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Sam Francis' review of the ideology of "Nouvelle Droite"

Thread ID: 20621 | Posts: 57 | Started: 2005-10-12

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Petr [OP]

2005-10-12 11:27 | User Profile

I think Francis raised here many noteworthy points on the internal contradictions hiding behind the surface of [I]Nouvelle Droite[/I] that its uncritical admirers usually leave untouched.

Many of the admirers of [I]Nouvelle Droite[/I] gush over at the academic background of many of its proponents. They fail to see the downside of this - that New Right could be just a form of alienated-from-reality, self-indulgent theorizing, Right's equivalent for intellectual college-cults of Jean-Paul Sartre or Noam Chomsky.

Like Sam Francis points out,[I] Nouvelle Droite [/I]does [B]not [/B]actually draw its main ideology from some primordial Aryan wisdom, but rather from deconstructionist Foucaultian nihilism, then trying [B]hypocritically[/B] to uphold some traditional values: [COLOR=Red][B] "In fact, it is never clear in O’Meara’s account why anyone who embraces post-modernism, whether on the left or the right, would retain any logical grounds for affirming any social fabric or philosophical commitment whatsoever. Despite O’Meara’s somewhat tortured account of how the New Right tries to eat the post-modernist cake while at the same time salvaging traditional identities that post-modernism rejects, the New Right’s position appears inherently arbitrary and contradictory."[/B][/COLOR]

This sort of pick-and-choose nihilism is a house built on sand, it cannot stand strong challenges.

(An example: any movement that really would like to "follow nature" and "oppose transcendental moralism" should have no qualms with cannibalism. That is very natural, chimpanzees do it all the time)

To wit: any enterprise to resurrect European culture without Christianity, nay, sometimes specifically[B] opposing[/B] Christianity, is a doomed enterprise, a vain masquerade.

I get this [I]so empty feeling[/I] when reading pagan New Right manifestoes - they know how to "talk the talk", use all the right phrases, but I cannot detect that joyful, spontaneous spirit that is so commonly associated with pagans. It is as if they themselves knew, deep inside, just how empty their gestures are.

PS: I also think this attempt to promote some abstract "Indo-Europeanism" as a spiritual alternative to Christianity is a mighty artificial enterprise - even in purely racial sense, Semites like Jews and Arabs (they are Caucasoids too, you know) are closer to Europeans than modern Hindus.

(Perhaps as Finno-Ugric person I am more aware of the weaknesses of "big tent Indo-Europeanism" than your average European... :rolleyes: )

PPS: IMHO, in the intellectual competition, people like Cornelius Van Til or R.J. Rushdoony could wipe the floor with these heathen. They are not [B]that[/B] smart.

See here:

[url]http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20508&highlight=hamann[/url]

Petr

[url]http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol4no3/sf-omeara.html[/url]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=5] New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe[/SIZE]

[SIZE=3][B]Michael O’Meara Bloomington, Ind.: 1st Books, 2004 $14.95

vi + 228 pp.

Reviewed by Samuel Francis[/B][/SIZE] [SIZE=3]

It tells us a good deal about the nature of contemporary American culture that Michael O’Meara’s important and often brilliant (but unfortunately sometimes opaquely written) account of the thought of the French “New Right” could be published in this country only by an on-line publishing house and not by a major firm. O’Meara’s book is neither a propaganda tract nor a mere regurgitation of books and writers but a careful and in many respects exhaustive examination of the major theoretical themes that characterize New Right philosophy and social and political theory. It is similar to but broader in scope than Tomislav Sunic’s book of 1990, [I]Against Democracy and Equality, [/I]to which O’Meara acknowledges a debt. For Americans, who even on the hard right display little familiarity with the French New Rightists, O’Meara’s book is the place to begin to find out what and who the New Right is, what the writers associated with it think, and why they think it. But those who begin [I]New Culture, New Right [/I]without adequate preparation may find parts of it forbidding and many of the ideas they encounter in it strange or even distasteful.

Readers should at once put out of their minds any connection with or similarity to the American “New Right” of the 1970s and 1980s, a collection of direct mail scam artists, religious nuts, and Beltway “populists” with six-digit salaries who were mostly semi-literate and proud of it. Nor is the French New Right, a school (or more accurately an “orientation”) that began to emerge around the same time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, associated with the nationalist movement of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the Front National. Indeed, the New Right as O’Meara uses the term is aloof from practical politics. Influenced by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and his concept of “cultural hegemony,” it concentrates almost entirely on cultural and philosophical rather than formal political conflicts, an approach for which it has adapted the term “metapolitics.” (In this respect it most closely resembles the “paleo-conservatives” around the Rockford Institute and Chronicles, or perhaps the Occidental Quarterly itself, although, as will become clear, there are many major differences.) “To wage its own anti-liberal version of Gramsci’s war of position,” O’Meara writes, the New Right’s “metapolitical strategy”

[I] sets its sights on three long-range objectives. Through its publications, conferences, and various public engagements, it endeavors to engage the ideas “that inspire and organize our age” (Madame de Staël), recuperating from them what it can for its own project. Secondly, it seeks to undermine the liberal order by discrediting its underlying tenets and affirming those traditional European ideas supportive of the identities and communities it champions. Finally it aspires to cultural hegemony, if not within civil society as a whole, at least within the elite. From the beginning, then, its “Gramscianism of the Right” privileged culture, which was taken as the “infrastructural” basis of both civil society and the state. /I

The French New Right has centered largely around an organization founded in 1968 called the Groupement de Recherche et d’Etudes pour la Civilisation Européenne (GRECE, or “Group for Research and Study of European Civilization”), and its major exponent has been the journalist and author Alain de Benoist. Entirely unlike the American “New Right” (or for that matter the Old Right), the French New Right is anti-Christian, anti-American, and anti-capitalist. Why then is it a “right” at all?

It is a right (a label Benoist and most of his colleagues have always hesitated to embrace) because it mounts a searching and virtually total critique and rejection of “modernity”—modern philosophy since Descartes, modern science and technology, modern materialistic values and culture, and the modern state and its tendencies toward global hegemony and technological regimentation—and it sees in Christianity the origins and underpinnings of modernity and in America and modern capitalism its most extreme representation. It affirms what O’Meara and the New Right itself describe as “traditional societies”—that is, the hierarchical, traditionalist, particularist, familistic and patriarchalist, communitarian, and usually agrarian and pagan societies that modernity destroys. “Traditional culture” as O’Meara explains in a footnote (55), “refers not to those primitive, tribal formations studied by anthropologists, but to the pre-modern formations that characterized Europe up to the 17th century—that is, to the Greek, Roman, Celtic, Germanic, and Medieval forms of the European civilizational heritage.” As the name GRECE suggests, one of the archetypal societies of this kind that the New Right idealizes is that of the ancient Greek polis itself. “Reactionary,” a term usually employed to describe portly suburban dentists or literary monarchists who wear opera capes, does not quite fit la Nouvelle Droite.

But what is most significant about the New Right’s positions is less the positions themselves than its sophisticated and complex philosophical elaboration of them. It is O’Meara’s own intimate familiarity with this elaboration by a wide range of writers over a period of some thirty years (as well as with the ideas of earlier figures such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger) and in a variety of disciplines ranging from philosophy to social and political theory to mythology, anthropology, and history that makes his book especially valuable and especially fascinating.

At the core of the New Right’s critique of modernity is a rejection of the philosophical rationalism that drives the modern mind and of its principal source, the philosopher René Descartes. “In his quest for truth—that is, epistemological truth—,” writes O’Meara,

[I] Descartes concentrated on the length, depth, breadth, and velocity of physical objects, for these alone enabled him to quantify “the empirical unity of the world” and render nature into extensions whose measurements leant themselves to precise and predictable calculations.… His unprecedented success in reducing complex natural phenomena to simple mathematical explanations would, of course, do much to launch the career of modern science; but his success came at a steep price. Besides reducing reality to a simple expanse of matter, “understood” in abstract mathematical terms that did little to enhance man’s knowledge of his world and, in some cases, further estranged him from it, his quantifying reductionism had the effect of relegating the qualitative features of the European life—all those things associated with culture and heritage—to a secondary order of significance. /I

Once Cartesian rationalism was incorporated into not only eighteenth century philosophy and science but also political and social thought—as it was through Locke (in an empiricist variation), Kant, and the philosophes of the continental Enlightenment—the result was to mandate in the name of “reason” and “progress” the “liberation” of human beings from traditional and “irrational” social bonds and relationships, thereby launching the war of modernity on tradition, buttressed by the ideologies of individualism and liberalism.

[I] Because liberalism’s quantitative optic focuses on the immediate and simplistic, with everything levelled down to choices between appetite and aversion, it lent itself to the myth of homo oeconomicus—or, more accurately, was the premise upon which the myth [of Economic Man] historically arose. The myth has since become the paradigm for liberalism’s quantitative model of individualization. /I

In the New Right’s critique of modernity, individualism itself is closely linked to the other features of modern society:

[I] For once the social world becomes a collection of monadic individuals, inherent distinctions and supraindividual designations take on a secondary order of significance. What counts for liberalism is the basic zoological unit, which—ideally—is a self-contained rational being. The qualitative attributes of station, character, and breeding (not to mention race, culture, and history), whose importance has prevailed in every previous civilization, are thereby ignored, for the individual—any individual—is looked on as an “instance of humanity,” worthy, in himself, of dignity. From this “naturalistic” notion of the individual, which denies everything in man that goes beyond his zoological nature, there emerges another of liberalism’s defining doctrines—that of egalitarianism and the contention that all individuals, irrespective of their inherited or acquired qualities, are bearers of equal rights and deserving of equal treatment.[/I] (p. 65)

It must be acknowledged that much of the French Right’s critique of modernity is not entirely new or unique to it—much of the critique of rationalism and the Enlightenment has been anticipated by anti-modernist Christian thinkers (C.S. Lewis comes to mind on the popular level) and philosophical conservatives like Richard Weaver. The latter argued that there is a straight road from the philosophical nominalism of the thirteenth century William of Occam to the behaviorism, Marxism, and relativism of the twentieth century. But, like Weaver’s argument, much of the New Right critique seems overdone. It is quite true that the Enlightenment put together an ideological construct that commanded the aggressive abolition of traditional social institutions and authorities, but that is not the only such construct that rationalism and naturalism can build. The early New Right in the 1970s was much attracted to such emerging disciplines as sociobiology, genetics, and ethology that were just as much developments from rationalistic and naturalistic worldviews as the behaviorism and blank-slate environmentalism the new disciplines rejected. As O’Meara writes, the New Right’s

[I] initial challenge to liberal culture took place, for instance, in the realm of science and bore many characteristics, such as a positivist faith in scientific reason, that it later rejected. Science, however, was a “natural” starting point for its anti-liberal project. In the 18th century, the champions of liberal modernity had mobilized the New Science against their conservative foes and have since represented themselves as the political vanguard of the most advanced scientific ideas. Twentieth-century science, however, has proven to be far less amenable to liberal claims. The basic tenets of evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, molecular biology, sociobiology, and ethology, all, seem to contradict liberal notions of environmental primacy, natural “goodness,” the individualist nature of the social world, the irrelevance of race, or the plasticity and equality of human nature. Given liberalism’s vulnerability in this field, it was here that Grécistes staged their first critical assault on modernist values, targeting what the most recent scientific research revealed about the social, hierarchical, genetic, and hence anti-liberal foundations of human life. /I

The French New Right, in other words, was heading toward what I have elsewhere called “counter-modernism” rather than the anti-modernism in which it eventually became involved. Counter-modernism is itself a form of modernism and accepts many of its metaphysical premises (including its naturalism) while rejecting the conventional implications and constructs (especially social and political) that the Enlightenment and its heirs have devised. Examples of counter-modernist thinkers in Euro-American thought would be Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, the Federalist Papers, the Social Darwinists of the nineteenth century, the classical elite theorists Vilfredo Pareto and Gaetano Mosca, and James Burnham. Yet unfortunately, the New Right was deflected from developing its counter-modernist tendencies, for reasons that are not entirely clear from O’Meara’s account. Quite frankly, it is impossible not to suspect simple expediency and safety, as the European Thought Police (both figuratively in the dominant culture and literally in the actual criminalization of the right through “race relations” laws) in the 1980s began cracking down on what were demonized as “racism” and “hate speech.” The New Right may have found it safer to abandon counter-modernism and science entirely than to pursue and elaborate the logical social implications of the new science of man.

[B]In any case, the New Right certainly did not take its rejection of modernism from the Christian or conservative right but from the movement known as “post-modernism,” associated with Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, et al., a movement usually involved not with the right of any sort but with the extreme left. The logical implications of post-modernism are radically relativistic and skeptical, even nihilistic, and affirm little of anything.[/B] As O’Meara writes:

[I] Against the rational, objective, and universal claims of the modern narrative [i.e., the modernist worldview], as it applies the timeless truths of mathematical reason to man’s contingent world, they [the post-modernists] argue that the narrating subject is never autonomous, never situated at an Archimedean point beyond space and time, never able to perceive the world with detachment and certainty. Rather, representations of all kinds are entwined in sociolinguistic webs of signification that know no all-embracing truth, only their own truths, which are indistinguishable from the will to power…. All forms of human action, even (or especially) the most lofty, inevitably shatter before an elusive, polymorphous reality, represented by a now self-conscious throng of incompatible discursive traditions. This leads postmodernists to a “radical pluralism” that “deconstructs” modernist notions of truth, value, and justice in the interests of a wider field of localized representations and practices.[/I] (pp. 22-23)

Post-modernists usually apply their “deconstruction” to white, Christian, patriarchal, heterosexual Western society, arguing that its claims to truth, justice, rationality, normality, and even scientific and philosophical certainty are mere myths concocted and deployed for the purposes of buttressing the power of those who benefit from them. This position is in some respects close to those of such thinkers as Pareto and Nietzsche, at least in implication, and one that the New Right has embraced—up to a point.

The point at which the New Right breaks with conventional post-modernism is in the latter’s endorsement, as a practical matter, of the “individualistic tendencies of liberal politics. In many respects they [the post-modernists] are, in fact, simply more philosophically sophisticated liberals, although ones whose principal reference is no longer the ethnically homogeneous nation-state, but rather the rainbow world of the global market.” Given the zealous antagonism of post-modernists to any and all European identities and their passion to dissolve them, as O’Meara writes, [I] B and D groups, racial minorities, trance freaks, lesbian bikers, squatters, immigrants, and grunge rockers all register in their count, while Basque nationalists, Swiss Communards, and Lombard regionalists, whose communities are ancient and intergenerational, are generally suspected of being “closed” or repressive variants of the Great Narrative. /I

[B]In fact, it is never clear in O’Meara’s account why anyone who embraces post-modernism, whether on the left or the right, would retain any logical grounds for affirming any social fabric or philosophical commitment whatsoever. Despite O’Meara’s somewhat tortured account of how the New Right tries to eat the post-modernist cake while at the same time salvaging traditional identities that post-modernism rejects, the New Right’s position appears inherently arbitrary and contradictory. [/B]“Based on a recuperation of postmodernism’s anti-liberal core,” O’Meara writes,

[I] identitarians claim the only viable narratives for Europeans—and hence the only viable communities and identities—are those posited by the cultural, historical, and racial legacies native to their heritage. Unlike the New Left, then, whose rebellion in 1968 ostensively targeted the America-centric order founded in 1945, the New Right fights this order not in the name of a postmodernism that extends and radicalizes its underlying tenets, but for the sake of freeing Europeans from its deforming effects.[/I] (p. 26)

Nevertheless, the latent nihilism of post-modernism appears to render any such “identitarian” commitments on the part of Eurocentric New Rightists logically and ethically impossible. The preference of one side for “lesbian bikers” and of the other for “Lombard regionalists” or the ancient Greek city-state seems to be merely that—an arbitrary preference, rooted in no logical or ethical soil, though perhaps grounded in material interests, psychological peculiarities, social habits, or the will to power.

