Modernization without westernization is the first step to reject imperialism – Grego

Modernization without westernization is the first step to reject imperialism

By Antonio Grego

Committee for the project «Eurasia»

 

The staff of the Committee for the project «Eurasia» is organized within three different structures, separated and independent, but all of them are interdependent. Two of them contribute to the scientific and academic work of our Group: «Eurasia», a quarterly of Geopolitical Studies, born in 2004. Since that, «Eurasia» has published many analysis and studies focused on Geostrategy and International Relations. Our second structure is the CESEM Institution («Centro Studi Eurasia-Mediterraneo», a think-tank focused on the Eurasian-Mediterranean partnership).

A brand new organization, it has established ties with many Italian universities, aimed at the training and the apprenticeship of our young collaborators. During these eight years our quarterly has organised many open meetings, conventions and workshops with foreign institutions. Our goal is focused on the knowledge of foreign countries, on the introduction of new books of geopolitics and the explanation of Multipolarism and its trends for a mainstream Italian audience.

Furthermore, we have a web journal called «Stato e Potenza» («State and Power»); it has a definitely more political and militant approach to the global situation. It has been created to reach more people with our analysis focused on issues like Eurasianism and the Multipolar system. In this case our analysis is oriented to a daily examination of capitalism and imperialism. Its style is less scientific than «Eurasia» and «CESEM», but the goal is the same: a strategic and economical analysis of the global system we live in.

We cannot forget that we operate and we organize our public initiatives in a difficult country like Italy. You certainly know that the Ministry of Defense and the Italian Armed Forces have been part of NATO since 1949 (its establishment), and our internal policy has always been influenced (if not directed) by Washington D.C. and London. For almost fifty years the chances for criticizing this situation with independent studies have been restrained, despite the activity of the most important Communist Party of Western Europe. However, the communist forces gradually changed their political field, first joining the Euro-Communist project (created by CIA to divide the leftist parties in Western Europe from the USSR) and finally becoming in the Nineties one of the most pro-American political forces in the Italian politics. Let’s make it clear: the former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi raised many doubts before joining the U.S.-led campaign against Gaddafi’s Lybia, while the Democratic Party (the post-Communist and social-democratic formation) was quick in asking for a military intervention.

You can easily understand the Italian scenario within we have to move: a country whose culture has been totally destroyed by Liberalism, nowadays organized in a «left» and a «right». The extreme liberal capitalism was introduced in Italy after the end of the so-called «First Republic» (1948-1992), and it was presented like a panacea for the corruption of the State institutions. It won after the so-called «Mani Pulite» («Clear Hands»), a judicial operation led by Washington D.C. that erased a whole political system and led to the total destruction of the Italian economy based on State industries and the public intervention in the economic field.

Our country was enslaved to the ultra-capitalist era of the unipolar world, with the absolute power of the global finance; in a few years Italy lost most of its industrial assets, bought by Anglo-American societies thanks to deregulated privatizations and denationalizations. Now it seems we are back to those years: after the financial crisis our economy fell into a deep crisis due to its huge debt and the progressive strategic decline of Italy during the Nineties.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Euopean Union decided to impose on Italy a political transition with a so-called «technical government» under Giorgio Napolitano’s supervision. Napolitano is another former Communist who became pro-American during the Seventies. The new Italian Prime Minister is Mario Monti, former president of the European branch of the Trilateral Commission, former commissioner of the European Union and international advisory for Goldman Sachs; the new minister of Defense is admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, member of the NATO General Command, while the new Foreign minister is Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, former Italian ambassador in the United States of America and in Israel. These facts make you clear the political and strategic lines that the new Italian government (not chosen by the Italian people) is going to follow.

Social protests in Italy rise day after day, and in a long period this could benefit our publishing activity. However the pressure and the open hostility by mainstream media toward critic voices is still high, especially in relation with the international politics. In Italy four different reviews of geopolitics are currently published, but on the other hand televisions and other medias ignore these topics; their approach to geopolitics is very superficial and mainly based on the American propaganda. We try to challenge mainstream cultural elites with an activity which relies only on our own economical resources, with many sacrifices but always aiming at the higher dignity and professionalism.

The international situation

The current world order is the result of two main events, happened during the last decade of the past century: the liberal and capitalist counter-revolution in the USSR and the birth of a common market and monetary free area in the European Union. These two events resulted in a stronger influence of the Transatlantic partnership, because of the expansion of the American power in Eastern Europe, from the Baltic countries to the Balkans; moreover, we saw the victory of capitalism in the geopolitical European space, an important event as described in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s publications. The Warsaw’s Pact quick decline and the geopolitical weakening of Russia have been other important factors.

The European Union is currently paying a high price for its military and economical dependance on the American superpower: in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal workers and small factories are going to be wiped out due to the financial crisis and the financial measures. Brussel’s solutions are focused to help only the private banking system, forgetting the people. This is a complete non-sense because that’s the same sector that led to the current crisis through speculation and the sub-prime derivates market. Meanwhile our countries keep on spending billions to support military campaigns ordered by the United States of America and Great Britain.

The situation we are witnessing is a clear example of the skill of capitalism to perpetuate itself through Space and Time, showing the inadequacy of the optimistic and dogmatist views of the Marxist ideology. Capitalism has never been in danger of its own existence, it can’t destroy itself without the presence of another factor: the political force of a party and a State and its army, the Socialism in a powerful country. At the same time this can be considered like a realist prevision of the Marxist theory: capitalism could contain the seeds for its own destruction.

Globalization has shown two different faces: the worst one consisting in the violent will of expansion of the American power all over the world, the other has seen the spreading of new technologies and economical development in different parts of the planet. This process of modernization is without any doubt positive from the perspective of countries like China, Pakistan, Brazil and India, and could lead to a global change that could create the preconditions for a multipolar order. This can have other effects, like the beginning of a self-destruction of capitalism: in its moment of biggest success, the capital system doesn’t represent only a «division of workforce», but even a «world division» in areas of influence and direct conquer.

Carl Schmitt’s idea of «Great Spaces» has been confirmed in the past years: these constructions exist in a midway between the global order and the single National States. It became reality with the return of Russia as a power after Eltsin’s dark age, and it has been proved when States like China, India, Iran, Turkey and Brazil gained more and more influence. This process was not a simple «Westernization» of the world, but something more and deeper.

On the political side, the idea of «Westernization» isn’t enough to fully understand what’s happening in the world; it could be seen as a part of a bigger process which also includes modernization, a slide from modernity to post-modernity and a general analysis of what we consider as the «West». Every «political resistance» that the unipolarism is now meeting in different part of the world relies on peculiar histories and traditions which capitalism hasn’t been able to defeat. Political and social struggle must rely on these cultures.

The American imperialism represents a brand new structure of global will of power, something we had never seen before in history: a process aimed at the expansion of its influence worldwide, but still different from the old European colonialism. If we consider the world as we know we should infer that the Anglo-American power and its influence have won.

However this conclusion (as Samuel Huntington wrote) has been an illusion for the cultural and political elites in the White House since 1992: the global spreading of the so-called «American Way of life» (its subculture, its movies, its food) cannot lead to a decisive victory. In his famous book «The Clash of Civilizations», Huntington wrote about the Japanese «Wakon-Sai» and the Chinese «Ty-Jong», eras of technical modernization without any Western influence.

The president of the People’s Republic of China, Mr. Hu Jintao, recently claimed that China seeks to defend its own tradition from any foreign (Western, we can add) influence. Non-Western cultures have three different paths on their way: defending their cultural identity while achieving modernization (like Hu Jintao said), rejecting both «Westernization» and modernization (just like some Islamic movements and Lin Biao’s Chinese school) or a mid-way of what we can call an inclusive «Westernization», like that we are witnessing now in Turkey.

We believe that the first step to reject imperialism and to seek a real multipolar system can be chosen only by the first way: modernization without «Westernization». In our view the other two way of thinking modernity aren’t winning strategies: on the contrary, they are going to strengthen global capitalism. We can observe this in many cases: Tukey’s Neo-Ottomanism is directed by the USA in organizing

Middle East after the so-called «Arab Spring», and so it is the same for many political and religious groups in Middle East and Asia. The United States of America are seeking a strategy of containment for every possible global competitor, spreading chaos and poverty to weaken them: this can be reached in many different ways, even using some ideologies like a certain radical Ecologism and reactionary ideologies (often with some kind of a religious background) in non-Western parts of the world. At the same time, even some ultra-nationalist movements can be used for their goals, as we can see in some parts of Eastern Europe.

The strategic and technological power will be the key for all those countries willing to increase their influence.

Nowadays, Russia and China are America’s most influential global competitors. The People’s Republic of China has a stronger political system than the Russian; it is based on a Communist and patriotic system and it is seeking an intelligent approach to the global market to improve its own social and technical development. Beijing still relies on the strategy called «non-intromission» in States’ internal affairs (Zhou Enlai explained this at the Bandung Conference), but is studying new tactics to contain Western aggressive policies in Asia.

We are going to see some kind of a new «Cold War» in Africa very soon. Libya and Sudan have been two preliminary examples of that (although Beijing’s reaction to Western aggressions hasn’t been strong). Russia and China are the only non-Western global powers, they are Permanent Members in the United Nations Security Council, they have got nuclear weapons and important military industries. Plus, Russia has got another very important weapon: the world’s biggest resources in oil and gas, and many other raw materials like coal, steel and uranium.

The Soviet defeat marked a dark era not only for its political meaning, but even more for geopolitics: Russia lost its «Great Space», which Vladimir Putin is trying to build again within the Eurasian Union. Without its strategic routes to the South and the East (Central Asia, Ukraine, Belarus), Russia would lose a huge part of its potential.

A new multipolar order would not automatically lead to the defeat of imperialism, to a fair world and an era of peace. This could lead incited to a global conflict and many regional wars, especially in Northern and Central Africa, in the Middle East and in South-Western Asia. The Cold War ended years ago, but the nuclear power still exists and the multipolar order will be a challenge between nuclear superpowers. Multipolarism has already existed in history: for example during the Thirties, after the end of the British imperial power. It resulted in a terrible conflict between the West and the Tripartite Pact, and a subsequent war against the USSR.

The nuclear power was officially born during the days of May 1945. The criminal attack on Japan was a clear message to Moscow: «Now we can fully destroy you». From that moment, Stalin planned how to defend his country from the American imperialist madness. The Russian answer was the very beginning of the Cold War with the Mutual Assured Destruction era.

Now nine Nations have nuclear weapons: the United States of America, Great Britain, France, Israel, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Four of them are NATO members or part of the Western sphere, five of them joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and share partnerships with Russia and China. Of course nobody will declare war on the counterpart (this would be a suicide) with a first strike, so we can assume that conventional weapons will still be used in the future wars, adding some new high-technology and ICT (Information & Communication Technologies) systems. We think that future wars will be fought in the most underveloped areas of the world, where the superpowers strategies and interests will collide.

The Italian case

As we wrote in the beginning of this analysis, Italy is currently in a very difficult position. After the recent regime change, our new government includes a former Goldman Sachs and Trilateral Commission associated member as a Prime Minister, a NATO personality as minister of Defense and a former ambassador to Washington D.C. and Israel is our Foreign minister. This is enough for you to understand the real nature of this «technical government», collecting military, political and economical personnel from Atlantic structures.

The social situation of Italy is worsening day after day: this system is literally crushing every social conquer that Italian workers won during the past decades. Young people have no perspective for their future but in-occupation and unemployment; the State has no chance to get back its sovereignty and independence. The War on Libya marked a milestone. Sivlio Berlusconi’s government, with all its political faults, was still a strict ally of Russia’s Putin and Libya’s Gaddafi. Our State-run oil and gas company, ENI, launched cooperation projects with its Russian and Libyan counterparts like we had never seen before.

Italy is a kind of bridge in the Mediterranean Sea which links Europe to Northern Africa and Middle East. For this reason Italy has been like a NATO aircraft carrier since the end of the Second World War. We have had more than one hundred American and NATO military bases and facilities on our soil since the beginning of the Cold War. More or less every American aggression in the past decades was launched from Italy: the first Gulf War, the War on Serbia, the invasion of Afghanistan, the second Gulf War and the latest War on Libya. We have been forced to a war against an allied country and its people only to follow Western orders (those coming from the nuclear Western powers, France, Great Britain and the USA). If Italy had a different government and a sovereign political system, our country could play an important role to improve a strategic partnership between the Arab countries and Europe and in defending peace and security in areas like the Balkans and Syria.

