sacré et le profan, Gallimard, 1996.
6. Eliade, Mircea, Tratat de istorie a religiilor, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1992.
7. Eliade, Mircea, Aspecte ale mitului, Univers Publishing House, Bucharest, 1978.
8. Ries, Julien, Sacrul în istoria religioasa a omenirii, Polirom Publishing House, Iasi, 2000.
9. Ries, Julien, Histoire de religions, phénoménologie et herméneutique, in Les Cahiers de l’Herne Mircea Eliade, Editions de l’Herne, Paris, 1978.

ENDNOTES

i Mircea Eliade, Nostalgia originilor, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1994 p.14
ii Julien Ries, Histoire de religions, phénoménologie et herméneutique, in Les Cahiers de l’Herne Mircea Eliade, Editions de l’Herne, Paris, 1978.
iii Mircea Eliade, Tratat de istorie a religiilor, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1992, p.46.
iv Douglas Allen, L’analise phénoménologique de l’experience religieuse in Les Cahiers de l’Herne – Mircea Eliade, Editions de l’Herne, Paris, 1978, p.128
v Mircea Eliade, Le sacré et le profan, Ed.Gallimard, 1996, p.31.
vi Mircea Eliade, quoted work, p.63.
vii Mircea Eliade, Tratat de istorie a religiilor, Humanitas Publishing House, Bucharest, 1992, p.5.
viii Mircea Eliade, quoted work, p.6.
ix Julien Ries, quoted work
x Mircea Eliade, quoted work, p.25
xi Julien Ries, Sacrul în istoria religioasa a omenirii, Polirom Publishing House, Iasi, 2000, p.65
xii Mircea Eliade, Aspecte ale mitului, Univers Publishing House, Bucharest, 1978, p.5-6
xiii Gilbert Durand, Aventurile imaginii. Imaginatia simbolica. Imaginarul, Publishing House, Bucharest, 1999, p.172

 

——————-

Durac, Livia. “Mircea Eliade: The hermeneutics of the religious phenomenon.” Lecture delivered to the 4th International Conference on the Human Being in Contemporary in Philosophy, held at Volgograd, 28-31 May 2007. The original PDF file was found at: <http://volgograd2007.goldenideashome.com/2%20Papers/Durac%20Livia%20p%202.pdf >.

Note: On Eliade’s thought, see also “Mircea Eliade: An Appreciation” by David J. Levy and “Excerpts from The Sacred and the Profane” by Mircea Eliade.

 

Living with Our Tradition – Venner

Living in Accordance with Our Tradition

By Dominique Venner

Translated by Giuliano Adriano Malvicini

 

Every great people own a primordial tradition that is different from all the others. It is the past and the future, the world of the depths, the bedrock that supports, the source from which one may draw as one sees fit. It is the stable axis at the center of the turning wheel of change. As Hannah Arendt put it, it is the “authority that chooses and names, transmits and conserves, indicates where the treasures are to be found and what their value is.”

This dynamic conception of tradition is different from the Guénonian notion of a single, universal and hermetic tradition, which is supposedly common to all peoples and all times, and which originates in a revelation from an unidentified “beyond”. That such an idea is decidedly a-historical has not bothered its theoreticians. In their view, the world and history, for three or for thousand years, is no more than a regression, a fatal involution, the negation of of the world of what they call “tradition”, that of a golden age inspired by the Vedic and Hesiodic cosmologies. One must admit that the anti-materialism of this school is stimulating. On the other hand, its syncretism is ambiguous, to the point of leading some of its adepts, and not the least of them, to convert to Islam. Moreover, its critique of modernity has only lead to an admission of impotence. Unable to go beyond an often legitimate critique and propose an alternative way of life, the traditionalist school has taken refuge in an eschatological waiting for catastrophe. (1) That which is thinking of a high standard in Guénon or Evola, sometimes turns into sterile rhetoric among their disciples. (2) Whatever reservations we may have with regard to the Evola’s claims, we will always be indebted to him for having forcefully shown, in his work, that beyond all specific religious references, there is a spiritual path of tradition that is opposed to the materialism of which the Enlightenment was an expression. Evola was not only a creative thinker, he also proved, in his own life, the heroic values that he had developed in his work.

In order to avoid all confusion with the ordinary meaning of the old traditionalisms, however respectable they might be, we suggest a neologism, that of “traditionism”.

For Europeans, as for other peoples, the authentic tradition can only be their own. That is the tradition that opposes nihilism through the return to the sources specific to the European ancestral soul. Contrary to materialism, tradition does not explain the higher through the lower, ethics through heredity, politics through interests, love through sexuality. However, heredity has its part in ethics and culture, interest has its part in politics, and sexuality has its part in love. However, tradition orders them in a hierarchy. It constructs personal and collective existence from above to below. As in the allegory in Plato’s “Timaeus”, the sovereign spirit, relying on the courage of the heart, commands the appetites. But that does not mean that the spirit and the body can be separated. In the same way, authentic love is at once a communion of souls and a carnal harmony.

Tradition is not an idea. It is a way of being and of living, in accordance with the Timaeus’ precept that “the goal of human life is to establish order and harmony in one’s body and one’s soul, in the image of the order of the cosmos.” Which means that life is a path towards this goal.

In the future, the desire to live in accordance with our tradition will be felt more and more strongly, as the chaos of nihilism is exacerbated. In order to find itself again, the European soul, so often straining towards conquests and the infinite, is destined to return to itself through an effort of introspection and knowledge. Its Greek and Apollonian side, which are so rich, offers a model of wisdom in finitude, the lack of which will become more and more painful. But this pain is necessary. One must pass through the night to reach the dawn.

For Europeans, living according to their tradition first of all presupposes an awakening of consciousness, a thirst for true spirituality, practiced through personal reflection while in contact with a superior thought. One’s level of education does not constitute a barrier. “The learning of many things”, said Heraclitus, “does not teach understanding”. And he added: “To all men is granted the ability to know themselves and to think rightly.” One must also practice meditation, but austerity is not necessary. Xenophanes of Colophon even provided the following pleasant instructions: “One should hold such converse by the fire-side in the winter season, lying on a soft couch, well-fed, drinking sweet wine, nibbling peas: ‘Who are you among men, and where from?” Epicurius, who was more demanding, recommended two exercises: keeping a journal and imposing upon oneself a daily examination of conscience. That was what the stoics practiced. With the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, they handed down to us the model for all spirtual exercises.

Taking notes, reading, re-reading, learning, repeating daily a few aphorisms from an author associated with the tradition, that is what provides one with a point of support. Homer or Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus, Montaigne or Nietzsche, Evola or Jünger, poets who elevate and memorialists who incite to distance. The only rule is to choose that which elevates, while enjoying one’s reading.

To live in accordance with tradition is to conform to the ideal that it embodies, to cultivate excellence in relation to one’s nature, to find one’s roots again, to transmit the heritage, to stand united with one’s own kind. It also means driving out nihilism from oneself, even if one must pretend to pay tribute to a society that remains subjugated by nihilism through the bonds of desire. This implies a certain frugality, imposing limits upon oneself in order to liberate oneself from the chains of consumerism. It also means finding one’s way back to the poetic perception of the sacred in nature, in love, in family, in pleasure and in action. To live in accordance with tradition also means giving a form to one’s existence, by being one’s own demanding judge, one’s gaze turned towards the awakened beauty of one’s heart, rather than towards the ugliness of a decomposing world.

Notes

(1) Generally speaking, the pessimism intrinsic to counter-revolutionary thought – from which Evola distinguishes himself – comes from a fixation with form (political and social institutions), to the detriment of the essence of things (which persist behind change).

(2) The academic Marco Tarchi, who has for a long time been interested in Evola, has criticized in him a sterile discourse peopled by dreams of “warriors” and “aristocrats” (cf. the journal “Vouloir”, Bruxelles, january-february 1991. This journal is edited by the philologist Robert Steuckers).

Excerpt from the book Histoire et traditions des Européens: 30,000 ans d’identité (Paris: Éditions du Rocher, 2002).

 

————–

Venner, Dominique. “Living in Accordance with Our Tradition.” Eurocontinentalism Journal, 5 Octoboer 2013. <http://eurocontinentalism.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/living-in-accordance-with-our-tradition-dominique-venner/ >.

 

Dostoyevsky and Russia – Dugin

Dostoyevsky and the Metaphysics of St. Petersburg

By Alexander Dugin

Translated by Vladislav Ivanov

 

The Author Who Wrote Russia

Russia’s principal writer is the novelist Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky. Russian culture and its outlook accumulate in him, as if to some magic source. All the previous anticipates Dostoyevskiy, all the following results from him. No doubt he is Russia’s greatest national genius.

Dostoyevsky’s heritage is immense and almost all researchers agree upon the importance of his main novel, “Crime and Punishment”. If Dostoyevsky is the main author of Russia, “Crime and Punishment” is the main work of Russian literature and fundamental text of the Russian history.*

Consequently, there is nothing accidental or arbitrary about it, and there cannot be. Certainly this book must contain some mysterious hieroglyph, in which the whole Russian fate is concentrated. Deciphering that hieroglyph is the equivalent of attaining knowledge of the unfathomable Russian Mystery.

The Third Capital – The Third Rus

The novel is set in St. Petersburg. This fact, in itself, has a symbolic meaning. What is the sacred function of Petersburg in Russian history? By understanding this, we come near to Dostoyevskiy’s position.

St. Petersburg takes on sacred significance only in comparison with Moscow. Both capitals are bound up with each other by a ial cyclic logic, by a symbolic thread. Russia has had three capitals. The first one – Kiev – was the capital of a national, ethnically uniform state, situated on the periphery of the Byzantine Empire. That northern frontier formation did not play a very important civilizational or sacred role. A usual state for Aryan barbarians. Kiev is the capital of the ethnic Russ.

The second capital – Moscow – is something much more important. It took on a special significance at the moment of Constantinople’s fall, when Russ turned out to be the last Orthodox Christian Kingdom, the last Orthodox Christian Empire left.

Hence it follows: “Moscow is the Third Rome”. The idea of the Kingdom in the Orthodox Christian tradition has a special eschatological role: the State, by recognizing the completeness of the Church’s truth is, according to Tradition, the obstacle in the way of “Ruin’s son”, the hindrance to the advent of the “Antichrist”.

The Orthodox Christian State, constitutionally recognizing Orthodox Christianity’s truth and the Patriarch’s spiritual sway, is the “cathechon”, or “deterrent” (from Saint Paul the Apostle’s second Letter to the Thessalonians). The introduction of Patriarchate in Russ became possible only at the moment when the Byzantine Empire had fallen as a kingdom and, consequently, the Constantinopolitan Patriarch had lost his eschatological significance. For this significance is concentrated not just in the Orthodox Christian Church hierarchy, but in the Empire which recognizes the authority of that hierarchy. Hence follows the theological and eschatological significance of Moscow, of Moscow Russ. The Byzantine Empire’s fall signified, in the apocalyptic view of Orthodox Christianity, the approach of the “apostasy” period, of general recreancy. Only for a short time does Moscow turn out to be the Third Rome so as to postpone the Antichrist’s advent, to put off the moment when his arrival becomes a general, universal phenomenon. Moscow since then is the capital of an essentially new State. Not a national State, but a soteriological, eschatological, apocalyptic one. Moscow Russ, with its Patriarch and Orthodox Christian King (or Czar), is a Russ which is absolutely different from the Kievan one. It is no longer on the Empire’s periphery, but is the last stronghold of salvation, the Ark, the ground cleared for New Jerusalem to descend. “There will not be the Fourth one”.

