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mardi, 30 novembre 2010

La Chine et la Russie abandonnent le dollar comme devise de leurs échanges commerciaux

La Chine et la Russie abandonnent le dollar comme devise de leurs échanges commerciaux

Ex: http://fortune.fdesouche.com/

La Chine et la Russie ont convenu de ne plus utiliser le dollar dans leurs échanges commerciaux mais leur propre devise, ont annoncé mardi le Premier ministre chinois, Wen Jiabao et son homologue russe, Vladimir Poutine, à l’issue de la quinzième rencontre de haut-niveau entre les deux nations.

Les deux dirigeants ont déclaré que cette décision reflétait un renforcement des liens entre Pékin et Moscou et n’était pas destinée à remettre en cause la devise américaine mais à protéger leurs économies respectives.

Par le passé, la Chine et la Russie utilisaient dans leur commerce bilatéral d’autres devises, dont le dollar, mais la crise financière internationale et la baisse du billet vert ont conduit les deux parties à considérer une autre alternative.

 

La rouble est actuellement la sixième devise étrangère, après le dollar, l’euro, la livre Sterling, le dollar de Hong Kong et le ringgit malais à être autorisée par la Chine dans ses échanges commerciaux, annonce le Moscow Times.

Le China Foreign Exchange Trade System, le régulateur chinois d’échanges commerciaux avec l’étranger, a indiqué dans un communiqué que cette décision permettra de réduire les risques et de faciliter le commerce bilatéral entre la Chine et la Russie.

La première transaction commerciale de cette nouvelle donne a eu lieu lundi et concerne l’Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. et la Bank of China Ltd., pour un montant d’un million de yuans (151.000 dollars), selon Bloomberg.

La National Bank of China évalue un yuan à 4,6 roubles pour le départ de ces nouvelles régulations, annonce RT.

Cette annonce conjointe est perçue comme le résultat d’une augmentation des échanges commerciaux entre les deux pays. Durant les dix premiers mois de l’année 2010, le volume global des échanges a atteint 45,1 milliards de dollars, soit une hausse de 43,4% par rapport à la même période, l’année passée.

Les discussions entres les deux pays devraient maintenant porter sur les prix du gaz naturel importé par Pékin et que les Chinois espèrent réviser à la baisse…

Tout sur la Chine

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Article lié :

La Chine et la Russie éjectent le dollar

Le Premier ministre chinois Wen Jiabao et son homologue Vladimir Poutine ont annoncé, à l’issue de leur rencontre du 23 septembre à Saint-Pétersbourg, que le dollar n’est désormais plus la monnaie utilisée pour leurs échanges commerciaux bilatéraux.

C’est la première fois que le dollar est ainsi déréférencé par deux puissances économiques majeures. La première fois, mais peut-être pas la dernière… Alors que les Etats-Unis, noyés dans les déficits, tentent de relancer leur économie et que la Fed révise à la baisse ses prévisions de croissance.

Le rouble et le yuan servent maintenant à régler les échanges commerciaux bilatéraux, se substituant au dollar, utilisé par la Russie et la Chine à ce jour. Le Premier ministre russe le confirme : « Le rouble et le yuan ont déjà commencé à se négocier sur les marchés interbancaires des deux pays. Dans une étape ultérieure, le renminbi sera lui aussi utilisé ». Et le ministre russe des Finances Alexeï Koudrine, d’enfoncer le clou : « Le yuan pourrait devenir une monnaie de réserve au cours des dix prochaines années ».

Les deux pays ont également signé un accord pour renforcer leur coopération dans les secteurs de l’aviation, de la construction ferroviaire, de l’énergie y compris le nucléaire. Le document couvre également les questions douanières et de propriété intellectuelle. Wen Jiabao a salué cet accord, déclarant que « le partenariat stratégique entre les deux nations avait atteint un niveau sans précédent ».

Le moniteur du commerce international

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Autre article lié :

Poutine appelle à contrer le « monopole excessif » du dollar

Le premier ministre russe Vladimir Poutine, en visite à Berlin, a qualifié l’euro de monnaie stable et appelé à renoncer au monopole excessif du dollar en tant que devise de réserve, rapporte vendredi le correspondant de RIA Novosti.

« On observe actuellement des problèmes au Portugal, en Grèce et en Irlande, l’euro chancelle quelque peu, mais, somme toute, c’est une bonne devise mondiale, une monnaie stable », a indiqué le chef du gouvernement russe lors d’un forum économique réunissant les dirigeants des plus grandes entreprises allemandes.

« Le monopole excessif exercé ces derniers temps par le dollar en tant qu’unique monnaie mondiale de réserve était à mon sens mauvais, et nous devons y renoncer. C’est mauvais pour l’économie mondiale. Cela l’a déséquilibrée », a estimé M.Poutine.

Le forum économique berlinois a été organisé par le journal allemand Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Ria Novosti

Summit di Lisbona: la NATO si proclama forza militare globale

nato.jpg

SUMMIT DI LISBONA: LA NATO SI PROCLAMA FORZA MILITARE GLOBALE


DI RICK ROZOFF
rickrozoff.wordpress.com

Ex: http://www.comedonchisciotte.org/

Dal vertice recentemente concluso della NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in Portogallo Washington ha ottenuto tutto quello che chiedeva ai suoi 27 alleati della Nato -almeno 20 partner della NATO che forniscono truppe per la guerra in Afghanistan- all'UE e alla Russia.

L'Alleanza Atlantica controllata dagli USA ha approvato senza riserve e anche senza delibere il piano americano che prevede di includere tutta l'Europa nel sistema missilistico di intercettazione mondiale del Pentagono e della sua Missile Defense Agency (MDA). La dichiarazione del vertice afferma: "La NATO manterrà una giusta combinazione di forze di difesa convenzionali, nucleari, e missilistiche. La difesa missilistica diventerà parte integrante della nostra posizione di difesa globale.". [1]

Nell'adottare il suo nuovo Concetto Strategico ha anche autorizzato un’analoga operazione di guerra informatica su scala continentale in combinazione con il nuovo USA Cyber Command del Pentagono -e per tutti gli scopi pratici sotto la sua direzione.



Ha inoltre ribadito l’impegno della coalizione sull’articolo 5 per rendere l'assistenza militare collettiva a ogni Stato membro sotto ipotetico attacco e esteso il concetto di attacco per includere categorie non-militari come computer, energia e minacce terroristiche. Il Concetto Strategico "riconferma il legame tra le nostre nazioni per difendere l’un l'altra contro l'attacco, anche contro nuove minacce alla sicurezza dei nostri cittadini". [2]

"I membri della NATO presteranno sempre reciproca assistenza contro un attacco, a norma dell'articolo 5 del Trattato di Washington. Tale impegno rimane fermo e vincolante. La NATO scoraggerà ogni minaccia di aggressione e difenderà da essa e dai problemi emergenti dove si minaccino la sicurezza fondamentale dei singoli alleati o l'Alleanza nel suo complesso".

Sia pure in mancanza di minacce militari convenzionali -come pure di quelle nucleari-, ovvero anche senza rischi di carattere militare nei riguardi dei membri della NATO nordamericani ed europei, altri pericoli –se pianificati- serviranno come base per l'attivazione dell'articolo 5. Essi includono attacchi o minacce alle reti di computer:

" Cyber-attacchi ... possono raggiungere una soglia tale da minacciare la prosperità nazionale ed euro-atlantica, la sicurezza e la stabilità", afferma la NATO, per cui i suoi membri sono obbligati a "sviluppare ulteriormente la capacità di prevenzione, individuazione, difesa e recupero dai cyber- attacchi, anche mediante l'uso del processo di pianificazione della NATO di rafforzare e coordinare le capacità nazionali di cyber-difesa, portando tutti gli organismi della NATO sotto cyber-protezione centralizzata .... "

"Dipendenza" europea dal petrolio e dal gas naturale russo e il controllo delle vie marittime strategiche e rotte commerciali:

"Alcuni paesi della NATO diventeranno più dipendenti dai fornitori esteri di energia e, in alcuni casi, dalla fornitura estera di energia e di reti di distribuzione per il loro fabbisogno energetico. Dato che una quota sempre maggiore del consumo mondiale è trasportato in tutto il mondo, le forniture di energia sono sempre più a rischio di perturbazione".

