Race, Identity, Community – Tudor

Race, Identity, Community

By Lucian Tudor

Translations: Español (see note at the bottom of this page)

Modern Right-wingers who assert the importance of racial differences and advocate racial separatism, especially White Nationalists, face a number of philosophical challenges which they need to be aware of and ready to address. It is all too common to rely on presuppositions, assumptions, or implications without being prepared to respond to more in-depth issues or the complications involving the interpretation of facts and ideas. What is needed in the modern Right is a developed philosophy of race and culture, of identity and community, which clarifies the issues involved and which gives depth to their standpoint.

Without this philosophical or intellectual depth supporting their worldview in their minds, they are less and less likely to successfully challenge their opponents and convince others. The intellectual resources to establish this depth have already been provided by the thought of the German “Conservative Revolution” and the European “New Right,” but their contributions and ideas have not yet been fully recognized or utilized. We hope to bring to attention some basic philosophical problems and the necessity of being of aware of them and being prepared to address them. Of course, we do not pretend to investigate or tackle all the issues involving these topics and in enough depth; rather, our purpose here is to fulfill the aim of simply spreading an awareness of the most typical complications involved.

Ethnic Identity and Culture

Human beings are defined by their particular identities; the notion of an abstract humanity before which all particularity is unimportant is completely groundless. Yet it always needs to be kept in mind that identity per se is a complicated subject, encompassing both the details of individual or personal identity as well as various types of group or collective identities – ideological, political, religious, social, etc. Group identities may also overlap or conflict with each other (which still does not eliminate their validity), they may be voluntary or involuntary, and they may be inherited or chosen. It cannot be denied that a person’s identity as part of a collective group, even a racial or ethnic group, has a subjective dimension and involves conscious identification, just as it cannot be denied that some types of identity or aspects of them are inherited and inescapable.[1]

However, what concerns us here in particular is the role and function of ethnic and racial identity, and the undeniable relationship between these two forms of collective identity. “Ethnicity” has become a word with many meanings, encompassing both larger and smaller groups which are defined by the possession of certain common elementary characteristics, especially in the field of culture. Properly defined, an ethnicity signifies a people or a folk which constitutes (and is thus defined) as an organic cultural unity with a particular spirit and a particular historical continuity. In many cases, the term “nation” or “nationality” is synonymous with ethnicity, although it is always important to distinguish a “nation” in the ethno-cultural sense from the idea of “civic nation.”

However, it always needs to be kept in mind that culture exists on multiple levels, which means that an ethnicity or folk is not the only level at which culture operates; it is not the only valid form of cultural unity. This is why it is valid to speak of cultural groups encompassing multiple ethnicities (for example, a general Celtic culture), a larger Western culture, or, greater still, a general Indo-European or European culture. It is for this reason that Guillaume Faye is right to assert the position that one can identify both with local as well as with greater ethno-cultural groups: “to each European his own fatherland, national or regional (chosen on the basis of intimate, emotive affinities) – and to all Europeans the Great Fatherland, this land of intimately related peoples. The consciousness of belonging to both a ‘small native land’ and a ‘great fatherland’ is very difficult for contemporaries to grasp.”[2]

Each cultural entity is furthermore in contact with and sometimes connected with other cultural entities. Although cultures exist separately from other cultures, they cannot be regarded as forming different universes and they normally engage in contact and exchange ideas with each other. Each exchange results in the appropriation – or better, re-appropriation – of the cultural creations of another group in a new way based on the particular local spirit of a folk.

The different ethnic groups of Europe have generally engaged in a “cultural dialogue” with each other throughout their history, oftentimes drawing ideas, cultural objects and practices from other groups or from past cultures. Europeans have also exchanged certain cultural creations with non-European peoples, although this “dialogue” naturally occurred in a very selective and limited form because of the foreignness of these peoples. Thus one can, as Hans Freyer has done, justly speak of a “world-history of Europe,” while simultaneously upholding the fact that Europeans have always maintained their uniqueness and particularity.[3]

This fact of course, brings up the question of openness to other cultures, and whether or not it is valid for a cultural group to be either completely open or completely closed to others. On the one hand, liberals and globalists advocate complete opening, while on the other hand some (although not all) Right-wingers advocate total closure. In reality, neither complete closure nor complete openness are normal or healthy states, but rather a selective communication with partial (not absolute) barriers. It is a fact that, as Alain de Benoist pointed out, the “diversity of peoples and cultures exists . . . only because, in the past, these various peoples and cultures were relatively isolated from one another,” and thus in order to maintain their existence as different cultures, “communication can only be imperfect. Without this imperfection, it would lose its raison d’être and its very possibility of existing.”[4]

Racial Issues

The matter of race is closely bound up with that of ethnicity, which therefore also links racial identity with ethnic identity. It is not satisfactory to merely point out the reality of race, since opponents can argue that its reality is insignificant; one must assert its importance and function. Race is, of course, primarily a biological type, defined by certain physical-anthropological traits and certain subtle traits of character which are inherited.

There are also evidently many disagreements on racial classification, which is why one must always be prepared to defend one’s particular view of racial typology. We will only mention here that we believe that, contrary to certain scientists who insisted on asserting the primacy of sub-racial groups among Europeans, that European peoples as a whole, due to their close relatedness, form primarily a general “white” or European race. The existence of this common racial type among all European ethnic groups forms a bond between them and allows them to better relate to each other (in ways that they surely cannot relate to non-white peoples). This fact certainly does not eliminate differences between European groups, but to deny the racial relatedness of European peoples is akin to and just as incorrect as denying the existence of a general European culture and type.[5]

However, it also needs to be mentioned that race should not be seen in a simplistic biological sense, since it has an important and undeniable sociological function. Race has a spiritual dimension, permeating society and culture, due to the fact that racial type is also defined by its style of expression. Race is a force “which has deposited itself in man’s bodily and psychic existence, and which confers an intrinsic norm upon all the expressions of a culture, even the highest, most individual creations.”[6] This does not mean that culture and society can be reduced to race, which would be a fallacious biological reductionism, since many cultural and social changes occur independently of race and because of multiple factors. Nevertheless it is clear that racial type is an important influence on the nature of culture and society (which may themselves convey a reciprocal influence on race), even if it is one influence among a number of others.[7]

Thus, to quote Nicolas Lahovary, “the first explanation [of history] is generally found in the nature of a human being and his derives, in all the cases where he acts as a collective being, from the nature of his people. The latter, in turn, depends on the race that imprints its seal upon it.”[8] Therefore, it is evident from this that since any significant level of racial miscegenation transforms the basic structure of a racial type, it also transforms ethnic type; a concrete change in racial background causes a fundamental change in identity. The notion that culture and ethnicity can exist entirely independently of race can thus be seen as naïve and ill-founded; ethno-cultural type and identity is strongly influenced by race, even by racial phenotype alone, with which it has a psychological association.

The problem of miscegenation, however, is not readily solved. Anyone who believes in the importance of racial differences and in the separation of racial groups[9] must be prepared to challenge the “multiculturalist” argument that racial miscegenation is acceptable and normal due to its incidence all throughout history. Without touching upon the reasons for the occurrence of miscegenation, we must remind our readers that it is necessary to argue, on the basis of racial principles and values which hold a meta-historical value, that miscegenation, despite its presence throughout history, is a deviation from normality, not an expression of it. Maintaining stability in racial type was regarded as the norm in most traditional societies.[10]

Likewise, the notion that miscegenation is beneficial and brings about positive transformations (and is thus desirable) is of course entirely lacking in foundations, not only because race-mixing is usually associated with negative changes but also because it is completely unnecessary for positive transformation, as such transformations often occur within homogeneous populations.

It needs to be emphasized, in this regard, that evoking mere biological racial survival or preservation – as is commonly done by White Nationalists – is by itself never a sufficient argument against multiculturalism (or, more precisely, multiracialism). It always needs to be contended that even if, theoretically, the white or European race could survive in the presence of rampant multiculturalism and multiracialism, multiracial society would still be problematic.

The racial type can only live and thrive when it is able to express itself, to live in accordance with its own inner being and nature, in a homogeneous society without psychological and sociological interference from the immediate presence of other races. Just as a unique cultural type and spirit cannot survive when it is completely merged with other cultures, so a unique racial expressive style is unfulfilled and altered in a multiracial society; it denies a race complete fulfillment in its own way of being. This means that racial being only truly manifests itself in a homogeneous community, and is distorted or harmed by social mixing (the “integration” of different races). Furthermore, as Benoist pointed out, mixing can be opposed not only for biological but also for socio-cultural reasons:

In fact, hostility to miscegenation may very well be inspired by cultural or religious considerations. . . . Moreover, it is well known that in societies where there are many interracial marriages, the social status of these married couples depends, to a large extent, on their closeness to the dominant racial phenotype — all of which impacts on the marriage and on genetic selection.[11]

The Importance of Community

As previously implied, racial identity and ethnic identity only find their full meaning and validity in the presence of a sense of organic spiritual community. Of course, similarity in racial and ethnic type among the people contributes to their sense of organic community, but the latter also in turn influences the collective identities based on the former. This type of community mentioned here can be understood better by distinguishing the idea of community (Gemeinschaft) from that of society (Gesellschaft), as in the terminology of Ferdinand Tönnies.[12]

A true community exists where a group of people feel an organic sense of belonging and solidarity, with the existence of psychological bonds between each other, whereas a society is a mere mass or collection of essentially disconnected individuals. In society, bonds between individuals are superficial and mechanical (hence also their transitory nature). On the other hand, in organic community, in Othmar Spann’s words, “individuals may no longer be looked upon as self-sufficing and independent entities; the energy of their being inheres in their spiritual interconnexion, in the whole . . .”[13]

This stands in contrast to liberal individualism – which, in theory, means regarding society as nothing more than a sum of its parts, and, in social life, means the fundamental feeling of separation between individuals. The traditional holistic view of society holds that the normal state of human social order is thus the spiritual community and not the individualistic society, that the community is higher than the individual. This, of course, does not lead to totalitarianism or deny the importance of the individual personality, which is given value within the context of community life.[14] Rather, holism rejects individualism as a perversion of social life and a negative deviation, as opposed to being a normal condition.

Individualism results in the atomization of social life, in the disintegration of the feeling of community and the sense of spiritual bonds. All sense of community is of course never fully lost, since it is inherent in all human societies, but it can be weakened or harmed, with the consequences being that an active sense of the common good and interdependence between all the members of the community deteriorates or disappears entirely.[15] It signifies, in short, departing from the organic community into the modern society. To quote Edgar Julius Jung, in a description that is even more valid today than it was in his time, “the sum of men with equal rights forms the modern [Western] society. Without the spirit of true community, without inner binding, they live in dumb spitefulness beside one another. Formal courtesy and badly warmed up humanity conceal strenuous envy, dislike, and joylessness . . .”[16]

Consequently, as Tomislav Sunić wrote, the individualistic society of “liberal countries gradually leads to social alienation, the obsession with privacy and individualism, and most important, to ethnic and national uprootedness or Entwurzelung.”[17] In other words, collective identities – such as ethnic and racial identities – are destabilized or dissolved in an atomized individualistic society due to people’s lack of community-feeling and solidarity. Without the organic sense of community and spiritual bonds, peoples are disintegrated and transformed into a mass of individuals. Racial and ethnic identity can no longer have the meaning it once had in past social forms.