Fernand Braudel thought the Mediterranean Sea to be an independent economical space that could be totally independent because of its culture, its economy and its political balance. With its internal differences, the Mediterranean Space has been a beacon of light for centuries in the past. Despite some weird interpretations that we totally reject, the example of Roma and its Empire are totally different from the modern American imperialism: Rome’s institutions still today are some of the highest examples that the word has ever known in fields like administrative law, politics and the State system. This model was melted with the Greek one, able to improve and grow up throughout the centuries, and it was translated to other historical experiences like those of Constantinople (during the long era of the Byzantine peace and harmony) and Moscow, the headquarters of a great empire which is the center of the international balance.

Unfortunately it seems that Italy today has forgotten its own lessons and its rich heritage (political, historical and cultural); our country is living in a condition of extreme ethic, political and social decadence.

Because of that, the American influence found the ground to establish its «cultural» model meeting light or no resistance at all in our society and cultural life. One of our main problems is the historical fragmentation of the Italian political and geographical condition; Italy is united by its culture and literature, but sadly divided by its economical internal conditions. The division of Italy (North, Center and South) is shown by two different phenomena: the Northern League, struggling from more than twenty years for the political independence of Northern Italy, and crime organizations based in the Southern regions, like the Mafia.

The economical scenario of modern Italy is based on small and medium-sized factories. In some cases these industries exploit workers, but more often they suffer from the policies of big companies like Agnelli’s FIAT, Pirelli (tires), Benetton (clothing production), linked to the biggest global lobbies and oligopolies. Every year the Italian State supply these big companies with public money, but workers have never seen the results of these operations, which benefit only super managers like FIAT’s Marchionne and Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, whose policies often lead to serious mistakes and damages for our public interests.

Recently Italy has reformed the Article n. 18 of the Workers’ Statute (originally written in 1970), so it is now possible to fire workers without any right cause. Only a judge could decide if the workers has been fired on the basis of a right cause, but even if the worker wins the lawsuit (and that’s not sure) he couldn’t take back his former workplace. Italian banks have shown the same cynical approach: they aren’t funding anymore small factories nor citizens who want to buy houses; their variable rates of interests are too high and their bonds aren’t sustainable for the middle class.

Tens of Italian workers, small businessmen and traders fell into a deep crisis with their own families and the rates of suicides for economical reasons is increasing day after day. Thousands of Italians are losing their job, unemployed young people rate has never been so high (36%), and the public sector and retirement pensions are being targeted by new taxes, while bonus for super managers and big assets were left untouched. Some isolated cases (controls on the fiscal renditions of celebrities) in the last two months must be considered as pure forms of propaganda by an ultra-capitalist government which considers public money more important than a worker’s life.

The same for the European Union: this is a political construction built on economical basis decided by bureaucrats that the people of Europe have never chosen nor elected. Southern Europe is now paying the price for the guidelines that the Brussels-Paris-Berlin alliance implemented under the direction of the White House and London. It can be viewed as a giant octopus ruled by lobbies struggling to keep Europe under NATO’s control.

If the present scenario is dark, our perspectives are brighter: the current system known as the so-called «Second Republic», the main responsible for the triumph of the Anglo-Saxon model in Italy (a majority election system based on a duopoly that Italian never truly accepted) has failed and corruption is creating a deep lack of confidence towards all the political parties. After years of fierce struggle, the two main parties (Bersani’s Democratic Party and Berlusconi’s «Popolo della Libertà») support Mario Monti’s government. The opposition (the Northern League, recently stricken by judiciary scandals and the only movement of the Italian parliament opposing Brussel’s policies) has never been so weak.

The Italian people are going to face serious challenge now and in the next future; the liberal guidelines ordered by Brussels are likely to be implemented until the end of the term of office and next elections (May 2013). We must not ignore that some analysts are saying that the elections could be delayed, allowing Mr. Monti’s government to operate for some additional months. The social situation in the country, the conditions of workers, families and retirees will be something to focus on during the next twelve months. May’s administrative elections will be an interesting test to understand what Italians really think of this situation. The lack of credibility that politics, parties and the parliamentary system is suffering could bring a low turnout as a result. As a paradox, this discredit could lead to an increased support for «non-political» personnel, like the current government itself, but people see and know what this government is doing. This is not a «technical government», but the cynical result of the influence shared by Western lobbies, banking system, big private monopolies, NATO, the High Finance and it embodies the extreme and worst trends of the two main political parties.

 

—————-

Grego, Antonio. “Modernization without westernization is the first step to reject imperialism.” Евразия: Международное Евразийское Движение, 18 May 2012. <http://evrazia.org/article/1985 >.

 

Notes on further reading: The concept in the above article has also been expressed by Alexander Dugin in his article “The Multipolar World and the Postmodern”. An academic study over-viewing the theory and development of the process called “modernization without westernization” in Asia can be found in “Modernization without Westernization: Comparative Observations on the Cases of Japan and China and their Relevance to the Development of the Pacific Rim” by Stuart D.B. Picken (NUCB Journal of Economics and Information Science, Vol. 48, No. 2 (2004), pp. 171-179, <http://www.nucba.ac.jp/themes/s_cic@cic@nucba/pdf/njeis482/14PICKEN.pdf > [Alternative download from our website: Modernization without Westernization – Picken]).

An example of a book written from a specifically Chinese perspective on this topic and focusing almost entirely on China (thus it is not a good resource for studies of developments outside of China) is Between Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the Modernization of Chinese Culture by Li Zonggui (Oxford: Chartridge Books Oxford, 2015). A collection of studies and perspectives on this process in various Asian countries can be found in Cultural Identity and Modernization in Asian Countries: Proceedings of Kokugakuin University Centennial Symposium (Tokyo: Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University, 1983. <http://www2.kokugakuin.ac.jp/ijcc/wp/cimac/index.html >.)

 

Advertisements

What is Wrong with Europe? – Dugin

What is wrong with Europe?

By Alexander Dugin

Edited by Daniel Macek

 

In order to understand correctly the nature of the present crisis we need to make short analysis of situation. I suggest three levels:

• Ideologically,
• Economically,
• Geopolitically.

Liberal ideology is the source of problem

Ideologically the problem is liberalism as the unique and only ideology imposed on the Europe and the rest of humanity by the Anglo-Saxon world. Liberalism affirms only individual identity and prohibits any kind of collective or organic identity. So liberalism step by step refuses religion, nation and gender belongingness in order to set individual completely free from any kind of holism. Gender is the core political problem because the liberals insists on the optional nature of gender, a gender as individual choice (before the struggle was around religion as individual choice or nation as individual choice). The other crucial point is immigration. The liberalism refuses to acknowledge religious or cultural identities as well as the gender one: so the immigrant is not considered as the bearer of different identity but as one numerical atomic individual more. Thus liberalism destroys any collective identity. Logically liberalism destroys European identity (with so-called tolerance and human rights theories). Together with intensive destruction of sexual identity it accelerates the end of society as such. The end of Europe is granted by the very fact of acceptance the liberalism as mainstream ideology.

The last step in developing liberalism will be negate human identity as collective one. So welcome to trans-humanism. That is the liberal agenda for tomorrow.

Liberalism is nihilist ideology. It insists on liberty from any kind of collective identity but never suggests something positive. In the past competing wit the totalitarian ideologies – communism or fascism – the liberalism was concrete and attractive because it negated the concrete totalitarianism positing itself as alternative. It was a real alternative. But when the totalitarianisms were overcome, the nihilistic nature of liberalism was revealed. It can only negate. It cannot affirm anything. It is not the ideology of positive freedom, it is ideology of negative liberty. Yesterday it wasn’t so explicit. Now it is.

Liberalismhas turned totalitarian. You do not have  the liberty to be non-liberal. You must be liberal. You can choose to be left liberal or right liberal or centre liberal. You can be – in the extreme case – be far left liberal or far right liberal. But always liberal. If you are judged illiberal by liberals you are finished – labelled as extremist, terrorist and so on. The liberals can tolerate only tolerant people. If you are not tolerant (in liberal sense) you are intolerable.

What can we oppose to liberalism? In XX century there were two options: communism (socialism) and fascism. Both failed historically – politically, philosophically, military, economically. They exist now as simulacra. They are hyper marginal or are manipulated by liberalism: hence the liberal-communism of post-modernists, anarchists and trotskistes, or liberal-fascists serving the liberals to promote their cause exactly as Islamic fundamentalism is used as weapon of USA. So my idea is to oppose to liberalism (first political theory) not second political theory (Marxism), nor third (fascism), but the fourth. I have developed this idea in book The Fourth Political Theory, translated in many languages – in German as well. We need combat liberalism, refusing it and deconstructing it totally. At the same time we need to do so not in the name of the class (as in Marxism) or in the name of nation or race (as in fascism), but in the name of the organic unity of People, social justice and real democracy. Liberals interpret democracy as the rule of minorities. We need to restore the original meaning of the term: the democracy is the rule of the majority, of the organic majority, a majority sharing a common identity – that is the rule of the People as the historic and cultural unity.

Financial capitalism is a catastrophe

Economically the problem is in financial capitalism pretending to overcome the real sector of industry in favour of financial markets technology. Such capitalism is monopolistic and creates bubbles instead of the development of the economic infrastructure. Such economy is based on financial speculations (of the G. Soros type) and cherishes the illusion of infinite growth. That contradicts the reality check. The middle class is not growing anymore. The growth of the financial markets doesn’t correspond to the growth of the real sector. Putting all the attention to financial institutions, promoting the delocalization of the real sector to the Third World countries in the course of the globalization, is the way to the abyss. The first waves of the crisis have already passed, but new waves will be here soon. The economic collapse of the Southern European countries such as Greece, and in the near future Italy and Spain, is only the visible peak of the immense catastrophe. The European unity is based on the full acceptance of the financial capitalism logistic. Only Germany struggles now in order to keep the economy in touch with industrial realities, refusing embark on the train into the nothingness. That is the reason for anti-German hysterics in Europe and in USA. German economy is may be the last real economy, the rest is already virtual economy.

So we need to reconstruct Europe on an alternative economic basis.

The infinite growth is but a liberal illusion. The fall of the middle class is the severe reality. The way out of this is complete revision of the myths of the financial capitalism.

Atlanticism is wrong

Geopolitically, Europe is today an Atlanticist entity. The geopolitics imagined by the Englishman Sir H. Mackinder declares that there are two types of civilizations – the civilization of the Sea (Seapower) and the civilization of the Land (Landpower). They are constructed on opposite systems of values. Seapower is purely mercantile, modernist and materialist. The Landpower is traditionalist, spiritual and heroic. That dualism corresponds to the pair of Werner Sombart’s concept – Händlers (Traders) and Helden (Heroes). Modern European society is fully integrated in the Civilization of the Sea [Seapower]. That is manifested in the North-American strategic hegemony and in NATO.

This situation prevents Europe from becoming an independent geopolitical entity. More profoundly it perverts the geopolitical nature of Europe as a continental entity – a Landpower.

So there is a need to change the situation and to restore the Landpower strategy based on the real European sovereignty. Instead of Atlanticism, Europe needs to become a continental strategic power.

Europa and Russia

If we summarize the points, we can logically deduce where we are in European-Russia relations. The Present Russia is

• Relatively hostile towards liberalism (more traditionalist and conservatively inclined);
• Economically trying to free itself from the dictatorship of the World Bank and WMF;
• Geopolitically continental and anti-Atlanticist.

That is the reason why Russia is under attack – in Ukraine, in Moscow, everywhere. The recent killing of the liberal Boris Nemstsov was a provocation that serves to demonize Russia more and more in the eyes of the West. The liberals, the global financial oligarchy and the Atlanticists (the USA and the financial elite) try to provoke hostility between Russia and Europe, as well as trying to save their shaking rule by promoting ethnic conflicts. The war in Ukraine is the first step in a series of ethnic conflicts on European soil. The global liberal elite plans the ethnic war not only in Ukraine or Russia, but in Germany, France, Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The liberal Empire tries to save their hegemony from falling apart by dividing us.

We need to resist in order to construct better Europe, the truly European Europe. And in such situation, Russia is the friend and the USA is the enemy. We have to work on a Russian-European alliance not because Europeans love Russia or Russians love Europeans. The reason is different; we need to be together in order to save each one of us before the danger that menaces everyone.

I wish you gathering all the best and I would like to add that I appreciate very much the impact of the Zuerst magazine led by the brave Manuel Ochsenreiter and its struggle for a better Germany promoting real European case.

