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Madrid burns [OP]

2003-07-04 08:49 | User Profile

I begin this thread to place several writings of Alain De Benoist, one of the main intellectuals of the French and European New Right Movement.

Through the Research Group For The Study Of European Civilization (GRECE in its French acronym), and the circles and publications which grew up around it, de Benoist developed a theory of long-term counter-cultural struggle for hegemony with the dominant 'Western liberal internationalist ideology'. Drawing upon the theories of the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, de Benoist started a struggle to 'contest' and delegitimise this opposing ideology. Labels should not be imposed on de Benoist although the term 'Nouvelle Droit' (New Right) was one which he used. In a war of ideas, it was the appointed function of the Nouvelle Droit to provide new arguments. The breadth of de Benoist's thought ranges from his defence of the old 'pagan' ethos through to his dissection of American cultural imperialism and the Indo-European myth in European civilization.

It can be said, as some of the material here reveals, that there are now visible indications that liberalism is under substantive challenge. Yet the hour is late and the ideology of market-driven disintegration is still empowered in all European societies. The thought of de Benoist, of course, was first composed in French. Thanks to the labours of other Europeans, it passed into most languages, progressively through the 1980's and definitely throughout the 1990's.

The importance of de Benoist in altering 'our' discourse is one where some participants in our politics express their thoughts in a language without knowing its source. That is 'success' indeed! The ideological outpouring of the GRECE school is vast and covers the gamut of contest, from the characterisation of European Identity with its Indo-European roots through to the discussion of race, the place of economics in society, psychology and philosophy.

Introduction from: [url=http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/]http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/[/url]

Madrid burns

2003-07-04 08:51 | User Profile

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[B]The Path Toward the Sacred[B/]

Excerpted from Alain de Benoist, Comment Peut-on Etre Païen? (Paris: Albin Michel, 1981), translation by Irmin Benoist.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Renaissance was genuinely a re-naissance, a rebirth. "It involved," as Ernest Renan said, "seeing Antiquity face to face." Yet that rebirth was not a journey backward nor a simple resurgence of the past, but on the contrary a point of departure for a new spiritual adventure, a new adventure of the Faustian soul, henceforth triumphant because finally awakened to itself. Today "neo-paganism," likewise, is not a regression. It is, on the contrary, the deliberate choice of a more authentic future, more harmonious, more powerful -- a choice that projects into the future, for new creations, the Eternal from which we come.

If one acknowledges that something is great, Heidegger says, "then in the beginning of that greatness there remains something still greater." Paganism today clearly requires, in the first place, a certain familiarity with ancient Indo-European religions, their history, their theology, their cosmogony, their symbolic system, their myths and the mythemes of which they are composed -- familiarity of knowledge, but also spiritual familiarity; epistemological familiarity, but also intuitive familiarity. Paganism is not only a matter of accumulating knowledge about the beliefs of the various regions of Europe, nor can we ignore the features that distinguish them, often profoundly. Paganism also requires, above all, identifying the projection of those beliefs, the transposition of a certain number of values which, as heirs to a culture, belong to us and concern us directly. (That, as a consequence, leads to reinterpreting the history of the last two millennia as the story of a fundamental spiritual combat.)

This recovery of pagan traditions is a considerable task. Not only do the religions of old Europe cede nothing to monotheism in their richness or their spiritual and theological complexity, but we can even say that on this terrain they often prevail. Yet whether pagan religions are indeed more rich and more complex than monotheism is not the most important issue. What is important is that they speak to us, and for my part I draw more lessons from the symbolic contrast of Janus and Vesta, more ethical understanding from the Oresteia or from the account of Ymir's dismemberment, than from the adventures of Joseph and his brothers or the story of the aborted murder of Isaac.

Beyond the myths themselves, it is advisable to look for some conception of divinity and of the sacred, some system of interpretation of the world, some philosophy. Even to declare disbelief in the existence of God, as Bernard-Henri Lévy does, presupposes an implicit monotheism. Our epoch still remains profoundly Judeo-Christian in how it conceives history and in the essential values it assumes, even though the churches and synagogues have emptied. Conversely, a pagan need not believe literally in Jupiter or Wotan, although that would be no more ridiculous than a literal belief in Jehovah. Contemporary paganism does not consist in erecting altars to Apollo or reviving the worship of Odin. It implies instead looking behind the religion and, according to a procedure henceforth traditional, seeking the "mental equipment" of which the religion is the product, the interior universe it reflects, the form of apprehending the world it denotes. In short, it implies considering the gods as "centers of values" (H. Richard Niebuhr) and the beliefs of which they are the object as systems of values. The gods and the beliefs pass, but the values remain.

That is to say that paganism, far from being characterized by a denial of spirituality or a rejection of the sacred, consists on the contrary in the choice (and the reappropriation) of another spirituality, of another form of the sacred. Far from being confounded with atheism or agnosticism, it interposes, between man and the universe, a fundamentally religious relationship, which in its spiritual quality seems to us much more intense, more serious, stronger than what Judeo-Christian monotheism can lay claim to. Far from desacralizing the world, it sacralizes it in the literal sense of the term, since it regards it as sacred, and it is precisely therein that it is pagan. Thus, as Jean Markale writes, "paganism is not the absence of God, the absence of the sacred, the absence of ritual. Quite the contrary, it is the solemn affirmation of transcendence, which begins with the recognition that the sacred no longer resides in Christianity. Europe is never more pagan than when she searches for her roots, which are not Judeo-Christian."

Spirituality, the sense of the sacred, faith, belief in the existence of God, religion as ideology, religion as system and as institution -- all are very different notions and do not necessarily intersect, and they are no longer univocal. There are religions that do not have any God (Taoism, for example); belief in God does not necessarily imply belief in a personal God. On the other hand, to imagine that all religious concerns could be permanently removed from mankind is, in our eyes, pure fantasy. Faith is neither repression nor illusion, and the best human reason can do is recognize that reason alone is not sufficient to exhaust all man's inner aspirations. As Schopenhauer observes: "Man is the only being who is astonished by his own existence; a brute animal lives in its tranquillity and is astonished by nothing ... This astonishment, which occurs especially in the face of death and in view of the destruction and disappearance of all other beings, is the source of our metaphysical needs; it is because of this that man is a metaphysical animal." The need for the sacred is a fundamental human need, in the same way as food or copulation. (If some choose to forgo any of these, so much better for them.) Mircea Eliade notes that "the experience of the sacred is a structure of consciousness," which one cannot hope to do without. Man needs some belief or some religion -- we distinguish here religion from ethics -- as ritual, as actions that comfort him by their unvarying regularity, forming part of the habitual patterns by which he is constructed. In this respect, the recent appearance of genuine disbelief is among those phenomena of decline that are destructuring man in what makes him distinctively human. (Is the man who has lost the capacity or the desire to believe still a man? One can at least pose the the question.)

"It is possible," Régis Debray writes, "to have a society without God; it is not possible to have a society without religion." He adds: "States on the way to disbelief are also on the way to abdication." George Bataille's remarks are also pertinent: "Religion, the essence of which is the search for a lost intimacy, is essentially an effort of the clear consciousness to become entirely self-awareness." That is enough to condemn Western liberalism. We would certainly give Judeo-Christianity too much credit if we rejected all the concepts over which it claims a monopoly simply because it has claimed them. We need not reject the idea of God or the concept of the sacred simply because of the sickly form in which Christianity has expressed them, any more than we must break with aristocratic principles simply because they have been caricatured by the bourgeoisie.

We should note as well that in pre-Christian antiquity the word "atheism" is practically meaningless. Ancient trials for "unbelief" or "impiety" are generally concerned, in reality, with other offenses. When the pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus remarks that "there are some people for whom the sky is empty of gods," he specifies that they do believe, nevertheless, in magic and in the stars. In Rome it was the Christians who were accused of "atheism," since they showed no respect to images of the gods or to places of worship. In Greece, rational thought itself only reoriented theogony and mythical cosmology. That is why Claude Tresmontant, after having gratuitously likened pantheism to "atheism," is compelled to write that the latter is "eminently religious," that in fact "it is far too religious, since it unduly divinizes the universe." In ancient Europe, the sacred was not conceived in opposition to the profane, but rather embraced the profane and gave it meaning. There was no need for a Church to mediate between man and God; the whole city itself effected this mediation, and religious institutions constituted only one aspect of it. The conceptual antonym of Latin religio would be the verb negligere. To be religious is to be responsible, not to neglect. To be responsible is to be free -- to possess the concrete means of exercising a practical liberty. To be free is also, at the same time, to be connected to others through a common spirituality.

When Lévy remarks that "monotheism is not a form of sacrality, a form of spirituality, but on the contrary, the hatred of the sacred as such," his comment is only apparently paradoxical. The sacred involves unconditional respect for something; yet monotheism, in a literal sense, outlaws such respect, placing it outside the Law. For Heidegger, the sacred, das Heilige, is quite distinct from traditional metaphysics and from the very idea of God. We say, to use an antimony favored by Emmanuel Lévinas, that the sacred vests itself as a mystery in this world, that it is based on an intimacy between man and the world, in contrast to holiness, which relies on the radical transcendence of the Other. Paganism sacralizes and thereby exalts this world, whereas Judeo-Christian monotheism sanctifies, and thereby deducts from and diminishes it.

Madrid burns

2003-07-04 08:51 | User Profile

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Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: A Sociological View of the Decay of Modern Society Alain de Benoist, Mankind Quarterly, 34 (1994), 263ff.

The text is based on an original essay by Alain de Benoist, translated and interpreted by Tomislav Sunic.

Peaceful modern societies which respect the individual evolved from age-old familistic ties. The transition from band-type societies, through clan and tribal organizations, into nation-states was peaceful only when accomplished without disruption of the basic ties which link the individual to the larger society by a sense of a common history, culture and kinship. The sense of "belonging" to a nation by virtue of such shared ties promotes cooperation, altruism and respect for other members. In modern times, traditional ties have been weakened by the rise of mass societies and rapid global communication, factors which bring with them rapid social change and new philosophies which deny the significance of the sense of nationhood, and emphasize individualism and individualistic goals. The cohesion of societies has consequently been threatened, and replaced by multicultural and multi-ethnic societies and the overwhelming sense of lost identity in the mass global society in which Western man, at least, has come to conceive himself as belonging.

Sociologically, the first theorist to identify this change was the Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), who emphasized the tendency for mass urban societies to break down when the social solidarity characteristic of tribal and national societies disappeared. Ibn Khaldun saw dramatically the contrast between the morality of the nationalistic and ethnically unified Berbers of North Africa and the motley collation of peoples who called themselves Arabs under Arabic leadership, but did not possess the unity and sense of identity that had made the relatively small population of true Arabs who had built a widespread and Arabic-speaking Empire.

Later it was Ferdinand Tonnies (1855-1936) who introduced this thought to modern sociology. He did so in his theory of gemeinschaft and gesellschaft (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 1887). This theory revealed how early tribal or national (gemeinschaft) societies achieved harmonious collaboration and cooperation more or less automatically due to the common culture and sense of common genetic and cultural identity in which all members were raised. This avoided major conflicts concerning basic values since all shared a common set of mores and a common sense of destiny.

However, as history progressed, larger multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies began to develop, and these Tonnies described as being united by gesellschaft ties. These were not united by any common set of values or historical identity, and collaboration was only maintained due to the need to exchange goods and services. In short, their existence came to depend on economic relations, and as a result of the diversity of cultural values, the lack of any "family feeling," and the emphasis on economic exchange and economic wealth, conflict over wealth and basic values was likely to disrupt the harmony of such societies at any time. In political terms, liberalism developed to eulogize the freedom of individuals from claims to national loyalty and support for national destiny, while Marxism grew out of the dissatisfaction felt by those who were less successful in achieving wealth and power, which now came to represent the primary goals of the individuals who were left at the mercy of the modern mass gesellschaft society. Nationalism and any sense of loyalty to the nation as a distinct ethnic, kinship unit came to be anathematized by both liberals and Marxists.

"A specter is haunting Europe—a specter of communism" wrote Marx in the preface of the Manifesto. A century later this specter became a mere phantom, with liberalism the dominant force. Over the last several decades, liberalism used communism as a scarecrow to legitimize itself. Today, however, with the bankruptcy of communism, this mode of "negative legitimation" is no longer convincing. At last, liberalism, in the sense of the emphasis on the individual above and even against that of the nation, actually endangers the individual by undermining the stability of the society which gives him identity, values, purpose and meaning, the social, cultural and biological nexus to which he owes his very being.

Fundamentally, classical liberalism was a doctrine which, out of an abstract individual, created the pivot of its survival. In its mildest form it merely emphasized individual freedom of action, and condemned excessive bureaucratic involvement by government. But praiseworthy though its defense of individual freedom was, its claim that the ideal system is that in which there is the least possible emphasis on nationhood leads to situations which in fact endanger the freedom of the individual. In its extreme form, classical liberalism has developed into universal libertarianism, and at this point it comes close to advocating anarchy.

From the sociological standpoint, in its extreme form, modern internationalist liberalism defines itself totally in terms of the gesellschaft society of Tonnies. It denies the historical concept of the nation state by rejecting the notion of any common interest between individuals who traditionally shared a common heritage. In the place of nationhood it proposes to generate a new international social pattern centered on the individual's quest for optimal personal and economic interest. Within the context of extreme liberalism, only the interplay of individual interests creates a functional society—a society in which the whole is viewed only as a chance aggregate of anonymous particles.

The essence of modern liberal thought is that order is believed to be able to consolidate itself by means of all-out economic competition, that is, through the battle of all against all, requiring governments to do no more than set certain essential ground rules and provide certain services which the individual alone cannot adequately provide. Indeed, modern liberalism has gone so far along this path that it is today directly opposed to the goals of classical liberalism and libertarianism in that it denies the individual any inalienable right to property, but still shares with modern liberalism and with libertarianism an antagonism toward the idea of nationhood. Shorn of the protection of a society which identifies with its members because of a shared national history and destiny, the individual is left to grasp struggle for his own survival, without the protective sense of community which his forebears enjoyed since the earliest of human history.

Decadence in modern mass multicultural societies begins at a moment when there is no longer any discernable meaning within society. Meaning is destroyed by raising individualism above all other values, because rampant individualism encourages the anarchical proliferation of egotism at the expense of the values that were once part of the national heritage, values that give form to the concept of nationhood and the nation state, to a state which is more than just a political entity, and which corresponds to a particular people who are conscious of sharing a common heritage for the survival of which they are prepared to make personal sacrifices.

Man evolved in cooperating groups united by common cultural and genetic ties, and it is only in such a setting that the individual can feel truly free, and truly protected. Men cannot live happily alone and without values or any sense of identity: such a situation leads to nihilism, drug abuse, criminality and worse. With the spread of purely egotistic goals at the expense of the altruistic regard for family and nation, the individual begins to talk of his rights rather than his duties, for he no longer feels any sense of destiny, of belonging to and being a part of a greater and more enduring entity. He no longer rejoices in the secure belief that he shares in a heritage which it is part of his common duty to protect—he no longer feels that he has anything in common with those around him. In short, he feels lonely and oppressed. Since all values have become strictly personal, everything is now equal to everything; e.g., nothing equals nothing.

"A society without strong beliefs," declared Regis Debray in his interview with J.P. Enthoven in Le Nouvel Observateur, (October 10, 1981), "is a society about to die." Modern liberalism is particularly critical of nationalism. Hence, the question needs to be raised: Can modern liberal society provide strong unifying communal beliefs in view of the fact that on the one hand it views communal life as nonessential, while on the other, it remains impotent to envision any belief—unless this belief is reducible to economic conduct?

Moreover, there seems to be an obvious relationship between the negation and the eclipse of the meaning and the destruction of the historical dimension of the social corpus. Modern liberals encourage "narcissism"; they live in the perpetual now. In liberal society, the individual is unable to put himself in perspective, because putting himself in perspective requires a clear and a collectively perceived consciousness of common heritage and common adherence. As Regis Debray remarks, "In the capacity of isolated subjects men can never become the subjects of action and acquire the capability of making history" (Critique de la raison politique, op. cit. p. 207). In liberal societies, the suppression of the sense of meaning and identity embedded in national values leads to the dissolution of social cohesion as well as to the dissolution of group consciousness. This dissolution, in turn, culminates in the end of history.

Being the most typical representative of the ideology of equalitarianism, modern liberalism, in both its libertarian and socialist variants, appears to be the main factor in this dissolution of the ideal of nationhood. When the concept of society, from the sociological standpoint, suggests a system of simple 'horizontal interactions,' then this notion inevitably excludes social form. As a manifestation of solidarity, society can only be conceived in terms of shared identity—that is, in terms of historical values and cultural traditions (cf. Edgar Morin: "The communal myth gives society its national cohesion.")

By contrast, liberalism undoes nations and systematically destroys their sense of history, tradition, loyalty and value. Instead of helping man to elevate himself to the sphere of the superhuman, it divorces him from all 'grand projects' by declaring these projects 'dangerous' from the point of view of equality. No wonder, therefore, that the management of man's individual well-being becomes his sole preoccupation. In the attempt to free man from all constraints, liberalism brings man under the yoke of other constraints which now downgrade him to the lowest level. Liberalism does not defend liberty; it destroys the independence of the individual. By eroding historical memories, liberalism extricates man from history. It proposes to ensure his means of existence, but robs him of his reason to live and deprives him of the possibility of having a destiny.

There are two ways of conceiving of man and society. The fundamental value may be placed on the individual, and when this is done the whole of mankind is conceived as the sum total of all individuals—a vast faceless proletariat—instead of as a rich fabric of diverse nations, cultures and races. It is this conception that is inherent in liberal and socialist thought. The other view, which appears to be more compatible with man's evolutionary and socio-biological character, is when the individual is seen as enjoying a specific biological and cultural legacy—a notion which recognizes the importance of kinship and nationhood. In the first instance, mankind, as a sum total of individuals, appears to be "contained" in each individual human being; that is, one becomes first a "human being," and only then, as by accident, a member of a specific culture or a people. In the second instance, mankind comprises a complex phylogenetic and historic network, whereby the freedom of the individual is guaranteed by the protection of family by his nation, which provide him with a sense of identity and with a meaningful orientation to the entire world population. It is by virtue of their organic adherence to the society of which they are a part that men build their humanity.

As exponents of the first concept we encounter Descartes, the Encyclopaedists, and the emphasis on "rights"; nationality and society emanate from the individual, by elective choice, and are revokable at any time. As proponents of the second concept we find J.G. Herder and G.W. Leibniz, who stress the reality of cultures and ethnicity. Nationality and society are rooted in biological, cultural and historical heritage.

The difference between these two concepts becomes particularly obvious when one compares how they visualize history and the structure of the real. Nationalists are proponents of holism. Nationalists see the individual as a kinsman, sustained by the people and community, which nurtures and protects him, and with which he is proud to identify. The individual's actions represent an act of participation in the life of his people, and freedom of action is very real because, sharing in the values of his associates, the individual will seldom seek to threaten the basic values of the community with which he identifies. Societies which lack this basic sense of national unity are inherently prone to suffer from repeated situations wherein the opposing values of its egotistical members conflict with each other.

Furthermore, proponents of nationhood contend that a society or a people can survive only when: a) they remain aware of their cultural and historical origins; B) when they can assemble around a mediator, be it individual, or symbolic, who is capable of reassembling their energies and catalyzing their will to have a destiny; c) when they can retain the courage to designate their enemy. None of these conditions have been realized in societies that put economic gain above all other values, and which consequently: a) dissolve historical memories; B) extinguish the sublime and eliminate subliminal ideals; c) assume that it is possible not to have enemies.

The results of the rapid change from national or tribal-oriented societies to the modern, anti-national individualism prevalent in contemporary "advanced" societies have been very well described by Cornelius Castoriadis: "Western societies are in absolute decomposition. There is no longer a vision of the whole that could permit them to determine and apply any political action ... Western societies have practically ceased to be [nation] states ... Simply put, they have become agglomerations of lobbies which, in a myopic manner, tear the society apart; where nobody can propose a coherent policy, and where everybody is capable of blocking an action deemed hostile to his own interests." (Liberation, 16 and 21 December, 1981).

Modern liberalism has suppressed patriotic nationhood into a situation in which politics has been reduced to a "delivery service" decision-making process resembling the economic "command post," statesmen have been reduced to serving as tools for special interest groups, and nations have become little more than markets. The heads of modern liberal states have no options but to watch their citizenry being somatized by civilizational ills such as violence, delinquency, and drugs.

Ernst Junger once remarked that the act of veiled violence is more terrible than open violence. (Journal IV, September 6, 1945). And he also noted: "Slavery can be substantially aggravated when it assumes the appearance of liberty." The tyranny of modern liberalism creates the illusion inherent in its own principles. It proclaims itself for liberty and cries out to defend "human rights" at the moment when it oppresses the most. The dictatorship of the media and the "spiral of silence" appear to be almost as effective in depriving the citizenry of its freedom by imprisonment. In the West, there is no need to kill: suffice it to cut someone's microphone. To kill somebody by silence is a very elegant kind of murder, which in practice yields the same dividends as a real assassination—an assassination which, in addition, leaves the assassin with good conscience. Moreover, one should not forget the importance of such a type of assassination. Rare are those who silence their opponents for fun.

Patriotic nationhood does not target the notion of "formal liberties," as some rigorous Marxists do. Rather, its purpose is to demonstrate that "collective liberty," i.e., the liberty of peoples to be themselves and to continue to enjoy the privilege of having a destiny, does not result from the simple addition of individual liberties. Proponents of nationhood instead contend that the "liberties" granted to individuals by liberal societies are frequently nonexistent; they represent simulacra of what real liberties should be. It does not suffice to be free to do something. Rather, what is needed is one's ability to participate in determining the course of historical events. Societies dominated by modern liberal traditions are "permissive" only insofar as their general macrostability strips the populace of any real participation in the actual decision-making process. As the sphere in which the citizenry is permitted to "do everything" becomes larger, the sense of nationhood becomes paralyzed and loses its direction.

Liberty cannot be reduced to the sentiment that one has about it. For that matter, both the slave and the robot could equally well perceive themselves as free. The meaning of liberty is inseparable from the founding anthropology of man, an individual sharing a common history and common culture in a common community. Decadence vaporizes peoples, frequently in the gentlest of manners. This is the reason why individuals acting as individuals can only hope to flee tyranny, but cooperating actively as a nation they can often defeat tyranny.

Madrid burns

2003-07-04 08:55 | User Profile

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BETWEEN THE GODS AND THE TITANS

Alain de Benoist considers the achievement of the writer Ernst Juenger and his ideal of the Worker in the context of the Conservative Revolution.

This article first appeared as part of the central theme in Nouvelle Ecole No.40 (41, rue Barrault, 13 arr. 75 Paris) under the title Ernst Juenger: La Figure du Travailleur entre les Dieux et les Titans. We have translated it and are reprinting it in two parts in considerably abridged form with acknowledgements. Ernst Juenger is arguably the most provocative of all the writers of the Conservative Revolution. (Among other remarks attributed to him is the one that the abolition of torture is an indication of decadence in a society.) Even his most provocative utterences have the intellectual virtue, however, of forcing his opponents to articulate their opposition to him in an intelligent manner. Scorpion readers able to read French may be interested to know that Alain de Benoist is the general editor responsible for the publication of a new series of French translations of the writers of the Conservative Revolution, published by Pardes, (B.P. 47, 45390 Puiseaux 45390 France).

FOR ARMIN MOHLER, author of the classic manual on the German Conservative Revolution (Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland), Ernst Juenger's Der Arbeiter was one of those which he "still could not pick up without his hands shaking". For Mohler Der Arbeiter is more than a philosophy, it is a work of poetry. The word is apt, above all if we consider that all poetry possesses an incipient quality: it simultaneously penetrates the world and unveils the divine. Der Arbeiter possesses a metaphysical quality which takes it far beyond the historical and political context in which it was written.

Ernst Juenger was born on 28th March 1895 in Heidelberg, the son of Ernst Georg (1868-1943), a chemist and assistant to research chemist Viktor Meyer. He had one sister and five brothers, two of whom died very young. Juenger went to school in Hannover and Scwarzenberg, later in Brunswick and finally in Hannover again, as well as having attended Scharnhorst Realschule (secondary school). In 1911 he joined the Wunstdorf section of the Wandervogel and in the same year published his first poem, Unser Leben, in their local journal. In 1913 he left home to sign up at Verdun for the French Foreign Legion. After a few months, when the young man had already begun training in Algeria, his father was able to persuade him to return to Germany, where he attended the Hannover Guild Institute. It was at this time that he became familiar with the works of Nietzsche.

The First World War began for Germany on August 1st 1914 and Juenger signed up on the first day. He rose in the ranks to become lieutenant, was wounded three times before being awarded the Iron Cross First Class on December 16th 1916. In February 1917 he became Stosstruppfuehrer (leader of an assault battalion). This led to the experience of hand-to-hand fighting in the trenches. Juenger was decorated with the Ritterkreuz of the Order of the Hohenzollerns. He finished the war in hospital, having been wounded fourteen times. Juenger was also awarded the Cross Pour le merite, the highest award in the German army. Only twelve subalterns in the German army received this award during the First World War, among the other eleven the future Marshal Rommel.

Between 1918 and 1923, in the barracks at Hannover, Juenger began to write in earnest, inspired by his experiences at the front. In Stahlgewittern (In Hurricans of Steel), first published in 1919 and reedited in 1922, was an immediate success. There followed Der Kampf als inneres Erlebnis (1922) Das Waeldchen 125 (1924) and Feur und Blut (1925) (The Fight within, Copse 125, Fire and Blood). Juenger also wrote on specialist military themes in Militaer-Wochenblatt and became known as something of an expert on military matters; but he did not feel at ease in a peacetime army. In 1923 he left the Reichswehr and entered Leipsic University to study biology, zoology and philosophy. In 1925 he married the 19 year old Gretha von Jeinsen. His political views developed rapidly in the political tumult of the time. In the space of a few months Juenger had become one of the principle representatives of the so-called national-revolutionaries of the Conservative Revolution. In September 1925, a former commando leader, Helmut Franke, launched the review Die Standarte which set out to "contribute towards a spiritual deepening of the Front mentality". Juenger was on the editorial board along with another "nationalist soldier", Franz Schauwecker. The journal began life as a supplement to the magazine Der Stahlhelm, which was the organ of the Stahlhelm movement. (This was an active association of former combatants opposed to the Treaty of Versailles. In 1925 it had 250 thousand members. After the national socialists came to power in 1933, the association was forcibly amalgamated with the regime's official old combattants' organization (NSDFB) and by 1935 no trace of Der Stahlhelm remained.) In Die Standarte Juenger immediately adopted a radical tone, quite different to that of most of the Stahlhelm adherents. In an article published in October 1925, he criticised the theory of the "stab in the back" (Dolchstoss), which was accepted by almost all nationalists, namely that the German army was not defeated at the front but by a "stab in the back" at home. Juenger also pointed out that certain revolutionaries of the far left had fought in the war with distinction. This caused an uproar in Die Stahhelm and the movement distanced itself from the young writer. In March 1926 it closed down Die Standarte. Juenger started the magazine again a month later however with the same name, but dropping the "Die". Nevertheless, not all lines had been severed and Standarte was supported financially by several members of Der Stahlhelm. In the pages of Standarte on June 3rd 1926, Juenger made an appeal to all former soldiers to unite for the creation of a "Nationalist Workers' Republic". In August, Otto H<148>rsing, co-founder of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot Gold, the Social Democrats' security force, proposed to the government that the journal should be banned, which it was, but for only five months. Franz Seldte, the leader of Der Stahlhelm and still proprietor of the journal, took the opportunity to sack its leading editor, Helmut Franke. Juenger went with him. With Wilhelm Weiss the two launched another review, called Armenius. (Standarte, under different editorship, continued until 1929.) In 1927 Juenger moved from Leipsic to Berlin, where he made contact with the Buendisch youth. The Bunds were an attempt to unite the romantic spirit of the Wandervogel with an organization more permanent and hierarchical. Juenger became the leader (Schirmherr) of one of these youth groups. In 1927 Juenger was associated with the launching of yet another publication, Der Vormarsch (Advance) which was the brain-child of Captain Ehrhardt.

"Losing the War to Win the Nation"

At this time Juenger was subject to several literary and philosophical influences. There was a French fin de siecle influence in his early works, notably Der Kampf als innere Erlebnis also a kind of Baudelairian dandyism in Sturm, a very early work. Mohler draws a comparison between Juenger and the Barres of Roman de l'Energie nationale: in the works of both writers nationalism is a substitute for religion, a manner of enlargening and strengthening the soul, the result of a conscious choice, a factor which emerged as a result of the destruction of old norms in the wake of the Great War. The influence of Spengler and Nietzsche is also evident. In 1929, in an interview given to an English journalist, Juenger defined himself as a "disciple of Nietzsche", stressing with approval the fact that Nietzsche was the first to challenge the fiction of an abstract universal man, by dividing mankind into the strong and the feeble. In 1922 Juenger read the first volume of Der Untergang des Abendlandes with great passion, but he was no passive disciple of Spengler, as we shall see. The experience of war, however, remained the strongest influence in Juenger's writings. He distinguished between the Gegner (opponent) and Feind (enemy); it is because there was not an absolute enemy but only the opponent of the moment, that the Great War and war as such has something "holy" about it.

Another lesson which Juenger claimed to have learned was that "life is nourished by death" and that life, in its essence, is "indestructable". The war had been lost but this defeat had a potentially positive aspect, according to Juenger. Formal defeat or victory is not the "bottom line" in war. The aim is not the be all and end all of struggle. The war had not been so much a war between nations as between a certain kind of man. As an epigraph to his book Aufbruch der Nation (National Reveille) published in 1930, Franz Schauwecker wrote "we needed to lose the war in order to win the nation". Juenger had written in a similar vein. For Juenger after the Great War there could be "no going back". The old roads led nowhere. He called the Great War an Umbruch, an irreparable break with the past. The war had provided a model for the peace. War has a profound significance and the sacrifice of millions must have a meaning but the meaning can not be so much rationalised as felt (geahnt). From 1926 onwards, Juenger appealed incessantly for a united front of nationalist groups and movements. At the same time he tried, without notable success, to change them. Nationalism should become revolutionary. From this perspective the crux of the national struggle was the struggle against liberalism. In Armenius and in Der Vormarsch he attacked the humanists who favoured an "anaemic" society, the cynics who wished to see the Great War as nothing but futility and madness. At the same time he opposed the sentimentality of conservative nationalism ("the cult of museums") and distinguished between healthy neo-nationalism and the sentimentality of what he called "grand-daddy nationalism". The nation is more than a country, it is an idea and Germany exists there where the idea of Germany fires the spirit.

In the April issue of Arminius Juenger took a nominalist position: for him there is no universal truth, no universal moral, no universal man with a just claim to equal rights. Value is found in the particular. While Voelkisch groups sought a return to the soil, Juenger on the contrary exalted the power of technics and repudiated the individual. Born of bourgeois rationality, technology was now going to turn on the spirit which had engendered it. As technology advances, so the individual will disappear. In the meantime the town had become the "front" in the national struggle and in Berlin representatives of many different currents of the Conservative Revolution met around Juenger, including the writer Ernst von Saloman, the Nietzschean Friedrich Hielscher, who was editor of Das Reich, the neo-conservatives August Winnig (whom Juenger met through Alfred Baeumler) and A.E. Guenther, co-editor with Wilhelm Stapel of Deutsches Volkstum, the national-Bolsheviks Ernst Niekisch and Karl Paetel and of course his own brother Friedrich Georg Juenger, who had become quite well known in his own right.

In April 1928 Juenger handed over editorship of Der Vormarsch to Hielscher, who was a close friend of his. (Among other things Hielscher was the coordinator of a European regionalist movement and the founder of a neo-Pagan church. In the Third Reich he was to hold an important position in the Ahnenerbe while maintaining contact with the "internal immigration". He was arrested in September 1944 and thrown into prison and only escaped execution thanks to the special pleading of Wolfram Sievers, (most of whose writings, apart from an autobiography, have never been published.) In 1930 Juenger became, with Werner Lass, the editor of Die Kommenden, a point of contact with national-Bolsheviks, as these wrote regularly for the paper. He also wrote for Widerstand (Opposition) edited by Ernst Niekisch, whom he knew personally. For Niekisch the future man was collective man, who alone would be able to face up to the "murderous consequences" of technological discovery. The national movement and the communist movement had the same enemy: the bourgeois West. Although fascinated by Bolshevism, Juenger was at no time a national-Bolshevik. He and Lass left Die Kommenden in July 1931, Lass to found an out and out national-Bolshevik publication: Der Umsturz (Overthrow), but Juenger had not the least inclination to take part in this project, nor in the national-socialist movement. In an article written for Suedeutsche Monatshefte in September 1931 he included national-socialism among the nationalisms which were inspired by the past and therefore, according to him, tainted with liberal and bourgeois ideas. As Marcel Decombis noted in his work on Juenger published in 1943, "Juenger, the perfect Prussian officer, who subjects himself to the most intense self-discipline, could never submit again to a collectivity." His brother evolved politically in much the same direction. At that time they went on a number of voyages to Southern Europe together. From 1929 onwards, Juenger spent less time writing for publications and more on writing books. In 1929 the first version of Das abenteurliche Herz (Adventurous Heart) was published, followed by Die totale Mobilmachung (Total Mobilisation) in 1931 and Der Arbeiter (The Worker) in 1932.

The Worker

The first part of the book revolves around the notion of what the writer called Gestalt (form, figure). This Gestalt is seen as a global type, of which the totality includes characteristics which can not be found in any of the separate constituent parts. It is at the root of sense, a supreme reality which gives sense to phenomena. Sense is not here intended to have exactly the meaning we associate with cause and effect, rather it is sense in being an imprint which marks a period in time and gives that period in time.. sense. Man here is the measure of all things. Gestalt is the "pre-formed power" (vorgeformte Macht) which only accedes to being to the extent that it is willed into being by man who feels its appeal. The Gestalt is not dependent on man to be what it is, but it does depend on man to assume the status of existence, which it endows with the dimesion of profundity. It can only be understood dialectically, for it encompasses many different aspects. It is at once unchanging and localised. Its relationship to history is complex: it is not so much the product of history as what permits history to take place. It determines historical movement. History does not bring forth historical types but is transformed through its interaction with them. (Juenger noted elsewhere that our epoch was rich in types but poor in great men.) History is the metaphysics of being. The Gestalt is beyond Good and Evil. Not only is it not subject to a morality, it alone makes morality possible. The same goes for Truth and Beauty. The role of the theorist is not therefore to judge a figure but instinctively to recognise it. To identify with it is to commit a revolutionary act.

What is the dominant form of our time? Work, according to Juenger. It is therefore in the figure of the Worker that Juenger claimed to see the Gestalt of the generation to come. Juenger does not mean work as the key to economic activity or work as the "law of humanity", nor work as the consequence of original sin, nor does work here represent an "alienation". Juenger uses the term "work" to describe all creation which aims at giving form in the world; it is the affirmation of power, the deployment of energy. Work is the means by which the modern world is totally mobilised, the expression of a special form of being. Science, love, art, faith, culture, war: all is Work; Work too the vibration of molecules and the force which drives the stars and planets. Work is not so much an activity as the will which is "at work" within an activity, the "will to will", which is the creative force of history. The notion of the Worker as an economic creation is too restrictive and betrays the bourgeois reference frame of whoever sees Work in such a restrictive light. The Worker is not be confused with the proletariat, unless we conceive him as a "proletarian" within all classes. Juenger thus distinguishes sharply between the Worker's State as he saw it and the Marxian notion of "the workers' state". Against the Marxist Arbeiterschaft (work force), Juenger opposed the Arbeitertum, identification with work, the community of those dedicated to work. (This distinction was also made by August Winnig, notably in his Der Glaube an das Proletariat and Vom Proletariat zum Arbeitertum, but his stress was much more political in the practical sense of the word than Juenger's.) But Juenger himself stressed that his work was not anti-Marxist. Marx had his place in an understanding of the concept of the Worker, but that place should not be exclusive. Marxism, "useful because corrosive", had to be surpassed. Marx limited the notion of work to the economic field, but for Juenger work had a breadth which extended "from the atom to the galaxies". Marx believed that the worker would one day be transformed into an artist. Juenger believed that the artist was being transformed into a worker.