St. Petersburg is the capital of the Russ which comes after the Third Rome. In some sense there is no such capital, there can’t be. “There won’t be a Fourth Rome”. St. Petersburg establishes the Third Russia. Third by quality, structure and sense. It is neither a national state, nor a soteriological ark. It is a strange titanic chimera, the ‘postmortem’ country, the nation that lives and develops in a space that is beyond history. Petersburg is a city of “Nav” (“Death’s incarnation”, Old Russian), a city of the reverse side. Hence follows the assonance of the Neva River (on which Petersburg is situated) and the Nav. The city of moonlight, water, strange buildings, alien to history’s rhythm, to national or religious aesthetics. The Petersburg period of Russian history was the third sense of its fate. That was a time of special Russians, of ones beyond the ark. The old believers were the last to embark the ark of the Third Rome by the christening fire which committed their huts together with them to flames.

Dostoyevsky is the writer of Petersburg. He is not intelligible without Petersburg. But Petersburg itself would remain in the virtual, illusive state without Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky revived it, made this enigmatic city actual, having had revealed its sense (only then does anything exist, when its sense shows through itself).

Only in Petersburg does Russian literature appear. The Kievan period is the period of epic legends. Moscow period is the time of soteriology and national theology.

Petersburg brings literature to Russia, the unholy rudiment of what used to be a valuable national thinking, the extolled trace of what has gone. Literature is a covering, a surface speck of sidereal waves, a vacuum, which is moaning with despair. Dostoyevsky heeded this call of emptiness so much that everything gone, erased, forgotten was, as it were, resurrected in his heroic spiritual doing.

Dostoyevsky is more than literature. He is theology, epic legend. Therefore his Petersburg seeks the idea, the sense. It constantly turns to the Third Rome. It agonizingly scrutinizes the sources of the nation.

The main character of “Crime and Punishment” is named Raskolnikov, being a direct reference to the Schism (or “Raskol”). Raskolnikov is a man of the Third Rome, “geworfen” (or “thrown”) into navi Petersburg. The suffering soul, which by a strange logic suddenly found himself after self-immolation in the damp labyrinth of the Petersburg streets, yellow walls, wet roadways and morose gray skies.

The Capital

The plot of “Crime and Punishment” is a structural analogue to Marx’s “Capital”: the prophecy of the coming Russian Revolution. It was simultaneously a draft to a new theology, a theology of being forsaken by God, what would become the main philosophical problem of the Twentieth Century. That theology could be called the “theology of Petersburg”, navi thoughts, the intellectualism of ghosts.

The story is extremely simple. The student Raskolnikov sharply senses the social reality as a revelation of evil, a special sensation that is so characteristic in some Gnostic, eschatological teachings.

The potassium cyanide of civilization. The degeneracy and the vice flourishes where the organic connections, spiritual meanings and anagogic spirals of hierarchies that ascend unimpeded to heaven, are lost. The perception of unholy reality. The insufferable loss of the “Third Rome”. The horror before the encounter with the universal Antichrist element, with Petersburg. Raskolnikov guesses absolutely correctly that the symbolic pole of evil is a perverted womanhood (Kali). That is that damned by religion loan capital, which equalizes the living with the lifeless and creates monsters. That is the decaying, degradation of the world. All this is the crone-usurer, the Baba-Yaga of the modern world, the Winter-Woman, Death, murderer. Out of her dirty place she spins Petersburg’s web, sending through its black streets Luzhins, Svidrigaylovs, dvorniks and Marmeladovs, the “black brothers”, secret agents of the capitalist sin.

The toils of the Underworld entangle taverns and brothels, dens of misery and ignorance, and stairwells and gateways plunged in semi-darkness. Because of her senile sorcery, the Sophia, God’s wisdom, turns to pitiful Sonechka with the yellow ticket. The hub of the wheel of Petersburg’s evil is found. Rodion Raskolnikov completes the ontological reconnoitering. Certainly, Raskolnikov is a communist. Though he is closer to the socialist-revolutionaries, to the narodniks. Certainly, he is familiar with the contemporary social teachings. He knows foreign languages and could have familiarized himself with Marx’s “Manifesto” or even with “Capital”. What is important is at the beginning of the “Manifesto”: “…a specter is wandering Europe…”. This is not a metaphor, it is a precise definition of that special mode of being that comes about after a society becomes unholy, after “God’s death”. From that time on we are in the world of wraiths, in the world of visions, chimeras, hallucinations, of navi plots.** For Russia this means “journeying from Moscow to Petersburg”, the incarnation into the city on the Neva, into the ghost-city. This incarnation could never be complete.

The communist specter makes all reality ghostly. Having settled in the consciousness of the student, who searches for the lost Logos, it plunges him into a current of distorted visions: there an old libertine drags a drunk teenage girl somewhere; there Marmeladov cries in a heart-rending way, after he has sold the last shawl of his lady-love to get money for alcohol; there demonic Svidrigaylov, the envoy of the web eternity, which is under the wardship of the usurer-crone, sidles toward Rodion’s pure sister. But is this a delusion? The ghost, having possessed the consciousness, in fact rids the unconsciousness. The reality unveiled is frightful, intolerable, but true. Is it evil to understand evil? Is it an illusion to reveal the illusory character of the world? Is it insanity to realize that the humankind lives according to the laws of ill logic? The ghost of Marxism, the narcotic of disclosure, the Gnostic call to uprising against the evil Demiurge… The bloody pain of these wounds is more acute than the image of a brightly lit hall, full of well-dressed couples, whirling in the dance.

Raskolnikov, killing the old crone, commits a paradigmatic gesture, carries out a Deed to which, in an archetypal way, the Praxis as Marxism perceives it, is reduced. Rodion Raskolnikov’s Deed is the act of the Russian Revolution, the summary of all Social Democratic, Narodnik and Bolshevik literature. This is a fundamental gesture of Russian history which just came about after Dostoyevsky, having been prepared long before him in enigmatic initial points of the national fate. All our history is divided into two parts – before the murder of the usurer-crone by Raskolnikov and after the murder. But being a phantasmal, supertemporal moment, it cast flashes forward and backward into time. It shows itself in peasant uprisings, in heresies, in Pugachov’s and Razin’s rebellions, in the split of the Orthodox Christian Church (Schism, Raskol), in the advent of the dark time (the events at the beginning of 17th Century Russia), in all the complicated, multi-stage, insatiable metaphysics of Russian Murder, which spread from the profundity of the initial Slavic birth to the Red Terror and Gulag. Any hand raised over a victim’s skull was impelled by a passionate, vague, profound outburst. It was participation in the Common Deed and its philosophy. Killing and Death brings near the Resurrection of the Dead.

We Russians are a blessed nation. Therefore all our manifestations – lofty and shabby, comely and terrifying – are sanctified by otherworldly senses, by rays of the otherworldly city, are washed by transcendent moisture. In the abundance of the national Grace the good and the evil are mixed, pour from one to another, and suddenly the dark lightens, whereas something white becomes a mere hell. We are as unknowable as the Absolute. We are a divine nation. Even our Crime is incomparably superior to some other’s virtue.

Dichotomy of the two

Between the middle of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Russian consciousness was in a strange way possessed with comprehending one of the ten commandments – “kill not”. They discussed it as if it were the Christianity essence. Theologians, revolutionaries, and terrorists constantly repeated it (Savinkov was mad for that commandment) as well as humanitarians, progressives, and conservatives. Both the theme and the argumentation around it were so important that it affected, to a considerable extent, all modern Russian consciousness. Although the significance of that formula faded with the advent of Bolsheviks, it reemerged at the end of the Soviet period and began to haunt intellectuals’ brains with the renewed force. “Kill not” is not an exactly Christian and New Testament commandment, but is the Judaic and Old Testament one. This is a part of the Law, the Torah, that regulates, as a whole, the exoteric, outer, social and ethical norms of Israeli popular life. That commandment doesn’t have any special significance. You can find something analogous in most traditions, in their social codes. In Hinduism the equivalent is called “ahimsa”, “non-violence”. This “kill not”, as well as the rest of the paragraphs of the Law, regulate human freedom, directing it to the stream which, according to the spirit of Tradition, belongs to the better part, to its “right-hand side”. In addition, it is significant that “kill not” does not have any absolute metaphysical sense. As well as all exoteric statues this commandment just serves with the others in keeping the collective existence in order and for preserving the community from falling into chaos (“The Law has committed nothing”, according to Saint Paul the Apostle). In principle, if one compares the Old Testament reality with the modern one, the formula to “kill not” approximately corresponds to the inscription “smoking is forbidden”, put up in the theater’s foyer. Smoking in a theater is not allowed, it is not good. When some strained spectators begin to smoke, it’s a state of emergency for the usherettes. Such people are condemned by public opinion and subjected to repression by the servants of justice.

It is very significant that the Old Testament is full of defiant non-observance of that commandment. Murder is all around. It is committed by not only sinners, but also by righteous men, kings, anointed sovereigns, even prophets. Elijah’s favorite pupil, the prophet Elisha, was especially stern: he had no mercy even for innocent little ones. They killed during wars, killed natives and aliens, killed criminals and those who have killed, killed women. They had no mercy for infants, the aged ones, goyim, prophets, idolaters, sorcerers, sectarians, relatives. A lot of things were destroyed. In the Book of Job, Yahweh – without any special reason except a fairly superficial controversy with Lucifer – treats in a sadistic way his own chosen and virtuous man.

When the latter, covered with leprosy, gets indignant at this, Jahwe cows him with two geo-political*** monsters: the land called Behemoth and the sea called Leviathan, i.e. Jahweh mortifies him in the moral sense too. Modern Biblical investigation proves convincingly that the original text of the Book of Job comes to its end at the peak of the tragedy, and the naively moralistic end was added by Levites long after, who were terrified by the primordial, rigid nature of that most archaic of “Old Testament” fragments.

In other words, in the Judaic context where the commandment to “kill not” was directly taken from, it has neither any absolute character nor any special significance.

There was no controversy on that theme and apparently no reflection was given it with any express purpose. That is not to say that the commandment was never taken into account. It was: they tried not to shed blood for no purpose. They also bewared the rabbinical court. If someone was finished off in vain, a punishment followed. The usual law. The ordinary commandment. Nothing special. The standard of human conduct. In Christianity everything is different. Christ is the fulfillment of the Law. The Law ends with him. The Law’s mission is carried out. In some sense, it is removed from the agenda. Exactly “removed”, but not repealed. The spiritual problems pass on to a radically different plane. From now on the Post-Law, the era of Grace, begins. “The protection of Law is overcome”. Strictly speaking, the advent of such an era signifies the unimportant character of commandments.

Even the very first commandment of worshipping One Lord is overcome by the New Testament, by the Precept of Love for Him. Through the Incarnation, the Logos-God brings about absolutely new relations between the Maker and all creation, and among the creatures themselves. From then on everything happens under the sign of Emmanuel, by the beneficial formula, “God is with us”. God is not somewhere far away, He performs not just the role of Judge and Law-giver, but also the role of the Beloved and Loving One. The New Commandment does not reject the ten previous ones, but makes them unnecessary.

New Testament humanity is in a cardinal way different from the old, Judaic (or heathen) one. It bears the sign of transcendent Love. That is why the dichotomy of Law- “worship – worship not”, “singular – plural”, “steal – steal not”, “seduce – seduce not” and, finally, “kill – kill not”- doesn’t make sense anymore.