While the New Right, like the post-modernists, rejects capitalism, it does so from a rejection of the Economic Man ideology that derives from modernism and not from the post-modernist and far left distaste for whatever is Western. “Unlike the anti-capitalists of the far Left,” O’Meara writes,

[I] New Rightists do not oppose free enterprise per se, only a dog-eat-dog capitalism “unaccountable to anything other than the bottom line.” As Benoist writes, “I would like to see a society with a market, but not a market society.” Against both the liberal creed of laissez-faire and the left’s statist concept, New Rightists favor an organic economic system in which market activity is geared to the general welfare. For this reason they advocate a “recontextualization” of the economy within “life, society, politics, and ethics” in order to make it a means rather than simply an ends. /I

In contrast to both the classical liberal and modern libertarian (and Marxist) view of an autonomous Economic Man divorced from social and cultural reality, driven solely by rationalistic and individualistic profit motives, and indifferent to race, culture, nation, and tradition, the New Right seeks to construct an economic vision that sees human beings as social creatures with both motivations and obligations derived from their social and historical context.

[I] In rejecting both the principle and the intent of liberal individualism, New Rightists assume that the individual is never sufficient unto himself, but an expression of larger affiliations, of which he is not the constituent element, only the function. The whole, as Aristotle, says in reference to the human community, is necessarily anterior to its parts. Failing to recognize the individual as a bearer of such larger attachments, liberal individualism is wont to rebuff those traditional or substantive values associated with family, ethnos, nation, and hence those identities constituent of social cohesion and the capacity to make history. /I

Moreover, the New Right views modern capitalism as the logical descendant of the early modern bourgeoisie’s adoption of Cartesian rationalism as an ideological buttress of their economic aspirations. “Rationalism’s triumph, then, implied not merely a victory of quantity over quality in the realm of science, but of reason and money over culture and tradition.” (p. 60)

The current incarnation of Cartesian Economic Man is the hegemony of what Catholic counter-revolutionary Thomas Molnar has called the “monoclass” of “déclassé administrators…charged with implementing the liberal managerial principles of the American conquerors” that has “assumed control of the government, the media, and the major corporate structures.” This class is in fact simply James Burnham’s “managerial elite” behaving according to its group interests and the dynamic of its rationalism. Whatever the label, “New Class,” “monoclass,” “technocracy,” or “managerial elite,” the system over which the modern ruling class presides is one of mass consumption, a managed and manipulated mass culture of instant gratification and sensory thrill, a “global democracy” waging virtually genocidal war against whatever remnants of traditional cultures and ethnostates it can locate and pulverizing any manifestations of traditional racial, sexual, religious, or class identity, and a massive and anonymous bureaucratized state coupled with a twin economic structure that engineers and manages the global order in the interests of its elites.

The New Right’s critique of modern capitalism, as eccentric as it may seem to most on the post—New Deal American right, is in fact entirely consistent with both historic European (and some American) rightist traditions and with the New Right’s general critique of modernism and of modern social and cultural tendencies in sex, race, and nation. The New Right rejects contemporary feminism and endorses social differentiations of sex and sex roles.

[I] [W]hile subjecting feminism to their anti-liberal critique, New Rightists by no means hypostatize existing sexual roles. They fully accept that these may change over time and differ from culture to culture. They do, however, argue that sex-specific roles complementing the innate biological differences between male and female are inherently healthy. In fact, such designated differences have always existed, because they express differences found in nature. As Benoist puts it, sexual roles are “a feature of culture grafted onto a feature of nature.” That men are aggressive, competitive, inclined to abstraction, and enterprising and that women are nurturing, seducing, patient, and receptive is not, he insists, the result of a repressive patriarchal imposition or a misguided process of socialization, but of an evolutionary process that balances and compliments the difference between each sex, for without the feminine, a masculine society would be one-sided and dysfunctional, just as the opposite would be true. /I

The New Right’s positions on sex and male-female relations as O’Meara describes them are rather more sophisticated than the sort of simple-minded 1950s prudery masked as Old Testament moralism that we get from the American evangelicals and their sermons about “family values.” As O’Meara remarks, “Conservatives…often react to feminism’s contractual and anti-naturalist view of the family by extolling what they assume are traditional familial roles (but which are actually those of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie), unconscious that several models, with different sexual roles, appear in the historical record.” The New Right therefore can less easily be accused of “perpetuating the subjugation of women” than more conventional Christian and conservative critics of feminism.

Much the same is true of their views of race. O’Meara unfortunately does not dwell on this aspect of New Right thought, though he does make plain that New Right racial thought has moved from an early endorsement of modern biologistic accounts of race to one that today has sought to synthesize racial biological realities with anthropological theories of culture. The principal exponent of this new trend was the late anthropologist Arnold Gehlen.

Gehlen, O’Meara writes, “singles out man’s culture-making capacity as his defining characteristic” but does not deny the existence of some, though very limited, biologically given instinctual drives. Culture builds on these drives so that it becomes a “second nature” in addition to what Gehlen argued was a thin biologically endowed nature. [I] Virtually every conscious realm of human activity, Gehlen holds, comes to be affected by culture. In his anthropology, it is virtually inseparable from man. For without it, and the role it plays in negotiating his encounters with the world, man would be only an undifferentiated and still unrealized facet of nature—unable, in fact, to survive in nature. Contrary to a long tradition of rationalist thought (the anthropological structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss being the foremost recent example), there are no “natural men.” Free of culture, man would be a cretin, unable even to speak. Given the inescapable character of his culture, Gehlen argues that man is best described as a biocultural being: for although culture and nature are two distinct things, in him they form an indivisible unity. /I

Gehlen’s view of the necessity of human cultural endowments and his rejection of the concept of a pre-social “natural man” outside society and culture resemble the Aristotelian view of human nature as inherently sociable, man as the “creature of the polis” or political society (a concept that lies at the root of philosophical conservatism), rather than the “state of nature” fictions of such thinkers as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Like Aristotelian anthropology, Gehlen’s view rejects the individualism that underlies classical liberalism as well as the social determinism pushed by Franz Boas and his school. O’Meara remarks in a footnote to the passage quoted above, “It is this emphasis on the culture-nature link that distinguishes Gehlen’s anthropology from the ‘cultural determinism’ of the [sic] Boas’ school, which ignores man’s animal nature, posits an idealist concept of culture, and relies on a good deal of fraudulent research.” (p. 54, n.28) Yet, if Gehlen differs from Boas and the environmentalist and egalitarian theories he and his followers have inflicted on this country and the world for the last century or so, he may also save contemporary biological racialists from a simple-minded genetic determinism that almost entirely ignores culture as a formative force.

Gehlen’s emphasis on culture does not lead him to racial egalitarianism or universalism. Indeed, on the contrary, it implies a highly particularistic, almost tribalistic, view of cultural differences and cultural mixture.

[I] Since different families of men, in different times and environments, respond differently to the limitless choices poised by their world, their cultures grow in different ways…. As an organic unity with forms congruent with its distinct vitality, a culture, then, is understandable only in its own terms. For its essence lies neither in rationalist nor objectivist criteria, but in the conditioned behaviors and beliefs constituting the interrelated patterns and categories specific to it. As a consequence, there is no specific Culture, only different cultures, specific to the different peoples who engender them…. There can, it follows, never be a world culture, a single primary consciousness, a single mode or distillation of life common to all men. For the heritage of choices that goes into making a culture and giving it its defining forms is distinct in each organic formation in those cycles of growth and vitality distinct to it[/I]. (pp. 47-48)

Gehlen’s ideas have been used to mount arguments against immigration, multiculturalism, and the fantasies of “one world” and globalism, and legitimately so, but since Gehlen died in 1976 he was never aware of the major findings of the 1980s in twin studies and psychometrics that show clearly the existence of major genetically grounded differences in personality and intelligence between individuals as well as races. The biology of race and personality does not perhaps refute Gehlen’s “biocultural” approach, but it does suggest that regardless of his concessions to biological factors in the shaping of culture, he nevertheless continued to underestimate its importance. [B] In any case, the New Right itself in recent years has moved away not only from its early attraction to a biological view of human nature and society but also from its opposition to multiculturalism, if not to immigration as well.[/B] The earlier position, as O’Meara explains, offered a firm rejection of multiculturalism: [I] In contrast to liberalism’s homogenized world of fractured cultures and peoples, New Rightists advocate a heterogenous world of homogenous peoples, each rooted in their own culture and soil. Every people, they claim, has a droit à la différence: that is, the right to pursue their destiny in accord with the organic dictates of their own identity. They see, moreover, no convincing reason why Europeans should feel obliged to abandon their millennial heritage for the sake of a dubious cosmopolitan fashion. /I

But the new position has changed course radically.

[B][I] Recently, however, GRECE’s opposition to multiculturalism has undergone a significant shift. Until 1998, it consistently opposed multiculturalist efforts to recognize immigrant communities as separate legal entities, for it claimed these efforts threatened the integrity of French identity. Then, rather unexpectedly, it reversed course, adopting a “communitarian” position favoring the public recognition of non-French communities—so that immigrants could be able to “keep alive the structures of their collective cultural existence.” To some, this shift constitutes nothing less than an identitarian betrayal, for others a recognition that Europe’s enemy is not the immigrant per se, but the system responsible for immigration. /I[/B]

The shift was not without controversy, with New Rightists like Guillaume Faye and others rejecting it. As O’Meara comments: [I] When Grécistes first sloganized the droit à la différence, they sought to rebuff liberal efforts to stigmatize European identitarianism as a form of racism. At a certain point, however, its defense of cultural/ethnic difference took on a life of its own…. This eventually led to a qualified form of multiculturalism, as the GRECE reversed much of its earlier argumentation and joined the liberal chorus demanding the institutional recognition of the immigrants’ cultural identity. The problem with its metapolitics, however, did not end here, for its defense of European identity has consistently been waged on the Left’s cosmopolitan terrain—in that it fought not for the primacy of their own people, but for the application of pluralistic standards to support Europeans in the defense of their heritage…. Le droit à la différence ended up, then, parroting the ideology of liberal pluralist society and its relativist values. Needless to add, this augurs badly for the future of the GRECE’s identitarianism, for it now tacitly acknowledges the right of non-Europeans to occupy and partition European lands.[/I] (pp. 77-78)

Interestingly the same trend and its implications appear on the American hard right, as advocates of territorial secessionism and proponents of “Euro-American” identity present themselves not as the rightful heirs of the European civilization in North America but merely as one more chip in the multiculturalist mosaic demanding (or in the case of the right, begging for) recognition. One would have thought that French intellectuals intimate with Gramsci and Nietzsche would have avoided this trap.

The withering of the New Right’s opposition to multiculturalism is one of the major flaws of the movement from the perspective of the American right. Two other problems that most Americans will find troublesome are the French Rightists’ anti-Christianism and their anti-Americanism. Actually, both positions have a good deal to be said for them, but both are also problematical.

The New Right’s distaste for Christianity owes little to the conventional rationalist and secularist critique associated with figures like Bertrand Russell and T.H. Huxley and far more to the ancient pagan criticisms of Christianity before its acquisition of power under Constantine. The New Right argues that Christianity, and more generally monotheism itself in the forms of Judaism and Islam, have been destructive forces that have spawned intolerance, dogmatism, and a narrow-minded dualism in the European mentality and have authorized massive persecutions, exterminations, and cultural genocide of its victims. Christianity did not emerge from the European folk tradition and identity but was adopted as a theological construct shaped by its Semitic origins and its underclass adherents and was then imposed by the state and the church, often through repression of its rivals and critics. Only through a long process of “Germanization” (O’Meara here cites James Russell’s The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity) or “Aryanization” did early Christianity become at all compatible with European identity. New Rightists share Nietzsche’s critique that Christianity represented a slave revolt against the aristocratic paganism of ancient Europe and under the sway of its otherworldly and universalist beliefs rejected “national and cultural particularisms” and promoted the destruction and amalgamization of distinct peoples. They argue that by substituting its “logos” for the ancient pagan view of nature as suffused with many divinities and supernatural beings Christianity “desacralized” nature and prepared the way for the advent of modern rationalism and the secularized depredations of modern capitalism and mass democracy.

[I] For nearly fifteen centuries Christianity dominated the continent. In disenchanting the world, associating faith with reason, and fostering individual subjectivity, Benoist claims it prepared the present “eclipse of the sacred.” As a result, Europeans now lack the spiritual references—the transcendent certainties—that once inspired them, for a post-Christian world, in which science or liberal ideology has been substituted for the church’s discredited teachings, is a world that knows only life’s material properties and the existential groundlessness that dooms the individual to impotence. Spiritually adrift, Europeans seem to have dissipated even their instinct for survival, as ethnomasochism becomes foremost in their hierarchy of values and effeminacy renders them defenseless before larger dangers. Faced with the nihilism born of this void, New Rightists call for “a return to ourselves”—and to the primal sources of their heritage—advocated not for the sake of some pre-Christian Golden Age, but as a means of reviving the European project—and hence Europe’s will to power.[/I] (p. 98)

It has to be said that there is a good deal of truth in much of the New Right’s attack on Christianity, especially as Christianity appears today, whether on the political left or the political right, with its support for an egalitarianism and universalism that reject race and nation in general and the historic European (especially pre-Christian) identity in particular. Nevertheless, the New Right’s critique is also somewhat overdrawn, as O’Meara notes in his last chapter, which offers a critique of the New Right itself. Christianity, whatever its origins in the Near East and the deracinated proletariat of the late Roman Empire, was in fact “Germanized,” as Russell argues, assimilated itself to much of the heritage of Europe, and played a major role in creating the European civilization we have known since the early Middle Ages, including its art, music, philosophy, and even science. It is simply vacuous to claim that the actual Christianity of history displays the character Benoist describes. In any case, Christianity has been the religious identity of European man for some two thousand years, and to argue, as the New Right does, for the resuscitation of paganism as the “real” tradition of Europe is simply a posture, even if it is not intended literally. [I] In appealing to the pagan heritage, New Rightists do not actually seek a restoration of ancient pagan practices, just as they distance themselves from New Age pagans, whose eclectic mix of ancient cults and postmodern hedonism are no less anti-identitarian than the Christian/modernist practices they oppose. Instead, their paganism strives to resuscitate Europe’s ancestral concept of the cosmos, its classical ethical principles, its notion of time and history, and its affirmation of community. It thus affirms the integrity of the European project and “all the inscrutable creative powers manifested in their nature,” rejecting, in the process, a misanthropic religious conception that leaves man begging forgiveness from a god forged in the image of a Near Eastern despot. Above all, the New Right’s paganism aims at transvaluing the Judeo-Christian values that have inverted all that is strong and noble in their heritage. /I

Christianity today is virtually extinct, at least in Europe among real Europeans, and it is not that much more alive in America, which is why American churches are so zealous in their support for a mass immigration that replenishes the stock of an institution whites have abandoned. But apart from the pop paganism of the New Age cults, there is no real sign of a revival of a serious paganism of the kind the New Right talks about at either the popular or higher levels of culture. Whatever the merits of its critique of Christianity, the New Right’s neo-paganism seems to have born little fruit.

New Right paganism looks to the studies of Indo-European mythology and social structure of the late Georges Dumézil and invokes “mythos” as a pagan counterpart to the Christian “logos.” The latter, as O’Meara acknowledges, may

[I] be a more logically, analytically, and clearly developed form of thought, but cognitively it is not superior to mythos and often less suggestive and encompassing. More important still, logos—especially in its modern form—empties the world of those mythic truths that once constituted the essence of the European project. Against this “disenchantment,” which leaves the European powerless before the great challenges threatening him, a revival of Europe’s mythic heritage holds out the prospect that the true sources of his being might be recovered and the European project reborn. /I

Just as problematic as its hostility to Christianity, at least for many on the American right, is the French New Right’s outright hatred of America itself. While the New Right is surely correct that both contemporary “mainstream” (and even “conservative”) Christianity and the hegemonic forces of contemporary America are the enemies of European Man, it insists on pushing its critique of them far beyond contemporary manifestations.

