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The New Right in Europe has struck the opening blows

Thread ID: 10968 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2003-11-07

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Madrid burns [OP]

2003-11-07 02:46 | User Profile

*This is a old but very informative article on the European New Rigth. I strongly recommend the purchase of that book.

Note: Liberal it means here the Mainstream Right (i.e., neocons, libertarians, conservatives).*

The New Right in Europe has struck the opening blows. reviewed by Thomas Jackson

Against Democracy and Equality Tomislav Sunic

Peter Lang, 1990, 196 pp., $39.95

In America today, those who see the fundamental problems the nation faces live almost in an intellectual vacuum. This is because the United States does not even recognize its most dangerous enemies: racial and cultural dispossession, growing hatred of our European heritage, and the fatal loss of nerve that has permitted this to happen.

When public discourse touches on these subjects at all, it is to celebrate them as signs of a new, better America. Thus, for those who see the road to the new America as the road to oblivion, it is easy to think that they are alone, and that their country faces a unique horror that no one else ever imagined or thought about.

Of course, this is not true. Against Democracy and Equality by Tomislav Sunic not only traces the distinguished history of “revolutionary conservatism” but introduces a contemporary school of European writers who are struggling to find answers to the questions that, in America, are not yet being asked. As Professor Paul Gottfried writes in the preface to this little volume, Dr. Sunic has given us the first book-length introduction in English to the European New Right.

The very title suggests how boldly the New Right is prepared to defy the most cherished liberal assumptions. If this group of thinkers can be said to have one central tenet, it is that the essential nature of man lies not in equality but in inequality. Individuals, races, cultures, and nations are different and unequal; any attempt to treat them as equals is a form of tyranny.

Thus, the thinkers of the New Right are adamantly opposed to anything that imposes a universalistic equality. For them, Communism has been the most ruthless form of egalitarian totalitarianism but, in one of their most provocative insights, they see modern Western liberalism as a form of “soft” totalitarianism that is achieving its goals without the violence of concentration camps and secret police. In its ultimate form—which we can see developing in the United States—there is no need for violent repression because each man becomes his own censor and his own jail keeper.

The most prominent leaders of the European New Right are Frenchmen. Alain de Benoist is the best known figure, along with such men as Guillaume Faye, and Julien Freund. They have been prominent since the 1970s, and have played a central role in dislodging Marxism as the unacknowledged religion of European intellectuals. In America, where their ideas are even more of an anathema than in Europe, they are studiously ignored.

Antecedents

As Dr. Sunic explains, the New Right finds inspiration in thinkers who were influential before the Second World War, but who have since been repudiated because the Nazis endorsed some of their views. As part of his introduction to the New Right, Dr. Sunic briefly outlines the thinking of Carl Schmitt (1888-1982), Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), and Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923). These men clearly saw the rush towards universal brotherhood and saw that the consequences would be that Europe would voluntarily give up its prominence and even its distinctiveness.

According to Pareto, for example, it is folly for those who rule to renounce power in the name of universal brotherhood. As Dr. Sunic paraphrases his views, “The downtrodden and the weak will always appeal to the sense of justice of those who rule, but the moment they grab the reins of power they will become as oppressive as their former rulers. Moreover, if by chance some nation happens to display signs of excessive humanity, philanthropy, or equality, it is a certain symptom of its terminal illness.” In Pareto's own words, “Whoever becomes a lamb will find a wolf to eat him.”

For liberals, this does not matter. Let Europe be eaten by North Africa or the United States by Mexico. Since all peoples and cultures are equally valid, nothing will have been lost and resistance would be immoral.

Equality

One of the New Right's goals has been to understand the origins of the militant, universalist egalitarianism that underlies liberalism. Though its point of view offends many traditional conservatives, it finds the source in Christianity. Unlike polytheistic religions, monotheism emphasized the equality of all men before God. By the 16th and 17th centuries, this equality was broadened to include the temporal concepts of legal and political equality.

Thomas Jefferson is a villain to the New Right because of his assertion that all men are created equal. Though Jefferson did not mean these words literally, the New Right sees Karl Marx and his insistence on economic equality as a direct heir to Jefferson.

As Dr. Sunic explains, it is because of their veneration of equality that liberals are unable to withstand the arguments of socialists and communists. Liberals cannot reconcile themselves to the fact that even though men may be politically equal, free competition will always result in inequality. Liberals can therefore raise no principled objection to the forced economic equality of Communism.

The New Right therefore sees both Communism and Nazism as reactions to the half-way equality of liberalism. Communists think it has not gone far enough, whereas National Socialists think it has gone too far.

The New Right rejects equality and takes for granted the genetic basis of inequality. So far, according to Dr. Sunic, the New Right has not made formal political proposals but it would agree with the great British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane that “Any satisfactory political and economic system must be based on the recognition of human inequality.”