E diverse altre questioni neanche lontanamente connesse a faccende militari [3]:

"Vincoli vitali ambientali e delle risorse, tra cui rischi per la salute, il cambiamento climatico, scarsità d'acqua e il fabbisogno energetico crescente condizioneranno ulteriormente il futuro contesto di sicurezza nelle aree di interesse per la NATO e avranno il potenziale per incidere in misura significativa nella pianificazione e nelle operazioni della NATO".

La NATO ha anche ribadito il suo impegno a mantenere armi nucleari tattiche americane in Europa, con il Concetto strategico che dichaira: "finché ci sono armi nucleari nel mondo, la NATO rimarrà una alleanza nucleare".

E l'alleanza si è allineata con il cambiamento della Casa Bianca e il Pentagono da un impegno precedente per il "taglio" delle truppe Usa e Nato in Afghanistan a partire dall'anno prossimo per quello che Washington ha di recente definito un progetto "provvisorio" e "aspirazionale", di una strategia "transitoria" che potrebbe vedere forze militari occidentali ancora sulla scena della nazione asiatica 15 o più anni dopo il loro arrivo. La dichiarazione del vertice di Lisbona afferma: "La transizione sarà basata sullo stato di fatto, non fissata da un calendario, e non equivale al ritiro delle truppe ISAF".

Non c'è nessuna nazione o gruppo di nazioni che ponga alla NATO una sfida seria, nessuno costituisce una minaccia per l’unico blocco militare del mondo, e quasi nessuno ancora si frappone alla sua espansione globale. "Tuttavia, nessuno dovrebbe dubitare della determinazione della NATO se la sicurezza di uno dei suoi membri dovesse essere minacciata... La dissuasione, basata su un adeguato mix di capacità nucleari e convenzionali, resta un elemento centrale della nostra strategia globale .... Finché esistono armi nucleare, la NATO rimarrà una alleanza nucleare".

"La garanzia suprema della sicurezza degli alleati è fornita dalle forze nucleari strategiche dell'alleanza, in particolare quelle degli Stati Uniti; le forze strategiche nucleari indipendenti del Regno Unito e della Francia, che hanno un loro ruolo di dissuasione, contribuiscono alla deterrenza complessiva e alla sicurezza degli alleati».

Formalizzando i cambiamenti internazionali degli ultimi undici anni -in Europa, Asia, Africa e nel Mare Arabico– il nuovo Concetto Strategico della NATO obbliga tutti gli stati membri e decine di partner a “sviluppare e mantenere forze convenzionali robuste, mobili e dispiegabili per svolgere sia i compiti dovuti dall’articolo 5 che le operazioni delle spedizioni dell'alleanza, comprese nella NATO Response Force", e "garantire la più ampia partecipazione possibile degli alleati alla pianificazione della difesa collettiva in ruoli nucleari, nella costruzione del tempo di pace delle forze nucleari".

Invocando il semi-sconosciuto slogan che dal 1989 è stato impiegato nell’anticipazione e poi nella realizzazione dei progetti per subordinare tutta l'Europa sotto il comando militare della NATO [4], i capi di stato dell’alleanza a Lisbona la settimana scorsa hanno anche approvato il completamento dei piani di espansione che interessano i Balcani e l'ex Unione Sovietica:

"Il nostro obiettivo di un'Europa libera e integra e della condivisione di valori comuni, sarebbe meglio servito dalla eventuale integrazione nelle strutture euro-atlantiche di tutti i paesi europei che lo desiderano.

"La porta per l'adesione alla NATO rimane completamente aperta a tutte le democrazie europee che condividono i valori della nostra alleanza, che sono disposti e in grado di assumersi le responsabilità e gli obblighi di adesione, e la cui inclusione possa contribuire alla sicurezza comune e alla stabilità".


In particolare, la NATO "continuerà a sviluppare l’associazione con l'Ucraina e la Georgia nelle Commissioni NATO-Ucraina e NATO-Georgia, sulla base della decisione della Nato al summit di Bucarest del 2008" e "favorire l'integrazione euro-atlantica dei Balcani occidentali". Una menzione particolare è stata fatta riguardo la Bosnia, la Macedonia, il Montenegro e la Serbia.

La Commissione NATO-Georgia è stata istituita nel settembre del 2008, il mese dopo la guerra dei cinque giorni tra la Georgia e la Russia, che fu iniziata dal governo di Mikhail Saakashvili a Tbilisi, una settimana dopo che 1000 soldati Usa completarono l’esercitazione militare Immediate Response 2008 NATO Partnership for Peace, mentre le truppe e le attrezzature americane erano ancora in Georgia.

La decisione del vertice di Bucarest su un'eventuale adesione piena della Georgia e dell'Ucraina nella NATO e la creazione della Commissione NATO-Georgia ha dato luogo ad un Annual National Program per accelerare l'integrazione della Georgia nella NATO. Il percorso tradizionale di adesione, un Membership Action Plan (MAP), non è stato presentato alla Georgia nel 2008 a causa di due disposizioni NATO: una è quella per cui gli Stati membri non possono essere coinvolti in persistenti dispute territoriali (per questo motivo, per esempio, a Cipro non sarebbe stata data un MAP se fosse stata sul punto di aderire al Partenariato per la Pace) e l’altra che non ci possono essere forze militari straniere -vale a dire non-NATO- sul suolo di un potenziale socio.

Il governo georgiano rivendica le ormai indipendenti nazioni di Abkhazia e Ossezia del Sud come proprie e due anni fa ci sono stati piccoli contingenti di peacekeepers russi in entrambi i paesi. La Commissione NATO-Georgia e NATO e l’Annual National Program della NATO -un veicolo unico per integrare Georgia (e Ucraina) nella NATO bypassando i vincoli di cui sopra di un MAP - sono completati dalla Carta per il Partenariato Strategico (Charter on Strategic Partnership) Stati Uniti-Georgia la quale fu annunciata poco dopo la guerra del 2008 e firmata il 9 gennaio 2009. (La consimile Carta per il Partenariato Strategico Stati Uniti-Ucraina è stata firmata tra il segretario di Stato Condoleezza Rice e il ministro degli Esteri ucraino Volodymyr Ogryzko il 19 dicembre 2008).

La tesi di molti osservatori, compreso chi scrive, è che l'attacco georgiano in Ossezia del Sud il 7 agosto 2008 sarebbe stato, in caso di successo, immediatamente seguito da uno in Abkhazia, eliminando in tal modo gli ostacoli di cui sopra al pieno sviluppo della NATO nel Caucaso meridionale.

Il Parlamento della NATO, nella sessione autunnale dell'Assemblea in Polonia, il 12-16 novembre ha approvato una risoluzione che chiama l'Abkhazia e l'Ossezia del Sud "territori occupati", che ha portato il Ministero degli Esteri dell'Abkhazia a rispondere:

"La NATO è un'organizzazione che ha contribuito alla militarizzazione intensiva della Georgia per molti anni, fomentando la mentalità revanscista della leadership georgiana, che ha portato nell’agosto 2008 a spargimenti di sangue in Ossezia del Sud". [5]

Il presidente Barack Obama ha tenuto un colloquio col georgiano Saakashvili, a margine del vertice di Lisbona il 19 novembre.