[B]In the case of America, its critique is not confined simply to the modern post–World War II managerial regime in which state, corporation, and mass culture coalesce to dominate and deracinate the world as well as traditional American culture, but extends to America as it originated and developed. In the New Right’s view, the current American regime is merely the logical and natural extension of America as it was founded and is the most complete expression of modernity itself.[/B]

The New Right’s critique of America is in fact a mirror image of what the left thinks about it or would like America to be—the “proposition country,” “creedal nation,” or “first universal nation” of liberal and neo-conservative folklore. Pointing to the millennialist and utopian language of the early Puritans in New England, the egalitarian and universalist slogans of the Declaration of Independence, and the anti-European fulminations of Mark Twain and other progressivists in American history and culture, the New Right claims that this and the political and economic system reflecting it are all that exists in America. As such, it regards this country as the main enemy of European Man and his tradition and identity (as well as of the Third World peoples whose cause the New Right increasingly seems to champion). [I] As an anti-Europe, the United States represents the preeminent exemplar of liberal modernity. Nowhere else, the Grécistes argue, were the Enlightenment principles—of equality, rationality, universalism, individuality, economism, and developmentalism—more thoroughly realized than in this new land “liberated from the dead hand of the European past.” The country’s constitutional Framers, it follows, were steeped in 18th-century liberalism—which “blended with the earlier ecclesiastical culture of New England” (Carl Bridenbaugh) and later with the Emersonian ideals of individualism. This led them to adopt a political system whose ideological underpinnings rested on rationalist abstractions exalting the individual rather than the history and traditions of its people. The federal state was thus conceived not as an instrument of its people’s destiny—nationality in the European sense did not exist in America—but as a cosmopolis, potentially open to all humanity.

Contrary to the contention of certain paleo-conservatives, as well as the arguments of those historians associated with the school of “civic republicanism,” this propositional notion of the American state was not the invention of latter-day Jacobins, of whom William J. Clinton and George W. Bush are the descendants, but inherent to the country’s original constitutional project.[/I] (p. 145)

The hostility of the New Right to America and its global hegemony leads it to sympathize with the Soviet Union, as O’Meara notes. “Given the nature of the existing geopolitical realities, the GRECE has long sympathized with Russia, even during the Cold War.” The sympathy was not due to any affiliation with Marxism but to the New Right’s belief that Marxism-Leninism penetrated into and deformed Russian society far less than liberal modernism permeates American and contemporary European society, that the Russians are an Indo-European people and thus share a racial and deep-cultural identity with Europe, and that their imperial identity is derived from what Rightists like to call “tellurocratic” (based on land power, like Sparta, Rome, and Germany) rather than “thalassocratic” (sea-based power, like that of Athens, Carthage, Britain, and America). Moreover, if Russia recovers economically, it would be capable of mounting political and military resistance to the global hegemony of American liberal modernism. [I] If European capital and know-how continue to penetrate eastward, contributing to Russia’s recovery, the ex-Soviet Union holds out the prospect of becoming a vast continental power, with an abundance of natural resources (especially oil), an immense reservoir of human talent, and a will to power. A Eurasian rapprochement (which is already occurring in numerous areas of trade, research, and development) would thus portent [sic] an empire of unparalleled immensity and a possible “staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution”…. It would not be at all “unnatural,” then, if European and Russian destinies should merge and an “Empire of the Sun” stretching across fourteen times zones, arise. /I

[B]The New Right’s anti-Americanism is not confined to a political critique but extends also to American culture or what the critics claim passes for culture in this country. O’Meara cites a recent special issue of the New Right periodical Terre et peuple that ridiculed America as the “Planet of the Clowns,” taking “particular delight in emphasizing the absurdity of homo americanus.”[/B]

[I] From that part of the population claiming to have been abducted by aliens, to creationist accounts of human origins, to a president claiming fellatio by a student aide ought not be considered a “sexual relation,” they have had a field day[/I]. (pp. 149-50)

Any number of responses to this line of criticism may be offered, and O’Meara, though he appears to be sympathetic to much of it (recapitulating the thesis of Jewish liberal historian Louis Hartz that America is a society founded on Lockean liberalism and has neither conservative institutions nor conservative ideas), offers a response himself in his final chapter, in which he quotes paleo-conservative historian Paul Gottfried’s perfectly accurate comments that the New Right view of America is in large part simply a caricature of the reality.

First, as for America being a pure product of the Enlightenment and the triumph of modernity, that is certainly true of the system that has prevailed in this country since the New Deal era and increasingly since the Civil War. But it is arguable (indeed, it is the paleo-conservative argument) that this dominant system is by no means the only or real American identity, an identity steeped in racial and tribal realities far more than most Europeans today are. (Pace the French Rightists, “the preeminent exemplar of liberal modernity” is not America but the French Revolution.) Some New Rightists seem to perceive this, however dimly, but their knowledge of the realities of American history appears to be thin. O’Meara in a footnote notes that much of American modernism was simply the result of the triumph of the Northern base in the Civil War. “By contrast, the American South, closer to the legacy of the English gentry than New England Puritanism, was far more European in character,” and “In a characteristic expression of anti-liberal disdain for the North’s ‘anti-culture,’ Maurice Bardèche describes Sheridan’s terrorist assault on Atlanta and the subsequent crushing of Southern civilization as nothing less than a ‘barbarian victory.’” (p. 158)

[B]Bardèche is correct, of course, except that someone should explain to him that it was not Philip Sheridan but William T. Sherman who burned Atlanta (Sheridan did enough damage in the Shenandoah Valley)—facts that any American schoolchild would know. That Bardèche (and perhaps O’Meara, who fails to correct his error) does not know them suggests that much of the New Right sneering and snorting about America is really not much more than an affected European snobbery and resentment of a more successful and more powerful political order.[/B]

Moreover, despite the rhetorical and ideological dominance of American political forms by Enlightenment rationalism, the reality of American national political and social life is rather different. Americans, both their leaders and average citizens, love to boast of their egalitarianism but almost all of them live in racially homogeneous neighborhoods, attend racially homogeneous churches, and place their children in racially homogeneous schools. [B]I have no disposition to defend creationism any more than I would claims of alien abductions, but the New Right might try to grasp that the Americans who embrace creationism are rejecting the Darwinian naturalism that the New Right itself claims to oppose.[/B]

What the New Right does not appear to understand is that despite the presence and increasingly the domination of the liberal modernism it despises in this country and the American rejection of specific European traditions, American society, like any human society, re-invents itself as a naturally hierarchical, cultic, racially conscious community. The great promise of American nationhood was neither that it might replicate and perpetuate the specific obsolete and irrelevant European manifestations of such natural human formations nor that it might escape from history and nature and recreate the egalitarian Eden or construct a utopian “city on a hill,” but that, having discarded many of the particular feudal, ecclesiastical, dynastic, and nationalistic distractions, deformities, and conflicts of old Europe, European Man could find in North America a more authentic destiny than the European baggage permitted. That hope remains possible of fulfillment even today, but it cannot be realized until the present managerial regime and its calculated annihilation of European Man domestically and abroad is dismantled. Only if the fundamental European character of the American nation is identified and championed can the regime be challenged at all either politically or culturally. The French New Right’s total and cartoonishly simplistic rejection of all American culture ab ovo renders any such effort impossible.

[B]Indeed, it is difficult to see how the French New Right could mount any kind of effective opposition to modernity, given that it rejects almost every aspect of European society. The Christian view of man and society that shaped the classical conservatism that resisted the French Revolution and defended the eighteenth century dynastic states it rejects as bitterly as it does contemporary America. It also has come to affect a skepticism of the racial and sociobiological findings of recent science and of science as a whole. There appears to be no social or political group or force in modern European society with which it expresses any kinship or sympathy. It increasingly seems to ooze sympathy for the Third World invaders of Europe and the violently anti-Western states from which they come. And it regards the Soviet Union as preferable to the contemporary United States.[/B]

Since the collapse of American conservatism under Ronald Reagan and afterwards, there has been a desperate need for the emergence of a new identity for the right, both in Europe and America, a right that is less concerned with defending the “wisdom of our ancestors,” “the free market,” the Constitution, and similar bromides and is more interested in conserving a specific human group, its biological foundations, and its cultural extensions—in the case of Euro-American conservatism, European Man as a race and the heir and creator of a civilization, whether on the European or North American continents. There is increasing evidence that such a right is slowly beginning to emerge in the United States in the reactions against immigration and the invasion of Iraq, among other issues.

Much of what the French New Right has to offer in its philosophical critique of modernity and its defenses of the enduring legacies of ancient pre-Christian values and ideals is a valuable contribution to formulating the basis of such a right. The emerging American right (if it does or will exist) should pay more attention to what it has to say and would be well advised to emulate its intellectual depth and seriousness and to learn something from its “metapolitical” cultural war. Michael O’Meara’s book is by far the best and most comprehensive account of the thought of the French New Right now available in English, and there is far more in it than this review has been able to encompass (the influence of such thinkers as Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Julius Evola, René Guénon, Francis Parker Yockey, and others, for example), but as a whole the specifics of much of what the New Right is offering do not really speak to either the practical issues or the underlying philosophical and cultural problems that a real new right, in either the Europe or America of today and the future, requires.[/SIZE][/FONT]

Petr

2005-10-12 11:52 | User Profile

And here's a direct connection between deconstructionism and "New Right": [COLOR=DarkRed][FONT=Arial]

"Foucault's intellectual family tree is hard to trace. Throughout his career, he was hostile to attempts to link him to any philosophical movement. He did suggest several important influences on Madness and Civilization. [B]The first is the historian of religion Georges Dumezil, who got Foucault a job at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. Dumezil was an expert on Indo-European religion, and emphasized sets of relations between various traditions and structures. He is often seen as a forerunner of the structuralist movement. Foucault claimed that Dumezil's notion of the importance of structure influenced him greatly.[/B] Dumezil was also important in introducing him to the medical and scientific libraries of Uppsala, which provided much of the raw material for Madness and Civilization."[/FONT][/COLOR]

[url]http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/madnessandciv/context.html[/url]

Petr

Petr

2005-10-12 12:46 | User Profile

And here's R.J. Rushdoony's take on the fundamental ideological difference between the Biblical worldview and polytheism. The concept of equality before law is rooted in anti-nominalist monotheism.

[B] (from [I]The Institutes of Biblical Law[/I], pp. 17-18)[/B] [COLOR=Purple][FONT=Arial]

[SIZE=3]"The consequences for law of this fact are total: it means[I] one God, one law[/I]. [B]The premise of polytheism is that we live in a multiverse, not a universe, that a variety of law-orders and hence lords exist, and that man cannot therefore be under one law [I]except [/I]by virtue of imperialism[/B]. [B]Modern legal positivism denies the existence of any absolute; it is hostile, because of its relativism, to the concept of a universe and of a universe of law.[/B] Instead, societies of men exist, each with its order of positive law, and each order of law lacks any absolute or universal validity. The law of Buddhist states is seen as valid for Buddhist nations, the law of Islam for Moslem states, the law of pragmatism for humanistic states, and the laws of Scripture for Christian states, but none, it is held, have the right to claim that their law represents truth in any absolute sense. This, of course, militates against the Biblical declaration that God's order is absolute and absolutely binding on men and nations.

"[B]Even more, because an absolute law is denied, it means that the only universal law possible is an[I] imperialistic law[/I], a law imposed by force and and having no validity other than the coercive imposition.[/B] Any one world order on such a premise is of necessity imperialistic. Having denied absolute law, it cannot appeal to men to return to the true order from whence man is fallen. A relativistic, pragmatic law has no premise for missionary activity: the "truth" it proclaims is no more valid than the "truth" held by the people it seeks to unite to itself. If it holds, "we are better off one," it cannot justify this statement except by saying that "I hold it to be so," to which the resister can reply, "I hold that we are better off many." [B]Under pragmatic law, it is held that every man is his own law-system, because there is no absolute over-arching law-order[/B]. But this means anarchy. Thus, while pragmatism or relativism (or existentialism, or positivism or any other form of this faith) holds to the absolute immunity of the individual implicitly or explicitly, in effect its only argument is the coercion of the individual, because it has no other bridge between man and man. It can speak of love, but there is no ground calling love more valid than hate. [B]Indeed, the Marquis de Sade logically saw no crime in murder; on nominalistic, relativistic grounds, what could be wrong with murder? /B [B]If there is no absolute law, then every man is his own law.[/B] As the writer of Judges declared, "In those days there was no king in Israel (i.e., the people had rejected God as their king) ; every man did that which was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25; cf. 17:6; 18:1; 19;1). [B]The law forbids man's self-law: "Ye shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes" (Deut. 12:8)[/B], and this applies to worship as well as to moral order. The [I]first [/I]principle of the [I]Shema Israel[/I] is thus [I]one God, one law[/I]. It is the declaration of an absolute moral order to which man must conform. If Israel cannot admit another god or another law-order, it cannot recognize any other religion or law-order as valid either for itself or for anyone else. [B][I]Because God is one, truth is one.[/I] [/B]Other people will perish in their way, lest they turn be converted (Ps. 2:12). The basic coercion is reserved to God.

...

"[B][U]Modern political orders are polytheistic imperial states[/U], but the churches are not much better.[/B] To hold, as the churches do, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Lutheran, Calvinist, and all others virtually, that the law was good for Israel, but that Christians and the church are under grace and without law, or under some higher, newer law, is implicit polytheism. The Joachimite heresy has deeply infected the church. According to this heresy, the first age of man was the age of the Father, the age of justice and the law. The second age was the age of the Son, of the church, and of grace. [B]The third age is the age of the Spirit, when men become gods and their own law.[/B][/SIZE] [/FONT][/COLOR]

(Yup, it was this Joachim of Fiore who originally came up with the concept of "Third Reich (reign) of the spirit").

So you see, even if modern empires like USA may sometimes pay lip-service to God of the Bible, for all intents and purposes their ideology is polytheistic. They are already[I] de facto [/I]pagan. Gary North has written a whole book on the subject: [COLOR=Indigo][SIZE=4] [B]"Political Polytheism - The Myth of Pluralism"[/B][/SIZE][/COLOR]

[url]http://www.freebooks.com/docs/21f2_47e.htm[/url]

The true origin of that hypocritical, "totalitarian tolerance" of today is not rooted in Christianity but in[B] imperial polytheism[/B].

Petr

Okiereddust

2005-10-12 17:25 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Petr]I think Francis raised here many noteworthy points on the internal contradictions hiding behind the surface of [I]Nouvelle Droite[/I] that its uncritical admirers usually leave untouched.

Many of the admirers of [I]Nouvelle Droite[/I] gush over at the academic background of many of its proponents. They fail to see the downside of this - that New Right could be just a form of alienated-from-reality, self-indulgent theorizing, Right's equivalent for intellectual college-cults of Jean-Paul Sartre or Noam Chomsky.

Like Sam Francis points out,[I] Nouvelle Droite [/I]does [B]not [/B]actually draw its main ideology from some primordial Aryan wisdom, but rather from deconstructionist Foucaultian nihilism, then trying [B]hypocritically[/B] to uphold some traditional values: [COLOR=Red][B] "In fact, it is never clear in O’Meara’s account why anyone who embraces post-modernism, whether on the left or the right, would retain any logical grounds for affirming any social fabric or philosophical commitment whatsoever. Despite O’Meara’s somewhat tortured account of how the New Right tries to eat the post-modernist cake while at the same time salvaging traditional identities that post-modernism rejects, the New Right’s position appears inherently arbitrary and contradictory."[/B][/COLOR]

This sort of pick-and-choose nihilism is a house built on sand, it cannot stand strong challenges.

(An example: any movement that really would like to "follow nature" and "oppose transcendental moralism" should have no qualms with cannibalism. That is very natural, chimpanzees do it all the time)

To wit: any enterprise to resurrect European culture without Christianity, nay, sometimes specifically[B] opposing[/B] Christianity, is a doomed enterprise, a vain masquerade.

I get this [I]so empty feeling[/I] when reading pagan New Right manifestoes - they know how to "talk the talk", use all the right phrases, but I cannot detect that joyful, spontaneous spirit that is so commonly associated with pagans. It is as if they themselves knew, deep inside, just how empty their gestures are.

PS: I also think this attempt to promote some abstract "Indo-Europeanism" as a spiritual alternative to Christianity is a mighty artificial enterprise - even in purely racial sense, Semites like Jews and Arabs (they are Caucasoids too, you know) are closer to Europeans than modern Hindus.