Universalism

The other trait common to Christianity, liberalism, and Communism is their insistence on their own universal validity. In the Gospels of both Matthew and Mark, Jesus makes the staggering claim that anyone not for him is against him. Communism's goal of world-wide revolution was always explicit, but liberalism's projects for uplift are just as universalist. Muslims must be made into feminists; Japanese must become anti-racists; Africans must be taught democracy; Chinese must eat hamburgers.

Despite its constant preachments about “tolerance,” liberalism is therefore as harshly intolerant as any religious inquisition and would gladly remake the entire world in the image of a leftist American university.

Alain de Benoist has a completely different view of society: “A people is not a transitory sum of individuals. It is not a chance aggregate. It is a reunion of inheritors of a specific fraction of human history, who, on the basis of the sense of common adherence, develop the will to pursue their own history and give themselves a common destiny.”

As Dr. Sunic paraphrases him: “Real ‘organic’ democracy can only exist in a society in which people have developed a firm sense of historical and spiritual commitment to their community. In such an organic polity . . . the law must not derive from some abstract preconceived principles, but rather from the genius of the people and its unique historical character. In such a democracy, the sense of community must invariably preside over individualistic and economic self-interests.”

Economism and Individualism

This leads to the two other great flaws of liberalism: its emphasis on economics and its tendency to strip away a man's traditional, organic ties, and leave him a solitary individual. Once all people are seen as equal and equivalent, parochial loyalties are pure prejudice.

Common markets, currency unions, and supra-national organizations like the European Parliament are symptoms of both the attack on particularism and the victory of pure economics. If local loyalties no longer matter, only economic efficiency is left. The Deutsche Mark, the Pound Sterling, and the traditions and sovereignties they represent can all be brushed aside if a single European currency would be more efficient.

The primacy of economics also explains the relentless ugliness of modern life—stores like warehouses, office buildings like boxes, middle class people who dress like tramps, the obliteration of good manners—because the esthetic and the cultural have no economic value.

In such societies politics is no longer a battle of competing world views but a form of commerce. As Dr. Sunic paraphrases Carl Schmitt: “Different opinions are no longer debated; instead, social, financial, and economic pressure groups calculate their interests, and on the basis of these interests they make compromises and coalitions.” Politicians become rug merchants. An assertion of genuine philosophical differences is a nuisance that hampers trade.

A man with no particularist culture is extremely vulnerable. In a society of pure individualism only wealth gives identity, so the poor have nothing and the middle classes face the threat of nothing.

In a healthy society the individual, whatever his economic status, can be concerned with the greater good because it is his society and unlike any other. He may even regret, as Nathan Hale did, that he has but one life to give for his country. The healthy culture thrives on what may appear to be the sacrifices of individuals, but it gives them meaning, history, confidence, and identity, be they rich or poor.

“Soft” Totalitarianism

The individualism of liberalism is therefore fragmentation rather than strength. In the view of the New Right, it leaves men open to the “soft” totalitarianism that has made such headway in the United States. Even without police-state techniques, liberalism has so successfully enforced its orthodoxies that men fear to say what they believe about race, immigration, welfare, eugenics, mass democracy, culture, or even foreign aid. The New Right is correct in fearing this form of totalitarianism as the most dangerous and insidious.

Now that Marxism is dead there should be a free-wheeling debate about the validity of its assumptions about equality, universalism, and the primacy of economics. In America there is no such debate. As Alain de Benoist says, “It is always easy [for liberals] to avoid the debate. It suffices to disqualify the adversary. . . . One attacks the persons rather than what they write.” Here, too, the New Right finds the legacy of Christianity: Disagreement with liberalism is wicked, and the non-believer is condemned to eternal damnation.

The spokesmen of the New Right are not generally optimistic about being able to overthrow soft totalitarianism, but they are willing to fight it to the end. As Dr. Sunic puts it: “No matter how dismal and decadent the modern polity appears to be, no matter what the outcome of the struggle is, or how threatened Europe appears, the New Right insists that it is still worth dying for Europe as an honorable warrior.”

Of course, no one will lay down his life for a currency union. The New Right fears that a denatured Europe could eventually be overthrown by vigorous non-whites who still have cultural and racial memories they are willing to die for. Sadly, the non-white nations will also have suffered heavy losses because of the contamination of their own cultures by the missionaries of liberalism.

The Battlefield of Ideas

The New Right has chosen to fight on the battlefield of ideas because it believes that the course of Europe is ultimately governed by the prevailing intellectual climate.

As Dr. Sunic explains, “The real force that sustains liberalism and socialism is the cultural consensus which reigns more or less undisturbed in the higher echelons of education and legal systems.” The left has always understood the importance of capturing the culture. Thus every movie, school book, art show, television program, and court decision promotes the doctrine of universal equality.

Marx believed that the economic structure determines the culture but the New Right argues that it is the other way around: Liberty can be achieved only by creating a counter-culture that is vigorous enough to break liberalism's monopoly on the mind. This is a process that has hardly begun in the United States, where the more education a man has the more unthinkingly he has absorbed liberal dogmas.