However, a return to community is always possible; social formlessness is not a permanent condition. It is therefore clear that one of the key tasks of the modern Right is the battle for the restoration of the living community, to validate collective identities. It is likewise an intellectual necessity to constantly reassert the holistic vision which values the organic spiritual community and which rejects individualism as an error. A failure to do so can only mean a failure to carry out one’s ideas to the fullest extent, to fully defend one’s worldview. With the fundamental values of race, ethnos, and tradition must always be included the community, which binds them all into a higher unity. As Freyer once wrote:

Man is free when he is free in his Volk, and when it is free in its realm. Man is free when he is part of a concrete collective will, which takes responsibility for its history. Only reality can decide whether such a collective will exist, a will that binds men and endows their private existence with historical meaning.[18]

Concluding Remarks

To conclude this discussion, we wish to reemphasize certain essential points argued for above for the purpose of clarity:

(1) Ethnicities exist as distinct cultural entities, although cultural and ethnic groups exist on both smaller and larger levels, which is why one can speak of both European peoples and a single European people.

(2) Cultures generally communicate with each other and exchange creations; they are normally not fully closed from other cultures. Under normal conditions this communication does not eliminate their uniqueness and existence as separate cultures due to the naturally selective and limited nature of cultural dialogue; only complete openness, which is abnormal, eliminates particularity.

(3) Racial type has an important sociological function, making its mark on both culture and ethnicity. Race is a factor in ethnic identity; to change the racial background of an ethnicity also changes its character and identity. The survival of a particular ethno-cultural identity thus depends on resisting race-mixing, which negatively transforms racial type.

(4) Racial miscegenation, however, cannot be opposed merely by evoking the notion of preservation, but must be opposed on principle. The mixing of races must be rejected as a deviation from normal social order; racial homogeneity is required for ethno-cultural stability.

(5) Finally, racial and ethnic identity finds meaning only when there exists a sense of belonging to a spiritual community, which is itself augmented by ethnic and racial homogeneity. In individualistic liberal societies where the original sense of organic community is weakened, ethnic bonds and identity are weakened as well.

What we have provided here thus far is merely an introduction to some essential concepts of the European New Right. By writing this essay, we hope to see these concepts be more frequently utilized so that not only do the arguments of White Nationalists improve, but so that they are also better understood. The way forward – towards changing the social reality and overcoming liberalism, egalitarianism, and multiculturalism – exists first in the realm of thought, in the ability to successfully challenge the dominant ideology on the intellectual plane. Then, and only then, will the hegemony of liberalism begin to collapse.

Notes

[1] For a more in-depth – if somewhat unsatisfactory with certain topics (particularly race and ethnicity) – discussion of the problem of identity, see Alain de Benoist, “On Identity,” Telos, Vol. 2004, No. 128 (Summer 2004), pp. 9–64. http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pdf/on_identity.pdf.

[2] Guillaume Faye, Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance (London: Arktos, 2011), p. 143. See also Benoist, “On Identity,” pp. 46–51.

[3] See the overview of Hans Freyer’s Weltgeschichte Europas in Jerry Z. Muller, The Other God That Failed: Hans Freyer and the Deradicalization of German Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 330 ff.

[4] Alain de Benoist, “What is Racism?” Telos, Vol. 1999, No. 114 (Winter 1999), pp. 46–47. http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pdf/what_is_racism.pdf. On the issue of cultural openness, see also Benoist, “Confronting Globalization,” Telos, Vol. 1996, No. 108, (Summer 1996), pp. 117–37. http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pdf/confronting_globalization.pdf.

[5] For a discussion of the racial and cultural unity and relatedness of all Europeans, see for example the comments in Michael O’Meara, New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe, 2nd edition (London: Arktos, 2013), pp. 236 ff. This position has also been argued for by many other New Right authors (including Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Pierre Krebs, Dominique Venner, Pierre Vial, etc.).

[6] Hans Freyer, “Tradition und Revolution im Weltbild,” Europäische Revue 10 (1934), pp. 74–75. Quoted in Muller, The Other God That Failed, p. 263.

[7] Another source which readers may reference on this matter is Michael O’Meara, “Race, Culture, and Anarchy,” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer 2009), pp. 35–64. http://toqonline.com/archives/v9n2/TOQv9n2OMeara.pdf.

[8] Nicolas Lahovary, Les peuples européens: leur passé ethnologique et leurs parentés réciproques,d’après les dernières recherches sanguines et anthropologiques (Neuchâtel: Éditions de la Baconnière, 1946), p. 35. Quoted in Pierre Krebs, Fighting for the Essence (London: Arktos, 2012), p. 21, n. 13.

[9] A position which is, needless to say, not equivalent to “racism” (whose distinguishing feature is the belief in racial superiority and hierarchy, not merely the belief that races are different and should live separately), as Alain de Benoist among other New Right authors have pointed out.

[10] See for example: the chapters “Life and Death of Civilizations” and “The Decline of Superior Races” in Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, trans. Guido Stucco (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 1995); the commentaries in Guillaume Faye, Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age (London: Arktos Media, 2010); the chapter “The Beauty and the Beast: Race and Racism in Europe” in Tomislav Sunić, Postmortem Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity (Shamley Green, UK: The Paligenesis Project, 2010).

[11] Benoist, “What is Racism?,” p. 34.

[12] See Ferdinand Tönnies, Community and Society (London and New York: Courier Dover Publications, 2002). For a good overview of Tönnies’s ideas, see Alain de Benoist and Tomislav Sunić, “Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: A Sociological View of the Decay of Modern Society,” Mankind Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3 (1994). http://home.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/debenoist/alain6.html.

[13] Othmar Spann, Types of Economic Theory (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 61.

[14] As O’Meara noted, “emphasis on the social constituents of individualism by no means implies a hostility to personalism or a penchant for a faceless collectivism” (New Culture, New Right, pp. 113–14, n. 31), meaning that the rejection of individualism and the valuing of the community over the individual does not imply absolute and unlimited collectivism. Many other writers associated with the Conservative Revolution as well as the New Right have made this point as well.

[15] It must be clarified that this does not mean that every individual person who is individualist is necessarily an immoral person, or a person of bad quality. As Edgar Julius Jung pointed out, “he [the individualist] can be, personally, also a man striving for the good; he may even pay attention to and maintain the existing morals (mores). But he does not have any more the living connection with the significance of these morals” (The Rule of the Inferiour, vol. I [Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995], p. 53). Thus one can still maintain that individualism essentially means the “splitting-up” of the community, the weakening of bonds and solidarity which are essential to the existence of the true community. As Jung wrote, “community-spirit without a feeling-oriented connectedness with the community, without a supraindividualistic [above the individual] value-standard, is an illusion” (Ibid., p. 134).

[16] Ibid., p. 271.

[17] Tomislav Sunić, Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right, 3rd edition (London: Arktos, 2010), p. 128.

[18] Hans Freyer, Revolution von Rechts (Jena: Eugen Diederich, 1931), p. 69. Quoted in Hajo Funke and Elliot Yale Neaman, The Ideology of the Radical Right in Germany: Past and Present (Minneapolis: Institute of International Studies, College of Liberal Arts, 1991), p. 5.

 

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Tudor, Lucian. “Race, Identity, Community.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 6 August 2013. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/08/race-identity-community/ >.

Note: This essay by Tudor has also been translated into Spanish as “Raza, Identidad, Comunidad” (published online 17 March 2014 by Fuerza Nacional Identitaria). We have also made this translated file available on our site here: Raza, Identidad, Comunidad

On the matters discussed in the above essay, see also a more complete exposition in Lucian Tudor, “The Philosophy of Identity: Ethnicity, Culture, and Race in Identitarian Thought,” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Fall 2014), pp. 83-112.

 

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The West against Europe – Sunic

The West against Europe

By Tomislav Sunic

The following is the English translation of my speech in French, given in Lyon, France, on May 25, for the French identitarians (students, members of the “GUD” and “Europe Identité.”) The speech was delivered in honor of the late Dominique Venner, a historian and philosopher who committed suicide on May 21. On May 26, the day after my speech in Lyon, many GUD and “Europe Identité attendants participated in mass demonstrations in Paris against the recently adopted law by the French government on “same sex marriage.”

The term ‘Occidentalism’ exists only in the French language and has a very specific meaning. Often the words ‘Occident’ and ‘occidentalisme’ obtain specific meanings according to its user and the user’s profile. The term ‘occidentalisme’ is never used in the German or in the English language. Even the French word ‘l’Occident’, having a wider geographic significance, is translated into the German language as the ‘West’ — der Westen. The same goes for the English language in which the French noun ‘l’Occident‘ is translated into English as “the West,” a subject of many books and translations. In this regard Patrick Buchanan, a former adviser to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and a conservative large-circulation author, published a decade ago his bestseller The Death of the West (La Mort de l’Occident), where he laments about the West being invaded by millions of non-Christian immigrants. According to Buchanan, America and Europe are both part of the West.

Yet we know well that America and Europe are not synonymous despite the fact that they are for the time being still populated by majorities of pure-bred Europeans. Very often in our recent history, these two large continental land masses, despite their quasi-identical population, have waged terrible wars against each other.

In the Slavic languages the noun ‘Occident’ and the adjective ‘occidental’ do not exist either. Instead, Croats, Czechs or Russians use the noun ‘Zapad’, which means “the West.”

The French noun ‘occidentalisme’ (‘westernization’) indicates a notion of an ideology, and not an idea of a stable time-bound and space-bound entity as is the case with the noun ‘L’Occident’. I’d like to remind you that the French title of the book by Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, or in French, Le déclin de l’Occident, does not accurately reflect the meaning of the German title. The German word ‘Untergang’ signifies the end of all the ends, the final collapse, and it is a stronger word than the French term ‘déclin’, which implies a gradation, a “declination of evil” so to speak, leaving, however, an anticipation that a U-turn could be made at the very last minute. This is not the case in the German language where the noun ‘Untergang’ indicates a one-way street, an irreversible and tragic end. The same goes for the German noun ‘Abendland’, which when translated into French or English, means “the land of the setting sun”, having a largely metaphysical significance.

I must bring to your attention these lexical nuances in order to properly conceptualize our subject, namely ‘occidentalisme’ i.e. Westernization. One must keep in mind that the phrases “The Occident” and “the West” in different European languages often carry different meanings, often causing misunderstandings.

No doubt that the terms the West (‘L’Occident ‘) and Westernization (‘occidentalisation’) underwent a semantic shift. Over the last forty years they have acquired in the French language a negative meaning associated with globalism, vulgar Americanism, savage liberalism, and “the monotheism of the market”, well described by the late Roger Garaudy. We are a long way off from the 60’s and 70’s of the preceding century when the journal Défense de l’Occident was published in France comprising the names of authors well known in our circles. The same goes for the French politico-cultural movement Occident, which back in the sixties, held out a promise both for the French nationalists and the entire European nationalist youth.

The two terms, ‘Occident’ and ‘occidentalism’ which are today lambasted by the French identitarian and nationalist circles, are still the subjects of eulogies among East European identitarians and nationalists who suffer from an inferiority complex about their newly found post-communist European identity. In Poland, in Hungary or in Croatia, for example, to invoke “the West” is often a way to highlight one’s great culture, or a way to boast of being a stylish man of the world.