The worker reveals himself by virtue of his power. He will dominate by virtue of his Will to Power, which is expressed through work, a work which succeedes in mobilising. The Gestalt represents the spirit of the world at a given period. The key to all is power, for behind the representations of spirit in the world are not pure ideas but matter. Contrary to what Hegel claimed, theory does not determine reality but on the contrary reality engenders ideas. Economy plays a secondary role for Juenger, as he underlined in an interview given to Le Monde (2oth June 1978). The figure of the Worker is metaphysical and in its fundamental character is not transformed. Juenger called the Worker a "titanic personage". The antithesis of the Worker is the Bourgeois; for Juenger, to be anti-liberal is to be first and foremost anti-bourgeois. The Bourgeois too is a Gestalt which encapsulates a mode of life and thought, a scale of values, a state of mind, which can be found in all classes, not just the middle-classes. The Bourgeois has no metaphsical worth, he only reasons in a utilitarian manner. The Bourgeois wants to take as much as possible from life and give as little as possible. Above all else the Bourgeois is worried about safety. The Bourgeois is represented by the type of person who is afraid of life and is who is incapable of acting historically. The Bourgeois avoids all commitment to the decisive, the creative act. War and love, nature and death, all the elementary forces are "irrational" to him and do not belong to his society, for society, as he sees it, is the result of a voluntarily made and rationally conceived contract based on the principle of equality for all. Worker and Bourgeois are as different as dawn and dusk.

The advent of the figure of the Worker is linked to a new state of society which Juenger calls "total mobilisation" (totale Mobilmachung). This expression was clarified by Juenger in a long essay which served as a kind of preface to Der Arbeiter. It is the effects of the evolution of the techniques of war which heralds, in the most characteristic manner, entry into the era of total mobilisation. Since Clausewitz described the condition of "total war", the situation had rapidly evolved. Especially from 1916, the spirit of progress and the development of the techniques of war went hand in hand. Technology dominates the scene more and more. The Great War thus marked the end of the era of chivalry and traditional heroic values. From his own experience in the trenches, Juenger had seen the evolution of war into the pitting of abstract material force against abstract material force. The troops become canon fodder. War is impregnated with the same spirit as that which created the machines. Technical instruction becomes more and more crucial for every soldier. "...the men who march at the head, the tank drivers, the pilots, the U-boat captains, are all accomplished technicians." (Waeldchen 125) The technician then represents the modern state at war. The question must then be raised: in such a situation what meaning does the soldier's sacrifice have? The answer lies in the notion of total mobilisation. At the same time as war becomes a technical undertaking, the traditional distinction between combattant and non-combattant breaks down. Even the notion of war and peace gives way to the reality of permanent global conflict. Even the pacifist has to be ready to fight for his beliefs! The decisive aspect of the new state of affairs is the fact that all are potentially involved in war and all are available for mobilisation. The capacity to mobilise becomes increasingly the key factor in the destiny of peoples. Modern war has become an aspect of Work. The world as we know it is transformed into a universal factory, a "Vulcan's forge". The world is now mobile and mobilised. The Great War therefore exceeds the French Revolution in historical importance, for it has brought forth a new man, the man with a hammer in his hand. Worker and Soldier become one and the same. The military front and the industrial front are the same. The Great War also witnessed the emergence of the collectivist era (Wirzeit) as opposed to the individualistic one (Ichzeit). The rural world is in decline, motorways are built, leisure becomes an industry, political parties blossom, the screen takes precedence over the stage, the photograph over the portrait, national planning becomes very important, the value of money is controlled, production is standardised, statistics and typologies abound, the "metallic" (male) or "cosmetic" (female) fixidness of the face, the restrictions on individual liberty brought about by automation, the convergence of effort towards economic objectives which exceed their own frame of reference, the collaboration of state and industry: these among other factors accompany the replacement everywhere of the individual by the uniform and typical. In Juenger's eyes these factors are positive. His tone in evoking the power and importance of machines sometimes recalls Italian Futurism. The critic Henri Plard called Der Arbeiter "the richest and most provocative of his works", in which is allied "an effectively and passionately reactionary ideology with a modernism which clears all the dead wood of whatever is not 100% up-to-date." (Etudes Germaniques July-September 1979). The standardisation or uniformation of the world is taken as the bearing of a uniform. This is not a sign of decadence but a promise of the future and the precondition of the destruction of the Bourgeois type. The Worker must accelerate this process. The Worker arises as a result of the death of the individual. Only decomposition allows for recomposition at a higher level. The individual whose demise Juenger so joyously proclaims is not altogether identical with the individual person; rather it is the bourgeois individual, the Individuum, born of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, a creature struck from its roots, from its heritage, is in contrast with the Einzelne, the individual person, whose identity is situated in an "organic environment". The Individuum is "most charming invention of burgeois sentimentality..a part of the mass, which is the contrary of a people." So the individual is just "mass" in smaller letters. Work is indissociable from Liberty. Man puts most energy into something at a command. Liberty is a voluntary adhesion to a Gestalt in service to which the full capacity of the Worker is able to express itself. To be free means to take part, the will to be free is the will to work. Liberty presupposes a life filled with sense, an attachment rather than freedom from restraint. As a result of attaining liberty the Worker is able to realise his integration (Eingliederung) in the general structure of society through which the Worker is fully realised. Man is not to be considered as an individual but as an incarnation of Gestalt and attains liberty through participation in the attainment of the figure of which he is, as individual person, a representation. In the future society envisaged by Juenger, each person's place will not be determined by birth, fortune, or rank, but by the degree of adhesion to the type of the Worker.

Clearly Juenger's thought has gone way beyond drawing from the experience of war. When he speaks of the war of material forces he is not only making an observation concerning the technological evolution of war, he is pointing to the idea that the technical transformation of war has produced a rupture which affects the entire planet. This rupture marks the end of the rule of man or gods made in the image of man, and the emergence of the titanic force of the elemental in daily life. Ancient religions tell us that at the origin of civilizations there was a struggle between Gods and Titans. For millennia the Titans held the Gods in awe and kept their distance but now it is the Twilight of the Gods and the Giants are returning. They are returning by means of the immense force which technology has unleashed. Confronted with the unchaining of the elemental, all the old defences, old attitudes, old doctrines are withered. Anachronistic too are the traditional forms of political action. Defeat must be turned into victory. Life must be intensified and the Worker will prevail.

According to Julius Evola, "Juenger should be credited in this first stage of his thought, with having recognised the fatal error of thinking that all could be restored to what it was before, that the new world which was looming could be mastered or halted on the basis of a vision of a bygone era" (Oriente e Occidente Arche, Milan 1982 p.69) and, "man must become the instrument of the mechnical and yet at the same time master it, not only in the physical sense, but also spiritually. This is only possible in the context of a new human type...a being more the subject than the object, one who accepts those aspects of destruction which lead to a surmounting of individualism in favour of a new active impersonalism, towards a "heroic realism"." (Il cammino del cinabro, Arche, Milan 1983 pp. 99 191-192). What is important for man, according to Juenger, is neither happiness nor wealth. It is to enter into a state of resonance with respect to the Figure which is the way to achieve determination, destiny, a discovery which endowes sacrifice with a meaning. The Worker considers the military esprit de corps as nothing exceptional: for him it is the discipline on which he bases his whole life and therein lies his innate superiority. The great force of heroic realism is to be able to face anything, even the certainty of failure with equananimity: nothing can shake the resolve of the Worker. This equananimity is not to be confused with fatalism, it does not preclude the will to action. On the contrary, it provides a lucidity which stimulates action. The key notion of movement, of not being passive, recalls Nietsche's amor fati or Evola's "riding the tiger". Not life in itself is important but the nobility of life, that we can lead a life in the "grand style". The Worker gives form to a chaotic world. The Worker is a demi-urge.

Whether one welcomes it or not, the Worker's day will come. For Juenger force will solve many future problems and will resolve, in the most radical way, many of the tensions of society. The Worker must mobilise, that is to say, be prepared to act forcibly and to be mobile, swift to take advantage of the technical opportunities opening up, the source of the creation of the modern Worker in the first place. Only the Worker is capable of an authentic rapport with the "totalistic character of work", of a genuine relationship with the machine. Being as revealed in the Worker as Gestalt and the essence of the machine is The Will to Power. Technics constitute not only the "symbol of the figure of the Worker" but also the "manner in which that figure mobilises the world". And technology is not here to accelerate progress but to intensify power. Not only progress, but also the notion of the "infinite possibilities of technological development" are illusions. Technology will reach a point of perfection which will mark the furthest stage it can reach, and as with all form, its perfection is reached at the point that it is used to the maximum extent of its inherent potential. At this point there is a difference to be noted between Ernst Juenger and his brother, Friedrich Georg Juenger. The idea of technical perfection in the sense of achievement and fulfillment (Vollendung), is one which the latter examines critically in his writings but which Ernst Juenger sees in a positive light, arguing that one day technology, reaching its amplitude, its perfection, will be able to dominate the entire world, but that this can only be realised by the coming to power of the non-individualist Worker.

By rejecting the "myth of Progress", Juenger denies that technology is neutral, at the service of everyone, or that it is either intrinsically liberating or intrinsically oppressive. Technology enslaves those who are not adequate to cope with it and the form of life which it ushers in. The bourgeois mentality, on the other hand, is terrified of the Golom which it has created but is unable to master. Technology has its own langauge which the Worker is equipped to speak, but not the Bourgeois. Technology is a formation of the elementary forces of the world. This is the end of individualism. The "individual" will become a slave to the machine. The question, already posed by Juenger in Feuer und Blut, is whether man will dominate or be dominated by, his own inventions. Although Juenger rejects the notion that biologically race is important, but metaphysically technology calls forth a new elite and the will to form a new race (Wille zur Rassenbildung) and this new race must be "prudent, strong, shorn of equivocation, drunk with energy". Art will then become the "putting into form" (Gestaltung) of the world of Work. The advent of the Worker will herald the end of individualism and of proletarianism. It will reject the utopias of the materialists and the idealists and will interpret the world in its own image. Marxism and the old religions will all disappear.

Just as technology can not be neutral, nor can the state. The supposed neutrality of the liberal bourgeois state is a sham. In opposition to parliamentary democracies and democratic socialists, Juenger opposes the "democracy of the state", a society with a pyramidal structure founded on the Prussian principles of command and obedience, but in which the leader is not a despot but the "first servant, the first soldier, the first worker". For the Worker liberty and obedience are one. This notion of the "total state" was distinguished by Evola from that of the "totalitarian state", the first being supple, living, organic and marking the beginning of a cycle, the second being moribund, inflexible, mechanised, petrified and representing the end of a cycle. Juenger's state was to be tripartite: the first level with an economic funtion and passively reflecting the Gestalt of the Worker; the second level with an administrative and instructive function and actively reflecting the Gestalt of the Worker; the third level being the sovereign level, whose action would directly reflect the totality of Work and whose imperial authority would represent the Gestalt in its "pure" form. This tripartite system appears to be an adaption of an ancient model of a social scheme which to a certain extent was also reflected in the old German tripartite system of Staende.

In his work Die Totale Mobilmachung (Total Mobilisation) Juenger's perspective was essentially national: only the German people was capable of "affronting" itself, of undertaking a mobilisation of itself. It is in this sense that Juenger saw something positive emerging from the war for Germany: it gave Germany the opportunity to "realise itself". Mobilisation was to be mobilisation of everything which was German "and nothing else". In Der Arbeiter, on the other hand, Juenger abandoned the typical nationalist position in favour of a universal perspective. In the future the nations would become "planning areas" later to be followed by the rule of the Worker over the entire planet. The instauration of the Worker would signal the end of Western nihilism, for which the bourgeois system was responsible. The sovereignity of the "grand style" could only be realised on a global level. Man has reached the point where he must choose between mastering the world or renouncing his humanity.

Madrid burns

2003-07-04 08:59 | User Profile

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Life after West

Europe, Tiers Monde Meme Combat by Alain de Benoist, Laffont Paris 1996

FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE one of the most significant and rapid developments in the world since 1945 has been the abandonment by Europe of its former colonies and the corresponding rise of a so-called "third world" nominally at least, independent of white rule. Traditionally the left has been seen as favouring this development and the right opposing it. The legitimacy to which conservative political movements appealed included the legitimacy of imperial order. It is a salient feature of the so-called Old Right. It is an outstanding feature of the European New Right as opposed to the Old Right, that the "old empire" is not regarded as necessarily desirable, nor its loss regretted. On the contrary, thinkers of the right such as Alain de Benoist took as their intellectual point of departure in the sixties the notion that there must be more to right-wing thinking than a defence of the old colonial way of life.

The argument of the "new intellectuals" was that it was simplistic to ascribe to the left the "high moral ground" of anti-colonialism, since from the point of view of respect for national and cultural differentiation it would be wholly consistent for European conservatives or nationalists to defend the rights of colonial subjects to assert their identity viz. a viz. Europe and for the universalist left, with rationalist and humanist doctrines embedded in European thinking, to oppose such a development. There was after all, always a contradiction in patriotic appeals to ethnic homogeneity at home while at the same time claiming the right to colonies abroad. This was the point which GRECE increasingly emphasised in the course of the seventies and early eighties.

The appearance of the polemically named Europe, Tiers monde, meme combat in 1986 along with an issue of elements with a similar title marked the culmination of the "neutralist" orientation of GRECE in general and Alain de Benoist in particular. This was not in fact a new point of departure but a drawing of conclusions from its own anti-Western and anti-racist stance. This book can therefore be described as a summing up of the GRECE position to European relations with Africa, Asia and South America. The writer traces attitudes towards development and the colonies (later "Third World") over the last hundred and fifty years. He points out with abundant historical illustration, that there is a pro-colonial tradition on the Left especially, but not only the French Left. He offers us a kind of "genealogy of colonialism and neo-colonialism" from which we learn for example, that Francois Mitterand was an enthusiastic supporter of French Algeria and that in the years of the Third Republic champions of French colonial policy were predominantly politicians of the left, such as Jules Ferry, while the right took a more isolationist position.

The Left break with colonialism came at the same time as the abandonment of hope in the Western proletariat as a force of world revolution. The Third World, a term sweepingly used to embrace a whole range of different countries, replaced the Proletariat as the "oppressed of the world" and the figure of poverty on which the well-to-do could exercise their bad conscience or use against their parents. The Third World peasant vied with the Working Class Hero as the mythological figure with which the children of the privileged classes of the West sought to identity themselves.

The quest for exoticism and the increasing yearning to return to a "natural state" led to a rejection of the industrial model of Marxism in favour of a peasant, non-white kind. This followed the time of a frenetic xenophilia in general and sinophilia in particular. Pascal Bruckner even wrote of Mao replacing Christ as an example for humanity. It was the time of Vatican Two and the rise of the World Council of Churches when an emotional "love thy neighbour far away" replaced "defend the working class at home" as the main cause of the left, in other words when Christian egalitarianism began to oust Marxist dialectics as the bedrock of leftist moral judgements.

It is interesting to speculate on the extent to which the replacement of Russia by China as the role model country was responsible for the anti- white leftism of the sixties. This anti-imperialist (for which read anti-white imperialist) leftism, although Marxist at the outset has become increasingly difficult to identify with Marxism in the course of time. As the Marxist historian V.G. Kierman has argued (see his collection of essays: Imperialism and its Contradictions published recently by Routeledge), an interpretation of European colonialism which makes all Europeans "guilty" and all non-Europeans "innocent" is not only historically simplistic, it is thoroughly non-Marxist, since it makes the issue of race more important than that of class. A Marxist, should accept, argues Kierman, that the European working classes belonged to the exploited class and certain native elites to the bourgeoisie. Non-European landlords, employers or slave drivers are not exempt from the charge of class exploitation by virtue of the colour of their skin. Kierman is not the first Marxist to ask whether the concentration on race in leftist attitudes to colonialism has not been a major factor in letting native elites "off the hook" through a process of inverse racialism. In fact, modern attitudes has as much or more to do with Christian beliefs about the equality of man than specifically Marxist ones. For a Christian, racialism must be logically abhorrent, since it divides God's kingdom, it differentiates among the community of souls. Christianity could only support racial Apartheid for as long as it could argue that the non-white was not fully human. Once full humanity was accepted, preferential treatment to whites becomes inadmissible to the Christian.

Militant priests like Gonzales Arroyo and Gustavo Gutierez were the spearhead of a new "liberation theology" aimed at winning over the Third World to the cause of Christ and at the same time challenging the privileges of the West. What Pascal Bruckner called the "Calcutta syndrome", so brilliantly satirised in Jean Raspail's Camp des Saints, preached the end of frontiers and that "the future belongs to the half- caste". The Western view, as expressed in the Marshall Plan and subsequently elaborated by John Foster Dulles, Truman's Secretary of State, largely ignored the issue of race as such, concentrating instead on "the fight against communism" and warning that the Third World was in "danger of becoming communist" for just so long as it remained poor. Aid and education would help it to reach a standard of living which would ensure its attachment to democracy and a free-market economy. Old imperial divisions of privilege were seen as redundant and had to be replaced by the privilege of money. The racial elite was replaced by a financial elite, but this financial elite maintained good contacts with the West and was swift to exploit the anti-communism of the West for its own ends. Uprisings in the Muslim world in the fifties were less pro-communist than anti-Western and it was a crucial failing of American and Russian strategic thinking to be blind to the difference. But the Manichean view of Third World politics was not really laid low until the collapse of the Soviet Union, when it become clear to even the most obtuse that there was something more to anti-Western agitation than "communist subversion".

The brinkmanship, notably of Dulles and Khrushchev in the fifties, when France and Britain were ignominiously scuttling out of their former colonies or fighting losing rearguard actions against new liberation movements, excluded any possibility of a "third way" or even a "third world". But a number of events came about to change the division of the world into "West" and "East": the Sino-Soviet split, the return of de Gaulle to power in France, the rise of "neutralist" leaders outside the direct American-Soviet spheres of influence, led by India, the increasing attraction to those outside the immediate nuclear firing line of "neutralism", the attraction being increased by the realisation of the possibilities of playing one super-power off against another. Essentially, de Benoist's plea is for a stepping up of this "neutralist" policy, a rejection of the confrontational, Manichean politics of the fifties in favour of a confrontation between West and non-West in the next century, with Europe on the side of the neutralists. The triangle would be West, East, Europe and Third World.

In one sense this book has been overtaken by events, in another it is events which have finally caught up with this book. The Socialist bloc is no more. The confrontation of the United States and Soviet Union has given way to a more complex shuffling of positions for influence among a number of different power blocs, Dulles' nightmare. The notion of a "third way" so strong in this book, has lost much of its punch with the possibility of forth or even fifth and sixth ways. At the same time, the chances for Europe to cut itself off from the United States have never been better. The old argument of the better of two evils no longer applies. The anti-Russian politics played by Europe towards Serbia may or may not be commendable ethics but they are not politically inevitable.

Alain de Benoist points out the irony of the fact that the former colonies had liberated themselves in the name of nationalism and self-determination, whilst it was internationalists in the West who supported their struggle. The end of colonialism was not "inevitable" but a matter of political will, as Francois Perroux among many others, has observed. But it requires political realism to accept that today the appeal to an alternative to capitalism and communism is appealing to peoples for whom both doctrines may seem alien, European. If the liberation of Europe involves the rejection of the 3 Cs (Christianity, Communism, Capitalism) then it is, according to de Benoist, exactly this liberation towards which Europe as a whole is also striving. Materially so different, he is saying, spiritually, Europe and the Third World are following the same way. They are enslaved to the same system, known as "the West".

In 1958 Aime Cesare at the first international conference of black poets said, "the surest way into the future is through the past", a sentiment at complete variance with the uni-dimensional Western attitude to "growth". One aspect of the arrogance of the West, as de Benoist points out, is to make no-distinction between growth and development, both being understood under the catch-all word "progress", but progress to what? The answer for de Benoist is clear. When the West talks about progress is means progress towards integration into the Western economic, political and cultural model. He provides this excellent definition of neo-colonialism, "making the Third World believe and act in the belief that their problems are solved to the extent that the Third World becomes Westernized".

With the growing rise of economic liberal thinking and the political "right" which preached this doctrine, many former Maoists and other Leftists converted to the Western model (Pascal Bruckner is a case in point). The rediscovery of pro-capitalist economic theorists such as Hayek, Adam Smith, Ricardo, the new popularity of Ayn Rand, the political success of Ronald Reagan and Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, was accompanied by an increasingly critical attitude to the state generally and to Third World leaders and politics which had taken protectionist measures or indigenization decrees. The right now preached the autonomy of the economy. It is this doctrine which Alain de Benoist has always challenged, one thread of consistency in the writings of an intellectual who at times appears to fluctuate wildly in his beliefs. ( A sub-title for this book could have read: "Against the Autonomy of the Economy". The writer quotes Levi Strauss, the ethnologist, with approval, "man does not realise his nature through an abstraction called humanity but in traditional cultures." (Race et histoire in Anthropologie structurale II Plon p.385). De Benoist notes that Alain Finkelkraut inveighed against UNESCO in an article in the journal Debat for pursuing a philosophy in the spirit of this rejection of abstract man, something which Finkelkraut describes as "ethnic paganism"!

It was Levi Strauss after all whom Jean-Paul Sartre attacked for believing that a bonding of the individual and society was an integral part in the formation of the individual character itself, in other words that an individual acquired identity through a given cultural milieu and not by his independent achievements. Ultimately the health of the individual is dependent on his relationship to a community of values. It is de Benoist's thesis that economic liberalism cuts the roots of all pre and supra-individual associations with the purpose of removing all impediments between the individual and the universal market.

De Benoist does not mention the role played by the philosophy of the state, in say, the scramble for Africa, but surely the role of the state was crucial in supplying the support and not least financial support to make colonisation feasible. Gladstone was despised for not relieving Khartoum in time and leaving Captain Gordon to his fate. The politics of a Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Mosley, Joseph Chamberlain, span the left-right divide when it comes to colonialism. The post-colonial era was dominated by elites educated in the schools of European statism. The great enemies of colonialism were not so much specifically "left" or "right" as sceptical of the state. The fact that de Benoist omits this point is serious, since the reader is left with the uncomfortable feeling that the omission is not so much a slip as a wish to avoid a historical analysis which would place a greater responsibility for colonialism on philosophy of the state than on that of free trade.

The book, in short raises more questions than it answers and leaves the reader with the impression that the attitude of the New Right to the subject of colonialism and neo-colonialism is glib but not original. Nevertheless the dedication to the cause of peoples is genuine, and is it not, as the more percipient of establishment journalists themselves seem to believe, the definitive challenge to the New World Order? In an article published in The Atlantic Monthly (March 1992) and significantly if puerilely entitled Jihad Vs. McWorld, Benjamin Barber emphasises that the forces of Balcanisation and Universalism are set on collision course with one another. Neither, he claims, are much concerned with the future of democracy, but that's another story

Madrid burns

2003-07-04 09:03 | User Profile

[url=http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/debenoist/alain5.html]http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/debeno...ist/alain5.html[/url]

The Time of the Nets

by Alain de Benoist

( from nr. 208 - november 1997 - of Diorama 

The twentieth century ended in November 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The 21st century unofficially begun in 1993, with the first diffusion on a vast scale of the Internet. There is no doubt: the coming of the "global web" announces an unprecedented epoch: the Age of Net. The Internet is a net whose circumference is unlimited and whose centre is nowhere. This decentralised, interactive, horizontal medium, that connects its users at the speed of electron, establishes a sort of planetary brain whose neurons are the connected individuals. More than thirty million people have already entered this global communicating society, that easily overcomes frontiers and controls. Each month, one million new "contacts" join this system. On the "info-highways", where writing, sound and image blend in a unique numerical language, a New World is rising, a "cyberworld", populated by "cybercitizens". Neither governments nor politicians have so far understood the exact measure and the consequences of this phenomenon.

Every technological evolution creates its own ideology, and this ideology drives social change. In traditional societies, human relations were mainly territorial and took place in a continuous spatial dimension. Urbanisation has deeply modified this model. To the disjunction between the place of work and the place of residence some social praxis' have been added that daily permit to exit one’s own domicile (multilocalization). Space becomes a property like any other, that can be sold, amassed or exchanged. The advent of the net transforms and accelerates this process. While communication becomes the essential engine of social relations, the extension of the net contributes to the fragmentation and the "uninstitutionalization" of society. There is no more belonging, no more adhesion: "to be on-line" is the categorical imperative. Political parties no longer represent an efficient means of achievement for individuals, while civic associations and single issue movements overwhelms trade unions. In the world of the net there are no more nations or populations, but multiple and winded belongings: tribes, Diaspora and clans.

Walkman and mobiles are tools, among many others, that contribute to free man from steadiness. "Tomorrow streets and squares", Alain Finkielkraut says, "will be invaded by busy mutants talking with themselves". Thus a nomadic society is created - nomadism of tools, of values and of men - that privileges a cross-sectional modality of communication, flattening all the classical institutional and pyramidal structures. A virtual world, with no distances and no expiration is growing: a world of uncontrollable crypted net, in which unmaterialised objects circulate and return materialised at the end of the process they’re involved in; a world that could also become a financial jungle, where the Stock Exchanges are transformed into electronic casinos.

In addition to nomadism there is cocooning. Internet is a communication tool, but its form of communication abolishes the dimensions of space and time, that are(were) the context in which, until yesterday, human freedom was expressed. In this way, the net imprisons the individual in a private sphere that is more and more limited to the abuse of a remote control or of a keyboard. The progressive sliding of the job place towards the address (telework) goes in this same direction. If world can be virtually discovered remaining at home - philosopher Paul Virilio argues - why should we exit? Finally, the net emphasises all the essential features of this age: the mood for immediacy (i.e. zapping), the oblivion of history and of "the reasons", the enjoyment is conceived as a privileged way of access to the experience. Freedom of expression is more and more restricted in its commercial form, the absolute sovereignty of the consumer. Bill Clinton defined the electronic commerce "Far West of the total economy". In a universe in which everything is accessible through a toll (global marketplace), only the market still distracts people from loneliness.

The advent of the net also creates assemblages of a new type. When 300,000 persons are gathered in Paris for the "Gay Pride" day, when the world-wide Days of Youth inspires one million catholic young people to join in Longchamp, when hundreds of thousand persons take part in Belgium to a "white march", when two million Basques protest in public square against the attacks of ETA, when a million Germans take part in Berlin to a "love parade", when one million Italians demonstrate in Milan against the division of their country, when an innumerable crowd meet in London for the Ascension-day in paradise of Lady-D, former-Madonna of tabloids and instantly proclaimed Saint and martyr once dead, the sociologists refer to "unidentified popular movements". These, more or less spontaneous, huge assemblies truly represent the type of manifestation that corresponds to the world of the net.

Besides the obvious diversities of motivations, they all are a unique phenomenon: post-modern ways of affirmation of a feeling, a belief or a shared way of life, set inside the current tendency of affirmation of communitarian identities, that go beyond the limits of the usual belongings.

So, flows replace territories everywhere.

The Internet is only the most immediately visible form of this deterritorialisation. We are only at the beginning of a phenomenon, and whoever believes that it could be reversible in the short term is probably wrong. The advent of the world of the internet is a challenging question. The state of tomorrow will depend on the way we will be able to give it an answer.

 

(Translation into English by A.Boraschi)

Madrid burns

2003-07-04 09:10 | User Profile

Alain de Benoist, "Nazism and Communism: Evil Twins?" A book review of Stéphane Courtois, ed., Le Livre Noir du Communisme, in pdf format in:

[url=http://www.angelfire.com/biz/telospress/images/benoist112.pdf]http://www.angelfire.com/biz/telospress/im.../benoist112.pdf[/url]

Madrid burns

2003-07-04 09:28 | User Profile

This article talk about the De Benoist thought

Paris: Moses and Polytheism By Thomas Sheehan

[url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7558]http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7558[/url]

Madrid burns

2003-07-04 09:36 | User Profile

[url=http://www.rosenoire.org/articles/monotheism.php]http://www.rosenoire.org/articles/monotheism.php[/url]

Monotheism vs. Polytheism

By Alain de Benoist

translated & introduced by Tomislav Sunic

Can we still conceive of the revival of pagan sensibility in an age so profoundly saturated by Judeo-Christian monotheism and so ardently adhering to the tenets of liberal democracy? In popular parlance the very word "paganism" may incite some to derision and laughter. Who, after all, wants to be associated with witches and witchcraft, with sorcery and black magic? Worshiping animals or plants, or chanting hymns to Wotan or Zeus, in an epoch of cable television and "smart weapons," does not augur well for serious intellectual and academic inquiry. Yet, before we begin to heap scorn on paganism, we should pause for a moment. Paganism is not just witches and witches' brew; paganism also means a mix of highly speculative theories and philosophies. Paganism is Seneca and Tacitus; it is an artistic and cultural movement that swept over Italy under the banner of the Renaissance. Paganism also means Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Charles Darwin, and a host of other thinkers associated with the Western cultural heritage. Two thousand years of Judeo-Christianity have not obscured the fact that pagan thought has not yet disappeared, even though it has often been blurred, stifled, or persecuted by monotheistic religions and their secular offshoots. Undoubtedly, many would admit that in the realm of ethics all men and women of the world are the children of Abraham. Indeed, even the bolder ones who somewhat self-righteously claim to have rejected the Christian or Jewish theologies, and who claim to have replaced them with "secular humanism," frequently ignore that their self-styled secular beliefs are firmly grounded in Judeo-Christian ethics. Abraham and Moses may be dethroned today, but their moral edicts and spiritual ordinances are much alive. The global and disenchanted world, accompanied by the litany of human rights, ecumenical society, and the rule of law—are these not principles that can be traced directly to the Judeo-Christian messianism that resurfaces today in its secular version under the elegant garb of modern "progressive" ideologies?

And yet, we should not forget that the Western world did not begin with the birth of Christ. Neither did the religions of ancient Europeans see the first light of the day with Moses—in the desert. Nor did our much-vaunted democracy begin with the period of Enlightenment or with the proclamation of American independence. Democracy and independence—all of this existed in ancient Greece, albeit in its own unique social and religious context. Our Greco-Roman ancestors, our predecessors who roamed the woods of central and northern Europe, also believed in honor, justice, and virtue, although they attached to these notions a radically different meaning. Attempting to judge, therefore, ancient European political and religious manifestations through the lens of our ethnocentric and reductionist glasses could mean losing sight of how much we have departed from our ancient heritage, as well as forgetting that modern intellectual epistemology and methodology have been greatly influenced by the Bible. Just because we profess historical optimism - or believe in the progress of the modem "therapeutic state"- does not necessarily mean that our society is indeed the "best of all worlds." Who knows, with the death of communism, with the exhaustion of liberalism, with the visible depletion of the congregations in churches and synagogues, we may be witnessing the dawn of neopaganism, a new blossoming of old cultures, a return to the roots that are directly tied to our ancient European precursors. Who can dispute the fact that Athens was the homeland of Europeans before Jerusalem became their frequently painful edifice?

Great lamenting is heard from all quarters of our disenchanted and barren world today. Gods seem to have departed, as Nietzsche predicted a century ago, ideologies arc dead, and liberalism hardly seems capable of providing man with enduring spiritual support. Maybe the time has come to search for other paradigms? Perhaps the moment is ripe, as Alain dc Benoist would argue, to envision another cultural and spiritual revolution—a revolution that might well embody our pre-Christian European pagan heritage?

Tomislav Sunic

Nietzsche well understood the meaning of "Athens against Jerusalem." Referring to ancient paganism, which he called "the greatest utility of polytheism," he wrote in The Joyful Wisdom:

There was then only one norm, the man and even people believed that it had this one and ultimate norm. But, above himself, and outside of himself, in a distant over-world a person could see a multitude of norms: the one God was not the denial or blasphemy of the other Gods! It was here that the right of individuals was first respected. The inventing of Gods, heroes, and supermen of all kinds, as well as co-ordinate men and undermen - dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons, devils—was the inestimable preliminary to the justification of the selfishness and sovereignty of the individual: the freedom which was granted to one God in respect to other Gods, was at last given to the individual himself in respect to laws, customs, and neighbors. Monotheism, on the contrary, the rigid consequence of one normal human being—consequently, the belief in a normal God, beside whom there are only false spurious Gods—has perhaps been the greatest danger of mankind in the past.

Jehovah is not only a "jealous" god, but he can also show hatred: "Yet, I loved Jacob, and I hated Esau" (Malachi 1:3). lie recommends hatred to all those w ho call out his name: "Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? 1 hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies" (Psalm 139: 21-22). "Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, 0 God" (Psalm 139:19). Jeremiah cries out: "Render unto them a recompense, O Lord, according to the work of their hands. . . . Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the Lord" (Lamentations 3:64-66). The book of Jeremiah is a long series of maledictions and curses hurled against peoples and nations. His contemplation of future punishments fills him with gloomy delight. "Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let not me be confounded: ... bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction" (Lam. 17:18). "Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, and pour out their blood by the force of the sword; and let their wives be bereaved of their children, and be widows; and let their men be put to death" (Lam. 18:21).

Further. Jehovah promises the Hebrews that he will support them in their war efforts: "When the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land" (Deuteronomy 12:29). "But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth" (Deut. 20:16). Jehovah himself gave an example of a genocide by provoking the Deluge against the humanity that sinned against him. While he resided with the Philistine King Achish, David also practiced genocide (1 Samuel 27:9). Moses organized the extermination of the Midian people (Numbers 31:7). Joshua massacred the inhabitants of Hazor and Anakim. "And Joshua at that time turned back, and took Hazor, and smote the king thereof with the sword: for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms. And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them: there was not any left to breathe: and he burnt Hazor with fire" (Joshua 11:10-11, 20-21). The messianic king extolled by Solomon was also known for his reign of terror: "May he purify Jerusalem for all gentiles who trample on it miserably, may he exterminate by his wisdom, justice the sinners of this country... May he destroy the impious nations with the words from his mouth." Hatred against pagans is also visible in the books of Esther, Judith, etc.

"No ancient religion, except that of the Hebrew people has known such a degree of intolerance," says Emile Gillabert in Moise et le phénomène judéo-chrétien (1976). Renan had written in similar terms: "The intolerance of the Semitic peoples is the inevitable consequence of their monotheism. The Indo-European peoples, before they converted to Semitic ideas, had never considered their religion an absolute truth. Rather, they conceived of it as a heritage of the family, or the caste, and in this way they remained foreign to intolerance and proselytism. This is why we find among these peoples the liberty of thought, the spirit of inquiry and individual research." Of course, one should not look at this problem in a black and white manner, or for instance compare and contrast one platitude to another platitude. There have always been, at all times, and everywhere, massacres and exterminations. But it would be difficult to find in the pagan texts, be they of sacred or profane nature, the equivalent of what one so frequently encounters in the Bible: the idea that these massacres could be morally justified, that they could be deliberately authorized and ordained by one god, "as Moses the servant of the Lord commanded" (Joshua 11:12). Thus, for the perpetrators of these crimes, good consciousness continues to rule, not despite these massacres, but entirely for the sake of the massacres.

A lot of ink has been spilled over this tradition of intolerance. Particularly contentious are the words of Jesus as recorded by Luke: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). Some claim to perceive in the word "hate" a certain form of Hebraism; apparently, these words suggest that Jesus had to be absolutely preferred to all other human beings. Some claim to see in it traces of Gnostic contamination that suggest renouncement. despoliation of goods, and the refusal of procreation. In this context, the obligation to "hate" one's parents is to be viewed as a corollary of not wishing to have children.