Dr. Sunic has given us an important book. This review can only begin to summarize the richness of thought that he has found in scores of books and journals that are not even available in English. Dr. Sunic has opened the door to a great but little-known body of learning that directly addresses our current crises.

Against Democracy and Equality is still in print and can be ordered directly from Peter Lang, 62 West 45th Street, New York, NY 10036.

Madrid burns

2003-11-07 03:03 | User Profile

Tomislav Sunic believes that with the decline of communist power the sinister aims of internationalism and globalisation are now being propagated by capitalist totalitarianism. He is a former diplomat in the Croatian Government and a professor of political science. He is also the author of several books, including AGAINST DEMOCRACY & EQUALITY: THE EUROPEAN NEW RIGHT, TITOISM & DISSIDENCE: STUDIES IN THE HISTORY & DISSOLUTION OF COMMUNIST YUGOSLAVIA, COOL CROATIA, AMERICA IN THE EYES OF EASTERN EUROPE, and AMERICAN IDEOLOGY. Mr. Sunic is very aware of the dangers we all face, and therefore has a very open-minded attitude towards working with like-minded groups and individuals.

Synthesi Please tell our readers a little about yourself. What experiences have you had that have shaped your outlook on politics and life in general? When did you first become interested in politics? Also, please tell us something about your diplomatic career.

Politics was part of family life. My father, a Catholic attorney and a former political prisoner, was constantly at loggerheads with the Yugoslav communist authorities. Back in communist Yugoslavia, I expressed my resentments against the mendacity of the system by dropping out and becoming a hippy and even hiking down to India. Being reared on books in several languages helped me to complete my university degrees and put myself into a wider perspective. I like to speculate as to how my interlocutor or enemy perceives me. This requires a great deal of intellectual effort and emotional detachment. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, I was called by Tudjman's government to do some diplomatic lobbying for Croatia.

What is your position on the Croat-Serb war? At one point, it was reported that Serbia and Croatia had actually reached a compromise that would have stopped the war, but Croatia was pressured by the West to form an alliance with the Bosnian Muslims and to fight against the Serbs. Is there any truth to this? In your opinion, did outside powers benefit from the civil war?

I must have heard a myriad of rumors and conspiracy theories regarding the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. I do not blame so much the Serbs as I do the decade-long EU and USA upholding of the frail legality of the multiethnic brew called Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was the product of Versailles architects in 1919 with a refill of the allied blessing in 1945 in Potsdam. Slobodan Milosevic strictly knew that; notably while trying to salvage Yugoslavia by force, which actually sped up its forceful demise. Hence, the real reason he is paying a hefty price now in the Hague.

It is known that many Croatian communists became nationalists after Croatia's succession from Yugoslavia. Were these conversions genuine, or were these politicians merely opportunists?

The latter is true. However, almost all former Croatian communists are now ultra-liberal free marketers. This is a trademark not just of Croatia but of all post-communist countries, including Russia. What is worrisome, however, is not so much the make-believe volume of civic and democratic parlance of the new political class; rather, it is the shiftiness and phenomenal feel-good lightness by which it betrayed its former Marxist mythology. If some other political myth holds sway tomorrow, the same people will flock to new secular deities with no feelings of guilt.

While Serbia has traditionally had close ties with Russia, Croats seem to identify more with Western European nations, such as Germany. In fact, it has been reported that many volunteers from Western nations came to Croatia to participate in the civil war. It was also reported that many Russians and other Slavs participated on the side of Serbia. Do you have any knowledge of this being the case? If so, to what extent did foreign volunteers participate in the civil war?

Over 2000 foreign volunteers from Chile to Canada, from the USA to Australia, and served at some point in early Croatian rag-tag units during the so-called Homeland War. This was partly due to cultural affinities and partly to the strong anticommunist feelings of many. The Serb-dominated Yugoslav army displayed the communist red star insignia until 1995, which invariably boosted the early Croatian separatist cause among European and US conservatives. The unfortunate religious cleavage between the Orthodox East and Catholic West violently erupted to the fore. Many Western volunteers and many Croat expatriates came to fight. I cannot be more specific at this stage.

What is your opinion of Ante Pavelic, the Croatian leader during WW2? It has been claimed that the Ustashe government committed many atrocities against Serbs, Jews, and other non-Croats. How much of this is propaganda and how much is true?

The English historian Edward Carr wrote that, before one studies history, one must study a historian. Failure to look at different, i.e., revisionist historical accounts, leads to misperceptions, paranoia, and, eventually, armed conflicts. The former Yugoslav propaganda had committed a mistake by hyper-inflating Croatian fascist crimes of WWII. Tudjman in 1990, dared to demolish this antifascist victimology. His public speeches, given the widespread foreign media prone "historical linkages," soon earned him a bad reputation among liberal pressure groups, both in the USA and Europe. Moreover, his speeches were a big enough reason to alter the mindset of the local, largely rural, Serbs in Croatia, who were already whipped into a frenzy by Milosevic's communist propaganda. The spiral of fear and misperception, backed by mythical and histrionic narratives on both sides, resulted in war in 1991.