I piani della NATO per una penetrazione più a est e a sud di ciò che molta gente pensa che sia l'Europa non sono limitati al Caucaso.

Il vertice di Lisbona, approvando la nuova dottrina della coalizione, ha anche affermato per la prima volta senza mezzi termini che la portata della NATO è tanto ampia quanto il mondo stesso:

"La promozione della sicurezza euro-atlantica è meglio garantita attraverso una vasta rete di relazioni con i paesi partner e organizzazioni in tutto il mondo".

Il presidente Obama e gli altri 27 capi di Stato della NATO hanno approvato il nuovo Concetto Strategico, che inoltre afferma:

"Siamo fermamente impegnati nello sviluppo di relazioni amichevoli e di cooperazione con tutti i paesi del Mediterraneo, e abbiamo intenzione di sviluppare ulteriormente il Mediterranean Dialogue nei prossimi anni. Attribuiamo grande importanza alla pace e alla stabilità nella regione del Golfo, e intendiamo rafforzare la nostra cooperazione nella Istanbul Cooperation Initiative".

Il Mediterranean Dialogue comprende la NATO e sette paesi in Africa e in Medio Oriente: Algeria, Egitto, Israele, Giordania, Mauritania, Marocco e Tunisia.

La Istanbul Cooperation Initiative del 2004 [6], mira al potenziamento delle partnership del Mediterranean Dialogue al livello di quelle del programma NATO "Partenariato per la Pace, che ha preparato 12 nazioni in Europa orientale per la piena adesione a partire dal 1999: Albania, Bulgaria, Croazia, Repubblica Ceca , Estonia, Ungheria, Lettonia, Lituania, Polonia, Romania, Slovacchia e Slovenia.

Viene anche consolidato il legame con i sei membri del Gulf Cooperation Council - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Arabia Saudita e gli Emirati Arabi Uniti - in qualità di partner militari della NATO. Giordania ed Emirati Arabi Uniti sono paesi contributori ufficiali di truppe (Troop Contributing Nations –TCN) per la International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan della NATO, come sono membri del Partenariato per la Pace della Georgia e dell'Ucraina nell’ex spazio sovietico e in Bosnia, Macedonia e Montenegro nei Balcani.

Lo scorso fine settimana la NATO ha promesso di "approfondire la cooperazione con gli attuali membri del Mediterranean Dialogue e di essere aperta all’inclusione in esso di altri Paesi della regione" e di "sviluppare un più profondo partenariato per la sicurezza con i nostri partner del Golfo e di rimanere pronti ad accogliere nuovi partner nella Istanbul Cooperation Initiative". Cioè, includere tutto il Medio Oriente e l'Africa settentrionale nella sua più ampia connnessione militare con un occhio alle nazioni come l'Iraq [7], Libano, Palestina, Yemen, Libia, Somalia, Gibuti, Etiopia, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Ciad e anche il Kenya.

La dichiarazione del summit ha confermato la prosecuzione dell'Operazione Active Endeavour, "l’operazione marittima nel Mediterraneo per il nostro articolo 5", l’operazione Ocean Shield al largo del Corno d'Africa, il trasporto aereo di di truppe ugandesi in Somalia per i combattimenti e il sostegno alla Forza africana in attesa e la Training Mission NATO in Iraq.

Oltre ai dettagli dei piani di espansione in Europa, Asia e Africa una dopo l’altra, la NATO ha annunciato che ora è una formazione politico-militare internazionale. La dichiarazione del vertice ha espresso "profonda gratitudine per la dedizione, la professionalità e il coraggio dei più di 143.000 uomini e donne provenienti da paesi alleati e partner, che vengono dispiegati nelle operazioni e le missioni della NATO".

La sua nuova dottrina afferma anche: "unica nella storia, la NATO è un’alleanza di sicurezza che mette in campo forze militari in grado di operare insieme in qualsiasi ambiente; capace di controllare operazioni dovunque attraverso la sua struttura di comando militarmente integrata...."

La NATO Response Force (NRF) della coalizione "fornisce un meccanismo per generare una elevata prontezza e un pacchetto di forze tecnologicamente avanzate costituito da elementi di terra, aria, mare e delle forze speciali che può essere schierato rapidamente in operazioni ovunque sia necessario." [8]

La NRF è stata proposta dall'allora Segretario alla Difesa Usa Donald Rumsfeld, nel settembre del 2002 e formalizzato in occasione del vertice NATO di Praga nel novembre dello stesso anno. Essa ha effettuato la sua prima esercitazione a fuoco, la Steadfast Jaguar su grande scala del 2006, nella nazione dell'Africa occidentale dell'isola di Capo Verde. Alla fine dell'anno fu affermato che essa aveva piena capacità operativa formata da un massimo di 25.000 uomini "fatto di componenti di terra, aria, mare e delle forze speciali... in grado di svolgere missioni in tutto il mondo attraverso l'intero spettro delle operazioni." [9]

Alludendo in parte alla NRF, il nuovo Strategic Concept dichiara:

"Dove la prevenzione dei conflitti non abbia esito, la NATO sarà preparata e in grado di gestire le ostilità in corso. La NATO ha capacità uniche di gestione dei conflitti, compresa la facoltà senza pari di implementare e sostenere vigorose forze militari in campo".

Essa impegna inoltre i Paesi membri a "sviluppare ulteriormente la dottrina e le capacità militari per organizzare gli interventi, tra cui quelli per anti-insurrezione, stabilizzazione e ricostruzione".

A Lisbona, Obama ed i suoi colleghi capi di Stato hanno convenuto che:

"Noi, i leader politici della NATO, siamo determinati a continuare il rinnovamento della nostra alleanza in modo che sia adatta allo scopo di affrontare le sfide alla sicurezza del 21° secolo. Siamo fermamente impegnati a conservare la sua efficacia come l’alleanza politico-militare di maggior successo del mondo".

L’unica coalizione militare mondiale non protegge l'Europa da minacce chimeriche nucleari e missilistiche o dalle questioni che sono meglio affrontate dai rispettivi membri della sua magistratura, dalle forze di sicurezza interna ed ambientali,dai ministeri e dipartimenti dell'immigrazione, dell'energia, della salute pubblica e dalle unità di crisi.

Impiega piuttosto il continente europeo come una base operativa per le campagne e gli dispiegamenti militari ovunque altrove.

Tale ruolo è stato consolidato con l'integrazione militare di Stati Uniti, NATO e Unione europea [10]. Il 19 novembre il presidente della Consiglio europeo della UE, Herman Van Rompuy, si è rivolto ai leader della NATO a Lisbona e ha detto "la capacità delle nostre due organizzazioni per plasmare le nostre future condizioni di sicurezza sarebbe enorme se lavorassero insieme. È ora di abbattere le pareti restanti tra loro". [11]

La nuova dottrina della NATO del 21° secolo, afferma:

"L’Unione europea è un partner unico ed essenziale per la NATO. Le due organizzazioni condividono la maggioranza dei soci, e tutti i membri di entrambe le organizzazioni condividono valori comuni. La NATO riconosce l'importanza di una difesa europea più forte e più capace. Accogliamo con favore le entrata in vigore del trattato di Lisbona, che fornisce un quadro per rafforzare le capacità dell'UE di affrontare le sfide comuni.

"Alleati non comunitari rappresentano un significativo contributo a tali sforzi. Per il partenariato strategico tra la NATO e l'UE, il loro pieno coinvolgimento in queste iniziative è essenziale. La NATO e l'UE possono e devono giocare ruoli di rafforzamento in modo complementare e reciproco".


