You Say You Want a Revolution? – Solère

You Say You Want a Revolution?

Transcript of the Radix Podcast Interview with Fenek Solère by Richard Spencer

 

Introduction: Fenek Solere joins Richard Spencer to discuss his novel, The Partisan, the tradition of violent partisanship in Europe, the social conditions that incite and suppress revolution, and the evolution of the American and European Alternative Right.

RS: Well, Fenek Solere, welcome to the podcast, it’s a pleasure to have you on.

FS: It’s a delight, Richard, thank you for having me.

RS: Well let’s talk about your new novel, indeed, your debut novel, The Partisan and I think first, what we should do, is give a summary of it, a taste of what the novel’s about and what sparked you to write it?

FS: Yes, certainly. I started writing the novel four or five years ago. It was by observing what was going on in France at that time and particularly Paris. I was very strongly of the opinion that France, for a whole range of reasons, both historical and intellectual would be a touchstone, a litmus paper for what was going to be, if I can use the expression, the Clash of Civilizations, especially in Europe because of mass immigration and things of this nature. Essentially the novel is a forward view, it’s a vision of a future five to seven years hence, very unlike the one Michel Houellebecq predicts, which is one of submission. This is one of No Submission. The situation is that France is being submerged into a wider Eurabic state, including most of Southern Italy and there are very strong Islamic political, cultural and military influences reaching across the Mediterranean into Europe. Just like the very big migrations we already see but now with wider implications. So, as well as the current demographic dynamic, it is predicting what is occurring as defining Europe’s future and I set this against the theatre which is Paris and France in general.

RS: Talk a little bit more about why you chose France as the setting because as I was reading the novel that was a very distinct aspect of it. The bohemian life in France, certainly with regard to the main character, La Pertoleuse, is a very dominant feature. So why France? You are, we can tell by your accent, from Britain, right?

FS: Well France for me seemed a natural choice. It is a focal point for the New Right, the very start of the intellectual movement that blossomed into Identitarianism. I was very much aware of the work, writings and opinions of de Benoist and Guillaume Faye, and please remember I was writing at a time before Generation Identitaire broke onto the scene at Poitiers, so my text was in some ways pre-empting those brave and very symbolic actions. So the whole Metapolitics around the Gramscian notion of the war of position and how the New Right had been re-positioning itself informed The Partisan. I see it as a pivotal novel, so the stage-set of Paris and culture-rich France is quite good in that regard. I wanted that juxtaposition of the self-styled 68’ers intellectual Bohemian France coming face to face with the realities of the other, they have for so long eulogized. A very different culture, that of Islam and in the novel we see them beat against each other quite violently and viciously. So I think it’s about the War of Position, understanding the whole notion of France as representing Europe, a very identifiable Europe, with a large and extended back history and an identity worth preserving and celebrating.

RS: And it’s also a place of revolution and obviously there’s the French Revolution but that in a way is only the beginning. It’s perceived as a place of left wing revolution and right wing partisanship of a type we don’t see in the US, at least not in the form it’s taken at the time of Charles De Gaulle for example, or indeed other leaders of France. So I agree, France is the perfect setting for a novel of partisanship. Why don’t we, before we start talking about the philosophical issues you raise with your novel, talk about the three main characters, Sabine, who is of course La Petroleuse, Luc and the man Costello who is chasing them.

FS: Yes, indeed, I wanted to inject some film noir elements into the story. So Sabine is a very determined, very individual female, and deliberately so. I’m trying to challenge any sort of residual misogyny amongst the Alternative Right. She is a complex character, indeed, a rebellious character, a licentious character but ironically with both loose and strict morals. I think there’s a nice tension there. And she’s also a woman who knows her mind and a woman who has suffered and indeed suffers during the course of the novel. But she overcomes these obstacles, ultimately becoming a significant icon among the traditional forces of France, the alternative resistance. In fact, she emerges as a central figure for them, becoming their poster-girl, and that is emphasized at the opening of the story with her taking very direct action against those collaborating with the transition to the Eurabic state. So she’s an evolving character. She acquires knowledge during the course of the novel, arriving in Paris as a blank sheet of paper in on sense, and that’s where Luc comes in, the male love interest, because he is already steeped in these traditions. He’s precociously well read, familiar with Herman Hesse at the age of twelve or thirteen, before moving onto much more political material, which in the novel he makes available to Sabine and she becomes intellectually empowered. It is the growth of both these characters as the storyline unfolds which is quite important. It’s a part of the love interest, it is part of the human story and also an ideological gateway for the reader too, because they are taken through various stages of radical development, to the point where they are in total sympathy with the main protagonists.

RS: What was it like for you to come to these views? Was your experience like Sabine’s or very much different?

FS: My arrival at these ideas, or this way of thinking, was instinctive. I come from a small provincial town. There was a homogenous demographic, so my rebellion was against the socialist milieu that dominated the town. Those that used the platitudes of egalitarianism to hide their own nepotism, corruption and self-advancement. So I came to my opinions through a philosophical antagonism to the lie of what I witnessed with my own eyes, in what we describe in Britain as a Labour ‘rotten borough’. So that is how I came to be a nationalist and patriot, rather than through the more edgy racial dimension. The problems of multiculturalism were not something I was exposed to as a child.

RS: I think there’s a certain personality type that seek these ideas out even before we have them ourselves. When I was a college undergraduate I was not racially conscious in the sense of thinking about these things, as part of a world-view, I mean. I was racially unconscious like millions of other white people. I was seeking out the edgy ideas, the one’s that seemed to strike at the heart of the system and many of those were Marxism and Critical Theory for example, and also Nietzsche and German idealists thinkers, but I was actively trying to seek them out. I was asking myself, what is the problem deep at the heart of reality that bothers me and I think that was my journey. So I was racially unconscious and then obviously became racially conscious. But I don’t in a way think race is the most important thing. It is obviously an indispensable factor, an extremely important one, but I think there has to be a spirit behind that, that you want something more, you want a deeper, more intense experience, you seek danger, you seek a heightened world, something that is different to bourgeois reality. I think that is how I would kind of describe a person who may become a partisan. I’m not a partisan of course, I just type blogs and do podcasts.

FS: Yes, you are a cultural partisan. But I recognize what you are saying. For me it was the excitement, that edginess of being a teenager, acting out, saying and doing outrageous things to get noticed, but before long I was getting exposed to some really good reading material like Michael Walker’s The Scorpion, which in turn introduced me to Nietzsche and before long I was reading de Benoist, well not in the original French of course, but the English translations of parts of his work. Then it was Conservative Revolutionaries like Carl Schmitt, Ernst Junger, Martin Heidegger, Edgar Julius Jung, Ludwig Klages, Arthur Moeller Van den Bruck, Ernst Niekisch and Ernst von Salomon. That group even included Thomas Mann, author of The Magic Mountain, until he distanced himself from them in the 1920’s.

Over time I got the sense of the transnationalism of de Benoist’s thinking. So I was becoming familiar with people like Marco Tarchi, an Italian professor of political science at the University of Florence and creator of Nuova Destra along with former members of the Nouvelle Ecole like Robert Stuekers from Belgium, Marcel Ruter from Holland and the Croatian Dr. Tomislav Sunic and some of the great pieces he’s written, particularly Against Democracy & Equality (2008) and Homo Americanus (2007). At the moment I’m enjoying Alexander Dugin’s Eurasian Mission: An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism (2015) and I know you are very familiar with his work and are very supportive of him, having published his Martin Heidegger: The Philosophy of Another Beginning (2014). So this has been a long journey, starting with that hormonal teenager I spoke of but then I think it grew in me and became far more consolidated, grounded not only in theory and philosophy but also in lived-experience.

But to go back to Costello, he is a modern day Inspector Javert from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (1862) and the whole idea of having a character like that was to have him ask himself questions. He’s on the edge all the time. He has a task to hunt La Petroleuse down. He’s a specialist, part M16 and part Special Air Services, but all the time he’s conflicted, reflecting on his own experiences in recent international conflicts but also from his family history. But I don’t want to give away too much of the plot…’

RS: Yes, you can tell because you put thoughts in his head and you can tell he’s not sure what he’s doing. He’s a sort of instrument of the state. I think, when he’s first introduced someone says, ‘Oh, we have this person from England, like who is it, James Bond. Oh, no, it’s even better! But he is a type of James Bond. He’s an instrument of the state and he isn’t sure what he’s doing and he becomes a kind of reluctant hunter and he’s obviously physically attracted to Sabine as well so it gets quite interesting.

FS: That was a plot-device. I wanted to challenge the reader and make it very clear this was not a simple case of the goodies versus baddies, black and white, the white hat and the black hat from the westerns, but there was an in-between. This novel is attempting to get to those people who are ‘in-between’ . Trying to excite and entice them into Sabine’s world and that sub-plot is part of that mechanism. I also think, if you look at the early phases of the novel, I deliberately refer back to the Algerian crisis, introducing the notion of the Organisation de l’armee secrete (OAS) and the experience of the French Pieds- Noirs and that was significant because I wanted the back-drop to be very clear. Once France had been in Algeria, Algerie-Francais, and now Algeria has come to France. And I think that is quite an important theme of the novel. What we are witnessing today is the transference of the battle ground from Oran to metropolitan France. And if you know anything about that particular period in history, you’ll be aware that something like 3,500 French Settlers were killed in July 1962 alone by rogue elements of the Algerian liberation Front (FLN) and local auxiliaries there. So the backdrop is one of extreme and very recent historical disaster and tragedy.