As for Ante Pavelic, the leader of WWII Croatia, his role must be put into his epoch, i.e., along with the Romanian, Corneliu Codreanu, the Fleming, Staf De Clercq, the Englishman, Oswald Mosley, the Russian-American, Anastase Vonsiatsky, the Spaniard, Franco, etc., and other real or would-be fascist leaders.

During my visit to Croatia, I came away with the impression that many Croats cheered when NATO launched its military campaign against Serbia. In your opinion, do ordinary Croats still hold such hostile feelings towards Serbia?

Unfortunately, this is largely true. Many Croats, even in academic circles, use this type of "negative legitimization." Serbs are often used as scapegoats for Croatia's own failures, be it in the field of diplomacy or economy. However, centralistic-minded Serbs have traditionally nourished a cult of a "chosen people" destined to play a leading role in policing the Balkans. Hence, the reason that they alienated other non-Serb peoples. The end result was war.

From the Berlin Congress in 1878 until 1991, Serbs were the darlings of the anti-German Western powers. I think that, eventually, these two similar peoples will be on speaking terms. Croats must realize that Serbs will remain their first neighbors. However, from a wider anthropological perspective, it is worth alerting the political class in the EU and USA that multicultural, let alone multiracial states, never last long. Such ideas are uncontrolled and irresponsible Third-world immigration, the American government, and the EU are paving the way for their own balkanization. The case of multiethnic ex-Yugoslavia speaks volumes.

The current Croatian government has indicated that it would like to join both the EU and NATO. If Croatia is accepted into either of these organizations, what changes do you think might take place in Croatia? In your view, would these changes be positive or negative?

There are no "yes's," "no's," or "ifs." Joining the EU and NATO is the only option for Croatia, short of becoming a pariah state. The only problems are the Croatian methods. The Croatian political class does not know the linkages, the possible setbacks, the terms of juridical engagements, etc. Croatia does not have civil society, as it was destroyed after WWII by the Yugoslav leader Tito and his communist followers, who were very largely made up of the semi-rural, bewildered populace. The Croatian public does not fully know the underpinnings of the EU or NATO. It envisions entry into these two supra-national bodies as entry into a self-serving rich men's country club. What Croatia needs first is total de-communization. Without this, Croatia will constantly be plagued by a traumatic lack of decision-making. At this stage, Croatia, similar to the Russian political class, is engaged in broken English mimicry of all things Western.

You are known as a very outspoken anticommunist. Please explain the reasons for your opposition to communism? In addition, you have said that Croatia's current, main threats are the "Western" ideals of capitalism and consumerism. If you consider yourself to be an anticommunist as well as an anticapitalist, what political system would you like to see take shape in Croatia, a sort of third-position?

There are different forms of anticommunism. However, being an anticommunist does not presuppose that one must, therefore, embrace its only present counterpart, i.e., global capitalism. Both systems have inherent principles of egalitarianism, economism, and universalism, i.e., the belief in the abstract ideology of "human rights" and the dogma of perpetual economic growth. Due to its violent transparency, poor economic results, and negative social-biological selection, along with the nameless topography of terror, communism lost its intellectual appeal. By contrast, modern capitalism, which operates today under the term of "globalism," is more successful in promoting the same totalitarian goals, albeit with different rhetoric. It is utopia achieved. Many failed communist practices are now fully operational, albeit under different labels in the EU and USA. Former paleo-communist political romanticism, such as multiculturalism, multiracialism, academic self-censorship, intellectual opportunism, which is known as political correctness, and the loss of the sense of the tragic, is in full swing in the West. Moreover, unlike communism, modern liberalism, i.e., global capitalism, does not leave visible traces of blood and cohorts of martyrs in its wake. Its destructive longevity is guaranteed.

You have also spoken out against blind nationalism, which, in your opinion, was used to manipulate the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. However, you have also indicated that you consider yourself to be pro-European. What are your reasons for your opposition to nationalism? Do you consider yourself to hold pan-European ideas?

In hindsight, inter-European nationalism has done irreparable harm to all peoples of European extraction, starting with civil war in America in 1861 and then during the Great Civil War, WWI and WWII. Petty provincial nationalism at the expense of next door similar looking European neighbors is self- defeating. It serves the purpose of non-Europeans and other alien phenotypes. Even in terms of territorial imperative, petty nationalism is today outdated. The only solution lies in supra-statal pockets of cultural resistance by the Europeans in the USA, Chile, South Africa, Europe, all the way to Russia, i.e., in places where remnants of the European peoples still live. Failure to clearly define the enemy today may lead in the very near future to the definite demise of European heritage. Only in this extraterritorial way one must define oneself today as a European and no longer in a narrow autistic, chauvinistic, nation-state framework.