La NATO ha anche acquisito un nuovo partner in Eurasia, uno con il territorio più grande del mondo, che si estende dal Baltico e il Mar Nero fino al Pacifico: la Russia. Il soggetto di un altro articolo.

Rick Rozoff
Fonte: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com
Link: http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/lisbon-summit-nato-proclaims-itself-global-military-force/
22.11.2010

Traduzione per www.comedonchisciotte.org a cuar di ETTORE MARIO BERNI

1) North Atlantic Treaty Organization Lisbon Summit Declaration http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_68828.htm?mode=pressrelease

2) Strategic Concept For the Defence and Security of The Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation http://www.nato.int/lisbon2010/strategic-concept-2010-eng.pdf

3) Thousand Deadly Threats: Third Millennium NATO, Western Businesses Collude On New Global Doctrine Stop NATO, October 2, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/thousand-deadly-threats-third-millennium-nato-western-businesses-collude-on-new-global-doctrine

4) Berlin Wall: From Europe Whole And Free To New World Order Stop NATO, November 9, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/berlin-wall-from-europe-whole-and-free-to-new-world-order

5) Russian Information Agency Novosti, November 18, 2010

6) NATO In Persian Gulf: From Third World War To Istanbul Stop NATO, February 6, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/nato-in-persian-gulf-from-third-world-war-to-istanbul

7) Iraq: NATO Assists In Building New Middle East Proxy Army Stop NATO, August 13, 2010 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/iraq-nato-assists-in-building-new-middle-east-proxy-army

8) North Atlantic Treaty Organization Allied Command Operations http://www.aco.nato.int/page349011837.aspx

9) North Atlantic Treaty Organization The NATO Response Force http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49755.htm

10) EU, NATO, US: 21st Century Alliance For Global Domination Stop NATO, February 19, 2009 http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/eu-nato-us-21st-century-alliance-for-global-domination

11) EUobserver, November 21, 2010

La guerre des empires selon F. Lenglet

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La guerre des empires (F. Lenglet)

 

Pour François Lenglet (FL), la « guerre des empires » est inéluctable. L’hypothèse d’une alliance structurelle USA-Chine est, à ses yeux, une « bulle géopolitique » qui finira par exploser, et sans doute assez vite. Nous sommes d’accord, même si (on le verra plus loin), nous marquons quelques fortes divergences avec l’analyse de l’auteur, à notre avis trop pro-US.

La thèse, dans les  grandes lignes :

FL établit un parallèle inquiétant entre le rapport actuel Washington-Pékin et le rapport Londres-Berlin en 1899. Deux économies interdépendantes, l’une ayant longtemps été en avance sur l’autre, plus puissante et plus avancée. Puis, progressivement, l’économie «  à la remorque » se renforce, et finit par battre son alliée à son propre jeu. Dès lors, l’alliance n’est plus possible, parce qu’on ne sait plus qui est le maître de qui. La rivalité commence.

 

Les arguments qu’on oppose à ce parallèle ne satisfont par FL.

La Chine, se démocratiser ? Pur occidentalo-centrisme. Pour qui voit les choses du point de vue chinois, quel est le meilleur régime politique : une démocratie occidentale corrompue, dévorée par le cancer financier, virtualisée par le marketing tout puissant, ou un régime pékinois autoritaire, mais qui garantit à son peuple le doublement du PIB tous les sept ans ? A part le droit de vote, dont ils ne sauraient sans doute pas quoi faire, les Chinois n’ont rien à gagner à se « démocratiser », si la « démocratie » veut dire, concrètement, le règne de Goldman Sachs.

La Chine, puissance pacifique qui ne s’intéresse qu’à elle-même ? Niaiserie. Il existe un très fort ressentiment chinois. Pour Pékin, les guerres de l’opium et le « siècle de l’humiliation », qui suivit, jouent un peu le rôle du traité de Versailles dans l’Allemagne de Weimar : une honte, et surtout, une injustice. Les occidentaux ont souvent tendance à croire que leur suprématie mondiale de ces deux derniers siècles traduit un ordre des choses quasi-essentialisable. Illusion : c’est oublier qu’à l’échelle du temps long, le pays le plus développé et le plus puissant du monde a été, le plus souvent, la Chine. Et de cela, les Chinois, eux, se souviennent parfaitement.

Alors, USA, Chine : un fauteuil pour deux ?

Première question : comment en est-on arrivé là ?

FL commence par rappeler l’histoire des relations américano-chinoises. La visite de Nixon, en 1972, a été le coup d’envoi d’un partenariat USA/Chine qui, pour ne pas avoir été sans nuages, s’est bon an mal an maintenu pendant quatre décennies.

Au départ, pour les  USA, il s’agit surtout de contrer l’URSS. Exemple, l’opération Chestnut, lancée en 1979, permet aux Américains d’implanter une station d’écoute ultra-perfectionnée dans le désert occidental chinois. Pour écouter qui ? Les soviétiques, sur le point d’entrer en Afghanistan (où la CIA s’active, afin précisément d’attirer Moscou dans le piège). Face à l’enjeu représenté par le soutien chinois contre l’URSS, l’amitié avec Taiwan ne pèse pas lourd, aux yeux des conservateurs réalistes (Kissinger, puis Brzezinski).

Pour la Chine, dès le départ, l’alliance aigre-douce avec les USA est surtout une affaire économique  Pékin n’a pas vraiment besoin des investissements occidentaux (la Chine n’a jamais manqué de capital, parce qu’avec un coût du travail quasi-nul, on n’a pas besoin de capitaux importants pour produire – le travail, au besoin, fabrique le capital productif). Mais la Chine a en revanche désespérément besoin des technologies occidentales.

Dans les années 80, Deng lance donc la modernisation à marche forcée de l’économie chinoise, et pour récupérer de la technologie sans permettre l’implantation en profondeur des USA, il invente une solution aussi simple que redoutable : les « zones économiques spéciales », sorte de Far West chinois ultra-capitaliste, qui va servir de filtre (la technologie occidentale passe, mais, le pouvoir restant aux Chinois dans les joint-ventures, l’influence est bloquée). Les firmes américaines, qui pensent leur planification à beaucoup moins long terme que Pékin, vont se laisser attirer dans le piège, fascinées qu’elles sont par le gigantesque marché chinois. Un marché de dupe, où la dupe n’est pas celui qu’on croit : les capitalistes occidentaux sont persuadés qu’ils viennent de gagner la guerre contre leurs propres peuples (en mettant en concurrence le salarié occidental et l’esclave chinois) ; c’est vrai, mais ils ont aussi, sans le savoir, perdu la guerre à l’échelle géopolitique, contre une oligarchie rivale…

Quoi qu’il en soit sur le long terme, au fil des années 80-90, une sorte de symbiose s’instaure progressivement entre les deux géants. Pékin offre aux firmes US sa main d’œuvre quasiment illimitée, très bon marché et remarquablement docile. Les Américains, en retour, offrent la technologie, le savoir-faire, et un appui massif à la Chine pour son intégration dans l’économie mondiale (clause de la nation la plus favorisée, puis OMC).

Mais cette symbiose n’a jamais été sans ambiguïté et nuages. Dès 1982, les Chinois se sont rendu compte que, contrairement aux accords passés, la CIA construisait des réseaux sur leur sol (plus tard, cela débouchera sur la secte Falun Gong). Aussitôt, exploitant la diaspora, profitant de l’envoi aux USA de dizaines puis de centaines de milliers d’étudiants, ils bâtissent leurs propres réseaux (les services secrets chinois sont potentiellement plus puissants que la CIA elle-même – nous y reviendrons dans une note de lecture ultérieure).