RS: Oh yes, it is like the late 60’s when France moved from being an Imperial power and then there was the crisis involving De Gaulle. Many people united to revive the old empire, keep it going, and it seems like when that turning was crossed, it’s like the empire comes home, the chickens come home to roost. I don’t think all racial clashes are driven from Imperialism but it is definitely an important aspect to it all.

FS: It is. And of course it humanizes the main Arabic character in The Partisan, because it gives him a justification for his very strong and very bitter feelings towards France and that drive for revenge. But not just for revenge’s sake. He has ideals himself. He has good intensions for his vested interest group and I think that emerges as the story unfolds. A bit-like the Resistance, and I deliberately used that specific word Resistance because I love that ‘spin’. I think in one sense it’s superficial and facile but it is also very important point to make at this moment in time because France is indeed being occupied. And we are the opposition to the mainstream which is going along with this process, the Great Replacement, that Renaud Camus speaks about.

RS: Oh, yes, we’re the New Left

FS: Exactly, I couldn’t agree more.

RS: No, I think that is absolutely true. One question that came up earlier when we were talking was how would you understand the psychology of this new type of European leader. And what I mean by that is, this new type of non-European leader, and he or she may be a Muslim or maybe not? But at the moment we still live under white hegemony effectively. Barak Obama may be a wild card but basically the heads of state are white men and women. And you can call them multiculturalists or white guilt mongers or whatever but they are basically mostly well-educated and upper crust. White people are trying to ride the tiger of multiculturalism, either way using it for their advantage. In some cases they are being elected by their constituencies, like this Miliband figure, the leader of the Labour Party in Britain. Maybe he’s the ultimate expression of theirs, but you can see this, even in as someone a boring as Angela Merkel. But there’s going to be a change and I don’t think Obama’s a representative of this, because I think Obama is a lot less radical than people think and a lot more mainstream, but at some point there is going to be a new kind of leader. It is not going to be the ‘squidgy’ liberal white person, it’s going to be an actual Asian, an actual Muslim and he’s going to be a PM or President of France and Britain. How do you describe that psychology ? Do you think this will be a tension between adopting the system, becoming part of the system, a tension between conquering the old imperial power and revenge. A tension between some kind of racial hand-outs to his people. How would you estimate the psychology of this new European leader who I think we will inevitably see in the next decade?

FS: I think you’re right, that is coming. I think it is going to be by means of a creeping gradualism and as you have indicated it is going to be very interesting how it is played out. There will be continued attempts at assimilation. The rise of the people you are predicting will be from within the system. They are going to beneficiaries of the system. They are going to milk the system for all it is worth, patronage, prestige and pay-cheques. They do not want to change the system outright, just yet. These will be highly educated individuals who will have their own immediate vested interests and those of their intimate family and group close to their hearts. So I think there will be a long transition phase only speeding up and becoming more perceptible when their control on the leavers of power are so far advanced that they can risk allowing any wild outbreaks of disorder or any really extreme behaviours to occur. So their plan is for us to have quite a slow poisonous death. Ed Miliband is certainly a very good example. A treacherous individual. I have met his brother David and I was even less impressed with him. And that was the man Ed beat to be the leader of the Labour Party. Hollande in France is the best example though. There we have the personification of utter banality. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like there was a vacuum walking ahead of all those heads of state after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. He really is vapid, there is no substance at all. The interesting thing there though is because of his lack of charisma the door is left open for the resurgent Sarkozy challenge. And Sarkozy is a really dubious character, mired of course in corruption. And I think he’s the doorman for the new leader that you are describing because in my opinion, Sarkozy is not French. So Sarkozy really is like Thatcher was in the UK, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I suggest you take a second look at so-called white hegemony and the white leadership of these countries. I think you need to look a little below the surface. You need to look at the backgrounds of some of these people, who underwrites their campaigns, who funds theses parties. Look at the technocrats and ministers who surround them. In my interview on the Wermod & Wermod website with Alex Kurtagic I very quickly listed a whole range of people who were not remotely British and who do not represent the best interests of the indigenous community but who dominate the important decision-making positions throughout the country. And not just recently but for the last 5 to 8 years and the last 2 or 3 regimes. France is exactly the same. So the door is already open, they are setting the stage for this transition and it is going to be gradual. It will be like Alex Kurtagic said in one of his speeches about The Collapse, It’s already started and it will go on for some time and in my opinion we won’t know of its completion until Robert Mugabe is installed in Buckingham Palace.

RS: What do you think are some of the forces that might improve partisanship and what are some of the ways the forces that might retard or suppress it? And what I mean by that partisanship, is as Carl Schmitt defined it. A violent action, someone taking on the authority of the state or against the state’s interest. So what do you think are some of the forces that might inspire actions like that and what might prevent it?

FS: I think some of those actions are already occurring in many ways and have occurred over a period of time. Let’s look at the Radical Left, easy examples are the Red Army Faction with characters like Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhoff. There are movies made about them, they are glamorized in features like The Baader Meinhoff Complex, where you have chic actresses like Martina Gedek and Joana Wokalek representing really quite plain and quite moribund characters in some ways. Now, flick the switch, look at the right, you’ve got very attractive dynamic characters like Francesca Mambro , of the Italian Armed Revolutionary Nuclei (NAR) and you’ve got Yevgenia Khasis in Russia going through a controversial re-trial for her involvement in a political assassination. See for yourself the very different approaches to both these situations and bringing it back to my novel The Partisan and the lead female figure I contend is all about inspiration, it’s all about people coming across a personal circumstance or feeling inspired by characters taking action and following them and conducting activities that will challenge the state. I cited the examples I did because I think they have been put through the movie mill of the left and been overlooked on the right, except that is for Mambro. She was represented in quite a negative way in a recent movie when it concentrated on one of the victims, a bystander who got tragically shot, and I do not want to diminish that, but it was an interesting comparison on how the left and right are represented. So certainly what we need is leadership, glamour, excitement. We also need the spark that creates those activities and we have seen it in the riots across Europe.

What is holding us back, the flip-side of your question, it is obvious to me, Aldous Huxley’s soma. We do have an awful lot of apathy and just in time pleasure that keeps us off the streets . And in many ways that is a good thing but what I would like to say Richard, is that clearly I’ m not advocating violence, that is not what this is about, this is a warning against violence but what I am saying is that violence is going to be inevitable unless we can stop this demographic juggernaut before it reaches the tipping-point. After that, the game is up, we will be living on the movie set of Apocalypse Now. So, for me, it goes back to leadership. Today, in the Western World we have the most stupid at best or the most treacherous self-serving leaders, there is no positive dynamic. The 68’ers and their philosophers have dissipated. The right has filled the gap but the right are being stifled as well. UKIP in Britain, Sarkozy in France, look at your own country, I cannot tell the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats anymore and if our friend Ms. Clinton gets elected to the highest office, that will be the greatest example of the most stifling influence in American politics. So there is a whole strain of soma running through society and we need something to light a fire.

RS: I agree, that soma is not just among political rightists, its among everyone. I was shocked by the fact that there weren’t serious riots occurring after the Trayvon Martin case and there weren’t violent riots after the Ferguson situation. There is still things going on there but they’ve died down. I was kind of thinking why isn’t this happening. It could be simple things like instead of rioting you can watch free streaming pornography on your government sponsored smartphone. Then there’s obesity, a product of our post-modern, post-industrial world and the availability of junk food. And you know it seems post-modern civilization might really go with a whimper and not a bang. It may be able to dull partisanship, but a riot, which is a different thing? But it might be able to dull those things too and absorb them into itself.

FS: Yes, it’s like T.S. Elliot said in The Hollow Men ‘Not with a bang but whimper’. I think that’s a deliberate policy of the system. You talk about obesity, but there’s mental obesity, mental retardation, we’re not exposed to the same texts or they are difficult to get to. The Left has dissipated. In many ways the Left is so mutated, it is not recognizable from when I was a boy. I think de Benoist said: ‘What’s left of the new Left, possibly the New Right?’ and I quite like the way he played that. I think it’s a cheeky way of doing it, it’s a challenging way and if you think of the synthesis the New Right developed, certainly in the 80’s, what you’ve got there is a very interesting challenge to the Left and de Benoist filled that space and I rather admire his tactic.

RS: I agree. I think the Left is a victim of its own success. I mean the Left is the establishment. You can’t claim to be challenging the system when you have an academic post, or you’re in charge of this literary theory of feminism Department at Harvard. And that is one way the system has absorbed political partisanship. I would say most partnership has come from the Left, or is it has historically and the system has been able to absorb that and I think that is an interesting thing and it may not exactly be by design but is certainly a way the system can maintain stability.