 

—————

Dugin, Alexander. “What is Wrong with Europe?” The Fourth Political Theory, August 2015. <http://www.4pt.su/en/content/what-wrong-europe >.

 

Progressivism as a Surrogate Community – Chen

Progressivism as a Surrogate Community in the United States

By Clare Y. Chen

 

Handle wrote up a great post on how progressivism psychologically serves the human desire for society and community.

I won’t get into summarising it, but I wrote a somewhat lengthy comment that I think merits some further expansion.

Coincidentally, I was thinking about something very similar earlier today. Those individuals who are the most atomised, rootless, and without intimate [face-to-face] social networks are also the most easy to Cathedralise.*

Rightists used to think that leftism was all about an overbearing, banal, and uniform solidarity in the masses, but we didn’t pay enough attention to the fact that the prerequisite was the destruction of fraternal, familial, and ethno-religious bonds. And what better place for that than the great ‘propositional nation’ of America?

You’re young, and you’ve got the whole world out there. Away from home, and on an unfamiliar campus around people in a similar position, where you have no connection to anything. Without existing friendships, it’ll be hard to develop any sense of security that you can really speak your mind and do as you wish.

Break a progressive taboo? No one will stand up for you. The fear of ostracisation and blacklisting would crush an ordinary person. You can atone for your crimes by grovelling before your masters in the Cathedral, begging them for a chance for redemption. But, it’s easier to submit and pay tribute without having the Mongols sack your city first, isn’t it?

Look at what happened to Pax Dickinson. What would an ordinary denizen have done? He would have prostrated himself before the pantheon of progressive deities–feminism, multiculturalism, et al.–repeatedly offering apologies and chanting the prog mantra.

What is especially awful about that affair with Dickinson is the fact that the odious Anil Dash openly wanted to blacklist the former. It’s not enough to shamelessly campaign for his expulsion from his company. No, all things associated with him must be tainted and buried alive. The message is clear to all.

Now, consider the fact that these trends of atomisation are growing worse, and at alarming rates. We haven’t hit rock-bottom yet. More and more children are growing up in broken homes, and have little to no connection with any religious institutions, which are being co-opted and mercifully killed off by the Cathedral anyway.

The Leftist Singularity isn’t even close.

Now, that’s a sobering thought. Progressivism is a murderer who adopts the orphans of his victims and brainwashes them to do his bidding. Call it Stockholm Syndrome, or whatever, it’s all the same.

We neoreactionaries have our work cut out for us. It’s not just an uphill battle, it’s up a hill that also happens to lie where two tectonic plates meet. That’s not to say that it’s wholly hopeless, though. Enough people will reject and defy progressivism, with enough support. You are absolutely correct when you say that community is essential. Let’s continue building one.

Let’s focus on my metaphor that “Progressivism is a murderer who adopts the orphans of his victims and raises them to do his bidding.” Now, Handle points out that ancient states sometimes did this as an easy way of subjugating conquered populations.

It was a common tactic in the brutal ancient world for conquering forces to slay the men and enslave the women and children. Sending them to reeducation camps and giving a decent career path in the Grand Inquisitor’s Grand Bureaucracy is a much more subtle and effective system of control.

Progressivism competes with traditional loyalties–in the old days, we had our various religious, ethno-cultural, and fraternal associations, whether at church, town, or job. There was always a group that someone could relate with.

It’s different now. Religion has become completely irrelevant today. 72% of Millennials identify as the vapid and meaningless label “spiritual but not religious”. Most are actively hostile to the idea of organised religion. There are a myriad of reasons for this, but important factors include America’s Protestant way of looking at religion and the extensive degree to which remaining churches have become co-opted by the Cathedral (cf. “churchianity”).

And, of course, as America is a “propositional nation”, the general trends of ethnocentrism don’t really apply for whites. Apart from some regional cultural festivals that might attract slight curiosity, American whites overwhelmingly have no connection to the Old World. The few sporadic ties shown are more akin to Plastic Paddies than anything authentic. (In any case, American whites almost always consider themselves Americans first, rather than Germans, English, etc.) Even with subconscious identies as whites, American whites have been so bombarbed by propaganda that to dare show any of that is to invite smears of white supremacism, racism, bigotry, et al. ad nauseam.

Plenty has been said on how PC speech and behavioural codes have taken place in workplaces, so I won’t rehash that. Your master isn’t your manager, it’s human resources. Suffice to say that any place where you spend one-third of your weekday, but still must hide your heretical un-PC self behind a façade, will certainly contribute to a sense of social isolation.

The idea of America as an egalitarian, propositional nation is inherently progressive. As all these traditional communal ties have been obliterated as a result of just how ingrained progressivism is in the social fabric of America, there’s initially a vacuum–and nature abhors a vacuum. This is precisely the void that progressivism itself fills.

From birth to death, a person is surrounded by the influences of the Cathedral. A seemingly innocuous children’s show is far from it. Children are in [mostly public] schools for at least 12 or 13 years, and college for generally 4 or more. (If you’re reading this blog, it’s probably not necessary to expound on the awfulness of public schools and the universities.) These all either openly preach progressive ideology, or at least integrate it into its messages, whether through mockery of tradition or through pushing absurd sanctimonious messages. (For example, what the hell is this?)

What I find particularly abhorrent about this is that the periods where a person’s identity is most pliable and uncertain is where progressivism most strongly targets them. It offers them a universal place of belonging, approval, and likemindedness, albeit with certain caveats. These young adults are transplanted to a land isolated from everyone they knew beforehand, all alone.

Who’s going to compete for their loyalties? Their home churches? Certainly not. Progressivism has slain their caretakers and nurturers in the night, and tells them that they were abandoned. Join us, says the Cathedral. We’ll provide for you, should you become one of us.

It’s a bit of a truism that people prefer feeling good to knowing the truth. Therefore, we shouldn’t be the least bit surprised that the atomised and rootless young adults of modernity flock to the gates of the Cathedral, like moths drawn to a flame.

Or, considering how progressivism shapes, subsumes, and uses these individuals, like grey goo.

Now, in what ways can the neoreaction fight this trend? There are tactics that might help, such as attacking the sanctity of going to college, attacking popular culture, or providing alternative sources of information. And then there are, in my opinion, unrealistic goals, such as halting the growth of bastardy, change via political processes, or revival of ethno-religious identities.

Long-term, maybe the neoreaction can work itself into the social fabric of the West. That takes time, and it’s certainly no cakewalk. Without having achieved that first, perhaps the most lucrative source of short-term strength could be a generation of lost wanderers looking for shelter.

There will inevitably be visceral responses–after all, progressivism has become the core identity of many in Generation Y. (For example, anyone who labels themself an “activist” or “advocate” for something.) Expect overwhelming hostility from anyone whose identity is being attacked. So, stand firm and chip away at those foundations! Erode the base enough, and the decrepit structure collapses in on itself.

Expose progressivism as a murderer, and bring its dirty deeds and lies to light. Show its hostages that progressivism killed its parents. Offer your hand, and say, “your progenitors may have been killed off by the very master you now serve, but there’s a chance of honouring their memories and reforging their ways.”

I won’t entertain the thought that there’s some day of reckoning when all of them get over their Stockholm syndrome and reject the deceptive comfort of the Cathedral together, as that’s silly. But for every individual persuaded to discard the pretty lies, the effort and result means everything to them.

————

Added Notes:

* The term “The Cathedral” is used by certain Right-wing writers, especially those belonging to the general group called “Neoreaction.” The term was first used by the internet writer Mencius Moldbug, and can be defined as “the self-organizing consensus of Progressives and Progressive ideology represented by the universities, the media, and the civil service” (quoted from More Right).

 

—————

Chen, Clare Y. “Progressivism as a surrogate community.” Throne, Altar, and Rock ‘n’ Roll, 20 September 2013. <htts://thronealtarandrocknroll.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/progressivism-as-a-surrogate-community/ >.

 

Interview with Alexander Dugin – Tremblay

Against Universalism: An Interview with Alexander Dugin by Rémi Tremblay

 

Editor’s Introductory Note: The following interview conducted with Alexander Dugin is useful because it helps to clarify some of the positions of the Neo-Eurasianists towards the current political structures and towards Western nations. However, as with the majority of Dugin’s interviews, it is rather limited in scope and provides very incomplete or inadequate explanations of certain important topics, which can lead to misunderstandings. For example, the commentaries on “Manifest Destinies” as well as the roots of empires can be misleading for many readers. Furthermore, it is particularly important to note that Dugin’s explanation of the Eurasian political structure in this interview can seem to imply an authoritarian, undemocratic, and rigidly elitist form of government. However, it is important to recall that in many of his works, Dugin has advocated a form of democracy for Eurasian regions based off of the concept of “organic democracy” (also advocated by Alain de Benoist), and has referred to the envisioned Eurasian empire as a “democratic empire.” For that reason, it is more likely that Dugin prefers a mixed political system which combines true democracy with meritocratic aristocratism. In order to fully comprehend Alexander Dugin’s vision, it is necessary to read his other key texts. – Daniel Macek (Editor of the “New European Conservative”)

Interviewer’s Note: My recent articles have been critical of Eurasianism, and have raised a few questions. Alexander Dugin, the author of the two books referred to in my articles, has kindly offered to answer them.

Rémi Tremblay: In the West, Eurasianism seems to seek to ally itself with nationalists. However, in Russia nationalist groups like the ones that support Russia in the West were crushed and repressed. What can Western nationalists learn from that repression?

Alexander Dugin: Eurasianism works with different groups who are against liberalism, North American hegemony and Modernity as a whole. These groups can be right or left. It is most important to be against liberalism and Atlanticism. But Eurasianism is not nationalistic—it is a Fourth Political Theory, ideologically similar to the European New Right of Alain de Benoist.

In the West there are two kinds of nationalists: (1) that characterized as anti-liberal, continental, anti-USA, and traditionalist; and (2) that characterized as pro-liberal, anticommunist, Atlanticist, pro-American and racist (xenophobe). The Eurasianists are willing to work closely with the former, but have little or nothing in common with the latter.

The same situation exists within Russia. There are Eurasian, imperial, traditionalist patriots who mostly support Putin and are loyal to the state, and the pro-liberal, racist, neo-Nazi extremists manipulated by the USA (like the Right Sector in Ukraine). If the latter are repressed, we enjoy it as much as when repression touches the pro-American liberal. They are a fifth column.

But at the same time Eurasianism is not the Third Path, it is the Fourth one. That means we are beyond right and left, as we refuse the materialism of communists (accepting and supporting their anti-capitalist struggle), while at the same time refusing “Nation,” in the spirit of Julius Evola, as a bourgeois concept based on Imperial-style traditionalism. Nations are now destroyed by the same forces that constructed them on the eve of Modernity. They have served their end [undermining] traditional Stände (elites), ethnic culture, and Medieval forms of society, and now are of no further use to the same Masonic, global, anti-traditional elite that created them. So, everybody from left or right is free to transcend their views and pass from the Second Political Theory or from the Third one to the Fourth.

Tremblay: You call for a multipolar world. However, one gets the impression that a bipolar or even a unipolar world would emerge with Eurasianism. Wouldn’t it be logical for Europeans to support an independent Europe, independent from Moscow and Washington?

Dugin: If we say we want to construct a multipolar world and not a unipolar or bipolar one, we are going to do exactly what we declare. The theory of a multipolar world formulated in my books and in the different documents of Eurasian movements shows clearly that we support exactly a Europe totally independent from Washington and from Moscow. We need to have some fully independent Great Spaces (Grossraum)—North American, South American, European, Islamic, African, Russian-Eurasian, Indian, Chinese and Oceanic—that could be allies or foes, depending on the concrete situation. We are totally against unipolarity and North American hegemony, as well as a bipolar system.

Tremblay: The multicultural super-state that you propose as the model for future states has precedents like Yugoslavia, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. Can this model survive without an authoritarian leader? And likewise can multicultural Russia survive in the post-Putin era?

Dugin: The strategically centralized poly-cultural hyper-state is called Empire. Empire should be strong first of all in its ideology, and that ideology cannot be loose or liberal. It should be strong and based on the new aristocracy or ideocracy (as Eurasianists used to say). So, not only an Emperor but also an imperial ideology of a strong idealistic type is needed to grant cohesion to the whole system. I presume that Orthodox Christianity, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Islam are of such types. But they need the spiritual revival. The tri-functional Indo-European model studied by G. Dumezil should be the main platform for the societies of Indo-European origin. The society should be created not from below but from above. The meaning of the State is its spiritual mission. The aristocracy should consist of “Platonic Guards,” philosopher-warriors, that grant unity to the different ethnic groups representing the supra-ethnic elites, as was always the case in historic Empires.