You have spent a portion of your life in the United States. From my personal experience as an American living in Europe, I know that many Europeans have a false sense of reality when it comes to life in the USA. You, as a European who lived many years in the United States, have seen firsthand the difference between what is presented the movies and media that Europeans watch and the reality of the everyday American. Please share for our readers your thoughts on the subject. Also, please tell us something about Croatian-Americans. Are many of these immigrants politically active?

The problem with all Eastern Europeans, including Croats, is an identity crisis and a deep inferiority complex. The lack of self- assertiveness, which is due to perpetual historical tremors in this region, often results in surreal and self-complacent political romanticism. Most Croats have inherited strong residues of the homo sovieticus mendacity combined with the Melrose Place soap opera dream world. Croat expatriates did play a significant role in financing Tudjman's campaign. However, they also live in their own dream worlds, romanticizing Croatia in folkoristique lime lights. There is also a fundamental psychological gap between Croats in Croatia and Croat expatriates. It is this vicarious misperception of two virtual worlds, respectively, that leads to the breakdown in communication. As far as the new post-Tudjman, left-leaning government in Croatia is concerned, it has shoved aside the Croatian expatriates.

I would like for you to give our readers an assessment of the current Croatian government. Can you make a prediction regarding the next elections? If the presidential election were held today, in your opinion, who would win?

The cumulative votes of opposition right-wing parties today could easily dislodge the current left-leaning government in a would-be election. Due to their constant bickering and clannish approach to body politics, this is hardly going to be the case. Although a small nation of 4 million citizens, Croatia has phenomenal regional differences between north and south and the Mediterranean Croats, who often make their electoral choices on the basis of their regional in-group decisions. Almost the same replica exists among expatriate Croats, unlike the Flemish, Irish, or Palestinian nationalists, who all have a solid supra-regional political platform. This endless infighting does not make Croatia a serious partner in the eyes of Western observers. It was only during Tudjman's leadership, a man with deep insight into Croatian diversity, that Croatia managed to become an independent state. The actual coalition government, which is made up of five left-leaning parties, has brought the country to administrative standstill. Croatia functions today by EU "ukases" i.e. decrees.

How is late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman remembered in Croatia? Many in the West consider him to be a war criminal that should have been tried in the Hague. However, during the war, Tudjman received the West's backing and seemed to know how to "play ball" with the Western powers. Is he remembered as the father of independent Croatia or has his reputation suffered as a result of criticism from the West?

Tudjman's Croatia did not receive any backing from the West, not until 1995. The emergence of Croatia was primarily the result of nameless volunteers, committed individuals with strong will to power. Prior to 1995, Croatia was subject to an arms embargo, just like the heavily armed rump Yugoslavia, i.e., Serbia. It had to build its administration and army from scratch. It was a moment that briefly united all Croats of different political persuasions. The EU never liked Tudjman. He was a former communist turned a staunch revisionist and anticommunist, a large enough reason for the Western opinion makers to isolate Croatia. The so-called international community is now firmly behind the more docile left-leaning government in Croatia.

Speaking of the Hague, how is the issue of the extradition of Croatian war veterans treated by the Croatian press? How does the common Croat feel about the issue? On one hand, it seems that Croatia and Serbia are in the same boat. Both nations are being asked to send people some feel are war heroes to be judged by a foreign court in a foreign land.

Even heroes do not last long. Again, Croat soldiers, due to the pressure of various international bodies, are often portrayed as a bunch of criminals. The Hague judiciary looks for "legal equidistance" between the Yugoslav aggressor and the Croat victims. Average Croats are bedazzled and bewildered. Whose gods should they trust today?

Yet, I do not blame the Hague or the international community for their half-baked legal practices. Being a disciple of sociologist Vilfredo Pareto and the jurist Carl Schmitt, I blame the lack of leadership in Croatia, the lack of the new elites, and the lack of a meritocracy able to outsmart the often ignorant New World Order architects. Playing meek and hollering "mea culpa" won't help. Pareto wrote,"Whoever becomes a sheep will find a wolf to eat him." This is the case with the Croatian administration staffed by former communists with no initiative, many of whom have a murky past.

In your opinion, should the Croatian government do anything to help the Bosnian Croats? It seems that they are in a rather difficult position, as their most popular politicians and political parties have been banned. It is quite clear that they feel as if they are not properly represented in the Bosnian government and that they would like to form an independent Croat state. Is there any chance that, in the future, the Bosnian Croatians could be annexed by Croatia?

Playing dumb in politics is often a virtue, but living under the cover of delusions may be dangerous. Bosnia and Hercegovina form a small and belated replica of the failed multiethnic Yugoslavia. It can be upheld on the map, as it currently is, only by foreign, including US, troops and half-ignorant EU commissars. We must remember how former multiethnic Yugoslavia ended its voyage into the darkness. I have spoken with some foreign leaders and members of the media. They are aware of this make-believe country, but they must rhetorically abide by the new "multicultural role models."