FS: I think that’s not necessarily expressed in the text of this novel but what the story does do is work towards the de-legitimization of those basic tenets of Judeo-Christian tradition that prevents us from defending ourselves and it takes on the de-humanizing quality of global capitalism where we become mere units of production, spending and buying. Of course it deals with questions of ethnic homogeneity, but it’s not the only dimension, despite the Arabic and Muslim versus the secular or Christian world, and there’s this feeling as well of being liberated. Liberated from the excesses of modernity. Which is what you were just talking about. For me, mitigating as many of the more negative features of modernity is central. I am by nature an optimist and I consider myself to be progressive and successful in terms of my career and profession. So it is not that modernity is holding me back or I’m threatened by it. I’ve mastered it but I feel the fulfillment that I want modernity to offer me is a mirage. So the sort of vanguard you are describing will start with a small cadre of the committed, people like yourself in the States, Generation Identitaire in France, The Immortals in Germany, National Action and Sigurd Legion in the United Kingdom. I’m being up-beat but I can see these elements developing into something bigger. Well, I would hope they develop and I think they can with the right leadership.

RS: Do you think this will develop on the vanguard right, of our type of right? You mentioned the lack of legitimate antagonism to the system offered by the Christian Tradition. It’s almost as if the Christian traditionalists does not want to undermine but indeed underpins the system and supports it. Do you see it that way? Is it going to be a vanguard revolt? It’s not going to be a mainstream middle-class who will rise up, it’s going to be people on the margins who are hated, who are a-social. There’s a great quote that you have, where Luc says something to Sabine, like, It’s the bohemian, it’s the vanguardist, it’s the a-social person who is truly sane. I think that’s where partisanship or some kind of riot or social revolution, of whatever form will come. Maybe it is violent or maybe non-violent but nevertheless, a revolution, which truly does change the world, changes society, in a way that Ghandi, Martin Luther King and more violent figures changed society. That will come from the vanguard on the fringe.

FS: Yes, and that is why this novel is written in the way it is. It is very much aimed at that vanguard. It does not believe as the author does not believe that the moribund right, the Christian American Right will generate something which is fresh and unique, and that is what is required at this moment. But there is an irony in what I have just said because if you use France as an example, and if you look back over the great thinkers and writers who have supported the Right, many came from strong catholic backgrounds. So it is quite interesting that de Maistre, De Bonald, and people like Drieux la Rochelle, Henry de Motherlant were very strong in their faith. However in the post-modern world we cannot rely on a Charles Martel emerging from the Christian Right. They have been co-opted. The catalyst for what we are seeking will indeed be ‘other’ and I think we’ve already seen some of that vanguard act in a non- violent but very demonstrative way. The take over the mosque in Poitiers by Generation Identitaire and the siege of the Socialist headquarters were fantastic visceral images conveying strong messages and those sort of ‘happenings’ , the 68 generation attitude, I can see beginning to mount. And if you look at the youth of Europe, increasingly they are moving in our direction. So the novel is all about attracting them. It’s deliberately written in an explosive exciting way, that’s to bring the audience to the theory, the philosophy, bring them to the books that will influence them. It’s the ‘attractor’, the same as the love story element. We are not going to get to these young people by handing out thousands of copies of Francis Parker Yockey’s Imperium. A great piece of thinking, a brilliantly articulated neo-Spenglerian piece, but we’re simply not going to get a vanguard out on the street with that. We need to turn people on as Kai Murros says, we need to switch people on. Look this is a debut novel, I’m learning the craft, Richard, this is a very early piece. An attempt to draw that audience to us through literature and there’s some very good pieces of literature out there already. So this is just one contribution.

RS: I quite like Alex Kurtagic’s Mister. It’s quite a long novel. You’ve got to really get into the world of his work. But it is funny and it’s a non-revolutionary in a way. Very different from yours. Though they are published by the same publishing company, their nice counter-parts but in a way the image of the bourgeois man who is very intelligent and recognizing what is going on but in Mister someone who doesn’t revolt. Someone who finds another way of coasting along, going with the flow, not challenging the zeitgeist. I think there may be another genre of literature arising out of this. The revolt and collapse at the end of history.

FS: And there’s some really good writers out there as well. You publish them through your National Policy Institute outlet and Arktos have got some great theoretical texts. I regularly read their books and I’ve been in e-mail exchange with John Morgan since right back to the time when he was running Integral Traditions about six or seven years ago. So I very much agree with you. Alex is a great guy. He makes some great speeches. I know you have shared a platform with him. He was a very deserving winner of the inaugural Jonathon Bowden Oratory Prize and we haven’t touched on Bowden in our conversation but I know you are a great admirer of his intellect and his oratory, as was I, and like you I was turned on by that. It really stimulated and fascinated me. He is/was a great weapon in our armory. Works like The Partisan are aimed at a younger, but not just a young, but a youthful audience. A different audience. It’s a gateway to theory as I previously said in my interview at Wermod & Wermod. It is very much a piece to bring people to our milieu, to excite them. It is the first of many I have to say. I’m being very creative at the moment and I’m very excited about what’s going on and what you are doing at Radix. I’ll try very hard to come to your next conference. I couldn’t come along to Budapest because of other commitments but I’d like to come along to the next. I know you’ve got some great speakers and a mystery speaker as well, so I’ll look forward to the opportunity of being exposed to such talented intellects.

RS: That would be great. I don’t want to give it away but let’s just say the mystery speaker just happens to be from Texas and he’s running for President. Oh, I’m just kidding, Ted Cruz…

FS: I don’t think he’ll be turning up…

RS: May be we should invite him? He might come. Maybe we can get an invitation through some dumb staffer who would book him. That would be hilarious…

FS: But the speakers you have got are phenomenal and the one person I haven’t paid tribute to but is a giant is of course Jared Taylor. I know you’ve come over to Europe and you’ve done The Traditional Britain Group meetings and I think that is really good because except for The Scorpion which is now inert and unfortunately Bowden’s passing we don’t have the same intellectual tradition that the French have, another reason why I set The Partisan in France.

RS: Well, I think that is changing. And I’m not saying that to seem arrogant, oh, no we’re not out to challenge de Benoist and Guillaume Faye. But I think that is changing because for so long the American Right was intellectually so dominated by the Buckleyite conservative movement and so you had people like Russell Kirk, who I am not a great admirer of to be honest, but he’s an interesting guy, but these guys just ignored Europe in general, despite Kirk’s protestations otherwise. But they also had no contact and no awareness of developments like the French New Right and so we were just, well impoverished. I can remember when I was first just starting to enter this world in 2002/2003 I would find some translations of de Benoist on an Australian website in HTML format…

FS: That sounds familiar…

RS: And that was the only way. And I would try to buy copies of Telos which is actually a very interesting Left Wing/Right Wing journal, just so, because you know these were a lot like Radix is now. But they would come out when they were ready but you would buy these just to get a little taste of what was going on in Europe. We were really struggling back then but I think if you are looking at what’s happening, whether it’s the stuff I’m involved with or John Morgan’s doing we’re finally moving in the right direction and we’re finally shaking things up, getting rid of that conservative paradigm and moving things on. And I think we’re at an interesting point where we’re not in competition with all these groups, we’re synthesizing things and I think it’s very exciting.

FS: I agree, I feel that excitement as well. I referred earlier to that transmission of the New Right, it’s now travelled, It’s in fact transcontinental, not just because of the global village but because there are great and admirable thinkers of the Right perspective at the moment, people like the Australian Kerry Bolton. Sam Francis, who you often refer to in your podcasts and in your writing provided some great thoughts and expositions. Then there was your own Alt-Right site too. So we are becoming less and less dependent upon what was big in 1979/80. These were really big stepping stones and now with the superb articles on Greg Johnson’s Counter Currents and his own book New Right/Old Right things are motoring. Greg’s text by the way is sitting on my shelf right next to your own Dugin book on Heidegger that I referred to earlier .

RS: Those two books are at war with each other, perhaps?

FS: But nice to have on the shelf and hopefully some of this will find its way into some literature I produce in the future and give it some gravitas. So, yes, you’re right, I feel that excitement and like I said in an e-mail I sent you some four years ago, where I said when you were really active on the Alternative Right website, ‘you’ve definitely hit your stride here’, we’ve certainly got something going. You’ve got a lovely piece on the website at the moment about those Russians visiting the States and I think that’s a really clever piece. I’ve spent a lot of time in Russia. I speak some Russian and I am familiar with our milieu there.

RS: Excellent, well Fenek, let’s just put a book mark in this conversation. This was a lot of fun and I hope you can come back. And I was definitely stimulated by reading The Partisan. I enjoyed it and I think if anyone is listening they should at the very least give your book a shot. I think they will definitely find a lot of food for thought there, so I definitely recommend it. And this was a lot of fun, so thanks for coming on and let’s do it again.

FS: That would be great Richard. Thank you, goodbye.

 

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Solère, Fenek. “You Say You Want a Revolution?” Interview with Fenek Solère by Richard Spencer. Radix, 20 May 2015. < http://www.radixjournal.com/vanguard-radio/2015/5/20/you-say-you-want-a-revolution&gt;. Transcript provided for the New European Conservative by Fenek Solère personally.

 

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Report from Budapest – Taylor

Report from Budapest

By Jared Taylor

 

A full report on the “forbidden” NPI conference

Published Saturday, October 5, 2014

It was a bold idea from the beginning. The National Policy Institute (NPI), an American organization, was to hold a conference in Budapest on “The Future of Europe.” In addition to well-known identitarians such as Philippe Vardon of France, Markus Willinger of Germany, and myself, the controversial Russian academic Alexander Dugin, was to take part. Hungary’s Jobbik party would provide essential support on the ground, and one of its elected representatives was to address the meeting.