These interpretations remain pure conjecture. What is certain is that Christian intolerance began to manifest itself very early. In the course of history this intolerance was directed against "infidels" as well as against pagans, Jews, and heretics. It accompanied the extermination of all aspects of ancient culture—the murder of Julius of Hypati, the interdiction of pagan cults, the destruction of temples and statues, the suppression of the Olympic Games, and the arson, at the instigation of the town's Bishop Theophilus of Sarapeum, of Alexandria in A.D. 389, whose immense library of 700,000 volumes had been collected by the Ptolemeys. Then came the forced conversions, the extinction of positive science, persecution, and pyres. Ammianus Marcellinus said: "The wild beasts are less hostile to people than Christians are among themselves." Sulpicius Severus wrote: "Now everything has gone astray as the result of discords among bishops. Everywhere, one can see hatred, favours, fear, jealousy, ambition, debauchery, avarice, arrogance, sloth: there is general corruption everywhere."

The Jewish people were the first to suffer from Christian monotheism. The causes of Christian anti-Semitism, which found its first "justification" in the Gospel of John (probably written under the influence of Gnosticism, and to which many studies have been devoted) lie in the proximity of the Jewish and Christian faiths. As Jacques Solé notes: "One persecutes only his neighbors." Only a "small gap" separates Jews from Christians, but as Nietzsche says, "the smallest gap is also the least bridgeable." During the first centuries of the Christian era anti-Semitism grew out of the Christian claim to be the successor of Judaism, and bestowing on it its "truthful" meaning. For Christians, "salvation is of the Jews" (John 4:22), but it is only Christianity that can be verus Israel. Hence the expression perfidi, applied to the Jews until recently by the Church in prayers during Holy Friday—an expression meaning "without faith," and whose meaning is different from the modem word "perfidious."

The origins of modern totalitarianism are not difficult to trace. In a secular form, they are tied to the same radical strains of intolerance whose religious causes we have just examined.

Saint Paul was the first to formulate this distinction. With his replacement of the Law by Grace, Paul distinguished between the "Israel of God" and the "Israel after the flesh" (1 Corinthians 10:18), which also led him to oppose circumcision: "For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God" (Romans 2:28-29). Conclusion: “For we are the circumcision" (Philippians 3:3). This argument has, from the Christian point of view, a certain coherence. As Claude 'Tretmontant says, if the last of the nabis from Israel, the rabbi Yohushua of Nazareth, that is to say Jesus, is really a Messiah, then the vocation of Israel to become the "beacon of nations" must be fully accomplished, and the universalism implied in this vocation must be put entirely into practice. Just as the Law that has come to an end with Christ (in a double sense of the word) is no longer necessary, so has the distinction between Israel and other nations become futile as well: "There is neither Jew nor Greek" (Galatians 3:28). Consequently, universal Christianity must become verus Israel.

This process, which originated in the Pauline reform, has had a double consequence. On the one hand, it has resulted in the persecution of Jews who, by virtue of their "genealogical" proximity, are represented as the worst enemies of Christianity. They are the adversaries who refuse to "convert," who refuse to recognize Christianity as the "true Israel." As Shmuel Trigano notes, "by projecting itself as the new Israel, the West has given to Judaism a de facto jurisdiction, albeit not the right to be itself." This means that the West can become "Israelite" to the extent that it denies Jews the right to be Israelites. Henceforth, the very notion of "Judeo-Christianity" can be defined as a double incarceration. It imprisons "the Christian West," which by its own deliberate act has subordinated itself to an alien "jurisdiction," and which by doing so denies this very same jurisdiction to its legitimate (Jewish) owners. Furthermore, it imprisons the Jews who, by virtue of a religion different from their own, are now undeservedly caught in the would-be place of their "accomplishment" by means of a religion which is not their own. Trigano further adds: "If Judeo-Christianity laid the foundations of the West, then the very place of Israel is also the West." Subsequently, the requisites of "Westernization" must also become the requisites of assimilation and "normalization," and the denial of identity. "The crisis of Jewish normality is the crisis of the westernization of Judaism. Therefore, to exit from the West means for the Jews to turn their back to their 'normality,' that is, to open themselves up to their otherness." This seems to be why Jewish communities today criticize the "Western model," only after they first adopt their own specific history of a semi-amnesiac and semi-critical attitude.

In view of this, Christian anti-Semitism can be rightly described as neurosis. As Jean Blot writes, it is because of its "predisposition toward alienation" that the West is incapable of "fulfilling itself or rediscovering itself." And from this source arises anti-Semitic neurosis. "Anti-semitism allows the anti-Semite to project onto the Jew his own neuroses. He calls him a stranger, because he himself is a stranger, a crook, a powerful man, a parvenu; he calls him a Jew, because he himself is this Jew in the deepest depth of his soul, always on the move, permanently alienated, a stranger to his own religion and to God who incarnates him." By replacing his original myth with the myth of biblical monotheism, the West has turned Hebraism into its own superego. As an inevitable consequence, the West had to turn itself against the Jewish people by accusing them of not pursuing the "conversion" in terms of the "logical" evolution proceeding from Sinai to Christianity. In addition, the West also accused the Jewish people of attempting, in an apparent "deicide," to obstruct this evolution.

Many, even today, assume that if Jews were to renounce their distinct identity, "the Jewish problem" would disappear. At best, this is a naive proposition, and at worst, it masks a conscious or unconscious form of anti-Semitism. Furthermore, this proposition, which is inherent in the racism of assimilation and the denial of identity, represents the reverse side of the racism of exclusion and persecution. In the West, notes Shmuel Trigano. when the Jews were not persecuted, they "were recognized as Jews only on the condition that they first ceased to be Jews." Put another way, in order to be accepted, they had to reject themselves; they had to renounce their own Other in order to be reduced to the Same. In another type of racism, Jews are accepted but denied; in the first, they are accepted but are not recognized. The Church ordered Jews to choose between exclusion (or physical death) or self-denial (spiritual and historical death). Only through conversion could they become “Christians, as others.”

The French Revolution emancipated Jews as individuals, but it condemned them to disappear as a "nation"; in this sense, they were forced to become "citizens as others." Marxism, too, attempted to ensure the "liberation" of the Jewish people by imposing on them a class division, from which their dispersion inevitably resulted.

The origins of modem totalitarianism are not difficult to trace. In a secular form, they are tied to the same radical strains of intolerance whose religious causes we have just examined. The organization of totalitarianism is patterned after the organization of the Christian Church, and in a similar manner totalitarianisms exploit the themes of the "masses"—the themes inherent in contemporary mass democracy. This secularization of the system has, in fact, rendered totalitarianism more dangerous—independently of the fact that religious intolerance often triggers, in return, an equally destructive revolutionary intolerance. "Totalitarianism," writes Gilbert Durand, "is further strengthened, in so far as the powers of monotheist theology (which at least left the game of transcendence intact) have been transferred to a human institution, to the Grand Inquisitor."

It is a serious error to assume that totalitarianism manifests its real character only when it employs crushing coercion. Historical experience has demonstrated—and continues to demonstrate—that there can exist a "clean" totalitarianism, which, in a "soft" manner, yields the same consequences as the classic kinds of totalitarianism. "Happy robots" of 1984 or of Brave New World have no more enviable conditions than prisoners of the camps. In essence, totalitarianism did not originate with Saint-Just, Stalin, Hegel, or Fichte. Rather, as Michel Maffesoli says, totalitarianism emerges "when a subtle form of plural, polytheistic, and contradictory totality, that is inherent in organic interdependency" is superseded by a monotheistic one. Totalitarianism grows out of a desire to establish social and human unity by reducing the diversity of individuals and peoples to a single model. In this sense, he argues, it is legitimate to speak of a "polytheist social arena, referring to multiple and complementary gods" versus a "monotheistic political arena founded on the illusion of unity." Once the polytheism of values "disappears, we face totalitarianism." Pagan thought, on the other hand, which fundamentally remains attached to rootedness and to the place, and which is a preferential center of the crystallization of human identity, rejects all religious and philosophical forms of universalism.

Alain de Benoist is editor of Nouvelle Ecole, an academic journal published in Paris. Tomislav Sunic serves in the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Madrid burns

2003-07-04 10:31 | User Profile

Manifesto of the French New Right by Alain de Benoist and Charles Champetier

[url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?showtopic=8327]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...?showtopic=8327[/url]

Hilaire Belloc

2003-07-04 16:58 | User Profile

I very much like the works of Alain De Benoist. He doesn't buy into the globalist/pro-marxist nonesense that many pop-intellectuals are espousing.

Here's a collection of many of his writings. [url=http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/debenoist/]http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/debenoist/[/url]

Madrid burns

2003-07-29 07:38 | User Profile

From the Summer Issue of the Occidental Quarterly: [url=http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol3no2/adb-democracya.html]http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol3no2/...democracya.html[/url]

Democracy Revisited: The Ancients and the Moderns by Alain de Benoist

"The defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy,” wrote George Orwell.1 This does not seem to be a recent phenomenon. Guizot remarked in 1849: “So powerful is the sway of the word democracy, that no government and no party dares to live, or thinks it can, without inscribing this word on its banner.”2 This is truer today than ever before. Not everybody is a democrat, but everybody pretends to be one. There is no dictatorship that does not regard itself as a democracy. The former communist countries of Eastern Europe did not merely represent themselves as democratic, as attested by their constitutions;3 they vaunted themselves as the only real democracies, in contrast to the “formal” democracies of the West.

The near unanimity on democracy as a word, albeit not always a fact, gives the notion of democracy a moral and almost religious content, which, from the very outset, discourages further discussion. Many authors have recognized this problem. Thus, in 1939, T.S. Eliot declared: “When a word acquires a universally sacred character . . . , as has today the word democracy, I begin to wonder, whether, by all it attempts to mean, it still means anything at all.”4 Bertrand de Jouvenel was even more explicit: “The discussion on democracy, the arguments in its favor, or against it, point frequently to a degree of intellectual shallowness, because it is not quite clear what this discussion is all about.”5 Giovanni Sartori added in 1962: “In a somewhat paradoxical vein, democracy could be defined as a high-flown name for something which does not exist.”6 Julien Freund also noted, in a somewhat witty tone:

To claim to be a democrat means little, because one can be a democrat in a contradictory manner—either in the manner of the Americans or the English, or like the East European communists, Congolese, or Cubans. It is perfectly natural that under such circumstances I refuse to be a democrat, because my neighbor might be an adherent of dictatorship while invoking the word democracy.7 Thus we can see that the universal propagation of the term democracy does not contribute much to clarifying the meaning of democracy. Undoubtedly, we need to go a step further.

The first idea that needs to be dismissed—an idea still cherished by some—is that democracy is a specific product of the modern era, and that democracy corresponds to a “developed stage” in the history of political regimes.8 This does not seem to be substantiated by the facts. Democracy is neither more “modern” nor more “evolved” than other forms of governance. Governments with democratic tendencies have appeared throughout history. We note that the linear perspective used in this type of analysis can be particularly deceiving. The idea of progress, when applied to a political regime, appears devoid of meaning. If one subscribes to this type of linear reasoning, it is easy to advance the argument of the “self-evidence” of democracy, which, according to liberals, arises “spontaneously” in the realm of political affairs just as the market “spontaneously” accords with the logic of demand and supply. Jean Baechler notes:

If we accept the hypothesis that men, as an animal species(sic), aspire spontaneously to a democratic regime which promises them security, prosperity, and liberty, we must then also conclude that, the minute these requirements have been met, the democratic experience automatically emerges, without ever needing the framework of ideas.9

What exactly are these “requirements” that produce democracy, in the same manner as fire causes heat? They bear closer examination.

In contrast to the Orient, absolute despotism has always been rare in Europe. Whether in ancient Rome, or in Homer’s Iliad, Vedantic India, or among the Hittites, one can observe very early the existence of popular assemblies, both military and civilian. In Indo-European societies kings were usually elected; in fact, all ancient monarchies were first elective monarchies. Tacitus relates that among the Germans chieftains were elected on account of their valor, and kings on account of their noble birth (reges ex nobilitate duces ex virtute sumunt). In France, for instance, the crown was long both elective and hereditary. It was only with Pippin the Short that the king was chosen from within the same family, and only after Hugh Capet that the principle of primogeniture was adopted. In Scandinavia, the king was elected by a provincial assembly; that election had then to be confirmed by the other national assemblies.

Among the Germanic peoples the practice of “shielding”—or raising the new king on his soldiers' shields—was widespread.10 The Holy Roman Emperor was also elected, and the importance of the role of the princely electors in the history of Germany should not be neglected. By and large, it was only with the beginning of the twelfth century in Europe that elective monarchy gradually gave way to hereditary monarchy. Until the French Revolution, kings ruled with the aid of parliaments which possessed considerable executive powers. In almost all European communities it was long the status of freeman that conferred political rights on the citizen. “Citizens” were constituent members of free popular communes, which among other things possessed their own municipal charters, and sovereign rulers were surrounded by councils in the decision-making process. Moreover, the influence of customary law on juridical practice was an index of popular “participation” in defining the laws. In short, it cannot be stated that Europe’s old monarchies were devoid of popular legitimacy.

The oldest parliament in the Western world, the althing, the federal assembly of Iceland, whose members gathered yearly in the inspired setting of Thingvellir, emerged as early as 930 A.D. Adam von Bremen wrote in 1076: “They have no king, only the laws.” The thing, or local parliament, designated both a location and the assembly where freemen with equal political rights convened at a fixed date in order to legislate and render justice.11 In Iceland the freeman enjoyed two inalienable privileges: he had a right to bear arms and to a seat in the thing. “The Icelanders,” writes Frederick Durand

created and experienced what one could call by some uncertain yet suggestive analogy a kind of Nordic Hellas, i.e., a community of freemen who participated actively in the affairs of the community. Those communities were surprisingly well cultivated and intellectually productive, and, in addition, were united by bonds based on esteem and respect.12

“Scandinavian democracy is very old and one can trace its origins to the Viking era,” observes Maurice Gravier.13 In all of northern Europe this “democratic” tradition was anchored in a very strong communitarian sentiment, a propensity to “live together” (zusammenleben), which constantly fostered the primacy of the common interest over that of the individual. Such democracy, typically, included a certain hierarchical structure, which explains why one could describe it as “aristo-democracy.” This tradition, based also on the concept of mutual assistance and a sense of common responsibility, remains alive in many countries today, for instance, in Switzerland.

The belief that the people were originally the possessor of power was common throughout the Middle Ages. Whereas the clergy limited itself to the proclamation omnis potestas a Deo, other theorists argued that power could emanate from God only through the intercession of the people. The belief of the “power of divine right” should therefore be seen in an indirect form, and not excluding the reality of the people. Thus, Marsilius of Padua did not hesitate to proclaim the concept of popular sovereignty; significantly, he did so in order to defend the supremacy of the emperor (at the time, Ludwig of Bavaria) over the Church. The idea of linking the principle of the people to its leaders was further emphasized in the formula populus et proceres (the people and the nobles), which appears frequently in old texts.

Here we should recall the democratic tendencies evident in ancient Rome,14 the republics of medieval Italy, the French and Flemish communes, the Hanseatic municipalities, and the free Swiss cantons. Let us further note the ancient boerenvrijheid (“peasants’ freedom”) that prevailed in medieval Frisian provinces and whose equivalent could be found along the North Sea, in the Low Lands, in Flanders, Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Finally, it is worth mentioning the existence of important communal movements based on free corporate structures, the function of which was to provide mutual help and to pursue economic and political goals. Sometimes these movements clashed with king and Church, which were supported by the burgeoning bourgeoisie. At other times, however, communal movements backed the monarchy in its fight against the feudal lords, thus contributing to the rise of the mercantile bourgeoisie.15

In reality, most political regimes throughout history can be qualified as mixed ones. “All ancient democracies,” writes François Perroux, “were governed by a de facto or de jure aristocracy, unless they were governed by a monarchical principle.”16 According to Aristotle, Solon's constitution was oligarchic in terms of its Areopagus, aristocratic in terms of its magistrates, and democratic in terms of the make-up of its tribunals. It combined the advantages of each type of government. Similarly, Polybius argues that Rome was, in view of the power of its consuls, an elective monarchy; in regard to the powers of the Senate, an aristocracy; and regarding the rights of the people, a democracy. Cicero, in his De Republica, advances a similar view. Monarchy need not exclude democracy, as is shown by the example of contemporary constitutional and parliamentary monarchies today. After all, it was the French monarchy in 1789 that convoked the Estates-General. “[D]emocracy, taken in the broad sense, admits of various forms,” observed Pope Pius XII, “and can be realized in monarchies as well as in republics.”17

Let us add that the experience of modern times demonstrates that neither government nor institutions need play a decisive role in shaping social life. Comparable types of government may disguise different types of societies, whereas different governmental forms may mask identical social realities. (Western societies today have an extremely homogeneous structure even though their institutions and constitutions sometimes offer substantial differences.)

So now the task of defining democracy appears even more difficult. The etymological approach has its limits. According to its original meaning, democracy means “the power of the people.” Yet this power can be interpreted in different ways. The most reasonable approach, therefore, seems to be the historical approach—an approach that explains “genuine” democracy as first of all the political system of that ancient people that simultaneously invented the word and the fact.

The notion of democracy did not appear at all in modern political thought until the eighteenth century. Even then its mention was sporadic, frequently with a pejorative connotation. Prior to the French Revolution the most “advanced” philosophers had fantasized about mixed regimes combining the advantages of an “enlightened” monarchy and popular representation. Montesquieu acknowledged that a people could have the right to control, but not the right to rule. Not a single revolutionary constitution claimed to have been inspired by “democratic” principles. Robespierre was, indeed, a rare person for that epoch, who toward the end of his reign, explicitly mentioned democracy (which did not however contribute to the strengthening of his popularity in the years to come), a regime that he defined as a representative form of government, i.e., “a state in which the sovereign people, guided by laws which are of their own making, do for themselves all that they can do well, and by their delegates do all that they cannot do themselves.” 18

It was in the United States that the word democracy first became widespread, notably when the notion of “republic” was contrasted to the notion of “democracy.” Its usage became current at the beginning of the nineteenth century, especially with the advent of Jacksonian democracy and the subsequent establishment of the Democratic Party. The word, in turn, crossed the Atlantic again and became firmly implanted in Europe—to the profit of the constitutional debates that filled the first half of the nineteenth century. Tocqueville's book Democracy in America, the success of which was considerable, made the term a household word.

Despite numerous citations, inspired by antiquity, that adorned the philosophical and political discourse of the eighteenth century, the genuine legacy drawn from ancient democracy was at that time very weak. The philosophers seemed more enthralled with the example of Sparta than Athens. The debate “Sparta vs. Athens,” frequently distorted by bias or ignorance, pitted the partisans of authoritarian egalitarianism against the tenets of moderate liberalism.19 Rousseau, for instance, who abominated Athens, expressed sentiments that were rigorously pro-Spartiate. In his eyes, Sparta was first and foremost the city of equals (hómoioi). By contrast, when Camille Desmoulins thundered against Sparta, it was to denounce its excessive egalitarianism. He attacked the Girondin Brissot, that pro-Lycurgian, “who has rendered his citizens equal just as a tornado renders equal all those who are about to drown.” All in all, this type of discourse remained rather shallow. The cult of antiquity was primarily maintained as a metaphor for social regeneration, as exemplified by Saint-Just's words hurled at the Convention: “The world has been empty since the Romans; their memory can replenish it and it can augur liberty.”20

If we wish now to continue our study of “genuine” democracy, we must once again turn to Greek democracy rather than to those regimes that the contemporary world designates by the word.

The comparison between ancient democracies and modern democracies has frequently turned into an academic exercise.21 It is generally emphasized that the former were direct democracies, whereas the latter (due to larger areas and populations) are representative democracies. Moreover, we are frequently reminded that slaves were excluded from the Athenian democracy; consequently, the idea emerged that Athens was not so democratic, after all. These two affirmations fall somewhat short of satisfying answers.

Readied by political and social evolution during the sixth century b.c., as well as by reforms made possible by Solon, Athenian democracy entered its founding stage with the reforms of Cleisthenes, who returned from exile in 508 b.c. Firmly established from 460 b.c., it continued to thrive for the next one hundred and fifty years. Pericles, who succeeded Ephialtes in 461 b.c., gave democracy an extraordinary reputation, which did not at all prevent him from exercising, for more than thirty years, a quasi-royal authority over the city.22

For the Greeks democracy was primarily defined23 by its relationship to two other systems: tyranny and aristocracy. Democracy presupposed three conditions: isonomy (equality before laws); isotimy (equal rights to accede to all public offices); and isegory (liberty of expression). This was direct democracy, known also as “face to face” democracy, since all citizens were allowed to take part in the ekklesía, or Assembly. Deliberations were prepared by the boulé(Council), although in fact it was the popular assembly that made policy. The popular assembly nominated ambassadors; decided over the issue of war and peace, preparing military expeditions or bringing an end to hostilities; investigated the performance of magistrates; issued decrees; ratified laws; bestowed the rights of citizenship; and deliberated on matters of Athenian security. In short, writes Jacqueline de Romilly, “the people ruled, instead of being ruled by elected individuals.” She cites the text of the oath given by the Athenians: “I will kill whoever by word, deed, vote, or hand attempts to destroy democracy.... And should somebody else kill him I will hold him in high esteem before the gods and divine powers, as if he had killed a public enemy.”24

Democracy in Athens meant first and foremost a community of citizens, that is, a community of people gathered in the ekklesía. Citizens were classified according to their membership in a deme—a grouping which had a territorial, social, and administrative significance. The term démos, which is of Doric origin, designates those who live in a given territory, with the territory constituting a place of origin and determining civic status.25 To some extent démos and ethnos coincide: democracy could not be conceived in relationship to the individual, but only in the relationship to the polis, that is to say, to the city in its capacity as an organized community. Slaves were excluded from voting not because they were slaves, but because they were not citizens. We seem shocked by this today, yet, after all, which democracy has ever given voting rights to non-citizens?26

The notions of citizenship, liberty, or equality of political rights, as well as of popular sovereignty, were intimately interrelated. The most essential element in the notion of citizenship was someone's origin and heritage. Pericles was the “son of Xanthippus from the deme of Cholargus.” Beginning in 451 b.c., one had to be born of an Athenian mother and father in order to become a citizen. Defined by his heritage, the citizen (polítes) is opposed to idiótes, the non-citizen—a designation that quickly took on a pejorative meaning (from the notion of the rootless individual one arrived at the notion of “idiot”). Citizenship as function derived thus from the notion of citizenship as status, which was the exclusive prerogative of birth. To be a citizen meant, in the fullest sense of the word, to have a homeland, that is, to have both a homeland and a history. One is born an Athenian—one does not become one (with rare exceptions). Furthermore, the Athenian tradition discouraged mixed marriages. Political equality, established by law, flowed from common origins that sanctioned it as well. Only birth conferred individual politeía.27

Democracy was rooted in the concept of autochthonous citizenship, which intimately linked its exercise to the origins of those who exercised it. The Athenians in the fifth century celebrated themselves as “the autochthonous people of great Athens,” and it was within that founding myth that they placed the pivot of their democracy.28

In Greek, as well as in Latin, liberty proceeds from someone's origin. Free man (e)leudheros (Greek eleútheros), is primarily he who belongs to a certain “stock” (cf. in Latin the word liberi, “children”). “To be born of a good stock is to be free,” writes Emile Benveniste, “this is one and the same."29 Similarly, in the German language, the kinship between the words frei, “free,” and Freund, “friend,” indicates that in the beginning, liberty sanctioned mutual relationship. The Indo-European root leudh-, from which derive simultaneously the Latin liber and the Greek eleútheros, also served to designate “people” in the sense of a national group (cf. Old Slavonic ljudú, “people”; German Leute, “people,” both of which derive from the root evoking the idea of “growth and development”).

The original meaning of the word “liberty” does not suggest at all “liberation”—in a sense of emancipation from collectivity. Instead, it implies inheritance—which alone confers liberty. Thus when the Greeks spoke of liberty, they did not have in mind the right to break away from the tutelage of the city or the right to rid themselves of the constraints to which each citizen was bound. Rather, what they had in mind was the right, but also the political capability, guaranteed by law, to participate in the life of the city, to vote in the assembly, to elect magistrates, etc. Liberty did not legitimize secession; instead, it sanctioned its very opposite: the bond which tied the person to his city. This was not liberty-autonomy, but a liberty-participation; it was not meant to reach beyond the community, but was practised solely in the framework of the polis. Liberty meant adherence. The “liberty” of an individual without heritage, i.e. of a deracinated individual, was completely devoid of any meaning.

If we therefore assume that liberty was directly linked to the notion of democracy, then it must be added that liberty meant first and foremost the liberty of the people, from which subsequently the liberty of citizens proceeds. In other words, only the liberty of the people (or of the city) can lay the foundations for the equality of political and individual rights, i.e., rights enjoyed by individuals in the capacity of citizens. Liberty presupposes independence as its first condition. Man lives in society, and therefore individual liberty cannot exist without collective liberty. Among the Greeks, individuals were free because (and in so far as) their city was free.

When Aristotle defines man as a “political animal,” as a social being, when he asserts that the city precedes the individual and that only within society can the individual achieve his potential (Politics, 1253a 19–20), he also suggests that man should not be detached from his role of citizen, a person living in the framework of an organized community, of a polis, or a civitas. Aristotle's views stand in contrast to the concept of modern liberalism, which posits that the individual precedes society, and that man, in the capacity of a self-sufficient individual, is at once something more than just a citizen.30

Hence, in a “community of freemen,” individual interests must never prevail over common interests. “All constitutions whose objectives are common interest,” writes Aristotle, “are in accordance with absolute justice. By contrast, those whose objective is the personal interest of the governors tend to be defective.” (Politics, 1279a 17sq). In contrast to what one can see, for instance, in Euripides' works, the city in Aeschylus' tragedies is regularly described as a communal entity. “This sense of community,” writes Moses I. Finley, “fortified by the state religion, the myths and traditions, was the essential source of success in Athenian democracy.”31

In Greece, adds Finley, “liberty meant the rule of law and participation in the decision- making process—and not necessarily the enjoyment of inalienable rights.”32 The law is identified with the genius of the city. “To obey the law meant to be devoted with zeal to the will of the community," observes Paul Veyne.33 As Cicero wrote, only liberty can pave the way for legality: “Legum…servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus“ (“We are the servants of the law in order that we can be free,” Oratio pro Cluentio, 53.)

In his attempt to show that liberty is the fundamental principle of democracy (Politics, VII, 1), Aristotle succeeds in de-emphasizing the factor of equality. For the Greeks equality was only one means to democracy, though it could be an important one. Political equality, however, had to emanate from citizenship, i.e., from belonging to a given people. From this it follows that members of the same people (of the same city), irrespective of their differences, shared the desire to be citizens in the same and equal manner. This equality of rights by no means reflects a belief in natural equality. The equal right of all citizens to participate in the assembly does not mean that men are by nature equal (nor that it would be preferable that they were), but rather that they derive from their common heritage a common capacity to exercise the right of suffrage, which is the privilege of citizens. As the appropriate means to this téchne, equality remains exterior to man. This process, as much as it represents the logical consequence of common heritage, is also the condition for common participation. In the eyes of the ancient Greeks it was considered natural that all citizens be associated with political life not by virtue of universal and imprescriptible rights of humans as such, but from the fact of common citizenship. In the last analysis, the crucial notion was not equality but citizenship. Greek democracy was that form of government in which each citizen saw his liberty as firmly founded on an equality that conferred on him the right to civic and political liberties.

The study of ancient democracy has elicited divergent views from contemporary authors. For some, Athenian democracy is an admirable example of civic responsibility (Francesco Nitti); for others it evokes the realm of “activist” political parties (Paul Veyne); for yet others, ancient democracy is essentially totalitarian (Giovanni Sartori). 34 In general, everybody seems to concur that the difference between ancient democracy and modern democracy is considerable. Curiously, it is modern democracy that is used as a criterion for the democratic consistency of the former. This type of reasoning sounds rather odd. As we have observed, it was only belatedly that those modern national governments today styled “democracies” came to identify themselves with this word. Consequently, after observers began inquiring into ancient democracy, and realized that it was different from modern democracy, they drew the conclusion that ancient democracy was “less democratic” than modern democracy. But, in reality, should we not proceed from the inverse type of reasoning? It must be reiterated that democracy was born in Athens in the fifth century b.c. Therefore, it is Athenian democracy (regardless of one’s judgments for or against it) that should be used as an example of a “genuine” type of democracy. Granted that contemporary democratic regimes differ from Athenian democracy, we must then assume that they differ from democracy of any kind. We can see again where this irks most of our contemporaries. Since nowadays everyone boasts of being a perfect democrat, and given the fact that Greek democracy resembles not at all those before our eyes, it is naturally the Greeks who must bear the brunt of being “less democratic”! We thus arrive at the paradox that Greek democracy, in which the people participated daily in the exercise of power, is disqualified on the grounds that it does not fit into the concept of modern democracy, in which the people, at best, participate only indirectly in political life.

There should be no doubt that ancient democracies and modern democracies are systems entirely distinct from each other. Even the parallels that have been sought between them are fallacious. They have only the name in common, since both have resulted from completely different historical processes.

Wherein does this difference lie? It would be wrong to assume that it is related to either the “direct” or “indirect” nature of the decision-making process. Each of them has a different concept of man and a different concept of the world, as well as a different vision of social bonds. The democracy of antiquity was communitarian and “holist”; modern democracy is primarily individualist. Ancient democracy defined citizenship by a man's origins, and provided him with the opportunity to participate in the life of the city. Modern democracy organizes atomized individuals into citizens viewed through the prism of abstract egalitarianism. Ancient democracy was based on the idea of organic community; modern democracy, heir to Christianity and the philosophy of the Enlightenment, on the individual. In both cases the meaning of the words “city,” “people,” “nation,” and “liberty” are totally changed.

To argue, therefore, within this context, that Greek democracy was a direct democracy only because it encompassed a small number of citizens falls short of a satisfying answer. Direct democracy need not be associated with a limited number of citizens. It is primarily associated with the notion of a relatively homogeneous people that is conscious of what makes it a people. The effective functioning of both Greek and Icelandic democracy was the result of cultural cohesion and a clear sense of shared heritage. The closer the members of a community are to each other, the more likely they are to have common sentiments, identical values, and the same way of looking at the world, and the easier it is for them to make collective decisions without needing the help of mediators.

In contrast, having ceased to be places of collectively lived meaning, modern societies require a multitude of intermediaries. The aspirations that surface in this type of democracy spring from contradictory value systems that are no longer reconcilable with unified decisions. Ever since Benjamin Constant (De la liberté des anciens comparée à celle des modernes, 1819), we have been able to measure to what degree, under the impact of individualist and egalitarian ideologies, the notion of liberty has changed. Therefore, to return to a Greek concept of democracy does not mean nurturing a shallow hope of “face to face” social transparency. Rather, it means reappropriating, as well as adapting to the modern world, the concept of the people and community—concepts that have been eclipsed by two thousand years of egalitarianism, rationalism, and the exaltation of the rootless individual.

Alain de Benoist is a leading French theoretician of the European New Right, the editor of Nouvelle École, and a principal founder of the Group for the Research and Study of European Civilization (GRECE). In 1978 he was awarded the Grand prix de l’essai de l’Académie francaise.

Translated by Tomislav Sunic from the author’s book Démocratie: Le problème (Paris: Le Labyrinthe, 1985)

End Notes 1. George Orwell, Selected Essays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957), p. 149.

1. François Guizot, De la démocratie en France (Paris: Masson, 1849), p. 9.

2. Georges Burdeau observes that judging by appearances, in terms of their federal organization, the institutions of the Soviet Union are similar to those of the United States, and in terms of its governmental system the Soviet Union is similar to England. La démocratie (Paris : Seuil, 1966), p. 141.

3. T.S. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society (London: Faber & Faber, 1939).

4. Bertrand de Jouvenel, Du pouvoir (Geneva : Cheval ailé‚ 1945), p. 411.

5. Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1962), p. 3.

6. “Les démocrates ombrageux,” Contrepoint (December 1976), p. 111.

7. Other authors have held exactly the opposite opinion. For Schleiermacher, democracy is a "primitive" political form in contrast to monarchy, which is thought to correspond to the demands of the modern state.

8. “Le pouvoir des idées en démocratie,”Pouvoir (May 1983), p. 145.

9. Significantly, it was with the beginning of the inquiry into the origins of the French monarchy that the nobility, under Louis XIV, began to challenge the principles of monarchy.

10. The word "thing," which designated the parliament, derives from the Germanic word that connoted originally "everything that is gathered together." The same word gave birth to the English "thing" (German Ding: same meaning). It seems that this word designated the assembly in which public matters, then affairs of a general nature, and finally "things" were discussed.

11. “Les fondements de l'État libre d'Icelande: trois siècles de démocratie médiévale,” in Nouvelle Ecole 25-26 (Winter 1974–75), pp. 68–73.

12. Les Scandinaves (Paris: Lidis [Brepols], 1984), p. 613.

13. Cf. P.M. Martin, L'idée de royauté‚ ... Rome. De la Rome royale au consensus républicain (Clermont-Ferrand: Adosa, 1983).

14. Here "democracy," as in the case of peasants’ freedoms as well, already included social demands, although not "class struggle"—a concept ignored by ancient democracy. In the Middle Ages the purpose of such demands was to give voice to those who were excluded from power. But it often happened that "democracy" could be used against the people. In medieval Florence, social strife between the "popolo grosso" and the "popolo minuto" was particularly brisk. On this Francesco Nitti writes: "The reason the working classes of Florence proved lukewarm in defense of their liberty and sympathized instead with the Medicis was because they remained opposed to democracy, which they viewed as a concept of the rich bourgeoisie." Francesco Nitti, La démocratie, vol. 1 (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1933), p. 57.)

15. This opinion is shared by the majority of students of ancient democracies. Thus, Victor Ehrenberg sees in Greek democracy a "form of enlarged aristocracy." Victor Ehrenberg, L’état grec (Paris: Maspéro, 1976), p. 94.

16. Pius XII, 1944 Christmas Message: [url=http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P12XMAS.HTM]http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P12XMAS.HTM[/url]

17. M. Robespierre, “On Political Morality,” speech to the Convention, February 5, 1794: [url=http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/413/]http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/413/[/url]

18. On this debate, see the essay by Luciano Guerci, “Liberta degli antichi e liberta dei moderni,” in Sparta, Atene e i `philosophes' nella Francia del Setecento (Naples: Guido, 1979).

19. Camille Desmoulins, speech to the Convention, March 31, 1794. It is significant that contemporary democrats appear to be more inclined to favor Athens. Sparta, in contrast, is denounced for its "war-like spirit." This change in discourse deserves a profound analysis.

20. Cf., for example, the essay by Moses Finley, Démocratie antique et démocratie moderne (Paris: Payot, 1976), which is both an erudite study and a pamphlet of great contemporary relevance. The study is prefaced by Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who, among other errors, attributes to Julien Freund (see n. 7, above) positions which are exactly the very opposite of those stated in the preface.

21. To cite Thucydides: "Thanks to his untainted character, the depth of his vision, and boundless disinterestedness, Pericles exerted on Athens an incontestable influence.… Since he owed his prestige only to honest means, he did not have to truckle to popular passions.… In a word, democracy supplied the name; but in reality, it was the government of the first citizen." (Peloponnesian War II, 65)

22. One of the best works on this topic is Jacqueline de Romilly's essay Problèmes de la démocratie grecque (Paris: Hermann, 1975).

23. Romilly, Problèmes de la démocratie grecque.

24. The word “démos” is opposed to the word “laós,” a term employed in Greece to designate the people, but with the express meaning of "the community of warriors."

25. In France, the right to vote was implemented only in stages. In 1791 the distinction was still made between "active citizens" and "passive citizens." Subsequently, the electorate was expanded to include all qualified citizens able to pay a specified minimum of taxes. Although universal suffrage was proclaimed in 1848, it was limited to males until 1945.