Croats and Serbs in Bosnia do not have the problem of deciding who to join in the putative future. By contrast, if Bosnian Muslims do not make their own executive decision about their identity, somebody else soon will in their stead.

Mr. Sunic, please tell us about your latest book, Against Democracy and Equality. What are the basic ideas of this book? What was your motivation for writing it?

This book is a survey of some prominent figures of the so-called conservative revolution of the first part of the XX century, such as the sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, the political scientist Carl Schmitt, the historian Oswald Spengler, and many others. The book also covers their new intellectual followers in today's European New Right. I am appalled by the dogmatic spirit and bias in the American and EU higher education, which has for decades been subject to leftist brainwashing and to fraudulent Freudo-Marxian scholasticism. I am also shocked by the false meritocracy in the American establishment and by the ridiculous affirmative action system, which definitely reminds me of the quota system in hiring that was in place in the ex-communist multiethnic Yugoslavia. The best and the brightest are, as a rule, shoved aside. The modern liberal theology of the big buck, the dictatorship of well-being, coupled with the false misnomer of "multiculturalism," destroys all values and all cultures, including our own. I do not blame non-Europeans, and I reject conspiracy theories. I primarily hold responsible lazy and corrupted academics, the modern media, and politicians who are mortgaging the Euro-American future. However, most likely, we need more chaos in our polity, because only out of chaos new elites and a new value system can emerge.

Dr. Sunic, thank you very much for the interview! It was very informative.

This interview originally appeared on the PRAVDA website at [url]http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/02/25/26639.html[/url] All questions were compiled by Justin Cowgill and we would like to thank Mr. Sunic for giving us permission to use his interview. He can be contacted by e-mail at: [email]tomislav.sunic@zg.hinet.hr[/email]

Madrid burns

2003-11-07 03:19 | User Profile

[url]http://jkalb.freeshell.org/texts/scorpion.html[/url]

THE SCORPION by James Kalb

The Scorpion is the leading publication in English about the thinkers and themes of the European New Right (ENR). It is edited by Michael Walker, an Englishman living in Germany who is well-connected in Nationalist circles in Europe. American Renaissance readers know him from his talk on "European Nationalist Movements" at the 1998 American Renaissance conference.

The ENR is the most important intellectual movement in Europe to oppose the postwar liberal-to-socialist consensus. It insists on discussing issues the "mainstream" does not want to hear about—like the importance of human differences—and raises them in ways that make them hard to ignore. As Thomas Jackson points out in his review of Tomislav Sunic's Against Democracy and Equality (American Renaissance, December 1992), it has "played a central role in dislodging Marxism as the unacknowledged religion of European intellectuals."

Nonetheless, it remains all but unknown this side of the Atlantic. Since the Founding Era, Americans have had little interest in European political thought, and this lack of interest has had some justification. America has mostly had a free and stable government that has brought its people peace and prosperity. Europeans mostly have not. The main political invention we have imported from them recently has been the welfare state. Why look to them for inspiration?

Times change. European politics is still no model to follow, but we are no longer free from its vices. On both sides of the Atlantic the state has become the enemy of people and culture. All Western governments now make it fundamental policy to abolish human distinctiveness and thus the qualities that define their own peoples, in the name of efficiency, equality, and lifestyle freedoms. To that end pervasive bureaucratic controls have been established, obvious facts and basic political and social issues hushed up, and dissidents silenced as bigots and haters. The consequences have been catastrophic: political unresponsiveness, bureaucratic tyranny, unchecked cultural degradation, and—to all appearances—the impending death of the West.

Radical political dysfunction requires rethinking basic principles. Neither cheerleading for the American Way nor conspiracy theories lead us anywhere. The similarity of problems on both sides of the Atlantic means there is no longer a fundamental opposition between European and American politics. Instead, the political history of Europe now makes European thought especially useful, because Europeans have been forced by events to think through modern political pathologies. Until recent decades, we have been spared that need.

The other English-speaking peoples are in the same position as we. Long-term stability and an insular location may be good for a country, but they do not provoke thought. European political thinking that tries to offer a fundamental alternative to the current destructive left-liberal order is almost unavailable in English. The result has weakened right-wing political thought throughout the English-speaking world.

For over 20 years The Scorpion has worked to change this. Its goal is to make sense of the modern world and find new ways to defend and advance such traditional concerns as people, culture and nation. It recognizes that the West has turned against itself, and that its leading tendencies are destroying the things that have made it what it is. The publication therefore believes that its ultimate goal must be to help lay the groundwork for a new European civilization based on different principles.

That goal is hugely ambitious, and requires rethinking fundamental principles. Each issue of The Scorpion therefore deals with a great political or cultural theme: race, sex, education, ecology, nihilism, the nature of the nation or the state. It includes a long essay giving the editor's thoughts, and also pieces, often by ENR thinkers, that offer a variety of other perspectives.