In Christian holiness, all means are expressed positively. The new man needs no rules here, he lives for one thing – the sober, everlasting, undiluted Love, staying in prayer and contemplation. Here, there’s not just “kill not”. The Christian saints would laugh at such caution for in them the duality is already abolished, the barrier between self and non-self is crushed. Moreover, they want to be killed, they aspire to suffer, they long for martyrdom. However, valuable Christian life doesn’t have any relation to the old Ten Commandments. They are once and forever overcome in the sacred christening. Further, there is only the realization of Grace.

But let’s consider a Christian not in holiness, not in monkshood, not in asceticism and the hermitic life. Will the idea set by the Old Testament order be valid for him? No. He is christened, which means born from above, and consequently God is with him too. Inside, but not outside. Therefore, even being a sinner, the unworthy one too lives beyond the old man, in the new being, in the stream of the undeserved light of Grace. Observing or not observing Old Testament legislation has nothing to do with the intimate essence of the Christian existence.

Of course, it is more convenient for a society to have dealings with those who are obedient and observe rules. For a Christian society too. But all this doesn’t have any common measure with the Church sacrament, with the mystical life of a believer. Here the most interesting element begins. A Christian, by overstepping some Old Testament commandment, in fact demonstrates that he did not complete in himself the mysterious nature of the New Man, the potential personality cast by the Holy Spirit in the font of christening.

But who can boast that he has reached full deification? The more one is holy, the more mean, sinful, terrible he seems to himself before the face of the Shining Trinity. Consequently, as in the case of the yurodivy (“God’s fools”) who disparaged the human aspect, falling can be, in a paradoxical Christian way, a sacrament.

Observing the Ten Commandments isn’t a decisive factor for an Orthodox Christian. Only one thing is important for him: Love, the New – absolutely New – Testament, the Love Testament. The Ten Commandments without Love is the way to hell. And if Love is, then they have no significance anymore. This was all clear to radical Russian intellectuals. In Boris Savinkov’s book, “The Pale Horse”, a terrorist named “Vanya” (a literary character, inspired by Ivan Kalyayev) says before committing a murder: “And the other way – Christ’s way to Christ… Listen, if you love a lot, really love, you can then kill, can you not?”

And further –

“…one must undergo a cross torment, one must determine on doing all this out of love and for love. But absolutely out of love and for love… So I live, and what for? Maybe I live for my death-hour. I pray: Lord, give me death in the name of love. You cannot pray for murder, can you?”.

Savinkov lived, thought, wrote, and murdered after Dostoyevsky. But nothing is added to Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov murders not just for humankind’s sake (though for it too), he murders for the sake of Love. In order to go through suffering, he has to die, to kill death in himself and others. Ivan Kalyayev, as well as Savinkov himself, are profoundly Russian, profoundly Orthodox Christian, profoundly “dostoyevskian-type” people: having an evidently divine character, along with the entire nation, and filled with such lofty, paradoxical and Orthodox Christian Thought, a comparison which makes the most refined and profound Western philosophical schemes turn insipid. Russians don’t formulate a theology, they endure it, live it throughout all their lives. This is the theology, coming through pores, through breath, through tears, through sleep and grimaces of wrath. Through torment and torture. Through the wet and bloody, carnal and spiritualized element of the New Life.

With Love and for Love’s sake one may do everything. This doesn’t mean that one must do everything and that all commandments should be countermanded, rejected. On no account. One should just demonstrate with one’s life and gestures that there is – and this is the chief thing – another measure of being, the new light, the light of Love.

The place of the usurer-crone’s murder is St. Petersburg. So this is the place of Love in Russia, locus amoris.

Rodion raises two hands, two angular signs, two sinew plexus, two runes over the wintry shriveled skull of the Capital. In his hand there is a coarse, gross, crudely made item. With this item, the central ritual of Russian history, and of Russian mystery, is committed. The wraith materializes, the moment falls out of the system of earthly time (Goethe would have gone immediately crazy, having seen which moment in fact stopped…). Two theologies, two testaments, two revelations meet in the magic point. This point is absolute.

Axe is its name.

Labris

The short genealogy of the axe.

The most brilliant hypotheses concerning this item – its origin and its Symbolism – was advanced by Herman Wirth, a German scientific genius and a specialist in the sphere of human prehistory and ancient letters. Wirth showed that the twofold axe was the primordial symbol of the Year, of the circle, of its two halves, one is following the winter solstice, the other is foregoing it. The standard (not twofold) axe correspondingly symbolizes one half of the Year, as a rule the springtime, the ascending half.

Moreover, the utilitarian use of an axe for chopping trees, also according to Wirth, bears a relation to yearly symbolism, for the Tree in Tradition means Year. Its roots are the wintry months, its crown are the summer ones. Therefore chopping trees is correlated, in the primordial symbolical context of the sacred societies, with the advent of the New Year and the old one’s end.

The Axe is simultaneously the New Year and the instrument with which the old is destroyed. Simultaneously it is a cutting instrument, splitting Time, snipping the umbilical cord of its span off in the Winter Solstice’s magic point, when the Sun’s greatest Mystery of death and resurrection comes about.

The rune in the ancient runic calendar depicting the axe was called “thurs” and was dedicated to God Thor. It fell on the first months of the New Year. Thor was the Axe-God or its symbolic equivalent, the Hammer-God or Miollnir. With this Hammer-Axe, Thor smashed the skull of the World Serpent, Irmunganthr, who floated in the lower waters of darkness. Again the obvious solstice myth, connected with the point of the New Year. The Serpent is the Winter, the cold, the lower waters of the Sacred year, where the polar sun descends to. Thor, here he is both the Sun and the spirit of the Sun, overcomes the cold’s grasp and sets the Light free. On the later stages of the myth, the Sun-Light figure is divided into two – the savior and the saved – and then into three with the addition of salvation’s instrument, the axe. In the primordial form, all those personalities were something united – god-sun-axe (hammer).

The earliest inscription of the axe sign in the ancient Paleolithic caverns and rock carvings were analyzed by Herman Wirth in the light of the entire ritual and calendar structure. He traced the amazing constancy of the axe proto-sense through the most different by both age and geographic location cultures and languages. He showed the etymological and semantic relation of words which mean ‘axe’ with other symbolic notions and mythological subjects, which are also associated with the mystery of New Year, the middle of Winter, the Winter Solstice.

Especially interesting are the indications that the symbolic meaning of “axe” is strictly identical with two other ancient hieroglyph-word-items: “labyrinth” and “beard”.

The “Labyrinth” is a development of the idea of a year spiral, twisting to the New Year and then right away starting to untwist. “Beard” is merely the masculine sun’s light in the autumn-winter half of the year circle (the hair as a whole are the sun’s rays). Therefore in the runic circle another rune – “peorp” – looks like the axe, but means the beard. In the middle of the Labyrinth lives Minotaurus, the monster, the human-bull, the equivalent of Jormungandr, the World Serpent and… the usurer crone. Dostoyevsky described the ancient mythological subject, the secret paradigm of a symbolic succession, the primordial ritual, which our ancestors practiced for many millennia. But this is not just an anachronism or uncoordinated fragments of the collective unconscious. In fact the matter is about a much more important eschatological picture, about the sense and gesture of the End of Times, about the sacred apocalyptic moment, when time collides with Eternity, when the fire of Doomsday blazes.

The Russians are the blessed nation, and Russian history is the resume of world history. To us, like to a temporal, spatial and ethnic magnet, the destiny sense of centuries gravitates with increasing progression. The First and the Second Rome were just for the Third one to appear. The Byzantine Empire was the prophecy of the Holy Russ. The Holy Russ in the apocalyptic way drew itself to the wraith-city named St. Petersburg, where Russia’s greatest prophet Fyodor Dostoyevsky appeared. The scene of his main novel, “Crime and Punishment”, is set in the labyrinth of Petersburg’s streets and the novel’s main characters are Russia’s main characters. Among them, the most important are Raskolnikov, the usurer-crone and the axe. In addition, the axe is the beam that connects Raskolnikov with the usurer-crone. Consequently, world history – through the history of Rome, through the history of the Byzantine Empire, through the history of Russia, through the history of Moscow, through the history of St. Petersburg, through the history of Dostoyevsky, through the history of “Crime and Punishment”, through the history of the novel’s main characters – is reduced to the AXE.

Raskolnikov splits the capitalist crone’s head. The name “Raskolnikov” (“Raskol” means literally a “split”) itself indicates the axe and the operation it makes. Raskolnikov performs the New Year ritual, the Doomsday mystery, the celebration of the Sun’s resurrection.

Capitalism, creeping to Russia from the West, from the sunset side, carnally represents the world serpent. Its agent is the spider-crone, spinning a web of usurious slavery. She is also part of it.

Raskolnikov brings the axe of the East.

The axe of the rising sun, the axe of Freedom and the New Dawn.

The novel should have ended in a triumphal way with the full justification of Rodion. Raskolnikov’s crime is the punishment for the usurer. The era of the Axe and proletarian Revolution is proclaimed. But… additional forces entered the affair. The investigator Porfiriy turns out to be especially insidious. That representative of Kafkian jurisprudence and Pharisaical pseudo-humanitarianism begins a complicated intrigue to defame the main character and his actions in Raskolnikov’s own eyes. Porfiriy, in the mean way he juggles the facts, leads Raskolnikov up a blind labyrinth of doubt, nervousness, and mental derangement. He doesn’t just try to put Rodion in jail, but seeks to suppress him in a spiritual way. The main character should have treated that scum the same way he did the crone: “Smash the serpent’s skull”. But our personage turns out to be unable to gather himself up… Then the rest of the tissue of the myth also turns out to be unraveled. Raskolnikov, according to the primordial scenario, should have gotten Wisdom-Sophia out of the brothel, like Gnostic-Simon did with Helena. Even the scene of reciting the gospel narration about Lazarus’s resurrection remained from the original version: Sophia, rescued by Love and upon being released from usurious slavery propagates the universal resurrection. But here for some reason she joins in a conspiracy with the “humanitarian serpent-worshipper”, Porfiriy. She begins to suggest to Raskolnikov an idea: that the old woman, she said, should have been spared, that she was “not a shaking louse”. The society of love of animals, including the world serpent from pitch-darkness. A care for a capitalist’s tear.

How can this all be explained?

Dostoyevsky was a prophet and had the gift of a clairvoyant. He foresaw, not only the revolution (the stroke on the skull with the axe), but also its degeneration, its betrayal, its being put on the market. The Sophia of socialism gradually degraded to humanitarian Pharisaic dithering. Porfiriys penetrated the party and undermined the basics of the Soviet country’s eschatological reign.

First they gave up the permanent revolution, then the purges, and then Sonya, under the guise of the late-Soviet intellectuals, again started whining about the silliest – to “kill not”… And blood gushed as a river. This wasn’t the blood of usurer-crones, but that of really innocent children.

There exists a virtual version of “Crime and Punishment”, which has an absolutely different ending. It has to do with the new, coming period of Russian history. Till now we lived through the first version. But now that’s all over. The new myth is incarnating, the scarlet sword of Boris Savinkov is scorching the hands of a new youthful Russia, the Russia of the End Times.

Axe is the name of that Russia.

Notes

* Let’s take notice right away of the fact that quite a few of the concepts in this article are suggested by reading the very interesting work of V. Kushev, “730 steps”, in which the author analyzes the paradigm of “Crime and Punishment”.