(Perhaps as Finno-Ugric person I am more aware of the weaknesses of "big tent Indo-Europeanism" than your average European... :rolleyes: )

PPS: IMHO, in the intellectual competition, people like Cornelius Van Til or R.J. Rushdoony could wipe the floor with these heathen. They are not [B]that[/B] smart.

See here:

[url]http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20508&highlight=hamann[/url]

Petr

Yes, I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head Petr.

Its interesting to note the the "New Rightists Indentitarians" preference for European culture seems purely arbitary.

[QUOTE][I] identitarians claim the only viable narratives for Europeans—and hence the only viable communities and identities—are those posited by the cultural, historical, and racial legacies native to their heritage. Unlike the New Left, then, whose rebellion in 1968 ostensively targeted the America-centric order founded in 1945, the New Right fights this order not in the name of a postmodernism that extends and radicalizes its underlying tenets, but for the sake of freeing Europeans from its deforming effects.[/I] (p. 26)

Nevertheless, the latent nihilism of post-modernism appears to render any such “identitarian” commitments on the part of Eurocentric New Rightists logically and ethically impossible. The preference of one side for “lesbian bikers” and of the other for “Lombard regionalists” or the ancient Greek city-state seems to be merely that—[B]an arbitrary preference, rooted in no logical or ethical soil, though perhaps grounded in material interests, psychological peculiarities, social habits, or the will to power[/B].[/QUOTE]

And grounded in no logical or ethical soil, we can see how transient their loyalties can be. One suspects that adherents of their positions would drop their alliances with the Anerican old right and and traditional paleoconservatives in a heartbeat.

Just like their adherents over here on these boards - the Phoran crowd - seem to do. Fade seems to capture their own personal flakiness and rootlessness perfectly - which is why that is wher they all seem to find their proper home, in spite of its outrageous defects.

But anyway, let's look at the only thing left they might positively stand for to us, opposition to immigration and multiculturalism. As you note Petr.

[B]In any case, the New Right itself in recent years has moved away not only from its early attraction to a biological view of human nature and society but also from its opposition to multiculturalism, if not to immigration as well.[/B] The earlier position, as O’Meara explains, offered a firm rejection of multiculturalism: [I] In contrast to liberalism’s homogenized world of fractured cultures and peoples, New Rightists advocate a heterogenous world of homogenous peoples, each rooted in their own culture and soil. Every people, they claim, has a droit à la différence: that is, the right to pursue their destiny in accord with the organic dictates of their own identity. They see, moreover, no convincing reason why Europeans should feel obliged to abandon their millennial heritage for the sake of a dubious cosmopolitan fashion. /I

But the new position has changed course radically.

[B][I] Recently, however, GRECE’s opposition to multiculturalism has undergone a significant shift. Until 1998, it consistently opposed multiculturalist efforts to recognize immigrant communities as separate legal entities, for it claimed these efforts threatened the integrity of French identity. Then, rather unexpectedly, it reversed course, adopting a “communitarian” position favoring the public recognition of non-French communities—so that immigrants could be able to “keep alive the structures of their collective cultural existence.” To some, this shift constitutes nothing less than an identitarian betrayal, for others a recognition that Europe’s enemy is not the immigrant per se, but the system responsible for immigration. /I[/B]

The shift was not without controversy, with New Rightists like Guillaume Faye and others rejecting it. As O’Meara comments: [I] When Grécistes first sloganized the droit à la différence, they sought to rebuff liberal efforts to stigmatize European identitarianism as a form of racism. At a certain point, however, its defense of cultural/ethnic difference took on a life of its own…. This eventually led to a qualified form of multiculturalism, as the GRECE reversed much of its earlier argumentation and joined the liberal chorus demanding the institutional recognition of the immigrants’ cultural identity. The problem with its metapolitics, however, did not end here, for its defense of European identity has consistently been waged on the Left’s cosmopolitan terrain—in that it fought not for the primacy of their own people, but for the application of pluralistic standards to support Europeans in the defense of their heritage…. Le droit à la différence ended up, then, parroting the ideology of liberal pluralist society and its relativist values. Needless to add, this augurs badly for the future of the GRECE’s identitarianism, for it now tacitly acknowledges the right of non-Europeans to occupy and partition European lands.[/I] (pp. 77-78)

Interestingly the same trend and its implications appear on the American hard right, as advocates of territorial secessionism and proponents of “Euro-American” identity present themselves not as the rightful heirs of the European civilization in North America but merely as one more chip in the multiculturalist mosaic demanding (or in the case of the right, begging for) recognition. [B]One would have thought that French intellectuals intimate with Gramsci and Nietzsche would have avoided this trap.[/B]

The withering of the New Right’s opposition to multiculturalism is one of the major flaws of the movement from the perspective of the American right. Two other problems that most Americans will find troublesome are the French Rightists’ anti-Christianism and their anti-Americanism. Actually, both positions have a good deal to be said for them, but both are also problematical.[/QUOTE]And one would think that radical American paleoconservatives/quasi white-nationalists, who have made opposition to the ideas of the neoconservatives the lynchpin of their whole being, would have the sense to avoid the logic which drifts so inexorably toward the neoconservatives ideas.

I see very little to distinguish the ENR now from the neoconservatives, except for their dogmatic rejection of Christianity, America, and capitalism. However by breaking with the neoconservatives on these grounds, they have created an ideology which seems to contain even less substantively to differ with from the various forms of the unregenerative left - from Chomsky to Zuganov.

Briefly, ENR seem to have become a group of quasi neoconservatives, who distinguish themselves from neoconservatives by hating America, Christianity, and capitalism.

Really just an eccentric group of parlor leftists to me. People that invest in them I think are as big fools as people who invest in the permanence of AntiYuppies writings here or the continued operation of the Phora. I wouldn't be surprised to see these ENR one day summarily renounce all their work, and even try to destroy it, the same way Antiuppie wanted all his posts here nuked or Fade pulled the plug on the Phora.

What an utter waste of human energies and abilities.

Petr

2005-10-12 18:32 | User Profile

[quote=okiereddust][COLOR=DarkRed][FONT=Arial][I][B] - "Really just an eccentric group of parlor leftists to me."[/B][/I][/FONT][/COLOR]

This could be true, to a certain extent. Here are some examples of "nou-droes" extolling Hinduism and merrily projecting their own ideals on it:

[url]http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/downloads/books/aid.htm#Chapter1Section1SubSection6[/url]

[COLOR=Navy][FONT=Garamond] [SIZE=3]"The caste system as a religiously sanctioned hierarchical organization of society has exerted a fascination on Western nostaligics who felt lost in the modern world and longed for a kind of restoration of the pre-modern world. [B]Among these nostalgics, one of extraordinary stature was certainly Julius Evola (1898-1974), an Italian aristocrat and an independent Rightist ideologue who, after years in the margin, ingratiated himself with the Fascist regime by developing a “truly Italian” version of the Race Theory, “more spiritual than the purely biological German [I]Rassenlehre[/I]”.[/B] Thus, he rejected biological determinism in favour of will-power, preferring chivalrous values like courage over the modern rigid bio-materialist subjection of man to the verdict of his genes. On the other hand, his occasional conflicts with the ideologues and the authorities of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, now eagerly highlighted by his remaining followers, hardly suffice to make him acceptable, e.g. there is no excuse for his writing a foreword to the Italian translation of the anti-Semitic forgery, [I]The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[/I]

"[B]Though a declared racist, his views were at odds with those of most White racists, e.g. he glorified Asian cultures because of their hierarchy and traditionalism, esp. the martial virtues as preserved (or so Western romantics thought) in imperial Japan. (22) He professed a premodern aristocratic “horizontal racism”: the European aristocracy was one “race” bound to intermarry, the common people were the other “race”, with national borders and identities being less important. [/B]After being hit during a bombardment in Vienna at the end of World War 2, he spent his last thirty years in a wheelchair, writing political-cultural essays and fairly accurate but always “traditionalist” accounts of Oriental religions. Evola is interesting because he presented a premodern (and anti-modern) viewpoint, a living fossil in the 20th century.

"Those who have been duped by the dominant Marxist discourse into classifying Fascism as Rightist would do well to study Evola’s Rightist critique of Fascism. [B]He attacked Fascism on the following points: its anti-traditionalism and zest for newness and youth (as exemplified by its term Duce/“leader”, i.e. one who takes the people to a distant goal, a utopia, as opposed to the premodern “ruler” who merely maintains the existing order); its superficial modernist optimism (best seen in Fascist, Nazi, Stalinist and Maoist visual art); its equalizing “Jacobin” nationalism which minimizes class differences; its totalitarianism, as opposed to premodern culture’s sense of measure and division of powers; its secularism, which creates an opposition between the political and the sacred; its socialism; its personality cult (one ought to revere the institution of kingship, not the person of the king); and its natalist policy based on the vulgar cult of numbers, neglecting quality for the sake of quantity.[/B] (23)

...

"A related distortion was Evola’s assumption that the spiritual caste is subordinate to the martial caste, an assumption which he maintained even in the analysis of a Vedic ritual in which the king “marries” his priest. (24) [B]The traditional and Vedic view is that worldly action is subordinate to contemplation, so that ritually, the king is the bride and the priest is the groom. Evola turned this upside down, affirming the primacy of the royal function[/B]: partly, this was an exaggerated exaltation of the martial function typical of the interbellum period (when marching in uniform was an almost universal style for all kinds of movements, due to the militarization of a whole generation in World War 1); partly, it was a projection of a medieval conflict in the Holy Roman Empire between the Emperor and the Pope, a conflict in which Evola’s retrospective sympathies lay with the Emperor.

"At any rate, it took a top-ranking scholar genuinely rooted in a genuine tradition, the Brahmin art historian and philosopher Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, to correct the deviations of the Western enthusiasts of “Tradition”. [B]He commented: “As it is, Evola’s argument for the superiority of the Regnum, the active principle, to the Sacerdotium, the contemplative principle, is a concession to that very ‘mondo moderno’ [= modern world] against which his polemic is directed.” /B But the problem with the Traditionalist school is that they never listen: why should they listen to an Oriental scholar, when they already have Evola’s or Guénon’s version of Oriental wisdom? So, the subordination of genuine Asian tradition to the pet concerns of some Western seekers and weirdos has continued.

"[B]The late Frithjof Schuon, a Traditionalist who (like Guénon) converted to Islam, finding it the best embodiment of the “perennial wisdom”[/B], has written a eulogy of the caste system: “Like all sacred institutions, the caste system is based on the very nature of things (…) to justify the caste system, it is enough to ask this question: do heredity and diversity of qualities exist? If yes, the caste system is possible and legitimate.” (26) Yet, it must be said in his favour that he takes a nuance view, valuing egalitarianism as well, viz. as a natural implication of the fact that apart from difference in qualities, all human beings also have something in common: their immortal soul. [B]Moreover, he has partly abandoned the racial view of caste: “Even the Hindu castes, originally purely Indo-European, could not be limited to a race: there are Tamil, Balinese, Siamese Brahmins.”[/B] (27)

[B]"Even more recently, a passionate defence of caste has been published by the late Alain Daniélou, musicologist and India-lover of socialist persuasion and homosexual inclination. Like many orientalists before him, he had a distorted perception of Hindu culture, transparent of his own likes and dislikes, e.g. greatly exaggerating the degree of sexual freedom or permissiveness in Hindu society.[/B] He considered the caste system as a primitive but highly effective form of guild socialism. Daniélou’s book [I]Histoire de l’Inde[/I] includes an imaginative processing of the AIT in all its implications, describing how the white Aryans subdued the dark natives and forced them into the menial castes, etc. His book[I] Les Quatre Sens de la Vie[/I] (“The Four Meanings of Life”) is a passionate plea for the caste system conceived as a way to preserve the racial and cultural identities of different ethnic groups. (28) it remains odd, though, to read a glorification of caste by a Westerner who will never have to live in that system.[/SIZE] [/FONT] [/COLOR] Yup, it would seem that certain kooky instability is typical for the "New Right" - I think we could classify Phora as predominantly NoDro forum.

Bill White's "Overthrow" website has even clearer smell of "New Right" in it, with constant citations of Evola and all - and the name his outfit? [B]"Libertarian Socialist News."[/B] (Or was it[I] Libertarian National Socialist Green Party[/I]?) No schizophrenia evident in here, nossirree.

[url]http://www.overthrow.com/faq.asp[/url]

Okiereddust

2005-10-12 19:44 | User Profile

[COLOR=DarkRed][FONT=Arial][I][B] - "Really just an eccentric group of parlor leftists to me."[/B][/I][/FONT][/COLOR]

This could be true, to a certain extent. Here's are some examples of "nou-droes" extolling Hinduism and merrily projecting their own ideals on it:

Yup, it would seem that certain kooky instability is typical for the "New Right" - I think we could classify Phora as predominantly NoDro forum.

Bill White's "Overthrow" website has even clearer smell of "New Right" in it, with constant citations of Evola and all - and the name his outfit? [B]"Libertarian Socialist News."[/B] (Or was it[I] Libertarian National Socialist Green Party[/I]?) No schizophrenia evident in here, nossirree.

[url]http://www.overthrow.com/faq.asp[/url]

Petr Actually Bill White at least seems to have a certain pragmatic political acumen and vision, even if he personally is a shady character. At least he once seemed like he did. Although he's never accomplished anything.

Overall though, you can see why the Nazi's had such a low opinion of the obstensively supportive but independent intellectual movements in their sphere. Once they got in power, they're attitude was either accept party "coordination", "shut the f*** up", or work on your theories in the local KZ.

CornCod

2005-10-13 02:51 | User Profile

I agree with my late mentor, Sam Francis, on the issue of the European New Right. I certainly disagree with much of what the Benoist crowd believes (in particular the anti-Christian ranting), but they do have something to teach us. I have rubbed shoulders with some of the ENR folks, for example, Tom Sunic, who is a real gentleman.

European Nationalist intellectuals tend to go off on tangents and get pretty erratic. American Nationalist intellectuals (what few there are) are much too rigid and not open to new ideas. The only first-class mind we had was Sam Francis and I see no one replacing him in the near term.

Okiereddust

2005-10-13 03:13 | User Profile

All too true Corn Cod.

Hyperborean

2005-10-13 18:34 | User Profile

The ENR new right philosophical base comes from Nietzsche and Heidegger (forerunners of Foucault), certainly a shaky basis for a coherent view of life. They also like Russell for his anti-christian essays.

The two founders of a New Right group in England are former Catholics, now converted to polytheistic paganism. They promote homosexual "marriage" and have a rather bizarre theory of a so-called "Mannerbund", which will consist of homosexual men who will serve as the vanguard and protectors of bourgeois society.

You are right that their underlying presuppositions derive from the left, not the right. I was expelled from their yahoo discussion group simply for bringing this up.

Petr

2005-10-13 20:46 | User Profile

Who are those two, Hyperborean?

Petr

Petr

2005-10-13 21:03 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Hyperborean]The two founders of a New Right group in England are former Catholics, now converted to polytheistic paganism.[/QUOTE]

Who are those two, Hyperborean?

Petr

Okiereddust

2005-10-13 21:30 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Hyperborean]The ENR new right philosophical base comes from Nietzsche and Heidegger (forerunners of Foucault), certainly a shaky basis for a coherent view of life. They also like Russell for his anti-christian essays. .............

You are right that their underlying presuppositions derive from the left, not the right. I was expelled from their yahoo discussion group simply for bringing this up.[/QUOTE]In other words they are posturing as sort-of-right postmodernists, with close philosophical ties to Foucault, who MacDonald notes was a great admirer of the Frankfurt school.

I remember AntiYuppie, who everyone seemed to admire as one of their leading lights at the Phora, distinctly objected when I started to tie PM into the FS. He I think was quite ingfluenced by PM.

Again I find it interesting that this group of links Faust gave me included Adorno himself. This is an odd group IMO. One wonders in fact what their stance on holocaust reperations, et. al., is. Fade the Butcher may have just been ahead of his time.

Petr

2005-10-13 21:50 | User Profile

Back in 2004 at the old Phora forum, PaleoLeftist said to NeoNietzsche that his attitude towards the concept of truth was similar to that of Leo Strauss. (You know, that only a tiny elite is capable of comprehending and adopting the esoteric truth)

NN did not deny this charge, but said that he could indeed be labelled as a sort of "WN neocon".