26. On the evolution of that notion, see Jacqueline Bordes, ‘Politeia’ dans la pensée grecque jusqu’à Aristote (Paris : Belles Lettres, 1982).

27. Nicole Loraux interprets the Athenian notion of citizenship as a result of the "imaginary belonging to an autochthonous people" (Les enfants d'Athéna. Idées athéniennes sur la citoyenneté et la divison des sexes [Paris: Maspéro, 1981]). The myth of Erichthonios (or Erechtheus) explains in fact the autochthonous character and the origins of the masculine democracy, at the same time as it grafts the Athenian ideology of citizenship onto immemorial foundations.

28. Emile Benveniste, Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-européennes, vol. 1 (Paris : Minuit, 1969), p. 321.

29. On the work of Aristotle and his relationship with the Athenian constitution, see James Day and Mortimer Chambers, Aristotle, History of Athenian Democracy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1962).

30. Finley, Démocratie antique et démocratie moderne, p. 80.

31. Finley, Démocratie antique et démocratie moderne, p. 141.

32. Veyne adds: "Bourgeois liberalism organizes cruising ships in which each passenger must take care of himself as best as he can, the crew being there only to provide for the common goods and services. By contrast, the Greek city was a ship where the passengers made up the crew." Paul Veyne, "Les Grecs ont-ils connu la démocratie?” Diogène October-December 1983, p. 9.

33. For the liberal critique of Greek democracy, see Paul Veyne, "Les Grecs ont-ils connu la démocratie?" and Giovanni Sartori, Democratic Theory (see n. 6 above).

Faust

2003-07-29 18:22 | User Profile

Madrid burns,

Thanks for posting this stuff.

Madrid burns

2003-10-02 10:05 | User Profile

A new site about the though of Alain de Benoist:

[url]http://www.alaindebenoist.com/index.php[/url]

Madrid burns

2003-12-19 01:59 | User Profile

From the July 2003 issue of Chronicles:

[url]http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/July2003/0703Benoist.html[/url]

The Modern Conception of Sovereignty: A Jacobin Invention by Alain de Benoist

The question of sovereignty reappeared at the end of the Middle Ages, when many began to ask not only what is the best possible form of government, or what should be the purpose of the authority held by political power, but what is the political bond that unites a people to its government? That is to say, how ought we to define, within a political community, the connection between those who govern and those who are governed?

This is the question that Jean Bodin attempted to address in his famous book, La République (The Commonwealth), which appeared in 1576. Bodin did not invent sovereignty, but he was the first to make a conceptual analysis and to propose a systematic formulation. The starting point for this exercise was not an observation of the facts but a two-fold aspiration: first, Bodin’s desire for a restoration of the social order, which had been turned upside down by the religious wars, and second, the demand, on the part of the kings of France, for emancipation from every form of allegiance to the emperor and the pope. Bodin’s treatment of sovereignty would quite naturally constitute the ideology of the territorial kingdoms, then in their infancy, which sought to emancipate themselves from the tutelage of the Holy Roman Empire, while consolidating the transformation of power that resulted from the king’s success in dominating his feudal nobility.

Bodin begins by recalling, quite correctly, that sovereignty (or majestas), which he makes the cornerstone of his entire system, is an attribute of the power to command, which itself constitutes one of the givens of politics. Like most authors of his time, he also declares that a government is only strong if it is legitimate, and he underscores his conviction that a government action must conform to a certain number of values determined by justice and reason. He is well aware, however, that such considerations are not enough to account for the notion of sovereign power. For that reason, he declares that the source of power derives from the law. The capacity for making and breaking the laws belongs to the sovereign. That is what constitutes the hallmark of sovereignty: The power to legislate and the power to govern are identical. The conclusion that Bodin deduces from this is radical: Since he cannot be subjected to the decisions that he makes or to the decrees he issues, the prince is necessarily above the law.

This is the formula that had appeared among Roman legal experts: princeps solutus est legibus. “Those who are sovereign,” writes Bodin, “must not be in any way subject to the commands of others. . . . That is why the law says that the prince is absolved from the power of the laws. . . . The laws of the prince depend only on his pure free will.” The prince, therefore, possesses the sovereign power to impose laws that are not binding on himself, and, to exercise this power, he has no need of the consent of his subjects—which means that sovereignty is totally independent of the subjects on which it imposes the law. Cardinal Richelieu would later say, in the same spirit, that “the prince is master of legal formalities.”

By this reason of its legislative power, continues Bodin, the supreme authority is and can only be unique and absolute, whence his definition of sovereignty as the “absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth”—that is to say, as an unlimited power in the order of human affairs. The absolute power of sovereignty lies in the fact that the sovereign is not subject to his own laws but issues and abrogates them as he likes. On the other hand, the ability to make laws requires that sovereignty be absolute, because the legislative power cannot be shared. All the rest of the sovereign’s political prerogatives stem from this initial affirmation. Bodin deduces from this that the fundamental characteristic of sovereignty is that it confers on the prince, who is subject to no rule beyond his own will, the power not to be bound or dependent on anyone, his power being neither delegated, nor temporary, nor responsible to anyone whatsoever. In fact, if he were to set about depending on someone other than himself, whether domestic or foreign, he would no longer have the power to legislate. He would no longer be sovereign.

Boudin’s sovereignty is therefore completely exclusive: In assigning to the king the role of unique legislator, it confers on the state an unlimited power to act. As a result, a sovereign state is defined as a state whose ruler depends on no one other than himself. This implies that the nation is constituted as a state, and even that it is identical with the state. For Bodin, a country may exist by reason of its history, its culture, its identity, or its customs, but it does not exist politically except to the extent that it is constituted as a sovereign state. Sovereignty is then the absolute power that makes a commonwealth a political entity, itself unique and absolute. The state must be one and indivisible, since it is nothing other than an expression of the legislative monopoly held by the sovereign. Local autonomies can only be admitted to the extent that they do not constrain the prince’s authority. In fact, these autonomies will never cease to be ever more constrained. The state thus becomes a monad, while the prince finds himself divided from the people—which to say, placed into an isolation that borders on solipsism.

The significance of this new theory is evident. On the one hand, it dissociates civil society and political society, a dissociation that political thought will make great use of at the beginning of the 18th century. On the other hand, it lays the foundation of the modern nation-state, which is characterized by the indivisible nature of its absolute power. With Bodin, political theory enters, with both feet, into modernity.

According to Bodin, sovereignty is above all inseparable from the idea of a political society; it abolishes particular connections and loyalties and sets itself up on the ruins of concrete communities. Implicitly, the social bond has already turned into a governmental contract, in which only individuals are involved, eliminating any mediation between members of society and the power of government. This severing of the connections between prepolitical communities and the political unit will be brought about, first, by absolute monarchy, and then by the nation-state, which defines itself above all by its homogeneous character, whether that homogeneity is natural (that is, cultural or ethnic) or acquired (by relegating all collective differences to the sphere of private life).

It is not difficult to see the religious underpinnings of this doctrine: The way in which Bodin conceives of political power is only a profane transposition of the absolutist way in which God exercises His own power—and the way in which the pope rules over Christianity. This is true even though he rejects the medieval conception of power as a simple delegation of God’s authority. With Bodin, the prince is no longer content to hold power by “divine right.” By giving himself the power to make and unmake laws, he is acting in the manner of God. He constitutes, by himself, a separate whole, which dominates the social whole as God dominates the cosmos. The same goes for the absolute rectitude of the sovereign, which simply translates into the political realm the attributes of the Cartesian god, who can do all that he wills but cannot will that which is evil.

From sovereignty, it is a small, surreptitious step to the notion of infallibility. In other words, Bodin desacralizes sovereignty by taking it away from God, but he resacralizes it immediately in a profane form: He leaves the monopolistic and absolute sovereignty of God in order to end up with the monopolistic and absolute power of the state. All modernity, then in its infancy, resides in this ambiguity: On the one hand, political power is becoming secular; on the other, the sovereign—henceforth identical with the state—is becoming a person endowed with an almost divine political power. This is a perfect illustration of Carl Schmitt’s thesis that “all the pregnant concepts of the modern theory of the state are theological concepts that have been secularized.”

Bodin’s theory of sovereignty, however, does not imply any particular type of regime. He prefers monarchy, because power is naturally more concentrated in a monarchy, but he understands it as equally compatible with the power of an aristocracy or with democracy, though the risk of dividing power is greater in a democracy.

There is something paradoxical in this modern formulation of sovereignty. Bodin takes pains to distinguish tyrannical power from sovereign power but only by appealing to ideas that, objectively speaking, constitute a limitation on sovereignty, even though he defines it as indivisible and absolute. This limitation might reside in the prince’s need to respect certain natural and divine laws. It might also reside in the ultimate purpose of power, which is to serve the common good without injuring the rights of the members of society; it might even reside in the criteria for its legitimate exercise. This entirely theoretical bulwark against tyranny will quickly fail, by reason of the very dynamic of absolutism.

The conception of sovereignty that was characteristic of absolute monarchy was preserved in its entirety by the French Revolution, which confined itself to ascribing such power to the nation. From this comes the difficulty that the republic came up against when it tried to reconcile the first two articles of the Declaration of the Rights of Men, which declare the primacy of the individual’s universal rights, with the third article, which makes the nation the sole authority to judge its own competence.

One of the merits of a recent book by Ladan Boroumand is to have established, on the basis of a careful examination of texts, not only the continuity of the idea of absolute sovereignty from the ancien régime to the Revolution but that the revolutionary affirmation of the primacy of national sovereignty does not date from 1792 or 1793—during the rise to power of the Jacobin Party—but to the very beginning of the movement. The key moment is reached when the Third Estate makes its unilateral decision, in May 1789, to undertake the process of verifying the deputies’ credentials, a decision that launches the transformation of the Estates-General into the National Assembly and endows the deputies with political sovereignty.

The motion proffered by the Abbé de Siéyès, which invites the communes to proclaim themselves a “National Assembly,” was opposed by Mirabeau’s motion, which puts forward the alternative name, “Assembly of the People’s Representatives.” The rivalry between the two motions uncovers a revealing difficulty in the attempt to define the nation. At the end of the day, Siéyès’ motion will carry, while Mirabeau’s will be rejected as injurious to the nation’s right. For Siéyès, however, the nation is “a living body of associates under a common law,” a body that is rigorously homogeneous in its essence and detached from every prepolitical purpose. It is to this body, and to it alone, that sovereignty must be granted. “The nation exists before all, it is the origin of all. Its will is always legal, it is a law unto itself.”

On June 17, 1789, Siéyès gets the name “National Assembly’ adopted, with the slogan that the representation of the nation can only be “one and indivisible.” Since the General Will is regarded as taking shape only within the legislative body, national representation is confused with the nation. From that instant, sovereignty becomes the property of the nation, and the sovereignty transferred to the Assembly is to be exercised from on high. Henceforth, the nation corresponds to the area of collective sovereignty that is incarnated in the National Assembly. Revolutionary sovereignty, therefore, does not come originally from the electoral body but represents a simple transfer from royal power.

The Constitution of 1791 goes still further, adding the qualification that “sovereignty is indivisible, inalienable, and indefeasible.” However, in August 1791, in the course of the debate that preceded the final drafting of this article, a first draft submitted to the Assembly still attributed to sovereignty only the quality of indivisibility. Inalienability was added at the request of Robespierre. On September 7, Siéyès declares: “France must not be an assembly of little nations, which would govern themselves separately as democracies; it is not a collection of states; it is a unique whole, composed of integrating parts.” By extension, on September 25, 1792, the French Republic is itself proclaimed “one and indivisible.” Thus, intermediate bodies and basic forms of community life are denied any legitimacy of their own. A year later, the Jacobin denunciation of the “Federalist peril” will repeat this argument. Acting on the same principle, the revolutionaries will try to make regional dialects disappear, and then they will demand the suppression of the ancient provinces and their replacement with geometrically equal departments.

Parallel to this, the concept of the people receives a purely abstract definition, one that corresponds to the idea of the nation whose priority is immediately declared. This is the necessary condition for the people, in its turn, to be declared “sovereign.” “If as an objective reality,” writes Ladan Boroumand,

the people could not be admitted into the sphere of the nation’s sovereignty, the metaphysical entity par excellence, its metamorphosis into an ideal being gives it the right to participate in the logic of national sovereignty without endangering the transcendent existence of the nation, which is incarnate in [the political process of] representation.

Representation, however, is itself conceived as a principle of the unity and “indivisibility” of the people, thereby excluding the idea of a people formed out of particular communities and distinct entities. The idea of the nation, put forth as a unitary and transcendent being whose unity and indivisibility are necessarily independent of any external principle, ends up restoring the concept of the people to the point that the new idea replaces the old, inaugurating a tradition that French law has never ceased to perpetuate. Finally, the revolutionary conception of sovereignty makes nationality and citizenship synonymous: From then on, there will no longer be a French national who is not a French citizen (except when a citizen is stripped of civil rights), nor a citizen who is not a national. The people is all the more indivisible and unitary in that it has become a simple abstraction. This is why France, still today, is not a federal state and cannot recognize the existence of a Corsican or Breton people.

Thus, under the Revolution as under the ancien régime, the same conception of sovereignty as the “absolute and eternal power” of a republic is the source of all the rights and duties of the citizen. The sovereignty of the Jacobins allows no more restrictions than the sovereignty of Bodin. The revolutionaries denounce federalism in the same terms that absolute monarchy employed, when, for example, it reproached the Protestants for wanting to cantonize France on the model of Switzerland. They hurl anathemas and struggle against local particularisms in the same way that royal power tried by every means to reduce the autonomy of the feudal nobility. To legitimate revolutionary justice, they advance the same arguments that Cardinal Richelieu used in defending the discretionary power of the ruler. With the Revolution, national sovereignty is in opposition to royal absolutism, not because it rejects absolutism per se, but because it is transferring the absolute prerogatives of the king to the nation.

“Certainly,” as Mona Ozouf has written,

the men of the Revolution appear to break with the old world, by inventing a society of free and equal individuals. In reality, they have inherited from absolutism a concept that is much older and more constraining: the idea of national sovereignty, a transcendent mythic body that is in command of individuals. And this idea very quickly recovers its efficacy, and the absolute sovereignty of the nation comes to fill the place left vacant by the absolute sovereignty of the king. . . . The Terror itself, far from being a desperate measure dreamed up by a Republic on the point of collapse, follows logically from what they have borrowed from the Ancien Régime.

If, by all the evidence, it violates the natural rights of individuals, the Terror does not at all violate the rights of the nation, which, on the contrary, it intends to guarantee and preserve. “The similarities between absolutism and Jacobinism,” writes Boroumand, “are easily explained. If the political reflexes and expedients are, before and after 1789, the same, it is from that fact that they are informed by the same principle: the sovereignty of the nation.” Thus, as Henri Mendras has observed,

What was a claim in the 16th century, became in France an absolute doctrine, an intangible principle for the monarchy during two centuries, then for the constitutions since 1791. This principle was a juridical fiction, an abstraction that was incarnate in the king as absolute prince. With the king gone, the Republic picked up the baton.

Alain de Benoist is the publisher of Krisis.

Madrid burns

2004-02-13 15:23 | User Profile

a commie warning about the alliances among intellectuals of the "Fascist" New Right and intellectuals of the movement of the Deep Ecology

[url]http://www.communalism.org/Archive/3/dspe.html[/url]

The Dark Side of Political Ecology By Peter Zegers

“If the word ecology is used to describe our outlook, it is preposterous to invoke deities, mystical forces to account for the evolution of first nature into second nature. Neither religion nor a spiritualistic vision of experience has any place in an ecological lexicon. Either the term ecology applies to natural phenomena by definition, or it is a chic metaphor for the disempowered consciousness that fosters mysticism or outright supernaturalism.”

[Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy. (Montréal: Black Rose, Second edition 1991) p. xxi]

The ecology movement has over the last decades been a battleground for both progressive and reactionary ideas. The notions one encounters in the ecology movements range from genuinely progressive and humanist ones to extremely misanthropic, even ecofascistic ones. In the essay “Will ecology become 'the dismal science'?” American social ecologist Murray Bookchin identified nearly ten years ago some of the anti-humanistic tendencies within the ecology movement in the United States: deep ecology, biocentrism, Gaian consciousness, and eco-theology. Basic to these outlooks is a suspicion of reason and an emphasis on the importance of intuitive and irrational approaches to ecological issues. Bookchin concluded the essay with this note: “It is not only the great mass of people that must make hard choices about humanity's future in a period of growing ecological dislocation; it is the ecology movement itself that must make hard choices about its sense of direction in a time of growing mystification.” (1) Since Bookchin’s essay was published in 1991, these anti-humanistic tendencies have unfortunately become even more prominent. A case in point is one of the leading American deep ecologists, Bill Devall. Together with George Sessions, Bill Devall introduced the ideas of Arne Næss, the founder of deep ecology, to the American public. Devall uttered on August 2, 1998, at the conference Gold and Green, a racist remark against Mexican immigrants: according to him, they “did what gangs of Mexicans always do – rape, pillage, burn, murder.” He also made the point that the owner of Maxxam Corporation (a firm threatening a redwood forest in California) was “a criminal Jewish capitalist.” Devall’s associate George Sessions, also present at this conference, lamented about the left wing perspective of a lot of people in the ecology movement and claimed that social justice issues only would distract attention from the real cause of the ecological crisis: overpopulation. In order to counteract the ecological imbalance Sessions suggested that an authoritarian regime should be implemented, like the one that ruled Japan from 1615 to 1836. (2) Is this just a marginal incident? Because of the premisses on which deep ecology is predicated I very much doubt this.

The Political Implications of Deep Ecology Deep ecology is a vague and formless concept and one can find all kinds of mixtures of reactionary and seemingly progressive ideas in it. Deep ecologists claim very different thinkers as pioneers of deep ecology, one can for example find Heidegger alongside Spinoza. No effort is made to explain how these very different thinkers can be rubricated in the same category. Commenting on this lack of coherence Arne Næss wrote: “Why Gleichschaltung? Why monolithic ideologies? We have had enough of those in both European and world history.” (3) To put a demand for coherence on a par with a Nazi operation is telling enough and reveals his limited understanding of fascism. Næss continues in the same article: “It would, in my view, be a cultural disaster for humankind if one philosophy or one religion were to become established on earth. It would be a disaster if future Green societies were so similar that they blocked the development of deep cultural differences.” (4) Does this also apply to human rights and democracy? In another interview he stated: “Diversity in every aspect of our existence should be a norm, whether it is biodiversity, cultural diversity or economic diversity. Diversity of ideas is also very important. If we thought that there is one correct idea, one absolute truth, one right way to sustainability, then we might end up creating a kind of eco-fascism. It is only through multiplicity, plurality, diversity and inclusivity that we can find self-realization. There is no one final definition of self-realization. Everyone will find their own meaning in this word. Through deep questioning we come to deep ecology and through deep ecology we come to self-realization, but all this means nothing. It remains a kind of theory. It is through practice that we find realization. As each one of us has our own body, we have our own ‘realization’.” (5) Maybe because of this limited understanding of eco-fascism Næss does not mind being published by extreme right wing publications in France and Italy. Indeed his ideas bear a close resemblance to the 'ethno-pluralism' advocated by Alain de Benoist and others in the Nouvelle Droite. American author Kirkpatrick Sale, who is very close to deep ecology, is very clear about the fact that democracy and human rights need not be respected, but that we instead should respect the denial of democracy and human rights! Kirkpatrick Sale wrote: “[Bioregional diversity] does not mean that every community in a bioregion, every subregion within an ecoregion, every ecoregion on a continent, would construct itself along the same lines, evolve the same political forms. Most particularly it does not mean that every bioregion would be likely to heed the values of democracy, equality, liberty, freedom, justice and the like, the sort that the liberal American tradition proclaims. Truly autonomous bioregions would inevitably go in separate and not necessarily complementary ways, creating their own political systems according to their own environmental settings and their own ecological needs … Different cultures could be expected to have quite different views about what political forms could best accomplish their bioregional goals, and (especially as we imagine this system on a global scale) those forms could be at quite some variance from the Western Enlightenment-inspired ideal. And however much one might find the thought unpleasant, that divergence must be expected and – if diversity is desirable – respected.” (6)

Not only does deep ecology oppose the universal concepts of democracy and human rights through its misguided understanding of diversity, the ideas of Næss verge also on the mystical and he himself seems to be aware of this since he quotes New Age-author Charlene Spretnak approvingly when she calls for 'emotional involvement and caring' instead of rational thinking. (7) It is therefore not very surprising that New Age-authors Fritjof Capra and Charlene Spretnak have embraced the label deep ecology. Fritjof Capra is like Spretnak very outspoken in his anti-rationalism: “Ultimately, deep ecological awareness is spiritual or religious awareness.” (8) Charlene Spretnak declares humanism to be the principal enemy of an ecological politics. In 1984 she said in an address to the annual gathering of the E.F. Schumacher Society: “Green politics rejects the anthropocentric orientation of humanism, a philosophy which posits that humans have the ability to confront and solve the many problems we face by applying human reason and by rearranging the natural world and the interactions of men and women so that human life will prosper.” (9) Spretnak and Capra wrote a book about the German Greens where they, in spite of the 'pluralism' of deep ecology, made very clear that they are hostile to left wing tendencies in the Green movement. (10) Unfortunately no such demarcation exists for right wing tendencies in the ecology movement. The Right seems to be very grateful to enter this lack of demarcation and it would indeed be very hard to demarcate deep ecology from the Right because it shows structural similarities with Right ideology. Although Capra and Spretnak seem to be aware of the German past, they have trouble seeing the continuity with the present. They describe Herbert Gruhl as a 'conservative' politician, whereas the term eco-fascist would be more appropriate. Gruhl was one of the founders of Die Grünen but left the party in 1982 (which Capra and Spretnak seem to regret and blame the 'marxists' for) to found the Ökologisch Demokratische Partei (Ecological Democratic Party). When this party decided in 1989 to distance itself from the extreme Right political party Die Republikaner against the will of Gruhl, he withdrew and founded the Unabhängige Ökologen Deutschlands. He was one of the first to use ecological discourse for xenophobic purposes. (11) Capra and Spretnak also do not seem to understand why many Germans are so suspicious about ideas that bear a close resemblance to the Blut und Boden (Blood and soil) theories of the Nazis. Instead of analyzing this resemblance and continuity, they choose to ignore it and as a consequence they were uncritical of Rudolf Bahro's views that only a few years later culminated into a kind of spiritual fascism. (12)

Deep ecology is a very eclectic bag of ideas and there are yet other features that are very disturbing because of the reactionary implications. Fundamental for deep ecology is the completely unfounded assertion that the ecological crisis is caused by 'overpopulation'. There is not a single line in the vast literature on deep ecology that explains why this would be the case. It is simply a matter of faith for adherents of deep ecology and because of this, critique of this aspect has not resulted in a change of ideas in this matter. (13) Some of the supporters of deep ecology have publicly stated that AIDS and famines are nature's revenge on humankind and that we should not do anything about it. A case in point is Dave Foreman, an activist of the environmental direct action group Earth First!, who said in an interview to Bill Devall: “When I tell people how the worst we could do in Ethiopia is to give aid – the best thing would be to just let nature seek its own balance, to let the people there just starve – they think that is monstrous. But the alternative is that you go in and save these half-dead children who never will live a whole life. Their development will be stunted. And what is going to happen in ten years' time is that twice as many people will suffer and die. Likewise, letting the USA be an overflow valve for problems in Latin America is not solving a thing. It is just putting more pressure on resources we have in the USA. It is just causing more destruction of our wilderness, more poisoning of water and air, and it is not helping the problems in Latin America.” (14) Not a single protest against this raving was uttered by Devall, one of the leading exponents of deep ecology in the United States. We understand from his statements at the Gold and Green conference quoted above why Bill Devall did not bother to contradict Foreman. Deep ecology lacks a theory of the social causes of the environmental crisis and the only solution they can think of is a reduction of population. How to achieve this is not made clear, but some supporters do not exclude draconic, indeed eco-fascistic measures.

The anti-humanist notion of 'biocentrism', the notion that all living beings have equal 'intrinsic worth', is another disturbing feature in deep ecology. This 'biocentrism' has its counterpart in 'anthropocentrism', the view that human happiness and welfare should precede all other priorities. In the book The Arrogance of Humanism (1981) David Ehrenfeldt wrote in this 'biocentric' vain about the right of the smallpox-virus to exist. Since then tons of paper have been produced with articles about 'intrinsic worth', 'biocentric democracy', and 'biocentrism' and its implications. Indeed deep ecology has become a booming academic industry. The way seems to be opened for the discussion of how much human suffering and death is acceptable in the name of an 'ecological ethics'. Again, there is not the faintest idea about the social roots of the environmental problems. All people, regardless of their position in society, are held equally responsible for the destruction of the environment in this view. Humanity's 'original sin' was 'anthropocentrism' (theological words apply very neatly in this way of thinking). Deep ecologists have a very static view on nature or 'wilderness'. As important as they profess to value 'wilderness', they never explain very much the meaning of this concept. For them 'nature' is just a scenic view, untouched by human intervention even though in reality there is no 'wilderness' left on this earth. Nevertheless some deep ecologists want to exclude people from some areas, at least people not living 'traditional' (pre-1500 A.D., according to Foreman) lifestyles. (15) Hand in hand with their reverence for 'wild' nature goes a depreciation of science and technology. These are held responsible for the desacralization of nature and consequently the destruction of the environment. Bill Devall, in his usual subtle way, states it like this: “Students in natural resources sciences and management – are much like the guards in Nazi death camps.” (16) In another passage he makes the same comparison: “I see an analogy between rescuers of Jews and homosexuals in Nazi-occupied Europe and strategic monkeywrenching (a tactic used by the environmental direct action group Earth First!, PZ) in the late twentieth century.” (17) Like Næss, Devall has no hesitations about using inappropriate analogies that trivialize the Holocaust.

The Extreme Right and Ecology Even more disturbing than the reactionary implications of basic tenets of deep ecology is the use of ecological concepts by groups and individuals of the extreme Right. Many people in the ecology movement consider themselves to be 'beyond Left and Right', but this position unfortunately makes them very vulnerable to overtures from the extreme Right, which (especially in Europe) is trying to modernize its rhetoric (the slogan was, tellingly enough, invented by the German right wing ecologist Herbert Gruhl for Die Grünen). By adopting ecological themes and concepts and incorporating them into its propaganda, the extreme Right today is seeking to gain mainstream public acceptance. For example, in France the Nouvelle Droite (New Right) has shown a lot of interest in deep ecology. Nouvelle Droite is the name for a tendency in the extreme right wing milieu that tries to modernize its ideology. A central organization in this field is the Groupement de Recherche et d'Études pour la Civilisation Européenne, founded in 1968. Its leading ideologue is Alain de Benoist, who is constantly changing his ideas, but nonetheless always opposed the egalitarian ideas that originated in the Enlightenment. (18) It is far beyond the scope of this article to explain in any detail the history of GRECE. (19) Suffice it for now to say that De Benoist and his supporters became interested in ecology around 1993. In an article about the European New Right (ENR) Mark Wegierski wrote: “Although some ENR members at one time advocated technocracy, they have now embraced ecology as one of the most hopeful tendencies on the planet today. The 1993 GRECE colloquium was dedicated to ecology.” (20) From the milieu around GRECE a new ecological organization was founded in the early nineties. This organization called Nouvelle Écologie (New Ecology) organizes conferences and lectures and publishes the magazine Le recours aux forêts. Nouvelle Écologie regards itself as the French branch of the international deep ecology movement and tries to influence the ecology movement toward a right wing direction.

Even as the extreme Right has picked up and incorporated ecological themes, some prominent ecologists have themselves evolved toward reactionary positions and do not mind to work together very closely with the extreme Right. The British ecologist Edward Goldsmith is a case in point. Goldsmith has been a well-known figure in the international environmentalist movement for several decades. In 1970 he founded the journal The Ecologist, which has long been a leading voice for the movement. He was one of the authors of the 1972 bestseller A Blueprint for Survival. Already in this book some conservative views were exhibited: “If there is no hierarchy there will be constant bickering and fighting. There will also be no mechanism for ensuring the perpetuation of those qualities required if the society is to survive.” (21) The overall obsession in Blueprint is 'stability' and 'order'. According to the authors of Blueprint the causes of the environmental crisis are to be found in economic and demographic growth. Like the authors of the Limits to Growth report of the conservative Club of Rome, whom they regard as like-minded individuals, their view on the environmental crisis is extremely limited. In 1991 he received the Right Livelihood Award, the 'alternative Nobel prize'. He is presently very much involved with international campaigns against the WTO, MAI, nuclear energy, and genetically modified organisms. For years, Goldsmith had also been known for his socially paleo-conservative views, especially on the role of women and the family. In an interview he said: “In my view women perform a very important role, both with regard to social coherence as well as of the viewpoint of the protection of the environment. They do not have the typical male chauvinism and competiteveness. I am in favor of the kind of feminism Vandana Shiva stands for, whom I know very well by the way, but which is completely at odds with the American kind of feminism that in the end results only in a reversal of male chauvinism into female chauvisnism. You know, one has to accept the differences between men and women, just like those of ethnic groups and cultures. For me, as well as for Shiva, cultural, ethnic, and also biological diversity, destroyed by the global economy, are very important.” (22) In The Way: An Ecological World-View (1992, revised and enlarged edition 1998) Goldsmith tries to formulate his worldview. Like Fritjof Capra he bases his views on an unlikely mix of mechanistic systems theory and eastern mysticism. Many of Goldsmiths ideas focus on religion and its alleged role in shaping the social order. Western society went wrong, he asserts, when it embraced technology, science, and progress instead of the traditional 'Way' (or Tao). The monotheistic religions are also to blame for the desacralization of nature. Goldsmith thinks society should be reorganized so that it accords with the precepts of 'Gaia' which means arranged in the same plan and governed by the same laws as the Cosmos and the natural world. Religion is the means through which the laws of nature should be instrumentalized in society. Goldsmith puts it himself this way: “The argument put forward in this book is that we can only conceivably do better if, among other things, we set out to re-interpret our problems in the light of a very different world-view – the worldview of ecology – inspired as it must be by the chthonic world-view entertained by our remote ancestors who knew, as modern man no longer knows, how to live on this planet.” (23) He sees potential in the religious fundamentalist movements in the Moslem world and India. He states: “[t]here are signs … that such movements are likely to preach a return to the vernacular way of life …[A] considerable proportion of the revitalist movements that have so far sprung up in the Third World have been 'nativistic' – which is to say that they correctly attributed the ills against they were reacting to the way of life imposed upon them by their colonial masters, and preached a return to the Way of their ancestors ... We cannot afford to wait and see whether such movements will develop into revivalist cults that are powerful enough to transform our society. Instead, we should work towards their development by helping to create the conditions in which they are likely to emerge. Let us remember that the world-view of ecology is very much that of the vernacular community-based society.” (24) Interestingly, he refers a few times very favorably to deep ecology in his book The Way: An Ecological World-View, which he hopes will develop into a movement to perform the task put forward in the book. Goldsmith thanks deep ecology founder Arne Næss, “who, after reading a summary of this book in The Ecologist, urged me to complete it and get it published.” (25) The view that people should obey the laws of nature (or Gaia) can be found in deep ecology, but also in New Age and the Nouvelle Droite.

The views of Goldsmith are also a potential justification for racism. Nicholas Hildyard, a former associate of Goldsmith, wrote a critique of his views and showed convincingly that he is in favor of separation of different so called 'ethnic groups'. (26) In an article for The Ecologist Goldsmith wrote: “The Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland constitute two distinct ethnic groups, of different origin, with different manners and traditions and different motivations and capacities. They could occupy the same geographic area and form a single society if they were capable of living in cultural symbiosis with each other, which they have done up to now. The Catholics, however, are no longer willing to fill the lower echelons of the economic hierarchy, as the cultural pattern which previously enabled them to do so has largely broken down. The only remaining solution is to separate them territorially. Ataturk separated Greeks and Turks very successfully, although there was a terrible outcry at the time and it undoubtedly caused considerable inconvenience to the people who were forced to migrate. But should we not be willing to accept measures of inconvenience in order to establish a stable society?” (27) Few people would agree with his rather peculiar view that Irish Catholics and Protestants are two distinct ethnic groups. In his book The Way he adds more in general: “Social evolution has led to the development of complex social groupings and to a wide diversity of different ethnic groups, each perfectly adapted to the specialized environment in which it lives.” (28) This view accords perfectly with Nouvelle Droite views on ethnicity, which is also in favor of territorial separation of different 'ethnic' groups. In the 1990s he therefore has become very attractive to the Nouvelle Droite.