But instead of one liberal, decadent North American financial Empire, there should be different Empires with different imperial visions. The Russian vision is obvious—it has its roots in our organic Orthodox tradition and Russian Eurasian Empire. I presume that the future of Europe lies in the restoration of the Charlemagne heritage and of the eschatological anticipation of the return of King Arthur. Possibly some would hope for the new Roman Empire professed by Virgil, who thought that Apollo would return and this time for eternity.

Tremblay: You claim that non-interventionist politicians like Ron Paul should be supported in the United States. However, you support interventionist politicians in Russia. If non-interventionists take control in the USA and interventionist politicians control the Kremlin, wouldn’t it become a unipolar world directed by Moscow?

Dugin: We have no possibility of exercising unipolarity, nor do we want to. Now there is unipolarity. It should be stopped. Non-interventionists are the only salvation of the USA, which is currently a tool in the hands of an anti-American elite that uses the American people in order to create global government. Without concentrating on inner political problems there will be no USA. The present masters will sacrifice the American people to their globalist agenda.

Russia is on the defense. Globalists attack us on our ground. Where is Ukraine? Is it close to the American borders? No, it is far, far away. But Washington supports Ukrainian liberals and neo-Nazis, pushing them to attack Russia. If some longsighted American politicians see that this is not correct and that it does not serve American interests, they are quite right and are real patriots.

Tremblay: You oppose American Manifest Destiny, but how does Orthodox Messianism differ?

Dugin: We oppose any kind of universalism. USA has its own mission. It is American—North American. Not universal. Manifest Destiny exists, not in the singular but in the plural. We need to use the expression in the plural, Manifest Destinies: American, European (that is quite different), Russian, Islamic, Chinese, and so on. No American dream—liberal and Calvinist—in its secular and materialist version must try to be the only Destiny for all humanity. The American people will pay a terrible price for this titanic presumption. Every great people has its own destiny. The American people are great, but not so great as to be able to deny the greatness of others. The globalist elite that has usurped the power in the USA must repent and surrender this ill-gained dominance.

Tremblay: In Putin Vs Putin, you talk about Putin being moderately Eurasianist based on his first two terms. In light of his third mandate, do you still have this opinion of a half-Western, half-Eurasianist politician?

Dugin: Yes, absolutely. He is half-Eurasianist. He is obliged to be more and more Eurasiniast but that is against his will. He is a liberal-capitalist, but a realist at the same time. Kissinger is much closer to him than we are, but still we support Putin because he will follow the Eurasianist course instead of his own. This is the hard geopolitical logic that binds him, so he will act exactly as we predict, including by the different logic of simply following circumstances and opportunities. He is a realist of pure type. We are not.

Tremblay: In the Great Spaces you propose, Quebec would be part of a bloc otherwise entirely Anglo-Saxon. Wouldn’t that mean the end of our culture and existence as an ethnos in the long term?

Dugin: The Empire conceived in the Eurasianist multipolar vision is never unidimensional, unlike modern nations. They should respect pluralism—ethnic and cultural. There are no fully homogeneous spaces. In Russia we have Muslims, Caucasians, Tartars, Siberians, Finno-Ugrians and so on. North America was built by Anglo-Saxons, Irish, French and Spanish with certain participation from other European nations, notably German, so I suggest the return to the ethnic organization: French Quebec should be French and so on. However, this should not be achieved in the process of creating a new national state, but cultural rights should be granted in the geopolitical context by the Imperial Constitution.

 

—————–

Dugin, Alexander. An Interview with Alexander Dugin: Against Universalism.” Interview by Rémi Tremblay. Alternative Right, 21 May 2015. <http://alternative-right.blogspot.com/2015/05/an-interview-with-alexander-dugin.html >.

Review of Alexander Dugin’s Putin vs. Putin – Tremblay

Review of Alexander Dugin’s Putin vs. Putin

By Rémi Tremblay

 

Putin Vs. Putin: Vladimir Putin Viewed from the Right
by Alexander Dugin
Arktos Publishing, 316 pages

 

Few leaders evoke as much fascination as Vladimir Putin. In a world led by mediocrities like Barack Obama, David Cameron, Stephen Harper, and the other poltroons of political correctness and monotone rhetoric, the athletic and mysterious Russian president stands out.

Enigmatic, strong, and unapologetic, this former judo expert and secret service agent has many in the West wondering who Vladimir Putin really is. Still, despite its title, Putin Vs Putin: Vladimir Putin Viewed from the Right was not written in order to answer these questions or even to describe Putin’s reign, but rather it was written to give a Eurasianist critique of the Russian president and his achievements.

This man, born in Saint-Petersburg, became the interim president of Russia in 1999, at the climax of the Yeltsin era, a period known in Russia not only for its corruption, but also for its liberal policies and its opening up to the Western world. In Moscow, the liberal oligarchs, who had built their fortunes at the expense of ordinary Russians when the USSR collapsed, were in power. Simply put, they were above the law. Yeltsin was their toy and, seeing his inevitable downfall, they decided to support Putin, believing that his patriotism and populism were only facades that could serve to bolster their power. Like his predecessor, they were sure, he would become their puppet.

Putin’s muscular intervention in Chechnya during his first year as president brought him the legitimacy his predecessor never enjoyed, and helped him build a trademark of manly patriotism. The oligarchs who pushed him to become president, like Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich, and Alexander Mamut, soon realized their mistake, and the relationship between them and their protégé soon soured.

Putin never denounced the oligarchs as a whole, and the liberal tendency they supported in Moscow remains powerful, despite a lack of popularity among the general population. But Putin at least managed to put a few in check by taking back what they had stolen, jailing some, and forcing others to take the road to exile.

Putin’s first term saw many achievements that fitted the Eurasianist agenda, policies it should be noted that were backed by the population. He took the media out of the hands of the most notorious oligarchs, prevented Russia’s disintegration, reformed the Federation Council, introduced the rigid structure of the federal districts, and so on. But between election periods, Putin has proved to be quite liberal and even conciliatory towards the West.

In 2003, Putin started asserting Russia’s sovereignty. He refused to join the American invasion of Iraq, instead siding with Paris and Berlin in opposition to it. This assertion of sovereignty, at first implicit, became resoundingly explicit at his 2007 Munich speech, when he demanded the end of unipolarity and called for a multipolar world.

On this basis, the Russian president engaged in independent and active geopolitics, signing many treaties and pacts with other Eurasian countries, including the Eurasian Economic Community, the Common Free Market Zone, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. However, Dugin regrets that those treaties and alliances are generally based on economics rather than a common worldview or a common historic destiny.

His strong actions made a break with the weakness of the Yeltsin years. Putin himself came to embody Russia in the same way that Louis XIV did France, when he declared, L’etat c’est moi (I am the state). He managed to eliminate the opposition around him: the liberal oligarchs, the leftists, and, it must be added, the ultranationalists. The creation of this void around himself was encouraged by the population, who, having never known democracy, demanded instead an effective authoritarian leader.

In 2008, after two consecutive terms, Putin had to step down due to constitutional limits. Dimitri Medvedev, a pro-Western liberal, replaced him.

Despite what many people feared, Medvedev’s term did not weaken Putin’s legacy nor change the outlook of the Russian state. Instead this partial return to the failed policies of the Yeltsin era, which was encouraged by the Obama administration, prepared the way for Putin’s return to the Presidency in 2012. However, this is something that has left many questions unanswered.

As he moves through his third term, Putin must realize that he has essentially failed. Economically, his few improvised policies, lacking proper planning, have seen the economy grow. But he has not solved the most important problem: Russia still does not have a real economy. Many fields, notably in the high-tech sector, have yet to be developed. Immigration and corruption are growing concerns, and, even in the field of geopolitics, he has failed. Despite some minor successes, Putin has failed to stop NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe. Several pro-American governments have been established in neighboring countries such as Georgia and Ukraine.

According to Dugin, Putin is far from the image of the hardcore nationalist created by Western media propaganda. He is a man of halves: half-liberal, half-Eurasianist. He has made many steps in the right direction, but somehow he never seems to reach the end goal. Putin is essentially a realist, as defined by Machiavelli and Carl Schmitt. He has not found an ideology, but rather reacts instinctively to events and circumstances.

Despite his flaws, Putin is, according to Dugin, the best leader possible; especially when compared to the standard Western politician.

Putin Vs Putin: Vladimir Putin Viewed from the Right is not a biography but a Eurasianist analysis of Putin’s reign and of the challenges to be overcome in the future. It is an excellent introduction to Russian politics, thanks to the many footnotes, which introduce the main protagonists of the Russian political scene and the many influences at work in Moscow.

 

—————-

Tremblay, Rémi. “Putin vs. Putin: Eurasianism and Beyond.” Alternative Right, 15 May 2015. <http://alternative-right.blogspot.com/2015/05/putin-vs-putin-eurasianism-and-beyond.html >.

 

The Turning Point? – Benoist

The Turning Point?

By Alain de Benoist

Translated from the French by Tom Sunic

 

Centuries never immediately acquire a character that can reward them with a right spot in history. Thus the 20^th century did not really start until 1914. Will the 21^st century be labeled as “the 2015 century”? Without wishing to predict the future, which remains by definition unpredictable, we can try to look at today’s events, which in turn, can help us sketch the general framework of the future. One thing remains certain though: never has the world been so uncertain, never have we witnessed such across -the -board upheavals. In each domain decks of cards are being shuffled and reshuffled. With the old issues disappearing, new ones keep popping up on the horizon. Which are these main driving forces?

The background scene is pretty well known by all. Among the major problems emerging in the coming decades, four, at least, will prove to be crucial: the inevitable depletion of natural resources; the future of international migrations and inter-ethnic relations; the rise of new types of warfare (war for oil and war for water, space warfare, and cyber warfare), including the planned merging of electronics and living beings. What about the rest of the things?

Will the 21st century be a Eurasian century? The United States has obsessive fear of seeing an assertive China-Russia alliance as a prelude to the constitution of a large continental bloc. Having been embarked on a series of geopolitical wars of aggression, it will do everything to encircle China and Russia, to impose the Trans-Atlantic “Free Trade” Agreement designed primarily to cut off Europe from Russia, to manipulate artificially the price of oil, and it will do so with its habitual brutality based on the principle: “If you are not our vassals, you are against us.” Events in Ukraine, a country which is the real geostrategic pivot of Eurasia, have already helped reactivate the Cold War — which had never really come to an end in the first place. The Maidan Square “revolution” has been from the outset more anti-Russian than pro-European, but it was the Americans who eventually drew benefit from it. The United States is prepared for anything, absolutely anything in order to uphold its status of “the indispensable nation.”

“De-Americanization of the World”

Russia, for its part, is seeking to implement a new geopolitical axis with Beijing and Tehran, a factor of multipolar balance of power opposed to the Atlanticist endeavors. The Chinese, after long procrastination, are no longer hiding their desire to “de- Americanize the world.” Yet, the future of Russia, a great power, albeit still fragile, in a similar way as China, with its own inner contradictions, remains uncertain. Countries of Eastern Europe are still hesitant as to which path to follow—all the more so as Germany is seeking to replace the former USSR as a federating factor in Eastern and Central Europe.

We are witnessing a restructuring of the forms of world domination. The United States, with its financial markets, its armed forces, its language and its culture industries remains the leading world power. Its economic impact, however, is decreasing bit by bit (its share of global industrial output has fallen from 45% in 1945 to 17.5% today), with the dollar representing today only a third of world trade in comparison to more than a half in 2000. The process of “de- dollarization” has already and simultaneously begun, in oil and gas trading and on the monetary front. Russia and China, emulated by other Third World countries, are using more and more their national currencies in trade and investment. The project of trade in energy and raw materials, without resorting to the dollar, is beginning to take shape. Meanwhile, the purchase of gold is gathering momentum. The advent of a new international reserve currency, designed to replace the dollar, seems inevitable.

The total debt of the United States has now reached a staggering $60 trillion figure (400% of GDP. i.e. public debt, private debt, corporate debt and household debt), which, for all intent and purposes, is no longer repayable. Other nations, trapped in the cauldron of debt, also run the risk of default. As a leading figure of a growth company, albeit with no growth in sight, Europe, which is already on the brink of recession, appears now to be close to collapse. The crisis of 2008 was only a dress rehearsal. A bubble in government bonds of all OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries keeps swelling. There are today over 100 trillion dollars’ worth of bonds and more than 555 trillion dollars in derivatives. What will happen when this “bond bubble” burst?