Petr

Hyperborean

2005-10-14 02:26 | User Profile

[quote=Petr]Who are those two, Hyperborean?

Jonothon Boulter & Troy Southgate

q.v. [URL="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new_right/?yguid=147743484"]http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new_right/?yguid=147743484[/URL]

and this for a history: [URL="http://www.nationalanarchist.com/leaders.html"]http://www.nationalanarchist.com/leaders.html[/URL]

Petr

2005-10-14 02:36 | User Profile

Nicholas Berdyaev argued already in 1922 that Oswald Spengler, one of the spiritual founders of "New Right", had condemned himself to spiritual infertility by refusing to see how essential ingredient Christianity had been in the birth of Western "Faustian" worldview:

[COLOR="Sienna"][SIZE="4"][B]"The Pre-Death Thoughts of Faust "[/B] [/SIZE][/COLOR] [url]http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1922_059.html[/url]

Already in Spengler we can see how New Right's polytheistic worldview can foster and co-operate with post-modernist relativism: [FONT="Trebuchet MS"][SIZE="3"][COLOR="Blue"] "Spengler can convey the impression of being an extreme relativist and sceptic.[B] Even mathematics for him is something relative. [/B]There exists the ancient Apollonian mathematics, -- a finite mathematics, and there exists the European Faustian mathematics, -- an infinite mathematics. Science is not unconditional, not absolute, but is rather the expression of the souls of various cultures, of various races.[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

...[FONT="Trebuchet MS"][COLOR="Blue"]

[SIZE="3"]"Spengler's thoughts on antiquity are very insightful. And it mustneeds be admitted, that Greek thought did not know of a philosophy of history. It was not a matter of either Plato, or of Aristotle. The point of view of a philosophy of history is contrary to the aesthetic ponderings of the Hellene. The world for him was a completed cosmos. Hellenic thought created the Hellenic metaphysics, so inconducive for conceiving the world as an historical process. [B]Spengler senses himself as an European man with a Faustian soul, with its infinite aspirations. He not only sets himself distinct from ancient man, he moreover asserts, that the ancient soul for him is inconceivable, is impenetrable. [/B]This however does not prevent him from drawing upon its understanding and insights. But does history exist for Spengler himself, is he one for whom there is a world, as history, and not as nature? I think, that for Spengler history does not exist and for him a philosophy of history is impossible. Not by chance did he call his book a morphology of world history. The morphological perspective derives from nature-knowledge. Historical fate, the fate of culture exists for Spengler only in that sense, that fate exists for a flower. The historical fate of mankind does not exist. There does not exist a single mankind, a single subject of history. Christianity was the first to have rendered possible a philosophy of history, in that it revealed the existence of a single mankind with a single historical fate, having its own beginning and end. Thus first for the Christian consciousness is revealed the tragedy of world history, the fate of mankind. [B]Spengler however turns back to the pagan particularism. For him there is no mankind, no worldwide history. Cultures, races -- are isolated monads with an isolated fate. [/B]For him the varied types of culture experience a cyclical turning of their own fate. He returns to the Hellenic perspective, which was surpassed by the Christian consciousness. With Spengler the Baptismal water as it were was missing. He abjures his own Christian blood. And for him, just as for the Hellene, there does not exist the perspective of an historical remoteness. The historically remote distance exists only in this instance, if there exists an historical fate of mankind, a worldwide history, if each type of culture is but a moment of a worldwide fate.

[B]"The Faustian soul with its endless aspirations, with the distance opening up before it, is the soul of the Christian period of history. This Christianity shatters the boundaries of the ancient world, with its delimited and narrowed horizons. After the appearance of Christianity in the world, an infinity opened up. Christianity rendered possible the Faustian mathematics, the mathematics of the endless. [/B]Of this Spengler is not at all aware. He does not posit the appearance of the Faustian soul in any sort of connection with Christianity. He has made an examination of the significance of Christianity for European culture, for the fate of European culture. This fate however -- is a Christian fate. [B]He wants to push Christianity back exclusively to the sense of a magical soul, to a type of Hebrew and Arabic culture, to the east. And he thus dooms himself to a lack of understanding of the meaning of European culture. [/B]For Spengler generally there does not exist a meaning to history. The meaning of history also cannot exist amidst such a denial of the subject of the historical process. The cyclical turnings of the various types of culture, lacking connections between them of a single fate, is totally meaningless. Moreover, the denial of a meaning to history makes impossible a philosophy of history. There remains but the morphology of history. But for the morphology of history there is merely the manifestation of nature, in it there is no unique historical process, no fate, as a manifestation of meaning. [B]In Spengler the Faustian soul ultimately loses its connection with Christianity, which gave it birth, and in the hour of the waning of the Faustian culture it attempts to return to the ancient sense of life, tacking on it also the theme of history[/B]. [/SIZE][/COLOR][/FONT]

(Would Indo-Europeanists like to argue that [I]nirvana[/I]-seeking Hinduism is closer to "Faustian soul" than Christianity?)

And yet, Oswald Spengler [B]was [/B]an original, powerful thinker compared to his weak[I] Nouvelle Droite [/I] imitators and epigons.

Petr

Okiereddust

2005-10-14 03:16 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Petr]Nicholas Berdyaev argued already in 1922 that Oswald Spengler, one of the spiritual founders of "New Right", had condemned himself to spiritual infertility by refusing to see how essential ingredient Christianity had been in the birth of Western "Faustian" worldview:

[COLOR="Sienna"][SIZE="4"][B]"The Pre-Death Thoughts of Faust "[/B] [/SIZE][/COLOR] [url]http://www.berdyaev.com/berdiaev/berd_lib/1922_059.html[/url]

Already in Spengler we can see how New Right's polytheistic worldview can foster and co-operate with post-modernist relativism:(Would Indo-Europeanists like to argue that [I]nirvana[/I]-seeking Hinduism is closer to "Faustian soul" than Christianity?)

And yet, Oswald Spengler [B]was [/B]an original, powerful thinker compared to his weak[I] Nouvelle Droite [/I] imitators and epigons.

Petr[/QUOTE]Interesting thinker, Berdyaev. He sure sums up Spengler nicely, author of the famous quote "mankind is a zoological abstraction".

I read once that the three most famous German "revolutionary conservatives", generally in the order of increasing nihlism, were Moeller van den Bruck, Spengler, and Ernst Junger.

All of them were great writers and observers of the human condition, but their philosophy ultimately is lacking in cohesion at its core, typical of the nihlists.

I think that's what makes their philosophy ultimately not an alternative to liberalism as they conceive it.

Junger oddly enough would seem to be the most popular for the [I]Nouveau Right[/I], but he has one slight flaw. He lived [B]55 years[/B] after WWII, and basically to my knowledge seems to have almost repudiated his nihlistic writings, and publishing career in general, writing little.

Faust

2005-10-14 03:51 | User Profile

Okiereddust,

It was from Spengler that I found my user name. I rather liked some Spengler's and Evola's writings. One cannot expect to agree with someone all the time. Evola’s writings did not seem entirely ant-christian to me he seemed rather fond of St. Bernard and the Knights Templar. And seemed to have a high regard for medieval society. Georges Dumezil's book on Roman Religion is great.

Sadly the GRECE seems to be going almost Neocon and Benoist doing his best to become a French William F. Buckley.

Petr

2005-10-14 05:01 | User Profile

Thanks, Hyperborean, that stuff about Southgate was actually quite hilarious.

And HERE you can see a photograph of Miguel Serrano, one of the luminaries of the New Right, merrily hanging out with -[B] Dalai Lama[/B].

[COLOR="Blue"] [FONT="Arial"][SIZE="4"][B]"FASCIST OCCULTISM AND IT’S CLOSE RELATIONSHIP TO BUDDHIST TANTRISM"[/B] [/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR] [url]http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Part-2-12.htm[/url]

This piece shows how some No-Dros are knee-deep in Oriental occultism and even Tantric sorcery.

Petr

Okiereddust

2005-10-14 06:03 | User Profile

[QUOTE]The two founders of a New Right group in England are former Catholics, now converted to polytheistic paganism. They promote homosexual "marriage" and have a rather bizarre theory of a so-called "Mannerbund", which will consist of homosexual men who will serve as the vanguard and protectors of bourgeois society.[QUOTE=Hyperborean]Jonothon Boulter & Troy Southgate

q.v. [URL="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new_right/?yguid=147743484"]http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new_right/?yguid=147743484[/URL]

and this for a history: [URL="http://www.nationalanarchist.com/leaders.html"]http://www.nationalanarchist.com/leaders.html[/URL][/QUOTE][/QUOTE]Hmm. I thought these guys had something going for them. Troy Southgate especially was very well known.

Just shows where you can go with bad leaders.

Hyperborean

2005-10-14 12:52 | User Profile

This is the exchange that got me booted in response to this post by Southgate (following a longer discussion of what we might call kinism):

In fact I believe that questions of inequality are usually very subjective. Granted, we are all > human at the end of the day, but each of us have our inherent limitations, but it's not for us to judge whether the achievements of the Roman Empire, for example, are particularly 'superior' to those of the Chinese. Horses for courses. That's the great beauty of diversity

[FONT=Courier New]This was my comment:[/FONT]

[FONT=Courier New]> [SIZE=2][COLOR=black][COLOR=black]It seems to me[/COLOR][/COLOR][/SIZE][SIZE=2][COLOR=black][COLOR=black] that rather than simplifying things, you have instead created quite an intellectual quagmire. [/COLOR][/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE=2][COLOR=black][COLOR=black]Whence comes diversity and its attendant beauty? If I choose Culture A, I can’t then tell George to select Culture B so I can experience some of that diversity. But why would I want to be part of Culture A, unless I truly believed it were more beautiful, powerful, truthful, nobler – in short, superior in some way – than Culture B? And diversity can only happen when Culture A puts up a wall to reject Culture B, or at least keep it at bay.[/COLOR][/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE=2][COLOR=black][COLOR=black]You give yourself away when you write: “we are all human at the end of the day” – this is the very antithesis of de Maistre’s comment that he had met a Frenchman and a Russian and a Persian, but never just a “man”. For any movement that claims to be on the “Right”, a man’s race, nation, culture, religion is an essential part of him, not something accidentally superadded to some neutral humanity.[/COLOR][/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE=2][COLOR=black][COLOR=black]The liberal position is that we are ultimately just “human”, and our sexuality, race, culture or religion are mere historical accidents or the result of a basically arbitrary choice. But if a man’s choice of a culture is merely arbitrary, then he will not oppose the infiltration of an alien culture into his own. We are witnessing this on a massive scale in the nations of the Northern hemisphere.[/COLOR][/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE=2][COLOR=black][COLOR=black]And the comment about things being too “subjective”, as though that were a fault. Are you saying that truth is only what some professor can measure or some economist count? This is nothing more than liberalism’s “reign of quantity”.[/COLOR][/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE=2][COLOR=black][COLOR=black]If the “new right” is simply warmed over liberalism, then what exactly is your little movement trying to achieve? If the new right not in any way superior to what the left is offering (horses for courses), who precisely do you hope to influence?[/COLOR][/COLOR][/SIZE]

[SIZE=2][COLOR=black][COLOR=black]Maybe I was misunderstanding their position (overall it seems to be based on liberalism to me), but what I wrote doesn't seem particularly outrageious.[/COLOR][/COLOR][/SIZE]

[/FONT]

Sertorius

2005-10-14 16:26 | User Profile

• VDARE.com: Blog Articles - [url]http://blog.vdare.com[/url] -

Sam Francis Purged From TownHall Archives

Posted By James Fulford On 13th October 2005 @ 22:37 In General | No Comments

I’ve mentioned the Internet Archive Wayback Machine before, it’s and extremely useful tool.

You can “Browse through 40 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. ” and what it is is an attempt to back up the internet.

I mention this because Townhall.com has gone through a massive overhaul, which means a lot of links are dead, and you can use the Wayback Machine to revive old links, and find stuff that people have taken down for one reason or another.

One thing that’s vanished from Townhall.com is their archive of Sam Francis columns for the year 2000. You can find it here: Sam Francis Archive. Here’s a column on H-1Bs and Rob Sanchez, here’s one on the election of Vicente Fox, here’s on on the death penalty.

Another Sam Francis site samfrancis.net, was down temporarily after his death, but is now back up. You can see an archive of years worth of his Principalities and Powers columns there in PDF, including this classic from 2000,( a personal favorite of mine) Attack of the 300-pound Beefy Guys, [PDF] describing the shock and horror felt by David Brooks at the sight of actual American working men at a Buchanan rally.

Article printed from VDARE.com: Blog Articles: [url]http://blog.vdare.com[/url]

URL to article: [url]http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2005/10/13/internet-archive-wayback-machine/[/url]

Click here to print.

Petr

2005-10-19 09:43 | User Profile

This earlier citation of mine on this thread (about Julius Evola) made me think further about this issue: were Fascists and Nazis really genuinely "anti-modernists" or were they actually more egalitarian than most people think, more dependent on the Jacobin tradition than their "New Right" admirers today would like to admit?

[url]http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/downloads/books/aid.htm#Chapter1Section1SubSection6[/url]

[FONT="Garamond"][SIZE="3"][COLOR="Blue"]"Though a declared racist, (Evola's) views were at odds with those of most White racists, e.g. he glorified Asian cultures because of their hierarchy and traditionalism, esp. the martial virtues as preserved (or so Western romantics thought) in imperial Japan. (22) [B]He professed a premodern aristocratic “horizontal racism”: the European aristocracy was one “race” bound to intermarry, the common people were the other “race”, with national borders and identities being less important.[/B]

...

"Those who have been duped by the dominant Marxist discourse into classifying Fascism as Rightist would do well to study Evola’s Rightist critique of Fascism. [B]He attacked Fascism on the following points: its anti-traditionalism and zest for newness and youth (as exemplified by its term Duce/“leader”, i.e. one who takes the people to a distant goal, a utopia, as opposed to the premodern “ruler” who merely maintains the existing order); its superficial modernist optimism (best seen in Fascist, Nazi, Stalinist and Maoist visual art); [U]its equalizing “Jacobin” nationalism which minimizes class differences[/U]; its totalitarianism, as opposed to premodern culture’s sense of measure and division of powers; its secularism, which creates an opposition between the political and the sacred; its socialism; its personality cult (one ought to revere the institution of kingship, not the person of the king); and its natalist policy based on the vulgar cult of numbers, neglecting quality for the sake of quantity.[/B] (23) [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]

I have seen before this famous citation from Hitler on the purposes of Hitler-Jugend, and it stroke me how [B]egalitarian[/B] Hitler's rhetoric indeed was - it sure would seem to confirm Evola's aristocratic critique:

[COLOR="DarkRed"][FONT="Times New Roman"][SIZE="3"]"This youth learns nothing but to think German and to act German. When these boys enter our organization at the age of ten, it is often the first time in their lives that they get to breathe and feel fresh air; then four years later they come from the Jungvolk into the Hitler Youth, and we keep them there for another four years, [B]and then we definitely don't put them back into the hands of the originators of our [U]old classes and status barriers[/U][/B]; rather we take them straight into the Party or into the Labor Front, the SA, or the SS, the NSKK [motorized corps] and so on. And if they are there for another two years or a year and a half and still haven't become complete National Socialists, then they go into the Labor Service and are polished for another six or seven months, all with a symbol, the German spade. [B]And any [U]class consciousness or pride of status[/U] that may be left here and there is taken over by the Wehrmacht for further treatment for two years[/B], and when they come back after two, three, or four years, we take them straight into the SA, SS, and so on again, so that they shall in no case suffer a relapse, and they will never be free again as long as they live."[/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR]

[url]http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/hitleryouth/hj-prelude.htm[/url]

Nazis often expessed their contempt for traditional monarchies and aristocracy, and one of the main purposes of Waffen-SS was to eventually displace the Wehrmacht that was dominated by aristocratic officers, and who were actually often conspiring against Hitler.

Btw, most of these modernist traits listed above were present from Italy and Germany, but they were lacking in imperial Japan. For instance, Japanese did not venerate emperor Hirohito's personality, but the emperor-institution itself. The emperor was also considered to be divine, "Son of Heaven," and not a mere secular Duce or Führer. Japanese society was also fiercely traditionalist, whereas to Fascists and Nazis, "reactionary" was a mock word (Goebbels used it on Francisco Franco in a despising manner in his diaries).