The popularity of Goldsmith's writings among the Nouvelle Droite has made him welcome at Nouvelle Droite conferences. On 27 November 1994 he was one of the featured speakers for the 25th annual conference of GRECE, the major Nouvelle Droite organization in France. Its theme was (very tellingly) “Left-Right: the end of a system.” He also gave an interview to their magazine Elements in October 1996. Goldsmith was also a welcome guest at the conference of the Flemish connection of Nouvelle Droite in Belgium. On 11 November 1997 he was a speaker on the third colloquium of the Delta Stichting, the Belgian connection of GRECE, about How can we survive decadence? His speech was called Against progress: the U-turn we need. Another speaker at this conference was Alain de Benoist, with whom Goldsmith obviously does not mind sharing a platform. Goldsmith has also contributed his writings to Nouvelle Droite publications, such as the Flemish Tekos. This magazine is published by the Delta Foundation, which has a lot of contacts with the extreme Right Vlaams Blok (Flemish Bloc). Guy de Martelaere, collaborator of Tekos, found translating Goldsmith’s writings to be an uplifting experience: “The Tekos-colloquium in Antwerp on 11 November was a big success. The conservative-ecological theses of Edward Goldsmith have attracted a lot of interest and acceptance from Nouvelle Droite audiences, which partly have yet to discover green thought. Alain de Benoist, internationally the leading ideologue of the Nouvelle Droite, and Luc Pauwels, chief editor of the Belgian periodical Tekos, are moving into an ecological direction, inspired among other things by contact with Goldsmith and his ideas. I myself got the task to translate one of Goldsmith's most recent and philosophically profound articles for Tekos.” (29)

In recent years, Goldsmith has also been an active supporter of Nouvelle Écologie in France. Laurent Ozon, a disciple of Alain de Benoist, is the director of this organization. Laurent Ozon wrote in an article about housing: “For ecologists it is today essential to safeguard for every people its creative local expression, its possibility even to live or to exist as a constructive part of a culture that participates in the diversity of life. Because the uprooting caused by the individualization of style and the globalization of construction standards is an important weapon in the war waged by the forces of money, hate, and standardization against the natural communities and their ecosystems.” (30) The writings of Goldsmith are an important source of inspiration for Ozon. Besides being the director of Nouvelle Écologie, Ozon has very active against the war of NATO in Kosovo as the leading figure in the Collectif Non à la Guerre, which tried to build an alliance between Left and Right in opposition to the the intervention of NATO in Kosovo. Nouvelle Écologie also has the support of Antoine Waechter, the leading exponent of the 'neither Left nor Right' faction within the green movement in France, the socalled 'ninis'. On May 29, 1989, Waechter declared on French public television: “To open the borders for foreigners is a dangerous utopia. Bearing in mind the demographic explosion in the Third World, there would be millions of people wandering to an already overpopulated Europe. The damage on the cultural and environmental level would be devastating.” (31) How would the Nouvelle Droite not be interested in such an ecologist? In September 1993 Krisis, the journal edited by Alain de Benoist, asked for and got an interview from him. In this interview Waechter said: “[I]f there is a place today for an autonomous ecological movement, it is precisely because political ecology is accompanied by a philosophy of action completely different than that supported by the Right-Left cleavage, that structured the French political landscape for two centuries and shows today clear signs of exhaustion.” (32) Waechter broke away from Les Verts in 1994 because he thought they were too much leaning toward the Left and he founded the political party Mouvement Écologiste Indépendant (Independent Ecology Movement). The new party received the full support of Nouvelle Écologie and its whereabouts got plenty of coverage in Le recours aux forêts (the title of this magazine is a reference to an article by the German extreme right wing author Ernst Jünger that was translated to French and published in Krisis in 1993). Waechter has made several electoral alliances with the autonomists in Alsace. The autonomist party in Alsace (like in Brittany) has a long history in right wing politics. In an interview in Alsace Presse in December 1998 Waechter explained his differences with Les Verts, and its candidate Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Waechter said: “Our list is truly ecological, whereas that of Daniel Cohn-Bendit is a list of the Left with an ecological coloration. Our aim is to make sure that the list of Les Verts does not accumulate the votes of distracted voters, that is the votes of the Leftists and the votes of those with an ecological sensibility that could be seduced by the centrist discours of Cohn-Bendit.” (33) In a letter to the daily Libération Waechter protested against the accusation of working together closely with extreme Rightists on a conference in Paris in January 1999: “What are they reproaching me for? To have participated in a forum and presenting a lecture about Robert Hainard. Is there a single idea in my lecture that resembles closely or distantly the theses of the extreme Right? No, for sure. Is there a single word from the moderator, Laurent Ozon, that would justify such a connection? Not any more so. Burt Laurent Ozon has had the courage to ask some iconoclast questions and to gather some intellectuals of different persuasions to answer them. This is disturbing because this enterprise is situated outside of the convenient cleavage. Just like an ecological list is disturbing because it destroys the myth according to which the ecologists are represented at the European elections by Les Verts. Why can not the Left and the Right deal with the emergence of political ideas that are different from socialism and liberalism?” (34)

Edward Goldsmith was, like Antoine Waechter, one of the featured speakers in this conference in Paris which had as its theme: Ecology against progress? It was organized by Nouvelle Écologie and Goldsmith presented his usual paleo-conservative views on Family, Community, Democracy. Of course Alain de Benoist and several other people of the Nouvelle Droite were also present. A report of this conference was published in Le recours aux forêts, the magazine of Nouvelle Écologie, which earlier devoted a special issue to the views of Edward Goldsmith. In the interview in this special issue of Le recours aux forêts on his views, Goldsmith said: “In both France and England, as well as in Germany, the Greens have the tendency to align themselves with the Left, because the Left is thought of as being less linked to the big multinational corporations, and therefor more inclined to protect the interests of the people. But, in my view, this will change, because of the simple reason that there practically no difference anymore between the Left and the Right, neither in France nor in Germany and the United States … It goes without saying that it is a question of time before a party will be created to represent all these groups that are marginalized by the global economy and also of those who want to preserve what is left of our society, of its culture, and its natural environment. The next political cleavage will be the one between the parties in favor of the global economy and those in favor of the local and communitarian economy. Of course I hope the ecologists will play an important role in the formation of this party, that could be a federation of parties.” (35)

In advance of the European elections of May 1999, Goldsmith tried to put his ideas into practice and he wanted to form an electoral alliance with Waechter's MEI. But in February 1999 the right wing affiliations of both Edward Goldsmith and Antoine Waechter were exposed, whereupon the alliance was broken up. (36) Fortunately Waechter’s MEI did not get many votes in the subsequent election. In September 1999 Goldsmith wrote a letter to the magazine Silence in which he defended his attendance at the conference of GRECE in 1994 by stating that he also spoke at a conference organized by the trotskyist party in Switzerland. He says he never checks the organizations who invite him to speak at their conferences. He states that he does not know about the current political views of GRECE (although he admits that it was founded from a extreme Rightist background) and he defends Alain de Benoist by saying that the Frenchman is critical of the views on immigration of the Front National. Indeed, De Benoist is critical of Front National, but that does not mean he is not part of the extreme right wing. It seems to escape Goldsmith that not every criticism of the Front National is necessarily progressive. De Benoist is in disagreement with the strategy used by Front National, not its principles. Goldsmith also denied that he was involved with financing the MEI campaign for the European elections but Antoine Waechter said otherwise in a press statement issued by the MEI dated 7 December 1998. Very revealing Goldsmith writes at the end of this letter: “It may be worthwhile to mention that all my African, Hindu and Polynesian friends (except those who were too much exposed to Western influences) agree on the principles of this worldview.” (37) Makes one wonder where these friends stand in the political spectrum. Goldsmith seems to believe in some kind of cultural apartheid and that different cultures should not influence one another.

Alain de Benoist said of Goldsmith in an interview: “I am … in sympathy with the views expressed by … Edward Goldsmith, in such works as The great U-turn (1988), The Way: an Ecological Worldview (1991) and again, very recently, in a collection of pieces entitled The Case against the Global Economy and for a Turn toward the Local (Sierra Club Books, San Francisco 1996).” (38) Goldsmith's book was translated into French as Le défi du XXIe siècle - Une vision écologique du monde. His book is very well received by the connections of the Nouvelle Droite in Germany and Italy as well. The Way was translated to German and Heinz-Siegfried Strelow, one of the leading exponents of the Unabhängigen Ökologen Deutschlands (Independent Ecologists of Germany) wrote that it should become obligatory reading for conservative ecologists (which is nothing but an euphemism for ecofascists). (39) In Italy The Way was published as Il Tao dell'Ecologia and Goldsmith also contributed an article to the right wing magazine Diorama Letterario under the same title. (40) This magazine is the Italian connection of GRECE and headed by Marco Tarchi, a political scientist working at the university of Florence. Goldsmith went to Florence on 17 February 1999 to speak about Community, Local Economies, and Globalization. He did not mind sharing a platform with Marco Tarchi on this occasion. Tarchi is a well-known supporter of GRECE, a former member of the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano and nowadays very close to the separatist Lega Nord. He professes an interest in the deep ecology of Arne Næss. (41) In a review of Robyn Eckersley's Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward an Eco-centric Aproach for the British far Right magazine The Scorpion the known neo-nazi Michael Walker wrote: “[I]t is precisely deep ecology and bio-regionalism that are most likely to inspire a conservative or anti-liberal, even anti-humanist, dare we say even racialist, green perspective. There is no lack of dire warnings from the Left about the dangers for the uninitiated of bio-regionalism, which by its very name invites the novice to consider the biological implications of the conservation of differences. Deep ecology is so radical in its anti-capitalism that anti-capitalism is more important than anti-fascism and saving the world more important than either, more important than anything else in fact.” (42) Fortunately so far there have been no signs of the far Right making serious overtures to the ecology movement in Britain, but judging from this assessment of Michael Walker, the ecology movement should be very vigilant.

The Challenge for the Ecology Movement There is a very real danger that the right wing will significantly influence the ideology and practice of the ecology movement. The Nouvelle Droite will gladly take the opportunity to use the similarities in thinking of the anti-humanist and anti-rationalist currents in the ecology movement. In this they have the full support of Edward Goldsmith. The ecology movement once was a very promising movement, but unfortunately the promise of a new kind of politics was never fulfilled. Instead it drifted into mysticism and religion on the one hand and to an uncritical acceptance of the status quo on the other hand (cfr. Les Verts in France, Die Grünen in Germany, Agalev and Ecolo in Belgium, I Verdi in Italy). The current rise of mysticism, religion, and obscurantism in Europe and North America will be regarded by the right wing as a gigantic opportunity to spread their message. In spite of the statement by the neo-nazi Michael Walker about the anti-capitalist nature of deep ecology, capitalism has nothing to fear from mystical ecology. The social causes of environmental degradation are 'deeply' mystified by the acolytes of deep ecology, bioregionalism and ecofeminism. It is more likely that these tendencies will result in authoritarian measures against the poor and weak in society. As an antidote to this kind of thinking American social ecologists Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier wrote: “What prevents ecological politics from yielding reaction or fascism is an ecology movement that maintains a broad social emphasis, one that places the ecological crisis in a social context.” (43) Rather than in a context of race, ethnicity, bioregion, mysticism, and the like, ecological politics should be embedded in the struggle against hierarchical domination and class exploitation, the fundamental social causes of environmental problems.

Ecology, if unmediated by social theory and philosophy, can easily result in terrible disasters. Context is all-important, as Murray Bookchin points out correctly: “To think ecologically is to enter the domain of nature philosophy. This can be a very perilous step. Serious political ambiguities persist in nature philosophy itself: namely its potential to nourish reaction as well as revolution. Contemporary society is still seared by images of nature that have fostered highly reactionary political views. Vaporous slogans about 'community' and humanity's 'oneness with nature' easily interplay with the legacy of 'naturalistic' nationalism that reached its genocidal apogee in Nazism, with its myths of race and 'blood and soil'. It requires only a minor ideological shift from the ideas of the nineteenth-century Romantic movement and William Blake's mystical anarchism to arrive at Richard Wagner's mystical nationalism.” (44) With the goal of creating a rational, humanist, and truly democratic society, social ecology stands out as the complete opposite of the current anti-humanist, irrationalist, and authoritarian trends in the ecology movement and in society at large. We have to make hard choices and think critically and rationally about these choices. We face a grim future if the battle against the reactionary trends is not won.

Notes

1. Murray Bookchin, “Will Ecology become 'the Dismal Science'?” in The Progressive (1991). Reprinted in Which Way for the Ecology Movement? (Edinburgh & San Francisco: AK Press, 1994).

2. Quoted in David Kubrin, “Toxic Ideologies” in Reclaiming Quarterly, Summer 1999.

3. Arne Næss, “Deep Ecology and Ultimate Premises” in The Ecologist, Vol. 18, Nos. 4/5 (1988). Reprinted in Society and Nature, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1992), p. 108.

4. idem, p. 113.

5. Interview with Arne Næss and Helena Norberg-Hodge in Resurgence, January 1997.

6. Kirkpatrick Sale, Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1991), p. 108.

7. Arne Næss, “Deep Ecology and Ultimate Premises” in The Ecologist, Vol. 18, Nos. 4/5 (1988). Reprinted in Society and Nature, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1992), p. 112.

8. Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter (London: Flamingo, 1997), p. 7. In The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (1982) Capra also stated his support for deep ecology.

9. Charlene Spretnak, The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics (Santa Fe: Bear & Co., 1986), p. 27.

10. Fritjof Capra and Charlene Spretnak, Green Politics: The Global Promise (London: Hutchinson, 1984).

11. For Herbert Gruhl, see Janet Biehl, “'Ecology' and the Modernization of Fascism in the German Ultra-right” in Janet Biehl & Peter Staudenmaier, Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience (Edinburgh & San Francisco: AK Press, 1995). I also highly recommend the writings of Jutta Ditfurth, Feuer in die Herzen: Gegen die Entwertung des Menschen (Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag, 1997) and Entspannt in die Barbarei. (Öko-)Faschismus und Biozentrismus (Hamburg: Konkret Literatur Verlag, 1996). Although there was a public break between the ÖDP and Gruhl, this did not have much influence on the formers ideology. In fact they continued to spread his books and pamphlets and kept informal relations with their erstwhile leader.

12. For Rudolf Bahro, see Janet Biehl, ”'Ecology' and the Modernization of Fascism in the German Ultra-right”. See also the exchange between James Hart and Ullrich Melle who defend Rudolf Bahro and Janet Biehl in Democracy & Nature #11/12 (Vol. 4, no. 2/3, 1998).

13. See Murray Bookchin, Re-enchanting Humanity: A Defense of the Human Spirit against Anti-Humanism, Misanthropy, Mysticism and Primitivism (London: Cassell, 1995).

14. Dave Foreman interviewed by Bill Devall, “A Spanner in the Woods” in Simply Living Vol. 12 (c. 1986). Quoted in Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology (Montréal: Black Rose, second revised edition, 1995), p. 117. In 1989 there was a public debate in New York between Dave Foreman and Murray Bookchin about their differences. Foreman distanced himself from his statements in the interview he gave to Bill Devall in this debate, but soon thereafter he started using the same eco-brutalist language again. This is hardly surprising because it is inherent in 'biocentric' thinking. After leaving Earth First!, Foreman joined the board of directors of the conservationist organization Sierra Club and tried, fortunately unsuccessfully so far, to have it adopt an anti-immigration policy. The debate was published in Steve Chase (ed.), Defending the Earth: A Dialogue between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman (Boston: South End Press, 1991).

15. Dave Foreman, “A Modest Proposal for a Wilderness Preserve System” in Whole Earth Review #53 (Winter 1986). Quoted by Bill Devall, Simple in Means, Rich in Ends: Practicing Deep Ecology (Layton: Gibbs Smith, 1988), pp. 164-165.

16. Bill Devall, Simple in Means, Rich in Ends, p. 49.

17. ibid., p. 149.

18. For his intellectual development see the detailed analysis of Pierre-André Taguieff in Sur la Nouvelle Droite (Paris: Descartes & Cie, 1994). Unfortunately Taguieff takes the proclamations of De Benoist about his politics being neither Left nor Right far too serious.

19. In Krisis #15 De Benoist published “La nature et sa valeur intrinsique” (September 1993). Under the pseudonym Robert de Herte he wrote in Elements #79 “Les deux écologies”, “Herbert Gruhl et les 'verts' allemands” and “Écologie et réligion” (January 1994).

20. Mark Wegierski, “The European New Right” in Telos #98/99 (Winter 1993/Fall 1994). Telos, once a leading neo-marxist theoretical journal in the United States, has unfortunately been transformed into a platform for European Nouvelle Droite authors.

21. The Ecologist, A Blueprint for Survival (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 102. For a critique of its conservatism see David Pepper, The Roots of Modern Environmentalism (London & New York: Routledge, 1984).

22. Edward Goldsmith interviewed by Paul Gimeno in Oikos #3. Oikos is a publication of the Belgian (Flemish) green party Agalev. My translation from the Dutch. For a critique of the reactionary ecofeminism of Vandana Shiva, see the excellent essay by Maria Wölflingseder, “Kosmischer Größenwahnsinn. Biologistische und rassistische Tendenzen im New Age und im spirituellen Ökofeminismus” in Gerhard Kern & Lee Taynor (eds.), Die esoterische Verführung: Angriffe auf Vernunft und Freiheit (Aschaffenburg: Alibri Verlag, 1995), pp. 187-210. See also from the same author “Fetisch Weiblichkeit: Über die diffizilen Zusammenhänge zwischen spirituellen Ökofeminismus und rechter Ideologie” in: Renate Bitzan (ed.), Rechte Frauen: Skingirls, Walküren und feine Damen (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1997), pp. 56-71. For a critique of American ecofeminism see Janet Biehl, Rethinking Ecofeminist Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1991).

23. Edward Goldsmith, The Way: An Ecological World-View (Athens GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998). Revised and enlarged edition, p. 424.

24. Edward Goldsmith, idem p. 437-438.

25. Edward Goldsmith, idem p. xvii.

26. Nicholas Hildyard, `Blood' and 'Culture': Ethnic Conflict and the Authoritarian Right (London: Cornerhouse briefing #11, January 1999).

27. Edward Goldsmith, “Basic Principles of Cultural Ecology” in The Ecologist, Vol. 1, no. 12, 1971, p. 4. Quoted by Nicholas Hildyard, op. cit., pp. 12-13.

28. Edward Goldsmith, The Way, p. 420.

29. Guy de Martelaere, “Nieuws en korte beschouwingen” in Gwenved #23 (January 1998). Guy de Martelaere also publishes in the British right wing periodicals Perspectives: European identities, autonomies and initiatives, edited by the Transeuropa Collective, and Alternative Green, a magazine edited by Richard Hunt. My translation from the Dutch. In 1997 Tekos (no. 85) published a translation of the first editorial Goldsmith wrote in 1970 for The Ecologist. It also published a translation of “Scientific superstitions” (from The Ecologist, vol. 27, no. 5, Sept/Oct. 1997). Guy de Martelaere translated parts of The Way to Dutch for the publishing house of Tekos. Goldsmith also gave an interview to the right wing Belgian periodical De Vrijbuiter (Spring 1998) in which he praised the traditional family and traditional community.

30. Laurent Ozon, “L'habitat, un enjeu pour les écologistes” in Le recours aux forêts #4. My translation from the French. Ozon's articles are translated and published in Italian in Diorama Letteraria, and in Dutch in the extreme right wing paper of Voorpost, SOS-Nieuwsbrief.

31. Quoted by Philippe Pelletier, L'imposture écologiste (Paris: Reclus, 1993), pp. 101-102. My translation from the French. See also Thierry Maricourt, Les nouvelles passarelles de l'extrême droite (Paris: Syllepse, 1997).

32. “Ni droite, ni gauche. Entretien avec Antoine Waechter” in Krisis #15 (September 1993), pp. 16-23. My translation from the French. In the same issue was published “Eight Theses on Deep Ecology” by Arne Næss.

33. Interview with Antoine Waechter in Alsace Presse, 8 December 1998. My translation from the French.

34. Antoine Waechter, Libération, 15 February 1999. My translation from the French.

35. Interview with Edward Goldsmith in Le recours aux forêts #3. My translation from the French.

36. Christiane Chombeau, “Le dérive extrémiste d'Antoine Waechter” in Le Monde, 18 February 1999. Nicole Gauthier, “Waechter accusé par les siens de dérive brune” Libération, 12 February 1999.

37. Letter of Edward Goldsmith in Silence #248 (September 1999). Emphasis added. My translation from the French. Arne Næss seem to share this purist, ‘nativist’ view: “The quite young Dalai Lama was exalted by cameras and films that were ‘smuggled’ to him … When such a central personality, raised from the cradle in a strong culture, tumbles headlong for something so specifically Western technology as a camera, what chances does the culture have to survive? The enthusiasm of the Dalai Lama maybe reveals the demonic force of modern industrial technology.” Arne Næss, Økologi, samfunn og livsstil (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 5th edition 1976) pp. 111-112. Translation from the Norwegian by Eirik Eiglad.

38. Alain de Benoist interviewed in the British right wing magazine Right Now! A Magazine of Politics, Ideas, and Culture, 1997.

39. Heinz-Siegfried Strelow in Junge Freiheit #47 (1996), quoted by Jean Cremet, “Neue Rechte: jetzt generationen- übergreifend” in AK 403, 5 June 1997. The UÖD split away from the Ökologisch-Demokratische Partei (Ecological Democratic Party). The MEI is affiliated with the latter. Reports of Hannes Krill in the Süddeutsche Zeitung of 26 and 29 January 2000 indicate that the split between Die Grünen and the ÖDP could be restored in the near future. Die Grünen have got rid of their left wing that temporarily blocked the influence of the ecofascists.

40. Edward Goldsmith, “Il tao dell'ecologia” in Diorama Letteraria #214 (May 1998).

41. Marco Tarchi, “Cari liberali, adesso è vostro il pensiero unico” in Liberal #26 (May 1997). Tarchi also contributed to the American journal Telos, see “In Search of Right and Left” in Telos #103 (Spring 1995). Like De Benoist Tarchi is critical of Alleanza Nazionale (the former Movimento Sociale Italiano), but that does not mean he is not right wing, he is merely from a rival tendency on the Right.

42. Michael Walker, “A Darker Shade of Green” in The Scorpion #19. This British magazine is very close to GRECE. Michael Walker is also a collaborator of Elemente, the magazine of the German branch of the Nouvelle Droite.

43. Janet Biehl and Peter Staudenmaier, “Introduction” in Ecofascism, pp. 2-3.

44. Murray Bookchin, The Philosophy of Social Ecology, pp. 101-102. Emphasis added.

Faust

2004-02-16 04:06 | User Profile

Madrid burns,

Thanks for posting this stuff.

NeoNietzsche

2004-02-16 04:32 | User Profile

Guidance for the Goyim:

[QUOTE]The origins of modern totalitarianism are not difficult to trace. In a secular form, they are tied to the same radical strains of intolerance whose religious causes we have just examined. The organization of totalitarianism is patterned after the organization of the Christian Church, and in a similar manner totalitarianisms exploit the themes of the "masses"—the themes inherent in contemporary mass democracy. This secularization of the system has, in fact, rendered totalitarianism more dangerous—independently of the fact that religious intolerance often triggers, in return, an equally destructive revolutionary intolerance. "Totalitarianism," writes Gilbert Durand, "is further strengthened, in so far as the powers of monotheist theology (which at least left the game of transcendence intact) have been transferred to a human institution, to the Grand Inquisitor."

It is a serious error to assume that totalitarianism manifests its real character only when it employs crushing coercion. Historical experience has demonstrated—and continues to demonstrate—that there can exist a "clean" totalitarianism, which, in a "soft" manner, yields the same consequences as the classic kinds of totalitarianism. "Happy robots" of 1984 or of Brave New World have no more enviable conditions than prisoners of the camps. In essence, totalitarianism did not originate with Saint-Just, Stalin, Hegel, or Fichte. Rather, as Michel Maffesoli says, totalitarianism emerges "when a subtle form of plural, polytheistic, and contradictory totality, that is inherent in organic interdependency" is superseded by a monotheistic one. Totalitarianism grows out of a desire to establish social and human unity by reducing the diversity of individuals and peoples to a single model. In this sense, he argues, it is legitimate to speak of a "polytheist social arena, referring to multiple and complementary gods" versus a "monotheistic political arena founded on the illusion of unity." Once the polytheism of values "disappears, we face totalitarianism." Pagan thought, on the other hand, which fundamentally remains attached to rootedness and to the place, and which is a preferential center of the crystallization of human identity, rejects all religious and philosophical forms of universalism.[/QUOTE]

Go Pagans!

Texas Dissident

2004-02-17 00:24 | User Profile

Guidance for Nazis and those misled souls who may be entertaining the idea....

Nazism and communism seduced the masses with different ideals, both of which can appear equally attractive. The whole problem comes from what the realization of these ideals implied in both cases: the eradication of part of humanity. From this viewpoint, the distinction between extermination as a means to realize a political objective and extermination as an end in itself is doubtful: no regime has ever seen the massacres it engaged in as an 'end in itself.' Courtois characterizes "racial genocide" and "class genocide" as two sub-categories of "crimes against humanity." In both cases, the end is the same. Both the utopia of a classless society and of a pure race required the elimination of those presumed to be obstacles to the realization of a "grandiose" project, impediments to the realization of a radically better society. In both cases, the ideology (racial or class struggle) led to a bad principle: the exclusion of whole categories ("inferior" races or "harmful" classes) composed of people whose only crime was to belong to one of these categories, i.e., to exist. Both systems designated an absolute enemy with whom it was impossible to compromise. In both cases, the result was planned terror. Class or racial hatred, social or racial prophylaxis, it is all the same.

• from Alain de Benoist's "Nazism and Communism -- Evil Twins"

NeoNietzsche

2004-02-17 01:09 | User Profile

[QUOTE=Texas Dissident] Guidance for Nazis and those misled souls who may be entertaining the idea....[/QUOTE]

It's most unfortunate that Benoist's analysis is insufficiently thorough such that he should senselessly endorse the pernicious metaphysical nonsense involved in speaking of "crimes against humanity" or in classifying an attempt at racial homogeneity as "utopian" in the measure of that toward a classless society or in merely arbitrarily adjudging a principle as "bad".

This is very disappointing.

BjarniTyrdal

2004-02-17 01:59 | User Profile

Guidance for Nazis and those who are entertaining the idea.... Quote: Nazism and communism seduced the masses with different ideals, both of which can appear equally attractive. The whole problem comes from what the realization of these ideals implied in both cases: the eradication of part of humanity. From this viewpoint, the distinction between extermination as a means to realize a political objective and extermination as an end in itself is doubtful: no regime has ever seen the massacres it engaged in as an 'end in itself.' Courtois characterizes "racial genocide" and "class genocide" as two sub-categories of "crimes against humanity." In both cases, the end is the same. Both the utopia of a classless society and of a pure race required the elimination of those presumed to be obstacles to the realization of a "grandiose" project, impediments to the realization of a radically better society. In both cases, the ideology (racial or class struggle) led to a bad principle: the exclusion of whole categories ("inferior" races or "harmful" classes) composed of people whose only crime was to belong to one of these categories, i.e., to exist. Both systems designated an absolute enemy with whom it was impossible to compromise. In both cases, the result was planned terror. Class or racial hatred, social or racial prophylaxis, it is all the same.

• from Alain de Benoist's "Nazism and Communism -- Evil Twins"

Finally, a paleo has read something by an ERN writer. Too bad, nothing was noted of meta-politics, the nature of traditionalism the critique or capitalism, Christianity, classical liberalism, egalitarianism or the problem of democracy. Still, Tex has done more then I had hoped so I will give credit as it is due.
Of course DeBenoist is a first rate thinker and has an excellent record of service although he is no longer the beacon of hope one saw in the ‘80s we still must recognize what he has done.

I regret to say that he does not understand NSDAP type of National Socialism at all or if he does he chooses not to write such for legal reasons which is understandable. The NSDAP model had lots of problems as I see them and it is not something which is suitable for model now. However, the rote and total condemnations are unfounded, trite and please no one. Hitler never promoted the “eradication of part of humanity” but did promote the expulsion of jewry to Madagascar and latter Palestine which is very different from eradication. If it is required I will post lots of material to that effect. As the supposed common point of Bolshevism and the NSDAP regime exist not little more need be said.

Exception being given to the typical paleo refusal to consider race honestly. Anyone that has spent a few hours in a formally Occidental area will be forced to realize (but maybe not admit) that race does determine what becomes of an area. All expressions of genuine conservatism seek to preserve the traditionalism of a people and that means Organicism of which racialism is a part. Paleos almost always deny that reality and they have continuously failed to prevent the destruction of American or even note the nature of the decay. As a result, they deserve to lose what remnants of their children’s future they have left and the indications are they are happy with that reality or at least not disturbed enough to change how they do things.

Madrid burns

2004-02-21 10:32 | User Profile

[I]It mentions to Alain de Benoist (Robert de Herte)*

THE PARIAH NATION by Professor Revilo P. Oliver

April 1985

In the Eighteenth Century, some French naturalists, notably Corneille de Pauw and the celebrated Comte de Buffon, noting the differences between mammals of cognate species in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, elaborated a theory that there was in the Western Hemisphere some geological influence that produced biological degeneration. Assuming that the various mammalian species had been carried from the Eastern half of the globe to the Western, it appeared that some of them had become weaker and smaller, while others had shown the morbid growth of giantism. Anthropoid mammals were not exempt from the deleterious influence, and human beings from Europe and Asia had degenerated in the New World to savages, the Indians of North and South America. Presumably, civilized men more recently transported to the two continents would likewise degenerate from generation to generation, and the future of the Europeans who established their colonies in North America was dark indeed.

These theories were once widely accepted, and it will be remembered that Thomas Jefferson, inspired by his hopes for the new nation he had helped to found, was particularly active in efforts to refute them, and spent a great deal of his own money in collecting and shipping to Europe specimens of species that were not inferior to the corresponding species of the Old World. The theories of De Pauw, Buffon, and others were eventually abandoned when it was seen that they arose from ignorance of the laws of biological evolution that were eventually formulated by Darwin, and represented the kind of thinking that is now prevalent only in the sacrosanct nonsense about the equality of the races.

In the Nineteenth Century, cultivated Europeans were disturbed by the growing power of the United States, derived from exploitation of the vast natural resources that Great Britain had shortsightedly abandoned to her revolted colonists, and by the contrast between that power and the crudity and vulgarity that was shamelessly exhibited by the majority of Americans. Good examples of this dismay at the low level of culture in the United States are the mordant "Domestic Manners of the Americans" (1832), by Frances Milton Trollope (mother of the Victorian novelist and herself a writer of distinction), and the milder and less discerning "American Notes" (1842) of Charles Dickens. A minority of Americans of superior education tried to refute such censures by showing that they were themselves cultured individuals and claiming that progress would eventually raise the American populace to their level. Most of the champions of our cultural potentiality are well-known, but I shall mention the unfortunate Francis Glass, who deserves to be remembered for his eulogistic biography of George Washington in a Latin which was astonishingly good in his circumstances and almost Classical, about which I have written elsewhere, and for his valiant but hopeless struggle against the poverty to which he was born.

At the same time, sagacious Europeans, not only conservatives but real liberals (as sharply distinct from the chatterboxes who usurp that title today), notably Lord Acton, and Macaulay, were deeply worried by the constant deterioration of American government in a fatuous democracy which, they foresaw, could only end in catastrophe. And all Europeans of humane spirit were appalled by the bloody ferocity with which the Northern States, crazed by the ranting of the poisonous vermin called Abolitionists, invaded the Southern States to slaughter white men and subject them to an innately savage and primitive race. The enormity of the losses on both sides in that fratricidal madness and the disregard of the conventions that mitigated war between civilized nations profoundly shocked thoughtful Europeans, who correctly saw in them the beginning of that Advance to Barbarism that became so patent in the so-called World Wars, in which the United States was the decisive force.

The suspicion and, in some cases, apprehension with which Europeans watched the United States were partly allayed by the hope that the "grande barbarie eclairee au gaz" would eventually acquire the cultural stability of European civilization, partly mitigated by the disdain that enabled Carlyle to dismiss the horrors of the war of 1861-1865 as "a dirty chimney on fire," and partly repressed by an awareness that the United States did have a military potential that was useful to European powers, as, for example, it was shortsightedly used by a clever British politician, George Canning, as a cat's-paw in an economic offensive against Spain for which Britain was unwilling to accept responsibility, with the result that the simple-minded Americans took a childish pride in their Monroe Doctrine, imagining that it was their own bright idea, sprung from a noble itch to meddle in the affairs of South America.

In the Twentieth Century, the power that the United States, with its vast resources and manpower, could exert when drunk with idealistic hallucinations became the central fact of European history, and the decisive participation of the American simpletons in the two European Catastrophes gave to the United States a factitious prestige and encouraged the less cultivated classes of European nations to emulate the worst and most vulgar aspects of American life, including the fatuous "democracy," which placed political power in the hands of the most unscrupulous manipulators of "hoi polloi." The result was the 'Americanization' of Europe, which was essentially a barbarization of which the better European minds were painfully aware.

So long as the United States seemed a dominant world power with, perhaps, a great future, and some Europeans for a time drew a specious analogy between American power over Europe and the Roman Empire's power over Greece, resentment of the United States was checked by respect for our nation's accomplishments and supposed potential. But when it became increasingly obvious that the Americans were mad and had embarked on a policy of national suicide -- a suicide by which the United States would also consummate the ruin of Europe and the destruction of Western civilization. Respect for power became contempt for the world's village idiots. Europeans became even more afraid of the insane giant in his self-destructive fury, and criticism of our hapless country became more incisive and deeply perceptive.

The admirable French quarterly, "Nouvelle Ecole," edited by the distinguished Alain de Benoist, devoted its combined Fall and Winter issues in 1975 to a searching study of American life and culture. I may say in passing that I was invited to contribute a long article in French to that issue, but I declined, partly because I was not sure that I could attain the necessary objectivity, but primarily because I knew I could not write an honest analysis of our plight without stressing the effects of the Jewish invasion and eventual subjugation of the United States. The subtle conquerors of the world by deceit so systematically exacerbated and cynically exploited the very worst deficiencies of our population, which had been largely recruited from the lowest classes of European Aryans, that, great as our race's folly had been, it would have been unjust to place upon it the whole gravamen of guilt for what alien invaders had cunningly encouraged or incited it to do. My article would thus have been one which it would have been imprudent for the editor of the journal to print. "Nouvelle Ecole," a journal of high intellectual content and largely written by men of eminence in the true sciences and in historical studies, was a courageous publication, but it had nevertheless to be circumspect and avoid overt offense to Yahweh's Master Race. Even so, despite all that caution, a few years later a private meeting of its editors, contributors, and supporters was invaded by a mob of howling Jews, who wielded iron clubs to split the skulls of Aryans who dared think thoughts not approved by their God-given masters.

"Nouvelle Ecole," I may add, represents the best thinking of Europe today, with the necessary and limiting discretion I have mentioned. Its policy is to marshal in each quarterly issue the essential conclusions of contemporary research in history and the sciences that are directly concerned with human civilization and culture, and I regret the failure of an ambitious project undertaken a few years ago by some leading American "conservatives," who hoped to publish an English translation of the periodical or, at least, of an anthology of articles from it. The project failed in the end for lack of sufficient funds, although the amount needed was absurdly small by the standards of a nation in which excited dunderheads are reported to have given of their own free will $74,000,000 two years ago, and probably more in later years, to finance the oleaginous gabble of Jerry Falwell, who is only one of the many rabble-rousers who promote Jesus and the Jews on the Jews' boob-tubes.

In the periodical's special issue, entitled "L'Amerique," the leading article, by Robert de Herte and Hans-Jurgen Nigra, is entitled "Il etait une fois l'Amerique" ('Once upon a time there was an America'). The title will have informed you that it reaches the conclusions of Professor Anthony Hacker of Cornell in his "End of the American Era" (1970): the United States has ceased to be a nation, that is, a body of persons united by a common race and culture, and has become merely a geographical expression, a name for a territory inhabited by incompatible races and temporarily held together by the efforts of each to exploit the others in a competitive fermentation that will inevitably end someday in an explosion.

The article is keenly perceptive and implacably objective. No American can read it without wincing at every paragraph and bitterly conceding that facts cannot be refuted by the habitual American technique of shouting, usually with what Oscar Wilde termed "the rage of Caliban at seeing his face in a mirror." The authors touch unerringly with their stylus each spot of gangrenous oedema on an apparently doomed land, and they marshal their facts ruthlessly, but if there is any exaggeration at all, it is in their quotation from one of the most eminent of modern French literary men, the late Henri de Montherlant. I translate it: A single nation which has succeeded in debasing intelligence, morality, and the quality of humanity on practically the whole surface of the globe: that is something that was never seen before since the earth existed. I indict the United States for perpetrating a continuous crime against mankind. There is a certain unfair hyperbole in that statement, as there would be in a denunciation of Othello without reference to Iago. It is true that the Americans, with their depraved itch to inflict democracy and degeneracy on the whole world, have wrought unequalled devastation and slaughter on a global scale in their fits of righteousness and sadism, but it is disingenuous not to add that they have made themselves the fellahin of the Chosen People who have swarmed into their new Promised Land, and if the Americans have served Yahweh's Folk in especially conspicuous ways, so have Europeans, who eagerly served the same masters and as vilely, and who have, after all, wrought their own destruction and cannot reasonably complain that the Americans helped them destroy themselves. Prostitutes, even if they are better educated, should not denounce the brothel next door for immorality.

The leading article that I have cited, with the complementary article by Alain de Benoist, make of the "American" number of Nouvelle Ecole an objectively analytical and dispassionate study of the United States today that is at once complete (with the exception I have mentioned) and concise. I cannot summarize here more than a hundred closely-printed quarro pages, but I commend that magazine to you, if you are willing to think about facts and are not a typical American, such as those I have heard a hundred times exclaim, in soprano or falsetto, "I can't bear to hear anything unpleasant."

The recently begun British quarterly, "Scorpion," which carried the notice of Evola that I mentioned in February, contains in its belated number for Summer, 1984, a series of short articles on the United States. There is one on Jack London, "the last American hero," another on Ayn Rand, a demographic survey with a map that attempts to predict the coming partition of the territory now called the United States, and some minor items, but there are three principal articles, all of them comparatively short.

Robin Davies writes a modest estimate of what, if words are to be used properly, we must call the only Civil War thus far fought in our territory, which began in 1777 and ended in the independence of the American colonies and the expulsion of the losers in that Civil War who had not been murdered by their fellow colonists. It presents a segment of history of which many Americans first learned from Kenneth Roberts' famous novel, "Oliver Wiswell" (New York, Doubleday, 1940), which set off an epidemic of hysteria among the Daughters of the American Revolution. I note, incidentally, that Davies' list of sources indicates that he missed the judicious work by Henry Belcher, "The First American Civil War" (London, Macmillan, 1911), which is an excellent summary.