Surtout, le mode de développement choisi par Pékin présente un inconvénient pour la population : une génération entière est sacrifiée. Le PIB chinois présente en effet, à partir de la fin des années 80, une structure tout à fait atypique : exportations gigantesques (jusqu’à 35 % certaines années, soit un taux d’extraversion absurde pour une économie de cette taille), investissement fabuleux (jusqu’à 50 % certaines années, un taux qui ferait presque passer le décollage japonais pour une entreprise au rabais !)… et, donc, obligatoirement, une part du PIB réservée à la consommation très faible (certaines années, à peine 20 %).

L’avantage de cette formule, évidemment, c’est que le développement des capacités productives se fait à une vitesse foudroyante. Si vous investissez 50 % de votre PIB, étant donné que dans les conditions chinoises, 5 points d’investissement rapportent à peu près 1 point de capacité productive, vous faîtes croître vos capacités de production de 10 % par an (ce que feront les Chinois pendant trente ans). Mais si en plus, vous exportez 30/35 % de votre PIB (pour accumuler des réserves de change et acheter, en réalité, de la technologie), il vous reste peu pour la consommation. Conséquence : les salaires versés aux ouvriers qui produisent pour l’investissement ou l’exportation n’ont pas de contrepartie dans le marché intérieur, et le risque de surchauffe inflationniste est permanent. La Chine pourrait en sortir en remplaçant les exportations par le marché intérieur, mais comme Pékin veut absolument acheter de la technologie (et de l’influence), le choix sera maintenu durablement en faveur de ce modèle qu’on pourrait qualifier de « stakhanovisme à l’échelle d’un pays-continent ».

Comme le rappelle FL, le « printemps de Pékin » en 1989 fut donc beaucoup plus une demande de remise en cause de ce modèle (moins d’exportation, plus de consommation) qu’une revendication démocratique (même si, peut-être du fait de l’existence de réseaux CIA, les étudiants pékinois mirent en avant la revendication politique stricto sensu). Et donc, la boucherie de Tian Anmen ne signifiait pas que le « communisme » était maintenu, mais plus simplement que la Chine, pour ne pas avoir à tolérer l’influence occidentale (en échange des technologies) continuerait à acheter du savoir-faire en exportant à tout va – au prix de sa « génération sacrifiée ».

Ce message, d’ailleurs, fut reçu en Occident : pour la galerie, Bush père prit quelques sanctions peu durables ; mais en arrière-plan, le très puissant lobby patronal US-China Business Council a parfaitement décodé Tian Anmen : pour lui, cela veut dire, tout simplement, que la Chine va poursuivre son développement en sacrifiant une génération, et qu’il y a donc beaucoup, beaucoup d’argent à gagner dans les « zones économiques spéciales ». De fait, ce qui s’est décidé à Tian Anmen, c’est donc une alliance objective entre l’oligarchie postcommuniste chinoise et l’oligarchie néolibérale US – alliance dont les consommateurs surendettés américains et les ouvriers surexploités chinois vont faire les frais (une analyse que, bien entendu, FL s’abstient de formuler aussi brutalement – ici, c’est nous qui décodons).

Les années 1990-2008 voient le triomphe de la « Chinamérique ». Les flux commerciaux croissent vertigineusement, au rythme de la bulle financière occidentale et de l’économie productive asiatique. Il en découle une période de forte croissance apparemment globale, en réalité purement chinoise ; l’Amérique réelle est en train d’imploser – même si, au départ, personne n’accepte de le voir.

Ici, FL propose une analyse qui, à notre humble avis, fait la part trop belle aux élites occidentales. Pour lui, les dirigeants du capitalisme occidental auraient toléré la dévaluation de 50 % du Yuan en 1994 parce qu’ils souhaitaient maintenir coûte que coûte les liens avec la Chine (et non, comme nous le pensons, parce qu’ils y voyaient un moyen d’intensifier la guerre de classes en Occident même). Idem, FL estime que lorsque les taux longs US n’ont pas immédiatement suivi la remontée des taux courts en 2005, les dirigeants US n’ont pas compris que cela venait des achats chinois de bons du trésor US (sans rire ?). Et il ajoute que la crise des subprimes trouve son origine dans le dérèglement du marché des taux par les achats chinois à partir de cette date, ce qui est tout simplement faux (l’explosion du marché des subprimes est antérieur de trois ans au décrochage des taux longs, il remonte à 2001/2002, et il trouve son origine dans les taux directeurs bas de la FED – lire à ce sujet « Crise ou coup d’Etat ? »).
Bref, l’analyse de FL fait à notre avis la part un peu trop belle au discours officiel US ; nous croyons quant à nous que les USA ont accepté le Yuan comme monnaie de guerre chinoise parce que cette monnaie de guerre était, aussi, celle de leur propre guerre, contre leurs propres peuples, en vue d’un ajustement brutal de la structure de classe.

Quoi qu’il en soit, le double marché de dupes s’est maintenu pendant deux décennies, de 1990 à 2008. Ni l’incident de 1994 (bâtiment chinois intercepté car soupçonné de livrer des armes chimiques à l’Iran), ni celui de 1999 (bombardement « par erreur » de l’ambassade de Chine à Belgrade lors de l’opération US/Otan pour le Kosovo) n’ont remis en cause les dynamiques commerciales formidables enclenchées par la « Chinamérique »…

Jusqu’au moment où ces dynamiques ont produit ce qu’elles devaient produire : le basculement du centre de gravité du capitalisme global. Voilà comment nous en sommes arrivés où nous sommes aujourd’hui.

Deuxième question : et où va-t-on, après ?

Fondamentalement, le heurt va opposer deux puissances qui sont, et l’une, et l’autre, des empires. Il ne faut pas ici tomber dans le simplisme : il n’y a pas d’un côté une puissance malsaine, de l’autre une puissance saine. Il y a deux systèmes de pouvoirs immenses, l’un sur le déclin (donc plus prédateur à court terme), l’autre en expansion (donc n’ayant pas besoin d’être prédateur à court terme), mais aussi brutaux l’un que l’autre.

Oui, oui, on sait, l’Amérique est « démocratique », pas la Chine – mais allez donc poser la question à Bagdad, vous allez voir… Et oui, oui, on sait, la Chine n’a pas attaqué de pays récemment – mais allez poser la question de son « émergence pacifique » aux millions d’esclaves qui triment dans ses usines, et là aussi, vous verrez…

FL nous apprend qu’en 1999, deux colonels de l’armée chinoise inventent le concept de « guerre hors limite », notion pratiquement identique au concept US du « Fourth Generation Warfare » : la guerre qui se déploie sur tous les fronts, en impliquant tous les aspects de la vie politique, économique et culturelle, parce que la confrontation directe, par l’armement, est devenue impensable (trop grande puissance de destruction). Et quand les USA inventent la « lutte contre le terrorisme » pour justifier leur impérialisme, la Chine conçoit la théorie de « l’émergence pacifique » pour désamorcer les critiques que son offensive économique tous azimuts pourraient susciter.

Chine et USA jouent chacun avec leurs atouts propres, mais en réalité, ils jouent sur le même échiquier, et avec des logiques de puissance précontraintes par la nature même de leur affrontement. Les Chinois font semblant de ne pas avoir de prétention à la domination globale (sauf quand il s’agit de mettre la main sur le pétrole du Soudan et du Tchad – alors là, on y va franchement, soutien militaire inclus), et les Américains font semblant de coopérer sans arrière-pensée (sauf quand une firme chinoise veut s’emparer d’Unocal – alors là, pas touche, il y va du contrôle US sur le pétrole d’Asie centrale…).