However, about two weeks before the conference, Prime Minister Victor Orban came under pressure from the Hungarian Socialist Party and condemned the conference. His statement mentioned Prof. Dugin by name, and characterized NPI as a “xenophobic and exclusionary” organization. Those of us scheduled to take part began to worry that pressure would build on the Larus Event Center to cancel its contract to host the conference.

Things got worse. A little more than a week before the conference, the Interior Ministry issued a statement forbidding the meeting, and warning that all speakers would be stopped at the border or deported if found within Hungary. Again, Prof. Dugin was cited as a particularly offensive speaker, but others were cited as “racists” who might violate the Hungarian fundamental law that forbids “violating the human dignity of others.”

I arrived on September 29, the Monday before the weekend of the conference, and had no trouble with border control. Others were not so lucky. William Regnery, the NPI board chairman, was scheduled to fly in for a Tuesday meeting with the general manager of the Novotel City Center hotel, where a number of conference events were planned. Mr. Regnery had asked me to attend the meeting with him, but when I got to the hotel, I was dismayed to learn that Mr. Regnery had not arrived. The hotel manager confirmed that the Larus Center had canceled its contract. He also said that many people attending the conference were booked at the hotel and that since the meeting was now forbidden, he had to make a decision about whether to hold the rooms.

Later that day I later learned that Mr. Regnery had been stopped at the Hungarian border by the police, put in a detention cell overnight, and deported to London. That same day, the hotel manager unilaterally canceled all the room reservations and planned events.

Likewise on Tuesday, I was shocked to learn that Jobbik support had completely melted away, and that no one was looking for an alternate venue. I knew that Jobbik representative Marton Gyongyosi, who had been scheduled to speak, had withdrawn, accusing the organizers of “racism,” but I assumed we still had some local Hungarian support. I was wrong. We had no one. Mr. Regnery telephoned from London and asked me to find a suitable venue. We were also in contact with Richard Spencer, the director of NPI, who asked me to find a private room in a restaurant for a dinner–for an estimated 70 people.

The forbidden conference was now big news. The press was full of stories about Russian extremists and American “racists” about to converge in Budapest. I was afraid it would arouse suspicions if an American phoned up restaurants trying to book a last-minute dinner for 70. I decided to wait until the next day, when I knew a Hungarian-American would be arriving, who could make calls in Hungarian.

We finally got to work on Wednesday, and found a charming, traditional restaurant that was willing to serve as many as 100 people in a private room. We took a taxi to the restaurant, worked up a menu, and made a down payment. We had a venue!–so long as we could keep it secret. We scouted the neighborhood and established a redirection point nearby so that we could tell people to meet there and be taken to the restaurant rather than reveal its name and address in advance. Mr. Spencer was thus able to send e-mail messages to everyone registered for the conference, telling them that the event was still on, and that they were to meet Saturday evening at the redirection point.

Mr. Spencer was to arrive the next day, and we were all worried he would get the same treatment as Mr. Regnery, but he slipped across the Austrian-Hungarian border by train without attracting attention. He gave a number of interviews to the press, and he and I met Thursday evening to toast to the success of the conference.

Disaster struck the next day. Mr. Spencer had sent a message to a number of supporters inviting them to meet him informally at the Clock Café in Budapest that evening. Late that night, an estimated 40 police officers descended on the café and locked it down for two hours, while they asked for identification papers and grilled people.

Some 20 people who did not have papers were taken outside for interrogation. Mr. Spencer, who did not have his passport with him, was arrested and asked police to let everyone else go. He was detained along with French-American journalist James Willy, whom the authorities appear to have thought had some role in organizing the conference. We have since heard from Mr. Spencer that he is safe and unhurt, but is likely to be in detention until Monday, when he will be deported. Fortunately, I was not at that gathering; otherwise, I suspect I would be sharing a cell with Mr. Spencer.

The arrest was a terrible blow. We don’t know how the police knew to go to the Clock Café, so we didn’t know how much our security was breached. I felt sure the police did not know about the restaurant, but did they know about the redirection point? This was a forbidden meeting. Would they arrest everyone who showed up?

Mr. Regnery had planned to come back to Hungary at the last minute for the dinner but after Mr. Spencer’s arrest, he decided that would be foolish. On Saturday morning we consulted by phone and had to make some hard decisions. Cancel for fear the police would break up the meeting? Tell only trusted people the name of the restaurant and tell everyone else the dinner was off?

I met with a trusted associate of Richard Spencer. We looked over the list of 65 or so people who said they planned to come to the redirection point and recognized only about 20 names. It didn’t make sense to have a small dinner for people we already knew. We sent them a message with the name and address of the restaurant, but told everyone else to go to the redirection point. I went directly to the restaurant, and another man went to the redirection point early, to keep an eye out for the police. If there were no police, he was to bring people to the restaurant. How much did the police know? I packed a change of clothes and a toothbrush in my briefcase in case I had to spend a night in a cell.

As it happened, there were no police at the redirection point, and people were skillfully in groups to the restaurant. Before long, we had 76 people in all–more than half the original number of registrants–including guests from Sweden, Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia, Slovakia, Britain, Ireland, Croatia, the United States, Spain, Canada, Russia, and even Mexico and Japan. To my disappointment there was only one Hungarian. He explained that the conference had been virtually unknown in Hungary until the scandal broke, and that a few others who had registered dropped out when the police prohibited the meeting.

We admitted three journalists who had been cleared in advance by Mr. Spencer, but kept out half a dozen more who showed up but had not been cleared. I stepped outside and answered their questions for 20 minutes, but decided not to let them cover the event.

Back at the restaurant, I welcomed everyone in the name of NPI. After an excellent dinner, I apologized for the thin program–only two scheduled speakers–but pointed out that speakers had been expressly forbidden to enter the country.

I explained that at least two other speakers had been directly intimidated. The Hungarian government had prevailed on the French to send the police to tell Philippe Vardon that since he was a “notorious racial activist” he was unwelcome in Hungary and would arrested if he tried to come. The Russian police told Alexander Dugin the same thing: He would be expelled immediately if he tried to come to Hungary.

I then introduced the only other scheduled speaker who was able to attend: the author and academic, Tom Sunic. Mr. Sunic lives in neighboring Croatia, and took real risks to come to Budapest. Croatia is not in the free-travel Schengen area of the European Union, and there was a good chance he would be turned back or even detained at passport control. It would be a considerable professional liability to have been officially rejected as an undesirable by a neighboring country.

Mr. Sunic spoke on the failure of the European Union. He pointed out that it was originally established as an economic community, and criticized the role of capitalism in dissolving ethnic and racial bonds: “Merchants have no country.” He spoke of the guilt that seems to be part of Catholicism and that causes Europeans to welcome Third-World immigration. Mr. Sunic urged all Europeans to rise above old antagonisms left over from past conflicts and to embrace a larger destiny. He stressed the dangers of petty nationalism that resulted in the terrible bloodshed in his own country, the former Yugoslavia, and concluded with a rousing call for all Europeans to work together to preserve their common culture and heritage.

My talk was called “Towards a World Brotherhood of Europeans.” I argued out that it is not only on the continent of Europe that we find Europe but in all those places overseas where Europeans have built new societies. I said that I speak for many Canadians, New Zealanders, Australians, and Afrikaners when I call myself a European and refer to Europe as my spiritual and cultural homeland. I said that only Europeans–white people–could defend Europe and carry its heritage forward in a meaningful way, and that our people and civilization are under threat everywhere. I argued that the genetic and cultural effect of alien immigration is no different from armed invasion, and concluded that although the crisis is not sharp, nor the lines so clearly drawn, the struggle of our generation to defend Europe is no different from Marathon, Poitiers, the Siege of Vienna, and the Battle of Blood River.

We had booked the restaurant from 6:00 to 11:00 p.m., and the crowd was thick and exuberant until 11:30 when the management politely sent us out the door to catch the last subway trains home. Late that night I sent out a message to all conference registrants, announcing a 2:00 p.m. gathering on Sunday at the Heroes’ Square, where our European brethren planned to gather and continue informal fellowship.

We did our best despite the outrageous behavior of the Hungarian authorities. We suspect that after the press reports on the meeting are published, the government will have even more reason to be ashamed of their heavy-handed behavior.

We look forward to future meetings under friendlier circumstances.

 

————–

Taylor, Jared. “Report From Budapest.” American Renaissance, 5 October 2014. <http://www.amren.com/news/2014/10/report-from-budapest/ >. Republished at the Radix Journal: <http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2014/10/5/amrens-report-from-budapest >.

 

Glimpse of Post-American Future – Morgan

A Glimpse of the Post-American Future:
The National Policy Institute Conference of 2013

By John Morgan

When I think of my favorite cities in the United States, Washington, DC is not high on the list. I’ve had to go there, for various reasons, several times over the years, but, except for the time I came as a tourist, it’s never been a place I would imagine spending any more time in than absolutely necessary.

But in stepping off the plane as I was arriving for the recent National Policy Institute (NPI) conference there, and catching sight of the Capitol gleaming in the distance from Ronald Reagan airport, I did enjoy the irony of the fact that this had been chosen as the meeting place for those of us who are in opposition to nearly everything that America has come to stand for in recent history. We were gathering there, and we were refusing to be ignored, airing what is unquestionably the most radical political positions that exist at the present time (more on that later) in the shadow of the very institutions that are doubtless hoping that our views remain forever as marginalized from mainstream discourse as they are today.