Self-Destruction of Capitalism

The fact of the matter is that capitalism has become incapable of continuing the “development of its logic within the framework shaped ironically by the logic of its own development” (Francis Cousin). To offset its declining level of performance, capitalism must constantly increase the volume of its profit, that is to say, it must constantly expand the scope of its trade opportunities. In order to insure, however, the free flow of goods and commodities, it must raise its productivity level, which in turn means lowering the share of living labor that has been domesticated through the wage labor system. Hence the proliferation of “superfluous people” — i.e., the unemployed. How to sell ever more and more to customers who are being forced to earn less and less with their wages? Conversely, how to deal with the zero marginal costs of digital goods and services? Capitalism is now facing the fundamental problem of the devaluation of capital value. The flight into the loan system and into calculated obsolescence, followed by the race into financial speculation and “derivatives,” has its limits. The model of consumerism through credit is coming to an end. Having destroyed everything, capitalism, just like a scorpion, is bound to destroy itself.

Saturation of the market, the explosion of debt, the downward trend in the rate of profit, the decline of Europe, the widespread rise of false consciousness, the activation of a sub-chaotic process of de-civilization — the world seems to have entered into an implosive and terminal stage. Can we get out of it other than by war?

It is no longer unreasonable to think that the war is approaching and that it will be a new world war. This will not be a “clash of civilizations” (for this to happen one needs some civilizations), nor a war between “Islam” and the “West.” Again it will be a war between the East and the West. A “final battle” between the powers of the Earth and the powers of the Sea, between the continental powers and thalassocratic powers, between the money system and the principle of reality. NATO, which has become an offensive military alliance servicing the American wars, remains the most threatening coalition to world peace. A sign went out when Vladimir Putin was labeled by the Americans as the main enemy. On December 4, 2014, the House of Representatives passed a resolution amounting to the declaration of war against Russia. The alternative is war.

 

—————-

De Benoist, Alain. “The Turning Point?” The Occidental Observer, 21 February 2015. <http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/02/the-turning-point/ >.

 

The War on Russia – Dugin

The War on Russia in Its Ideological Dimension: An Analysis from the Perspective of the Fourth Political Theory

By Alexander Dugin

(Edited by John B. Morgan, Editor-in-Chief, Arktos Media)

 

The coming war as concept

The war against Russia is currently the most discussed issue in the West. At this point it is only a suggestion and a possibility, but it can become a reality depending on the decisions taken by all parties involved in the Ukrainian conflict – Moscow, Washington, Kiev, and Brussels.

I don’t want to discuss all the aspects and history of this conflict here. Instead I propose to analyze its deep ideological roots. My conception of the most relevant events are based on the Fourth Political Theory, whose principles I have described in my book under the same name that was published in English by Arktos Media in 2012.

Therefore I will not examine the war of the West on Russia in terms of its risks, dangers, issues, costs or consequences, but rather in an ideological sense as seen from the global perspective. I will therefore meditate on the sense of such a war, and not on the war itself (which may be either real or virtual).

Essence of liberalism

In the modern West, there is one ruling, dominant ideology – liberalism. It may appear in many shades, versions and forms, but the essence is always the same. Liberalism contains an inner, fundamental structure which follows axiomatic principles:

• Anthropological individualism (the individual is the measure of all things);
• Belief in progress (the world is heading toward a better future, and the past is always worse than the present);
• Technocracy (technical development and its execution are taken as the most important criteria by which to judge the nature of a society);
• Eurocentrism (Euro-American societies are accepted as the standard of measure for the rest of humanity);
• Economy as destiny (the free market economy is the only normative economic system – all the rest types are to either be reformed or destroyed);
• Democracy is the rule of minorities (defending themselves from the majority, which is always prone to degenerate into totalitarianism or “populism”);
• The middle class is the only really existing social actor and universal norm (independent from the fact of whether or not an individual has already reached this status or is on the way to becoming actually middle class, representing for the moment only a would-be middle class);
• One-world globalism (human beings are all essentially the same with only one distinction, namely that of their individual nature – the world should be integrated on the basis of the individual and cosmopolitism; in other words, world citizenship).

These are the core values of liberalism, and they are a manifestation of one of the three tendencies that originated in the Enlightenment alongside communism and fascism, which collectively proposed varying interpretations of the spirit of modernity. During the twentieth century, liberalism defeated its rivals, and since 1991 has become the sole, dominant ideology of the world.

The only freedom of choice in the kingdom of global liberalism is that between Right liberalism, Left liberalism or radical liberalism, including far-Right liberalism, far-Left liberalism and extremely radical liberalism. As a consequence, liberalism has been installed as the operational system of Western civilization and of all other societies that find themselves in the zone of Western influence. It has become the common denominator for any politically correct discourse, and the distinguishing mark which determines who is accepted by mainstream politics and who is marginalized and rejected. Conventional wisdom itself became liberal.

Geopolitically, liberalism was inscribed in the America-centered model in which Anglo-Saxons formed the ethnical core, based upon the Atlanticist Euro-American partnership, NATO, which represents the strategic core of the system of global security. Global security has come to be seen as being synonymous with the security of the West, and in the last instance with American security. So liberalism is not only an ideological power but also a political, military and strategic power. NATO is liberal in its roots. It defends liberal societies, and it fights to extend liberalism to new areas.

Liberalism as nihilism

There is one point in liberal ideology that has brought about a crisis within it: liberalism is profoundly nihilistic at its core. The set of values defended by liberalism is essentially linked to its main thesis: the primacy of liberty. But liberty in the liberal vision is an essentially negative category: it claims to be free from (as per John Stuart Mill), not to be free for something. It is not secondary; it is the essence of the problem.

Liberalism fights against all forms of collective identity, and against all types of values, projects, strategies, goals, methods and so on that are collectivist, or at least non-individualist. That is the reason why one of the most important theorists of liberalism, Karl Popper (following Friedrich von Hayek), held in his important book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, that liberals should fight against any ideology or political philosophy (ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Marx and Hegel) that suggests that human society should have some common goal, common value, or common meaning. (It should be noted that George Soros regards this book as his personal bible.) Any goal, any value, and any meaning in liberal society, or the open society, should be strictly based upon the individual. So the enemies of the open society, which is synonymous with Western society post-1991, and which has become the norm for the rest of the world, are concrete. Its primary enemies are communism and fascism, both ideologies which emerged from the same Enlightenment philosophy, and which contained central, non-individualistic concepts – class in Marxism, race in National Socialism, and the national State in fascism). So the source of liberalism’s conflict with the existing alternatives of modernity, fascism or communism, is quite obvious. Liberals claim to liberate society from fascism and communism, or from the two major permutations of explicitly non-individualistic modern totalitarianism. Liberalism’s struggle, when viewed as a part of the process of the liquidation of non-liberal societies, is quite meaningful: it acquires its meaning from the fact of the very existence of ideologies that explicitly deny the individual as society’s highest value. It is quite clear what the struggle opposes: liberation from its opposite. But the fact that liberty, as it is conceived by liberals, is an essentially negative category is not clearly perceived here. The enemy is present and is concrete. That very fact gives liberalism its solid content. Something other than the open society exists, and the fact of its existence is enough to justify the process of liberation.

Unipolar period: threat of implosion

In 1991, when the Soviet Union as the last opponent of Western liberalism fell, some Westerners, such as Francis Fukuyama, proclaimed the end of history. This was quite logical: as there was no longer an explicit enemy of the open society, therefore there was no more history as had occurred during the modern period, which was defined by the struggle between three political ideologies (liberalism, communism and fascism) for the heritage of the Enlightenment. That was, strategically speaking, the moment when “unipolar moment” was realized (Charles Krauthammer). The period between 1991 and 2014, at the midpoint of which Bin Laden’s attack against the World Trade Center occurred, was the period of the global domination of liberalism. The axioms of liberalism were accepted by all the main geopolitical actors, including China (in economic terms) and Russia (in its ideology, economy, and political system). There were liberals and would-be liberals, not-yet liberals, not-liberal-enough liberals and so on. The real and explicit exceptions were few (such as Iran and North Korea). So the world became axiomatically liberal according to its ideology.

This has been the most important moment in the history of liberalism. It has defeated its enemies, but at the same time it has lost them. Liberalism is essentially the liberation from and the fight against all that is not liberal (at present or in what has the potential to become such). Liberalism acquired its real meaning and its content from its enemies. When the choice is presented as being between not-freedom (as represented by concrete totalitarian societies) or freedom, many choose freedom, not understanding it in terms of freedom for what, or freedom to do what… When there is an illiberal society, liberalism is positive. It only begins to show its negative essence after victory.

After the victory of 1991, liberalism stepped into its implosive phase. After having defeated communism as well as fascism, it stood alone, with no enemy to fight. And that was the moment when inner conflicts emerged, when liberal societies began to attempt to purge themselves of their last remaining non-liberal elements: sexism, politically incorrectness, inequality between the sexes, any remnants of the non-individualistic dimensions of institutions such as the State and the Church, and so on. Liberalism always needs an enemy to liberate from. Otherwise it loses its purpose, and its implicit nihilism becomes too salient. The absolute triumph of liberalism is its death.

That is the ideological meaning of the financial crises of 2000 and of 2008. The successes and not the failures of the new, entirely profit-based economy (of turbocapitalism, according to Edward Luttwak) are responsible for its collapse. The liberty to do anything you want, but restricted to the individual scale, provokes an implosion of the personality. The human passes to the infra-human realm, and to sub-individual domains. And here he encounters virtuality, as a dream of sub-individuality, the freedom from anything. This is the evaporation of the human, and brings about the Empire of nothingness as the last word in the total victory of liberalism. Postmodernism prepares the terrain for that post-historic, self-referential recycling of non-sense.

The West is in need of an enemy

You may ask now, what the Hell does all of this have to do with the (presumable) coming war with Russia? I am ready to answer that now.

Liberalism has continued to gain momentum on a global scale. Since 1991, it has been an inescapable fact. And it has now begun to implode. It has arrived at its terminal point and started to liquidate itself. Mass immigration, the clash of cultures and civilizations, the financial crisis, terrorism, and the growth of ethnic nationalism are indicators of approaching chaos. This chaos endangers the established order: any kind of order, including the liberal order itself. The more liberalism succeeds, the faster it approaches its end and the end of the present world. Here we are dealing with the nihilistic essence of liberal philosophy, with nothingness as the inner (me)ontological principle of freedom-from. The German anthropologist Arnold Gehlen justly defined the human as a “deprived being,” or Mangelwesen. Man in himself is nothing. It takes all that comprises its identity from society, history, people, and politics. So if he returns to his pure essence, he can no longer recognize anything. The abyss is hidden behind the fragmented debris of feelings, vague thoughts, and dim desires. The virtuality of sub-human emotions is a thin veil; behind it there is pure darkness. So the explicit discovery of this nihilistic basis of human nature is the last achievement of liberalism. But that is the end, and the end also for those who use the liberalism for their own purposes and who are beneficiaries of liberal expansion; in other words, the masters of globalization. Any and all order collapses in such an emergency of nihilism: the liberal order, too.

In order to rescue the rule of this liberal elite, they need to take a certain step back. Liberalism will reacquire its meaning only when it is confronted once more with non-liberal society. This step back is the only way to save what remains of order, and to save liberalism from itself. Therefore, Putin’s Russia appears on its horizon. Modern Russia is not anti-liberal, not totalitarian, not nationalist, and not communist, nor is it yet too liberal, fully liberal-democrat, sufficiently cosmopolite, or so radically anti-communist. It is rather on the way to becoming liberal, step by step, within the process of a Gramscian adjustment to global hegemony and the subsequent transformation this entails (“transformismo” in Gramscian language).

However, in the global agenda of liberalism as represented by the United States and NATO, there is a need for another actor, for another Russia that would justify the order of the liberal camp, and help to mobilize the West as it threatens to break apart from inner strife. This will delay the irruption of liberalism’s inner nihilism and thus save it from its inevitable end. That is why they badly need Putin, Russia, and war. It is the only way to prevent chaos in the West and to save what remains of its global and domestic order. In this ideological play, Russia would justify liberalism’s existence, because that is the enemy which would give a meaning to the struggle of the open society, and which would help it to consolidate and continue to affirm itself globally. Radical Islam, such as represented by al-Qaeda, was another candidate for this role, but it lacked sufficient stature to become a real enemy. It was used, but only on a local scale. It justified the intervention in Afghanistan, the occupation of Iraq, the overthrow of Gaddafi, and started a civil war in Syria, but it was too weak and ideologically primitive to represent the real challenge that is needed by liberals.