An American, Robert Hoy, best known for his songs, contributes an article, "Lid on a Boiling Pot," reprinted from the collection entitled "New Right Papers," edited by Robert W. Whitaker (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1982). Mr. Hoy surveys the "Populist" movement that tries to unite the various and diverse protests of Americans (I mean Americans, not resident aliens), almost always of the least educated and least brain-washed classes, who tried to oppose, often with violence, one or another aspect of the totalitarian tyranny that now covertly rules their occupied country. He hopefully believes that we have reached an "historic moment" that offers an opportunity to the New Right to overthrow the small-time gangsters of the major political parties. "As happens so seldom in history, destiny holds out the hand of a tremendous opportunity. Woe to us, if we do not accept it!" But it may be doubted whether Destiny has obtained the Jews' permission for such hand-holding.

The lead article is by the editor of "Scorpion," Michael Walker: "Our America: Lost and Found." He tries to continue, on a reduced scale, the articles in "Nouvelle Ecole," and he does so with the same implacable realism. The title is explained by his observation that "Our America is the British America, which, like all the other nations of America, can survive only if the United States is destroyed... The United States is now beyond question the "enemy of Europe," politically, militarily, and above all, culturally."(1) The menace to civilization that he sees lies in the contagion of the barbarism that has become the way of life in the United States. "The America of the United States, which is not our America, defines itself in terms of its world mission, not to "conquer" but to "convert" in the name of a way of life which is inimical to the human community. "We are all potential Americans." He means of course that Europe can sink into the "democratic" degradation that the government of the United States is trying to impose on the whole world by enslaving the American populace and gradually pauperizing it. But here, as in "Nouvelle Ecole," we miss an important element: we are trying to stage Othello without Iago.

Mr. Walker quotes the disgusting inscription on the Statue of Liberty which, in effect, advertises the United States as the world's garbage dump for human refuse, but he does not note that the silly verses were written by an enemy alien, Emma Lazarus. That is a symbol of what is missing throughout his analytical discussion, even in his references to the prevalent superstitions that provide an enormously lucrative business for the innumerable "Bible thumpers" who "ply their trade in an anxiety-ridden land." It is no coincidence that, as is stated in the title of the booklet by Ralph Perier, published by "Liberty Bell", "The Jews Love Christianity." And as Mr. Walker himself remarks, the ruin of civilization wrought by America was a consequence of the prevalent mania that "the United States has a Judaeo-Christian mission to make the world 'safe for democracy.'" And I particularly note that the Europeans, who so relentlessly judge us, did not themselves recognize that self-preservation imposed on them the more modest and rational mission of making Europe safe from 'democracy.' And although we are bitterly and justly condemned for importing hordes of enemy races into this country, all of Europe, including the Britain that made itself no longer Great, has been smitten by the same suicidal mania. In Sweden, for example, cancer of the cerebrum has become so epidemic that the 7,000,000 Swedes and aliens long established in Sweden have, of their own free will, irremediably polluted their country by importing 1,000,000 pieces of anthropoid garbage from Africa and the biological cesspools of Asia.(2)

Michael Walker's prognosis is grim: "The United States is doomed and no amount of corn-beer patriotism can save it. ... When the United States does disintegrate, it will do so quickly and with little fuss. It is, after all, a "gimmick" made to sell, and like all gimmicks, it wasn't made to last. The United States may disappear faster and sooner than anyone would think possible."

That is his opinion. I doubt it. I especially doubt the prediction about "little fuss." It is true that I spent decades hoping with a blithe optimism for the survival of the American people and the country "they" created, and I remember I once based a calculation on the assumption that White men in the United States retained at least so much of the basic instinct of all higher mammals to protect their progeny that they would never permit their children, for whom they claim to have some affection, to be hauled to "integrated" boob-hatcheries and forced into association with niggers. What wild optimism that was!

I no longer expect manhood of rabbits. But my guess is that the dismemberment of the United States will be a long and bloody process, and that a large part of the Aryans of this country will have (before their death) a practical experience of the "democracy" they so joyously imposed on the Sudeten Germans and many other members of their own race in Europe.

=============================NOTES=========================

(1) The phrase that Walker emphasized may be intended to be an allusion to Francis Parker Yockey's "The Enemy of Europe," which (together with my long essay on Yockey) has been published by Liberty Bell Publications. Yockey, however, has the merit of facing frankly the fact of the Jews' dominion over a country that is only nominally independent.

(2) There is little merit in the argument "tu quogue," and I have noted only a few examples of the rotting of European nations. An American who is vexed by the article in "Scorpion" could write an answering polemic, claiming that all the infections of the American body politic were imported from Europe, beginning, of course, with the Puritans, who came straight from England. I remember an encapsulated bit of history that was current when I was in college: "The "Mayflower" set sail from Plymouth on the sixth of September, 1620. It encountered severe storms on the Atlantic, but did not sink. That was one of the great tragedies of the sea."

Madrid burns

2004-03-07 07:53 | User Profile

A hateful article on the GRECE, the European New Right, Edward Goldshmitt, etc., it claim that the European New Rigth is autoritarian, but the article inself is a example of an autoritarian leftwing dogmatism. Also, it is a flawed article because the European New Rigth don't have such esentialist concept of ethnic identity.

From "Blood" to "Culture": A New Racism

[url]http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/briefing/11blood.html[/url]

Such imposed cultural stereotypes have never gone unchallenged: oppressed groups have demanded their right to self-determination and, critically, the right to define -- and redefine -- themselves rather than to be defined hegemonically by others.37 Such demands, which have long formed a central plank of anti-racist, indigenous and human rights movements worldwide, have frequently been based not only on the recognition of the diversity of cultures, but also on a commitment to confronting the political and social basis of racism, discrimination, exclusion and xenophobia. As such, these demands have played a central role in the struggle "against the hegemony of certain standardising imperialisms and against the elimination of minority or dominated civilizations".38

Stripped of that commitment to confront racism and other forms of discrimination, however, the "right to be different" may take on very different overtones. Within Europe, for example, the New Right has attempted to appropriate the language of "difference" in the cause of ethnic separation. In France, the Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes pour la Civilisation Européenne (GRECE), a group comprising largely right-wing intellectuals, some of whom have close ties to neo-fascist groups throughout Europe,39 has been at the forefront of developing what has been referred to as "differentialist racism". By portraying cultural identities as fixed fate40 and -- depending on the "distance" between cultural communities -- as more or less irreconcilable, GRECE and its followers twist "the defence of the right to be different" so as to serve the cause of a new and subtle form of apartheid.41

Unlike the racisms of the colonial age, the "differentialist" racism of GRECE and other groups on the New Right rarely makes claims for the biological superiority of one "race" over another. On the contrary, it is prepared to concede that the concept of "races" as isolatable biological units is flawed, "racial identity" being the product of contingent historical circumstances.

Moreover, this new racism does not seek to eliminate "the other": rather, it insists on respect for ethnic and cultural diversity and the differences these imply. Indeed, the leading intellectual architect of GRECE, Alain de Benoist, argues that "racism is nothing but the denial of difference", be it in the form of xenophobia or in the form of liberal, "humanitarian" integrationist programmes.42

Cultural identity, however, is not portrayed by the New Right as something relative, fluid, multiple-in-form or open to negotiation -- which is the lived experience of those whose daily comings and goings constitute the cultural differences that the New Right now embraces: instead, it is portrayed as a mechanism which, like genes, "functions to lock individuals and groups a priori into a genealogy ... that is immutable and intangible in origin".43

The Road to the Ghetto

Defending ethnic diversity thus depends on preserving the "essence" and "purity" of the supposedly closed cultures into which the New Right divides humanity. This in turn depends on keeping cultures separate, since mixing would cause either ethnic violence (on the premise that people of one culture are incapable of living with or among those with different traditions, life-styles and customs) or the destruction of identities through physical and cultural "interbreeding".44 The result is "a politics of exclusion, ranging from demands for 'foreigners'/'aliens' to be sent 'home' to genocide in the form of 'ethnic cleansing'".45

It is not hard to imagine where such a politics can lead, not just in Europe but more widely. Guillaume Faye, a leading light in GRECE prior to his departure to Le Front National, is candid:

"In keeping with the core of the right to difference doctrine, we must reject multiracial society and envisage, together with the immigrants themselves, their return to their country of origin."46

Another leading figure on the French New Right, is equally explicit: "It is preferable to avoid mixing and cross-breeding. It is preferable to preserve the superiority of the race to which I belong -- its difference, its originality."47

The theme has also been taken up with gusto by Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of Le Front National: "We not only have the right but the duty to defend our national character as well as our right to difference." To be harmonious, Le Pen contends:

"a nation must have a certain ethnic and spiritual homogeneity ... The problem of immigration [must] be solved for the benefit of France by a peaceful and organized return of immigrants."48

In Belgium, meanwhile, the right-wing Flemish Nationalist Movement -- Vlaams Blok -- is already advocating special schools to "refamiliarise non-Europeans with their own cultures" (defined, presumably, by Vlaams Blok), prior to their repatriation due to the "incompatibility" of non-European and European cultures.49

Elsewhere, in Brazil, conservative landowners (and some Western conservationists) have called for indigenous groups whose members adopt "Western-style" clothes to be denied their rights to their traditional territories, on the grounds that they have "lost" their culture -- as if culture were a discrete object that could be mislaid like a suitcase. Instead of "difference" being a bulwark against stereotyping and the top-down imposition of identities, it becomes a route to the ghetto, threatening a totalitarian nightmare for those who do not fit into the new order or whose sense of cultural identity does not accord with the ethnicities prescribed by the New Right. "You're Turkish? Well, this is your culture. If you don't behave 'like a Turk', then we must re-educate you." "You're a European married to a Jew? Sorry, you will have to separate. You belong to different cultures ... "

What emerges is a project no less oppressive, culturally homogenising and imperialist than previous racisms: oppressive because the assumed "immutability" of cultures inevitably pigeon-holes people into cultural stereotypes that are not of their own making; culturally homogenising because it is assumed each and every culture has an "authentic" core, deviation from which must be rooted out; and imperialist because the "defence" of cultures justifies the top-down partitioning of existing nations and regions according to the pre-conceived territorial and cultural orthodoxies of the most dominant group. The logical outcome is ethnic separation, ghettoisation and, where the "authentic" culture of one group is derived from its hegemony over another, the legitimising of the subordinate culture's continued domination.50

Racism with a Presentable Face?

"Culture" -- viewed as an all-encompassing determinant of human behaviour51 -- has thus become the latest resting place for those on Europe's Right who seek a discourse for legitimising racism and discrimination which resonates better than biology with the everyday concerns and worries of contemporary Europeans.52

Indeed, as many commentators have stressed, the New Right's espousal of "difference" represents not a conversion to liberal pluralism but a deliberate strategy to make racist sentiments more acceptable to the general public.53 Internal GRECE documents, for example, describe the group's overall objective as "the intellectual education of everyone in whose hands the power of decision will come to rest in the coming years".54 Conscious that its views, if stated in the raw, would be unacceptable to the public, the group stresses the need to disguise its real objectives:

"The political aims may under no circumstances be exposed. We have to present our aim particularly as an intellectual and moral revolution, and must be extremely careful in the political strategy."55

To that end, it has built up a network of front organisations, including publications and study groups, to ensure, in Geoffrey Harris' words, "that what are really extreme-right ideas enter the very fabric of French intellectual and political life" -- a strategy that has proved highly successful in widening the appeal of neo-fascist groups such as Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National by creating an intellectual environment that is more "understanding" of (and receptive to) overtly racist views.56 It has also actively sought to establish links with other movements, such as the Greens.57

Political organisation, however, only goes part of the way to explaining the New Right's success in "normalising" racism within many sections of mainstream society: of equal importance is the strategic use it has made of the "differentialist" discourse developed by GRECE to clothe racism in a benign, but radical, language that rehabilitates racism as acceptable politics. For example, by falsely casting opponents of racism as "universalists" intent on eradicating the differences between cultures, and "differentialists" as the defenders of cultural rights, the New Right has sought to develop a discourse that resonates amongst those who feel their ethnic identities are threatened or those who are evolving new ethnic identities in response to the fragmentation of previous nation-states and the deterritorialisation of national sovereignties. It has also sought to excuse racism by passing it off as just another form of resistance to top-down, universalist, social engineering.58 As philosopher and sociologist Renata Salecl observes of the new "meta-racism" of the New Right:

"How would a meta-racist react to a Neo-nazi attack on Turkish women? After expressing his repulsion at the Neo-Nazi violence and sincerely condemning it, he would be quick to add that these events, deplorable as they are, must be located in their context. They are perverted expressions of a real problem, namely that in our contemporary Babylon he experience of belonging to a clearly delimited ethnic community which provides meaning for the individual's life is fast losing ground. The true culprits are, therefore, the cosmopolitan proponents of 'multiculturalism' who advocate the mixing of races and thereby set off natural self-defense mechanisms."59

A second tactic, closely allied to above, has been to characterise racism as just another form of identity building -- on a par with other forms of identity building. Indeed, the New Right has wilfully sought to confuse social processes and practices that are actually radically different. For example, the observation that many identities are formed in part by relationships of exclusion is generalised by the New Right into an absolute: exclusion (viewed in the abstract) becomes a "natural" feature of all identity building. Discussion of the form such exclusion takes -- its context, its history, the power relations it gives rise to and from which it springs, its motivation -- is thereby curtailed: all forms of exclusion (read discrimination) are portrayed as equally valid. Racist forms of exclusion ("No Blacks", "No Muslims", "No Irish") are thereby treated as being sociologically equivalent to any set of social or other rules.

In a similar vein, New Right theorists have ably sought to transform racism into nothing more than a deeply-felt ethnocentrism. Racism thus become defendable on the grounds that our ethnocentrism makes "all of us racists", in the words of the late British politician, Enoch Powell. There is a world of difference, however, between the cultural essentialism exhibited through, say, ethnocentric jokes ("the Englishman, the Scotsman and the Irishman") or in the yearning most people feel to be part of a community, and the New Right's systematic attempt to create communities peopled exclusively by one internally-homogenous ethnic group -- in effect, to make exclusion and conformity the organising principle of society. It is the programmatic nature of the authoritarian Right's culturalism (whether exemplified by GRECE in France, by Pauline Hanson's One Nation party in Australia, the Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party in India or elements in Louis Farrakhan's black separatist movement) that makes it such an oppressive and authoritarian -- and, some would say, fascist -- project.60

Gaian Sociobiology?

The tendency towards authoritarian cultural essentialism is not restricted to the New Right. It is to be found even amongst radicals who, on other issues, have impressive progressive credentials. Within the Western environmental movement, for example, there is a strong wing whose preoccupation with social stability and "ancient traditions" has led to views on culture and ethnic conflict which accord closely (if coincidentally) with those of the New Right. In Europe, such views are most publicly identified with Edward Goldsmith -- founder and currently co-editor of The Ecologist, co-founder of the International Forum on Globalisation (IFG) and 1993 recipient of the prestigious Right Livelihood Award61 His major work, The Way: An Ecological World View,62 ably articulates the thinking underlying this Tradition--Right or Wrong school of Greens.63

For Goldsmith, the overriding goal of Green politics is to re-establish a "natural social order", "organised on the same plan and governed by the same laws [as] the Cosmos and the natural world".64 Tradition provides the blueprint for this all-encompassing plan and religion the means through which it should be instrumentalised in society,65 regimenting human relations -- between men and women, within families and communities and between ethnic groups -- so that they accord with the precepts of "Gaia".66 The result, many argue, is a "Gaian sociobiology",67 which, when it comes to addressing issues of ethnicity, family and community, risks lending itself to deeply authoritarian agendas.

One danger inherent in such Gaian sociobiology is that human rights can all too easily be rendered secondary to considerations of "social" stability, as defined by Gaians. Commenting in an earlier work on the civil strife that has historically racked Northern Ireland, for example, Goldsmith has insisted that Catholics and Protestants constitute separate and implacably opposed "tribal groups", whose differences are now culturally insurmountable; the only lasting solution therefore lies in splitting the two communities apart, forcibly if necessary. Writing three years after the most recent era of "Troubles" flared in 1968, Goldsmith argued:

"The Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland ... constitute two distinct ethnic groups, of different origin, with different manners and traditions and different motivations and capacities. They could occupy the same geographic area and form a single society if they were capable of living in cultural symbiosis with each other, which they have done up to now. The Catholics, however, are no longer willing to fill the lower echelons of the economic hierarchy, as the cultural pattern which previously enabled them to do so has largely broken down. The only remaining solution is to separate them territorially. Ataturk separated Greeks and Turks very successfully, although there was a terrible outcry at the time and it undoubtedly caused considerable inconvenience to the people who were forced to migrate. But should we not be willing to accept measures of inconvenience in order to establish a stable society?"68

Entirely missing from such an account is any sense that the "differences" in Northern Ireland are not reducible to those between "Catholics" and "Protestants".

Moreover, it is not possible to categorise the peoples of Northern Ireland into such broad, homogenised camps. Not all Catholics are "Nationalists" (supporters of a united Ireland), nor are all Protestants "Unionists" (supporters of continued membership of the United Kingdom). The experience of Unionist and Republican politics also differs radically for men and women,69 whilst class differences may mean that middle-class Catholics have more in common with middle-class Protestants than with their working class co-religionists -- and vice versa. Even those class differences obscure wide divergences between and amongst individuals as to how they approach the conflict -- and their willingness, or unwillingness, to renegotiate existing political structures.

Notes and References

1. See, for example, James, W., "Uduk Resettlement" and Allen, T., "A Flight from Refuge" in Allen, T., In Search of Cool Ground: War, Flight and Homecoming in Northeast Africa, UNRISD/Africa World Press/ James Currey, Oxford, 1996. Tim Allen shows how "Madi" identity has been constructed in response to the practices of the colonial state, whilst Wendy James offers a case study of how the "Uduk" have first been perceived as an ethnicity and how they now perceive themselves.
2. Martono, Proceedings of the Meeting between the Department of Transmigration and the Inter-Governmental Group on Indonesia, Jakarta, 20 March 1985, quoted in Colchester, M., 'Unity and Diversity: Indonesia's Policy towards Tribal People', The Ecologist, Vol. 16, Nos 2/3, 1986, p.59.
3. Ibid.
4. Hirsch, P., 'Seeking Culprits: Ethnicity and Resource Conflict', Watershed, Vol.3, No.1, July-October 1997, p.25. See also Corner House Briefing 13, Forest Cleansing: Racial Oppression in Scientific Nature Conservation, January 1999.
5. For a discussion of racism against the Irish, see Allen, T.W., The Invention of the White Race, Volume One: Racial Oppression and Social Control, Verso, London, 1995; Ignatiev, N., How the Irish Became White, Routledge, London and New York 1995.
6. Prebble, J., The Highland Clearances, Penguin, London, 1969.
7. Kinealy, C., This Great Calamity: The Irish Famine 1845-52, Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 1994; Kinealy, C., A Death-Dealing Famine: The Great Hunger in Ireland, Pluto Press, London, 1997; Woodham-Smith, C., The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845-9, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1963.
8. Other explanations which might better account for their poverty, such as class, racism and other causes of subordination and discrimination, get "ethnicised" out of existence. The "failure" of Afro-Americans to thrive in the white world of business in the US, for example, is explained by their "culture" -- discrimination is held to have little or nothing to do with it. Similar stereotyping informs many policy discussions of single mothers, the unemployed and "the poor" in general.
9. Indigenous peoples have argued for the past 20 years and more that self-definition is a crucial part of their struggle for self-determination. The International Labour Organisation's Convention 169 accepts the principle of self-definition as a fundamental criteria for determining who is "indigenous".
10. Balibar, E. and Wallerstein, I., Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, Verso, London, 1991.
11. As Roger-Pol Droit points out of Alain de Benoist and other leading figures in GRECE: "Alain de Benoist is still actively and closely related to international movement on the far Right. Apart from the journal Krisis, his 'liberal' face since 1988, he continues to edit Nouvelle Ecole, a mouthpiece of the New Right, whose editorial board includes, for example, Bernard Nottin, member of the scientific 'council' of the National Front and Jean-Claude Rivière, an advocate of the negationist thesis supported by Henri Roques in Nantes in 1985." See Droit, R.-P., "The Confusion of Ideas", Le Monde 13 July 1993, reproduced in, Telos, Nos 98-99, Winter 1993-Spring 1994, p.137.
12. In recent years, GRECE has been careful to acknowledge the historical contingency of cultures. This should not be taken, however, as a rejection of its claims as to the fixed "essence" of cultures. Underlying whatever form a culture may take at any one moment in history, there is assumed to be an "authentic" core which is always present, although often repressed. Discussing "European culture", for example, de Benoist has argued that "authentic" Europeans are anti-egalitarian by culture. This cultural essence, in his view, has been repressed by Judaeo-Christianity, which he portrays as an alien imposition. The task GRECE sets itself is "to bring to the surface a sensibility which has been repressed in the unconscious of our peoples by two thousand years of egalitarianism." See de Benoist, A., "La Question Religieuse: Entretien avec Robert de Herte", Eléments, September 1976; Taguieff, P-A., "The New Right's View of European Identity", Telos, op. cit. 39, p.111.
13. In Britain, the New Right (as exemplified in the writings of intellectuals associated with the Salisbury Review) has adopted the language of "difference" for similar tactical ends. As Susan Wright of the University of Birmingham observes of the changing discourse of the Right in the 1980s and 1990s, "The New Right ... consciously engaged in the manipulation of words, especially the process of naming and redefining key concepts. In particular, [they] focused on appropriating and reformulating the meanings of one semantic cluster -- 'difference', 'nation', 'race' and 'culture' ... They appropriated the anti-racist language about the need to respect cultural difference. This did not mean that they rejoiced in cross-cutting differences and fluid identities, or celebrated the creativity inspired by such hybridity ... Instead, they inverted this meaning of 'difference'. They opposed the dilution of separateness ... and turned difference into an essentialist concept to reassert boundaries: the distinctiveness of Englishness must be defended." See Wright, S., op. cit. 10.
14. de Benoist, A. "Three Interviews with Alan de Benoist", Telos, op. cit. 39. Much the same argument was common amongst apologists for the Apartheid regime in South Africa, who frequently argued that the policy of "separate development" was based not on racism but on the doctrine of respecting the "equal-but-different" status of different ethnic groups in South Africa. See Asmal, K, Asmal, L. and Roberts, R. S., Reconciliation through Truth: A Reckoning with Apartheid's Criminal Governance, David Philip, Cape Town, 1996, p.34ff. A similar line was used in the US to defend racial segregation during the 1960s.
15. Balibar, E. and Wallerstein, I., op. cit. 38, p.22.
16. Taguieff, P-A., op. cit. 40. See also Kohn, M., The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science, Jonathan Cape, London, 1995; Salecl, R., Psychoanalysis and Feminism After the Fall of Socialism, Routledge, London, 1994. As Roland Axtmann of the University of Aberdeen writes of GRECE, "The flipside of [GRECE's position] is the claim that ... differences have to be preserved at all cost: they must be cultivated, developed and defended against any attempt to abolish them. As a result, this particular version of the right to difference is organized around a 'mixophobic' core: it is 'haunted by the threat of the destruction of identities through interbreeding -- physical and cultural cross-breeding'." See Axtmann, R., Liberal Democracy into the 21st Century: Globalization, Integration and the Nation State, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1996, p.105.
17. Axtmann, R., op. cit. 44., p.105. See also Taguieff, P-A., op. cit. 40.
18. Faye, G., Eléments, No.48, Winter 1983/84. See also Faye, G., Nouveau Discours a la Nation Européene, Albatros, Paris, 1985.
19. Brigneau, Minute, April 1985, quoted in Taguieff, P-A., op. cit. 40, p.124.
20. Quoted in Taguieff, P-A., op. cit. 40, p.124.
21. Langdon, J., "Antwerp's Blok vote", The Independent, 10 January 1995. Such schools are not to be confused with schools set up by minority groups themselves as a part of their own efforts to familiarise their children with some of the cultural background of their parents or to maintain a cultural space for themselves.
22. As Susan Wright observes, the meaning which the New Right in Britain attaches to "Culture" is key to understanding how its new discourse of "respect for difference" is anchored in a politics of exclusion. New Right theorists in Britain do not dispute the anthropological idea that nations and cultures are historically constituted and not biologically or ontologically given. This insight, however, is used "not to erode but to reinforce exclusiveness." Critically, national identity is defined as a feeling of loyalty to 'persons of one's own kind'. But 'one's own kind' is defined in terms of a list of attributes that are "decidedly white and Christian and frequently gender and class specific". Wright concludes, "[The New Right] denied racism, yet their framing of nationalism in terms of 'our culture' cued a choice of policy recommendations for ethnic minorities -- complete assimilation, retrospective guest worker status, or removal by repatriation -- which were in implication or effect racist." See Wright, S., op. cit. 10.
23. As such, it fulfils much the same role as "Nature" served in the past -- and indeed continues to serve in other arenas, the debate on gender being just one example.
24. Outside of Europe, the strategies of the Right undoubtedly differ. No claim is therefore made as to the universality of this analysis. At a crude level, the New Right's cultural determinism can be dismissed as mere biological determinism in another guise. Such an interpretation, however, is easily parried by the more sophisticated New Right, which is increasingly using the discourse of "difference" to move onto completely new political ground, where deterministic claims (although helpful amongst certain audiences) are no longer needed to justify cultural separation: appeals to "cultural rights" are enough. Anti-racist critiques that rest on exposing the new discourse as biological determinism under another name are thus limited in their ability to counter the new cultural racism of the Right. Given the persuasiveness of this new cultural racism "for those who are unmoved by a crude biologism", the dangers are clear. See Modood, T., "'Difference', Cultural Racism and Anti-Racism", in Werbner, P. and Modood (eds.), op. cit. 8., p.169.
25. See Barnes, I. R., "The Pedigree of GRECE", Patterns of Prejudice, 14 (3) 1980; Pfaff, W., "The Presentable Face of France's Extreme Right", International Herald Tribune, 13 February 1997; "'Intellectual' fascists celebrate 25 years", Searchlight, Sept. 1994; Harris, G., The Dark Side of Europe: The Extreme Right Today, Edinburgh University Press, 1994, p.89ff.
26. Quoted in Harris, G., op. cit. 53.
27. Ibid.
28. Quoted in Harris, G., op. cit. 53. Of GRECE's tactics, Roger-Pol Droit writes, "The far Right has orchestrated ... confusion for quite some time. Alain de Benoist has made it his speciality. In the past few years, he has tried to make people believe he has changed. By closeting his various activities, publicly taking Third World and anti-capitalist positions, refusing any labels, especially those of the Right and the Left, he has found many tactics for covering his tracks. And this works. 'Everyone has the right to change', people say. 'This is even a good thing,' they think -- without taking the trouble to see if the news is true." Others point out how GRECE has actively sought to publish writers "whose literary or scientific fame and political positions mean they are not suspected of being compromised." This has "a double advantage: sensitive issues are reacclimatised, whereas participation in debates with respected thinkers makes one think the organizer is also respected." See Roger-Pol Droit, op. cit. 39., p.137.
29. In 1994, for example, GRECE invited Edward Goldsmith, founder and publisher of The Ecologist, to address its 25th Anniversary Meeting, an invitation he accepted.
30. If racism were simply a form of resistance to top-down, universalist social engineering, it would not exist outside of such resistance. But treating it as resistance conceals the top-down nature of racism itself. Racism always seeks bounded identities that are closed to negotiation, prescribing identities which are derived largely from theory and which bear little relation to the identities which are actually practised by the groups involved. The stereotypes it manufactures are, moreover, claimed to be valid for all places and all times -- all Englishmen and women are the same the world over -- and are predicated on social engineering (not least in order to ensure that the identities it seeks to impose are upheld despite inevitable internal and external resistance to the stereotyping they involve).
31. Salecl, R., op. cit. 44.
32. Zizek, S., "Multiculturalism -- A New Racism?", New Left Review 225, September/October 1997, p.30. For discussions of Hanson and Farrakhan, see Perera, S., "The Level Playing Field: Hansonism, Globalisation, Racism", Race and Class, Vol.40, Nos 2/3, October 1998-March 1999, pp.199-208; Marable, M., "Black Fundamentalism: Farrakhan and conservative black nationalism", Race and Class, Vol. 39, No.4, April-June 1998, pp.1-22.
33. Goldsmith is well-respected both in Britain and internationally for his energetic campaigning against nuclear power, chemical pollution, the World Bank and the increasing power of transnational corporations.
34. Goldsmith, E., The Way: An Ecological World-View, Themis Books, London, 1996.
35. As indicated, the views discussed in this section are by no means particular to Edward Goldsmith: on the contrary, the approach which they represent -- although opposed by many Greens -- is common, albeit in more or less muted forms, to a significant section of the movement.
36. See Goldsmith, E., op. cit. 62.
37. Discussing the role of religion in society, Goldsmith writes, "It is only within the context of a cosmic or ecological religion that people can be made to realise that the destruction of God's creation is a sin -- the ultimate sin" (emphasis added). He goes on: "People can only understand and believe that it is a sin, if they have been imbued with a world view and an associated theology in terms of which the preservation of the creation is man's [sic] overriding duty ..." (emphasis added). Elsewhere, he states, "A cosmic or ecological religion is the natural one for humans to be imbued with". The potential authoritarian outcomes inherent in a politics that uses religion as an instrument for social control through conscious propagandising (however worthy the cause) are clear. All quotes from: Goldsmith, E., "Ultimate Freedom", Fourth World Review, No.92, 1998.
38. Gaia is the name given by the scientist James Lovelock to the Biosphere and its atmosphere; it is analysed by Lovelock as acting as a self-regulating whole. Goldsmith argues that the laws governing Gaia apply also to society, society operating as a natural system.
39. Sachs, W., "Letter to Edward Goldsmith", Retraite Au Forets, November 1995. Conventional sociobiologists claim that genes are the basic determinant of all behaviour and thus, ultimately, of social organisation. Goldsmith rejects this reductionist view, arguing that genes do not dictate behaviour but interact in co-operation with their wider environment. However, he departs from other critics of conventional sociobiology by arguing that "natural" human societies (a term he restricts to preindustrial societies: all modern social formations are "unnatural") take the form they do because they are organised to fulfil the goals of "Gaia". In effect, human behaviour in such societies is determined by Gaian imperatives: individual free will, struggles over power, even history itself, are written out of the picture. Hence, the charge that The Way, Goldsmith's major work, amounts to "Gaian sociobiology" -- with Gaia, rather than genes, taking an all-determining role. The central thesis of The Way is problematic for a number of reasons. First, its reductionism obscures other more nuanced (and fruitful) explanations of human behaviour. Second, by positing a Gaian Law for society -- knowledge of which gives the author (and others) special privileges to judge the acceptability or otherwise of certain social processes and practices -- The Way gives spurious objectivity to categories ("natural"/"unnatural") which, in the social sphere, invariably reflect the vested interests of different social groups -- interests which make the mapping of "nature" onto society a far from objective practice, and often an oppressive one. And, third, by insisting that "unnatural" social and biological forms be "eliminated" (The Way, p.285-286), the door is potentially opened to extremely authoritarian forms of government. See Goldsmith, E., op. cit. 62.
40. Goldsmith, E., "Basic Principles of Cultural Ecology", The Ecologist, Vol. 2, No.5, 1971, p.4.
41. Porter, E., "Identity, Location, Plurality: Women, Nationalism and Northern Ireland" in Wilford, R. and Miller, R. L., Women, Ethnicity, Nationalism: The Politics of Transition, Routledge, London, 1998. For a discussion of how British rule polarised peoples' identities in ethnic terms, see Farrell, M., The Orange State, Pluto Press, London.
42. Goldsmith, E., Letter to George Monbiot and others, 27 October 1997.
43. Ibid.
44. For further discussion, see Richards, P., Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone, James Currey/Heinemann/ International African Institute, Oxford, 1996.
45. Ranger, T., "Concluding Reflections on Cross-Mandates", in Allen, T., op. cit. 29, p.327
46. Ranger, T., "The Invention of Tradition in Africa" in Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T., op. cit. 7, p.248. See also Vail, L., (ed.), The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991; Young, C., "The Colonial Construction of African Nations" in Hutchinson, J and Smith, A. D., Nationalism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, p.225.
47. Ranger, T., op. cit. 74., p.248.

Madrid burns

2004-03-31 00:05 | User Profile

From a letfie magazine:

[url]http://lgp.social-ecology.org/issues/lgp26.html[/url]

A Social (i.e, anthropocentrist and politically correct) Ecology Publication Number 26 January 1992

From Left to Right: New Right Ideology as a Problem Facing Leftism Today

Introductory note:

The National Front in France, the Republicans Germany, the Freedom Party in Austria, the Vlaams Blok in Belgium--all these ultra-right, even fascist parties have gained startling electoral successes in recent European elections. In increasingly multicultural Western Europe, tensions over "too much" immigration are being fanned into xenophobia among much of the general population. Journalists and academic pundits debate the emergence of a "new racism" that, according to a recent French report, nourishes "fantasies about the unassimilable character of immigrants, of their numbers and their economic weight--even in places where they don't exist." Nazi skinheads roam the streets, attacking foreign workers, asylum-seekers, and nonwhite immigrants generally.

Although some groups proudly celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday, others disclaim any connection with fascist movements earlier in this century. New Right intellectuals who purvey long-scorned fascist ideologies are attempting to become influential and even acceptable to polite society. Much as David Duke studiously avoids referring to the welfare recipients he hates as "black" in the United States, the young professionals of today's European ultra-right no longer rant openly about "Aryan supremacy" and "blood and soil." Indeed, seeking to make themselves mediagenic, they protest any "guilt by association" with earlier fascists--even as they foster an atmosphere of intolerance, xenophobia, and brutality and call for strong policies to end "foreigner-inspired" drug trafficking and street crime.

The more sophisticated New Right ideologists even deny, vehemently, that they are racist--racist in the sense of a belief that one race is superior to another. Instead, the "new, improved" radical right advocates maintaining the integrity of distinct cultures and authentic cultural identities, rather than purity of blood. It thereby shifts the focus of racist ideology from biology to culture (except when it inveighs against "race mixing"). A New Right notion of "ethnopluralism" contends that all cultures should have sovereignty over themselves, and that Europe should become a "Europe of fatherlands," with autonomy for all its peoples. Just as Turks should live in Turkey, Germans should have Germany for themselves, Republicans there argue. Similarly, Jean-Marie Le Pen denounces "anti-French racism" and claims that the "real" French have a "right to difference." Many cast themselves as in the same role as Third World peoples--as peoples whose cultures are threatened.

Precisely how these different political parties, ideologies, feelings of hostility, and street violence are related to one another remains largely nebulous to outside observers. Disconcertingly, some of the ideas that ultra-right ideologues offer are very familiar to radical culture in the United States today--ideas of identity, difference, intuitionism, community, diversity, ecology, self-determination, and decentralism. Their opposition to the cosmopolitan, bureaucratic consumer society of industrial modernity that atomizes and alienates "uprooted" humanity echoes a similar sensibility that has existed among many radicals since the sixties. They have even recuperated more established ideas from the Left, like anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism--using them in the service of antileftist ends.

In France, the group of intellectuals that make up the Nouvelle Droite echo other aspects of recent American ecological thought when they attack Christian (read: Semitic) monotheism and glorify a pre-Christian culture that communed with and expressed its own authentic pagan values. This culture, we are told, was suppressed by the alien cultural tradition of Judeo-Christianity, whose universalizing and homogenizing tendencies later became the basis for modernity. The Nouvelle Droit's pagans of choice are the "Indo-Europeans"--presumably the same "Indo-Europeans" that destroyed the "Old European" goddess-worshipping cultures of Neolithic eastern Europe that are the favored pagans of some ecofeminists. That the Nouvelle Droit and these ecofeminists prefer different pre-Christian "cultures" should not obscure the fact that both posit a cultural-chauvinist, tribalistic account of history based on "cultures" whose existence the archaeological record does not support.