The idea explored by this conference was one which questioned the very foundations upon which Washington rests: that America as we have known it is drawing to a close, and that if we, as both individuals and as a people, are to survive its end, we must rediscover our authentic identities.

The conference, which was held on Saturday, October 26, 2013, took as its theme “After the Fall,” and all of the speakers dealt with this idea in different ways, focusing their talks on themes related to the long-term unsustainability of the present, American-led state of global affairs, both domestically and globally, or else discussing what implications its end will have for those of us who care about the future of Western identity and civilization.

It took place, as did the NPI conference in 2011, in the Ronald Reagan Building in central Washington, which was an inspired choice on both occasions by Richard Spencer, NPI’s President and Director, given the airport-level security which it has, and also by virtue of the fact that, as a federal facility, the building authorities cannot deny NPI the right to hold its conferences there, in spite of any pressure or threats made by those who oppose it, without denying the organizers and participants their rights under the First Amendment. As such, NPI has been able to avoid the tragic fate of so many American Renaissance and similar conferences that have been called off in recent years due to such harassment.

Undaunted, however, a handful of protesters did make wholly unsuccessful attempts to disrupt the proceedings. I won’t discuss this in great detail, since videos of their activities are available online and Matt Parrott has already written about them for this site. I was left blissfully unaware of them by virtue of the fact that I had arrived over an hour before the start of the conference in order to set up a book table for my company, Arktos Media, and likewise ended up staying until several hours after the conference’s end – on both occasions, they were absent (no doubt fortifying themselves by smoking a bowl or whatever). A few of them made an appearance before the conference had actually begun, when everyone was simply having breakfast and getting coffee. When Richard demanded to see their admission passes, one of them, a White neo-hippie male youth, began shouting, “How can anyone in the 21st century have a bullshit nationalist identity . . . ” His thought was left incomplete as he was hustled out of the room—a great loss to the annals of political commentary, no doubt. A few others milled about the lobby outside the conference proper at various times throughout the day, perusing the book tables. I can’t know what they made of the books, but I hope that just maybe they came to realize that what they thought we stand for, and the reality as shown by our publications, are two very different things. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

This brings me to the point I mentioned earlier, about those of us who spoke at NPI, and those around the world who share our perspectives, being the REAL radicals. After all, what do these neo-Marxist protesters, using tactics and rhetoric that already seemed old hat in the 1960s, really have to offer? Nothing. While thinking themselves to be rebels against “the establishment” – which, oddly enough, they believe we represent (I’m still waiting for my check from the racist plutocrats who secretly control America to arrive in the mail) – they really embody nothing but a shabbily-dressed offshoot of the very system that they claim to oppose, and a slightly more extreme form of the ideas that have defined the United States and Europe for the last half-century. As Richard pointed out in his introductory remarks at the conference, these protesters aren’t the real enemy – they’re just sad. The only people who are actually developing a paradigm that challenges the dominant one in any meaningful way are those of us on the “radical Right” (for want of a better term). As such, WE are the genuine radicals – those who consider themselves to be our enemies are nothing but throwbacks to an earlier age.

As for the conference itself, it seemed to me that there were more people in attendance than there had been in 2011. Even more promising was the fact that there were many more young people among them, no doubt because of the significantly reduced price of the student tickets that Richard had made available. And, unlike 2011, there were even a few women in attendance, some of whom came of their own volition rather than reluctantly accompanying a spouse or boyfriend – a rare sight, at such an event in America, and hopefully a sign of an increasing trend.

Richard opened the proceedings by introducing the speakers and setting the tone for the day, which was one of daring to think beyond the parameters of Left and Right, and beyond any idea of “saving America” and toward imagining a new and better world to follow, as well as how it might work.

The first speaker was Piero San Giorgio, a Swiss citizen of Italian descent whose presentation was entitled “The Center Cannot Hold.” His talk was an extremely good overview of the many factors that are contributing to the decline of the present world order, particularly peak oil. He expressed his belief that all the signs indicate that a collapse of the economic system that will dwarf that of 2008 is not far off – a time most likely measurable in years rather than decades. Piero emphasized that capitalism was always a system destined to ultimately destroy itself, resting as it does on fantastical ideas of perpetual growth and the commodification of the entire planet and everything in it. For Piero, however, the coming collapse is not something to be feared, but rather an opportunity for revolutionary thinkers such as ourselves to refashion the world. To do this, we must be prepared by knowing how to survive on our own skills and resources, and Piero suggested a number of practical ways by which this can be accomplished. A very witty, well-written and thorough exposition of these threads is given in his book Survive the Economic Collapse: A Practical Guide, which was launched by Radix, an imprint of Washington Summit Publishers, in conjunction with the conference. This is a book that has been greatly needed by the “Right” for some time – both a summary of the evidence for an imminent collapse and a handbook for what one needs to in order to ensure that one can ride out the chaos rather than become caught up in it. As participants in a movement which is preoccupied with the idea of the collapse, it is nice to see someone take it up as a concrete phenomenon with definable features rather than treat it as a misty deux es machina that will magically deliver us from all our problems.

The next speaker, Sam Dickson, identified himself as a “racial communitarian activist.” Under the provocative title of “America: The God that Failed,” he set out what he saw as the fundamental flaws at the heart of America which have existed since its conception. In Dickson’s account, it was America’s roots in the British Isles, with its strong tradition of individualism that came about through its unique historical circumstances, as well as the individualistic tendencies of immigrants from other parts of Europe who came to America later, that led to the birth of the United States as a nation in which freedom was seen as an absolute value. This is an error, according to Dickson, since the individual can only attain meaning as a part of a community, and it was this elevation of freedom as an absolute value that led to Americans losing their sense of connection to a specific ethnic identity. In questioning freedom, Dickson hastened to add, one should not assume that those who do so are against freedom, as he sees himself as being against all forms of totalitarianism. Rather, one must question the view that sees freedom as an absolute value above all other concerns. Dickson says this was not just a problem that developed over the course of America’s history, but was implicit in the Declaration of Independence, which established equality as an absolute value and its associated sense of rights as something inalienable. A true community cannot be established solely on the idea of freedom, he claimed, and therefore America cannot be seen as an authentic nation. He went on to say that conservatives today are incapable of transcending this worship of freedom as an absolute and cannot surpass the notion of America as it is presently constituted. The only solution, he concluded, is to realize the limitations of the American conception of the nation, and to work toward a new nation based on the values of community and upon a renewed connection back to our European heritage.

This was followed by a panel discussion in which I participated, along with Richard, Andy Nowicki of Alternative Right, and Alex Kurtagić of Wermod and Wermod Publishing, concerning “Publishing and the Arts.” Richard kicked off by posing the question of how the new world of publishing that has emerged in recent years has impacted those of us engaged in “Right-wing” publishing. Andy spoke about the excitement of being part of a dissident form of media, and how satisfying it is to be in “the crest of an ever-growing wave” of alternative media. He also addressed the importance of avoiding getting too caught up in the day-to-day minutiae of the headlines and to instead to take a longer view, which leads to enduring rather than merely topical works, as well as the need to fund and encourage the arts of the dissident Right, which is a budding and much-needed component of the overall struggle to establish a new culture in keeping with our principles.

Next was my turn, and I discussed how a number of factors, including the birth of print-on-demand publishing, the growth of the Internet and social media, and even globalization – in the sense that my colleagues and I have outsourced ourselves to India for the past several years – have made Arktos possible, in a manner that would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago. In a sense, of course, we in Arktos are turning the very tools of the globalized world against itself in pursuit of an alternative. A gentleman from the audience expressed the view that the books that we publish only appeal to a small percentage of very intellectual readers in an age when books are allegedly on the decline, and that more direct, populist activism is what is really needed today. I replied that, while I would never discourage anyone from pursuing other courses of action, and in fact I am hopeful that such activities will take place, at the same time we should not dismiss the power of books. Not all books are intended for an exclusive audience, and I offered as an example the recent publication of our book, Generation Identity: A Declaration of War Against the ’68ers by Markus Willinger, which serves as a manifesto of the worldview of the identitarian youth movement which has accomplished many things in Europe in recent years, as an example of something which has proven to be very popular among young readers who are new to the “movement.” Besides which, it is my view that revolutions, whether they are political, cultural or intellectual, are always led by elites, and in this way books are still indispensable for training the elite that will lead our revolution in these fields. The European New Right, for example, would never have materialized were it not for the metapolitical efforts of Alain de Benoist and others who laid the groundwork in their books, something which could not have been achieved in any other medium.

Alex Kurtagić described what he is doing as an effort to engage with the space where “art, bibliophilia, and the counter-culture intersect,” and expressed his wish to bring out beautifully-produced editions of classic texts that have been neglected in recent years, as a sort of dissident Penguin Classics, which he has already done with Francis Parker Yockey’s Imperium and other books. Kurtagić believes the value of these books lies in the fact that they will lead to the development of a new body of theory, and also outlast any collapse scenario which we may face in the near future, unlike the products of the mass media and electronic culture.