The style of the magazine is intelligent, well-read, and sometimes quite demanding. Authors treat basic issues at the level they demand, and so the magazine is not intended for the mass market. Nonetheless, the attitude of the writers is far from academic. The survival of European man is at stake, and even when discussing high theory—or "culture and metapolitics," as the magazine's self-description puts it—the concern is with what to do about the very difficult situation in which Europe finds itself.

Many of the articles are excellent. Those by Alain de Benoist in particular are often very helpful introductions to ways of thought unknown in America, while the editor's essays add a touch of English commonsense, practicality and fairmindedness to grand continental theorizing. (I should disclose that I am a contributor.)

In addition to the themes to which issues are devoted, the magazine has published several series of articles exploring topics such as the stateless nations and regional cultures of Europe, and the German "conservative revolution," a movement after the First World War that inspired the ENR and included such men as Oswald Spengler and Carl Schmitt. Other continuing interests include the significance of science—especially genetics—and the search for a new religious outlook. There is an extensive book review section and a reader's forum, and the magazine also publishes manifestos of non-mainstream political movements, provocative clippings from the European press, and the occasional restaurant review.

The Scorpion handles its topics with great freedom. Even though informally associated with the ENR, it toes no lines and feels free to publish anyone, debate with anyone, and differ with anyone. Above all, it emphasizes its independence. It rejects party lines, pursues arguments as best it can, and presents thinkers who place the Western political world in new perspectives—often, for Americans, radically new perspectives. It opens up new avenues of thought for those who want to extricate themselves from the suffocating public philosophy now forced on us everywhere.

As an example, The Scorpion has featured the thought of the Italian writer Julius Evola and of the writers of the German Conservative Revolution. Those thinkers analyze government (or rather the state) in ways that for Americans are wholly unexpected. In this country we have a simple and utilitarian understanding of government, as the administrator of the will of the people or a regulatory body promoting prosperity and order. European thinkers like Evola and the Conservative Revolutionaries present other theories that are sometimes more useful in explaining political life. Government might, for example, be viewed as a sort of higher will that gives direction to social life, or as the expression of the innate character of a people. Even if in the end we prefer the more down-to-earth American view, the additional perspectives are needed to sort through something as multifaceted as politics. After all, can something men are willing to die for, like country and flag, really be explained by utility and practicality?

More generally, The Scorpion and the ENR are useful because of their breadth of interest. The European complaint is that Americans, especially conservatives, are concerned with machinery, money, moralism, and not much else. The complaint is exaggerated but not invented. It's a mistake to abandon to the Left whatever goes beyond immediate practicality. Politics depends on its setting -- not just economics and ethnicity, but also architecture, the arts, literature, philosophy, and the natural environment. The long-term prospects of the Right are dim unless it can dispute ownership of those things by the Left. The Scorpion therefore takes on not only the political and the "metapolitical," but the seemingly nonpolitical: thinkers like Nietzsche and Heidegger, cultural movements like romanticism and nihilism, issues like ecology and the built environment. It matters to a nation what music it listens to, how its people dress, what its public buildings look like and what its academics study. There are no quick fixes for such things, but we need to be aware of them, and the Europeans have gone through them much more thoroughly than we have.

The magazine has its limitations. Much of the theorizing is at a considerable distance from concrete politics. It rarely deals with issues of immediate practical concern to Americans, although it sometimes publishes articles about America, and has had a special issue on this country. It is put together for people who want to think about basic issues, and so will be unsatisfying for anyone who wants ready-made positions. And most of us will disagree with some things in it. Writers close to the ENR often use America as a whipping boy for the problems of Europe, and their discussions of economics and ecology sometimes ignore the need to put limits on the jurisdiction and activity of government. There are differences between European and American political discussion, and we must translate concepts, make allowances, and sometimes disagree.

The ENR seems to me wrong, for example, to blame Christianity for the universalism and egalitarianism that it correctly believes are destroying the West. In fact, Europeans have been looking for equal and rational universal principles since the pre-Socratics, and composing utopias since Plato. The wars of the last century and the EU suggest that getting rid of Christianity only makes European secular utopianism more destructive.

However that may be, what's needed today is not support for the views we already have or a ready-made program for cultural reconstruction. What's needed is a source of new perspectives, and a forum in which important and often speculative ideas can be discussed freely and openly, without regard to whether our rulers find them acceptable. For this, The Scorpion is an irreplaceable resource. There is nothing else like it in English.