Today's fascists have been challenged by massive demonstrations in Europe that protest their brutal reemergence (challenges that have been underreported in the U.S. media). But how are leftists today to respond to the situation where a "new racism" has "drawn from the culture of difference that was the legacy of feminism and of the Green movement" (as Fiamma Nirenstein puts it in her recent book Il Razzista Democratico, published by Mondadori)? How are they to respond to a situation in which their own accusations of racism often evoke laughter--and sometimes considerable popular resentment? It is clear that the Left on both sides of the Atlantic needs to understand precisely who they are dealing with, to become aware of the transformed ideologies that the European New Right is advancing--and even to realize the inadequacies of some of their own formulations. Like it or not, the New Right has long been studying leftist concepts, arguments, and strategies--and has learned to appropriate many of them for itself. If the Left is to reconstitute itself as a viable political force today, it must do so with an awareness of the ideological permutations that the New Right has wrought on some of its ideas.

Late last year, when hooligans drove foreign workers out of Hoyerswerda, a town in eastern Germany, the citizens stood by and cheered, "We are free of foreigners!" Shortly after that happened amid many other attacks on foreigners, Wolfgang Haug presented the following lecture in Stuttgart to examine some of these very questions. Haug, an editor of the leading anarchist periodical in Germany, Schwarzer Faden (Black Thread), examines how the New Right has reinvented itself from the Old. His challenging lecture is appended here with a postscript that draws some disconcerting parallels between the New Right in Europe and potential developments in the United States.

--Janet Biehl

Pogroms Begin in the Mind by Wolfgang Haug

Gramsci's prison notebooks are currently being republished, and Die Zeit is concerned about whether Gramsci will now become the new leading figure among Leftists. Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that we should probably free ourselves from "leading figures" altogether. Gramsci is the source of the idea of "left cultural hegemony," which he regarded as a basis for successful social change [in which what Gramsci called "subaltern" or oppressed groups should gain cultural supremacy as a precondition for attaining state power]. After 1968, something like the beginnings of a "left cultural hegemony" did emerge--mainly because the conservatives were so inept and boring--and for a few years this approach did bring about some actual changes in society. When we look more closely at this phenomenon, however, we see that on the political level, the Left was actually lagging behind its cultural work. Indeed, by the time the Left was preparing to transform its cultural influence into political influence by way of the Greens, its "cultural hegemony" was already coming to an end. When the rollback began in 1977, the Left reacted to it by accommodating itself to the system. Two projects, among many others that had emerged, epitomize how the Left was systematically absorbed by society from that time: the Green Party and the Tageszeitung.1

At about the same time, as far as we can reconstruct it, the Right began to copy Left concepts. Indeed, it has learned from Gramsci himself. An effort to establish a form of right-wing "cultural hegemony" has been under way at least since 1979, and we have learned most recently, since Hoyerswerda, that the seeds it has been sowing are now beginning to sprout. We know this not simply because a horde of hooligans is suddenly on the loose--they've been around for quite some time now. No, we know it because the overall spectrum of values has been pushed so decisively to the Right that now some parts of the population do not hesitate to openly applaud violent attacks on people. Where once we heard people saying, "I am proud to be a German," now we hear, "I confess that I felt good when I was clapping." Such was the tenor of a recent letter to the editor of Sonntags Aktuell. The writer's "justification" for her feeling was typically German-Philistine: the "noise disturbances" that foreigners supposedly cause.2

The process of developing a right-wing cultural hegemony began in France in 1979, when theorists of the New Right took over the conservative Paris daily Le Figaro, followed in 1980, by the founding of Criticon in Munich. But it was only with the debate over the "revisionist" historians3 that the broader public generally began to notice that something was going on. In fact, what was happening was that history was being rewritten, new myths were being created, old myths were being revived, meanings were being transformed--in short, a new language was being developed and used to express old ideas. Taboos were being evaded or circumvented, and ideas of leftists were being adopted and used, often altered only very negligibly, in an essentially alien context.

To take an example: A leftist anti-imperialist slogan would be adopted almost intact--but the new context would bring out another meaning in the slogan. It has become clear that many of our leftist slogans were too abbreviated and were not fully thought out. The result today is that the New Right can successfully appropriate for itself familiar emotions (of hatred), familiar enemies (like the United States), and sympathetic peoples (such as the IRA of Northern Ireland and the Basques) to which the Left has often appealed.

One of the many characteristics of this New Right is that it carefully distances itself from the Right of the past. And it says it wants to have nothing to do with right-wing excesses like Hoyerswerda or with cowardly arson attacks. Yet at the same time--at a high intellectual level--it pushes the spectrum of values ever farther to the Right and in this way prepares people for the acceptance of fascistic and violent actions.

The Distortion of the Concept of Racism

The New Right's game of conceptual confusion begins with the confusion of the concept of racism itself. Inasmuch as human beings belong to different peoples, the New Right argues, they are in fact different. Hence leftist antiracists who demand equality for everyone are actually the real racists, because they ignore the differences that exist among people. This view is based on an unreflective, religion-tinged view of the Left. The Judeo-Christian religion distinguishes only between people and God, we are told, not among different peoples. As a consequence, the New Right argues, when Christian monks went out to proselytize the idea that all souls are equal, they destroyed indigenous cultures around the world.

This argument sounds plausible, and it is therefore rather effective. Indeed, it appropriates the leftist critique of the white male mentality and Christian missionary consciousness, which we have often used to explain white racism. That Christianity is traced back to its Jewish roots is true enough, but the way it is explicated is conscious anti-Semitism. The fact that this presumed connection between "Jews" and the "destruction of cultures all over the world" has been useful to the New Right should attract our attention and make us reflect on these familiar contentions, so redolent of the past.

The problems these ideological permutations create run still deeper. The New Right shrewdly creates further confusion among its political opponents when it draws ideas from sources and areas that the Left has ignored or disregarded. Who among us, after all, has been concerned with the Counter-Enlightenment and its thinkers? Or with religion? Or even with Christian thought? Who among us has examined the role of the Jewish religion in the development of humanity?

Areas of thought that we have ignored or disregarded because they did not capture our interest have now become problems for us, as, for example, when New Right theorist Alain de Benoist demands, "In the name of the equality of all souls before God, [Christian] missionaries sought to impose on 'colonized peoples' a religious belief that was alien to them. . . . Because of this, these peoples underwent a massive loss of their cultures."(4) Clearly, a conceptual twist has taken place here. Christian missionaries certainly were not acting "in the name of equality." Rather, they were racists, for all practical purposes, who considered that they were dealing with people who were of less value than themselves--with "barbarians" or "savages" who could hope to become human only after they were converted to Christianity. That the process of a person "becoming human" in this way often meant his or her death shows that these Christian "uebermenschen" thought of themselves as saviors of souls, not as saviours of people. But it also shows how far removed these missionaries and colonizers were from really acting in the name of "equality," as Benoist says they were.

More important from a theoretical standpoint, this right-wing line of argument dismisses the positive contributions of the Jewish religion to human history. Before the Hebrew religion emerged, most religions saw people's existence as preordained. Their lives were firmly fixed in a body of social relationships from which they could never hope to escape. People were seen as part of the natural world, as were the erstwhile nature-"divinities" whom they worshipped. Indeed, society was imbued with a belief in a divinity that permeated everything. To this way of thinking, the divine manifested itself in the governments of the time, as well as in the ruling dynasties. Logically, the pharaohs and the divine kings (and later the monarchs of European absolutism) claimed that they were installed in office directly by their god. To rebel against this divine order--of which people themselves were part--was excluded in principle.

That the Jewish religion was focused on a patriarchal god, to be sure, is hardly anything to celebrate. But the move of the Jews toward a transcendental deity for the first time in (known) human history also ended a situation in which society and its destiny were entangled in the affairs of a deity or several deities. So greatly did the Jewish religion elevate its god that his distance from each person--and even from the ruler--became inconceivably great. With this outlook, human hierarchies were no longer socially unassailable. Popular movements of resistance could develop. Resistance now had as its basis the individual, who, conscious of his or her distance from an imaginary god, would ultimately no longer need to deal with a deity at all.

The Right's Struggle Against Individualism

Returning to today's New Right: We can see that the anti-Semitic content of the Right's ideas serves not only to mobilize the old prejudice against a chosen enemy, which is useful, of course, for its own power drives. It also includes a crucial component--a struggle against the individual and individuality. That this aspect of right-wing thinking has long gone unremarked among leftists may be partly due to authoritarian socialism itself, which believes that the individual has to be subordinated to the cause--a claim that is totalitarian in itself. (It would also be desirable for leftists to recall that the so-called "Jewish Bolshevik" revolution, as the Right so often designated it, also violently rid itself of most of its Jewish comrades. One can only wonder whether anti-Semitism necessarily emerges in communities or societies that impose totalitarian demands on their own members.)

In any case, the New Rightists unerringly adhere to this deep-seated anti-individualist tradition. "All prominent thinkers of the New Right," observes Hanspeter Siegfried, who has closely studied this ideology, "reject the individual as a starting point of ethics and politics."5 Benoist, representing the views of many New Rightists, formulates it thus: "In our theory, the individual person exists only in connection with the community of which he is a member. . . . We place no value on the interest of the individual as such.'"6

From this basic position, the New Rightists engage in two major battles. One is their demand that ethnic groups--as opposed to biological races per se--be kept pure. Hence, they cry "Foreigners, out!" presumably without intending any hostility to foreigners! Recently, Gerhard Frey announced over German television that "everyone should stay in their own country."7 That Frey, an Old Rightist, was willing to appropriate this line of argument from the New Right shows that the cultural hegemony of the New Right has already successfully permeated the Old Right camp, and that the "ethnopluralism" demanded by the New Right is compatible with the Old Right's sheer hatred of foreigners.

The second arena of the New Right's struggle against individualism is in its opposition to liberalism, which focuses primarily on the individual. Here liberalism is defined in its original, classical sense [not as welfare state liberalism]. The theoretical origins of anarchism, too, it must be noted, are a radicalized form of classical liberalism.

But let us return to the original problem. The New Right falsely portrays the Left as racist because it sees all people as "equal" and denies the existence of any differences among various ethnic cultures. This is obviously a straw man. The leftist demand for "equality" is based on the continued existence of inequality. Nor does the Left demand "integration" or "accommodation" with the system. Rather, for the Left "equality" means equal treatment for all people, of people having equal rights in a given situation and enjoying equality of opportunity in a given society. Again, what we advocate is equal individual rights for everyone.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the basic contradiction between Left and Right is the contradiction between the centrality of the individual and the centrality of the community. (It is not surprising, then, that the Marxist Left has often had problems determining what is "left" and what is not.) The demand for equal treatment is a demand for pluralism in present-day society, a society that has long consisted of minorities. If this society is to function, it must also acknowledge its own diversity (and not, in fact, the actual equality) of its members--and take people seriously as individuals. But it is precisely this point that the New Right ideologists oppose. "Freedom of opinion," writes Benoist, "ceases where it contradicts the common good."8

Like many of the New Right's concepts, its concept of "common good" is vague, but it is essentially a pale paraphrase of voelkisch [folk] totalitarianism. Today it includes "organic popular democracy"--a concept filched from ecologists who have long written of "organic growth." It has still another ideological kinship with spiritualism. Among the new myths that the Right is creating is the myth that for two thousand years the "Volk-concept" has been distorted by concepts of "equality, rationalism, and an elevation of the unaffiliated individual." But judging from the Right's own contradictory notions, a real Volk venerates hierarchy, antirationalism, and an organic community. Accordingly, it is expressly fascist. The antirationalism of the New Right and of countless spiritualistic movements requires a clear leftist interpretation of the Enlightenment.9

But polite society still frowns upon the word "fascist," so in the New Right's lexicon, "aristocratic" is used in its place. The New Right's methodology becomes clearer in such passages as this: "The aristocracy creates its own law out of itself," writes Benoist. "It creates order because [the aristocracy] is order. Yes, might makes right. . . Aristocracy, when it intervenes as a political class, creates . . . not only an administrative apparatus but also a cultural, bourgeois apparatus (Gramsci). . . . In the long run an aristocracy must be capable of giving meaning to words."10

The New Right, in effect, wants above all to redefine social norms, so that rational doubt is regarded as decadent and eliminated, and new "natural" norms are established. In the conceptual framework of "natural" and "organic" societies, each person is assigned a fixed role in the community, and out of this community bond the governed and the governing alike are to achieve an unmediated identification with the whole. The notion of a "harmonious" state looms large on the horizon of New Right ideology. And it would seem only logical for the Right to imagine that such an identification of the governed and governing strata would be impossible when minorities are among the governed. The New Right's concept of nationalism is wholly reconcilable with a United Europe, and indeed it is redefining itself as a form of "Europeanism." In this bizarre ideological world, "Europeanism" becomes the cement that will presumably hold everything together and gloss over any contradictions.

Other ethnic groups may then simply revert to a cultural Stone Age: "We want to substitute faith for law," writes Benoist, "mythos for logos, duties toward the Creation for the innocence of becoming, humility for the struggle for power; . . . [to substitute] will for pure reason, the image for the concept, and home for exile."11 One of the principal sources of this mishmash--and anarchists should finally become fully aware of this--is none other than Georges Sorel, who has been quoted by fascists no less than by syndicalists. Sorel is a theorist of the Counter-Enlightenment par excellence, of mythos against reason. "One must consider myth as a means to effect the present," he wrote in Reflections on Violence. "Only the wholeness of mythos is meaningful."

Sorel, in fact, tried to apply mythos to build the ideal of a syndicalist general strike. He sought on the one hand to arouse the workers' fantasies, but on the other hand to avoid the weightier question of the dubious viability of myths. "A myth cannot be refuted," he wrote, "because it is fundamentally identical with the outlook of the group and as a result it is an expression of a movement's convictions." Not surprisingly, Italian fascists were among the most eager practitioners of Sorel's theory, nor is it surprising that the syndicalist Sorel is now being eagerly picked up by the present-day New Right.

Given these views, it is not natural law but new myths that are to determine social consciousness. It is the dream, not the reality, that is to shape society. Whoever generates images in the world has power. But when images cease to be subjected to scrutiny--and for the New Right, one of the failings of reason is that it participates in critical scrutiny--and when the individual no longer counts for anything, when society embraces images--when finally this occurs, then the thousand-year Reich becomes once again imaginable. That myths can have serious social consequences was shown in the recent elections in Bremen, where the Christian Democrats "successfully" used the imagery of a "flood of asylum-seekers" or of "Bremen as Paradise for asylum-seekers," thereby exploiting public hostility toward immigrants and to win votes. With this appeal to the basest of feelings, they were able to induce the citizenry to forget even such a concrete problem as increased taxes. We find a strong emphasis on myth over reason in countless spiritualist, Green, and (eco-) feminist groups.12

Notes

1. The Tageszeitung is a daily Berlin newspaper that originally had a left-of-center bent. It has since become tepidly moderate (translator's note).

2. The letter was from a Mrs. Feiler in Pforzheim, on visiting Hoyerswerda, published in Sonntags Aktuell, Oct. 6, 1991.

3. That is, the notorious recent debate over the extent and in some cases the actual historical occurrence of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry (translator's note).

4. Alain de Benoist, Gleichheitslehre, Weltanschauung und Moral (Tuebingen, 1981), p. 56. Benoist is the primary theorist of the Nouvelle Droite, which emerged in the late 1960s in France, and a leading figure in the "Groupement de recherche et d'etudes pour la civilisation europeenne" (G.R.E.C.E.), an amalgam of ultra-right intellectuals.

5. See Hanspeter Siegfried's highly recommended essay, "Kulturrevolution von rechts?" in Widerspruch 21, Beitraege zur sozialistischen Politik (Zurich, 1991), p. 78.

6. Alain de Benoist, in Aus Rechter Sicht 2 (Tuebingen, 1984), p. 133.

7. Gerhard Frey has massively financed the Right for thirty years and publishes Deutsche National-Zeitung, a viciously ultra-right newspaper (circulation about 120,000). The party he heads, the German People's Union (DVU), got 6.l8 percent of the vote in the Bremen elections in September 1991. In what Frey calls its "breakthrough," the DVU got 6.3 percent in Schleswig-Holstein in April 1992. In the DVU's heavy direct-mail campaign, Frey called for "Anatolia for the Turks, Schlewwig-Holstein for the Germans" and warned that "fake asylum-seekers are cashing in" (translator's note).

8. Alain de Benoist, Demokratie: Das Problem (Tuebingen, 1985), pp. 78ff.

9. See Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society (Boston and Montreal, 1990).

10. Benoist, Demokratie: Das Problem, p. 89.

11. Alain de Benoist, Heide Sein zu neuem Anfang: Die Europaeische Glaubensalternative (Tuebingen, 1982), p. 306.

12. See Janet Biehl, Der sozial Oekofeminismus und andere Aufsaetze (Grafenau: Trotzdem Verlag, 1991).

13. Siegfried, "Kulturrevolution von rechts?", explicating Armon Mohler's chapter "Der Faschistische Stil," in Liberalenbeschimpfung (Essen, 1990).

Editors' Postscript:

Texas Dissident

2004-03-31 16:31 | User Profile

Leftist or not, I think this latest article you posted brings up some good points, MB. Certainly a few worthy of discussion, particularly the European New Right's view of the individual and what influence that might have, if any, on the American Right which I see as existing in a quite different context.

That the Nouvelle Droit and these ecofeminists prefer different pre-Christian "cultures" should not obscure the fact that both posit a cultural-chauvinist, tribalistic account of history based on "cultures" whose existence the archaeological record does not support.

In any case, the New Rightists unerringly adhere to this deep-seated anti-individualist tradition. "All prominent thinkers of the New Right," observes Hanspeter Siegfried, who has closely studied this ideology, "reject the individual as a starting point of ethics and politics."5 Benoist, representing the views of many New Rightists, formulates it thus: "In our theory, the individual person exists only in connection with the community of which he is a member. . . . We place no value on the interest of the individual as such.'"6

It is becoming increasingly clear that the basic contradiction between Left and Right is the contradiction between the centrality of the individual and the centrality of the community...."Freedom of opinion," writes Benoist, "ceases where it contradicts the common good."

But judging from the Right's own contradictory notions, a real Volk venerates hierarchy, antirationalism, and an organic community. Accordingly, it is expressly fascist.

Given these views, it is not natural law but new myths that are to determine social consciousness. It is the dream, not the reality, that is to shape society. Whoever generates images in the world has power. But when images cease to be subjected to scrutiny--and for the New Right, one of the failings of reason is that it participates in critical scrutiny--and when the individual no longer counts for anything, when society embraces images--when finally this occurs, then the thousand-year Reich becomes once again imaginable.

Franco

2004-04-01 07:25 | User Profile

I remind ODers that you cannot put a political label on a RACIAL ideology. Nazism is, when distilled, a racial ideology.

You can call Uncle Franco whatever you want. But his ideology is WHITENESS [and Western culturalism e.g. art, music, architecture, etc.].

:king:

Madrid burns

2004-05-13 12:15 | User Profile

Racialism versus Communitarianism

[url]http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=2849[/url]

The Faye-Benoist Debate: Has the European New Right abandoned biological racialism?

Introduction by Michael O’Meara

THE ARTICLE by Guillaume Faye (pictured) and the interview with Alain de Benoist translated below should be of interest to National Vanguard readers. Representing the alternative racialist and communitarian wings of the European New Right, the positions Faye and Benoist defend in these two pieces are emblematic not just of the divergent strategies presently dividing European nationalist ranks, as they struggle with issues of pluralism, culturalism, and globalism, but of the difficulties inherent in the anti-liberal politics of White racial survival.

As part of the recent controversy over Jacques Chirac's decision to ban the Muslim head scarf in French public schools, these pieces first appeared in the review Terre et Peuple, one of the many split-offs from the Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes pour la Civilisation Européenne (GRECE). Founded in 1968, the anti-liberal nationalists identifying themselves as Grécistes believed the American-centric order imposed on Europe in 1945 -- with its miscegenational social practices and the capitalist 'totalitarianism of its homo dollaris uniformis' -- would never be overturned as long as its opponents appealed to the discredited political legacies of Vichy, traditional Catholicism, monarchism, or neo-fascism, all of which had failed to make the slightest impact on the postwar era. Taking a page from the Left’s playbook, the GRECE's young founders abandoned these earlier forms of anti-liberalism for a 'Gramscianism of the Right', which aimed at metapolitically subverting the liberal order at the level of culture and belief.

Given the egalitarian principles undergirding liberalism's anti-nationalist world view, the 'biological realists' of the early GRECE sought to popularize what contemporary science had to say about such claims. Their anti-egalitarian metapolitics failed, however, to influence the dominant discourse, which brooked not the slightest abridgement of this cardinal principle. Once this was evident, Grécistes began rethinking their cultural strategy and the need to pursue a less confrontational approach. As they did, they gradually downplayed, then discarded, their biological realism for the sake of an 'ethnopluralism' which endeavored to legitimate White racial identity in the name of cultural heterogeneity. This new strategy was premised on thebelief that ethnopluralism, whose principle of self-determination had gained prominence in the decolonization and anti-imperialist movements of the previous decades, could be used to defend the racial/cultural integrity of European peoples, (for if Third World peoples had the right to self-determination, then, it was reasoned, so too did Europeans).

The GRECE's ethnopluralist turn took the form of two slogans: la cause des peuples and la droite à la différence, both of which translate awkwardly into English, but which imply that humanity 'can only remain healthy as long as cultural diversity is safeguarded' from the homogenizing forces of the global market (the right to difference) and as long as every people is allowed to retain its distinct cultural identity (the cause of the peoples). Then, as these ideas penetrated the larger nationalist movement, Le Pen, Haider, Fini, and numerous nationalist parliamentary parties and groupuscules across the continent began employing some variant of them to justify their defense of Europe's biocultural heritage. The success of these slogans seemed, moreover, to suggest that it was wiser to promote White racial survival on the basis of agreement than on conflict, for in using slogans congruent with liberal beliefs, even if they broke with liberal goals, anti-liberal nationalists were able to turn the dominant discourse against itself.

This 'strategy of persuasion' proved, however, a bit too clever for the GRECE's own good, for in the process of defending human heterogeneity for Europe's sake, something began to change in its cultural politics, as ethnopluralism evolved into more than the 'ruse' it was intended to be. Eventually, it became the focus of its metapolitics, preparing the way for its later embrace of multiculturalism, Third World immigration, and those American communitarian principles supportive of racially Balkanized societies. Instead, then, of driving a wedge into the anti-White policies of the postwar order, the GRECE’s ethnopluralism, premised as it was on the liberal belief that all peoples are of equal worth, ended up echoing the reigning blather about diversity.

This brings us to Guillaume Faye. With a pen as mighty as his former comrade, he now challenges Benoist's claim that Third World immigration has become an undeniable, and hence uncontestable, facet of European existence and that it must be dealt with in ways recognizing it as such. Like a number of prominent early ex-Grécistes (such as Robert Steuckers, Pierre Vial, Pierre Krebs, etc.), Faye continues to write, speak, and agitate in defense not simply of Europe's cultural and communal heritage, but of the traditional racial homogeneity of its lands. He thus rejects all compromise with liberal equalitarianism, aligning himself against the GRECE's 'differentialist' discourse. For in assuming the liberal postulates underpinning the politics of ethnopluralism, Faye claims the GRECE has become increasingly complicit with the governing elites, whose own variant of ethnopluralism justifies the on-going de Europeanization that comes with open borders and free trade.

Here then, in these pieces reflective of Benoist's communitarianism and Faye's racial nationalism, the two most prominent anti-liberal opponents of the European New Class cross swords over their once common opposition to liberalism's hybridized world order.

• An Interview with Alain de Benoist From Terre et Peuple 18 (Winter Solstice 2003)

Terre et Peuple: The present dispute [over whether Muslim females will be allowed to wear the veil in the classroom] has revived the question of communitarianism. In numerous books and articles published over the years, particularly in the columns of Eléments [the GRECE’s popular trimestrial review], you have frequently taken positions at odds with your readership. I would like to begin this interview by asking if there has been any fundamental changes in our society in the years [since the Cold War’s end, when last you took a public stand on this issue], and, by contrast, if the identitarian movement is not better situated today to address this disturbing but crucial dispute.

Alain de Benoist: I've always taken positions contrary to those who don't know or understand my own. But I’ll admit I have displeased some in saying that immigration is a fact, no longer an option, and that in engaging a battle, one has to fight on its specific terrain, not on the one which we might prefer to fight. . .

What’s happened in the last 14 years? The social pathologies engendered by a massive, uncontrolled immigration have gotten incontestably worse. These pathologies have made life more difficult for millions of people, who see no likely end to these difficulties. One consequence of this has been a certain shift in perspective. The comforting idea of a future Reconquista [in which Europeans will militarily recapture the lands they have lost to Third World immigrants] is no longer entertained, except by a handful of spirits who haven't a clue as to what world they’re living in. At the same time, no one (with perhaps the exception of the business class) proposes a further opening of our borders -- which, in any case, no longer stops or guarantees anything. If the question of the veil has aroused such heated discussion, it’s only because it provides the political class a convenient way of dealing with a problem which it has refused to address. But however it is posed, there's likely to be no end to this dispute. For my part, the position I took on the subject in Le Monde in 1989, when it was still possible to write [for France’s ‘paper of record’], has not changed.

You're right, moreover, to describe the subject as a crucial one. But because it is so, it's important not to treat it with slogans or fantasies. As to whether the identitarian movement is more mature, for that to be true, it would need to stop confusing appearance with truth and to stop attributing to ethnic factors what Karl Marx attributed to economic factors. Above all, the movement needs to rethink the notion of identity, acknowledging that it is not an eternal essence enabling its bearers to avoid change, but rather a narrative substance enabling them to remain themselves, even while changing.

T&P: The communitarian phenomenon encompasses many diverse realities (or at least the appearance of them): communities formed by non-European immigrants, communities based on religious affiliation, sexual preference, or regional identities, all of which are now experiencing a revival. . . But are these communities of comparable worth? For a communitarian, is it necessary to legitimate every community in the name of the droit à la difference?

AdB: Let’s begin by clarifying our terms. First, there is the notion of community, which Ferdinand Tönnies developed in opposition to his concept of society. In distinction to a society's mechanical [or functional] relations, in which social organization is based on individuality and individual interests, community defines a mode of organic sociality. In Max Weber’s term, this notion is an ideal type, for every collectivity, in different proportions of course, possesses traits that are distinct to both community and society. Based on Tönnies work, but with reference to Aristotle, there has arisen a communitarian school of thought, whose principal representatives are Alasdair McIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Michael Sandal. This school highlights the fictitious character of liberal anthropology, insofar as liberalism posits an atomized individual who exists anterior to his ends, that is, an individual whose rational choices and behavior are made and motivated outside a specific sociohistorical context. For the communatarian, [by contrast, the extra-individual forces of larger social or communal ties] are what constitute and motivate the individual. Identity, thus, is that which we choose to be before we even recognize who we are, being that inherited framework which defines the horizon of our shared values and lends meaning to the things of our world. As a specific moral value, then, identity is anterior to any universal conception of justice -- although the liberal believes such a conception ought to trump every particularistic sense of the good.

Communitarianism, then, responds to liberalism's dissolution of organic ties and the crisis of the nation-state it provokes, for liberal society is no longer able to generate sustainable forms of sociality. In reaction, communities of all sorts, whether inherited or chosen, now seek to reassert themselves in public life and to break out of the private, individualistic sphere in which liberalism has sought to confine them. . .

T&P: Doesn’t the communitarian’s systematic legitimation of difference lead to an impasse? Indeed, don’t certain communities refuse difference or seek to impose their will on others once they become dominant? In the name of difference, doesn’t one ultimately risk denying one’s own difference?

AdB: The recognition of difference is not necessarily angelic in its effects. It also doesn’t eliminate conflict. The right to difference or to an identity is much like the right to freedom: its abuse simply discredits its usage, not its principle. In this I oppose [the feminist philosopher] Elisabeth Badinter, who, in justifying 'the right to indifference', assumes that every time we emphasize 'our differences at the expense of our common ties, we create conflict'. Common identities can, in fact, be just as conflictual as differences: think of the 'mimetic rivalry' that [the literary scholar and anthropologist] René Girard has analyzed. A recognition of differences doesn't do away with the need for a common body of laws (which, indeed, is prerequisite to it) nor is it necessarily incompatible with notions of citizenship or the common good. The state's duty is to insure public order, not to incite hatred. Similarly, a policy recognizing differences demands reciprocity. He who designates me as his enemy becomes my enemy. For whoever promotes his difference in denying mine, abrogates the principle’s generality. It is thus necessary to create a condition in which our reciprocal differences are recognized, which isn't possible once immigration, Islam, fundamentalism, and terrorism are lumped together.

In respect to 'the right to difference' [la droit à différence], it is necessary to dispense with certain equivocations. First, it is a question of right, not an obligation. In recognizing difference, we create the possibility of living according to those attachments we consider essential, not for the sake of enclosing ourselves in them or keeping them at a distance. Difference, moreover, is not an absolute. By definition, it exists only in relation to other differences, for we distinguish ourselves only vis-à-vis those who are different. The same goes for identity: even more than an individual, a group does not have a single identity. Every identity is constituted in relationship to another. This also holds for culture: for in creating its own world of meaning, it nevertheless does so in relationship to other cultures. Different cultures are not incomparable species, only different modalities of human nature. Let’s not confuse the universal with universalism.

T&P: In your opinion, is communitarianism an effective response to the problem created by the introduction of millions of non-Europeans into Europe? Indeed, isn’t community important because it is a function of its specific place and time? For instance, there exist communities that are more rather than less dynamic, especially in terms of natality. Given the failure to integrate non-Europeans, the utopia of a Reconquista, and a communitarianism cloaking a demographic time-bomb, isn’t this enough to make one pessimistic?

AdB: First, let me say that whenever men fail to find a solution to their problems, history finds one for them. Second, history is always open (which doesn’t mean that anything is possible). Finally, in posing a problem in a way that has no solution, it shouldn’t be surprising that one is condemned to pessimism. Today, in Europe there are 52.2 [sic] million Muslims (25 million in Russia and 13.5 in Western Europe), a majority of whom are of European stock [This statement is not credible to me. --K.A.S.]. The rest, as far as I know, are neither Black nor Asian. If Europeans are less demographically dynamic, it is not the fault of those who are. If they no longer know what their identity is, again this is not the fault of those who do. In face of peoples with strong identities, those lacking such an identity might reflect on why they have lost their own. To this end, they might look to the planetary spread of market values or the nature of Western nihilism. In an era of general de territorialization, it might also be useful to think of identity in ways that no longer depend on locale. For my part, I attach more importance to what men do, than to what they presume themselves to be. . .

Guillaume Faye “The Cause of the Peoples?” From Terre et Peuple 18 (Winter Solstice 2003)

The [GRECE's] cause des peuples is an ambiguous slogan. It was initially conceived in a polytheistic spirit to defend ethnocultural heterogeneity. But it has since been reclaimed by egalitarian and human rights ideologies which, while extolling a utopian, rainbow-colored world order, seek to inculpate Europeans for having 'victimized' the Third World.

Failure of a Strategy

When [GRECE-style] identitarians took up the cause des peuples in the early 1980s, it was in the name of ethnopluralism. This 'cause', however, was little more than a rhetorical ruse to justify the right of European peoples to retain their identity in face of a world system that sought to make everyone American. For in resisting the forces of deculturation, it was hoped that Europeans, like Third World peoples, would retain the right to their differences [la droit àla différence] -- and do so without having to suffer the accusation of racism. As such, the slogan assumed that every people, even White people, possessed such a right. But no sooner was this argument made than the cosmopolitan P.-A. Taguieff [a leading academic commentator on the far Right] began referring to it as a 'differentialist racism' [in which cultural difference, rather than skin color, became the criterion for exclusion].

In retrospect, the New Right's strategy seems completely contrived, for la cause des peuples, la droit à la différence, and 'ethnopluralism' have all since been turned against identitarians. Moreover, its irrelevant to Europe's present condition, threatened, as it is, by a massive non-European invasion and by a conquering Islam abetted by our ethnomaschoistic elites.

Reclaimed by the dominant ideology, turned against identitarians, and tangential to current concerns, the GRECE's ethnopluralist strategy is a metapolitical disaster. It also retains something of the old Marxist and Christian-Left prejudice about Europe’s 'exploitation' of the Third World. As [the French Africanist] Bernard Lugan shows in respect to Black Africa,this prejudice is based on little more than economic ignorance. The cause des peuples is nevertheless associated with a Christian-like altruism that demonizes our civilization, accuses it of having destroyed all the others, and does so at the very moment when these others are busily preparing the destruction of our own civilization.

The 'right to difference' . . . What right? Haven't we had enough Kantian snivelling [about abstract rights]. There exists only a capacity to be different. In the selective process of History and Life, everyone has to make it on his own. There are no benevolent protectors. This right, moreover, is reserved for everyone but Europeans, who, [in the name of multiculturalism or some other cosmopolitan fashion], are summoned to discard their own biological and cultural identity.

This slogan poses another danger: it threatens to degenerate into a doctrine -- an ethnic communitarianism -- sanctioning the existence of non-European enclaves in our own lands. For in the Europe it envisages, communities of foreigners, particularly Muslim ones, will, for obvious demographic reasons, play an ever-greater role in our lives. This affront to our identity is accompanied by sophistic arguments that ridicule the 'fantasy' of a [possible White] reconquista. In this spirit, we are told that we will have to make do [with a multiracial Europe]. But I, for one, refuse to make do. Nor am I prepared to retreat before an alleged historical determinism [which aims at making Europe a Third World colony].

Life Is Perpetual Struggle

The cause des peuples has now become part of the ‘human rights’ vulgate. By contrast, the neo Darwinian thesis of conflict and competition, which assumes that only the fittest survive, seems to our bleeding-heart communitarians a vestige of barbarism -- even if this vestige corresponds with life’s organic laws. This thesis, though, in recognizing the forces of selection and competition, is alone able to guarantee the diversity of life's varied forms.

The cause des peuples is collectivist, homogenizing, and egalitarian, while the 'combat of peoples' is subjectivist and heterogeneous, conforming to life's entropic properties. In this sense, only nationalism and clashing wills-to-power are capable of sustaining the life affirming principle of subjectivity. Given its egalitarian assumption that every people has a 'right to live', the cause des peuples prefers to ignore obvious historical realities for an objectivism that seeks to transform the world’s peoples into objects suitable for a museum display. As such, it implies the equivalence of all peoples and civilizations.

This sort of egalitarianism takes two basic forms: one is expressed in a homogenizing but metissé concept of what it means to be human (the 'human race'), the other endeavors to preserve people and cultures in a way a curator might. Both forms refuse to accept that peoples and civilizations are qualitatively different. Hence, the absurd idea that one has to save endangered peoples and civilizations (at least if they are Third World) in the same way one might save an endangered seal. History’s turbulent selection process has, though, no room for preservation -- only for competing subjectivities. In its tribunal, salvationist doctrines are simply inadmissible.

The cause des peuples also assumes an underlying solidarity between European and Third World peoples. Again, this is nothing but a dubious ideological construct, which Grécistes invented in the early Eighties to avoid the accusation of racism. I don’t have the space here to expose the myth of Third World 'exploitation'. However, to explain its misfortunes in crude, neo-Marxist terms, as if it were due to the machinations of the IMF, the Trilaterals, the Bilderberg group, or some other Beelzebub, is hardly worthy of a response.

According to media or academic pundits, the 'culture of the other' is now under siege in France -- even though 'Afromania' is all the rage. I, on the other hand, think it is not at all exaggerated to claim that America's deculturating influences no longer threaten Europe, for its dangers have been surpassed by another.

Europe First!

I respect the destiny of the sometimes afflicted Inuits, Tibetans, Amazonians, Pygmies, Kanaks, Aborigines, Berbers, Saharians, Indians, Nubians, the inevitable Palestinians, and the little green men from outer space. But don’t expect crocodile tears from me. When the flooding threatens my own house, I can think only of my own predicament and haven't time to help or plead for others. Besides, when have these others ever cared about us? In any case, the dangers threatening them are greatly exaggerated, especially in view of their demographic vigor, which, incidentally, is owed to Western medicine and material aid -- for the same Western forces that have allegedly exploited them also seems to have made them prosper (or, at least, to reproduce in unprecedented numbers).