The difference was, of course, that Japs were [B]authentic[/B] pagans whereas their Italian and German counterparts were mere "neo-pagans," [I]wannabee-heathen[/I] who still couldn't shake off their Christian traits so easily.

Petr

Okiereddust

2005-10-19 17:28 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Petr]This earlier citation of mine on this thread (about Julius Evola) made me think further about this issue: were Fascists and Nazis really genuinely "anti-modernists" or were they actually more egalitarian than most people think, more dependent on the Jacobin tradition than their "New Right" admirers today would like to admit? Well if Evola is the quintessential ENR thinker, his critique certainly strikes me as typical of most revolutionary conservatives, who I think in Germany were still generally aligned, at least tempermentally, with German conservatism, aristocracy, and the German Nationalist Party.

These tensions, between conservatism and national socialist/Hitlerian pragmatism were always present in the Third Reich, from the "Night of Long Knives" to the 1944 coup attempt. There was an interesting article on the 44 coup attempt in Chronicles last year. One of their points was that the coup attempt, which originated from the aristocracy/army (in Prussia they were pretty much identical) wasn't supported by the west in part because of its aristocratic basis, and because it did not comport with the egalitarian vision for Germany the west envisioned.

This alignment makes sense to me. I read about how SS intelligence in Berlin reported that the counter reaction to the coup had engendered wide sympathy for Hitler even (or really "especially") among those quarters of Berlin (i.e. the workers portions of Berlin - East Berlin etc.) who had historically not been National Socialist supporters. Obviously the Red portions of Berlin viewed this as a battle within NS which had gone in their favor.

Btw, most of these modernist traits listed above were present from Italy and Germany, but they were lacking in imperial Japan. For instance, Japanese did not venerate emperor Hirohito's personality, but the emperor-institution itself. The emperor was also considered to be divine, "Son of Heaven," and not a mere secular Duce or Führer. Japanese society was also fiercely traditionalist, whereas to Fascists and Nazis, "reactionary" was a mock word (Goebbels used it on Francisco Franco in a despising manner in his diaries).

The difference was, of course, that Japs were [B]authentic[/B] pagans whereas their Italian and German counterparts were mere "neo-pagans," [I]wannabee-heathen[/I] who still couldn't shake off their Christian traits so easily.

Petr[/QUOTE]And the Japanese were also incorrigably reactionary. Japanese artistocrats could hardly conceive of their own peasantry as human (much less of course those countries they invaded).

Petr

2005-10-19 17:49 | User Profile

Yes, it would seem that in 1934 Hitler sacrificed Ernst Röhm and his populists to placate aristocrats, for his position was still not too strong back then and he needed their approval.

By early 1938 he already felt strong enough to defy the army brass by sacking von Blomberg and von Fritsch.

Then after the 1944 assassination attempt, he finally unleashed his wrath on aristocrats, with Roland Freisler and his [I]Volksgerichtshof /I.

As as for the Japanese, it is noteworthy that they showed practically [B]no[/B] indigenous resistance against the regime - no equivalent of von Stauffenberg plot in there, let alone the overthrowing of Mussolini. Actually the emperor had to told [B]them[/B] to stop fighting, and even after that, many of them rather committed suicide!

Petr

Okiereddust

2005-10-20 10:39 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Petr]Yes, it would seem that in 1934 Hitler sacrificed Ernst Röhm and his populists to placate aristocrats, for his position was still not too strong back then and he needed their approval. Of course the night of long knives was a very complex affair amidst the scheming. It basically brought together in an odd way all the elements in the NS party and historically aligned forces that were opposed to unrestricted Hitlerite/SS rule, from Roem and the Stasserites to Jung and von Sleicher.

Naturally of course such an odd alliance had quite a disadvantage over Hitler's pragmatic ruthlessness.

[QUOTE]Then after the 1944 assassination attempt, he finally unleashed his wrath on aristocrats, with Roland Freisler and his [I]Volksgerichtshof /I.[/QUOTE] Sometimes I wonder if in a way if the effect of this didn't mirror for Germany what the crackdown on the 44 Warsaw uprising did for Poland - striking a blow against the old nationalist forces.

[QUOTE]As as for the Japanese, it is noteworthy that they showed practically [B]no[/B] indigenous resistance against the regime - no equivalent of von Stauffenberg plot in there, let alone the overthrowing of Mussolini. Actually the emperor had to told [B]them[/B] to stop fighting, and even after that, many of them rather committed suicide![/QUOTE]Of course the Japanese had communists too. It seems odd how neither in Germany or Japan communists never seemed to mount any sort of resistance to the regime, and how what resistance there was in Germany was all in the aristocracy. (Although there were some National Bolshevics involved like Niekisch and Junger).

In Germany it probably had something to do with the fact the Stalin had shot most of the German communist leaders who fled to Russia. (As I understand he also did with a lot of Finnish communists). Germans are not big on mounting arbitrary challenges to authority just for gallantry's sake.

Macrobius

2005-10-23 19:15 | User Profile

Interesting review and comments. It is surprising that Frances did not mention Anthony Ludovici who is close in many respects to Benoist, was admired by Benoist, but has less post-modernism about him--still some of course, since he was a Nietzchean. It is not that English and America fail to have something comparable to the ENR. Rather, we lack a professional student/intellectual class to worship them, at least that anyone takes note of. The thinkers are there, with numerous works having the same merits and flaws, only no one bothers to read them and argue them in cafes and doughnut shops where journalists and policemen can hear them. :)

Macrobius

2005-10-23 19:26 | User Profile

Petr writes: "This piece shows how some No-Dros are knee-deep in Oriental occultism and even Tantric sorcery. "