** Stirner wrote in “German Ideology”: “Mensch, es spukt in deinem Kopfe!”, what could be approximately translated as, “Man, it is your head what is haunted by ghosts”. Regarding the exact translation of the German verb “spuken”, it is derived from “der Spuk” (a wraith) and is analogous to the French “hanter” and the English “to haunt”. Father Seraphim indicated to us an interesting analogy, having remembered that in Old Russian there existed the verb “stuzhati”, meaning the same as the German “spuken” – to be overcome by the evil ones, be possessed by the invisible beings. Jacques Derrida in his text “Hamlet and Hecuba” (1956) pointed out the similarity between Shakespeare’s drama and Marx’s “Manifesto”. In both cases everything begins with the ghost, from expecting its appearance. Derrida points out precisely that “the moment of the ghosts doesn’t belong to usual time”. In other words, time in the world of ghosts doesn’t have any common measure with the time of the human world. It is very closely connected with the very essence of Petersburg, the ghost-city, living beyond the sacred time of Russian history in some subtle sleep, sidereal dizziness. This is the ghost-like eternity of Svidrigaylov. This “flying Dutchman-like” city, its lights, its chandeliers, its candles and bulbs, and its Enlightenment are nothing more than St. Elm’s lights, the fictitious luminescence of a marsh-like quasi-existence. Stuzhalyy gorod, the haunted city, la ville hantee… The place of insanity, illness, fever, perversions, vice and…dawning consciousness.

*** In modern geopolitics, Leviathan and Behemoth means sea power and land power correspondingly. The Leviathan is Atlantism, the West, America, the Anglo-Saxon world, and market ideology. The Behemoth is the Eurasian, continental structure, and is associated with Russia, hierarchy and tradition.

 

——————

Dugin, Alexander. “Dostoyevsky and the metaphysics of St. Petersburg.” Eurocontinentalism Journal, 13 Friday 2013. <http://eurocontinentalism.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/dostoyevsky-and-the-metaphysics-of-st-petersburg-prof-dr-alexandr-dugin/ >.

 

Establish Multipolar World Order – Savin

Establish a Multipolar World Order

Interview with Mr. Leonid SAVIN of the International Eurasian Movement – by Euro-Synergies

 

Could you describe in a few key words the essence and goals of your movement? Does it place itself in an existing sociopolitical-historical trend of Russian politics? Does it lobby in Russian government circles to achieve its goals?

The main idea and goal of the International Eurasian Movement is to establish a multipolar world order, where there will be no dictatorship of the U.S. anymore or of any other country or actor of world politics. In the sector of ideology we strongly reject (neo)liberalism and the globalization process as its derivative. We agree that we (as well as other nations) need a constructive platform for our alternative future. In the search of it, our work is directed to dialogue with other cultures and peoples who understand the meaning and necessity of conservative values in contemporary societies. Speaking about Russian reality, we are heirs and assigns to the former Eurasianists (this ideology was born in the 1920s): Piotr Savitsky, Nikolay Trubetskoy, Nikolay Alekseev as well as Lev Gumilev — the famous Soviet scholar. They all studied historical processes and proposed a unique vision of our history, separate from the eurocentric science approach. The understanding that Russia is not part of Europe or Asia, but forms a very own unique world, named Eurasia, is also implemented in our political activity. In cooperation with members of parliament or the Council of the Federation or other governmental bodies, with our advices and recommendations, we always provide a strong basis linked to our history, culture, diversity and so on. And I must tell you that many people understand and support our ideas and efforts (in governmental structures, local and regional authorities, science and education, religious institutions and in society at large).

What is your vision on a multipolar world? Which role do you see for Western European nations? Do they have any future at all on the world stage of the 21st century? Will they surmount the actual crises on a demographic, metaphysical and mental level?

In my opinion, a multipolar world is the order with 5 or more centers of power in the world and this reality will keep our planet more safe and balanced with shared responsibility between the regions. But it is not just interdependence by the logic of liberalism: some regions might well exist in relative political and economic autarky. Beside that, there might exist a double core in one center (for example Arabs and Turks in a large Muslim zone or Russia and Central Asian states for Eurasia) and shifted and inter-imposed zones, because, historically, centers of power can be moved. Of course at the moment the most significant centers of power are described in terms of nuclear arms, GDP, economic weight/growth and diplomatic influence. First of all we already have more poles than during the Soviet-US opposition. Secondly, everybody understands the role of China as a ‘Bretton Woods-2’, as well as emerging countries under acronyms as BRICS or VISTA, “anchor countries” and so on. And, thirdly, we see the rise of popular and unconventional diplomacy and the desire of many countries (many of them are strong regional actors such as Iran, Indonesia and Brazil) to not follow the U.S. as satellites or minor partners.

Of course, Washington does not like this scenario and tries to make coalitions based on states with a neocolonial background or on dutiful marionettes. But even in the U.S., politicians and analysts understand that the time of unipolar hegemony has gone. They are trying to build a more flexible approach to international relations, called ‘multilateralism’ (H. Clinton) or ‘non-polarity’ (R. Haas), but the problem is that the U.S. do not have enough confidence in foreign actors united as joint, but who still have no strong alternative to the contemporary world order. So, they use another option for destabilization of rising regions, known as controlled chaos. Because of its military presence over most parts of the globe and its status of promoter of democracy and the protection of human rights, the White House can justify its own interests in these places. And cyberspace is also the object of manipulation, where the whole world is divided in two camps that remind us of the times of the Cold War (I call it ‘Cold Cyber War’).

We think that the contemporary West European nations are one of the poles (centers of power) in a forthcoming multipolar world order). But the problem for now is their engagement in U.S. pro-atlanticist politics, as manifested in the Euro-Atlantic chart of cooperation (common market, legislation and regulation mechanisms, including items of domestic politics), as well as NATO activity. The same we see on the other side of Eurasia – attempts of Washington to start trans-Atlantic cooperation with Asian countries. The contemporary crisis is neither good nor bad. It’s a fact. And the European nations must think about the way they’ll choose, because it will form the future (at least in Europe). It is not the first time in history: during the middle ages there was decline of population because of pestilence and wars. Religious schisms also occurred, so Europeans have some experience in metaphysics and ethics dealing with system failure too. The point is that now we have more interconnected reality and the speed of information sharing is fantastic, that was not possible, imagine, a century ago. And European society becomes more consumerist! But even in Europe, there are a lot of voices in respect of nature (organic greens), anti-grow movements (in economics) and traditionalists who try to keep and preserve ethnic and historical values and manners. Even the Soviet experience could be useful: after the Great Social Revolution there was a strong anti-church attitude promoted by the government, but after 70 years we’re back at our roots (of course during all this time not all people were atheists and the return to church happened during Stalin’s period when the institute of the Patriarchy was restored).

How do you see the dialogue of civilizations in the light of more than 10 years of wars between the West and the Muslim world? Where does Russia stand in this opposition? Are there fears of an islamization process within the Russian Federation, or are Russian authorities setting on long-time accommodation with Muslim minorities and actors?

At first we must bear in mind that the idea of Huntington (the ‘clash of civilizations’) was developed out of necessity of justifying the U.S.’s military and economic expansion. His book was issued when the first wave of globalization as the highest principle of Westcentrism just began its tide in the Third World. By the logic of neo-liberal capitalism it must be re-ordered and re-programmed in the search for new markets. All non-western societies must consume western products, services and technologies by this logic. And let’s remember that war against the Muslim countries originated from the neocons from Washington. So, these 10 years of wars that you to mention is nothing more than a provoked conflict by a small group that was very powerful in American politics at the beginning of the 2000s. By the way, all kinds of radical Islam (Wahhabism) were promoted by the United Kingdom. This version of Islam was founded in Saudi Arabia only with London’s special support. The Great Game in Eurasia was started many years ago and Britain has played here a most significant role. The U.S. took this role only after WW2, but many destructive processes were already unleashed. Of course, Russia is suspicious of radical Islam, because emissaries of the Wahhabis and al-Qaeda were already in the Northern Caucasus. And still now, there are different terrorist groups with the idea of the so-called “Emirate of the Caucasus.” There were also attempts to spread another sectarian belief promoted by Fetullah Gullen (Nurjular), but for now this sect is prohibited here. Actually Islam is not a threat to Russia, because, traditionally, a lot of people living here are Muslim. Regions like Tatarstan, the North Caucasus republics, Bashkortostan have an Islamic population. And our government supports traditional Islam here.

What do you think about the American/Western strategy of strategic encirclement of Russia? Can we see this as well in the process of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’? Is an open, Western-waged war against Syria and Iran possible and would it be the onset to a major world conflict, a ‘Third World War’? Where would Russia stand?

It works. Not only because of the reset of the Anaconda strategy for Eurasia by means of military presence. Sometimes it doesn’t manifest in classical bases. Logistics is the main element of contemporary warfare, as well as C4ISR – Command, Control, Computer, Communications, Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance – works in the vein of smart engagement. Other tools are: economics, promotion of democracy and human rights, cyber politics. The Arab Spring is a very complex phenomenon – there are a couple of components, but you can see that the U.S. has a bonus anyway: Egypt has asked for a huge loan from the World Bank; Western companies go to Libya; Muslim extremists are being manipulated against moderate Muslims, because they are a threat to western interests and so on. Organized chaos is just another view on the socio-political reality in turbulence. As Steve Mann (famous theorist of the chaos principle in diplomacy) wrote: the state is just hardware and ideology is its soft version. It were better to use ‘virus’ (in other words ‘promoting democracy’) and not to break PC. Syria and Iran are interesting for many nations now. The hysteria of Israel is not good, because this country has nuclear weapons. What will come of Israel using it? The Palestinian question is also on the table. I think that Israel is a more serious problem than Syria and Iran. Russia firmly supports Syria and takes a moderate position on Iran. During the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia declined to provide the “S-300” rocket complex to Iran (we had already signed the contract) and the deal was canceled. You bear in mind that during the same time Russia supported resolution 1973 of UN Security Council and the West started operation “Odyssey Dawn” against Libya. So, even VIP politicians in Russia sometimes do wrong things! But Mr. Putin is actively pro-Syrian and I think that the position of Russia about Iran and about Western pressure will be more adequate than before. As foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told: “we got experience with Libya and don’t believe the West anymore”.

What do you think about the Western Europeans: should they remain loyal to their historical-political heritage of individualism and atlanticism, or should they rethink themselves and orient themselves towards Russia and continentalism? What about pro-Russian elements in European society? Can they be partners or are they, politically and socially spoken, too marginal for that?

John M. Hobson, in his brilliant work The eurocentric conception of world politics, made very clear that the West is rooted in the logic of immanence instead of the logic of co-development that is characteristic of non-western societies. He continues that the formula “the West and the Rest” is wrong, because without the rest there is no place for the West. Now we see one United Europe, but in real life we have two levels. The first one is presented by the bureaucratic establishment with its symbols, history, power projections and procedures. The second one is active publicity with movements, political parties and personal activists who are not interested in an Orwellian future with “Big Brother,” universal values and so on. Actually, in geography we have more than one substance. And where is the border between Southern, Western and Eastern Europe? It’s mostly in the minds. From history we remember the Celtic space, the Roman Empire, the Germanic and nomad invasions (Huns, Avars, etc.), that shows that the face of Europe permanently changed throughout the centuries. Now the European population includes people from Africa and Asia and soon the demographic balance will change. Political culture will change too. Without Russia, Europe is impossible. Not only because of geography (just look at the map and you will see that the EU is just the small, overpopulated western peninsula of Eurasia), but also because of the role of Russia in European history. Napoleon and Hitler – the two most significant unifiers of Europe – were stopped and defeated in Russia and, after that, new political orders were established. And for now in Europe we have so many Russian “prints”: in culture, history, the role of some persons and diasporas. I think that pro-Russian elements just now have a very good choice, because the window of opportunity is open. All these elements could form an avant-garde of a new kind of cooperation: in trade relations, science, art and education and public diplomacy. The last one is the tie for all activities. Actually Minister Lavrov just today (i.e. 26.02.2013) announced that, because of the Russia year in the Netherlands and vice versa, there will be more than 350 actions on state level. It is a good sign of mutual respect and it may be deeper.