I’d like to remind you that during the communist epoch East Europeans were not only annoyed by communist bullying and ukases, but also felt offended by their status as second-class European citizens, especially when Westerners, namely the French and the English, used the term ‘East’ in order to describe their neck of the woods in Europe, namely “Eastern Europe” or “l’Europe de l’Est.” Moreover, the French language uses a parallel adjective “oriental” in designing eastern Europe, i.e. “L’Europe orientale” — an adjective whose disambiguation, frankly speaking, makes East Europeans furious. The French adjective “oriental” reminds East Europeans of the Orient, of Turkey, of Arabia, of Islam — notions under which they absolutely refuse to be catalogued. Even those East Europeans who are perfectly proficient in the French language and know French culture, prefer, in the absence of other words, that the French-speaking people label their part of Europe as “Eastern Europe”, but never as “l’Europe orientale.”

Balkanization and Globalization

The history of words and semantic shifts does not stop here. All East Europeans, whether left or right, anti-globalists or globalists, and even the ruling political class in Eastern Europe like to identify themselves as members of “Mitteleuropa” and not as citizens of Eastern Europe. The German term Mitteleuropa means “central Europe”, a term harking back to the nostalgic days of the Habsburg Empire, to the biedermeier style, to the sweetness of life once delivered by the House of Austria where Slovaks, Poles, Croats, Hungarians, and even Romanians and Ukrainians belonged not so long ago.

The notion of adherence to Europe, especially in this part of Eastern Europe, is further aggravated by the inadvertent usage of words. Thus the term ‘the Balkans’ and the adjective ‘Balkan’, which is used in a neutral sense in France when describing southeastern Europe, have an offensive connotation in Croatian culture, even if that designation carries no pejorative meaning. The perception Croats have about themselves is that they are at loggerheads with the Other, namely their Serbian or Bosnian neighbors.

And there is a big difference between how the term ‘Balkans’ is seen among the French or English where it typically carries a neutral connotation, as one often sees in geopolitical studies, However, in the eyes of Croats, the terms ‘Balkan’ and ‘Balkanization’ signify not only a geopolitical meltdown of the state; especially among Croat nationalists and identitarians, these terms provoke feelings associated with barbaric behavior, political inferiority, and the image of racial decay of their White identity.

In addition, the term “balkanesque’ in the Croatian language often induces negative feelings referring to a blend of various racial and cultural identities originating in Asia and not in Europe. One can often hear Croats of different persuasions teasing each other for their allegedly bad behavior with the quip: “Wow, you’re a real balkanesque dude!” In the Croatian daily vernacular, this means having an uncivilized behavior, or simply being a “redneck.”

In Serbia, this is not the case. Since the Serb identity is real and well-rooted in the historical time and space of the Balkans, it has no pejorative meaning.

The Germans, who know best the psychology of the peoples of Central Europe and of the Balkans, are well aware of these conflicting identities among the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Balkans. In fact, the German term “der Balkanezer” has a strong offensive meaning in the German vocabulary.

Which Europe?

Let us move further to Europe. Of course, to the famed European Union. What exactly does it mean to be a good European today? Let’s be honest. In view of the massive influx of non-European immigrants, especially from the Middle East and North Africa, all Europeans, whether native French, native English, or “natives” from all parts of Europe, have become good “balkanesque Balkanisers.” Indeed, what does it mean today to be a German, to be French or to be an American, considering the fact that more than 10–15 percent of Germans and French and more than 30 percent of U.S. citizens are of non-European and non-White origin? Visiting Marseille feels like visiting an Algerian city. The Frankfurt airport resembles the airport of Hong Kong. The areas around Neukölln in Berlin emit an odor of the Lebanese Kasbah. The soil, the turf, the earth, the blood, so dear to Dominique Venner or Maurice Barrès, so dear to all of us, what does it mean today? Absolutely nothing.

It would be easy to blame the aliens (“allogènes”) as the only guilty ones. One must admit, though, that it is ourselves, the Europeans, who are primarily responsible for the Westernization and therefore for the loss of our identity. While doing so, no matter how much one can rightly blame the alleged ignorance of the Americans, at least the Americans are not torn apart by small time intra-European tribalism. Possibly, the Americans of European descent can become tomorrow the spearhead of the rebirth of the new Euro-white identity. One must confess that racial identity awareness among White American nationalists is stronger than among European nationalists.

In the Europe of tomorrow, in the possible best of all the worlds — even with the aliens gone for good, it is questionable whether the climate will be conducive to great brotherly hugs between the Irish and the English, between the Basques and Castilians, between the Serbs and the Croats, between the Corsicans and the French. Let’s be honest. The whole history of Europe, the entire history of Europeans over the last two millennia has resulted in endless fratricidal wars. This still applies to “l’Europe orientale”, namely “Eastern Europe,” which continues to be plagued by interethnic hatreds. The latest example is the recent war between two similar peoples, Serbs and Croats. Who could guarantee us that the same won’t happen tomorrow again even under the presumption that the influx of Asians and Africans would come to an end?

To “be a good European” means nothing today. Declaring oneself a “good “Westerner” is meaningless as well. Being rooted in one’s soil in the globalist world has absolutely no significance today because our neighborhoods, being populated by aliens, along with ourselves, are subject to the same consumer culture. There might be something paradoxical happening with the arrival of non-Europeans: endless wars and disputes between European nationalists, i.e. between the Poles and Germans, between the Serbs and Croats, between the Irish and English — seem to have become outdated. The constant influx of non-Europeans to our European lands makes the designation of “European Europe” a lexical absurdity.

Our duty is to define ourselves first as heirs of European memory, even though we may live outside Europe; in Australia, Chile and America, or for that matter on another planet. One must admit that all of us “good Europeans” in the Nietzschean sense of the word, all of us can change our religion, our habits, our political opinions, our land, our turf, our nationality, and even our passports. But we can never escape our European heredity.

Not the aliens, but the capitalists, the banksters, the “antifas” and the architects of the best of all the worlds are our main enemies. In order to resist them it behooves us to revive our racial awareness and our cultural heritage. Both go hand in hand. The reality of our White race and our culture cannot be denied. We can change everything and even move to another planet. Our inheritance, that is, our gene pool, we must never change.

Race, as Julius Evola and Ludwig Clauss teach us, is not just biological data. Our race is our spiritual responsibility which alone ensures our European survival.

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Sunic, Tomislav. “The West against Europe.” The Occidental Observer, 2 June 2013. <http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2013/06/the-west-against-europe/ >.

 

Intellectual Terrorism – Sunic

Intellectual Terrorism

by Tomislav Sunic

 

The modern thought police is hard to spot, as it often seeks cover under soothing words such as “democracy” and “human rights.” While each member state of the European Union likes to show off the beauties of its constitutional paragraph, seldom does it attempt to talk about the ambiguities of its criminal code. Last year, in June and November, the European Commission held poorly publicized meetings in Brussels and Strasbourg whose historical importance regarding the future of free speech could overshadow the recent launching of the new euro currency.

At issue is the enactment of the new European legislation whose objective is to counter the growing suspicion about the viability of the multiracial European Union. Following the events of September 11, and in the wake of occasionally veiled anti-Israeli comments in some American and European journals, the wish of the European Commission is to exercise maximum damage control, via maximum thought control. If the new bill sponsored by the European Commission regarding “hate crime” passes through the European parliament, the judiciary of any individual EU member state in which this alleged “verbal offence” has been committed, will no longer carry legal weight. Legal proceedings and “appropriate” punishment will become the prerequisite of the European Union’s supra-national courts. If this proposed law is adopted by the Council of Ministers of the European Union, it automatically becomes law in all European Union member states; from Greece to Belgium, from Denmark to Portugal. Pursuant to this law’s ambiguous wording of the concept of “hate crime” or “racial incitement,” anyone convicted of such an ill-defined verbal offense in country “A” of the European Union, can be fined or imprisoned in country “B” of the European Union.

In reality this is already the case. In hindsight, the enactment of this EU law appears like the reenactment of the communist criminal code of the late Soviet Union. For instance, the communist judiciary of the now defunct communist Yugoslavia had for decades resorted to the similar legal meta-language, such as the paragraph on “hostile propaganda” of the Criminal code, Article 133. Such semantic abstraction could apply to any suspect – regardless whether the suspect committed acts of physical violence against the communist state, or simply cracked a joke critical of communism.

For the time being the United Kingdom enjoys the highest degree of civil liberties in Europe; Germany the lowest. The UK Parliament recently turned down the similar “hate crime” law proposal sponsored by various pressure groups. However, numerous cases of mugging of elderly people of British descent in English cities by foreign, mostly Asian gangs, either go unreported, or do not have legal follow ups. If a foreign suspect, charged with criminal offense is put on trial, he usually pleads innocent or declares himself in front of often timid judges as a “victim of racial prejudice”. Thus, regardless of the relative freedom in the UK, a certain degree of de facto self-censorship exists. The proposed EU law would make this de facto censorship de jure. This could, possibly, trigger more racial violence, given that the potential victims would be afraid to speak out for fear of being convicted of “hate speech” themselves.

Since 1994, Germany, Canada and Australia have strengthened laws against dissenting views, particularly against revisionists and nationalists. Several hundred German citizens, including a number of high- profile scholars have been accused of incitement to racial hatred or of denying the holocaust, on the basis of the strange legal neologism of the Article 130 (“Volkshetze”) in the German Criminal Code. From this poorly worded yet overarching grammatical construct, it is now easy to place any journalist or a professor in legal difficulty if he/she questions the writing of modern history or if happens to be critical about the rising number of non-European immigrants.

In Germany, contrary to England and America, there is a long legal tradition that everything is forbidden what is not explicitly allowed. In America and England the legal practice presupposes that everything is allowed what is not specifically forbidden. This may be the reason why Germany adopted stringent laws against alleged or real holocaust denial. In December of last year, a Jewish-American historian Norman Finkelstein, during his visit to Germany, called upon the German political class to cease to be a victim of the “holocaust industry” pressure groups. He remarked that such a reckless German attitude only provokes hidden anti-Semitic sentiments. As was to be expected, nobody reacted to Finkelstein’s remarks, for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic themselves. Instead, the German government, via its taxpayers, agreed last year to pay further share of 5 billion euros for this fiscal year to some 800.000 holocaust survivors. Such silence is the price paid for intellectual censorship in democracies. When discussion of certain topics are forbidden, the climate of frustration followed by individual terrorist violence starts growing. Can any Western nation that inhibits speech, and the free expression of diverse political views -however aberrant they may be – call itself a democracy?

Although America prides itself on its First Amendment, free speech in higher education and the media is subject to didactic self censorship. Expression of politically incorrect opinions can ruin the careers of, or hurt the grades of those who are “naive” enough to trust their First Amendment rights. It is a growing practice among tenured professors in the USA to give passing grades to many of their minority students in order to avoid legal troubles with their peers at best, or to avoid losing a job at worst.

In a similar vein, according the the Fabius-Gayssot law, proposed by a French Communist deputy and adopted in 1990, a person uttering in public doubts about modern antifascist victimology risks serious fines or imprisonment. A number of writers and journalists from France and Germany committed suicide, lost their jobs, or asked for political asylum in Syria, Sweden or America.