There was a revealing debate some years back in the Scorpion readers’ forum between the editor and several readers who questioned the wisdom of publishing a couple of letters from national socialists. Might not such actions threaten the magazine's respectability and ability to be taken seriously? Mr. Walker rejected the criticisms vigorously and at length—as indeed he had vigorously taken issue with the national socialists—and summarized the credo that motivates his magazine:

"Unlike [one of the readers], I am happy to say that I am neither "viscerally anti-nazi" nor "viscerally anti-liberal." I am viscerally anti-stupidity, and I am viscerally anti-totalitarian, I am viscerally anti-crudity and viscerally anti-ugliness . . . . These are the things we should be fighting, not liberals or nazis but these things when they appear in what they do and say, for in debate a man should not be held to account either [for] what others say he is or even for what he says he is; he should be held to account for that he means and what he does." In a world of spin, hype, code words and politically correct censorship, The Scorpion thus stands for discussion among human beings. It stands for ethnic and cultural particularity in a world that celebrates “diversity” so as to abolish it in favor of the uniformity of economics and bureaucracy. It promotes the intellectual and cultural work needed for constructive political action to become possible. It should be heard.

Independence, adventurousness, and lack of concern for respectability come at a price. The publication is at times something of a one-man show, and is perpetually underfunded. It comes out only once a year, and subscriptions are expensive (in North America, $36 for four 52-page issues by airmail. There is a reasonable selection of articles at its website, [url]http://thescorp.multics.org/[/url]. The magazine has also put out a CD that includes the 19 issues published from 1981 through 1998. The CD is well worth acquiring, since very few of the topics the magazine was discussing in 1981 have dated. The “fast pace of modern life,” it seems, is only a distraction from the intellectual paralysis The Scorpion has always fought.

Okiereddust

2003-11-07 05:01 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Madrid burns][url]http://jkalb.freeshell.org/texts/scorpion.html[/url]

THE SCORPION by James Kalb

The Scorpion is the leading publication in English about the thinkers and themes of the European New Right (ENR). It is edited by Michael Walker, an Englishman living in Germany who is well-connected in Nationalist circles in Europe. American Renaissance readers know him from his talk on "European Nationalist Movements" at the 1998 American Renaissance conference...............

The magazine has its limitations. Much of the theorizing is at a considerable distance from concrete politics. It rarely deals with issues of immediate practical concern to Americans, although it sometimes publishes articles about America, and has had a special issue on this country. It is put together for people who want to think about basic issues, and so will be unsatisfying for anyone who wants ready-made positions. And most of us will disagree with some things in it. Writers close to the ENR often use America as a whipping boy for the problems of Europe, and their discussions of economics and ecology sometimes ignore the need to put limits on the jurisdiction and activity of government. There are differences between European and American political discussion, and we must translate concepts, make allowances, and sometimes disagree.

The ENR seems to me wrong, for example, to blame Christianity for the universalism and egalitarianism that it correctly believes are destroying the West. In fact, Europeans have been looking for equal and rational universal principles since the pre-Socratics, and composing utopias since Plato. The wars of the last century and the EU suggest that getting rid of Christianity only makes European secular utopianism more destructive.

However that may be, what's needed today is not support for the views we already have or a ready-made program for cultural reconstruction. What's needed is a source of new perspectives, and a forum in which important and often speculative ideas can be discussed freely and openly, without regard to whether our rulers find them acceptable. For this, The Scorpion is an irreplaceable resource. There is nothing else like it in English. [/QUOTE]

Interesting summary of the what is apparently the preiminent ENR publication. It apparently is the European counterpart of Chronicles, and its viewpoint seem to provide a good comparison of the perspectives of the ENR as compared to paleoconservatism. Again I'd be intersted in Triskelion's perspective on this.

triskelion

2003-11-07 05:49 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Okiereddust]Interesting summary of the what is apparently the preiminent ENR publication. It apparently is the European counterpart of Chronicles, and its viewpoint seem to provide a good comparison of the perspectives of the ENR as compared to paleoconservatism. Again I'd be intersted in Triskelion's perspective on this.[/QUOTE]

I'm good friends with Mr. Walker that puts out the Scorpion and it's not really correct to say that he or his magazine is an ENR one. He gives lots of attention to those fellows but his own views are more complicated and a product of synthesis as are mine. I can't really comment on the Christian angle in great detail as I am not an ENR proponent although I am influenced by that school of thought to some extent.

Certainly Mr. Walker and his compatriots are primarily concerned with meta-politics which is something I am interested in but it is very far from my main focus as I have always and will always be a public activist rather then theoretician. Dr. Kalb feel has a reasonable criticsm of the ENR in that respect. Also, I not that DeBenoist and the Spenglerians spend far to much time criticizing America with regards to the fact that what current goes by that label is a terrible perversion of that expression of Occidental man's aspirations. Of course, DeBenoist is no where as good in terms of the ideas he promotes as he was 10 or more ago.

Basically, I find much to commend with some aspects of the program and meta-politics of Synergies Européennes which is technically not part of the "ENR framework" then with groups lik GRECE. In the end, spend fair more effort focusing upon the "vitalistic" tendancy within various NR/CR/NS & Fascist groups then the ENR which is too removed from practical politics although they have much to add to an understanding of certain aspects of the struggle.