Russia, the traditional geopolitical enemy of Anglo-Saxons, is much more serious as an opponent. It fits the needed role extremely well – the memory of the Cold War is still fresh in many minds. Hate for Russia is an easy thing to provoke by relatively simple means. This is why I think that war with Russia is possible. It is ideologically necessary as the last means to postpone the final implosion of the liberal West. It is the needed “one step back.”

To save the liberal order

Considering the different layers of this concept of a possible war with Russia, I suggest a few points:

1. A war with Russia will help to delay the coming disorder on a global scale. The majority of the countries that are involved in the liberal economy, and which share the axioms and institutions of liberal democracy, and which are either dependent upon or directly controlled by the United States and NATO, will forge a common front once more behind the cause of the liberal West in its quest to oppose the anti-liberal Putin. This will serve to reaffirm liberalism as a positive identity when this identity is beginning to dissolving as a result of the manifestation of its nihilistic essence.
2. A war with Russia would strengthen NATO and above all its European members, who will be obliged once more to regard American hyperpower as something positive and useful, and the old Cold War stance will no longer seem obsolete. Out of a fear of the coming of the “evil Russians”, Europeans will again feel loyal to the United States as their protector and savior. As a result, the leading role of the U.S. in NATO will be reaffirmed.
3. The EU is falling apart. The supposed “common threat” of the Russians could prevent it from an eventual split, mobilizing these societies and making their peoples once again eager to defend their liberties and values under the threat of Putin’s “imperial ambitions”.
4. The Ukraine junta in Kiev needs this war to justify and conceal all the misdeeds they carried out during the Maidan protests on both the juridical and constitutional levels, thus allowing them to suspend democracy, that would impede their rule in the southeastern, mostly pro-Russian districts and would enable them to establish their authority and nationalistic order through extra-parliamentary means.

The only country that doesn’t want war now is Russia. But Putin cannot let the radically anti-Russian government in Ukraine to dominate a country that has a population that is half-Russian and which contains many pro-Russian regions. If he allows this, he will be finished on the international and domestic levels. So, reluctantly, he accepts war. And once he begins on this course, there will be no other solution for Russia but to win it.

I don’t like to speculate regarding the strategic aspects of this coming war. I leave that to other, more qualified analysts. Instead I would like to formulate some ideas concerning the ideological dimension of this war.

Framing Putin

The meaning of this war on Russia is in essence the last effort of globalist liberalism to save itself from implosion. As such, liberals need to define Putin’s Russia ideologically – and obviously identify it with the enemy of the open society. But in the dictionary of modern ideologies there are only three primary iterations: liberalism, communism and fascism. It is quite clear that liberalism is represented by all the nations involved in this conflict except for Russia (the United States, the NATO member states, and Euromaidan/the Kiev junta). This leaves only communism and fascism. Therefore Putin is made out to be a “neo-Soviet revanchist” and a “return of the KGB”. This is the picture that is being sold to the most stupid sort of Western public. But some aspects of the patriotic reaction emanating from the pro-Russian and anti-Banderite population (i.e., the defense of Lenin’s monuments, Stalin portraits and memorials to the Soviet involvement in the Second World War) could confirm this idea in the minds of this public. Nazism and fascism are too far removed from Putin and the reality of modern Russia, but Russian nationalism and Russian imperialism will be evoked within the image of the Great Evil that is being drawn. Therefore Putin is being made out to be a “radical nationalist”, a fascist and an “imperialist”. This will work on many Westerners. Under this logic, Putin can be both “communist” and “fascist” at the same time, so he will be depicted as a “National Bolshevik” (although this is a little bit too complicated for the postmodern Western public). It is obvious that in reality, Putin is neither – he is not a Communist nor a fascist, nor both simultaneously. He is a political pragmatist in the realm of International Relations – this is why he admires Kissinger, and why Kissinger likes him in return. He has no ideology whatsoever. But he will be obliged to embrace the ideological frame that he has been assigned. It is not his choice. But such are the rules of the game. In the course of this war on Russia, Putin will be framed in this way, and that is the most interesting and important aspect of this situation.

The main idea that liberals will try to advance to define Putin ideologically will be as the shadow of the past, as a vampire: “Sometimes they come back.” That is the rationale behind this attempt to prevent the final implosion of liberalism. The primary message is that liberalism is still alive and vital because there is something in the world that we all must be liberated from. Russia will become the object from which it must be liberated. The goal is first to liberate Ukraine, and by extension Europe and the rest of humanity, who will likewise be depicted as being under threat, from Russia, and in the end Russia itself will be said to be in need of rescue from its own non-liberal identity. So now we have an enemy. Such an enemy gives to the liberalism its raison d’être once more. So Russia is being made out to be a challenger from the pre-liberal past thrown into the liberal present. Without such a challenge there is no more life in liberalism, no more order in the world, and everything associated with them will dissolve and implode. With this challenge, the falling giant of globalism acquires new vigor. Russia is here to save the liberals.

But in order for this to happen, Russia is being ideologically framed as something pre-liberal. She must be either communist, fascist or at perhaps National Bolshevist Russia. That is the ideological rule. Therefore, in fighting with Russia, or in considering to fight her, or in not fighting her, there is a deeper task – to frame Russia ideologically. It will be done from both the inside and the outside. They will try to force Russia to accept either communism or extreme nationalism, or else they will simply treat Russia as if it were these things. It is a framing game.

Post-liberal Russia: The first war of the Fourth Political Theory

In conclusion, what I propose is the following:

We need to consciously counter any provocation to frame Russia as a pre-liberal power. We need to refuse to allow the liberals to save themselves from their fast-approaching end. Rather than helping them to delay it, we need to accelerate it. In order to do this, we need to present Russia not as a pre-liberal entity but as a post-liberal revolutionary force that struggles for an alternative future for all the peoples of the planet. The Russian war will be not only be for Russian national interests, but will be in the cause of a just multipolar world, for real dignity and for real, positive freedom – not (nihilistic) freedom from but (creative) freedom for. In this war, Russia will set an example as the defender of Tradition, conservative organic values, and will represent real liberation from the open society and its beneficiaries – the global financial oligarchy. This war is not against Ukrainians or even against part of the Ukrainian populace. Nor is it against Europe. It is against the liberal world (dis)order. We are not going to save liberalism, per their designs. We are going to kill it once and for all. Modernity was always essentially wrong, and we are now at the terminal point of modernity. For those who rendered modernity and their own destiny synonymous, or who let that occur unconsciously, this will mean the end. But for those who are on the side of eternal truth and of Tradition, of faith, and of the spiritual and immortal human essence, it will be a new beginning, ABSOLUTE BEGINNING.

The most important fight at present is the fight for the Fourth Political Theory. It is our weapon, and with it we are going to prevent the liberals from realizing their wish of framing Putin and Russia in their own manner, and in so doing we will reaffirm Russia as the first post-liberal ideological power struggling against nihilistic liberalism for the sake of an open, multipolar and genuinely free future.

 

—————-

Dugin, Alexander. “The War on Russia in Its Ideological Dimension: An Analysis from the Perspective of the Fourth Political Theory.” Open Revolt, 11 March 2014. <http://openrevolt.info/2014/03/11/alexander-dugin-the-war-on-russia-in-its-ideological-dimension/ >.

 

Geopolitics of Leviathan – Rix

Geopolitics of Leviathan

By Edouard Rix

Translated by Greg Johnson

 

“Nur Meer und Erde haben hier Gewicht.”
(Only sea and land matter here.)
—Goethe

This article is less concerned with geopolitics than with thalassopolitics, a neologism coined by professor Julien Freund “to call into question certain conceptions of geopolitics that privilege telluric phenomena over maritime phenomena.”

“World history is the history of the fight of maritime powers against continental powers and of continental powers against maritime powers” writes Carl Schmitt in Land and Sea. [1]

In the Middle Ages, the cabbalists interpreted the history of the world as a combat between the powerful whale, Leviathan, and the no less powerful Behemoth, a land animal imagined as looking like an elephant or a bull. [2] Behemoth tries to tear Leviathan with its defenses, its horns or its teeth, while Leviathan, for its part, tries to stop with its fins the mouth and the nose of the land animal to starve or suffocate it. A mythological allegory not unrelated to the blockade of a terrestrial power by a maritime power.

The “Sea Power” of Admiral Mahan

Around the turn of the 20th century, the American Alfred T. Mahan in The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), the German Friedrich Ratzel in Das Meer als quelle der Volkergrösse [The Sea as Source of National Greatness] (1900), and the British Halford John Mackinder in Britain and the British Seas (1902), attach a paramount importance to the sea as source of power of the nations.

Admiral, historian, and professor at the US Naval Academy, Alfred T. Mahan (1840–1914) is the most famous geopolitician of the sea, his work comprising twenty books and 137 articles. On the basis of the study of European History of the 17th and 18th centuries, he sought to show how maritime power (Sea Power) appeared determinative of the growth and prosperity of nations.

For him, the sea can act against the land, whereas the reverse is not true and, in the long run, the sea always ends up winning any fight against the land. Mahan is deeply persuaded that the control of the seas ensures the domination of the land, which he summarizes with the formula “the Empire of the sea is without any doubt the Empire of the world.” [3] By thus affirming the intrinsic superiority of the maritime empires, he offers a theoretical justification to imperialism, the great expansionist movement of the years 1880–1914.

In The Problem of Asia, published in 1900, Mahan applies his geopolitical paradigm to Asia, insisting on the need for a coalition of maritime powers to contain the progression towards the open sea of the great terrestrial power of the time, Russia. Indeed, he stresses that its central position confers a great strategic advantage on the Russian Empire, because it can extend in all directions, and its internal lines cannot be crossed.

On the other hand—and here lies its principal weakness—its access to the sea is limited, Mahan seeing only three possible axes of expansion: toward Europe, to circumvent the Turkish blockade of the straits, toward the Persian Gulf, and toward the China Sea. This is why the admiral recommends damming up the Russian tellurocracy through the creation of a vast alliance of the maritime powers, thalassocracies, which would include the United States, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan, the Americans asserting themselves as the leaders of this new Holy Alliance.

Halford John Mackinder

Inspired by Admiral Mahan, the British academic Halford John Mackinder (1861–1947) also believed that the fundamental geopolitical reality is the opposition between continental powers and maritime powers. A fundamental idea run throughout his work: the permanent confrontation between the Heartland, i.e. the central-Asian steppe, and the World Island, the continental mass Asia-Africa-Europe.

In 1887, Mackinder delivered a short public speech to the Royal Geographical Society that marked his resounding debut on the geopolitical stage, declaring in particular “there are two types of conquerors today: land wolves and sea wolves.” Behind this allegorical and somewhat enigmatic utterance is the concrete reality of Anglo-Russian competition in Central Asia. In fact, Mackinder was obsessed by the safety of the British Empire vis-à-vis the rise of Germany and Russia. In 1902, in Britain and the British Seas, he noted the decline of Great Britain and concluded from it that she must “divide the burden” with the United States, which would take over sooner or later.

In his famous essay of 1904, “The Geographical Pivot of History,” he formulates his geopolitical theory. One can summarize it in two principal points: (1) Russia occupies the pivotal zone inaccessible to maritime power, from which it can undertake to conquer and control the Eurasian continental mass, (2) against Russia, maritime power, starting from its bastions (Great Britain, the United States, South Africa, Australia, and Japan) that are inaccessible to terrestrial power, encircles the latter and prohibits her from freely reaching the open sea.

Studying the “pre-Colombian” epoch, Mackinder contrasted the Slavs, who inhabited the forests, with the nomadic riders of the steppes. This semi-desert Asian steppe is the Heartland, surrounded by two densely populated crescents: the inner crescent, encompassing India, China, Japan, and Europe, which are territorially adjacent to the Heartland, and the outer crescent, made up of various islands. The inner crescent is regularly subject to the pressures of nomadic horsemen from the steppes of the Heartland.