Similar repressive measures have been recently enacted in multicultural Australia, Canada and Belgium. Many East European nationalist politicians, particularly from Croatia, wishing to visit their expatriate countrymen in Canada or Australia are denied visa by those countries on the grounds of their alleged extremist nationalistic views. For the time being Russia, and other post-communist countries, are not subject to the same repressive thought control as exists in the USA or the European Union. Yet, in view of the increasing pressure from Brussels and Washington, this may change.

Contrary to widespread beliefs, state terror, i.e. totalitarianism is not only a product of violent ideology espoused by a handful of thugs. Civic fear, feigned self-abnegation, and intellectual abdication create an ideal ground for the totalitarian temptation. Intellectual terrorism is fueled by a popular belief that somehow things will straighten out by themselves. Growing social apathy and rising academic self-censorship only boost the spirit of totalitarianism. Essentially, the spirit of totalitarianism is the absence of all spirit.

 

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Sunic, Tomislav. “Intellectual Terrorism.” Pravda, 11 February 2002. <http://english.pravda.ru/news/business/finance/09-02-2002/35357-0/ >.

 

Pareto & Political Irrationality – Sunic

Vilfredo Pareto and Political Irrationality

By Tomislav Sunic

 

Few political thinkers have stirred so much controversy as Franco-Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923). In the beginning of the twentieth century, Pareto exerted a considerable influence on European conservative thinkers, although his popularity rapidly declined after the Second World War. The Italian Fascists who used and abused Pareto’s intellectual legacy were probably the main cause of his subsequent fall into oblivion.

Pareto’s political sociology is in any case irreconcilable with the modern egalitarian outlook. In fact, Pareto was one to its most severe critics. Yet his focus extends beyond a mere attack on modernity; his work is a meticulous scrutiny of the energy and driving forces that underlie political ideas and beliefs. From his study, he concludes that irrespective of their apparent utility or validity, ideas and beliefs often dissimulate morbid behavior. Some of Pareto’s students went to so far as to draw a parallel between him and Freud, noting that while Freud attempted to uncover pathological behavior among seemingly normal individuals, Pareto tried to unmask irrational social conduct that lay camouflaged in respectable ideologies and political beliefs.

In general, Pareto argues that governments try to preserve their institutional framework and internal harmony by a posteriori justification of the behavior of their ruling elite–a procedure that stands in sharp contrast to the original objectives of government. This means that governments must “sanitize” violent and sometimes criminal behavior by adopting such self-rationalizing labels as “democracy,” “democratic necessity,” and “struggle for peace,” to name but a few. It would be wrong, however, to assume that improper behavior is exclusively the result of governmental conspiracy or of corrupted politicians bent on fooling the people. Politicians and even ordinary people tend to perceive a social phenomenon as if it were reflected in a convex mirror. They assess its value only after having first deformed its objective reality. Thus, some social phenomena, such as riots, coups, or terrorist acts, are viewed through the prism of personal convictions, and result in opinions based on the relative strength or weakness of these convictions. Pareto argues that it is a serious error to assume that because his subjects or constituents feel cheated or oppressed, a leader of an oppressive regime is necessarily a liar or a crook. More than likely, such a leader is a victim of self-delusions, the attributes of which he considers “scientifically” and accurately based, and which he benevolently wishes to share with his subjects. To illustrate the power of self-delusion, Pareto points to the example of socialist intellectuals. He observes that “many people are not socialists because they have been persuaded by reasoning. Quite to the contrary, these people acquiesce to such reasoning because they are (already) socialists.”

Modern Ideologies and Neuroses

In his essay on Pareto, Guillaume Faye, one of the founders of the European “New Right,” notes that liberals and socialists are scandalized by Pareto’s comparison of modern ideologies to neuroses: to latent manifestation of unreal effects, though these ideologies–socialism and liberalism–claim to present rational and “scientific” findings. In Freud’s theory, psychic complexes manifest themselves in obsessional ideas: namely, neuroses, and paranoias. In Pareto’s theory, by contrast, psychic impulses–which are called residues–manifest themselves in ideological derivatives. Rhetoric about historical necessity, self-evident truths, or economic and historical determinism are the mere derivatives that express residual psychic drives and forces such as the persistence of groups once formed and the instinct for combination.

For Pareto, no belief system or ideology is fully immune to the power of residues, although in due time each belief system or ideology must undergo the process of demythologization. The ultimate result is the decline of a belief or an ideology as well as the decline of the elite that has put it into practice.

Like many European conservatives before the war, Pareto repudiated the modern liberal, socialist myth that history showed an inevitable progression leading to social peace and prosperity. Along with his German contemporary Oswald Spengler, Pareto believed that no matter how sophisticated the appearance of some belief or ideology, it would almost certainly decay, given time. Not surprisingly, Pareto’s attempts to denounce the illusion of progress and to disclose the nature of socialism and liberalism prompted many contemporary theorists to distance themselves from his thought.

Pareto argues that political ideologies seldom attract because of their empirical or scientific character–although, of course, every ideology claims those qualities–but because of their enormous sentimental power over the populace. For example, an obscure religion from Galilee mobilized masses of people who were willing to die, willing to be tortured. In the Age of Reason, the prevailing “religion” was rationalism and the belief in boundless human progress. Then came Marx with scientific socialism, followed by modern liberals and their “self-evident religion of human rights and equality.” According to Pareto, underlying residues are likely to materialize in different ideological forms or derivatives, depending on each historical epoch. Since people need to transcend reality and make frequent excursions into the spheres of the unreal and the imaginary, it is natural that they embrace religious and ideological justifications, however intellectually indefensible these devices may appear to a later generation. In analyzing this phenomenon, Pareto takes the example of Marxist “true believers” and notes: “This is a current mental framework of some educated and intelligent Marxists with regard to the theory of value. From the logical point of view they are wrong; from the practical point of view and utility to their cause, they are probably right.” Unfortunately, continues Pareto, these true believers who clamor for social change know only what to destroy and how to destroy it; they are full of illusions as to what they have to replace it with: “And if they could imagine it, a large number among them would be struck with horror and amazement.”

Ideology and History

The residues of each ideology are so powerful that they can completely obscure reason and the sense of reality; in addition, they are not likely to disappear even when they assume a different “cover” in a seemingly more respectable myth or ideology. For Pareto this is a disturbing historical process to which there is no end in sight:

Essentially, social physiology and social pathology are still in their infancy. If we wish to compare them to human physiology and pathology, it is not to Hippocrates that we have to reach but far beyond him. Governments behave like ignorant physicians who randomly pick drugs in a pharmacy and administer them to patients.

So what remains out of this much vaunted modern belief in progress, asks Pareto? Almost nothing, given that history continues to be a perpetual and cosmic eternal return, with victims and victors, heroes and henchmen alternating their roles, bewailing and bemoaning their fate when they are in positions of weakness, abusing the weaker when they are in positions of strength. For Pareto, the only language people understand is that of force. And with his usual sarcasm, he adds: “There are some people who imagine that they can disarm their enemy by complacent flattery. They are wrong. The world has always belonged to the stronger and will belong to them for many years to come. Men only respect those who make themselves respected. Whoever becomes a lamb will find a wolf to eat him.”

Nations, empires, and states never die from foreign conquest, says Pareto, but from suicide. When a nation, class, party, or state becomes averse to bitter struggle–which seems to be the case with modern liberal societies–then a more powerful counterpart surfaces and attracts the following of the people, irrespective of the utility or validity of the new political ideology or theology:

A sign which almost always accompanies the decadence of an aristocracy is the invasion of humanitarian sentiments and delicate “sob-stuff” which renders it incapable of defending its position. We must not confuse violence and force. Violence usually accompanies weakness. We can observe individuals and classes, who, having lost the force to maintain themselves in power, become more and more odious by resorting to indiscriminate violence. A strong man strikes only when it is absolutely necessary–and then nothing stops him. Trajan was strong but not violent; Caligula was violent but not strong.

Armed with the dreams of justice, equality, and freedom, what weapons do liberal democracies have today at their disposal against the downtrodden populations of the world? The sense of morbid culpability, which paralyzed a number of conservative politicians with regard to those deprived and downtrodden, remains a scant solace against tomorrow’s conquerors. For, had Africans and Asians had the Gatling gun, had they been at the same technological level as Europeans, what kind of a destiny would they have reserved for their victims? Indeed, this is something that Pareto likes speculating about. True, neither the Moors nor Turks thought of conquering Europe with the Koran alone; they understood well the importance of the sword:

Each people which is horrified by blood to the point of not knowing how to defend itself, sooner or later will become a prey of some bellicose people. There is probably not a single foot of land on earth that has not been conquered by the sword, or where people occupying this land have not maintained themselves by force. If Negroes were stronger than Europeans, it would be Negroes dividing Europe and not Europeans Africa. The alleged “right” which the people have arrogated themselves with the titles “civilized”–in order to conquer other peoples whom they got accustomed to calling “non-civilized”–is absolutely ridiculous, or rather this right is nothing but force. As long as Europeans remain stronger than Chinese, they will impose upon them their will, but if Chinese became stronger than Europeans, those roles would be reversed.

Power Politics

For Pareto, might comes first, right a distant second; therefore all those who assume that their passionate pleas for justice and brotherhood will be heeded by those who were previously enslaved are gravely mistaken. In general, new victors teach their former masters that signs of weakness result in proportionally increased punishment. The lack of resolve in the hour of decision becomes the willingness to surrender oneself to the anticipated generosity of new victors. It is desirable for society to save itself from such degenerate citizens before it is sacrificed to their cowardice. Should, however, the old elite be ousted and a new “humanitarian” elite come to power, the cherished ideals of justice and equality will again appear as distant and unattainable goals. Possibly, argues Pareto, such a new elite will be worse and more oppressive than the former one, all the more so as the new “world improvers” will not hesitate to make use of ingenious rhetoric to justify their oppression. Peace may thus become a word for war, democracy for totalitarianism, and humanity for bestiality. The distorted “wooden language” of communist elites indicates how correct Pareto was in predicting the baffling stability of contemporary communist systems.

Unfortunately, from Pareto’s perspective, it is hard to deal with such hypocrisy. What underlies it, after all, is not a faulty intellectual or moral judgment, but an inflexible psychic need. Even so, Pareto strongly challenged the quasi-religious postulates of egalitarian humanism and democracy–in which he saw not only utopias but also errors and lies of vested interest. Applied to the ideology of “human rights,” Pareto’s analysis of political beliefs can shed more light on which ideology is a “derivative,” or justification of a residual pseudo-humanitarian complex. In addition, his analysis may also provide more insight into how to define human rights and the main architects behind these definitions.

It must be noted, however, that although Pareto discerns in every political belief an irrational source, he never disputes their importance as indispensable unifying and mobilizing factors in each society. For example, when he affirms the absurdity of a doctrine, he does not suggest that the doctrine or ideology is necessarily harmful to society; in fact, it may be beneficial. By contrast, when he speaks of a doctrine’s utility he does not mean that it is necessarily a truthful reflection of human behavior. On the matters of value, however, Pareto remains silent; for him, reasoned arguments about good and evil are no longer tenable.