If our communitarians really want to defend the cause des peuples, they might start with Europeans, who are now under assault by the demographic, migratory, and cultural forces of an overpopulated Third World. In face of these threats, you won't find us sniveling (like a priest)or fleeing (like an intellectual) to the 'other's' cause. 'Ourselves alone' will suffice.

Michael O'Meara, Ph.D., the translator of these pieces, studied social thought at the Ecole des Etudes Sociales en Sciences Sociales and modern European history at the University of California. His most recent book is New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe.

darkstar

2004-05-13 14:51 | User Profile

'If they no longer know what their identity is, again this is not the fault of those who do. In face of peoples with strong identities, those lacking such an identity might reflect on why they have lost their own. To this end, they might look to the planetary spread of market values or the nature of Western nihilism. In an era of general de territorialization, it might also be useful to think of identity in ways that no longer depend on locale.. . . '

The points about 'market values' seem to me to be blather, although perhaps if the term 'atomitized-individualist market values' were used, I could agree. As for the rest, it seems quite insightful. Dressing up Muslims as Frenchwomen obviously accomplishes little, and is a kind of pitiful reaction. What is need, as I think Benoist indicates, is a white valuation of white racial identities, with an accompanying desire to reproduce.

Of course, contra to what he implies, there is more to be done about immigration, even in Europe. And his comments do not really apply to North America at all, where immigration deserves much attention. But increasing the absolute number of whites is here too the greater issue, and valuation of white racial identities the most signficant.

Madrid burns

2004-06-02 09:30 | User Profile

An short text on Alain de Benoist's Europeanism by the globalist review Correspondence (from the Council on Foreign Relations):

[[url]http://www.cfr.org/pdf/correspondence/CORR.fall99.pdf[/url] ]

Benoist’s Imperial Fantasy

Darrin McMahon

The split last spring of the French National Front (FN) into two competing factions exposed fault lines that divide what is too often considered the solid block of the French right. The debate over European union may well prove to be the source of other such fissures. For though the far right in France is best known for the shrill nationalism of its more venerable spokesmen (and hence for vehement opposition to European construction), a number of younger men have questioned this dogmatism. The most prominent is Alain de Benoist. Since 1968 the recognized intellectual doyen of the so called New Right, Benoist is today a privileged opinion-maker at the far end of the political spectrum. And as he makes clear in a recent two-volume collection of essays chronicling the evolution of his thoughts on Europe, La Ligne de Mire: Discours aux citoyens européens, 1972-1995 [The Firing Line: Speeches to European citizens] (Arpajon: Labyrinthe, 1995-6), Benoist is no Europhobe, though this in itself may be cause for fear.

Shortly after the Maastricht referendum in 1992, Benoist began to stake out his somewhat ambiguous position on European union. He himself had abstained in the referendum, but the issue, he admitted, was complex, legitimately dividing even right-thinking colleagues. On the positive side, Maastricht was a step in the direction of Europe, and Benoist was first and foremost a "European." "I have always defined myself in this way," he affirms in a central essay included in The Firing Line, "Maastricht and the Memory of the Future." "I love Europe. I love the peoples that compose it. I want to see their diversity and their identity preserved. I believe in peoples and cultures more than in nations."

This is a theme that Benoist has sounded before and since— a vigorous defense of "cultures" and "peoples." And though such talk is often accompanied by unsettling discussions of racial and ethnic identity, the point to stress here is the opposition he draws with the concept of the nation. For unlike the more xenophobic variety of French right-winger (Philippe de Villiers, Charles Pasqua, Jean-Marie Le Pen), Benoist is no vulgar nationalist. "I am not one of those who thinks that the nation-state is the only framework for political life," he emphasizes. Pointing out both the geographical arbitrariness and the historical novelty of this form of association, Benoist is also quick to signal the nation-state’s role in suppressing regional and cultural diversity—above all in France, where the Jacobin legacy of a "one and indivisible" republic has long stifled the yearnings of the country’s many peoples—Basque, Corsican, Alsatian, Occitan, and Breton. Such yearnings, Benoist argues, are wholly legitimate and should even be recognized constitutionally. Whereas Jacobinism is "centralization, uniformity, and the impoverishment of the diversity of languages and cultures," Benoist is a federalist.

Of course, the defense of the particular in the face of the centralizing state enjoys a long history in right-wing thought, from the Vendée rebellion onward. Yet Benoist’s argument is not simply recycled fare. For in his view the days of the nation-state are numbered. "Too large to take care of small problems, too small to deal with the large," the nation is gradually giving way to "a multi-polar world" in which the "essential actors will be great continental zones." With supranational bodies dealing with major issues such as defense and trade policy, peoples and regions will be free to confront local problems at a more grass-roots level. "I believe in the possibility of forming in Europe a federal political unity on the basis of peoples and regions," Benoist insists. To the degree that the present process of European union helps to further this necessary historical development, he is in accord.

Why, then, not "yes"? The problem, in Benoist’s view, is that the present blueprint of European construction lacks both vision and might. Vision in the form of a unifying "idea, a project, or principle" to give direction to the federal model, and might in the form of the political capacity to carry this project out. Ironically, Benoist the federalist would give a united Europe more power, not less. His reasons, however, are perfectly clear. In the absence of a directing body vested with real sovereignty, he insists, the "United States of Europe" risks becoming "the Europe of the United States"—a purely economic association whose open borders and porous markets will easily be penetrated by preying American imperialists. In a post-Soviet world, America, and the unfettered global capitalism it represents, is the real enemy, "a country unlike any other…given over completely to the destruction of the personalities and cultures of peoples."

In order to protect itself, to defend the value of cultures, Europe must be united and strong. But how does Benoist propose to reconcile these two apparently contradictory impulses—the federal and the central? Empire, he argues in another of The Firing Line’s key essays, "The Idea of Empire." For empire, it seems, the imperial principle "works to conciliate the one and the many, the particular and the universal…unifying, without suppressing, the diversity of cultures, ethnicities, and peoples." In the example of Rome, Benoist finds a potent model of both what Europe has been and what it can be again—"a federal model, but a federal model endowed with an idea." What is this great "idea" that would endow a renascent European empire? and how would an imperial Europe deal with non-European peoples? Benoist speaks vaguely of the importance of myth as well as the value of pluralism, but on the whole he is loath to say. Which leaves one to ponder if it is a coincidence that both Hitler and Mussolini found in the idea of empire and the example of Rome equally attractive models for a united Europe.

For the time being, admittedly, Benoist’s views on Europe cut against far-right grain. Even the FN dissident and New Right fellow traveler, Bruno Mégret [This is wrong, Mégret never was a member of Nouvelle Droite.-Ed.], clings to a more familiar position on European union in his recent book, La Nouvelle Europe: Pour la France et l’Europe des Nations [The New Europe: For France and the Europe of Nations] (Saint-Cloud:Éditions Nationales, 1998), idolizing the nation-state and depicting Brussels as the headquarters of bureaucratic tyrants intent on stripping France of its glory and power. Yet embedded within this standard fare is also the recognition that in a multi-polar world, economic and military cooperation have their benefits, particularly in the fight to protect "cultures" and "peoples" from American globalization.

And in his calls for "grandeur," his enjoinder to take up the "great adventure of European peoples," to "claim collectively their first place in the world," Mégret sounds a distinctly Benoistian note. This doesn’t mean that one can expect the French Right to start signing on to the Schengen accords any time soon. But it does highlight the fact that the idea of European union has a disturbing past, present, and perhaps future in circles where it is generally least expected.

Madrid burns

2004-06-02 09:33 | User Profile

The Sacred Eclipsed?

Paul Gottfried

Review of L'eclipse du sacre by Alain de Benoist and Thomas Molnar Paris: La Talle Ronde, 1986, 247 pp.

This book is a series of discussions between two religious thinkers with shared cultural concerns. Thomas Molnar and Alain de Benoist have both written extensively on the problem of secularization in the modern West.

The attempts by modern states to recognize secularism as a public philosophy and to distance themselves from the symbols of traditional theistic religion represent a striking departure from earlier human history. Almost all past societies, even those few that prohibited the establishment of a national religion, encouraged public displays of religious beliefs. The United States until the 1950s impressed foreign visitors, such as the French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, as a land that combined religious freedom and pervasive public piety.

Against the tendency toward approved manifestations of piety, a militant secularism has asserted itself in the form of opposition to, for example, nondenominational public school prayer (even silent meditations are disallowed as a form of public school prayer) or public funding of activities associated with religious bodies. The attempt to dissociate religious belief from the polity has behind it influential supporters from members of the Supreme Court and Congress through the media and universities down to teachers' unions. This militant secularism has a clear precedent in the anticlerical Third Republic in France, which strove to eradicate French Catholicism in the opening years of the twentieth century. The culminating point of raising secularism to the level of public philosophy can be found, of course, in communist countries where atheism and scientific materialism have become hallowed state teachings.

Molnar and Benoist each stress the unprecedented and problematic aspects of governments and societies suppressing the public expression of religious sentiment. They also speculate about the future of our non-religious society. Molnar argues that because of the constancy of human spiritual needs, even secularism must eventually resemble a religion or yield to a real faith; Benoist, however, believes that the sense of the sacred has already departed from our culture.

It may be useful to note that these two thinkers start from dramatically different premises about religion and culture in the West. Molnar is a traditionalist Catholic who deplores the modernizing tendencies in the church and who even now speaks of Martin Luther with a frisson d'horreur.

Christianity and Atheism

Benoist, by contrast, is a critic of what he calls "judeochristianisme," the monotheistic assumptions and ethical prescriptions that have informed Western thought since the Middle Ages. Identifying himself as a "neo-pagan," Benoist has described Christianity and atheism as two sides of the same coin. The biblical reductionism by which all natural and historical phenomena were traced back to a single divine principle left the world without mystery. The view that there is a single divine author of the world, who stands over against it and demands human obedience to his will, caused nature to become desacralized. The cosmic point of gravity in the post-pagan West was no longer the relationship between men and nature or their ancient sacred cities but between the Creator and mankind. As long as men fulfilled the divine commandments imposed on them, they would enjoy divine favor and exercise mastery over nature.

Atheism, as Benoist sees it, represents an exaggeration of certain Judeo-Christian ideas committed at the expense of others. Atheists draw from the Judeo-Christian cosmology its desacralized view of nature, and even their customary veneration of scientific laws is derived from a theology that stresses the objectivity of the universe as the product of a self-revealing Creator. The biblical God and his followers are intended to rule nature without being parts of it, and the achievement of Western atheism is to "dislodge God from his throne to put us in his place and to attempt to construct mimetically a relationship to the world analogous to God's relationship with creation." Atheism is the flattery of imitation that post-Christian man pays to a transcendent deity who orders and regulates a world of his own making.

A Cat-and-mouse Game

There is an element of truth in many of Benoist's statements, and the presence of that element makes it hard for Molnar to trap him in what often seems a cat-and-mouse game. For example, Benoist is justified in insisting on the necessary connection between, on the one side, atheism, socialism, and millenialist ideology, all elements of Marxism and, on the other, Judeo-Christian culture. Modernist and postmodernist trends did not emerge out of a cultural vacuum. Nor would they today be so widespread among the educational and political elites unless they had a well-established, historical foundation. Benoist finds that certain contemporary ideologies have roots in the Bible: modern nationalism in the Old Testament, modern egalitarianism/universalism in the New Testament, and political millennialism in both Testaments. Unfortunately, he exaggerates these connections. The Bible does not provide a sufficient explanation for modern ideologies that developed thousands of years after the Bible was written. Since ancient times, devout Christians and Jews have believed in a biblical God without turning into secularists. Benoist is provocative when he describes the early church as "the Bolshevism of antiquity." Yet, though primitive Christians held possessions in common and defended the spiritual dignity of slaves, they did not claim to be either scientific materialists or social revolutionaries. Nor were they as "globalist" as the Roman Empire, which persecuted Christians and Jews and imposed emperor worship on all its subject peoples.

Hebraic and Classical Traditions

In trying to deal with Benoist's presentation, particularly in the last section, which contains questions and answers from participants, Molnar stresses the value-relativity and pantheism in Benoist's neo-paganism. But Benoist proves an elusive target. He manages to counterattack by accusing the biblical God of alienating men from nature, of generating moral fanaticism, and of driving his followers into ceaseless crusades to change the world in his image. Molnar asks one particularly sharp question about the mechanical nature of ritual piety in the Greco-Roman world. What made a sacrifice suitable (hieroprepes), as opposed to unsuitable (memiasmenon), was largely unrelated to the attitude or intention of the celebrant. The gods were believed to respond to the ritual itself, independently of the worshipper's virtues or vices. Benoist might have responded by pointing out the similarity between the Greco-Roman attitude toward sacrifices and the one suggested in Leviticus. Although in the Greco-Roman world sacrifices was mainly an external affair, the Hebrews, no less than the Greeks, thought that performing ritual sacrifices without the prescribed procedure was both wicked and dangerous. Benoist might also have pointed to the rules that govern Christian sacraments, particularly in the Roman and Orthodox communions. Here, too, the efficacy of a particular ritual depends upon the manner in which it is done. The violation of the proper procedure affects the validity of sacraments, no matter how well-meaning the participant may be.

Significantly, Benoist makes no such comparison between pagan and Judeo-Christian religions. He is determined to underscore their absolute difference and therefore ignores any points of contact between them. Benoist makes much of the presumed difference between the biblical concept of fearing God (yeras hashamaim) and the Hellenic sense of feeling awe (hazamenos) before divine mystery. But the Hebrew word for fear, yerah, can also signify reverence, while the Greek verb hazesthai means to dread one's parents or the gods as well as to stand in awe. Some obvious ethical and theological overlaps exist between the Classical and Hebraic traditions.

I believe that Molnar and Benoist both recognize these overlaps. Their contributions reveal that they are immensely learned in philosophy and the study of comparative religions. In battling with each other, they marshal staggering amounts of erudition drawn from entire lifetimes of reading. Unlike most American intellectuals, they believe that matters of the soul count for more than public policy issues. I tip my hat to both debaters and commend them for discussing the truly permanent things.

All the same, a debating format is not always the best instrument for examining scholarly positions. Sometimes, in the heat of battle, the participants blur or exaggerate what in less bellicose circumstances would be presented with greater care. This is particularly true of Benoist. Still, Molnar tries too hard to play his assigned role, assuming a militant Catholic stance a bit too often instead of displaying his sound knowledge of Classical civilization. He depicts primarily an ancient world that was mired in animistic superstition. But surely Molnar knows (I have no doubt that he does) that Greco-Roman religion inculcated reverence for one's city and one's ancestors and, as the French historian Fustel de Coulanges showed more than a century ago, contributed significantly to civic virtue and martial valor. The image that I find in Molnar's presentation of pagan society is at best a fragmentary picture of Classical civilization. In other, less polemical circumstances, Molnar would likely be as skeptical of it as I am.

Despite these objections, the debat dialogue between Molnar and Benoist makes for exciting reading. One may hope that sometime in the future university students in religion and philosophy will be encouraged to examine and think about this book. Having to read it may be for them an education in itself.

Paul Gottfried is a senior editor of the Modern Thought section of The World & I and author of The Search for Historical Meaning: Hegel and the Postwar American Right.

[The World and I (New York), December, 1986]

Madrid burns

2004-06-02 09:38 | User Profile

From Roger Griffin "Europe for the Europeans"

The Europeanism of the New Right

The Nouvelle Droite (for which we will use the term New Right' shorn of the neo-liberal connotations it has acquired in Britain and America) is inseparable from the figure of Alain de Benoist, very much a child of post-war Europe (he was born in 1943). In 1968, year of the left-inspired ParisEvents', De Benoist helped found a major think-tank of the radical right, the Groupement de Recherche et d'Utudes pour la Civilisation Europeenne (which by no coincidence forms the acronym GRECE). Displaying the eclectic mind and the yearning for an overarching vision of the world' so typical of right-wing autodidactics (cf. Spengler, Rosenberg and Evola), De Benoist has over the years produced a number of key books, as well as numerous articles for the reviews Nouvelle Ecole, Valeurs Actuelles, Le Spectacle du Monde and Elements. His heroes range from Nietzsche and Moeller van den Bruck, the foremost thinker of the proto-NaziConservative Revolution' in Germany (whose main historian, Armin Mohler, is an important contributor to the Nouvelle Droite) to the likes of Teilhard de Chardin, Piaget and Popper with no fascist pedigree. De Benoist's voluminous writings converge on a constellation of interrelated propositions: i) for scientifically demonstrable reasons humanity can only remain healthy as long as the dynamic principle of cultural diversity is safeguarded and the distinctive roots of each human group are retained; ii) for concrete historical reasons Europe is made up of distinctive national cultures (ethnies) whose bedrock of community is their roots in a common Indo-European tradition; iii) this communal heritage is under threat from a number of ideologies which tend to promote egalitarianism, homogenization, materialism, cosmopolitanism, and the ideal of an undifferentiated One World'; iv) the two main sources of the diffusion of such pernicious, culture-cidal forces are the liberal capitalism and democracy emanating from American economic power, life-styles and entertainment, and the evangelistic brand of communist materialism (till recently) embodied in Russia; v) the presence of immigrants (and by implication Jews) in Europe is inimical to cultural health because they should assert their cultural identity within their own nations; vi) by establishing the cultural hegemony of heroic (and intrinsically anti-democratic and anti- Marxist) ideas native to Indo-Europeans it is still possible to create the preconditions for the decadence to be stopped socio-politically and for European history to beregenerated'.

These are the organizing principles behind the vast compilation of articles which he published in Vu de droite (1977), earning him the coveted Academy Francaise prize for literature a year later. In it we are told with the specious facticity so typical of New Right that the 450 million human beings in Europe...are heirs of the same culture, they have a common origin. Their ancestors are called Indo-Europeans' (p. 32). This forms the preamble to De Benoist's affirmation thatI define myself first and foremost as a European, as one who is at home in Europe. Maybe you could even say that the will to see Europe come into her own again, to be an example to the world, to retrieve a communal identity and existence, is the fixed point of my entire life' (De Benoist, 1977, pp. 31-2). For an exposition of his special brand of Europeanism, however, the articles collected in Les Idees … l'endroit (1980) are even more illuminating. In one of the articles written in the wake of the Vietnam War he asserts that between American Vietnam and Communist Vietnam there isn't much to choose. My votes are for a Vietnamese Vietnam, as for an Algerian Algeria, a French France and a European Europe' (Benoist, 1983, p. 271). In another article entitledAgainst the Superpowers' he expands this point: Between the materialism of the West and the materialism of the East, between an America of vulgarity, egalitarianism and the mercantile spirit and a Russia of the Gulag, of oppression, of prisons and concentration camps, there is now a void. This void is Europe. A Europe under occupation: in the East by barbarianism, in the West by decadence. The worst thing that can be done is to end up thinking that one occupation is, in the last resort, preferable to the other. As far as I'm concerned I am inclined neither to dress up as a Cossack nor in Levis. Caught between Moscow which kills bodies and Washington which kills souls I am waiting for Europe to return to its being (ibid. p. 273). In the following piece called The Rise Of Europe' his thesis is that the only way out of the spiritual crisis which has overtaken it is for a higher new consciousness to be born. Citing Jung and Nietzsche he rejects a rectilinear for a spherical image of time, suggesting that history can take an entirely new direction at any moment. A Europe-widegnostic revolution' could lead to the regeneration of history' and the salvation of the West. The time is ripe for such a transformation, for we are at a point wherethose who have stayed awake during the long night encounter those who appear in the new dawn' (ibid. p. 290). The mythopoeia of the Nouvelle Droite has been a major factor in the overhaul of intellectual fascism since the 1970s.

By concentrating on the primacy of cultural' overpolitical hegemony' (perversely enough, the New Right draw on the theories of the Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci) and by stressing a pan-European philosophy of contemporary history, this current of palingenetic ultra-nationalism enables modern fascists to dissociate themselves from the narrower nationalisms of inter-war movements and take on board a number of mainstream Western thinkers. Their common denominator is that they are all in one way or another linked to anti-reductionism, anti-materialism and anti-egalitarianism, but free of links with Fascism or Nazism in the public mind. Examples are Jung, Koestler, Lorenz, Eysenck, Eliade, the last three of whom are directly linked to GRECE publications (Eliade was in fact an apologist for the Rumanian Iron Guard before the war and before becoming professor of Comparative Religion in the USA). Nevertheless, the fascist tendency of this New Right is shown not only in the overt rehabilitation of Aryan racial fantasies through the diffusion of Indo-Europeanism', but the respectability it gives to arguments which concentrate on the threat posed byalien' world views, and hence their human carriers, to European culture. The fascist Newspeak allows new ideological concerns such as ecology, Aids and the Third World, to be easily accommodated as well as the more up-market versions of historical revisionism (i.e. the international pseudo-academic industry bent on denying the Holocaust and euphemizing Nazism). Illuminating in this respect is the report on a meeting of the Thule Seminar held in West Germany in the late 1980s under the auspices of Pyramid Media. The predominantly yuppie participants heard a lecture on the civil war being fought out by the combined forces of excellence and diversity against an alliance of egalitarianism, materialism, cosmopolitanism and mediocrity.

The speaker, Pierre Krebs, French-born but a major contributor to the German New Right, reassured his audience (which included some neo-Nazi notables) that: We intend to take over the laboratories of thinking. Our aim is to combat egalitarian ethics and socio-economics with a world-view which stresses differentiation. In other words a culture, an ethical and socio-economic vision which respects the right to be different. We are new. We are committed to the homeland of the Indo-Europeans, to Athens and not to Jerusalem (Benz, 1989, p. 218) Krebs' earliest contribution to the Europeanism of the New Right was a small volume entitled The European Rebirth (Die europeische Wiedergeburt, 1982). In it he quotes freely from Nietzsche, Spengler, Holderlin, but particularly from Heidegger, who before the war had developed his `ontological' interpretation of Europe as the custodians of genuine Being caught between the two materialistic superpowers of the USA and Russia.

It was this theory which predisposed him to lend his weight to the NSDAP for over a year when he was appointed rector of Freiburg University shortly after it came to power. It is a theory which has naturally exercized a profound fascination on the New Right. Krebs portrays Europe as a unique cultural entity which grew out of a heroic Indo-European tradition, but is now threatened by the forces egalitarianism and multi-culturality which are destroying its organic roots. It is faced by decadence and decay, but if it can reconnect with its roots there is still time for it to recapture its identity and regnerate itself. In a typically palingenetic conclusion he summons his readers to enlist themselves in the cultural war for the rebirth of Europe: Ortega y Gasset announced that the moment has arrived for Europe to focus on its national idea. For today it is less utopian to think and believe in this way than in the 11th century when the unity of Spain and France were prophecied. We call upon Europe to achieve self-determination and for a comprehensive awareness of our selves and of the freedom which we must conquer. The 21st century will be European. For now our will is our only home, for Europe is about to be reborn (Krebs, 1982, pp. 94-5). Krebs was also the editor of Mut zur Identity. Alternativen zum Prinzip der Gleichheit [The Courage to Have an Identity. Alternatives to the Principle of Equality] (1988), one of the most influential work of New Right cultural criticism written in German to date. Apart from contributions by Krebs, it contains essays by the Frenchman Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye and Jean Haudry of La Nouvelle Droite, alongside essays by a cultural philosopher', a banker, an anthropologist (all Germans) and a former general of the Austrian army and prisoner of war. It also contains a vast bibliography of texts which either contribute to the analysis of contemporary decadence or foster the healthy forms of knowledge necessary for it to be overcome. Preaching a secular heroism which travesties the existentialist (and anti-nationalist) nominalism of Nietzsche as much as it perpetuates that of Heidegger, the essays explore from various angles Europe's present decline brought about by the principles of Judeo-Christianity, equality and multiculturality. In their different ways they all stress how a collective return to our organic roots Europe can still save itself fromgenocide'.

This perverse use of language is not fortuitous: we are assured in the section the challenge of the multi-racial society' (pp. 192-204) that Anne Frank's diary was a forgery and that the evidence for the Holocaust is dubious, and that it is the proponents of the multi-cultural society who are racists and responsible for counter- attacks by those who value the distinctive racial identity of all. Once again an overtly palingenetic philosophy of history informs the whole work, as when Faye invokesthe Faustian spirit of the old European civilization, which bears the youthful stamp of the Phoenix', and calls for the moribund religions' to be replaced by asecond paganism'. The `true war of values' is between the protagonists of the decline of mankind (apostles of the humanitarian, egalitarian, Soviet-American global state, which will be ruled by the bourgeois materialism of the cult of economics and the dissolution of any sense of belonging) and the defenders of identity, rootedness, and the diversity of species which is ultimately the only guarantee for the species Homo. By bearing witness to this European identity and defending the people [Volk] we belong to, we will contribute to the preservation of homo sapiens sapiens [sic] and to the only higher values which he can assert and impose on the indifferent, blind flow of life (Krebs, 1988, p. 260). It is passages such as this which bring out the key role that myth plays in New Right thought: they see it as the deliberate imposition of human well and spirit on an intrinsically menaingless world.

GRECE's influence is not confined to Germany. Sister publications to Elements are published in Italy, Luxemburg, Belgium and Switzerland, while the English contribution to Grecian' fascism is the periodical The Scorpion. This magazine, the brain-child of former National Front activist Michael Walker, regularly publishes articles by Nouvelle Droite thinkers. An example is issue 10, 1986, which contains two articles dedicated to an exposition of De Benoist's ideas, described as being addressed toa post-war generation unresigned to Europe's exit from history'. For good measure the magazine preaches the conflicting message of Evolian Traditionalism. De Benoist explicitly rejects Evola's Traditionalist ideas on Nietzschean' grounds in Les Idees … l'endroit (1980, pp. 119-26). It is thus no coincidence if the extended quotation from Evola which prefaces this paper is actually taken from Scorpion (issue 9, 1986). Predictably, then, Europeanism is one of the periodical's recurrent themes, forming the sub-text of its highly diverse pieces on cultural history, nationalism and political theory. On occasion it becomes explicit, however, as in an article which appeared in issue two (1982) dedicated to the themeFor a European Renaissance'. Even more significantly Scorpion hosted in October 1985 an international conference in London on the topic A Third Way for Europe', reported on at length in issue 9, 1986 entitledWhen Europe Awakes', the cover of which also provided the illustration in the preface. The conference followed on from one held earlier in the year by the Cercle Proudhon on Europe: The Right to an Identity' (naturally Krebs was one of the delegates), and another in Paris at which Guillaume Faye, one of Krebs' collaborators, gave an impassioned account his recently published work Nouveau discours … la Nation Europeene [New Address to the European Nation]. The London congress was attended by 50 participants representing France, Ireland, Luxemburg, Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland. A phrase from Michael Walker's leader sums up neatly the New Right vision of a Europe based not on the abolition of nationalism, but its simultaneous intensification and subsumption within a continental federation:We do not need a Europe under one flag; we need a Europe of a thousand flags of free communities from the Atlantic to the Urals.'

The centrality of palingenetic myth to the fascist philosophy of history' is again highlighted in the choice of these lines from Tolkein to set the tone of the conference: From the ashes a fire shall be woken A light from the shadows shall spring Renewed shall be blade that was broken The crownless again shall be king. We have seen that contemporary Italian fascists have in Evola their own Traditional source of pan-European fantasy. This has not deterred some young radical right intellectuals in Italy from espousing De Benoist's ideas to form a parallel Nuova Destra with its own publications, notably Elementi. Others have spawned a highly original strand of palingenetic myth by the blending into Evolian and New Right themes a celebration of fantasy literature, especially that of Tolkein, and of ancient legends (e.g. the quest for the Holy Grail) as the source of a newvision of the world' which points beyond contemporary materialism and decadence. For both currents of thinking this decadence' is usually seen as a threat to European civilization as a whole and not just Italy (see Ferraresi, 1984; Galli, 1983; Griffin, 1985; Bologna and Mana, 1983). It is perhaps important to remind ourselves at this point that there are some neo-fascists who in no uncertain terms still reject any sort Europeanist vision. Here is a particularly vitriolic passage from the pen of the Evolian Franco Freda, one which echoes many of the themes of Gravelli's Antieuropa: At first we thought that Europe really was a valid myth, and represented an idea-force. Even neo-fascists hardly out of school harp on aboutEurope- Fascism- Revolution' without checking to see if a homogeneous European civilization really exists. We will have nothing to do with Europe of the Enlightenment tradition... We have no truck with a democratic, Jacobin Europe. We have nothing in common with the Europe of the market-place, the Europe of plutocratic colonialism. With Jewish or Judaized Europe we have only scores to settle...Europe is an old whore who has plied her trade in every conceivable brothel and contracted every kind of ideological infection Ž from those of the medieval city-states to those of nationalist monarchies against the Holy Roman Empire; from Enlightenment humanism to Jacobinism, to free-masonary, to Judaism, to socialism, to liberalism, to Marxism. A whore whose belly conceived and gave birth to the bourgeois revolution and the proletarian revolt, whose soul is enslaved by the violence of merchants and the rebellion of the slaves. And, given all this, we are supposed to redeem her! (Freda, 1980, pp. 25-8). Yet it is significant that even Freda rejects Eurofascism not for a narrow Italian chauvinism, but for an international revolt against `The Modern World' in the spirit of Evolian Traditionalism. It is however the Europeanist version of palingenetic ultra-nationalism which is more typical of contemporary Italian fascism: after all it was Freda's guru himself, Julius Evola, who preached the vision of a European Empire.

Madrid burns

2004-06-02 09:44 | User Profile

Other Alain de Benoist's texts:

On the French right: new and old

[url]http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pages/textes.php?cat=entretiens&lang=en[/url]

Confronting Globalization

On Politics

Schmitt in France

The First federalist: Johannes Althusius

The Modern Conception of Sovereignty

The Time of the Nets

What is Racism?

What is Sovereignty?

[url]http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pages/textes.php?cat=orientation&lang=en[/url]

The 20th Century Ended September 11 - 01/2002

[url]http://www.alaindebenoist.com/pages/textes.php?cat=actualite&lang=en[/url]

Madrid burns

2004-06-02 09:58 | User Profile

American Culture: A Possible Threat

Thomas Molnar

Book Review: Alain de Benoist's Europe and the Third World

Is American materialism damaging other cultures?

   A vast number of books published during the last thirty years about the Third World contain only as much reality as conforms to the author's biases. Many of these books are haphazard compilations of statistical information with hastily drawn conclusions. Alain de Benoist, known in Europe for his nonconformist views, offers an explanation for the weakness of Third World studies, distinguishing three stages of Western interest - or lack of interest - in former colonial territories.

    The first phase extended from before World War II to the late fifties, decades in which the colonies and other "exotic" lands were described in terms of metropolitan interest: the raw materials they offered, the merchandise they absorbed, the cost of administering them, and the prestige they represented for a colonial power in a world where square miles and cultural influence counted.

    The second phase lasted from roughly 1960 to the late seventies. In this period, enthusiasm for decolonization and for the heroic halo surrounding the newly independent countries reached its peak: Nkrumah, Sukarno, Ben Bella, Nasser, Nehru could do no wrong. Western media took them for models of heroism and statesmanship; the white man became positively ashamed of his color. The Nehru jacket was the rage of cocktail parties, and London admired Nkrumah although he rapidly squandered the billions that had been given to Ghana by the British. The handful of new countries in which government was relatively honest and efficient - first among them the Ivory Coast - and where the white man was neither massacred nor ignored as entrepreneur, teacher, and adviser were dismissed by the enthusiasts as stooges and Uncle Toms.

    Inevitably, a third (and current) phase in the relationship to former colonies emerged by the midseventies. Suddenly former enthusiasts, who had supported industrialization of jungle and desert, made an about-face and showed contempt for the natives' inefficiency in running the steel mills, airlines, and factory complexes that Western governments were shipping to Africa and Asia. New regimes were blamed for donors' errors of judgment. The Third World was dismissed to wallow forever in underdevelopment.

    Few had the courage, in the course of all three stages, to draw up an honest balance sheet for Western involvement with Third World territories.

Benoist's Thesis

    It is at this point that we are well advised to join Benoist's study of the situation. Let me begin directly with his thesis. Benoist asserts that the United States, because of missionary zeal in spreading its own way of life and because of commercial interests, has been imposing on Third World countries its products and methods. The American public hears of public and private generosity in rushing food to famine-stricken areas, evacuating victims of disasters, and offering compensation for damage suffered (such as Dow Chemical's aid to India's Bhopal).

    What is not grasped is that America, and the Western nations generally, have appeared in other parts of the world not merely as commercial and industrial entrepreneurs, but as powers determined to mold "primitive natives" so that they change their way of doing things. This is an old issue that neither Benoist nor other critics will ever settle. After all, the movement of history includes the migration of peoples and ideas - and of techniques and worldviews.

    Still, Benoist criticizes the West because of Western hypocrisy and because of some dire effects of Western involvement in the Third World. He finds that the industrial nations, primarily the United States hiding behind its anticolonial record, have pushed underdeveloped countries to organize their economic life according to Western interests. These interests include extensive monoproductions: oil, minerals, certain agricultural products - the exclusivity of which make these countries dependent on Western consumers who then determine the price and the magnitude of the demand on the world market. Thus a new relationship of dependence comes into effect, and with it, forces that may prevent certain countries from rising economically, while the critics of the Third World claim that these countries should blame themselves alone for their lowly status.

    The enormous foreign debts of an increasing number of Third World countries are part of this pattern. True, Mexico, Brazil, and Nigeria contract debts because they import articles, goods, and services for which they are unable to pay, given their fragile economic and social structures. Certainly they are guilty of overdrawing. But, there is another side to the problem: Western governments and government-instructed banks encourage the Third World nations to borrow beyond their means. And there are other kinds of problems: A few years ago, German, American, and Japanese pharmaceutical firms pressured Bangladesh not to cancel substantial orders; if it did, it was hinted, Western governments would "reconsider" aid projects. Cases of this sort - the pressure cost Bangladesh $50 million - are appalling, though what Benoist fails to mention is that Third World leaders and officials are easy marks for cuts on juicy contracts.

The Third World and Europe

    The book also stresses the "common struggle" of the Third World and Europe against the overwhelming economic and ideological power of the United States. Benoist, whose documentation is impeccable but perhaps somewhat one-sided, insists that not only the Third World, but Europe is being colonized by America. How is this imperialism exercised in Western Europe? American negotiators, by virtue of American preponderance in the world market, have ways of putting pressure on foreign governments and intermediaries to purchase American products: movies, television sensationals like Dallas, or entire Disneylands. Why do foreign governments not protest? It may be because the penetration of American fashions escalates in proportion to the American publicity techniques that prepare the terrain for demand. Then, demand for these products leads to further imports of advertisement and market-research methods, in a constantly spiraling way.

    Where did this all begin, with the chicken or with the egg? Governments, socialist or liberal, European or African, Muslim or Christian are not prepared, in the twentieth-century oikumene, to resist American corporations, banks, multinationals, and mass-cultural products. It is almost futile to ask why at a point where the United States is economically and culturally dominant and therefore imitated. Benoist emphasizes that this material penetration is inseparable from the ubiquitousness of American-produced ideology, which is different from the traditional spirit and style of the rest of the world.

    According to Benoist, the destinies of Europe and the Third World are now linked in a common struggle against American economic and mass-cultural preponderance, for otherwise Europe and the Third World risk losing their soul, their sense of identity, language, and history. Despite the simplifications of this thesis, it is unfortunate that Benoist's critique does not receive a serious hearing in this country. We remain satisfied with our good conscience and regard those who challenge it as either primitive or envious people. We refuse to consider the proposition that American materialism may do damage to others.

Thomas Molnar is professor of religion at Yale. He is the author of The Pagan Temptation; The Decline of the Intellectual; Sartre: Ideologue of Our Time; and God and Knowledge of Reality.

[The World and I (New York), May, 1987]