Everything changed in the “Colombian” age, which saw the confrontation of two mobilities, that of England which began the conquest of the seas, and that of Russia which advanced gradually in Siberia. For the academic Mackinder, this double European expansion, maritime and continental, found its explanation in the opposition between Rome and Greece. Indeed, he affirms that the Germans were civilized and Christianized by the Roman, the Slavs by the Greeks, and that whereas the Romano-Germans conquered the oceans, the Slavs seized the steppes on horseback.

Mackinder made the separation between Byzantine and Western Empires in 395, exacerbated by the Great Schism between Byzantium and Rome in 1054, the nodal point of this opposition. He emphasized that after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, Moscow proclaimed itself the new center of Orthodoxy (the Third Rome). According to him, in the 20th century, this religious antagonism will lead to an ideological antagonism, between Communism and capitalism: Russia, heiress of the Slavic country village community, the Mir, will choose Communism, the West, whose religious practice privileges individual salvation, for capitalism . . .

For Mackinder, the opposition Land/Sea is likely to lean in favor of the land and Russia. Mackinder noted that if the United Kingdom could send an army of 500,000 to South Africa at the time of the Boer Wars, a performance saluted by all the partisans of the maritime power, Russia at the same time had succeeded in an even more exceptional exploit by maintaining an equivalent number of soldiers in the Far East, thousands of kilometers of Moscow, thanks to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. With the railroad, the terrestrial power was henceforth able to deploy its forces as quickly as the oceanic power.

Enthralled by this revolution in land transportation, which would make it possible for Russia to develop an industrialized space that is autonomous from and closed to trade with the thalassocracies, Mackinder predicted the end of the “Colombian” age and concluded that the telluric power is superior, summarizing his thought in a striking aphorism: “Whoever holds continental Europe controls the Heartland. Whoever holds the Heartland controls the World Island.”

Indeed, any economic autonomy in central-Asian space leads automatically to a reorganization of the flow of trade, the inner crescent thus having an interest in developing its commercial relations with the center, the Heartland, to the detriment of the Anglo-Saxon thalassocracies. A few years later, in 1928, Stalin’s announcement of the implementation of the first Five Year Plan would reinforce the British thinker, who did not fail to stress that since the October Revolution, the Soviets built more than 70,000 kilometers of railways.

Shortly after the First World War, Mackinder published Democratic Ideals and Reality, a concise and dense work in which he recalls the importance of the Russian continental mass, that the thalassocracies can neither control from the seas nor invade completely. Thus, concretely, it is imperative to separate Germany from Russia by a “cordon sanitaire,” in order to prevent the union of the Eurasiatic continent. This prophylactic policy was pursued by Lord Curzon, who named Mackinder High Commissioner in “South Russia,” where a military mission assisted the White partisans of Anton Denikin and obtained from them the de facto recognition of the new Republic of Ukraine . . .

To make impossible the unification of Eurasia, Mackinder never ceased recommending the balkanization of Eastern Europe, the amputation from Russia of its Baltic and Ukrainian glacis, the “containment” of Russian forces in Asia so that they could not threaten Persia or India.

Karl Haushofer’s Kontinentalblock

It was in Germany, under the decisive influence of Karl Haushofer (1869–1946), that geopoliticians, diplomats, and National Revolutionary and National Bolshevik theorists (the Jünger brothers, Ernst Niekisch, Karl-Otto Paetel) would oppose thalassocratic pretentions with greatest force.

A Bavarian artillery officer and professor at the War Academy, Karl Haushofer was sent to Japan in 1906 to reorganize the Imperial Army. During his return to Germany on the Trans-Siberian railroad, he became vividly aware of the continental vastness of Russian Eurasia. After the First World War, he earned a doctorate and became professor of geography in Munich, where connected with Rudolf Hess. In 1924, Haushofer founded the famous Zeitschrift für Geopolitik (Journal of Geopolitics). He was the direct intellectual heir to his compatriot Friedrich Ratzel and the Swede Rudolf Kjellén.

To begin, let us set aside the black legend of Haushofer as fanatical Hitlerist who used geopolitics to justify the territorial conquests of the Third Reich, a legend based in “American propaganda efforts,” according to Professor Jean Klein.[4] This diabolization will astonish only those who are ignorant of the anti-thalassocratic orientation of Haushofer’s geopolitics . . .

Haushofer wished to rise above petty nationalisms. Thus, beginning in 1931, in Geopolitik der Pan-Ideen (Geopolitics of Continental Ideas), he advocated the constitution of vast continental spaces as the only means to go beyond the territorial and economic weakness of traditional States. The first stage could be the sub-continental gatherings theorized in 1912 by the geographer E. Banse, who recommended 12 large civilizational regions: Europe, Greater Siberia (Russia included), Australia, the East Indies, Eastern Asia, the “Nigritie” (the “black lands,” i.e., Africa), Mongolia (with China, Indochina, and Indonesia), Greater California, the Andes, America (Atlantic North America), and Amazonia.

Haushofer’s radically continentalist and anti-thalassocratic thought came into focus in 1941, when he published Der Kontinentalblock-Mitteleuropa-Eurasien-Japan (The Continental Bloc Central Europe-Eurasia-Japan). Written after the Germano-Soviet pact, this work argued for a Germano-Italo-Soviet-Japanese alliance that would radically reorganize the Eurasian continental mass. He stressed that the permanent fear of the Anglo-Saxons is the emergence of a Berlin-Moscow-Tokyo axis, which would completely escape the influence of the commercial thalassocracies, which, he writes, practice the policy of the anaconda, which consists in gradually encircling and slowly suffocating its prey. But a unified Eurasia would be too large for the Anglo-American anaconda. Thanks to its gigantic mass, it could resist any blockade.

The idea of a tripartite alliance first occurred to the Japanese and Russians. At the time of the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, when the British and Japanese united against the Russians, some of the Japanese leadership—including Hayashi, their ambassador in London, Count Gato, Prince Ito, and Prime Minister Katsura—desired a Germano-Russo-Japanese pact against the English seizure of global sea traffic. The visionary Count Gato recommended a troika in which the central horse, the strongest one, flanked by two lighter and more nervous horses, Germany and Japan. In Russia, the Eurasian idea would be incarnated a few years later by the minister Sergei Witte, the creative genius of the Trans-Siberian Railroad who in 1915 advocated a separate peace with the Kaiser.

Needless to say, Haushofer disapproved of Hitler’s wars of conquest in the East, which went against his historical project of creating a Eurasian continental bloc.

The Anaconda Strategy of Spykman and Brzezinski

The fundamental idea, posed by Mahan and Mackinder, to prohibit Russia’s access to the open sea, would be reformulated by Nicholas John Spykman (1893–1943), who insisted on the pressing need for controlling the maritime ring or Rimland, the littoral zone bordering the Heartland and which runs from Norway to Korea: “Whoever controls the maritime ring holds Eurasia; whoever holds Eurasia controls the destiny of the world.”[5]

Interpreting this maxim at that onset of the Cold War, the United States tried by a policy of “containment” of the USSR, to control the Rimland by means of a network of regional pacts: NATO in Europe, the Baghdad Pact then the Organization of the central treaty of the Middle East, SEATO and ANZUS in the Far East.

With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, one might have expected a strategic redeployment of the USA and a break with Mackinderite orthodoxy. But that was not to be. So much so that still today, the (semi-official) foreign policy adviser most heeded by President Obama proves to be a dedicated disciple of Mackinder: none other than Zbigniew Brzezinski, a friend of David Rockefeller, with whom he co-founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973, and Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor from 1977 to 1980. His major theoretical work, The Grand Chessboard, appeared in 1997, at the time of the wars in Yugoslavia undertaken mainly under his initiative, under the aegis of the Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Brzezinski’s strategic analysis cynically reprises Anglo-Saxon geopolitical doxa: Eurasia, which comprises half the planet’s population, constitutes the spatial center of world power. The key to control Eurasia is Central Asia. The key to control Central Asia is Uzbekistan. For this Russophobe of Polish origin, the objective of the American Grand Strategy must be to fight against a China-Russia alliance. Considering that the principal threat comes from Russia, he recommends its encirclement (the anaconda, always the anaconda) by the establishment of military bases, or, in the absence of friendly regimes in the former Soviet republics (Ukraine included), insisting in particular on the necessary utilization of Islamists. Paradoxically, it is in the name of the fight against these same Islamists that American forces were deployed Uzbekistan after September 11th, 2001 . . . Machiavelli is not dead!

Notes

1. C. Schmitt, Terre et Mer (Paris: Le Labyrinthe, 1985), p. 23. [See the English translation available on this website here. — Trans.]

2. The names of Leviathan and Behemoth are borrowed from the Book of Job (chapters 40 and 41).

3. A. T. Mahan, The Problem of Asia and its Effect upon International Policies (London: Sampson Low-Marston, 1900), p. 63.

4. Jean Klein, Karl Haushofer, De la géopolitique (Paris: Fayard, 1986).

5. N. Spykman, The Geography of the Peace (New York: Harcourt-Brace, 1944), p. 43.

 

Source: Edouard Rix, Terre & Peuple, No. 46 (Winter Solstice 2010), pp. 39–41. Online: http://tpprovence.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/geopolitique-du-leviathan/

—————

Rix, Edouard. “Geopolitics of Leviathan [Parts 1 & 2].” Counter-Currents Publishing, 10 & 11 August 2011. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/08/geopolitics-of-leviathan-part-1/ > ; <http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/08/geopolitics-of-leviathan-part-2/ >.

 

Geopolitics Today – Benoist

Geopolitics Today

By Alain de Benoist

 

Geopolitics has long been frowned upon by public opinion. Following World War II, it became the most unpopular of the social sciences. It had been accused of being a “German science” which didn’t really mean much, except that it owes its initial impetus to the political geography principles enunciated by the German geographer Friederich Ratzel – the term “geopolitics” being used for the first time by the Swedish geographer Rudolf Kjéllen in 1889. In his book “Politische Geographie oder die Geographie der Staaten, des Verkehrs und des Krieges (1897)” Ratzel analyzed the interactions of the state, considered as a living body, in terms of its geography and its space. One of his disciples was the Bavarian General Karl Haushofer, founder of the “Zeitschrift für Geopolitik”. It was only by an obvious confusion between space in the geopolitical sense and “Lebensraum” that a connection/ proximity between Karl Haushofer and National Socialism was brought into question. This was wrongly so, and not only because Haushofer never was an ideologue of the 3rd Reich. More importantly, Hitler had much more sympathy for the Anglo Saxons than he had for the Slavs. He waged a war against Russia, a continental power, yet he would have preferred to ally with Great Britain, a sea power. Had he subscribed to the thesis of geopolitics he would have done the exact opposite.

Moreover, the definition of this discipline’s field of study or its status has never ceased to be a problem. Geopolitics studies the influence of geography on politics and history, that is to say, the relationship between space and power (political, economic or other). Yet the definition remains fuzzy, which explains that the reality of both the concept and the relationship to its objective have been disputed. It has therefore been described as a discipline aiming to legitimize retrospectively historical events or political decisions.

These criticisms do not, however, go to the bottom of things: That we can identify through history, geographical constants of political action is, as a matter of fact, indisputable. Geopolitics remains thus, a discipline of great value and great importance. It is, even, essential to refer to it in a world in transition, where all the cards are being redistributed worldwide. Geopolitics puts into perspective the weight of merely ideological factors, unstable by definition, and recalls the existence of large constants that transcend political regimes as well as the intellectual debates.

Of all the concepts specific to Geopolitics, one of the most significant is undoubtedly the dialectical opposition between Sea and Land. ” World history, said Carl Schmitt, is the story of the fight of maritime powers against continental powers and of continental powers against maritime powers.” It was also the Admiral Castex’ opinion as well as that of many other geopoliticians. Halford Mackinder, for example, defines the power of Great Britain by the domination of the oceans and seas. He perceives the planet as a whole composed of a ” Global Ocean” and a “Global Island”, corresponding to the entire Eurasian space as well as Africa , and ” peripheral islands” , America and Australia. In order to dominate the world, we must seize the global island and primarily its “heart” , the Heartland, the real world’s geographical pivot stretching from Central Europe to Western Siberia and towards the Mediterranean, from Middle-East and South Asia. One of the first English great navigators, Sir Walter Raleigh, used to say: ” Whoever controls the seas controls world trade; whoever controls world trade holds all the treasures of the world in his possession, and in fact, the whole world.”