Pareto’s methodology is often portrayed as belonging to the tradition of intellectual polytheism. With Hobbes, Machiavelli, Spengler, and Carl Schmitt, Pareto denies the reality of a unique and absolute truth. He sees the world containing many truths and a plurality of values, with each being truthful within the confines of a given historical epoch and a specific people. Furthermore, Pareto’s relativism concerning the meaning of political truth is also relevant in reexamining those beliefs and political sentiments claiming to be nondoctrinal. It is worth nothing that Pareto denies the modern ideologies of socialism and liberalism any form of objectivity. Instead, he considers them both as having derived from psychic needs, which they both disguise.

The New Class

For his attempts to demystify modern political beliefs, it should not come as a surprise that Pareto’s theory of nonlogical actions and pathological residues continues to embarrass many modern political theorists; consequently his books are not easily accessible. Certainly with regard to communist countries, this is more demonstrably the case, for Pareto was the first to predict the rise of the “new class”–a class much more oppressive than traditional ruling elites. But noncommunist intellectuals also have difficulties coming to grips with Pareto. Thus, in a recent edition of Pareto’s essays, Ronald Fletcher writes that he was told by market researchers of British publishers that Pareto is “not on the reading list,” and is “not taught” in current courses on sociological theory in the universities. Similar responses from publishers are quite predictable in view of the fact that Pareto’s analyses smack of cynicism and amorality–an unforgivable blasphemy for many modern scholars.

Nevertheless, despite the probity of his analysis, Pareto’s work demands caution. Historian Zev Sternhell, in his remarkable book La droite revolutionnaire, observes that political ideas, like political deeds, can never be innocent, and that sophisticated political ideas often justify a sophisticated political crime. In the late 1920s, during a period of great moral and economic stress that profoundly shook the European intelligentsia, Pareto’s theories provided a rationale for fascist suppression of political opponents. It is understandable, then, why Pareto was welcomed by the disillusioned conservative intelligentsia, who were disgusted, on the one hand, by Bolshevik violence, and on the other, by liberal democratic materialism. During the subsequent war, profane application of Pareto’s theories contributed to the intellectual chaos and violence whose results continue to be seen.

More broadly speaking, however, one must admit that on many counts Pareto was correct. From history, he knew that not a single nation had obtained legitimacy by solely preaching peace and love, that even the American Bill of Rights and the antipodean spread of modern democracy necessitated initial repression of the many–unknowns who were either not deemed ripe for democracy, or worse, who were not deemed people at all (those who, as Koestler once wrote, “perished with a shrug of eternity”). For Pareto the future remains in Pandora’s box and violence will likely continue to be man’s destiny.

The Vengeance of Democratic Sciences

Pareto’s books still command respect sixty-five years after his death. If the Left had possessed such an intellectual giant, he never would have slipped so easily into oblivion. Yet Pareto’s range of influence includes such names as Gustave Le Bon, Robert Michels, Joseph Schumpeter, and Rayond Aron. But unfortunately, as long as Pareto’s name is shrouded in silence, his contribution to political science and sociology will not be properly acknowledged. Fletcher writes that the postwar scholarly resurgence of such schools of thought as “system analysis,” “behavioralism,” “reformulations,” and “new paradigms,” did not include Pareto’s because it was considered undemocratic. The result, of course, is subtle intellectual annihilation of Pareto’s staggering erudition–an erudition that spans from linguistics to economics, from the knowledge of Hellenic literature to modern sexology.

But Pareto’s analyses of the power of residues are useful for examining the fickleness of such intellectual coteries. And his studies of intellectual mimicry illustrate the pathology of those who for a long time espoused “scientific” socialism only to awaken to the siren sound of “self-evident” neoconservativism–those who, as some French writer recently noted, descended with impunity from the “pinnacle of Mao into the Rotary Club.” Given the dubious and often amoral history of the twentieth-century intelligentsia, Pareto’s study of political pathology remains, as always, apt.

 

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Sunic, Tomislav. “Vilfredo Pareto and Political Irrationality.” The World and I, April 1988 Issue (New York). <http://www.tomsunic.com/?p=165>.

Note: This essay was also republished in Tomislav Sunic’s Postmortem Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity – Collected Essays (Shamley Green, UK: The Paligenesis Project, 2010).

Some readers may also want to be aware that Sunic’s principle sources in this article are Vilfredo Pareto’s Les systemes socialistes, vol. 1 (Paris: Mercel Giard, 1926) and The Other Pareto, edited by Placido Bucolo (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980). On this topic, see also Pareto’s The Mind and Society (Harcourt: Brace, 1935).

 

Wilson’s Defeat in Yugoslavia – Sunic

“Woodrow Wilson’s Defeat in Yugoslavia: The End of a Multicultural Utopia” by Tomislav Sunic (PDF – 487 KB):

Woodrow Wilson’s Defeat in Yugoslavia

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Sunic, Tomislav. “Woodrow Wilson’s Defeat in Yugoslavia: The End of a Multicultural Utopia.” Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Fall 1994), pp. 34-43. This file was originally retrieved from: <http://www.tomsunic.info/essays/woodrowwilson.pdf >.

Note: This essay was also republished in Tomislav Sunic’s Postmortem Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity – Collected Essays (Shamley Green, UK: The Paligenesis Project, 2010).

 

Review of Sunic’s Homo Americanus – Gottfried

Review of Tomislav Sunic’s Homo Americanus

By Paul Gottfried

A polyglot Croatian scholar, Tomislav Sunic, provides in his newest book, Homo Americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age, reasons that a good European should distrust the US. These reasons are significantly different from those that one might encounter in the Euro-American leftist and mainstream press, e.g., that President Bush is a Christian maniac who is unleashing an anti-Muslim crusade against a Middle Eastern people or that Americans have taken an inexcusably long time to introduce homosexual marriage or, most ominously, that we treat illegals from across our Southern border with xenophobic brutality. Sunic gives the proper reasons that Europeans should despise us, namely, because we are hostile to European national identities, because we have contributed to bringing to Central Europe Frankfurt School brain-laundering and last but not least, because we try to substitute for concrete historical traditions such notions as propositional nationhood and the ideology of human rights. In his elaboration of these grievances Sunic is entirely on target, and the fact that he has had to publish his manuscript (as far as I can determine) with his own funds speaks volumes for the difficulty of publicizing non-orthodox views on certain subjects.

I also think that Sunic strikes the proper balance, and indeed far better than most of the European New Right, by stressing both the newness and antiquity of the American policies and attitudes under discussion. Instead of dumping on the Protestant, moralistic culture out of which America grew as a nation, Sunic believes that culture had its strengths before it became secularized and corrupted. It is what American religious culture became by the beginning of the last century which concerns him, as does the obvious contradiction between a territorially defined Europe of nations and a righteous global empire seeking to implement its conception of rights everywhere.

Contrary to the postwar conservative illusion that the US, unlike revolutionary France, embraced historic rights while rejecting the “rights of man,” Sunic shows Americans being as obsessed with universal rights as they are with consumer products. It is the combination of consumption and rights talk which has produced “homo americanus,” a constantly reproduced American prototype that by now, according to Sunic, is as easily identified as “homo sovieticus.” During the Cold War, Sunic and others living in the communist bloc began to think of the products of party indoctrination as having a recognizable character and appearance. It was postmodern and post-bourgeois, but for all of its ritualized revolutionary discourse this human type was profoundly conformist. Its presence, according to some critics, precluded the possibility of restoring human character as it had existed before, in pre-Marxist societies: as a result of longtime Communist control, one had to deal with flat, standardized personalities that might have been the worst byproduct of “scientific socialism.”

Sunic, who received his doctorate at University of California, Santa Barbara, and then taught at Juniata College in Pennsylvania before returning to Europe, believes that Americans fall into a similar pattern. As the creations of a self-proclaimed political experiment, whose subjects generally frown on the European past, Americans, and especially the younger generation, show a depressing sameness. But they mask this defect as individual self-discovery. They confuse the dreary recitation of politically correct gibberish with sensitivity that they think they have arrived at through their own value-clarification. A combination of materialism, superficiality and misplaced moral concern is the American gestalt that Sunic keeps coming back to. And he seems bothered by the fact that Europeans have begun to imitate this gestalt even while bewailing American influence.

A foreword by Kevin MacDonald, known for his controversial arguments about the destructiveness of the Jewish impact on gentile society and culture, may unfairly bring Sunic flak. His own critique stays clear of anti-Jewish tirades and of the tasteless flattery of American Jews heard among some Christian Philosemites. Sunic properly focuses on why Europeans should deplore American conversionary politics, whose effects he carefully outlines. And with due respect to MacDonald, whose work I continue to find stimulating, he zeros in on the Protestant deformation, which may be far more important as an explanation for what Sunic criticizes than the Jewish war against gentile national identities. There is, by the way, one point raised in the introduction, and then in the text itself, which commands particular attention. In both places the observation is made that the politics of guilt may be imperialistic righteousness that the moral fanatic turns against himself, when he is not venting it on others. The point is well taken, and besides, it sounds like something the Frankfurt School and its American imitators might say about bourgeois Christians.

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Gottfried, Paul. “Homo Americanus.” Taki’s Magazine, 22 August 2007. <http://takimag.com/article/homo_americanus#axzz2HIndVAyg >.

Note: Tomislav Sunic’s book has also been published in a Spanish translation as Homo americanus: hijo de la posmoderna (Barcelona: Ediciones Nueva Republica, 2008) and in a French translation as Homo americanus: rejeton de l’ère postmoderne (Saint-Genis-Laval: Akribeia, 2010).

On the issue of the Jews, see also Tomislav Sunic’s “American Neurosis: Love and Hate for the Jews” and Paul Gottfried’s “In Search of Anti-Semitism.”

 

New Right Forty Years Later – Benoist

“The European New Right: Forty Years Later” by Alain de Benoist (PDF – 169 KB):

European New Right Forty Years Later

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De Benoist, Alain. “The European New Right: Forty Years Later.” The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1, (Spring 2009). <http://www.toqonline.com/archives/v9n1/TOQv9n1Benoist.pdf >.

Note: This essay has also been published as a preface to the third edition of Tomislav Sunic’s Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right (London: Arktos, 2011). It has also been translated into Spanish as “La Nueva Derecha Europea, 40 años después”, published online at El Manifesto (9 Julio 2014) <http://www.elmanifiesto.com/articulos.asp?idarticulo=4773 >.

 

History and Decadence – Sunic

History And Decadence: Spengler’s Cultural Pessimism Today

By Tomislav Sunic

 

Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) exerted considerable influence on European conservatism before the Second World War. Although his popularity waned somewhat after the war, his analyses, in the light of the disturbing conditions in the modern polity, again seem to be gaining in popularity. Recent literature dealing with gloomy post­modernist themes suggests that Spengler’s prophecies of decadence may now be finding supporters on both sides of the political spectrum. The alienating nature of modern technology and the social and moral decay of large cities today lend new credence to Spengler’s vision of the impending collapse of the West. In America and Europe an increasing number of authors perceive in the liberal permissive state a harbinger of “soft” totalitarianism that may lead decisively to social entropy and conclude in the advent of “hard” totalitarianism(1).