I suppose, then, you will enjoy this: Shadow of the Dalai Lama which fills in lots of pieces--incorrectly in parts, but it gets a lot of pieces on the board. In Geo-Political chess, you should develop all your pieces early in the game. --- ### Okiereddust *2005-10-24 10:07* | [User Profile](/od/user/29) [QUOTE=Macrobius]......It is not that English and America fail to have something comparable to the ENR. Rather, we lack a professional student/intellectual class to worship them, at least that anyone takes note of. The thinkers are there, with numerous works having the same merits and flaws, only no one bothers to read them and argue them in cafes and doughnut shops where journalists and policemen can hear them. :)[/QUOTE] Well its interesting to compare the figures for the ENR (question, isn't this really just a French New Right? It sure sounds like it) [QUOTE]Pierre-Andre Taguieff: GRECE claimed to have 2500 full members in 1985-86. There were between 5000 and 8000 people in the movement (these figures come from Alain de Benoist and are collated with others, but they seem exaggerated). Since 1978-79 GRECE's annual "national" colloquia have been based on particular themes.[1] They drew from 700 to 1200 people (the proceedings were published afterwards). As for the different journals connected with GRECE, Elements has around 5000 subscribers (for a printing of 15,000), Nouvelle Ecole has about 2000 subscribers, Etudes et Recherches (the new edition, No. 1, Spring, 1983) between 500 and 600, and Panorama des Idles Actuelles (No. 1, March, 1985) between 800 and 1000 (along with Nouvelle Ecole, which went from a triquarterly to a yearly review, the latter two journals have never appeared regularly). As for Krisis, "a journal of ideas and debates" (No. 1, Summer 1988), edited by Benoist, clearly tries to distance itself from the New Right's sphere of influence (it had 600 subscribers in 1992). Most of the texts published in it -- often reprints or interviews -- are written by decidedly leftist authors (Olivier Mongin, Jean-Michel Palmier, Alain Caille, Claude Julien, Dominique Wolton, Pierre Fougeyrollas, Bruno Etienne, Max Gallo, Jacques Julliard, etc.). Its declared intention is to transcend "old" splits by championing controversies that tend to make "new" ones beyond the opposition between Left and Right. [B]It is certainly legitimate to ask about the functions of such a journal:[/B] does it play a "metapolitical" role in the context of GRECE's strategy [B]or does it allow Benoist, the public figure who is tired of being "ghettoized," to regain cultural respectability?[/B] [url]http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18687[/url][/QUOTE] It's raw numbers don't really seem that different from [I]Chronicles[/I], even with out the hint of exageration. One difference between the ENR and [I]Chronicles[/I] might obviously be the work the ENR takes to avoid being "ghettoized", both ideologically and geographically. If Benoist moved his movement out to rural France and stayed within the orbit of the old Catholic Church, it might be comparable to what Fleming did. Also it might be a good way to ensure we'd never hear of it again. Of course Fleming did it deliberately in part, to aovoid I think the leftist neo-con influence that befell mainstream National Review type conservatism. Nuances vary, but one could argue that what Benoist has done is not all that different than what Buckley has done to his movement - move it left so it remains fashionable and he can be invited to fashionable capital cocktail parties and media interviews (whic it sounds like Benoist has managed to accomplish for his movement - that and nothing else). --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-10-25 00:42* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Okiereddust] Junger oddly enough would seem to be the most popular for the [I]Nouveau Right[/I], but he has one slight flaw. He lived [B]55 years[/B] after WWII, and basically to my knowledge seems to have almost repudiated his nihlistic writings, and publishing career in general, writing little.[/QUOTE] Not to mention he converted to Catholicism and even as early as 1944 declared that Christianity was the key to revitalizing Europe. --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-10-25 00:43* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) Furthermore, and I pointed this out in this thread: [url]http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18674[/url] The intellectual origins of the ENR are actually Christian not pagan. Alain de Benoist has admitted that he was deeply influenced by the Catholic non-Conformist movement of the 30's and 40's, which was led by Alexander Marc. --- ### Petr *2005-10-25 00:51* | [User Profile](/od/user/1012) Great to see you again in here, Perun! :) Do you have any idea on the whereabouts of PaleoLeftist? He was also a quality-poster. Petr --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-10-25 00:59* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) No I dont know where Paleo is. Havent seen him in quite some time. Well I dont know how long Ill be here. Im pretty busy with work and studies. Ive even fallen behind on posting at my blog. --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-10-25 01:13* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Hyperborean]Jonothon Boulter & Troy Southgate q.v. [URL="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new_right/?yguid=147743484"]http://groups.yahoo.com/group/new_right/?yguid=147743484[/URL] and this for a history: [URL="http://www.nationalanarchist.com/leaders.html"]http://www.nationalanarchist.com/leaders.html[/URL][/QUOTE] Yeah Im a member of that yahoo group. Not very good quality posts I must say. --- ### Okiereddust *2005-10-25 02:34* | [User Profile](/od/user/29) [QUOTE=perun1201]Furthermore, and I pointed this out in this thread: [url]http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18674[/url] The intellectual origins of the ENR are actually Christian not pagan. Alain de Benoist has admitted that he was deeply influenced by the Catholic non-Conformist movement of the 30's and 40's, which was led by Alexander Marc.[/QUOTE]Sounds a tad ungrateful to me. --- ### Petr *2005-10-25 12:30* | [User Profile](/od/user/1012) [QUOTE=Okiereddust]Sounds a tad ungrateful to me.[/QUOTE] Hey, as Comrade Stalin put it: [B][SIZE="3"][FONT="Times New Roman"][COLOR="Sienna"] "Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs."[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE][/B] [url]http://www.borntomotivate.com/FamousQuote_Gratitude.html[/url] Petr --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-10-25 17:18* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Okiereddust]Sounds a tad ungrateful to me.[/QUOTE] Yeah really.....even Trisk here also admitted they are influenced by Catholic social doctrine. So the question is, why on earth are they even pagan and condemning Christianity when they're so influenced by it? Here's even a Pagan critique of the ENR's anti-Christian tone: ** [url]http://www.thirdway.org/files/reviews/telos.html[/url] Wegierski also criticises the paganism of the French New Right, and its virulent anti-Catholicism. He states : "Roman Catholicism is probably the only remaining serious traditional religious force (of historical duration) in Europe today. However strenuously the ENR rejects it, the similarities of some of its positions to those of traditional Catholic organicism are all too obvious (anti-capitalism, the stress on the social, and attacks on gross materialism and consumerism)." [u]As a pagan myself, I find some ENR thinking on the subject confused[/u]. Pagan beliefs are reflected in most Christian churches. [u]*To reject Christianity is to reject our pagan heritage too.[/u]* On a political level we can surely see the good in Rerum Novarum or the philosophy of Aquinas? The obsessive nature of the ENR desire to trace a history of paganism to justify present beliefs is odd; it is really more an attempt to create one.** --- ### Petr *2005-10-25 17:23* | [User Profile](/od/user/1012) So is "New Right" basically a rip-off from Roman Catholic "Third Position"? Petr --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-10-25 17:24* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) BTW, here's a very interesting discussion about the ENR done by Jim Kalb and others. Kalb makes arguments very similar to mine: ** [url]http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/001388.html[/url] There are right-wing as well as left-wing opponents of Christianity. Right-wing opponents -- exemplified by the European New Right -- blame Christianity for the universalism and radical egalitarianism they believe are destroying the West. Even if it is those things that are to blame for the current state of the West, the complaint is misplaced. Europeans have been looking for rational universal principles equally applicable to all since the pre-Socratics, and composing utopias since Plato. It has in fact been part of the role of Christianity in European civilization to reconcile that native rationalistic and universalizing tendency with an appreciation for the value of particular irreplaceable concrete things. Christianity does not flatten things out and make them all conform to one abstract schema. The meaning of the doctrines of Creation and Incarnation, after all, is that God made the here-and-now in all its particularity, called it good, and became physically present in it. Without some such doctrines to limit its inherent universalizing tendencies, it's unlikely that Europe can avoid utopianism and the destruction of its inherited societies and peoples in the name of abstract idealism or the needs of power. The wars of the last century and the present EU suggest that getting rid of Christianity has only made European secular utopianism more destructive. Why think that's a coincidence? Posted by Jim Kalb at April 23, 2003 02:42 PM ** Bob Vandervoort also makes interesting arguments. ///// ** The right-wing opponents of Christianity generally offer nothing to replace the faith, except some kind of dreary nihilism or "live for today" thoughts. That is why their criticisms of Christianity never seem to go very far with Western Man. He may not be strongly wedded to the Church these days, but Western Man is sensibly leery of the Nietzsche-anism the right-wing critics offer in its place. Nevertheless, the critics of Christianity have put their finger on an important problem of modern day Christianity: it's current liberalizing tendencies. Many conservative Christians I know are very critical of the liberal churches. These conservative Christians do not offer much, however, for the right-wing critics who are concerned about the survival of the Western nation-state. I will go further, while conservative Christians have much to say with regard to the topics of abortion, homosexuality, the pop culture, prayer in school, etc. they have very little to say about the National Question all Western societies now face. To paraphrase Dr. Samuel Francis, even if the Christian Right outlawed abortion, enforced sodomy laws, and restored prayer in school, they would have done nothing at all to stop the growth of the federal government, or halt the cultural and racial dispossession of the West's historic people. He writes: "Indeed, the Christian Right for the most part doesn't care about these issues or even perceive them as issues, and in so far as it does, it not infrequently lines up on the wrong side of them." This is certainly true of whatever is left of the Christian Coalition. And this observation by Dr. Francis is certainly born out in my own conversations daily with conservative and libertarian Christians. They will line up in favor of all manner of conservative social issues. But when you press them for their beliefs on immigration, multiculturalism, etc. they have nothing to say. Or worse, they mouth the liberal PC phrases on the subject. So the right wing critics may think this vindicates their argument. Even the "conservative" Christians have nothing to say on the subject of racial dispossession. These “conservative” Christians will go so far as to denounce Christians who take a different (or historic) Christian view on race and immigration as being evil. They say this is not how Jesus would command us to love our neighbor. Certainly the Christian churches have made their share of mistakes in the past, even in racial matters. That is only natural since human beings run these institutions. This doesn't mean the churches were always wrong in the past. Many Christians today -- including the conservative ones -- have confused the universal message of the faith (as Mr. Kalb notes) with the liberal universal message in all other areas of life. The historic church, as Fr. James Thornton notes in his AR speech "Toward Renaissance and Renewal" ([url]http://www.amren.com/968issue/968issue.html[/url]) did not make the mistake of thinking all groups of people and society were exactly the same. They tried to tailor the Christian message to fit the unique societies and peoples they encountered. Nor were these Christians hoodwinked into believing it would be a good thing to invite the whole world over to Western Christendom. Indeed, the periods when the West was most self-confident coincided with a very robust Christian faith. I think some right-wing critics of Christianity are willing to acknowledge this historic fact. They are just reluctant in believing that Western Man can get back to that kind of Christian faith. That is not a satisfactory reason to abandon Christianity. Traditional Christians, however, who wish to preserve the nation-state, need to answer their critics on how best to get back to the older Christian view. We need more Christian voices willing to take up this task. After all, this historic Christian view on race and civilization carried over well until the twentieth century. It was only during the Great Depression and WWII that the confidence of Western Man and his church was shaken. Somehow during the middle of the twentieth century Western Christians began to believe that Christ commanded us not just to "love our neighbors" but also to go even further. We are now taught to believe we need to invite all our neighbors to move in with us permanently. Today it seems the Christians who argue against this idea are either denounced or distanced from by fellow Christians. ** --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-10-25 17:47* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Petr] Many of the admirers of [I]Nouvelle Droite[/I] gush over at the academic background of many of its proponents. They fail to see the downside of this - that New Right could be just a form of alienated-from-reality, self-indulgent theorizing, Right's equivalent for intellectual college-cults of Jean-Paul Sartre or Noam Chomsky. I would say the ENR does live in its own little world of "Aryan mysticism" and whatnot, which reflects their general sense of elitism(another aspect of academia). That is, their obession with hierarchies and aristocracies dont really seem to stem from a desire for a stable society but rather a contempt for the common man, hence why they seem to look down upon populism. Frankly I think we Christians could easily set up our own alternative to them. As Ive pointed out, most if not all of their major arguments can easily be found in Christian doctrine and made by avant-garde Christian thinkers. --- ### Hyperborean *2005-10-27 04:10* | [User Profile](/od/user/1087) The so-called New Right is a hodge podge of conflicting ideas. A little influence of Catholic social teachings is hardly enough to salvage it; at least the Catholic teachings arise out of a coherent world view. You could have also pointed out that the leaders of the UK branch of the ENR are esrtwhile Catholics, yet their movement now is anti-Christian and more left than right. What has Benoist added of value to the Ordre Nouveau? Would it not be better to scrap his enterprise and start over again from personalism and distributism? --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-10-31 18:58* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Petr]So is "New Right" basically a rip-off from Roman Catholic "Third Position"? [/QUOTE] You could say that, except they put a Nietzschean/neo-pagan twist to it. Although one could say the same about neo-paganism in general, it's more of a heresy that worships Zeus or Odin as opposed to Christ than an actual religion of its own. It certainly has little if anything to do with the way of the original pagans(who in many cases had no problems worshipping Christ alongside their own gods). --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-10-31 19:23* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Hyperborean]The so-called New Right is a hodge podge of conflicting ideas. I certainly agree with this, even though I myself am very non-conformist and ecletric in my ideological thinking. > A little influence of Catholic social teachings is hardly enough to salvage it; I originally had proposed for such a project, of saving the ENR with Christianity. But after some time and effort, I have come to the same conclusion as you. But more on that below. > You could have also pointed out that the leaders of the UK branch of the ENR are esrtwhile Catholics, yet their movement now is anti-Christian and more left than right. Not that, the main thinker of the Ukrainian branch of the ENR is himself a Byzantine Catholic. So again the question remains, why is the ENR so insistant on neo-paganism? > What has Benoist added of value to the Ordre Nouveau? Not much I would say. > Would it not be better to scrap his enterprise and start over again from personalism and distributism?[/QUOTE] Well getting back to my argument above, this is pretty much the conclusion I've made. I can see why many people are attracted to the ENR(or even neo-paganism in general), hell I used to be one. Sadly I can't entirely explain it, so I'll do my best. The sense of defending your ethnic and spiritual heritage and being able to defend it from an intellectual perspective. The general mystical, ritualistic, and avant-garde style of the movement, and so on. Many people who are attracted to this are under the general impression that these characteristics are lacking in Christianity(cant blame them entirely, many churches today lack much substance). Ive talked to many neo-pagans, and my impression is that many of them leave Christianity for the wrong reasons(btw Im talking about neo-pagans who are not necessarily intent on obnoxiously bashing the faith). Commonly they state they like the folkish nature of paganism as opposed to the more institutionalized nature of Christianity. I often point out to them is that Christianity is folkish too. While paganism is largely a folk religion(a pagan church is an oxymoron), Christianity on the other hand is both an organized and a folk religion. You see clear examples of "folk Christianity" throughout the world and especially in Europe. GK Chesterton made a very interesting point related to this issue. He noted that in the ancient world the search for knowledge was divided along two paths: mythology, which was largely the domain of common peoples; and philosophy, which was largely restricted to the upper classes. The genius of Christianity was that it combined both paths into one. Christianity is a faith with both a "mythology"(speaking in the general sense) and a philosophical tradition as well. Getting back to my original point. Generally the aspects that people find attractive in the ENR/neo-paganism can easily be found within the Christian tradition. Christianity has its own avant-garde that rejected the materialism of the modern world and espoused spirituality along with tradition. Off the top of my head I can name GK Chesterton, Hiliare Belloc, CS Lewis, Charles Peguy, Vladimir Solovyev, Fyodor Dostovesky, Nikolai Berdyaev, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and so on as figures of this movement. So we Christians clearly have our own tradition to build on. --- ### Okiereddust *2005-10-31 21:02* | [User Profile](/od/user/29) [QUOTE=Hilaire Belloc]So again the question remains, why is the ENR so insistant on neo-paganism? I'd say its simple - because they're Nietszchien's and postmodernists. Moeller himself said that values cannot be generated - they must arise spontaneously. (daemonically, was the word he used - I think a German expression - not really like demonic, just spontaneously and irrationally) I can't really blame them, t least without knowing them, for their personal religious stance. But I do think they should have the humility to recognize when they're lack of spiritual roots jeopardize their enterprise, and either do some spiritual soul-searching or stop wasting our time. > So we Christians clearly have our own tradition to build on.[/QUOTE]Fortunate. And it appears that it will haveto be built quite seperately from anything the ENR does. --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-10-31 21:17* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Okiereddust]I'd say its simple - because they're Nietszchien's and postmodernists. Well that also begs the question as to why they are that as well, especially when they admit they're influenced by Christian thinkers. This just doesnt make any sense. Now the non-conformists did believe in "Nietzschean Christianity" that is a Christianity that promoted the more masculine and heroic aspects of the faith. I dont know if thats entirely the same. > Moeller himself said that values cannot be generated - they must arise spontaneously. (daemonically, was the word he used - I think a German expression - not really like demonic, just spontaneously and irrationally) Well to be honest, my interest in the German Conserative Revolution has sunk to zero. Largely in connection to their Nietzscheanism and such. Quite similar to my disgust with the ENR. Besides, the French/Belgian Conservative Revolutions(lead by the non-Conformists) were staunchly Christian in orientation. > Fortunate. And it appears that it will haveto be built quite seperately from anything the ENR does.[/QUOTE] I have to agree. However, Im willing to accept pagans(like the one I quoted above) who recognize Christianity's place in Europe's heritage and ignore anti-Christian bashing. --- ### Petr *2005-11-02 20:14* | [User Profile](/od/user/1012) One "New Right" thinker (Dominique Venner) seems to have presented a thesis that I actually argued for on the old Phora Forum - that the secularization of the West did [B]not[/B] actually begin with nominalism or Reformation, but rather with Thomas Aquinas' Aristotelianism and his separation of grace and nature. (Before that, Europe had relied on Augustinian doctrine where the illumination of Holy Spirit on men's minds was necessary for the emergence of[B] any[/B] truth, not leaving room for secularism) [COLOR="Purple"][FONT="Garamond"][SIZE="3"]"[B]Venner traces nihilism's roots to the advent of Spengler's “Faustian civilization,” which began innocently enough when Saint Thomas introduced Aristotelian logic to Christian theology, privileging thereby the forces of rationality. Because Christianity held that there was a single truth and a single spiritual authority (the Church), reason in this Thomist makeover was made the principal means of accessing the divine. [/B]But once the Christian God became dependent on reason, He risked eventually being repudiated by it. This came with Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, who turned reason into a purely instrumental and calculative faculty. In the form of science, technology, and industry, Cartesian rationalism reduced everything to a mechanical causality, associating reason with the progressive mastery of nature, a belief in progress (soon to supplant the belief in Providence), and, ultimately, the rule of money. "[B]Venner claims a desiccated mathematicized reason, no matter how technologically potent, is no substitute for transcendent references, for a disenchanted world governed by its principles is a world devoid of meaning and purpose.[/B] [/SIZE][/FONT][/COLOR] [url]http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol4no2/mm-venner.html[/url] Of course, Venner's idea would mean that it was ultimately [B]Greek philosophy [/B](Aristotelianism) and not Christianity that is responsible for that "de-sacralization of the world" that "New Right" thinkers bemoan. Makes sense to me - Plato already tried to counter the modernism of Sophists with his totalitarian traditionalism. (More on this subject in here) [url]http://classics.dal.ca/AquinasattheOriginsofSecularHumanismendnotes.htm[/url] [COLOR="Blue"][SIZE="3"][FONT="Times New Roman"]"[B]In 1968, the influential American neo-Calvinist theologian and cultural historian, Francis Schaeffer, published a small book,[I] Escape from Reason[/I]. The origin of this disastrous modern “escape” is located by him in the division between nature and grace made by Thomas Aquinas, and in his placing of grace above nature. By this account, Thomas draws a horizontal line and places grace above it and nature below. This hierarchical division is what Schaeffer calls “the real birth of the humanistic Renaissance,” and of the autonomy of the human intellect. [/B]The reader is told that: “from the basis of this autonomous principle, philosophy also became free, and was separated from revelation.” Establishing the reality and goodness of the natural was a good thing, but by doing it as he did, “Aquinas had opened the way to an autonomous Humanism, an autonomous philosophy, and once the movement gained momentum, there was soon a flood.”[2] This was a bad thing. [B]Schaeffer declares that “Any autonomy is wrong” in respect to Christ and the Scriptures.