In the history of mankind, the confrontation between Land and Sea is the age-old struggle between the European continental logic and the “insular” logic embodied nowadays by the US. But the opposition between Land and Sea goes well beyond the perspectives offered by Geopolitics. The Land is a space formed by territories differentiated by borders. Its logic is based on sharp distinctions between war and peace, combatants and non-combatants, political action and trade. It is therefore the place of politics and history par excellence. ” Political existence is pure telluric nature” (Adriano Scianca). The sea is an homogenous area/stretch, the negation of differences, limits and borders. It is a space of indistinctness, the liquid equivalent of the desert. Being centre-less, it only knows ebb and flow and this is how it is related to postmodern globalization. The actual world is indeed a “liquid” world (Zygmunt Bauman), which tends to eliminate everything that is “earthly”, stable, solid, consistent, sustainable, and differentiated. It is a world of flux carried by networks. Trade itself, as well as the logic of is also formed in the manner of ebb and flow.

Geopolitics has regained its legitimacy with the various conflicts that have arisen since the 1970′ s. Most of these conflicts have been carried out by the US. Marked from their puritan origins by the conviction of being the “new chosen people” the Americans have intended to establish themselves as a universal model, which would bring to the world the benefits of “the American way of life” that is to say a model of a commercial civilization, based on the primacy of exchange value and the logic of profit. This planetary mission would be their “Manifest Destiny” . Geopolitics is precisely the discipline which helps to explain the constants of their foreign policy.

The disbanding of the Soviet system, has at the same time made globalization possible and marked the disappearance of a tremendous competitor for American power which has then had the temptation to shape a unipolar world under its hegemony. (What has been called “The New World Order” ) In the aftermath of the Soviet disbanding the US find themselves as an “Empire without shadow” (Eric Hobsbawn). Confident in their technological superiority, in their military power, in the benefits given by the dollar system, they have thought that an ” American century” was about to be forthcoming. Convinced to be from this point forward the world’s only superpower, they have pretended to play the role of the “world police”. The neo-conservatives were at the forefront of this project. This was the time Francis Fukuyama thought he could announce the “End of History”, namely the triumph of liberal capitalism and the democracy of human rights as the unsurpassable horizon of our time.

At the end of the 1990s, Gorbachev’s advisor Arbatov declared to the Americans: “We are dealing you the worst blow: we are going to deprive you of your enemy.” Significant words. The disappearance of the Soviet “Evil Empire” threatened to eradicate all ideological legitimization of American hegemony over her allies. This meant that, from then on, the Americans needed to find an alternative enemy, which provided a threat, real or imaginary, that would allow them to establish themselves as the masters of the “New World Order”. It is radical Islam, something they constantly encouraged in previous decades that will play the role of a foil. But in reality, their fundamental objective remains unchanged. This is to prevent, anywhere in the world, the emergence of a rival capable of competing with them and most importantly to control the Heartland, the “global island.”

In his book The Grand Chessboard, published in 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski enumerates explicitly the “geostrategic imperatives” the US must meet to maintain their global hegemony. Describing a project of “global management” of the world, he warns against the “creation or the emergence of an Eurasian coalition” that “could seek to challenge America’s supremacy.” In 2001, Henry Kissinger was already saying:” America must retain a presence in Asia, and its geopolitical objective must remain to prevent Asia’s coalescence into an unfriendly bloc.” Brzezinski recalled in his turn:” Who controls Eurasia, controls the world.”

To control Eurasia, means, first of of all, adopting a strategy of encirclement of Russia and China. The encirclement of Russia strategy includes the installation of new military bases in Eastern Europe, the establishment of anti missiles defense systems in Poland, Czech Republic and Romania, supporting the accession of Ukraine and Georgia to Nato, and pursuing an aggressive policy aiming to dislocate Russia’s influence in key regions around the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. In terms of energy supply, this strategy leads to the control of Central Asia’s pipelines – Central Asia being transformed into an American protectorate – encouraging the development of pipelines in the Caspian to bypass Russia and to reach Turkey, as well as limiting as much as possible the access of Russian tankers to the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits. It is within this context that we must put the ” colour revolutions” in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and Kyrgyzstan. Far from being spontaneous movements, these were organized and supported from the outside with the endorsement of the National Endowment for Democracy, a convenient front for the CIA.

The establishment of an “arc of crisis” to destabilize Russia’s traditional sphere of influence in the Caucasus, Afghanistan and Central Asia can only be understood in this context. Using the alleged “War against Terror”: in Afghanistan the US and her allies have set up military bases in the former Soviet republics, including, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The objective can be summed up in three words: encircle, destabilize, balkanize.

In parallel and simultaneously, they endeavoured to massively expand NATO in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans as far as the Russian border, even within the former Soviet Union. As of Sep 11 2001, President George Bush took a stand in favor of ” a large NATO from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea ” to pave the way from the Caspian and the Black Sea. That is to go from a relatively static structure to an expeditionary model of neocolonial interventions in all directions, global geostrategic centers of gravity slipping, thus, to the Middle East and Asia.

Maintaining NATO has two other goals. The first one is to continue to dissuade the EU to build up a a common and autonomous European defense force. Americans have always considered that European defense meant to them “the set up of NATO’s European pillar”. The second goal is to weaken the relations between Russia and Western Europe. Germany is particularly targeted, given the extent of its technological, energy and economical exchange with Russia. In this project, the EU becomes a simple American bridgehead in Eurasia.

In Middle East, where they are facing serious challenges due to the instability of the region, the failure of their military interventions and the growing isolation of their unswerving Israeli ally, the US are developing an aggressive strategy to counter the rise of Iran, which worries them because of its energy resources, its privileged relationship with China and Russia, and its increasing influence in Iraq and in the Gulf countries where there are significant Shiite minorities. Finally, they are currently engaged in a spectacular return to Africa, for two reasons, to counterbalance China’s influence and to take into account the growing importance of Africa in terms of global energy supplies.

To develop this aggressive policy, the US are not short of technological and financial means. Despite their financial difficulties and their exceptional deficits, their military budget, which is constantly increasing, is now close to $700 billion, a colossal amount, and equivalent to more than 40% of all military budgets combined in the world.

However, the question arises whether the United States have not reached the limits of their Imperial expansion capacity. Their domestic issues worsen. The dollar system, which they capitalize on, teeters on the brink. The global financial crisis that started there, back in 2008 hit them with full force. Their trade gap and the public debt have reached an all time high.

In Russia, meanwhile, Vladimir Putin, who clearly perceived their intentions, clearly broke from the catastrophic era under Boris Yeltsin, who had sanctified the omnipotence of the “oligarchs.”

The most recent events related to the civil war in Syria have, again, highlighted the importance of geopolitics. The extreme acumen of Vladimir Putin and his Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov against Barack Obama’s indecisiveness and Francois Holland naivety, has been symptomatic. With its intervention in the Syrian affair, Russia has regained its role as a major world power and thus showed that it (Russia) is not a negligible party in international affairs, but that it will have to be reckoned with in the future.

The “unipolar moment” has therefore not lasted for 10 years. The Americans, who now only represent 5% of the world population, have overestimated their strength. The engulfing of their troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, their domestic issues, their abyssal deficits, the instability of the dollar system and the world financial crisis have imposed limits on them. It quickly becomes apparent that they will not rule the world unchallenged. The History, which Fukuyama announced the end has already returned.

A multipolar world is emerging on the back of China’s rapid surge, followed by India, Brazil and even Iran. Emerging economies are growing dramatically. Their share in the world’s gross domestic product in purchasing power parity has gone from 36% in 1980 to 45% in 2008 and should reach 51% in 2014.

The US Eurasian strategy has led, as a reaction, to a significant rapprochement between Russia and China, which has materialized within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, founded in June 2001, which also includes four Central Asia countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) while Iran, Mongolia, India and Afghanistan participate as observers.

We know that in recent years, Iran has strengthened its relationship with China and Russia. This pragmatic alliance materializes today utilizing mutual geopolitical supports that have led some observers to consider the possibility to witness, in the coming years, the rise of a kind of “new Mongol Empire”. Between 1206 and 1294, Genghis Khan’s Turkish-Mongol Empire had spread throughout Central Asia before breaking up into four blocks. Today The SCO, whose main goal is to counter US influence in Central Asia, is associated again with Russia, China and Iran, three different countries, yet forming a real community of interests which represents 1.5 billion people. The big difference with the former Mongol Empire however, is that today Iran sees Turkey as regional rival power.

Since the end of the Soviet system, we have entered in an interregnum – a Zwischenzeit. The former Nomos of the Earth is gone but the contours of a new Nomos can only be speculated upon. The actual big world conflict is the one that opposes the Eurasian continental power to the American thalassocracy. The main question is whether we are going towards an unipolar world, an universum, or towards a multipolar world, a pluriversum.

The problem is that Europeans are rarely aware of this. Americans may have many faults but there is something we cannot deny them, they are aware of the global stakes and to try to think the world to come. In Russia and China too, they think the world to come. The Europeans, they don’t think. They only care about the present moment. They live under the horizon of fate, with institutions that condemn them to powerlessness and paralysis. Europe lives in a state of weightlessness. Facing an unprecedented moral crisis, the problem of immigration, an ageing population, economic offshoring and global competition. It appears Europe cannot defend its place in a globalized world. Bearing an identity that she (Europe) cannot anymore define, haunted by the secret desire to withdraw itself/ herself from History – thus running the risk of becoming the object of other’s history – thinking men are everywhere of the same disposition. Europe is now ” poor-in-world” (Heidegger). She (Europe) seems exhausted, beset by lassitude that leads to not wanting anything. Geopolitics of powerlessness? Rise of insignificance? The Euro banknotes are like its reflection: they only represent emptiness.

In the past, geopolitics applied its constraints mainly at state level, the same states that seem to have entered an irreversible crisis, at least in the western hemisphere. Now, it depends on the logic of continents which has long been hidden behind the disorderly conducts of the states but that is now more fundamental than ever. It (Geopolitics) helps to think in terms not only of countries but also of continents (Jordis Von Lohausen). The Sea against the Land, now it is US against the “rest of the world”, and first against the Eurasian and European continental bloc. In this sense, the collapse of the Soviet system has clarified things. There are now only two possible positions: either being on the side of the American sea power or being on the side of the Eurasian continental power. I’m with the latter.

——————–

De Benoist, Alain. “Geopolitics Today.” Speech delivered at “The End of the Present World: The Post-American Century and Beyond Conference”, held in Central London, UK, 12 October 2013. Text of transcript retrieved from <http://www.endofthepresentworld.com/p/alain-de-benoist-geopolitics-today_21.html >.

Note: See the Romanian translation of this article (“Geopolitica azi”, Estica, 3 September 2014) which is based off of our own publication here: <http://www.estica.eu/article/geopolitica-azi/ >.

 

European Son – Interview with Benoist

“European Son: An Interview with Alain de Benoist” (PDF – 191 KB):

European Son: An Interview with Alain de Benoist

Additional document with portions of the original interview containing critical commentaries on Christianity and the Human Sciences which were cut out from the official interview in The Occidental Quarterly (PDF – 314 KB):

Interview with Alain de Benoist on the Human Sciences and Christianity by Bryan Sylvain

———–

Citation for the official The Occidental Quarterly interview: De Benoist, Alain. “European Son: An Interview with Alain de Benoist.” Interview by Brian Sylvian. The Occidental Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Fall 2005), pp. 7-27. <https://www.toqonline.com/archives/v5n3/53-bs-debenoist.pdf >.

Citations for the original sources of the “Interview with Alain de Benoist on the Human Sciences and Christianity by Bryan Sylvain”: De Benoist, Alain. “Interview on Christianity, Part 1.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 28 January 2011. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/01/interview-on-christianity-part-1/ >; “Interview on Christianity, Part 2.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 29 January 2011. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/01/interview-on-christianity-part-2/ >; “Interview on the Human Sciences, Part 1.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 9 February 2011. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/02/interview-on-the-human-sciences-part-1/ >; “Benoist on Eugenics & Intelligence: Interview on the Human Sciences, Part 2.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 11 February 2011. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/02/benoist-on-eugenics-and-intelligence-interview-on-the-human-sciences-part-2/ >; “Benoist on J. Philippe Rushton: Interview on the Human Sciences, Part 3.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 14 February 2011. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/02/interview-on-the-human-sciences-part-3/ >; “Benoist on Feminism, IQ, & the Wealth of Nations: Interview on the Human Sciences, Part 4.” Counter-Currents Publishing, 14 February 2011. <http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/02/benoist-on-feminism-iq-the-wealth-of-nations-interview-on-the-human-sciences-part-4/ >.