Following this was lunch, and after this, there was a conversation between Sam Dickson and William Regnery. Regnery discussed his journey through the conservative movement of the time and how he later came to reject conservative politics in favor of the sorts of perspectives offered at NPI. Dickson then reflected on the fact that, while the America he grew up in during the 1950s and ’60s was better than it is today in some respects, it was also very closed-minded, and the dissemination information was dominated by a very few organizations, which rendered alternative points-of-view such as those represented by NPI and similar groups very difficult to find or disseminate. Therefore, in a sense, Dickson said that there are actually greater opportunities for revolutionary movements in America today than there were previously. Regnery professed his belief that the ostracism that Rightists encounter in America today is much more intense than anything that was experienced by Leftists under McCarthyism.

Next up was Alex Kurtagić once again, whose talks in various venues in recent years, including NPI in 2011, always cause them to be greeted with eager anticipation. His talk was on the theme of “The End of the World as We Know It.” Kurtagić explained that, since the financial meltdown of 2008, the idea of a collapse has percolated beyond its origins in the radical Right and into the mainstream, as expressed in the many books and novels which have dealt with the theme in recent years. The most distinguishing feature of these works, Kurtagić contended, is that they are primarily concerned with the idea of preserving America and its egalitarian, libertarian ideals. As such, they ultimately miss the point – egalitarianism is never questioned, and the issue of race never enters into the discussion.

The other common feature of such works, according to Kurtagić, is that they depict the collapse as something that happens suddenly and which is severe. This is not necessarily the way that it will actually happen, he pointed out – it is just as possible that we are already experiencing a gradual collapse, which will only be recognized by those looking back retrospectively at history at a later time. What must distinguish the “radical Right’s” idea of the collapse must be a willingness to see it through the lens of a transvaluation of values, rather than as an attempt to restore what will be lost when America as it is presently constituted finally falls. For Kurtagić, the key to this transvaluation is the idea of egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is the key to the liberal worldview because it is the tool that enables them to dismiss distinctions, hierarchy, meaning, and tradition. This is why the Right was ultimately forced to retreat from any meaningful opposition to liberalism, according to Kurtagić, because once egalitarianism was ensconced as the inviolable ideal of Western society, the Right was forced to oppose its enemies on their own terms, thus losing any ability to oppose them in a meaningful way.

Kurtagić called on his audience to dare to “think the unthinkable.” This means, according to him, questioning the very foundation upon which the radical Right in America has based itself in recent decades. The Anglo-American Right, according to Kurtagić, sees itself as a bastion of reason in a world of unreason. As a result, it has taken a scientific approach to its problems, which in turn is reflective of the bias towards empiricism inherent in the Anglo-American worldview. Speculative philosophy, in this tradition, is always viewed with suspicion. As a consequence, Kurtagić believes that the Anglo-American Right has failed to answer the issue of why egalitarianism cannot be questioned. The answer, he says, is because the Left succeeded in framing the issue of egalitarianism as one of an absolute good opposed to an absolute evil, and this is an idea that has spread throughout every facet of our society. Kurtagić claimed that it is not enough to try to prove the egalitarian ideal false through empirical data, but rather to depict it as an evil in turn, by pointing to the many injustices that have resulted from its pursuit, turning modern liberal democracies into near-totalitarian surveillance states in an effort to patrol the society and ensure that it is acting in accordance with this ideal.

What the game of egalitarianism is really about, Kurtagić said, is power – it is an instrument being used by those who want power to advance themselves, irrespective of whatever lofty goals initially inspired it. As such, it is mere arrogance masquerading as humility by the powers-that-be. What is needed to counter them is a moral critique of egalitarianism, which Kurtagić believes will undermine the moral legitimacy that supports the ruling classes. But it is not sufficient merely to tear down, says Kurtagić; something new will be needed to replace egalitarianism. This new ideal must surpass the merely biological view of life, because such a stand will merely render us as moral particularists, believing that what is good for our own group alone is what is best. But Kurtagić believes, along with Kevin MacDonald, that one of the distinguishing features of Western thought is universalism, and that the type of thought that we use to deal with a collapse scenario must be inherently Western in nature if we are to survive, and thus address the needs of all groups.

Unlike some, Kurtagić does not see the collapse as guaranteeing a reawakening of the racial spirit in Whites. We have come to focus on race, he said, because the Left decided to make an issue of it. But by countering them only on this level, we have only succeeded in dragging ourselves down to their level. Race is meaningless without taking into account whatever is built on top of it – therefore, we should focus our efforts on those higher, nobler aspects of our civilization rather than only upon its biological foundations. Kurtagić concluded by stating that he would rather live in a world full of differences than a homogenized one.

Following Alex Kurtagić was Roman Bernard, a Frenchman who has been active with the French organization which has been making headlines, Génération Identitaire – the same which brought identitarianism as a phenomenon to the attention of all Europe. His theme was “The Children of Oedipus.” He described his journey from more mainstream conservatism to the “radical Right,” in part as a result of his reading of English-language outlets such as Alternative Right, Counter-Currents, and Arktos. He explained that the youth of France are more and more beginning to question the ideals that they inherited from the radical Leftists who came to prominence after the strikes of 1968, and they are coming to see that all Europeans around the world are facing a common struggle. He pointed to Generation Identity as a portent of things to come: in its famous occupation of a mosque that was under construction in Poitiers, the site where Charles Martel drove back Muslim invaders in the eighth century, and in their occupation of the offices of the Socialist Party in Paris last May, the identitarians have given birth to a form of street activism that was unknown on the Right previously. Roman felt that these developments were indicative that a new and more vigorous Right, with much greater appeal to youth, was on the rise in Europe. Matt Parrott reinforced his message, emphasizing the need for continuing street-level activism to go along with more ideological or metapolitical efforts.

Mark Hackard, who writes for Alternative Right, then followed up with a discussion of the state of geopolitical affairs, in particular how the recent crisis in Syria, which led to Vladimir Putin’s frustration of Obama’s plans for military intervention, demonstrated that the era of American hegemony was already beginning to give way to a multipolar world in which other, opposing forces were coming into play.

Following this was Jack Donovan, who has been promoting the values of tribalism and a restoration of masculinity in his writings. Donovan pointed out that the collapse may come soon, or the system as it exists could limp on for quite some time; the one thing we can be certain of is that America, as it currently exists, will never change even as it declines, and the values which those of us on the “Right” hold dear will continue to be opposed by the establishment, as keeping people dependent on the liberal state is the key to their continuing power. Donovan said that, to the powers-that-be, we are only barbarians, condemned to be forever ostracized from the mainstream, but that rather than viewing this as a problem, we should embrace our barbarian identities.

Donovan said that the key to embracing this identity is to see ourselves as outsiders within our own homeland. What this means is to change the way we relate to the state, and see ourselves as something separate from it. He suggested four ways this could be accomplished. The first is to separate “us” from “them,” seeing ourselves in tribal terms and refusing to identify with America as a whole. The second is to stop getting angry because what is happening in society doesn’t make sense to us. The reason this is the case, Donovan said, is because what is being done is happening because it benefits those in power – not us. Therefore we shouldn’t expect things to seem sensible from our point of view. His third point is to de-universalize morality. Men, and White men in particular, he claimed, see themselves today as being on a mission to ensure that everyone in our society is being treated fairly. The problem is that this idea only works when everyone is interconnected as part of a cohesive community; in America today, many Whites have difficulty coming to terms with the idea that others do not have this same idea of universal justice in their hearts. No one cares when White men are excluded from anything today, Donovan pointed out. His fourth point is to encourage us to become “independent but interdependent” – to quietly establish a community somewhere of like-minded individuals who can jointly develop an alternative lifestyle, dissenting from the prevailing culture, and ensure that its members can provide for themselves by possessing the necessary skills. Land belongs to he who can hold it, Donovan emphasized, and while there is little chance that we can reclaim America from those who currently own it, it is still possible to establish a tribe that one can call one’s own.

Tomislav Sunić, who next took the podium, spoke on the idea of “Beyond Nationalism, or the Problem with Europe.” Sunić began by reminding us that prophecies of the imminent end of the world are nothing new in human history. The prevailing ideology of the modern West, he said, is that of progress, and the belief in an endless upward development of civilization. Sunić said that he sees himself as being among those who reject this belief. Believers in progress, he noted, have a tendency to want to impose their plans on society as a whole, and as a result have led to some of the greatest political atrocities of modern times. Our European ancestors, Sunić noted, were more accustomed to the idea of an inevitable fall, as can be seen in the myths of an apocalyptic end – and cyclical rebirth to follow – which predominated throughout Europe. For Sunić, this tragic sense, which he believes has been perpetuated up to the present day, as seen in great European writers such as Ernst Jünger and Emile Cioran, is part of what unites our civilization, in addition to its racial aspect. This indicates that the notion of our identity must go beyond the merely biological, in terms of being “White,” and we should look for our roots in our common historical memory. He also contended that defining ourselves solely in terms of what we oppose, such as in being against immigration or Islam, is also insufficient to form a complete identity.

Sunić claimed that we must embrace this European sense of the tragic, not as something negative, but rather as an opportunity to see history as an endless flow which will offer us opportunities, if only we can grab them. In order to do this, we must forge something new. This means creating a new, pan-European identity which will guarantee that we do not repeat the bloody mistakes that came between our various peoples in the past. Sunić offered many historical precedents for this idea, showing that when threatened by outside forces, Europeans have always demonstrated their willingness to put aside their differences to confront a greater threat. Sunić’s last point was that we must not ignore the issue of character when evaluating who is worthy to be a part of our new ethnostate – simply being of a common racial background is insufficient on its own. Sunić reminded us that both our movement and others, such as the Catholic Church, have been plagued by those with bad intentions who prey on such groups only for their own personal benefit. Such individuals must be rejected. Sunić believes that the only way forward is to establish a new European identity and rediscover our pride in who we are.