[3] Humans, created in the image of God to whom all belongs, demand by nature a rational whole. Once the division Aquinas made was made, step by step the autonomous rational ate up what is above the line rendering it either empty or irrational. [/B]The final result is what Schaefer calls the Line of Despair and he tries to show, by way of a dialectical summersault, how travelling down that line we arrive at the loss of confidence in reason: the escape from reason."[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR] Petr --- ### Okiereddust *2005-11-03 00:54* | [User Profile](/od/user/29) [QUOTE=Hilaire Belloc]Well that also begs the question as to why they are that as well, especially when they admit they're influenced by Christian thinkers. This just doesnt make any sense. One's religious preferences don't always make a lot of sense from a political viewpoint. I suppose that's just the way they've been brought up or the fashion of the particular mileau (paraisian in Benoists's case) they've inhabited. Now one can reason back from a political stance to its logical supportingfaith/metaphysical stance, if its not too far off. Solzhenitsyn did that when he had rejected communism (and communism had rejected him - in the gulag). But hje had a childhood faith to fall back on. [QUOTE]Now the non-conformists did believe in "Nietzschean Christianity" that is a Christianity that promoted the more masculine and heroic aspects of the faith. I dont know if thats entirely the same. [/QUOTE]"Nietzschean Christianity" that sounds like the ultimate oxymoron. Although its certainly true WWI german soldiers were issued a copy of two books, the Bible and [I]Thus Spake Zarathustra[/I] [QUOTE]Well to be honest, my interest in the German Conserative Revolution has sunk to zero. Largely in connection to their Nietzscheanism and such. Quite similar to my disgust with the ENR. Besides, the French/Belgian Conservative Revolutions(lead by the non-Conformists) were staunchly Christian in orientation. [/QUOTE]Well Rauschning viewed the "conservative revolution" as having two wings, one conservative and one nationaist (tending toward nihlist). There's certainly a similar ambivalence in their works, which makes it hard to use. But the overall broadness and scope of their viewpoints makes it fascinating. I still find a coherent conservative core in their philosophies, except for the Junger's. One analyst after reading [I]Storm of Steel[/I]said he though perhaps Junger still felt the effects of a battlefield head injury. :wink: > I have to agree. However, I'm willing to accept pagans(like the one I quoted above) who recognize Christianity's place in Europe's heritage and ignore anti-Christian bashing.[/QUOTE]Athoiugh that does often seem hard to do for them. --- ### Okiereddust *2005-11-03 01:02* | [User Profile](/od/user/29) [QUOTE=Petr]One "New Right" thinker (Dominique Venner) seems to have presented a thesis that I actually argued for on the old Phora Forum - that the secularization of the West did [B]not[/B] actually begin with nominalism or Reformation, but rather with Thomas Aquinas' Aristotelianism and his separation of grace and nature. (Before that, Europe had relied on Augustinian doctrine where the illumination of Holy Spirit on men's minds was necessary for the emergence of[B] any[/B] truth, not leaving room for secularism) I'm sure the Catholic talibanists will take issue with that :wink: [QUOTE]Of course, Venner's idea would mean that it was ultimately [B]Greek philosophy [/B](Aristotelianism) and not Christianity that is responsible for that "de-sacralization of the world" that "New Right" thinkers bemoan. Makes sense to me - Plato already tried to counter the modernism of Sophists with his totalitarian traditionalism.[/QUOTE]Good to see that in Occidental Quarterly. > [COLOR="Blue"][SIZE="3"][FONT="Times New Roman"]"[B]In 1968, the influential American neo-Calvinist theologian and cultural historian, Francis Schaeffer, published a small book,[I] Escape from Reason[/I]. The origin of this disastrous modern “escape” is located by him in the division between nature and grace made by Thomas Aquinas, and in his placing of grace above nature. By this account, Thomas draws a horizontal line and places grace above it and nature below. This hierarchical division is what Schaeffer calls “the real birth of the humanistic Renaissance,” and of the autonomy of the human intellect. [/B]The reader is told that: “from the basis of this autonomous principle, philosophy also became free, and was separated from revelation.” Establishing the reality and goodness of the natural was a good thing, but by doing it as he did, “Aquinas had opened the way to an autonomous Humanism, an autonomous philosophy, and once the movement gained momentum, there was soon a flood.”[2] This was a bad thing. [B]Schaeffer declares that “Any autonomy is wrong” in respect to Christ and the Scriptures.[3] Humans, created in the image of God to whom all belongs, demand by nature a rational whole. Once the division Aquinas made was made, step by step the autonomous rational ate up what is above the line rendering it either empty or irrational. [/B]The final result is what Schaefer calls the Line of Despair and he tries to show, by way of a dialectical summersault, how travelling down that line we arrive at the loss of confidence in reason: the escape from reason."[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR] Petr[/QUOTE]Yes, that's a bedrock schaefferian viewpoint. I wonder, might this point also explain the Catholic conservatives apostocy into neoconism? (I'm sure Fleming would disagree :lol:) --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-11-06 22:00* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Petr]One "New Right" thinker (Dominique Venner) seems to have presented a thesis that I actually argued for on the old Phora Forum - that the secularization of the West did [B]not[/B] actually begin with nominalism or Reformation, but rather with Thomas Aquinas' Aristotelianism and his separation of grace and nature. Yes you did and Aaron David King(aka Concerned Catholic) responded to your thesis. It's still at his blog. Besides Protestantism still bears the major responsibility, with its doctrine of seperating Christ from the surronding culture. > (Before that, Europe had relied on Augustinian doctrine where the illumination of Holy Spirit on men's minds was necessary for the emergence of[B] any[/B] truth, not leaving room for secularism) [/QUOTE] Yes Ive reading a lot about how Thomism is somehow to blame for all this, including an article about Benedict XVI's theology and how it stresses Augustinian rather than Thomist tenets. Frankly I'll take Aquinas over Augustine anyday! --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-11-06 22:05* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Okiereddust] "Nietzschean Christianity" that sounds like the ultimate oxymoron. Well read John Hellman's book, he explains it in more detail. Believe it or not, but Nietzsche had great praise for Jesus Christ, and even considered him a model for his superman. According to Nietzsche, it was St. Paul who corrupted Christianity into a "slave religion". > Well Rauschning viewed the "conservative revolution" as having two wings, one conservative and one nationaist (tending toward nihlist). There's certainly a similar ambivalence in their works, which makes it hard to use. But the overall broadness and scope of their viewpoints makes it fascinating. I still find a coherent conservative core in their philosophies, except for the Junger's. One analyst after reading [I]Storm of Steel[/I]said he though perhaps Junger still felt the effects of a battlefield head injury. :wink: Well Junger ironically held a life-long fascination for Catholicism, greatly admired St. Ignatius' *Spiritual Excerises*, wrote in 1944 that Christianity was key to revitalizing Europe and before his death converted. --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-11-06 22:10* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Okiereddust]I'm sure the Catholic talibanists will take issue with that :wink: The notion of a Catholic taliban is an oxymoron if I ever heard one. > Good to see that in Occidental Quarterly. I hate them, especially for their advocacy of eugenics and knee-jerks against those who oppose it(which is typical for pro-eugencists). They acknowledge the Christian heritage, at least officially, yet host that awful article by Francis about the germanization of Christianity(Im so ****ing sick of this article being posted by neo-pagans at every turn. The book's arguments are void and simply TOO EASY to refute). --- ### Petr *2005-11-06 22:19* | [User Profile](/od/user/1012) Here's some stuff on Georges Dumézil, one of the most respected scholars of "New Right" and Indo-Europeanist ideology. [B](from [I]On Jews, Pagans and Christians[/I] by Arnaldo Momigliano (Wesleyan University Press, 1989)) [/B] p. 290: [COLOR="Purple"][SIZE="3"][FONT="Times New Roman"]"Dumézil's extraordinary career and success are understandable only if they placed where they belong: with the contrasting and not always coherent trends of French sociological and political thought from the end of the First World War to the present day. In more than sixty years Dumézil has had time to support successively the ideology of Indo-European supremacy, the school of Durkheim - or rather of Durkheim's nephew Marcel Mauss - the linguistics of Benveniste, and the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss - and occasionally he has been supported by them. [B]The latest paradox is that Dumézil, while remaining the darling of the extreme right, to which he may have originally belonged, has persuaded left-wing sociologists and anthropologists, such as J.-P. Vernant, and was received among the Immortals of the Académie Francaise by the very leader of the structuralist revolution, Lévi-Strauss himself.[/B]"[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR] Indeed: [B][COLOR="Navy"][SIZE="3"][FONT="Garamond"] "Two of Dumézil’ s most noted accomplishments in the years leading up to his death include his acceptance into the Académie Fançais, sponsored by his long-time friend, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and his efforts in helping start the academic career of Miciel Foucaut, who later, on a number of occasions, thanked Dumézil for his assistance. C. Scott Littleton recalls Dumézil telling him once that he and Foucaut were very close friends for a long time following the start of his career and he was heartbroken to hear of his death. "[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR][/B] [url]http://departments.oxy.edu/anthropology/field/wall.html[/url] Claude Lévi-Strauss was an aggressive Jewish structuralist and an inspiration to Michel Foucault. Momigliano also noted how Dumézil tried in his famous Trifunctionality hypothesis to belittle the importance of Christianity (or the impact of religions of non-Aryan peoples like Etruscans) and project his own ideals to Ur-Aryan institutions instead - in other words, to behave like a typical "New Right" ideologue: pp. 295, 303, 312-13, 324: [COLOR="Purple"][SIZE="3"][FONT="Times New Roman"]"[B]By 1941 it was clear to Dumézil that the Indo-European spirit survives where societies keep alive this original Indo-European discovery: the functional tripartition of priests, warriors, and producers. ... By this criteria the Greeks seem to have been rather poor Indo-Europeans: not much of the original tripartition survived among them.[/B] ... "The successive history of triads in Rome confirms their lack of specialization, in the Dumézilian sense. We have already seen that even Dumézil does not claim that the Capitoline triad was trifunctional. [B]We have good reason to suspect that the Capitoline triad was not only introduced by an Etruscan king, but reflected some Etruscan doctrine.[/B] We are told by Servius in his commentary to Virgil ([I]ad Aen[/I]. I. 422) that the specialists in Etruscan doctrine did not consider a city properly founded unless Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva each had a temple, a gate, and a street in it. This is not the same as having a tripartite temple, as the Capitoline temple was. But it shows that the triad Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva was considered Etruscan. A few years after the foundation of of the triple temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, the plebeians of Rome found it necessary to have their own trinitarian sanctuary, and built one to the triad Ceres, Liber, and Libera in 493 B.C. It is interesting to note that the plebeians accepted the principle of having a trinity with two goddesses and one god, but gave pride of place to the goddess Ceres, who best suited their preoccupations. Again, the three Indo-European functions are not involved. Outside the triads trifunctionality is of course even less likely to appear.[B] Trifunctionality is altogether alien to Roman pantheon[/B]. ... "If there are other Indo-European societies in which the emphasis on the so-called trifunctional structure is greater than in Rome, then the first question to ask is whether the reason is not to be found inside that society rather than in the Indo-European original society. (4) [B]Feudal society fulfills Dumézil's requirements more obviously than the Roman society. But it fulfills them because of the combination of Christianity with feudalism. [/B]I am not surprised that Professor G. Duby has found the High Middle Ages a haven of trifunctionalism. Nor am I surprised that Dumézil should sympathize with what was after all the organization of pre-revolutionary France, a tripartite state if there ever was one. [B]The Middle Ages are trifunctional because they are Christian. The Romans were not trifunctional in any serious sense.[/B] (4)[B] The absence of priestly class in Germany noted by Caesar is a notorious example.[/B] A short poem of the Edda, the [I]Rigsthula[/I], which is often quoted as evidence for consistent trifunctional thinking among Scandinavians, is interesting evidence for the division into slaves, freemen and noblemen, not for three functions. The king is chosen from among the warriors, but to be king he must have a modicum of magic, of runes. One god creates three classes: the poem does not presuppose functional gods for each class.[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR] Dumézil was insistent of seeing the draconian caste-society of Hinduism as somehow common, essentially "Indo-European" institution. It is typical for New Rightists to deny the Christian roots of Europe and seek them from India instead. They seem to admire theocracy, when practised by Brahmins that is. For example, how many neo-pagans who like to scorn Christianity as "misogynistic Semitic religion" have you seen citing this part in the "Laws of Manu": (Chapter IX) [COLOR="Red"] [B][FONT="Arial"]17. (When creating them) Manu allotted to women (a love of their) bed, (of their) seat and (of) ornament, impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct. 18. For women no (sacramental) rite (is performed) with sacred texts, thus the law is settled; women (who are) destitute of strength and destitute of (the knowledge of) Vedic texts, (are as impure as) falsehood (itself), that is a fixed rule. 19. And to this effect many sacred texts are sung also in the Vedas, in order to (make) fully known the true disposition (of women); hear (now those texts which refer to) the expiation of their (sins). [/FONT][/B] [/COLOR] [url]http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/india/manu-full.html[/url] Not surprising from a culture that invented widow-burning... Petr --- ### Petr *2005-11-06 22:26* | [User Profile](/od/user/1012) [QUOTE=Hilaire Belloc]They acknowledge the Christian heritage, at least officially, yet host that awful article by Francis about the germanization of Christianity(Im so ****ing sick of this article being posted by neo-pagans at every turn. The book's arguments are void and simply TOO EASY to refute).[/QUOTE] I'd love to hear your take on this issue, Perun! :yes: Petr --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-11-06 22:30* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Petr]I'd love to hear your take on this issue, Perun! :yes: Petr[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15951[/url] I just got done posting my simple but still earth-shattering critique of Francis' review of Russell's book. Ironically I never once mention Peter Brown's *Rise of Western Christendom: 200-1000 AD* which deals with the same time period as Russell's book, yet Brown notes that the phenomea of the adapting Christianity to local cultures was widespread throughout the ancient world. As Brown puts it, within the universal "Christendom" there were several "mico-Christendoms" that reflects a particular cultural/ethnic identity. Brown especially notes how this occured in the Eastern churches, which were never touched by Germanic influence. Brown also notes how this localization of the faith actually helped strengthen it. Trying to attribute Christianity's "conservative" elements to Germanization is utterly absurd. Dan Brown-types have a better case in arguing this came about when Constantine converted. --- ### Petr *2005-11-06 23:00* | [User Profile](/od/user/1012) [QUOTE=Hilaire Belloc]Besides Protestantism still bears the major responsibility, with its doctrine of seperating Christ from the surronding culture.[/QUOTE] Puritan theocrats sure didn't seem to see it that way... some aspects Reformation were indeed managed less than perfectly, like Luther's excessive reliance on the support of secular rulers. [QUOTE=]Yes Ive reading a lot about how Thomism is somehow to blame for all this, including an article about Benedict XVI's theology and how it stresses Augustinian rather than Thomist tenets.[/QUOTE] Interesting. I don't follow the internal discussion of Roman Catholics very closely, could you point out some good sources on this issue? [QUOTE=]Frankly I'll take Aquinas over Augustine anyday![/QUOTE] We all have our own tastes. :) [B][COLOR="Blue"][FONT="Arial"]"It is Augustine who gave us the Reformation." So wrote B. B. Warfield in his assessment of the influence of Augustine on church history. It is not only that Luther was an Augustinian monk, or that Calvin quoted Augustine more than any other theologian that provoked Warfield's remark. Rather, it was that the Reformation witnessed the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over the legacy of the Pelagian view of man."[/FONT][/COLOR][/B] [url]http://www.apuritansmind.com/Arminianism/RCSproul%20Pelagius.htm[/url] Petr --- ### Petr *2005-11-06 23:12* | [User Profile](/od/user/1012) [QUOTE=Hilaire Belloc]Besides Protestantism still bears the major responsibility, with its doctrine of seperating Christ from the surronding culture.[/QUOTE] Puritan theocrats sure didn't seem to see it that way... although some aspects of Reformation were truly managed less than perfectly, like Luther's excessive reliance on the support of secular rulers. [QUOTE=]Yes Ive reading a lot about how Thomism is somehow to blame for all this, including an article about Benedict XVI's theology and how it stresses Augustinian rather than Thomist tenets.[/QUOTE] Interesting. I don't follow the internal discussion of Roman Catholics very closely, could you point out some good sources on this issue? [QUOTE=]Frankly I'll take Aquinas over Augustine anyday![/QUOTE] We all have our own tastes. :) [B][COLOR="Blue"][FONT="Arial"]"It is Augustine who gave us the Reformation." So wrote B. B. Warfield in his assessment of the influence of Augustine on church history. It is not only that Luther was an Augustinian monk, or that Calvin quoted Augustine more than any other theologian that provoked Warfield's remark. Rather, it was that the Reformation witnessed the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over the legacy of the Pelagian view of man."[/FONT][/COLOR][/B] [url]http://www.apuritansmind.com/Arminianism/RCSproul%20Pelagius.htm[/url] Petr --- ### Hilaire Belloc *2005-11-07 21:14* | [User Profile](/od/user/438) [QUOTE=Petr] Interesting. I don't follow the internal discussion of Roman Catholics very closely, could you point out some good sources on this issue? [url]http://www.the-tidings.com/2005/0506/theologians.htm[/url] This is about theologians reflecting on the world-view of Benedict XVI asserting that: ** As a theologian the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI has been described as Augustinian rather than Thomist and more "ressourcement" than "aggiornamento."** Then there's the two part interview for Zenit about Benedict XVI and the Thomist tradition. [url]http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=74647[/url] [url]http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=74697[/url] Part II deals with the issue of "Whig Thomists" vs. "Augustinian Thomists". --- ### Petr *2005-11-09 03:01* | [User Profile](/od/user/1012) There is a very clear connection between "New Right" and [B]radical feminism,[/B] as preached by people like [B]Marija Gimbutas[/B]. [COLOR="Blue"][FONT="Arial"]"Thus, among the members of the patronage committee of [I]Nouvelle Ecole[/I], we find not only scholars above suspicion, like Manfred Mayrhofer, Edgar Polomé, Colin Renfrew, the late Arthur Koestler or[B] the late Marija Gimbutas[/B], ...[/FONT][/COLOR] [url]http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/downloads/books/aid.htm#Chapter1Section1SubSection5[/url] What obviously connects them is a blatantly revisionist creation of primordial wonderland that we should return to. Naturally Wiccan feminists also share their anti-Christian attitudes. Just like New Rightists teach that Christianity is "just a passing phase in the history of European peoples", so do radical feminists teach that [B]patriarchy[/B] is just a passing phase in the history of mankind, [B]matriarchy [/B]being a natural state of humans! Also spracht Gimbutas: [COLOR="Purple"][FONT="Garamond"][B][SIZE="4"] Survival of Old European Matrilily in the Bronze Age and in Historic Times[/SIZE][/B][SIZE="3"] [B]A strong indication for the existence of matriliny in Old Europe is the historic continuity of matrilineal succession in the non-Indo-European societies of Europe and Asia Minor such as the Minoan, Etruscan, Pelasgian, Lydian, Lykian, Carian in western Turkey, Basque in northern Spain and southwest France, and the Picts in Britain before the Celts. This influence is also found in Indo-European-speaking societies - Celts, Teutons, Slavs, and Balts - who absorbed matricentric and matrilineal traditions from the rich substratum of Old European populations.[/B] Traces of matrilineal practices have been found in recent centuries in peripheral areas of the west and north of Europe, and in the Aegean islands. In a number of islands, including Lesbos, Lemnos, Naxos, and Kos, matrilineal succession to real property was the rule at the end of the 18th century A.D. The facts were reported by an English traveller, John Hawkins, who wrote: "In the large number of the islands, the eldest daughter takes as her inheritance a portion of the family house, together with its furniture, and one third of the share of the maternal property, which in reality in most of these cases constitutes the chief means of subsistence; the other daughters, when they marry off in succession, are likewise entitled to (a portion of) the family house and the same share of whatever property remains. These observations were applicable to the islands of Mytilin (Lesbos), Lemnos, Scopelo, Skyros, Syra, Zea Ipsera, Myconi, Paros, Naxia, Siphno, Santorini and Cos, where I have either collected my information in person or had obtained it through others." The matrilineal system in the 18th century, and in some islands up to the 20th century, certainly did not emerge in these late centuries but must have continued unbroken from prehistory. Its persistence is found in areas not touched by the Indo-Europeans, where the process of Indo-Europeanization was weak, or where the Old European substratum was very strong, as in Greece and Eturia. In the same areas where matrilineality survived, a non-Indo-European language persisted into historic times. A non-Greek language, for example, was last spoken in parts of Crete and the Aegean islands as late as the 4th century B.C. ... [B] At Sparta, in the center of the Peloponnese, where the inhabitants were a mixture of Indo-European warrior clans with the indigenous prepatriarchal peoples, women's position was similar to that in Crete. As Briffault remarked, "Spartan women were entirely unrestricted in their social and sexual relations. Virginity was not demanded of a bride. Children born out of wedlock were called 'virgin born ' and were regarded as equal to those born in wedlock. ... Tomb paintings and inscriptions have told us more of the Etruscans' luxurious style of life and the considerable role played by women. Accounts of Greek and Roman writers give further evidence of these facts and, more importantly, they indicate how the high status of women frightened them. Their writings express the view that the relations between men and women and their differing attitudes toward sex create a conflict, since strong women were seen as a threat to the power of the state. Historian Larissa Bonfante suggests that Rome's first "cultural shock" was that she was becoming too much like the Etruscan city that confronted her across the Tiber and from whom she took so much external culture - letters, the arts, and symbols of royalty. For the Romans, the Etruscans would always represent "the others."[/B][/SIZE] [/FONT][/COLOR] [url]http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/gimbutas.html[/url] This idea of "Indo-Europeanist" Nazis that pre-Christian paganism is somehow inherently superior to modern religions and ideologies just because of its greater antiquity can be turned right against them by arguing that [B]pre-Aryan matriarchalism[/B] is a more authentic way of life than machismo. Down with phallocentric Aryan sky-gods! Petr ---