← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · triskelion
Thread ID: 8402 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-07-24
2003-07-24 05:18 | User Profile
I noted that a fellow I have been conspiring with on introducing Eurocentric thought to the states ask about the conflict between my dear comrade Dr. Steuckers Synergies Européennes slpit from Alain DeBenoist's GRECE split. WHat follows his Dr. Steucker's take on the matter although I will refrain from posting some of the additional personal details as such is not honourable. The reader should note that I take no sides in this conflict while having certain concerns about DeBenoist not being what he was back in the '80s I still value much of what GRECE has done and is doing. I should also state that I am not in full agreement with SE and I object to some of the people associated with it quite strongly although I understand why Dr. Steuckers deals with who he does and his overall sense of meta-political synthisis.
Dear Vibeke,
Here the text about my "career" within GRECE. I know that you will perhaps be sad to learn about it because it tells about an internal struggle, but I have to tell you the truth anyway. Yours, RS
De : "Robert Steuckers" robert.steuckers@skynet.be Ã⬠: evola@listbot.com Objet : GRECE-story Date : Lun 6 déc 1999 14:50
Dear friends of the Listbot-Discussion Group,
Some members of the Listbot-Discussion-Group ask me to explain them which are the differences between GRECE (Groupe de Recherches et d'Etudes sur la Civilisation Européenne), lead by Alain de Benoist, and "Synergies Européennes" (in English, German and Dutch: SYNERGON). Well, this is not a question that I can answer by giving you some previously coined sentences. First of all, my personal history is deeply intermingled with the history of GRECE. I discovered the movement when I was 17 years old in 1973. I was still in a "secundary" school near Brussels in Belgium. I followed attentively the works of Benoist's team during my university studies from 1974 to 1980. I worked with Benoist's GRECE members in Belgium and wrote some modest youth articles in their bulletin "Pour une Renaissance Européenne", whose director was Georges Hupin. In 1980, when I finished my studies, I was invited by the very efficient Philippe Marceau, former General Secretary of GRECE to participate to the "Leading Members' Summer University of GRECE" in July 1980. I became a member in September 1980 and I received my membership card from the hands of Pierre Vial in Brussels together with some other people. In March 1981, I arrived in Paris to become the Redaction Secretary of Benoist's wonderful glossy magazine "NOUVELLE ECOLE". This cooperation lasted only nine months, simply because Benoist and I are completely different personnalities, who cannot possibly work together. It's not my task to explain why to others: others should discover this difference themselves by observing both of us, if they have the occasion. After I left Paris on December 15th, 1981, I ceased to pay membership's fees to GRECE. After my stay in Paris, I had to join the Belgian Army for ten months, serving in several places in Belgium and Germany. I married in 1983, started a new life and opened a translation office in Brussels in 1985. I kept close contacts with the French comrades of GRECE especially my old friend Guillaume Faye and the new General Secretary Jean-Claude Cariou (the very efficient Marceau left in 1982, while I was in tha Army). I participated passively to the activities of GRECE from 1982 to 1989, with one single exception. I held a speech for the yearly conference of GRECE in November 1986 (about the armed neutrality in Europe, i.e. Yugoslavia, Switserland, Austria, Sweden, Finland). I came back in 1989, when the very young new secretary of Benoist, Charles Champetier, asked me to join the leading team again. I did but without becoming a member again. Before my short career in the redaction of "NOUVELLE ECOLE", I published a first issue of ORIENTATIONS. Immediately after having left Paris in December 1981, I started the publication of this bulletin again. With the help of Jean Edmond van der Taelen (1917-1996), I started in November 1983 the bulletin VOULOIR, the best known of the publications I created. Jean van der Taelen invented the title and was a very generous comrade who paid all the costs of the first issues, contributing to launch the magazine. He remained a true and active man till his death, till his very last day, on January 12th, 1996. In 1992, immediately after our common trip to Moscow, where we met Alexander Dughin, Benoist seemed to have decided to sever our relationship. Several incidents, deliberately created by Benoist in April, May and June 1992, were clear signals that he wanted to get rid of the Belgian branch of his movement. I nevertheless participated to the 1992 Summer University as leader of the German-speaking group. Indeed, the Germans participated in a rather large number to this Summer University and in his Parisian team Benoist couldn't find a single guy able to brabble even an awkard sentence in German. In the very middle of the Summer University, I decided to leave and go back to Brussels. In December 1992, the GRECE people refused to pay back the magazines I gave them for sell during the yearly conference. As I had to pay back Jean van der Taelen, and partly Michael Walker as I sold the SCORPION too in my stand, we decided not to lose money anymore and to abandon all cooperation with Benoist's team. I must frankly confess that I wanted in fact to retire completely from the movement. But in February 1993, the people of Provence, who were deceived by my resign, incited me to organize an alternative Summer University, together with Italian friends of the national-revolutionnist magazine ORION of Marco Battarra, Alessandra Colla and Maurizio Murelli. One week after, we rent a marvellous castle in Lourmarin, one of the most beautiful village of Provence, just under the Luberon Hills. This first Summer University was a real success. So we decided to continue and to launch a new organization, which was called "SYNERGIES EUROPÃâ°ENNES". We met in Lourmarin in 1993, 1994 and 1995. After that, we had two Summer Universities in Lumbardy (1996, 1997), one in South-Tirol (1998) and one in Umbria (1999). The German group joined in 1995 during a German Summer University lead by Hans-Ulrich KOPP. The Russian group joined in 1996 after a trip of Chairman Gilbert Sincyr and the French Vice-Chairman Louis Sorel and the Chairman of the Paris Section Jean de Bussac to Moscow. In May 1994, we started to publish "NOUVELLES DE SYNERGIES EUROPÃâ°ENNES", to abandon ORIENTATIONS and to transform VOULOIR in a yearly magazine. After I left GRECE in silence, on December 5th 1992, I received at the end of January a letter from Arnaud Guyot-Jeannin, asking why I hadn't phoned since the yearly conference. I answered among other things, that I felt now free to write the true story of New Right, but I didn't because I found no time before November 1997 when Alessandra Colla asked me to write a foreword for a new edition of Faye's first and excellent book "Le systeme a tuer les peuples" ("The system that kills the people"). My main purpose was to stress the importance of the book, to explain the main streams of Faye's thinking, to remember our most important conversations and especially to explain why Faye left the movement in December 1996. Or to be more precise: how he had been kicked out of the movement... The French edition of this foreword, in the form of a cheep brochure, had to be edited three times! Many people asked me to answer a lot of question about my experience in New Right circles. Therefore I decided to dedicate the 1999 issue of VOULOIR to the French New Right. Month after month, new questions streamed in as well as new articles and new witnesses' reports. I hope to finish the job before Christmas! The issue is enormous. But all the answers to your questions, dear friends, are in this issue. I just wanted to communicate to you the frame of my experiences within New Right during the 26 last years. But one is sure, the war between the two branches of New Right in Europe is still raging. But anyway, even if I understand fully that one can feel sorry in front of what is considered by many as a civil war I tell you frankly that I enjoy this struggle and that I conduct it with humor and irony, which is not often the case in the adverse party. More in next e-mails! Yours truthfully, Robert Steuckers.