A ce petit jeu, la puissance montante part a priori gagnante. Plus grand marché du monde, Pékin va progressivement supplanter les USA comme le pays qui définit les normes (une des sources de la puissance US au XX° siècle). Ayant désormais refait l’essentiel de son retard technologique, la Chine n’a plus vraiment besoin des USA ; ce qu’elle achetait jusqu’ici à l’Ouest, c’était de la technologie ; mais désormais, la technologie, elle peut dans une large mesure la produire elle-même.

Plus structurant peut-être, le modèle de « socialisme de marché » inventé par Pékin (l’Etat possède en réalité l’outil de production, mais tolère l’enrichissement du management) semble, à ce stade, mieux fonctionner qu’un modèle US néolibéral en chute libre. Comme le rappelle FL, depuis 30 ans, la Chine fait exactement le contraire de ce qui est préconisé par le FMI – et le moins qu’on puisse dire, c’est qu’elle s’en sort mieux que ceux qui ont obéi au « consensus de Washington ».

Privatiser l’économie, dit le FMI. Restructurer les entreprises d’Etat, répond Pékin. Libéraliser le compte de capital du pays, dit le FMI. Contrôle des changes, répond Pékin. Banque centrale indépendante, dit le FMI. Contrôle politique sur le crédit, répond Pékin.

Jusque dans la gestion de la crise financière, Pékin donne une leçon de pragmatisme et d’efficacité à l’Occident : sauver les banques, dit l’Occident ; relancer par l’économie productive, répond Pékin (l’UE sauve les créanciers de la Grèce, la Chine investit dans ses usines…).

En somme, pour FL, ce qui vient de se passer, en 2008, c’est une rupture d’environnement géostratégique : ce n’est pas la chute du capitalisme, non. C’est la chute du capitalisme occidental néolibéral. Un mur vient de tomber : celui que l’Occident avait érigé autour de son pouvoir global. La chute de ce mur-là joue, pour les Chinois, le rôle joué par la chute du Mur de Berlin pour les Occidentaux : l’annonce qu’on vient de gagner une guerre « de quatrième génération ». Nous ne dirons pas le contraire. Lire à ce sujet « Crise économique ou crise du sens ? ».

Conséquence  de cette rupture géostratégique : la « Chinamérique » va exploser.

Ici, deux théories s’opposent : le « découplage » (la Chine poursuivra sa croissance sans la « Chinamérique ») et la crise globale (les USA entraîneront la Chine dans leur faillite, car Pékin ne pourra pas maintenir sa croissance folle une fois la « Chinamérique » disparue).

Sur ce point précis, nous marquons un désaccord avec l’auteur de « La guerre des empires ».
FL prend position pour la crise globale, donc contre le « découplage ». Il invoque pour cela les premières conséquences de la crise, qui aura entraîné un effondrement des exportations chinoises (voir « Crise ou coup d’Etat ? »). La croissance chinoise réelle passe sensiblement sous le seuil des 8 % annuels (nécessaire pour éviter la hausse du chômage, dans un pays qui voit un gigantesque exode rural interne).
Pour notre part, nous doutons de la viabilité de cette analyse. Que dans un premier temps, la Chine subisse un ralentissement de croissance est évident, logique. Mais nous estimons que le marché intérieur chinois pourrait très rapidement prendre la relève des exportations ; encore une fois, ce qui explique la croissance chinoise, c’est un taux d’investissement énorme et des débouchés solvables (l’exportation) ; si les exportations calent, il reste le développement du marché intérieur, et rien n’empêche Pékin de le lancer, à présent, puisque l’acquisition des technologies est en passe d’être achevée (donc plus besoin des exportations pour financer l’acquisition de technologie), et les ressources financières existent (taux d’épargne élevé, réserves de change énorme : marché solvable).
Peut-être la crise US arrive-t-elle quelques années trop tôt pour la Chine ; mais à moyen terme, à notre avis, sauf problème écologique ou énergétique, on ne voit pas ce qui empêcherait la Chine de se développer par l’investissement et la consommation (lire, à ce sujet, « Crise économique ou crise du sens ? »).
Le fond du désaccord : FL pense que la relance chinoise par l’investissement va enclencher un cycle inflationniste ; à notre avis, il oublie que si la Chine développe son marché intérieur au lieu d’exporter, le risque social lié à la surchauffe va beaucoup baisser (puisque les salaires augmenteront avec l’inflation, laquelle sera contenue par un afflux de produits enfin destinés au marché intérieur). FL pense que la dette chinoise est trop importante pour développer le marché intérieur : à notre avis, il oublie qu’une dette totale (tous acteurs confondus) à 200 % du PIB (son estimation, à notre avis maximaliste) n’est pas insurmontable, si le taux d’épargne est élevé (il l’est en Chine) et, surtout, si la croissance permet de couvrir les intérêts (à ce stade, elle le permet). En outre, il ne faut pas négliger que les flux du commerce international peuvent très bien rebondir via les pays émergents entre eux (c’est d’ailleurs ce qui se passe depuis un an).
Bref, comme FL, nous croyons effectivement que la crise marque la fin d’un système : la mondialisation néolibérale occidentalo-centrée ; mais à la différence de cet auteur, nous estimons que la théorie du « découplage » est tout sauf absurde. Il ne s’agit pas de nier que la Chine va éprouver des difficultés (on ne reconvertit pas sans casse une industrie bâtie pour l’export), mais simplement d’estimer, tout bien considéré, que Pékin a de fortes chances de surmonter ces difficultés. Encore une fois, avec 10 % de croissance et un fort taux d’épargne, on couvre les intérêts d’une dette totale, tous acteurs confondus, à 200 % du PIB (situation chinoise). Alors qu’avec une croissance faible (2, 3 %), voire nulle, et une épargne anéantie, on ne couvre pas une dette totale (tous acteurs confondus) qui doit maintenant dépasser largement 300 % du PIB (situation US).
Donc, disons-nous, la Chine va souffrir – mais elle passera le cap (ce qui ne sera pas le cas des USA).
L’avenir dira qui avait raison…

FL est en revanche tout à fait intéressant quand il nous renseigne sur les premières étapes de l’explosion de la « Chinamérique ».

Du côté américain, deux tendances s’affrontent. Les « gentils garçons » veulent la paix avec la Chine (on les appelle les « panda huggers », les « embrasseurs de panda ») ; Obama, a priori, appartient à cette école « mondialisation avant tout » (son demi-frère est d’ailleurs marié à une chinoise), tout comme une bonne partie de son administration. Mais une autre tendance, qui prime au Congrès, « America first » en quelque sorte, veut la confrontation. Arme envisagée : le protectionnisme (enfin, on y vient) – la campagne de presse en cours aux USA sur la sécurité des biens fabriqués en Chine, ou encore les tentatives du Congrès pour faire accuser la Chine de manipulation monétaire, traduisent d’ailleurs une volonté de faire sentir aux Chinois que les « panda huggers » ne sont pas forcément les seuls à décider, à Washington.

On ne s’étonnera pas ici que l’administration Obama (financement : Soros donc Rothschild ; conseil stratégique : Brzezinski dont Rockefeller) soit « panda hugger » (finir de gagner la guerre de classes), tandis que le Congrès (soumis au vote de l’Amérique profonde et en partie financé par l’industrie US) soit nettement plus hard avec la Chine (préserver la puissance US)…

Du côté chinois, on prend progressivement conscience de sa puissance, et on teste le rival, à petites touches. Remise en cause du dollar comme monnaie de réserve mondiale (discours de Zhou Xiaochuan, gouverneur de la banque centrale chinoise). Pesée au sein du FMI en faveur d’une monnaie de réserve mondiale constituée d’un panier de monnaie. Accords avec des pays asiatiques qui officialisent le rôle de monnaie internationale régionale du Yuan.