What about key power Germany? Do you believe in, let’s say, an ‘Indo-European bloc’, an axis Berlin-Moscow-New Delhi, as a formidable counterweight to the atlanticist bloc of the axis Washington-London-Paris? Do the horrors of the Second World War still affect Russians’ views of Germany and the Germans, or is it possible to turn the page on both sides and look forward? What about the French: do they belong in the atlanticist bloc, or can they be won for the continentalist bloc without giving in to their chauvinism? And what about China: will it turn out to be an even more dangerous enemy than the USA, or will both Russia and China remain strategic partners, e.g. within the SCO?

Because the EU has two levels, the same is true for Germany. One Germany, represented by the political establishment, is pro-U.S. and cannot do anything without Washington. Another one (latent or potential) is looking for closer cooperation with Russia. At the time of the Russian Empire a lot of German people came to our country at the invitation of Empress Catherine the Great. Even before that, many foreigners were in Russia as military officers, teachers, technical specialists, etc. People’s potential can do a lot of things. We must keep in mind that, besides Sea Power and Land Power in geopolitics, we have Man Power, which is the unique and main axis of any politics. The problem is that, after WWII, there was in most European countries a strong influence of Britain and the U.S.. They used very black propaganda and the peoples of Europe were afraid of a communist invasion. The U.S. even started more horrible projects in Western Europe (for example Propaganda-Due and operation “Gladio” in Italy, as well as “Stay Behind” NATO secret armies, formed from right-wing extremist elements). Still now in the EU, we see anti-Russian propaganda, but our borders are open and any European can go to Russia and see what happens here. The case of Gérard Depardieu is just one example.

If we look at what happens in China we’ll understand that it is a very strong actor and that its power grows from year to year. In the UN Security Council China is an important partner of Russia (for the Syria voting too). Russia is a supplier of oil and gas to China and we have new agreements for the future. Besides that we provide military equipment to China, though they have good weapon systems of their own as well. In the SCO we had good results and I think that cooperation in this organization must be enlarged through strategic military elements with the entry at least of Iran, Belarus, India and Pakistan (they have an observer or dialogue partner status). Turkey is interested as well, but because of its NATO membership it will be difficult to join.

I know that some Russians and Europeans describe China as a possible enemy, a “yellow threat” (the Polish writer Ignacy Witkiewicz even wrote about it in his novel in 1929!!!) and so on, but in reality China has no intents of border pretence to Russia. We have had some incidents in Siberia with contraband, but these are criminal cases which do not deal with state politics. China will focus on Taiwan and on the disputed islands in the Pacific and it will take all geopolitical attention and may be some loyalty from Russia and SCO members.

Also China has the same view on the future world order – multipolarity. Actually this idea (duojihua) was born in China in 1986. And with the strategic cooperation with many other countries in Africa and South America, joint efforts against western hegemony will be fruitful.

So, I think China and Russia can do a lot for a reform of the forthcoming world order.

A lot of people now want to forget their own origins and the origins of other peoples. Bavaria, for example, was populated centuries ago by Avars from Asia (part of them still live in the Caucasus) during the Migration Period. Groups of Turkish origin also went to lands of contemporary Austria. So in contemporary Europe we have a lot of Asian elements. And vice-versa in Asia we have people of Aryan origin. Not only in the North of India, but also in Tajikistan, Pakistan, Iran (arya is the self-name of the people of Iran and India). And hybridization is continuing as we speak in Europe and in other regions. Just before Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union we had a pact with Germany and had been cooperating extensively in technologies and in the economy. And France was attacked first by Germany, but now relations between both countries are normal. I think that historical harms between Germany and Russia have been mostly forgotten. And I think that many Germans still remember that the most destructive attacks did not come from the Soviet army but from U.S. and British air forces (Dresden, Leipzig…). It was not a war, but a deliberate destruction of cities and non-armed refugees. Actually now Germans is mostly good businessmen for Russians, compared to representatives of other European nations (these facts have been confirmed by many friends who do business with Europeans).

I can not to speak with enough certainty of what happens with Russian-French relations, because I’m not very interested in this sector. During the XXth century we had many deals with France, and after WWII it was the idea of Stalin to give the winner status to France. Charles de Gaulle also was pro-Soviet in a geopolitical sense. But after the legalization of gay marriage in France, many Russians feel suspicious about this country. But every people and every country has its own specifics. We have had many interesting philosophers from France who have had influence on Russian thinkers too.

Turning to domestic Russian problems: Russia under President Putin has been able to make enormous progress in the social field, mainly due to energy sales during the 2000s. Has this changed the face of Russia? Has this period come to an end or is there stagnation? How will Russia cope with its domestic problems, such as the demographic crisis, which it shares with Western Europe? Should the Siberian land mass be ‘re-colonized’ by Russians and other Europeans, in order to make it an impregnable ‘green lung fortress’ for the white peoples?

The grand contribution of Mr. Putin is that he stopped liberal privatization and the process of separatism in Russia. Persons such as Chodorkovsky were representatives of the Western oligarchy, especially of powerful financial clans (for example, he is a personal friend of Rothschild) and he had plans to usurp power in Russia through the corruption of parliament. We still have the rudiments of predatory liberalism such as misbalances, corruption, fifth column, degradation of traditional values, etc. For now we see in Russia efforts to build a smarter kind of economics, but it must be done very carefully. The questions that must be at the center are: how to deal with the Federal Reserve System? What about a new currency order that may be represented by BRICS? How to start mobilization? What to do with the neoliberal lobby within the government? The demographic crisis is also linked with neoliberalism and consumerism. A century ago, there was a rise of population in Russia, but two world wars have cut it. Even during Soviet times we had a good demography index. Now the government has started supporting young families and the process of human reproduction. In addition to birth programs we have an initiative dealing with the return of compatriots to Russia and all people who were born in the USSR can come to Russia very easily and get certain funding from the state. But I think that, because the Russians were the state-forming people, there must be a preference for Slavonic origin, because migrants from Asian countries (who do not speak Russian and have other traditions) will flow to Russia for economic reasons. Many Russian activists who take a critical stance on Asian people are already disappointed by this program. I think that the attraction of Byelorussians and Ukrainians can equalize this disproportion. But, strategically, the state must support a system of child-bearing with all necessary needs (fosterage, education, working place, social environmental, etc.). In some regions governors personally start up that kind of programs dealing with local and regional solidarity. First of all, Siberia is still Russian. The Siberian type of Russian is different from citizens from the central or southern regions, but till now it’s still mainly Russian, not only institutionally, but also ethnically. Actually, according to our statistics, most labor migrants to Russia come from Ukraine! So, in spite of strange relations between both countries and with strong anti-Russian stances on the part of Ukrainian nationalists and pro-western “democrats,” people just make their own choice. Rationally speaking, Siberia is not only interesting, because of its virgin forests and natural resources, but also because of its neighbors — and China is one of them with an emerging economy. So Siberia could serve as a hub in the future. I think that Europeans would also go to Russia (not only to Siberia), but this migration must be done meticulously, because of the language barrier, with a period of adaptation to different social conditions and so on. Maybe it could be useful to organize towns of compact residence and also city-hubs for foreign people who come to live in Russia, where they can live and work in new conditions. New Berlin, New Brussels, New Paris (of course translated into the Russian language) will then appear on a new Russian map.

What is your opinion about the future of Putinist Russia? Will the government be able to enduringly counter Western propaganda and destabilization campaigns, and come to a ‘generation pact’ between the older generation, born during Soviet times, and the younger generation, born after 1991? What will be President Putin’s fundamental heritage for Russian history?

The key problem for Russia is a neoliberal group inside the Kremlin. Putin has the support of people who want more radical actions against corruption, western agents and so on. But a “colored revolution” in Russia is impossible, because the masses do not believe in the pro-western opposition. Ideas of democracy and human rights promoted by West have been discredited worldwide and our people understand well what liberalization, privatization and such kind of activities in the interest of global oligarchy mean. And because of the announcement of the Eurasian Customs Union Russia must work hard the coming years with partners from Kazakhstan and Belarus. As for counterpropaganda, the new official doctrine of Russian foreign policy is about softpower. So Russia has all the instruments officially legalized to model its own image abroad. In some sense we do this kind of work, just as other non-governmental organizations and public initiatives.You mention a “generation pact,” referring to different ideals of young and older people, especially in the context of the Soviet era. Now, you would be surprised that a figure as Stalin is very popular among young people and thinking part of the youth understands well that Soviet times were more enjoyable than contemporary semi-capitalism. As I told in my previous answer, Putin is important because he stopped the disintegration of Russia. He already is a historical figure.

Is there a common ‘metaphysical future’ for the whole of Europe after the downfall of Western Christianity (catholicism, protestantism)? Can Russian Orthodoxism be a guide? What do you hold of the modest revival of pre-Christian religious traditions across the continent? What about countering the influence of Islam on the European continent? Is there a different view concerning that discussion between Russia and Western Europe?

Russian Christian Orthodoxy is not panacea, because there are also some problems. Christianity in XIIth century, XVIth century and nowadays is very different. Now many formal orthodox Christians go to church two times a year, at Easter and at Christmas. But Orthodox Christianity is also a thesaurus of wisdom where you can find ideas from ancient Greek philosophy, metaphysics, cultural heritage, transformed paganism and psychology. In this sense, Russian Christian Orthodox old believers keep this heritage alive and may be interested as well in forms (ceremonies) as in the spiritual essence with its complex ideas. Speaking about paganism, Russia is the only country in Europe that still has authentic pagan societies (Republics of Mari-El, Mordovia, Komi) with very interesting rites and traditions. Actually Finno-Ugric peoples historically were very close to Slavonic people and assimilated together, so there is a good chance to research these traditions for those who are interested in Slavonic pre-Christian culture. But the postmodern version of a restored paganism in Europe or any other region to my opinion is just a fake and there is not so much from true paganism. As for Islam, as I told before, in Russia there exist a couple of versions of traditional Islam, which are presented by several law schools (mazhabs). In the Northern Caucasus, the regional government has tried to copy the idea of multiculturalism and to implement Euro-Islam as an antithesis to spreading Wahhabism. But it has not worked and now more attention is paid to traditional religious culture linked with education and the social sector. But the project of multiculturalism has failed in Europe as well, so all common Euro-Russian outlooks on Islam are finished. But, to be honest, I think that Europe must learn from the Russian experience of coexistence of different religions (not forgetting paganism and shamanism – this belief is widely found in Siberia). In Europe, they use the term tolerance but we, Eurasianists, prefer the term complimentarity, proposed by Lev Gumilev, meaning a subconscious sympathy between different ethnic groups. As Gumilev explained, Russia became so large because Russians, during the expansion, looked on other people as on their own and understood them. This differs from the point of view (more specifically in ethnosociology) that all ethnic groups have the idea of “We are” against “The Other,” represented by another group. The imperial principle works with the idea of mosaics where every ethnos is a “We are.” And our famous writer and philosopher Fjodor Dostoevsky told about all-human (all-mankind) nature (not common to all mankind) that is represented by the Russians, because inside, you can find all radical oppositions. I think it is a good reason to turn to Russia and its people.