The final speaker of the day was the deliverer of the keynote address, Alain de Benoist, who more than anyone present has been responsible for giving birth to the trends which have culminated in the appearance of organizations such as NPI and the North American New Right. Benoist was the ideological founder of what came to be termed – against their own wishes – the “New Right” in France, and which later spread throughout Europe, and he has published dozens of books in French, several of which have now been translated by Arktos. Benoist’s project has always been to create a new type of political thought in Europe which will allow Europeans to defend and retain their identities while avoiding the intellectual and ideological pitfalls which befell similar efforts in the past. Thus, the subject of his talk was aptly named, “The Question of Identity.” He began by apologizing for his poor English, although it was my impression that everyone in the room was able to understand him with ease.

Benoist said that the question of identity is the most important question we face today, but also pointed out that it is a very modern question as well, since traditional societies never have the need to question their identity. He explained that identity in Europe became an issue with the rise of individualism in the wake of Descartes, who first described the notion of the individual as something independent of his community. Likewise, we have seen the division of the individual into various identities, such as one’s professional, sexual, ethnic identity, and so on.

The problems which prevail today in thinking about identity derive from the fact that we have come to think that it is a product only of how we think of ourselves. Benoist said that, from the communitarian perspective – which he also identified as his own – identity is dependent on how others see us, which means that identity can only be understood in terms of a social bond. This means that all notions of identity are ideological in nature. Furthermore, we tend to see identity as something immutable, whereas Benoist said that identity cannot exist without transformation, even if we remain, in essence, ourselves throughout such changes. The notion of identity is an interpretive act – when we perceive something, we do not just see it but also assign meaning to it, which gives our notions of identity a narrative character, in terms of a story which develops further every time we come back to it.

When it comes to mass immigration, Benoist said, while it is responsible for great social pathologies, those who oppose it miss the point by ignoring its actual causes. What is really behind it is “the system that kills the peoples,” namely the global system of capitalism that is attempting to destroy all differences in an effort to impose a universal world order. Benoist does not believe that our identity is primarily threatened by others, but rather the greatest danger we face is from the lack of respect for the identity of others that prevails everywhere today, in which Americanization is the order of the day and the highest value is money. We must wonder whether the world will continue to develop along unipolar lines, with America as the sole dominant force trying to bring about a monolithic world, or whether we will see the emergence of a multipolar world in which many identities will be allowed to play a role.

How this came about can only be understood by examining the roots of modernity in the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment, by its nature, was opposed to the very idea of identity, opposing tradition, rootedness, and ethnic solidarity. Benoist said that mainstream American conservatives repeat this mistake when they defend the myth of the individual against the rights of society as a whole. Continental Europeans, he said, have had less of a problem with this, since they have always recognized that capitalism is a destructive force. Capitalism is the opposite of real conservatism, he said; it believes itself to be universal and endless. Benoist pointed out that even Marx had identified capitalism as the system which stands for the abolition of all traditions and the feudal order. Capitalism relies for its survival on perpetual growth, and can thus only exist if it dismantles everything that stands in its way. This is why capitalism proved itself to be much more effective than Communism, Benoist said, since as a system it is even more universalist and materialistic than Communism ever was. Capitalism is ultimately responsible for the problem of immigration because it relies on a continual increase of its labor pool for a continuing increase in productivity, and thus it is the natural setting for the concept of “global citizenship.” But capitalism can only offer a caricature of a social bond, he said – in reality, all it can do is carry out the commodification of humans that is inherent in its logic. Benoist concluded by saying that identity will always remain under threat as long as the lifestyles inspired by capitalism remain unquestioned. He apologized to the audience if anyone had found his talk to be a deliberate provocation to Americans; he said he was only offering his opinion, but knew that it was difficult to convey in a country which valued the ideals of progress, individualism and capitalism above all else.

A very interesting question-and-answer session followed. Benoist further explicated his views on America, saying that one of the most fundamental problems with it is that it is the product of a land which already had its own culture being co-opted by another culture, which led to an inherent sense of alienation within it. He also noted that America was not alone in its responsibility for the present global order, admitting that the American and French revolutionary projects were linked by a similar ideology. Interestingly, he said that, in spite of their claim to stand for the rights of everyone, these revolutions had only possible as a result of massive bloodshed – in France, through the violent suppression of the ancien régime, and in America by the suppression of the Indians. He said that addressing these problems in America is always problematic, since a genuine Left and Right, as known in Europe, is absent here, “which is strange.” Benoist also invoked Carl Schmitt in reminding us that those who fight in the name of humanity only do so in order to deny the humanity of their enemy, rendering him into an absolute evil that must be destroyed.

After this was a very pleasant reception, during which I manned the Arktos book table. As inspiring as the speakers at the conference were, this is always my favorite part of any such event, since it gives me the opportunity to meet and speak with people who usually only know me through the Internet, or through my work for Arktos. It is always very invigorating to experience firsthand how many intelligent, interesting people find value in the work that we do, and I always greatly appreciate the many expressions of thanks for our efforts that were extended to me over the course of the weekend. I give my most heartfelt gratitude to anyone who did so.

I will conclude by saying that there were no problems of any significance at the conference, and both the speakers and the audience that the organizers managed to assemble were truly top-notch. I hope that NPI continues to hold such events with regularity in the future, as they are absolutely essential to the growth of a genuinely radical school of thought on the Right in America today – something that is desperately needed, as the impoverishment of the ideals underlying our society become more apparent by the day. Whether an actual collapse is imminent or not, what cannot be denied is the already ongoing collapse of America as a culture and as a society. Those of us on the “New Right” are the only ones capable of developing the right sorts of solutions. We need to get to work.

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Morgan, John. “A Glimpse of the Post-American Future: The National Policy Institute Conference of 2013.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 6 November 2013. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/11/a-glimpse-of-the-post-american-future/ >.

 

After the Fall – AR Staff

After the Fall

By the American Renaissance Staff

Second NPI conference is held in Washington.

 

The National Policy Institute (NPI) held its second national conference in Washington, DC, on October 26, with a very interesting lineup of speakers. The meeting was held in the Ronald Reagan Center, a federally operated facility, which resisted all “anti-racist” threats to the conference.

The speakers were introduced by Richard Spencer, director of NPI, and the conference began with Piero San Giorgio, a Swiss author and survivalist. Mr. San Giorgio argued strongly that current population and consumption trends can lead only to economic and social collapse. We may have already reached “peak oil,” and in 15 or 20 years, the energy it takes to extract oil could be greater than the energy we can get from burning it. We are also running out of copper, zinc, bauxite, and other metals while we pollute, deforest, and overfish the planet.

Mr. San Giorgio predicted that what he calls “the religion of perpetual growth” will come to a crashing end as governments default on debt and nations go to war over resources. The result will be widespread poverty of a kind now found only in the worst parts of Africa.

Only organized groups will be available to survive this collapse, and the best organized groups for that purpose are criminal gangs, which are well armed and used to getting what they want by force. Those of us who do not want to be slaughtered by gangs will need what Mr. San Girogio calls a “sustainable autonomous base” with its own food supply, energy source, and armed defense. Mr. San Giorgio believes we should build such bases for ourselves but that no one will survive in isolation. We are social animals who need a tribe and social links. In the mean time, Mr. San Giorgio recommends getting out of debt, converting financial assets to gold, and learning how to lead the simpler, pre-industrial way of life that is coming.

Mr. San Giorgio elaborates on these themes in his book Survive–The Economic Collapse.

Sam Dickson spoke next on “America: the God that Failed.” Describing himself as a “racial communitarian,” he argued that America’s great failing has been an excess of individualism that has destroyed the organic ties of community. The British were already the most individualistic people of the Old World, and those who settled North America were the most individualistic of the British. Immigrants who followed, both through Ellis Island and later, have come to make money rather than to join a national community.

Americans glorify freedom and liberty, but the price has been so thorough a destruction of the racial and social bonds of community that we no longer live in a nation—those of us who imagine a better life are men without a country. And in some respects we are freer than our ancestors—we are free to fornicate, marry across racial lines, divorce, abort our children, and even marry a person of the same sex—but these freedoms are granted by the state. Without strong communities we are powerless in the face of the state that grants—and withholds—what it takes to be freedoms.

Mr. Dickson argued that any nation based on foolish propositions such as the equality of all men and the idea of inalienable rights—he noted that rights are alienated all the time—cannot even pretend to be a nation. He sounded a warning to Americans: We must recognize our susceptibility to “freedom” and rediscover the importance of community. We must build a “reracinated” nation that is a true outgrowth of Europe rather than the formless “biomass” that now constitutes what is called the American people.

Mr. Dickson was followed by a panel discussion on breaking the mainstream’s grip on media. It was composed of Andy Nowicki of AlternativeRight.com, John Morgan of Arktos Media, and Alex Kurtagic of the Wermod & Wermod Publishing Group. Mr. Nowicki described the current success of alternative media as “riding the crest of a wave” that makes it possible to spread dissident ideas to the entire world. He also noted the importance of supporting not only writers but artists who embody a new sensibility.