Ce qu’il faut bien comprendre, en tout cas (et là-dessus, FL est très clair), c’est que le discours officiel sur la Chine « manipulatrice de monnaie » est surtout rhétorique. En réalité, les USA souhaitent d’un côté la réévaluation du Yuan (pour regagner des parts de marché), et la redoutent d’un autre côté (si le Yuan est réévalué, la puissance financière de Pékin, déjà considérable, deviendrait peut-être suffisante pour que la Chine remplace les USA comme première puissance monétaire du monde – ce qui lui permettrait de racheter les entreprises un peu partout, y compris en Occident).

En fait, Chine et USA sont, l’un comme l’autre, enfermés dans une manipulation commune qu’ils ont tolérée pour des raisons symétriques, et dont ils ne savent plus comment sortir.

Le problème, c’est qu’en sortant de cette manipulation commune, les USA et la Chine vont s’apercevoir qu’une fois le Yuan et le dollar convertibles, il n’y aura qu’un seul gagnant. Une des deux puissances va se trouver en situation de modeler l’économie mondiale – et il n’est pas du tout certain que ce soit les USA.

Conclusion de FL : tous les ingrédients sont réunis pour une nouvelle guerre planétaire – la quatrième (après les deux guerres mondiales et la guerre froide).

Troisième et dernière question : puisque ce qui vient, c’est une guerre, à quoi ressemblera cette guerre ?

Réponse : la « guerre sans limite », pour parler chinois, ou encore la « guerre de quatrième génération », pour parler US.

La guerre des mers : la Chine est en train  de construire une flotte capable de rivaliser avec l’US Navy. C’est logique : puisque les Chinois mettent la main sur les matières premières partout où ils peuvent, avec leurs réserves  de devise, ils veulent aussi pouvoir sécuriser les routes maritimes vers ces matières premières.

C’est aussi une mesure défensive : pour Pékin (que FL juge paranoïaque et que nous estimons simplement prudente), la Mer de Chine est un poste avancé. Surtout qu’il y a, au large, une bombe diplomatique prête à exploser : Taiwan, qui, en déclarant officiellement son indépendance, pourrait provoquer une intervention chinoise.

La Chine peut-elle rivaliser à termes avec la puissance militaire US ? Réponse : oui. Officiellement, Pékin dépense 10 fois moins que Washington en dépenses militaires (60 milliards de dollars contre 600 milliards). Mais la réalité serait, d’après FL, toute autre. Le chiffre réel des dépenses chinoises serait probablement du double du chiffre avoué, et comme les salaires chinois sont beaucoup plus faibles que les salaires US, on peut considérer que les 60 milliards officiels équivalent à 120 milliards réels au taux de change courant, et à 250 milliards à parité de pouvoir d’achat. Pékin dépenserait donc à peu près 40 % de ce que dépense Washington – et, en outre, n’ayant pas à financer d’expéditions coûteuses en Irak et en Afghanistan, ses dépenses d’équipement ne sont pas rognées par les dépenses de fonctionnement.

Au final, il semble peu probable que Pékin puisse jamais se donner les moyens de gagner une guerre conventionnelle contre les USA. Mais il est probable, en revanche, qu’elle puisse interdire à l’Amérique de considérer possible une victoire dans ce domaine.

Ce qui reportera le conflit vers d’autres théâtres d’opération, extérieurs à la sphère militaire…

La guerre du cyberespace : ils ont l’air malin, ceux qui annonçaient que l’Occident pouvait abandonner sans remord l’économie physique, puisqu’il allait gagner l’économie de la connaissance !

La Chine possède désormais le supercalculateur le plus puissant du monde. Elle possède aussi des entreprises performantes dans le secteur des télécoms. Elle compte 400 millions d’internautes. Elle forme chaque année des centaines de milliers d’ingénieurs dans les technologies de l’information. Le quart des tentatives de piratage observées dans le monde proviendrait de Chine. Le moteur de recherche Baidu domine Google en Chine même, tandis que les encyclopédies en ligne Baidu Baike et Hudong, contrôlée par le gouvernement chinois, n’ont même pas de concurrent (wikipedia est bloquée).

La Chine n’a pas le contrôle d’Internet, mais celui de son Internet. La Chine se met en situation de gagner, en tout cas sur son sol, la « guerre de l’information ». L’opération « faux SMS » conduite semble-t-il par la CIA en Iran, après la réélection d’Ahmadinedjad, n’est tout simplement pas « jouable » en Chine.

La guerre de l’or noir : la Chine n’a pas de pétrole. Pendant longtemps, ça ne l’a pas empêchée de dédaigner la grande stratégie globale : elle n’avait besoin du pétrole, n’ayant pas d’industrie. Cette période est révolue : la Chine va désormais se projeter à l’extérieur, contrairement à sa longue tradition, pour le pétrole (et d’autres matières premières).

Au total, et sur ces opérations récentes, la Chine s’est assurée l’exploitation de 8 milliards de barils hors de ses frontières (environ quatre ans de sa consommation au rythme actuel). Il est à noter que 30 % de cette manne vient d’Afrique… et 30 % d’Iran (où un seul champ représente 2,5 milliards de barils). Où l’on comprend pourquoi « l’axe du Mal » associe le Soudan et l’Iran…

En 2008, les investissements chinois à l’étranger ont dépassé 50 milliards de dollars, soit plus que les investissements étrangers en Chine. L’essentiel de cet effort porte sur les matières premières et les hydrocarbures.

La guerre du capital : la Chine n’a pas de pétrole, mais elle a tellement de devises qu’elle peut se permettre d’acheter bien d’autres choses encore.

On a récemment fait remarquer que l’évaluation de l’investissement nécessaire pour remettre en état l’ensemble du parc d’infrastructures des Etats-Unis (totalement délabré après 30 ans de néolibéralisme) correspond approximativement au montant des réserves de change chinoises. Ou pour le dire autrement (et cela donne une idée du raid financier qui se prépare potentiellement), les USA pourraient rembourser 20 ans de consommation de produits chinois à bas prix en vendant à la Chine… leurs ports, leurs routes, leurs aéroports, leurs ponts et leurs chemins de fer ! (où l’on comprend, encore une fois, que la réévaluation du Yuan est à la fois souhaitée et redoutée par Washington).

On n’en est pas là. Mais ça commence. Savez-vous que Volvo est, depuis quelques mois, une entreprise chinoise ? Et que si EDF s’est désengagée de l’électricité britannique, c’est parce que son concurrent chinois alignait les zéros ?

La guerre des modèles : le déluge d’argent chinois qui peut à tout moment fondre sur les entreprises occidentales va imposer au capital une révision drastique de son discours dominant (antiprotectionniste jusqu’ici). Ce n’est pas tant qu’il s’agisse de défendre le marché intérieur (les capitalistes occidentaux ne s’en préoccupent pas vraiment, ils pensent global avant tout) ; c’est qu’il va falloir défendre le contrôle exercé sur les entreprises par les institutions financières occidentales.

Cette défense va réhabiliter l’idée de compétition entre deux modèles. Non plus « la démocratie de marché » contre « l’économie dirigée par le Parti Unique », mais le néolibéralisme US contre le néo-colbertisme chinois. Or, dans cette guerre, il n’est pas certain que le modèle occidental prédomine. Si l’Amérique s’est longtemps imposée, rappelle FL, c’est parce qu’elle faisait rêver. Mais aujourd’hui, c’est la croissance chinoise qui fait rêver (en tout cas les peuples pauvres).