Thank you, Mr. Savin, for this very interesting and open-hearted interview.

 

—————-

Savin, Leonid. “Establish a Multipolar World Order: Interview with Mr. Leonid Savin of the International Eurasian Movement.” Interview by Synergies Européennes. Euro-Synergies, 25 March 2013. <http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/archive/2013/03/22/interview-with-mr-leonid-savin.html >. (See this essay in PDF format here: Establish a Multipolar World Order).

Notes: For another discussion of the theory of the multi-polar world, see Natella Speranskaya’s interview with Alexander Dugin: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/civilization-as-political-concept-dugin/ >. See also Dugin’s essays: “The Multipolar World and the Postmodern” and “Multipolarism as an Open Project”. The full exposition of the theory of the Multipolar World was made in Russian in Dugin’s book теория многополярного мира (Москва: Евразийское движение, 2012), which was translated into French as Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire (Nantes: Éditions Ars Magna, 2013). For the Eurasianist perspective on Japan in particular, we recommend reading Dugin’s essay “In the Country of Rising ‘Do’”.

 

The “West” Should be Forgotten – Benoist

The “West” Should Be Forgotten

By Alain de Benoist

Translated from the French by Tomislav Sunic

 

The “West”? Raymond Abellio observed that “Europe is fixed in space, that is to say, in geography, as opposed to the West which is “portable.” In fact, the “West” has continued travelling and changing directions. In the beginning that term meant the land where the sun sets (Abendland), as opposed to the land of the rising sun (Morgenland). Starting with the reign of Diocletian in the late third century AD, the opposition between East and West came down to the distinction between the Western Roman Empire (whose capital was Milan and then Ravenna) and the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople. The first one disappeared in 476 AD, with the abdication of Romulus Augustulus. After that the West and Europe merged for good. However, starting with the eighteenth century the adjective “Western” came to light on nautical charts referring to the New World, also called the “American system,” as opposed to the “European system,” or the “Eastern Hemisphere” (which then included Europe, Africa and Asia).

In the interwar period the West, having always been associated with Europe, as for example in Spengler’s works, was contrasted to the Orient, which turned into an object of fascination (René Guenon) and a scarecrow (Henri Massis). During the Cold War, the West included Western Europe and its Anglo-Saxon allies such as England and the United States, both being at that time opposed to the “Eastern bloc,” dominated by the Soviet Russia. This view, which allowed the U.S. to legitimize its hegemony, survived the collapse of the Soviet system (also for example with Huntington).

Today, the West has again acquired new meanings. At times it can have a purely economic one: “Western” are all developed, modernized, industrialized countries, such as Japan, South Korea and Australia, including the countries of the former “Eastern Europe,” North America or Latin America. “Ex Oriente lux, luxus ex Occidente,” (Light comes from the East; luxuriousness comes from the West) quipped jokingly the Polish writer Stanislaw Jerzy Lec. The West is losing its spatial content only to become merged with the notion of modernity. On the global level and as the last incarnation of furor orientalis in the eyes of Westerners, the West is opposed to Islamism. Accordingly, a fundamental divide separates the “Judeo-Christian” West from the “Arab-Muslim East,” and some people do not hesitate to predict that the final struggle of “Rome” and “Ismaël” — the war of Gog and Magog — will culminate in the messianic era.

In reality, there is no more such thing as the unitary “West,” just as there is no homogenous “East.” As for the notion of the “Christian West,” it has lost all meaning ever since Europe sank into indifference and “practical materialism” and in view of the fact that religion has become a private matter. Europe and the West have become completely disjointed from each other — to the point that defending Europe often means fighting against the West. No longer related to any geographical domain, let alone cultural, the word ‘West’ should be forgotten for good.

Let us rather talk about Europe. By thinking objectively, that is to say, by acquiring the gift for distancing itself from its self, and in order to be able to objectively rule on the true, the just and the good, Europe, all of a sudden, wished to access the universal — a desire that is not to be found in other cultures. Jean-François Mattei rightly speaks about the “theoretical view of the universal.” This idea of the universal has later on degenerated into universalism, which originally had a religious nature and then a secular nature (there is just as much distance between the universal and universalism as there is between liberty and liberalism). In its quest for Sameness, universalism boils down to the ideology of the Same, at the expense of Difference, i.e. in affirming the primacy of Oneness over Multiplicity. But it also reflects hidden ethnocentrism to the point that any idea of universal inevitably reflects a specific conception of the universal. Initially, there was a need to grasp the Other from the point of view of the Others and not from one’s own Self — which was both commendable and necessary. Afterwards, one gave up on being his Self — which turned out to be catastrophic.

Europe seems to be now in decline at all levels. The very construction of Europe is melting away before our eyes. Not only is Europe the “sick man on the economic planet” (Marcel Gauchet); it is also facing an unprecedented crisis of intelligence and political will. It wishes to bail out of history, driven by the idea that the present state of things — the boundless capital and techno-science — are expected to continue their course forever and that there is nothing else possible, and especially that there is nothing better. Ceding to an impetus that has become a part and an object of the history of others, Europe has exempted itself from its very self. Between the destitution of its past and the fear of its future, it believes in nothing else other than abstract moralism and disembodied principles that would save her from thriving in its being — even if the price is its metamorphosis. Forgetting that history is tragic, assuming that its can reject any consideration of power, searching for consensus at any cost, floating weightless, as if in a form of lethargy, not only does it consent to its own disappearance, but it interprets its disappearance as a proof of its moral superiority. One can obviously think of the “last man” that Nietzsche talked about.

So the only thing that is not declining is the subject of the decline itself — which is the subject of the permanent “declination.” This issue is not an offshoot of the old tradition of cultural pessimism. We need to know whether history obeys intrinsic laws that go beyond human action. If there is a decline of the West, then this decline comes from far away and must not be reduced to the present state of affairs such as globalization. The fate of a culture is contained in its origin. Its very history is determined by its origin because its origin determines its historical itinerary, its narrative skill, and the content of its narration. Historically, the Western idea first expressed itself in a metaphysical form, after that in an ideological form, and then in a “scientific” form. Evidently, it is running out of steam today. The West has said everything it had to say; it conjugated all its myths in every possible manner. It is coming to an end in a chaotic dissolution, as a depletion of energy and all-out nihilism.

The real issue is whether there is another culture which, having already embraced modernity, could offer the world a new form of mastering the universal, both in theory and practice, or for that matter, whether Western culture, having reached its terminal phase, could give birth to another one. Indeed, when a culture comes to a close, another one can replace it. Europe has already been the site of many cultures and therefore, there is no reason why it can’t be again the homeland of a new culture, of which we need to detect warning signs. This new culture will follow on the preceding one, but it will not be its extension. Rather than lapsing into unnecessary lamentation, what is needed is an eye sharp enough to look at the margins where something can grow that enables hope.

We are back at Spengler’s, but with one correction; what comes to an end heralds a new beginning.

 

—————

De Benoist, Alain. “The “West” Should Be Forgotten.” The Occidental Observer, 21 April 2011. <http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/04/the-%e2%80%9cwest%e2%80%9d-should-be-forgotten/ >.

Note: This article was originally published in French in Elements, #139 (April–June, 2011).

 

Defining Paganism – Faye

Defining Paganism

By Guillaume Faye

 

Paganism: The philosophic and/or religious attitude, generally polytheistic and pantheistic, that is the antipode to the revealed salvation religions, to religious or secular monotheism, or to Western materialism.

For Christopher Gérard, one of the principal contemporary practicing authorities on the subject: ‘Paganism, as a coherent vision of the world … is faithful to an ancestry, considered part of a very long memory, enrooted in multiple terrains, opened to the invisible … an active participant in the world, a sought-after harmony between microcosm and macrocosm. Paganism in essence is a natural religion, the most ancient of a world “born” with its birth – if the world were ever born. Rather than an eccentric fad – or the elegant nostalgia of literary refugees from some mythic Golden age, I think paganism is on the way to becoming the first of the world’s religions.’ He mentions 1.5 billion pagans on five continents, which would make it the world’s largest religious group. Gérard adds, ‘Without being narrowly moralistic … a lived paganism seems to me incompatible with whatever makes man servile. As the exaltation of life – of the eternal élan – paganism refuses everything that debases man: drugs, dependencies, every kind of unhealthy life.’ A lived paganism, in other words, is not destructuring, nor linked to the permissive, anti-vitalist mores of the present West (as certain prelates would have us believe). Gay Pride has nothing in common with the pagan bacchanalia! Paganism, moreover, is neither superstitious nor vacuously ritualistic, in contrast to Islam (this belief system which is most opposed to it), for Islam is all these things to the highest degree.

Pierre Vial has written that paganism is not anti-Christian, but a-Christian and post-Christian. ‘To be pagan is to refuse the inversion of values that Nietzsche denounced in Christianity. It is to take the hero, not the martyr, as the model. Christian suffering has always repulsed me. To celebrate the redemptive value of suffering seems life a form of masochism.’ (Today, modern European Christians practice their ethno-masochism and culpability on the immigrant colonisers; in every domain they practice the ‘duty to repent.’) Vial continues, ‘To exalt wretchedness, suffering, and sickness is unhealthy and I much prefer the Greek ideal of transcendence or the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius. Paganism ought not, though, to be confused with anti-clericalism or atheism. Another point: a purely intellectual definition of paganism … won’t suffice. It’s perhaps necessary, but it doesn’t go far enough. For paganism to exist, it must be lived. Not simply in gestures, but in life’s most ordinary expressions. Paganism is defined primarily in reference to the sacred … It affirms the immanence of the sacred.’

For both Gérard and Vial, paganism the authentic ‘religion,’ for it ties men of the same community together and ties them to a cosmos in which the divine is everywhere, where the gods are not separated from, but part of, the profane world.

Similarly, Gnosticism, which inspires Freemasonry, has nothing to do with paganism. Paganism’s constituting traits are: the presence of the sacred and the supernatural within nature; a cyclical or spherical conception of time; the refusal to consider nature the ‘property’ of the men who exploit and thus destroy it; the coming-and-going of sensuality and asceticism; the unqualified apology of the life-force (the ‘yes to life’ and ‘the Great Health’ of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra); the idea that the world is ‘uncreated’ and corresponds to a river of becoming, without beginning or end; the tragic sentiment of life refusing all nihilism; the cult of ancestors, of the line, of our people’s biological and cultural identity; the refusal of all revealed and universal Truths and thus the refusal of all fanaticism, dogmatism, and forced proselytism.

We need to beware, though, of certain so-called pagans who hold that paganism stands for ‘absolute tolerance,’ in the name of ‘social polytheism.’ Such pagans, like the post-conciliar Church, support, for instance, immigration and Islam and refuse to struggle against the reigning social decadence. This pseudo-paganism of secular clerics gives the pagan spirit a Leftist slant. It’s a pseudo-paganism, in effect – purely negative and reactive, a hollow Judaeo-Christianity, an anti-Catholic fixation.

It’s not a philosophy of life, but an attitude of resentment. Besides, these pseudo-pagans, who lack true culture, have never been able to define nor positively live their assumed ‘paganism.’ In a totally absurd way, it’s even led them to a pro-Islam position (whose Qur’an considers pagans ‘idolaters’ – and whose lot is that of the Eid al-Adha’s slaughtered sheep) – and to the egalitarianism of absolute toleration for every form of deviance, justified in the name of a purely casuistic ‘social polytheism’ (hemophilia, antiracism, ethno-pluralism, tribalism, etc.) One doesn’t even have to criticise the Church to assume the position of Monsignor Gaillot and the post-conciliar humanitarians.