Spengler wrote his major work The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes) against the background of the anticipated German victory in World War I. When the war ended disastrously for the Germans, his predictions that Germany, together with the rest of Europe, was bent for irreversible decline gained a renewed sense of urgency for scores of cultural pessimists. World War I must have deeply shaken the quasi-religious optimism of those who had earlier prophesied that technological inventions and international economic linkages would pave the way for peace and prosperity. Moreover, the war proved that technological inventions could turn out to be a perfect tool for man’s alienation and, eventually, his physical an­nihilation. Inadvertently, while attempting to interpret the cycles of world history, Spengler probably best succeeded in spreading the spirit of cultural despair to his own as well as future generations.

Like Gianbattista Vico, who two centuries earlier developed his thesis about the rise and decline of cultures, Spengler tried to project a pattern of cultural growth and cultural decay in a certain scientific form: “the morphology of history”- as he himself and others dub his work – although the term “biology” seems more appropriate considering Spengler’s inclination to view cultures as living organic entities, alternately afflicted with disease and plague or showing signs of vigorous life(2). Undoubtedly, the organic conception of history was, to a great extent, inspired by the popularity of scientific and pseudo­scientific literature, which, in the early twentieth century, began to focus attention on racial and genetic paradigms in order to explain the patterns of social decay. Spengler, however, prudently avoids racial determinism in his description of decadence, although his exaltation of historical determinism often brings him close to Marx­ – albeit in a reversed and hopelessly pessimistic direction. In contrast to many egalitarian thinkers, Spengler’s elitism and organicism con­ceived of human species as of different and opposing peoples, each experiencing its own growth and death, and each struggling for survival. “Mankind,” writes Spengler, should be viewed as either a “zoological concept or an empty word.” If ever this phantom of “mankind” vanishes from the circulation of historical forms, “we shall then notice an astounding affluence of genuine forms.” Appar­ently, by form (“Gestalt”) Spengler means the resurrection of the classical notion of the nation-state, which, in the early twentieth century, came under fire from the advocates of the globalist and universalist polity. Spengler must be credited, however, with pointing out that the frequently-used concept “world history,” in reality encompasses an impressive array of diverse and opposing cultures without common denominator; each culture displays its own forms, pursues its own passions, and grapples with its own life or death. “There are blossoming and aging cultures,” writes Spengler, “peo­ples, languages, truths, gods, and landscapes, just as there are young and old oak trees, pines, flowers, boughs and petals – but there is no aging `mankind.’”(3) For Spengler, cultures seem to be growing in sublime futility, with some approaching terminal illness, and others still displaying vigorous signs of life. Before culture emerged, man was an ahistorical creature; but he becomes again ahistorical and, one might add, even hostile to history: “as soon as some civilization has developed its full and final form, thus putting a stop to the living development of culture” (2:58; 2:48).

Similarly, each culture undergoes various cycles or different his­torical “seasons”: first appears the period of cultural blossoming or the spring-time of culture, followed by the period of maturation, which Spengler alternately calls summer or fall, and finally comes the period of decadence, which in Spengler’s view is synonymous with “civilization.” This “seasonal” flow of history is a predicament of all nations, although the historical timing of their decline varies with the virility of each nation, geographical area, or epoch. In the field of politics and statecraft, the process of decadence is very much the same. Thus, the closing years of the First World War witnessed the passing of the feudal rule of the landed aristocracy and the emergence of budding forms of parliamentary plutocracy – soon to be followed by the rise of rootless mobocracy and the “dictatorship of money” (2:633; 2:506). Undoubtedly Spengler was inspired by the works of Vilfredo Pareto and Gustave le Bon, who had earlier attempted to outline similar patterns of the rise and fall of political elites. In Pareto’s and Le Bon’s scheme, decadence sets in when the power elite no longer follows the established rule of social selection, and fails to identify internal and external enemies(4). Once it becomes emasculated by economic affluence and debilitated by the belief in the boundless goodness of its political opponents, the elite has already signed its own obituary. In similar words, Spengler contends that the rise of Caesarism must be viewed as a natural fulfilment of the money-dictatorship as well as its dialectical removal: “The sword wins over money; the master-will conquers again the booty-will” (2:634; 2:506). Then a new cycle of history will begin, according to Spengler, although he remains silent about the main historical actors, their origins, and their goals.

Spengler was convinced, however, that the dynamics of decadence could be fairly well predicted, provided that exact historical data were available. Just as the biology of human beings generates a well­-defined life span, resulting ultimately in biological death, so does each culture possess its own aging “data,” normally lasting no longer than a thousand years – a period, separating its spring from its eventual historical antithesis, the winter, or civilization. The estimate of a thousand years before the decline of culture sets in, corresponds to Spengler’s certitude that, after that period, each society has to face self-destruction. For example, after the fall of Rome, the rebirth of European culture started anew in the ninth century with the Carolingian dynasty. After the painful process of growth, self-asser­tiveness, and maturation, one thousand years later, in the twentieth century, cultural life in Europe is coming to its definite historical close.

As Spengler and his contemporary successors see it, Western culture now has transformed itself into a decadent civilization fraught with an advanced form of social, moral, and political decay. The first signs of this decay appeared shortly after the Industrial Revolution, when the machine began to replace man, when feelings gave way to ratio. Ever since that ominous event, new forms of social and political conduct have been surfacing in the West – marked by a wide-spread obsession with endless economic growth and irreversible human betterment – fueled by the belief that the burden of history can finally be removed. The new plutocratic elites, that have now replaced organic aristocracy, have imposed material gain as the only principle worth pursuing, reducing the entire human interaction to an immense economic transaction. And since the masses can never be fully satisfied, argues Spengler, it is understandable that they will seek change in their existing polities even if change may spell the loss of liberty. One might add that this craving for economic affluence will be translated into an incessant decline of the sense of public responsibility and an emerging sense of uprootedness and social anomie, which will ultimately and inevitably lead to the advent of totalitarianism. It would appear, therefore, that the process of de­cadence can be forestalled, ironically, only by resorting to salutary hard-line regimes.

Using Spengler’s apocalyptic predictions, one is tempted to draw a parallel with the modern Western polity, which likewise seems to be undergoing the period of decay and decadence. John Lukacs, who bears the unmistakable imprint of Spenglerian pessimism, views the permissive nature of modern liberal society, as embodied in America, as the first step toward social disintegration. Like Spengler, Lukacs asserts that excessive individualism and rampant materialism increas­ingly paralyze and render obsolete the sense of civic responsibility. One should probably agree with Lukacs that neither the lifting of censorship, nor the increasing unpopularity of traditional values, nor the curtailing of state authority in contemporary liberal states, seems to have led to a more peaceful environment; instead, a growing sense of despair seems to have triggered a form of neo-barbarism and social vulgarity. “Already richness and poverty, elegance and slea­ziness, sophistication and savagery live together more and more,” writes Lukacs(5). Indeed, who could have predicted that a society capable of launching rockets to the moon or curing diseases that once ravaged the world could also become a civilization plagued by social atomization, crime, and addiction to escapism? With his apoc­alyptic predictions, Lukacs, similar to Spengler, writes: “This most crowded of streets of the greatest civilization: this is now the hell­hole of the world.”

Interestingly, neither Spengler nor Lukacs nor other cultural pes­simists seems to pay much attention to the obsessive appetite for equality, which seems to play, as several contemporary authors point out, an important role in decadence and the resulting sense of cultural despair. One is inclined to think that the process of decadence in the contemporary West is the result of egalitarian doctrines which promise much but deliver little, creating thus an endless feeling of emptiness and frustration among the masses of economic-minded and rootless citizens. Moreover, elevated to the status of modern secular religions, egalitarianism and economism inevitably follow their own dynamics of growth, which is likely to conclude, as Claude Polin notes, in the “terror of all against all” and the ugly resurgence of democratic totalitarianism. Polin writes: “Undifferentiated man is par excellence a quantitative man; a man who accidentally differs from his neighbors by the quantity of economic goods in his pos­session; a man subject to statistics; a man who spontaneously reacts in accordance to statistics”(6). Conceivably, liberal society, if it ever gets gripped by economic duress and hit by vanishing opportunities, will have no option but to tame and harness the restless masses in a Spenglerian “muscled regime.”

Spengler and other cultural pessimists seem to be right in pointing out that democratic forms of polity, in their final stage, will be marred by moral and social convulsions, political scandals, and cor­ruption on all social levels. On top of it, as Spengler predicts, the cult of money will reign supreme, because “through money democracy destroys itself, after money has destroyed the spirit” (2:582; 2:464). Judging by the modern development of capitalism, Spengler cannot be accused of far fetched assumptions. This economic civilization founders on a major contradiction: on the one hand its religion of human rights extends its beneficiary legal tenets to everyone, reas­suring every individual of the legitimacy of his earthly appetites; on the other, this same egalitarian civilization fosters a model of economic Darwinism, ruthlessly trampling under its feet those whose interests do not lie in the economic arena.

The next step, as Spengler suggests, will be the transition from democracy to salutary Caesarism; substitution of the tyranny of the few for the tyranny of many. The neo-Hobbesian, neo-barbaric state is in the making:

Instead of the pyres emerges big silence. The dictatorship of party bosses is backed up by the dictatorship of the press. With money, an attempt is made to lure swarms of readers and entire peoples away from the enemy’s attention and bring them under one’s own thought control. There, they learn only what they must learn, and a higher will shapes their picture of the world. It is no longer needed-as the baroque princes did-to oblige their subordinates into the armed service. Their minds are whipped up through articles, telegrams, pictures, until they demand weapons and force their leaders to a battle to which these wanted to be forced. (2:463)

The fundamental issue, however, which Spengler and many other cultural pessimists do not seem to address, is whether Caesarism or totalitarianism represents the antithetical remedy to decadence or, rather, the most extreme form of decadence? Current literature on totalitarianism seems to focus on the unpleasant side-effects of the bloated state, the absence of human rights, and the pervasive control of the police. By contrast, if liberal democracy is indeed a highly desirable and the least repressive system of all hitherto known in the West – and if, in addition, this liberal democracy claims to be the best custodian of human dignity – one wonders why it relentlessly causes social uprootedness and cultural despair among an increasing number of people? As Claude Polin notes, chances are that, in the short run, democratic totalitarianism will gain the upper hand since the security it provides is more appealing to the masses than is the vague notion of liberty(7). One might add that the tempo of democratic process in the West leads eventually to chaotic impasse, which ne­cessitates the imposition of a hard-line regime.

Although Spengler does not provide a satisfying answer to the question of Caesarism vs. decadence, he admits that the decadence of, the West need not signify the collapse of all cultures. Rather, it appears that the terminal illness of the West may be a new lease on life for other cultures; the death of Europe may result in a stronger Africa or Asia. Like many other cultural pessimists, Spengler ac­knowledges that the West has grown old, unwilling to fight, with its political and cultural inventory depleted; consequently, it is obliged to cede the reigns of history to those nations that are less exposed to debilitating pacifism and the self-flagellating guilt-feelings which, so to speak, have become new trademarks of the modern Western citizen. One could imagine a situation where these new virile and victorious nations will barely heed the democratic niceties of their guilt-ridden former masters, and may likely, at some time in the future, impose their own brand of terror which could eclipse the legacy of the European Auschwitz and the Gulag. In view of the ruthless civil and tribal wars all over the decolonized African and Asian continent, it seems unlikely that power politics and bellicosity will disappear with the “decline of the West.” So far, no proof has been offered that non-European nations can govern more peacefully and generously than their former European masters. “Pacifism will remain an ideal,” Spengler reminds us, “war a fact. If the white races are resolved never to wage a war again, the colored will act differently and be rulers of the world”(8).