Mr. Morgan noted that although Arktos has been publishing only since 2010, it has produced some 60 books that he described as “alternatives to modernity.” Much of Arktos’ work has been to make available to English speakers important European works on politics, philosophy, and art that that have never been translated. Mr. Morgan noted that Arktos has been made possible only because of the latest technology—Internet, print on demand, Twitter, Facebook—and noted the delicious irony of fighting modernity with its own tools.

Mr. Kurtagic’s project is to produce beautiful, collectible versions of now-despised classics—what he calls “the dissident Penguin classics.” So far, he has produced beautiful annotated editions of Madison Grant’s best books and published a similar edition of Francis Yockey’s Imperium. At the same time, he strongly promotes new expressions of our traditional culture. To a questioner who doubted the wisdom of reviving bound books in the electronic age he replied that when the power goes out we will be glad to have paper.

Sam Dickson and William Regnery then spoke about how America has changed. Mr. Regnery, who grew up during the 1950s, said, “I regret that life in the ’50s is something my children, and grandchildren will not see.” He noted that there may have been precursors to the collapse in values of the 1960s, but that there was a community and even national coherence. He also described some of his adventures as a conservative activist but noted that the movement achieved virtually nothing in 40 years. “The conservative movement didn’t leave me,” he concluded. “I left the conservative movement.”

Mr. Dickson emphasized the same sense of community that he knew as a child, but also underscored how limited the sources of information then were. It was far harder than now to hear a dissident view of race or history, and a profusion of books, publishers, foundations, and Internet sites makes it much easier for independent-minded Americans to learn how badly their country has been led astray.

Mr. Kurtagic then spoke on “The End of the World as We Know It.” He noted that there is a vogue of fiction about the collapse of civilization. Many people sense that our levels of consumption and indebtedness cannot be sustained, but he pointed out that sometimes collapse can be slow and that its beginnings may be recognizable only in retrospect. Our aim should not be to contribute to the fall but to build what may come after the fall.

Today, egalitarianism is the highest value of the West but we must reject it. Egalitarianism makes everything the same, thus destroying all traditions and archetypes. Most people cannot even imagine a moral critique of egalitarianism, but until this false god is destroyed nothing new can emerge.

Egalitarianism erases the difference between the deserving and undeserving, and in so doing establishes a huge government apparatus that creates privilege for the undeserving. Egalitarian movements have also killed millions of people in their self-righteous quest for power. Conservatives try to fight egalitarianism with statistics and measures of inequality but theirs is only a half-hearted struggle that fails to reject the fundamental goal of homogenization and “social justice.”

Racialists seek to overthrow egalitarianism by asserting white identity but no solution can be found by seeking only what is good for whites. Western man believes in universal values, and will accept only those concepts based on what is good for all races. It is the left that makes a fetish out of race and we should not fall into its trap. We should strive towards the sublime, towards uniqueness, towards nobility. Biology is not a sufficient foundation for morality, and if we value our own uniqueness we must value and support the uniqueness of others.

Roman Bernard is a French activist who spoke about how young racially conscious Europeans are fighting dispossession. He said that for the first time, they feel deeply that all Europeans face the same challenges, and they see themselves as one people with a common destiny. They are not deceived by leftist media and, unlike European conservatives who just want to be left alone to enjoy their money, young identitarians want to take power so they can change the world.

Mr. Bernard pointed out that the old solution to immigration—white flight—is no longer possible. A man with a master’s degree waiting on tables cannot afford a house in the suburbs. As for solutions, it is too early to describe what form they will take. The awakening is too recent for its consequences to be predicted. However, the cultural and intellectual battle has begun, and more young people will join the movement as they see it as the only way out from a series of catastrophic failures.

So far, the most high-profile identitarian acts in France have been street theatre: storming the headquarters of the socialist party, and occupying the mosque that was under construction at Poitiers, not far from the famous battle of 732. The traditional Right would never think of doing such things. It is not possible to know how or whether these new youth movements will move into politics, but it has a focus and energy that reflect a genuine break with the past.

Jack Donovan, author of The Way of Men, spoke on “Becoming the New Barbarians.” Like Mr. San Giorgio, he predicted an inevitable decline and a more constrained way of life, since we can count on our rulers to fail us. They will also continue trying to keep us emasculated and dependent on the state. Healthy men are forceful, even violent. The state uses such men to serve its own violent purposes but wants to turn them into women for any other purpose.

Those among us who know that men are not created equal, who hate a government that tries to regulate everything, who know men and women are different, who believe free men should be armed, and who find same-sex marriage absurd are now the new barbarians.

Just as we are rejected and hated by the state, we must reject the state. Politicians cannot solve our problems, and once we recognize that they are crazy or stupid or both, we should “relax and appreciate their crafty strategies.” “We should see them for what they are,” Mr. Donovan added. “Be mocking, carefree, and violent.” We should not worry about changing the state; that is for people who believe in and belong to the state.

We must draw clear lines to distinguish ourselves from others, and be “morally accountable only to the tribe.” Blacks do not even pretend to care about us, and we must recognize that we have interests different from theirs. We have a compulsion to be fair, but this compulsion is healthy only in a world in which others believe in fairness.

When the decline comes, those with a tribal identity will survive, and a tribe must be of real comrades, not a group of Facebook friends. Bands of brothers should take over neighborhoods or apartment complexes. A community of 125 people can work together to survive when the state collapses, and if we have community we can live meaningful lives even if we are condemned to be outsiders in our own homeland.

The next speaker was Tomislav Sunic, the Croatian philosopher and author of Against Democracy and Equality. In a speech called “Beyond Nationalism, or the Problem of Europe,” he warned of the limits of white racial consciousness. Although he rejects the idea of inevitable progress—“after every sunny day there is a rainy day”—he does not believe in the inevitability of collapse. Even if there is a large-scale collapse, we cannot be sure that it will give rise to a healthy consciousness of race.

Mr. Sunic noted that the civil wars whites have waged against each other have killed far more of us than non-whites ever could. Race has never been a unifier; the Germanic Gepids even joined Atilla against Europe in the 5th century. At the same time, most of the people demonstrating in favor of illegal immigrants in Europe are themselves white, and “our worst detractors are from the same gene pool as ourselves.” He went on to point out that “when the final breakdown occurs, the lines of demarcation will not be clear at all,” and that there will be plenty of whites fighting on the barricades against us.

Mr. Sunic argued that Christianity is no longer central to the identity of the West. There are now more non-white than white Christians, and high-ranking church leaders tell us they see “the face of Jesus” among crowds of immigrants—even when they are Muslim or Hindu.

And yet biology alone cannot be our identity. “A generic white blank slate is meaningless if it is devoid of a racial soul.” Mr. Sunic called on whites to cherish their cultural and historical legacy because without that we are only a genotype. “We must resuscitate our sense of the tragic as well as our racial identity,” he concluded, noting that the sense of the tragic is what drives Promethean struggle, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

The keynote speaker was Alain de Benoist, the prominent French philosopher and one of the founders the New Right, who spoke about the nature of identity. He pointed out that as soon as someone speaks of his identity, it is a sign his identity is under attack. People in traditional, rooted societies do not ask “Who am I?” or “Who are we?” By the time someone begins to ask these questions, his identity may have disappeared.

Identity has many dimensions: language, culture, ethnicity, sex, profession, etc. We choose those parts of our identity we think most important to us, but it is a mistake to believe that our identity depends only on ourselves. A man living alone would have no identity, because identity is shaped by relations with others. Our community participates in our identity.

It is also a mistake to define identity as something immutable. We never cease to be ourselves, but the elements of which identity is composed change throughout our lives.

Many people say that mass immigration threatens collective identity, and this problem cannot be denied. However, too many natives then define themselves in opposition to what they are not rather than setting forth a positive identity.

Modernity itself attacks the identity of both the immigrant and the native. “I say the biggest threat is the system that kills the people,” Mr. de Benoist noted, adding that “the imposition of an across-the-board homogenization eliminates diversity of language culture, etc.” He decried global government and global markets that operate according to “the ideology of sameness.”

Mr. de Benoit also criticized capitalism because it seeks to reduce everything to a cost and a price, and to reduce all humans to interchangeable producers and consumers. Capitalism, noted Mr. de Benoist, has erased borders far more successfully than Communism ever did, and the global market leads to the global citizen. Capitalism has become a “total social fact” that seems to dominate and homogenize every aspect of our lives.

Modernity itself is the enemy of identity because it is rooted in the idea of progress, in which the past is nothing but a bundle of irrational superstitions. The future towards which modernity strives is one in which all men are individuals, seeking what is in their rational interests. Modernity has no place for the irrational or the collective, despite the fact that these are what give life meaning.

Mr. de Benoist concluded by saying that although globalization and Americanization are not synonymous, they are closely related. Only Americans believe that their system is the best in the world and that they have is a duty to export it. Of course, to the extent that this succeeds, it destroys all that is unique, different and valuable, just as it destroys identity. Ultimately, it destroys humanity because we cannot be human if we are all the same.

Before the conference speeches began, decorum was breached by an uninvited guest who shouted about “fu**ing racists” but the event was otherwise a success by any standard. Videos of the speeches should be available soon.

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American Renaissance Staff. “After the Fall.” American Renaissance, October 28, 2013. <http://www.amren.com/news/2013/10/after-the-fall/ >.