Against this, we affirm that paganism is in essence a partisan of social order – which it sees as reflecting the cosmic order, it equally opposes the fusion of peoples, random mixing, and thus a massifying individualism. The pagan vision of the world is holistic and organic and views its people as a hierarchical community of destiny. Like ancient Greek paganism, the notion of the City, inseparable from notions of patriotism and ethnic identity, is fundamental the pagan conception of the world. Similarly, Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power perfectly accords with paganism (to the degree it respects the natural, cosmic order).

In Europe, paganism – her ancient religion, far older than Christianity – has taken several forms: first there’s a ‘philosophical’ paganism (or neo-paganism), with Hellenic, Roman, Germanic, Scandinavian, etc., components, all of which hold no belief in anthropocentric gods, but rather in a sacred, polytheistic, and pantheistic vision of the world, in which the divinities are eternal allegories representing the multiplicities of life and cosmos; this paganism knows numerous communal rituals linked to the different stages of human life and to the seasonal cycles; it’s been evident in European art for centuries. There’s also a ‘wild’ paganism that stretches from the (pseudo-pagan) New Age to European Buddhism. Another false paganism is intellectualist paganism, which is often just a form of anti-Catholic hatred; what Gérard calls ‘salon paganism.’ And finally, there’s the latent or implicit paganism of traditional Catholicism and Orthodoxy, especially evident in their polytheistic cults.

There’s no pagan ‘Church.’ Paganism isn’t sociologically unified – one needs to speak of paganisms. The word itself is ambiguous, coined by Christians to designate the religion of peasants (pagani).

It might also be noted that sects belong neither to paganism nor its philosophy, but to derivations of the mystic monotheistic salvation religions.

Pagans today need to have the intelligence and wisdom to not – apriori – reject traditional Christianity, and vice versa, for the struggle against the common enemy is what’s most important. Not sectarianism, but a historic compromise, is needed here. No reconciliation, by contrast, is possible with the Judaeo-Christianity of the post-conciliar Left.

The main pagan reproach of Christianity (as made by Pierre Vial, Giorgio Locchi, and Louis Rougier) is its roots in universalism and egalitarianism and its progressive view of history; totalitarian ideologies of salvation, such as globalist liberalism, with its end to history and its disarming humanitarianism, are simply secularised forms of Christianity. Universalism, for example, has been transformed into a secular cosmopolitanism, and Christian charity into a masochistic humanitarianism. Universal charity, as it comes from Judaeo-Christianity and clashes with the pagan world vision, has been central to Europe’s moral disarmament, to its failure to resist the Third World’s colonising invasion. Similarly, in situating God outside or above the universe and declaring the latter profane, Judaeo-Christianity opened the way to an atheistic materialism. Following Augustine and Aquinas, traditional Christianity claimed that the equality and universality of men before God is destined not for the City, but for the beyond, following the Last Judgment.

We need, henceforth, to recognise that the egalitarian, universalist, and anti-nationalist virus of the early Christians, neutralised by the Medieval Church and by chivalry, has returned in force with the modern post-conciliar Church. Traditional Christianity, whether Catholic or Orthodox, incorporated important pagan elements, notably in the polytheism of the Holy Trinity, the cult of the saints and the Virgin Mary, etc. We might also mention Pelagius, Teilhard de Chardin, Giordano Bruno, or other Churchmen who attempted a synthesis of European Christianity and paganism.

The most important thing today is to confront the common enemy, Islam – the most abstract, the most intolerant, the most dangerous of the monotheistic religions (founding model of totalitarianism, even more so than Communism), with which, unfortunately, the Catholic hierarchy and our pseudo-pagan ‘ethno-pluralist’ intellectuals suicidally collaborate. In the course of the Twenty-first century, it’s not unreasonable to expect that authentic pagans in Europe and India will be the ones manning the front line in the struggle against the desert’s totalitarian religion – not the Catholic clerics or republican ‘secularists.’

It would be vain to instrumentalise paganism as a ‘political religion.’ For paganism is above all an attitude, a philosophical, spiritual positioning, a choice of values, and in no case does it have a vocation to institutionalise itself as a religion – as a ‘new Church.’ European Catholicism – before it was desacralised by Vatican II – included important pagan elements, to such a degree that certain modern theologians accuse it of having been a ‘pagano-Christianity’ – the same reproach Luther and Calvin made of it. Slavic-Greek Orthodoxy still retains many pagan remnants.

The historic alliance of authentic pagan philosophers (inspired by the heritage of Greece, Rome, and India) to traditional European Christianity is a prerequisite to the merciless struggle that is to be waged against the Masonic gnosis, the obscurantism of the Muslim colonisers, and the virus of materialism.

————-

Excerpt from: Faye, Guillaume. Why We Fight: Manifesto for the European Resistance. London: Arktos Media, 2011, pp. 205-210.

 

4th Political Theory & the “Other Europe” – Speranskaya

The Fourth Political Theory and “Other Europe”

By Natella Speranskaya

 

“The Fourth Political Theory is a volitional construction of the tradition based on deconstruction of modernity” – Alexander Dugin

Critique of (Neo)liberalism from “above”

In his book Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and The Concept of the Political Heinrich Meier states that the world that is trying to refrain from identifying the difference between a friend and an enemy Schmitt clearly shows the world the inevitability of “either or” in order to intensify the “awareness of an emergency situation” and re-awaken the ability that is manifested when “the enemy reveals itself with particular clarity”[1]. Indeed, today we can unmistakably identify our enemy. The ideological (as well as ontological) enemy is a liberal – a supporter of the political theory that defeated the two ideologies of the twentieth century – Communism and Fascism (National Socialism). Today we are dealing with the result of the victory. By saying “we” I do not mean some abstract political entity, rather I mean the representatives of the Eurasian geopolitical tradition or the approaches of tellurocratic geopolitics (therefore, the enemies are determined by their involvement in thalassocratic geopolitics). By commenting on the fundamental work The Concept of the Political Leo Strauss notes that despite all radical critique of liberalism incorporated in it Schmitt does not follow it through since his critique develops and remains within the scope of liberalism.

“His anti-Liberal tendency, – claims Strauss, – remains constrained by “systematics of liberal thought” that has not been overcome so far, which – as Schmitt himself admits – “despite all failures is not substituted by any other system in today’s Europe”[2]. Critique of liberalism is impossible within the scope of liberalism; without definite overcoming (or better to say, “collapsing”) the liberal discourse no substitution is possible.

We are well aware of the fact that all three major political ideologies of the past century – Liberalism, Communism and Fascism (the first, second and third political theories, respectively) – are the products of modernity. A paradigmatic shift to postmodernity necessarily implies the birth of a political theory that is beyond the scope of the preceding three theories (besides, given the political metamorphoses of Liberalism that can be reduced to a single definition – “Neoliberalism” – the need for a well-grounded alternative becomes essential). Only after getting liberated from the bondage of Liberal doctrine it is possible to proceed with its total critique. Moving a step beyond modernity does not mean: a) the attempts aimed at formation of another communist doctrine, b) a possibility of establishing a Neo-Fascist ideology capable of substituting an alternative political theory of counter-liberal essence. We are to make a political choice that will determine the future of the world order being already on the verge of transition to multipolarity, constituted by four poles, where the presence of the Eurasian pole is essential. Besides, the very political choice implies the conscious acceptance of the concept of The Fourth Political Theory enabling the critique of (Neo)liberalism from “above”.

“Other Europe”

“Only few people can actually argue against the fact that today, amid the frightening feeling of crisis and unease that has taken over the keenest minds, the whole European community appeals to the supreme ideal of world culture, culture, within which a new principle is expected to unite the powers and bearers of scattered European traditions”, – claims Italian philosopher Julius Evola in an introductory part of his essay United Europe: The Spiritual Prerequisite[3].

We, the representatives of the Eurasian political philosophy are building strategic relations with the last resistant rebels of Europe, those who even among the ruins maintain the courage to defend supreme, heroic and traditional values. When reflecting on preconditions of the new European unity, Evola highlights an imminent threat both from Russia and the USA. This essay deals with the historical period that has been characterized by a bipolar system of world order; the very model incorporated two poles, the two hegemons – the USSR and the USA. Nowadays, we are dealing with a unipolar model and a single hegemon, the United State of America and, therefore, find ourselves within a victorious Liberal discourse that is going through barely noticeable metamorphoses. Despite all the differences between the two historical periods, the European crisis not only remained an unresolved problem but rather increased significantly. However, what kind of Europe do we discuss? In one of his interviews Alexander Dugin noted that today we encounter “two Europes: “ liberal Europe” (or “Europe-1”) incorporating the idea of “open society”, human rights, registration of same-sex marriages, legalization of the Swedish family, and “other Europe” (“Europe-2”) – politically engaged, thinker, intellectual, spiritual, the one that considers the status quo and domination of liberal discourse as a real disaster and a betrayal of the European tradition. “Many years have passed since when the West became aware what the “tradition” stand for, in its highest sense; anti-traditional spirit has become synonymous with the western one as early as in the Renaissance era. “Tradition” in its full sense is a succession of periods called as “The heroic ages” by Vico – where there was the only creative force with metaphysical roots expressed in customs and religion, law, mythology, artistic creations – in all private areas of existence[4],– states Julius Evola. The last resistant rebels of Europe are the representatives of “Other Europe”.

In his work Europe and Globalization Alain de Benoist pays attention to the fact that “Europe possesses all trump cards that would enable it to overthrow the American hegemony and to become a major world power without any hesitation.” However, Europe restrains itself from making a strategic decision and allows to be thrown into an abyss of helplessness and total extinction by the USA; most of the Europeans have lost their identity, and only a few representatives of “Other Europe” are still faithful to the heritage of the European tradition. The fourth Nomos of the Earth that we have closely approached is characterized as “multipolar” or, more precisely, as potentially multipolar since “the only civilization – the United States of America is hegemonic in six major spheres of power – technologies, economics, finances, warfare, media and culture. De Benoist highlights that the US aims to delay inevitable transformation of Western universum into planetary pluriversum. A radical split from the US would lead Europe to become sovereign, to return its true identity (national, cultural, etc.) and, as a result, would contribute to the decline of the USA status of a world leader.

We would like to point out a need for identifying a principle capable of ensuring unity, mentioned by Evola, that we define as a political doctrine that represents a major alternative to the liberal ideology. The very political doctrine, founded by Alexander Dugin, has been titled as The Fourth Political Theory. Today we must reconsider the historical fate of Russia and Europe. Russia, not as a part of Europe, but rather Russia and Europe as two “big spaces” (Grossraum), two civilizations: on the one hand, given the multipolar model of the world order that incorporates the above-mentioned civilizations as actors, and on the other hand, considering comprehensive analysis of the relations between Russia and Europe that is overcoming the liberal paradigm and provides us with a completely different picture. Alain de Benoist also highlights that Russia, located in the center of Heartland, is not Europe, while Europe belongs to the Eurasian entity. It is noteworthy that the Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari, ex-governor of Venice and a former Member of the European Parliament (mostly popular in Russia for his work entitled The Geophilosophy of Europe) had a presentiment about the Fourth theory; this is described in Foreword of his geophilosophical work as follows: “…instead of a simplified classical scheme with two poles – left (Marxists) and right (anti-Marxists, conservatives), and the center in the middle, Cacciari discusses approproateness of the political scheme that involves, ar least, four distinctions”.