In this statement, Spengler clearly indicts the self-hating “homo europeanus” who, having become a victim of his bad conscience, naively thinks that his truths and verities must remain irrefutably valid forever, forgetting that his eternal verities may one day be turned against him. Spengler strongly attacks this Western false sympathy with the deprived ones – a sympathy that Nietzsche once depicted as a twisted form of egoism and slave moral. “This is the reason,” writes Spengler, why this “compassion moral,” in the day-­to-day sense, “evoked among us with respect, and sometimes strived for by the thinkers, sometimes longed for, has never been realized” (1:449; 1:350).

This form of political masochism could be well studied particularly among those contemporary Western egalitarians who, with the decline of socialist temptations, substituted for the archetype of the European exploited worker, the iconography of the starving African. Nowhere does this change in political symbolics seem more apparent than in the current Western drive to export Western forms of civilization to the antipodes of the world. These Westerners, in the last spasm of a guilt-ridden shame, are probably convinced that their historical repentance might also secure their cultural and political longevity. Spengler was aware of these paralyzing attitudes among Europeans, and he remarks that, if a modern European recognizes his historical vulnerability, he must start thinking beyond his narrow perspective and develop different attitudes toward different political convictions and verities. What do Parsifal or Prometheus have to do with the average Japanese citizen, asks Spengler? “This is exactly what is lacking to the Western thinker,” continues Spengler, “and which precisely should have never lacked to him; insight into historical relativity of his achievements, which themselves are the manifestation of one and unique, and of only one existence” (1:31;1:23). On a somewhat different level, one wonders to what extent the much vaunted dis­semination of universal human rights can become a valuable principle for non-Western peoples if Western universalism often signifies blatant disrespect for all cultural particularities.

Even with their eulogy of universalism, as Serge Latouche has recently noted, Westerners have, nonetheless, secured the most com­fortable positions for themselves. Although they have now retreated to the back stage of history, vicariously, through their humanism, they still play the role of the undisputable masters of the non-white­-man show. “The death of the West for itself has not been the end of the West in itself,” adds Latouche(9). One wonders whether such Western attitudes to universalism represent another form of racism, considering the havoc these attitudes have created in traditional Third World communities. Latouche appears correct in remarking that Eur­opean decadence best manifests itself in its masochistic drive to deny and discard everything that it once stood for, while simultaneously sucking into its orbit of decadence other cultures as well. Yet, although suicidal in its character, the Western message contains mandatory admonishments for all non-European nations. He writes:

The mission of the West is not to exploit the Third World, nor to christianize the pagans, nor to dominate by white presence; it is to liberate men (and even more so women) from oppression and misery. In order to counter this self-hatred of the anti-imperialist vision, which concludes in red totalitarianism, one is now compelled to dry the tears of white man, and thereby ensure the success of this westernization of the world. (41)

The decadent West exhibits, as Spengler hints, a travestied culture living on its own past in a society of different nations that, having lost their historical consciousness, feel an urge to become blended into a promiscuous “global polity.” One wonders what would he say today about the massive immigration of non-Europeans to Europe? This immigration has not improved understanding among races, but has caused more racial and ethnic strife that, very likely, signals a series of new conflicts in the future.

But Spengler does not deplore the “devaluation of all values” nor the passing of cultures. In fact, to him decadence is a natural process of senility which concludes in civilization, because civilization is decadence. Spengler makes a typically German distinction between culture and civilization, two terms which are, unfortunately, used synonymously in English. For Spengler civilization is a product of intellect, of completely rationalized intellect; civilization means uproot­edness and, as such, it develops its ultimate form in the modern megapolis which, at the end of its journey, “doomed, moves to its final self-destruction” (2:127; 2:107). The force of the people has been overshadowed by massification; creativity has given way to “kitsch” art; geniality has been subordinated to the terror of reason. He writes:

Culture and civilization. On the one hand the living corpse of a soul and, on the other, its mummy. This is how the West European existence differs from 1800 and after. The life in its richness and normalcy, whose form has grown up and matured from inside out in one mighty course stretching from the adolescent days of Gothics to Goethe and Napoleon – into that old artificial, deracinated life of our large cities, whose forms are created by intellect. Culture and civilization. The organism born in countryside, that ends up in petrified mechanism. (1:453; 1:353)

In yet another display of determinism, Spengler contends that one cannot escape historical destiny: “the first inescapable thing that confronts man as an unavoidable destiny, which no thought can grasp, and no will can change, is a place and time of one’s birth: everybody is born into one people, one religion, one social status, one stretch of time and one culture.”(10) Man is so much constrained by his historical environment that all attempts at changing one’s destiny are hopeless. And, therefore, all flowery postulates about the improvement of mankind, all liberal and socialist philosophizing about a glorious future regarding the duties of humanity and the essence of ethics, are of no avail. Spengler sees no other avenue of redemption except through declaring himself a fundamental and resolute pessimist:

Mankind appears to me as a zoological quantity. I see no progress, no goal, no avenue for humanity, except in the heads of the Western progress-Philistines…. I cannot see a single mind and even less a unity of endeavors, feelings, and understandings in these barren masses of people. (Selected Essays 73-74; 147)

The determinist nature of Spengler’s pessimism has been criticized recently by Konrad Lorenz who, while sharing Spengler’s culture of despair, refuses the predetermined linearity of decadence. In his capacity of ethologist and as one of the most articulate neo-Darwinists, Lorenz admits the possibility of an interruption of human phylo­genesis – yet also contends that new vistas for cultural development always remain open. “Nothing is more foreign to the evolutionary epistemologist, as well, to the physician,” writes Lorenz, “than the doctrine of fatalism.”(11) Still, Lorenz does not hesitate to criticize vehemently decadence in modern mass societies which, in his view, have already given birth to pacified and domesticated specimens unable to pursue cultural endeavors. Lorenz would certainly find positive resonance with Spengler himself in writing: “This explains why the pseudodemocratic doctrine that all men are equal, by which is believed that all humans are initially alike and pliable, could be made into a state religion by both the lobbyists for large industry and by the ideologues of communism” (179-80).

Despite the criticism of historical determinism which has been leveled against him, Spengler often confuses his reader with Faustian exclamations reminiscent of someone prepared for battle rather than reconciled to a sublime demise. “No, I am not a pessimist,” writes Spengler in “Pessimism,” for “pessimism means seeing no more duties. I see so many unresolved duties that I fear that time and men will run out to solve them”(75). These words hardly cohere with the cultural despair which earlier he so passionately elaborated. Moreover, he often advocates force and the toughness of the warrior in order to stave off Europe’s disaster.

One is led to the conclusion that Spengler extols historical pessimism or “purposeful pessimism” (“Zweckpessimismus”), as long as it translates his conviction of the irreversible decadence of the European polity; however, once he perceives that cultural and political loopholes are available for moral and social regeneration, he quickly reverts to the eulogy of power politics. Similar characteristics are often to be found among many poets, novelists, and social thinkers whose legacy in spreading cultural pessimism played a significant part in shaping political behavior among European conservatives prior to World War II (12). One wonders why they all, like Spengler, bemoan the decadence of the West if this decadence has already been sealed, if the cosmic die has already been cast, and if all efforts of political and cultural rejuvenation appear hopeless? Moreover, in an effort to mend the unmendable, by advocating a Faustian mentality and will-to-power, these pessimists often seem to emulate the optimism of socialists rather than the ideas of those reconciled to impending social catastrophe.

For Spengler and other cultural pessimists, the sense of decadence is inherently combined with a revulsion against modernity and an abhorrence of rampant economic greed. As recent history has shown, the political manifestation of such revulsion may lead to less savory results: the glorification of the will-to-power and the nostalgia of death. At that moment, literary finesse and artistic beauty may take on a very ominous turn. The recent history of Europe bears witness to how easily cultural pessimism can become a handy tool for modern political titans. Nonetheless, the upcoming disasters have something uplifting for the generations of cultural pessimists whose hypersensitive nature – and disdain for the materialist society – often lapses into political nihilism. This nihilistic streak was boldly stated by Spengler’s contemporary Friedrich Sieburg, who reminds us that “the daily life of democracy with its sad problems is boring, but the impending catastrophes are highly interesting.”(13)

One cannot help thinking that, for Spengler and his likes, in a wider historical context, war and power politics offer a regenerative hope against the pervasive feeling of cultural despair. Yet, regardless of the validity of Spengler’s visions or nightmares, it does not take much imagination to observe in the decadence of the West the last twilight-dream of a democracy already grown weary of itself.

California State University, Fullerton, California

Notes:

1. In the case of the European ‘New Right’, see Jean Cau, Discours de la décadence (Paris: Copernic, 1978), Julien Freund, La décadence: histoire sociologique et philosophique d’une expérience humaine (Paris: Sirey, 1984), and Pierre Chaunu Histoire et décadence (Paris: Perrin, 1981). In the case of authors of “leftist sensibility,” see Jean Baud­rillard’s virulent attack against simulacra and hyperreality in America: Amérique (Paris: Grasset, 1986)-in English, America, trans. Chris Turner (New York, London: Verso, 1988)-and Jean-François Huyghe, La soft-idéologie (Paris: Laffont, 1987). There is a certain Spenglerian whiff in Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Warner Books, 1979), and probably in Richard Lamm, Megatraumas: America at the Year 2000 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985). About European cultural conservatives see my Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right (forthcoming).

2. See Spengler’s critic and admirer Heinrich Scholz, Zum ‘Untergang des Abendlandes’ (Berlin: von Reuther and Reichard, 1920). Scholz conceives of history as polycentric occurrences concentrated in creative archetypes, noting: “History is a curriculum vitae of many cultures having nothing in common except the name; because each of them has its own destiny, own life, and own death” (11)-my translation.

3. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson, 2 vols. (1926; New York: Knopf, 1976), 1:21. My text, however, contains my own translations from Der Untergang des Abendlandes (München: Beck, 1923), 1:28-29. Citations hereafter are in the text, in parentheses, giving references to these two editions, respectively.

4. Vilfredo Pareto, ‘Dangers of Socialism’, in The Other Pareto, ed. Placido Bucolo, trans. Gillian and Placido Bucolo, pre. Ronald Fletcher (New York: St. Martin’s, 1980). Pareto writes: “There are some people who imagine that they can disarm the enemy by complacent flattery. They are wrong. The world has always belonged to the stronger and will belong to them for many years to come. Men only respect those who make themselves respected. Whoever becomes a lamb will find a wolf to eat him” (125). In a similar vein, Gustave le Bon, Psychologie politique (1911; Paris: Les Amis de G. L. Bon, 1984), writes: “Wars among nations have, by the way, always been the source of the most important progress. Which pacifist people has ever played any role in history?” (79)-my translation.