«Imitation of History»

The Fourth Political Theory is Liberalism’s enemy. However, what the current Liberalism stands for? Our strategic plan aimed at destruction of the hostile ideology depends on the answer to this question. Today we are dealing with “Neo-Liberalism” or “Post-Liberalism”, a non-authentic Liberalism. In his book The Fourth Political Theory A. Dugin establishes the change of status of the Liberal ideology within the transition from modernity to post-modernity, and describes the “scenery (панораму) of post-liberal grotesque”: the “individuum” of classical Liberalism, the former measure of all things, becomes a post- individuum; a man as a possessor of private property – that practically acquired a sacral status –becomes possessed by the latter; the Society of the Spectacle (La Société du spectacle (Guy Debord) occurs; the boundary between real and virtual is blurred – the world becomes a technical supermarket; all forms of supra-individual authority are eliminated; the state is substituted by the “civil society”; the principle – “the economy is our destiny” is replaced by another principle – “the digital code is our destiny”, in other words, everything comes to total virtuality.

“There is nothing more tragic than a failure to understand the historical moment we are currently going through; – notes Alain de Benoist – this is the moment of postmodern globalization”. The French philosopher emphasizes the significance of the issue of a new Nomos of the Earth that is a way of establishing international relations. So, what do you think the fourth Nomos will be like? De Benoist discusses two possibilities: transition to universe (or a unipolar world) which means the USA domination, and transition to pluriversum (a multi-polar world) where cultural diversity will face no threat of total absorption and “melting”. Indeed, the fourth Nomos of the Earth is related to the Fourth Political Theory. Alain de Benoist states that “similar to the three large Nomoi of the Earth within the modernity, there have been three major political theories”. In the era of modernity we have encountered the succession of Liberalism, Socialism and Fascism in the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries, respectively. And these three ideologies disappeared in the reverse order. So, the latest of the ideologies was the one that disappeared first. (…) The fourth Nomos of the Earth requires the emergence of the Fourth Political Theory. The Fourth Theory cannot yet be defined in detail, – adds de Benoist. – Indeed, it will be critical of the preceding theories. However, it will incorporate valuable ideas from the preceding ideologies. This will be a synthesis as well as Aufhebung in its Hegelian sense.

While elaborating an ideological basis for the Fourth Theory it is possible to analyze positive as well as negative aspects of the other three well-known political theories and adopt those aspects that we find acceptable. This is one of the ways. However, it does not mean that there are no other approaches. We can also propose the issue of “political mimesis” having considered it from another angle.

For instance, contemporary French philosophers Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy offer a new concept of “imitation of history”. They focus on the idea that Europe has tended to be imitation-oriented for a long time, “which, first of all, means imitating the ancients. The role of the antique model (Sparta, Athens, Rome) in the establishment of contemporary nation states and in the construction of their culture is well known»[5].

“Imitation of history” played a fundamental role in the concept of German Nazism (as well as Italian Fascism). It is important to reflect whether political mimesis of classical era is feasible today, and whether or not the need for a new shift towards antiquity has to be discussed. Was not it a mistake of the followers of the third political theory in the form of German National-Socialism (resulting in a defeat) that the imitation of the ancients ignored an important feature: existence of «two Greeces» – Apollonian and Dionysian, Greece of the light day and Greece of the mysteries, Greece of the Law and heroic severity and Greece of ecstatic rituals and sacrifices? And the last is the Russian rather than only European soil feasible for the revival of the spirit of antiquity? In other words, should not we borrow “political mimesis” or “Imitation of history” of more ancient ideologemes rather than those ideological aspects that exist within the political theories generated by modernity? This would be a radical solution for the development of political theory beyond the modernity.

As for Russia, establishment of the Russian school of Neoplatonism clearly indicates the seriousness of our intention and our understanding of Plato’s significant role. “The project of New Russia is to be commenced by Plato’s announcement”, – claims A. Dugin. The fact that Platonopolis, Plato’s Republic has never been founded may indicate that any attempt to establish it involved an initial intention of reducing a distance between modernity and antiquity by approximation of the Greek heritage to «us/them». However, the main point is that we/they are to be elevated to the Greeks. The city of the world must become the city of God and not the other way around.

“Nazism (and in many respects, the Italian Fascism) is characterized by defining its own movement, ideology and the state as a manifestation of some myth or as a living myth. This is what Rosenberg claims: “Odin is dead, but in another way, as essence of the German soul, Odin is resuscitating before our very eyes,” claim P. Lacoue-Labarthe, and J.-L.Nancy. National-Socialism was a synthesis of various myths (rather not quite successful): Apollonian and Dionysian Greece clashed rather than had anything in common within the new political doctrine; even at the early stage, this featured a further defeat in a historical collision. However, besides Greek element (Hitler used to say of himself: “I am Greek”), National-Socialism also incorporated the elements of the ancient Germanic paganism, Medieval and Indo-Aryan tradition. Mussolini’s Fascism, in its turn, represented an idealistic myth of Italy as the heiress of Rome. Julius Evola notes that with the doctrine of the state, Fascism “returned to the tradition underlying the great European states. Besides, it has revived or, at least, attempted to revive the Roman idea as the highest and special integration of “myth” about a new political organism that is “strong and organic”. For Mussolini the Roman tradition was not just a figure of speech, it was rather the “idea of power”, the ideal for upbringing of a new type of a human being who had to take power into his hands. “Rome is our myth” (1922). These words witnessed a proper choice and great courage; they incorporate a desire to bridge the gap over the abyss of centuries, to revive continuity of the only valuable heritage of Italian history”[6]. Nevertheless, Mussolini was never able to truly appreciate a spiritual dimension of Roman symbol and ancient Rome.

Racial Doctrine

A fatal mistake of the German National-Socialism was a distorted understanding of the racial doctrine that recognized only “racism of the first degree” (biological racism).

The first step in this succession was the confusion of concepts of “nation” and “race” that, in Evola’s words, equaled to democratization and degradation of the concept of race. Opinions of a small number of followers of different understanding of the racial theory were not taken into account. As for the Italian Fascism, from the very beginning this ideology was free from vulgar interpretation of the racial theory. In 1941 Evola was summoned to appear in the Venetian Palace where his meeting with Mussolini was planned. Mussolini expressed great interest in Evola’s work titled “The Synthesis of Racial Doctrine”, having discovered “a basis for establishing an independent fascist and anti-materialist racism” in it. Mussolini unconditionally accepted the theory of three races such as spiritual, mental and physical (biological). The very theory has had a direct correlation with Plato’s ideas: the race of body in the state corresponded to demos, the mass, while the mental race and the race of spirit correlated with guards/warriors and philosophers, respectively. However, subsequently Mussolini had come under pressure from the representatives of the Catholic Church who realized a major threat in racial issue being discussed on the level of spirit, and the theory of three races did not get an appropriate support.

Julius Evola used to emphasize that the concept of race (that is beyond its usual understanding as being both an anthropological and ethnic entity) confronts an individual (which is indeed a positive feature of racism). According to the Italian philosopher, one of the practical meaning of racial theory is “the need for overcoming liberal, individualistic and rationalistic conceptions according to which an individual is like an atom, the subject in itself, that lives, making sense only for himself”. Thus, the Italian Fascism with its roots was initially focused on the theory of three races that strongly distinguishes it from National-Socialist doctrine which fanatically professed biological racism.

Nowadays, the word “race” and its derivatives are only perceived in a negative sense; therefore, applying them as the elements of foundation for any ideological structure would be extremely incautious. The Fourth Political Theory categorically rejects racism including its latest, postmodern forms such as a dictatorship of glamour, following the trends of modern information, the idea of unipolar globalization (superiority of Western values). Alexander Dugin claims that the Fourth Political Theory rejects “all forms of normative hierarchization of societies on the basis of ethnic, religious, social, technological, economic and cultural origin. A comparison of societies is possible; however, one should not claim superiority of one society over the others”.

Returning to the issue of «Imitation of history» several questions might be posed: which path to follow when forming the Fourth Political Theory? Should we select “robust elements” from the three political ideologies or should we refer to Plato’s Politeia and pre-modern, traditional society (or combine both approaches)?

What could be a hypothetic transition from logos to mythos within the political ideology? And what is the relationship between the Fourth Political Theory and a myth?

What are the myth of Russia and the myth (or myths) of “other Europe” being incorporated in the Fourth Political Theory as a foundation for a multipolar world?

These questions await answers.

Alexander Dugin believes that Plato sacrificed the truth of the myth to the truth of philosophy. Therefore, Plato’s Republic, from the very beginning, was based on Apollonian principle (strictly rejecting the Dionysian one). Is not it appropriate to sacrifice the truth of philosophy for to Philosophy of the other Beginning that will eliminate the problematics of separation of logos and Mythos? Politeia is only possible when there are two of its constituent principles. The Fourth Political Theory is in need of a Myth, a Myth as a universal Myth, a Myth as paradeigma, within the scope of which the dialogue between Russia and “Other Europe” will mark (mean, become) the transition to a new political reality.

According to its founder, The Fourth Political Theory is a volitional construction of tradition based on deconstruction of modernity. It primarily deals with total rejection of subjects of three theories of the 20^th century: rejection of individual, class and race/nation-state in Liberalism, Communism and National-Socialism as well as Fascism, respectively. [Heidegger’s] Dasein (Germ. “being-there/there-being”) becomes the subject of the Fourth Political Theory making it a «fundamental-ontological structure developed in the field of existential anthropology». Besides, The Fourth Political Theory, focused on multi-polarity, goes even further than Heidegger and claims the plurality of Dasein. The Dasein-culture-civilization-big space-a pole of the multi-polar world presents an absolutely different context of political thought. There is no individual as it is abolished by Dasein; instead of individual there is an issue of authentic or non-authentic existence, that is a choice – das Mann or Selbst; that is the foundation of the Fourth Political Theory. A class and a race, as well as a state (at least, a contemporary national bourgeois state) all constitute anthropological and ontological constructs of modernity, versions of Techne, Ge-stell; and we are designing an existential political structure, – says Alexander Dugin.

Thus, all attempts of our liberal opponents aimed at discrediting the Fourth Political Theory as “a new version of National-Socialism” are groundless, and represent just a hostile reaction due to the occurrence of an equal (or a superior) rival and strategic actions aimed at eliminating the risk of the imminent collision with the enemy. Again, we would like to emphasize that the Fourth Political Theory is beyond the scope of the three political ideologies, and a rigid resistance to liberalism can be considered to be the only feature bringing it closer to the second and the third theories.

Notes

[1] Heinrich Meier. “Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss and The Concept of the Political.” The Hidden Dialogue. Moscow: SKIMEN, 2012.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Julius Evola. United Europe: The Spiritual Prerequisite. Tradition and Europe. Ex Nord Lux, 2009.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Julius Evola. Men Among the Ruins. Critic of the Fascist Regime: Right-Wing Views. Moscow, ACT, 2007.

 

——————

Speranskaya, Natella. “The Fourth Political Theory ‘Other Europe’.” Global Revolutionary Alliance News (GRANews), 9 February 2013. <http://www.granews.info/content/natella-speranskaya-fourth-political-theory-and-other-europe >.

Note: See also Natella Speranskaya’s interview with Alexander Dugin: <https://neweuropeanconservative.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/civilization-as-political-concept-dugin/ >.