5. John Lukacs, The Passing of the Modern Age (New York: Harper, 1970), 10, 9.

6. Claude Polin, L’esprit totalitaire (Paris: Sirey, 1977), 111: my translation.

7. Claude Polin, Le totalitarisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires Françaises, 1982) argues that egalitarianism, universalism and economism are the three pivots of totalitarianism: “Totalitarian power is first and foremost the power of all against all; the tyranny of all against all. Totalitarian society is not constructed from the top down to the bottom, but from the bottom up to the top” (117) – my translation.

8. ‘Is World Peace Possible?’ in Selected Essay, trans. Donald O. White (1936: Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967), 207.

9. Serge Latouche, L’occidentalisation du monde (Paris: La Découverte, 1989), 9; my translation. About Westerners’ self-hate and self-denial, see Alain de Benoist, Europe, Tiers monde même combat (Paris: Laffont, 1986): “And whereas Christian universalism had once contributed to the justification of colonization, Christian pastoralism today inspires decolonization. This `mobilization of consciences’ crystallizes itself around the notion of culpability.” The colonized is no longer “a primitive” who ought to be “led to civilization.” Rather, he is a living indictment, indeed, an example of an immaculate morality from whom the “civilized” has much to learn (62). See also Pascal Bruckner, Le sanglot de l’homme blanc. Tiers monde, culpabilité, haine de soi (Paris: Seuil, 1983), 13: for the bleeding-heart liberal Westerner “the birth of the Third world gave birth to this new category; expiatory militantism.” My translations here.

10. Spengler, ‘Pessimismus’, Reden and Aufsätze (München: Beck, 1937), 70; in English, ‘Pessimism?’ in Selected Essays, 143.

11. Konrad Lorenz, The Waning of Humaneness (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987), 58-59.

12. It would be impossible to enumerate all cultural pessimists who usually identify themselves as heroic pessimists, often as conservative revolutionaries, or aristocratic nihilists. Poets and novelists of great talent such as Gottfried Benn, Louis F. Céline, Ezra Pound, and others, were very much inspired by Oswald Spengler. See Gottfried Benn, “Pessimismus,” in Essays und Aufsätze (Wiesbaden: Limes, 1959): “Man is not alone, thinking is alone. Thinking is self-bound and solitary” (357). See also the apocalyptic prose of Ernst Jünger, An der Zeitmauer (Werke) (Stuttgart: Klett, 1959): “It seems that cyclical system corresponds to our spirit. We make round-shaped watches, although there is no logical compulsion behind it. And even catastrophes are viewed as recurrent, as for example floods and drought, fire-age and ice-age” (460-61). My translations.

13. Friedrich Sieburg, Die Lust am Untergang (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1954), 54. My translation.

 

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Sunic, Tomislav. “History And Decadence: Spengler’s Cultural Pessimism Today.” CLIO – A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History, Vol. 19, No 1 (Fall 1989), pp. 51-62. Text retrieved from: <http://home.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/tomsunic/sunic4.html >.

Note: This essay was also republished in Tomislav Sunic’s Postmortem Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity – Collected Essays (Shamley Green, UK: The Paligenesis Project, 2010).

 

Ludwig Clauss – Sunic

“Ludwig F. Clauss: Racial Style, Racial Character” by Tomislav Sunic (PDF – 406 KB):

Ludwig F. Clauss

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Sunic, Tomislav. “Ludwig F. Clauss: Racial Style, Racial Character (Part 1).” The Occidental Observer. 9 August 2011. <http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/08/ludwig-f-clauss-racial-style-racial-character-part-i/ >.

Sunic, Tomislav. “Ludwig F. Clauss: Racial Style, Racial Character (Part 2)” The Occidental Observer. 18 August 2011. <http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2011/08/ludwig-f-clauss-racial-style-racial-character-part-ii/ >.

Note: Readers may also be interested in the mention of Clauss’s race psychology made in Lucian Tudor, “Othmar Spann: A Catholic Radical Traditionalist,” Counter-Currents.com, 19 March 2013, <http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/03/othmar-spann-a-catholic-radical-traditionalist/ >.

 

Sixty-Eighters – Sunic

Sixty-Eighters

by Tomislav Sunic

 

From Italy to France, from Germany to England, the post-World War II generation is now running the show. They have traded in their jeans and sneakers for political power. Thirty years ago, they rocked the boat at Berkeley, in Paris, and in Berlin; they marched against American imperialism in Vietnam, and supported the Yugoslav dictator, Josip Broz Tito, and his “socialism with a human face.” They made pilgrimages to Hanoi, Havana, and Belgrade, and many of them dressed in the Vietcong’s garb, or Mao’s clothes. A certain Bimbo named Jane Fonda even paid a courtesy visit to North Vietnam and posed for a photo-op with her rear on a communist howitzer. This generation protested against their wealthy parents, yet they used their fathers’ money to destroy their own welfare state. A burning joint passed from hand to hand, as Bob Dylan croaked the words that defined a generation: “Everybody must get stoned.”

This was a time which the youth in communist countries experienced quite differently. Prison camps were still alive, deportations were the order of the day from the Baltics to the Balkans, and the communist secret police–the Yugoslav UDBA, the Romanian Securitate, the East German Stasi, and the Soviet KGB–had their hands full. European 68ers did not know anything about their plight, and they simply ignored the communist topography of horror.

Back then, the 68ers had cultural power in their hands, controlling the best universities and spreading their permissive sensibility. Students were obliged to bow down to the unholy trinity of Marx, Freud, and Sartre, and the humanities curriculum showed the first signs of anti-Europeanism. Conservatives concentrated all of their attention on economic growth, naively believing that eliminating poverty and strengthening the middle class would bring about the renaissance of the conservative gospel.

Today, the 68ers (or “neo-liberals” or social democrats”) have grown up, and they have changed not only their name, but also their habitat and their discourse. Their time has come: Now they hold both cultural and political power. From Buenos Aires to Quai d’Orsay, from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to 10 Downing Street, they sit in air-conditioned executive offices or in ministerial cabinets, and they behave as if nothing has changed. Perfectly recycled in stylish Gucci suits, wearing expensive Bally shoes, sporting fine mascara, the 68ers pontificate about the global free market. They have embraced their former foe, capitalist entrepreneurship, and have added to it the fake humanistic facade of socialist philanthropy.

They have drawn up a hit list, filled with the names of senile individuals from distant countries who have been accused of “war crimes” and must be extradited to the 68ers’ kangaroo courts. Seldom, if ever, do they acknowledge the millions of victims of communism, documented recently by Stephane Courtois in Le livre noire du communisme. Nor do they wish to face their own role in communist genocide. And why should they? Their decades-long civil disobedience resulted in the downplaying of communist horror and legitimized the Gulag. While the 68ers did not play a direct role in Beria’s, Yagoda’s, or Tito’s ethnic cleansing, they were useful idiots. If today’s caviar left were to open the Pandora’s box of the Gulag, Augusto Pinochet would look like a naughty little scout from boot camp. The best way to cover up their own murderous past is to sing the hymns of human rights and to lecture on the metaphysics of permanent economic progress.

The 68ers and their well-clad cronies are the financial insiders now, speculating on stocks, never hesitating to transfer megabucks to Luxembourg via the Cayman Islands or, better yet, to do some hidden wheeling and dealing on Wall Street. They no longer spout nonsense about equality and social justice for the Vietcong, Congolese, or Tibetans, nor do they indulge in academic rantings about socialist utopia. And why should they? Today, the time is ripe for their gross corruption, veiled, of course, in the incessant rhetoric of multiculturalism. The 68ers have won: The world belongs to them.

But for how long? The 68ers have inherited a massive financial burden, much of it the result of government spending on the various programs that they once took to the streets to demand. At the same time, their work ethic pales next to the rugged individualism of their hard-working predecessors. From Germany to France, from Italy to England, they may excel in a liberal mimicry of capitalism, which in practice translates into the rise of a handful of the very rich and an ever-larger mass of the working poor. But who will foot the tab? No country can be run by humanitarian decrees. When push comes to shove, good leftist intentions mean nothing: The voters can kick the 68ers out of office just as quickly as they brought them in.

Many conservatives in Europe misunderstand the true nature of the modern left and its socialist offshoots. These conservatives naively assume that the cultural war will be won through political elections. They believe that political power (that is, the army, police, and diplomacy) will keep the country together and circumvent or circumscribe leftist influence. This is a dangerous and possibly fatal mistake, not just for the conservative cause, but for European civilization. The political power held today by the former 68ers is being institutionalized through legal restrictions on freedom of speech, of thought, and of research. Germany, Belgium, France, and other European countries have already passed strict laws forbidding young scholars to pursue open and honest research in certain touchy areas of modern history. Passages from the German Criminal Code bring to mind the Soviet comrade Vishinsky: They are not what we expect of a free and democratic country.

Many conservatives have failed to realize that political power must always be preceded by cultural power, and afterwards strengthened by an incessant media war. In our age of video, of hologram Hitlers, of sound-bite political lingo, the one who adapts the fastest to the changing world is bound to win. The 68ers realized long ago that one needs to infiltrate universities, publishing houses, and schools before storming the White House. For three decades, leftist scholars have diligently dished out their marxophille dogma to gullible students in Europe. Their progeny have grown up and are well positioned to follow suit.

If conservatives ever wish to surface again, they must resolutely commit themselves to fighting the cultural revolution by grooming highly sophisticated, highly intelligent journalists and scholars, and by coaching young people to defend the heritage of Europe. Conservative political leaders must realize that the culture is the only battleground on which cultural and political hegemony can be snatched away from the hydra of 68ers. Consider this: Conservatives can still boast of some prominent political leaders, yet the universities, schools, and the media are totally controlled by the left.

Conservative intellectuals in Europe are too differentiated, and they often suffer from pathological vanity and obsessive individualism. Although they are sometimes wrongly accused of being populists, conservatives are incapable of whipping the young masses into a frenzy, or of creating militants ready to storm street barricades. Most conservatives don’t understand how to articulate their own message. It is impossible to get three conservatives to work together: Each will immediately wish to prove that he is the best. Cultural conservatives still don’t recognize their true enemy, much less know how to beat him. Frequently, they quarrel among themselves about their own nationalist victimology, or push their tribal dogmas to the extreme–always, of course, to the benefit of the international left. To be a conservative should not merely mean being frightened by postmodernity, or savoring one’s provincial “rootedness,” or wearing thick horn-rimmed glasses, or attending Sunday school lessons. Some great conservatives were agnostics, or pagans, or modernists, or revolutionary thinkers. By contrast, today’s conservatives have failed to address the social question of workers, and therefore, their turf has been stolen by the former 68ers, who are more versed in promising a glorious future.

What is to be done? Young conservatives, especially those with a solid background in the humanities, must start demystifying the leftist-liberal mythology. They must not gullibly imitate their teachers in the corrupt academy. After all, many self-proclaimed scholars are often half-wits with little knowledge of the drama of life, and they can easily be beaten on their own ground. In order to unseat the leftist-liberal political class and its pseudo-intellectual acolytes, young conservatives must resort to the same strategy that the left has pursued: Take to the cultural barricades, but to defend European civilization, rather than to tear it down.

And conservatives should not forget the ancient wisdom: Beat your leftist neighbor with his own weapon. Where it hurts the most.

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Sunic, Tomislav. “Sixty-Eighters.” Chronicles, (March 1999). <http://www.amerika.org/texts/sixty-eighters-tomislav-sunic/ >.