La Chine a d’ailleurs commencé cette guerre. Elle forme les élites des pays émergents. Il y a des milliers d’étudiants africains à Pékin. Partout, la Chine propose aux peuples longtemps dominés par l’Occident un modèle de rechange (lire la note de lecture sur « La Chinafrique »)… et cela ne se limite pas aux fonctions techniques ou d’encadrement intermédiaire : le directeur d’HEC s’est récemment étonné de la capacité des Chinois à rattraper leur retard dans la formation des gestionnaires !

La guerre culturelle : verrons-nous un jour un cinéma français proposer non plus trois films US (très bien faits) et un film français  (minable), mais trois films chinois (très bien faits) et un film français (toujours aussi minable) ? Pas impossible, même si c’est peut-être le seul terrain où les USA dominent encore …

Le mandarin va-t-il remplacer l’anglais comme langue la plus usitée  sur Internet ? Qui a répondu : jamais ? – perdu, c’est déjà le cas.

Pékin est pragmatique : pour développer l’apprentissage du chinois, le pouvoir chinois a copié rigoureusement le système des « alliances françaises », avec les « instituts Confucius » (60 dans le monde). En 2010, 30 millions de courageux ont entrepris l’apprentissage du Chinois (simplifié, tout de même – sinon, c’est dix ans d’études à raison de 4.000 idéogrammes par an).

Nous ne nous rendons pas compte de cet effort culturel, parce qu’il porte prioritairement sur la périphérie de l’Empire chinois. Pour l’instant, ce que veulent les dirigeants de Pékin, c’est réaffirmer leur prédominance culturelle sur les anciens Etats tributaires du système mandarinal.

Mais demain ?...

La guerre monétaire : Ce sera le terrain décisif. L’équation est simple : tant que le Yuan n’est pas réévalué, le dollar reste monnaie de réserve, mais l’Amérique implose. Le jour où le Yuan est réévalué, et où il devient convertible, il y aura deux monnaies de réserve possibles pour le monde (trois si l’euro existe encore, ce dont beaucoup doutent ici).

On en est peut-être très proche : voici un véritable symbole, la firme Mc Donald vient d’annoncer qu’elle s’endetterait en Yuans pour financer son implantation en Chine…

Le jour où le Yuan sera réévalué et convertible, on verra se produire un évènement décisif : les USA seront obligés soit d’emprunter en Yuan, ou, s’ils le font encore en dollars, de rembourser avec des dollars stabilisés, appuyés sur des actifs réels.

Ce jour-là, estime FL, l’Empire thalassocratique anglo-saxon aura perdu la suprématie mondiale. Et la guerre pourra opposer deux camps, parce qu’il y aura deux camps.

On pourra alors vérifier, pour la centième fois dans l’Histoire, que l’interdépendance économique ne garantit pas la paix. Au contraire : elle crée des opportunités de guerre, parce qu’elle oblige à définir le sens de la dépendance.

 

Mistral gagnant

Mistral gagnant

Par Alexandre Latsa*

Ex: http://fortune.fdesouche.com/

Lorsque la Russie a rendu public son souhait d’acquisition de Bâtiments de Projection et de Commandement (BPC) Mistral, la France a répondu par l’affirmative. Rapidement pourtant, des voix se sont élevées, exprimant des réticences à cette transaction. Ces réticences émanaient d’États impliqués dans des contentieux plus ou moins importants avec la Russie (Géorgie, États Baltes) et qui craignaient un risque de déséquilibre de la sécurité régionale, crainte accrue par le conflit d’août 2008 dans le Caucase.

Pourtant il semble irréaliste d’imaginer que la Russie de 2010 ait des intentions agressives envers un pays européen et ces réticences ont été interprétées comme une possible crispation de Washington, embarrassé par une acquisition de matériel aussi sensible. Mais le cadre est sans doute plus large et concerne l’évolution des rapports de force sur les mers, et l’affaiblissement de la domination militaire et maritime américaine, acquise durant la guerre froide. Pour mieux cerner la situation, il convient de comprendre l’utilité des Mistral et regarder dans quel contexte global la Russie souhaite cette acquisition.

Les BPC sont des outils de projection, permettant de réaliser depuis la mer des opérations terrestres. Multi-fonctionnels, ils peuvent servir au débarquement de troupes, à la lutte contre la piraterie maritime ou encore à des actions humanitaires. Le Mistral, qui appartient à cette classe BPC, peut transporter jusqu’à 1200 hommes, 16 hélicoptères, jusqu’à 120 véhicules (dont des blindés), deux aéroglisseurs et des navettes de débarquement.

Le navire comprend en outre des canons, des batteries de missiles, des installations médicales, et un centre de commandement. La forte capacité de projection et de déplacement sur des théâtres d’opérations lointains que permet ce BPC est essentielle pour la Russie qui ne possède plus à ce jour de matériel équivalent, depuis le retrait des navires de type Rogov, au début de la décennie.

 

Durant la guerre froide, l’URSS ainsi que les régimes non alignés rechignaient à l’acquisition de porte-avions et porte-aéronefs, guidés par un non interventionnisme et un anti-impérialisme dogmatique, lorsque ce n’était pas pour des contraintes matérielles. Dès la fin de la guerre froide, le monde a connu une décennie de domination militaire américaine totale, acquise justement par cette capacité de déplacement et projection de forces militaires à l’autre bout de la planète. 20 ans plus tard, l’émergence de puissances régionales contribue à entraîner la planète vers un multilatéralisme qui fait que désormais de nombreux pays ont  des ambitions de présence sur les océans du globe.

Hormis les traditionnelles flottes Occidentales, la Russie, la Chine, le Brésil, la Corée du sud, la Turquie ou le Japon souhaitent se doter de porte-avions ou porte-hélicoptères, ce qui devrait permettre à tous ces États une réelle capacité d’intervention à l’autre bout du monde au milieu du siècle. La Russie via l’amiral Vladimir Vysotsky avait montré  son intérêt pour les BPC français lors du salon Euronaval de 2008, expliquant que la Russie se préparait à construire une flotte de porte-avions, prévue pour être opérationnelle vers 2060.

Le barrage des réticences diplomatiques contourné, et les « resets » entre la Russie, l’Amérique, et l’OTAN confirmés, l’année franco-russe tombait à point. Vladimir Poutine, en confirmant dès le milieu de l’année, lors d’une visite à Paris, que Moscou ne fournirait pas de missiles S-300 à l’Iran après le vote de sanctions par l’ONU, avait en outre réglé cette épineuse question.  Les différends entre les parties au contrat portaient sur deux points : les technologies afférentes, et le lieu de fabrication. La France souhaitait une vente sans technologie de pointe et qu’au moins deux bateaux soient fabriqués en France. La Russie, elle, conditionnait l’achat aux technologies liées et souhaitait acheter un seul navire, et faire construire les trois autres en Russie.

Si l’on semble plutôt se diriger vers la formule française pour la fabrication, le premier bateau devrait être livré avec la technologie de pointe liée, et notamment les dispositifs de calcul de conduite des opérations aériennes, essentiels pour le développement ultérieur des porte-avions. Récemment, Vera Chistova, vice-ministre de la Défense pour les moyens économiques et financiers, a confirmé que les dépenses pour l’achat ont été pré-intégrées aux budgets russes des trois prochaines années.

Côté français, Le directeur de la DCNS (fabricant militaire du Mistral) Pierre Legros, a lui indiqué que ces navires disposeraient des mêmes équipements que ceux de la marine française et que les seules différences seraient un pont d’envol renforcé pour accueillir les hélicoptères russes et une coque plus résistante pour pouvoir naviguer dans des eaux glacées. Quand au PDG de l’association des chantiers où devrait être fabriqué le Mistral, il a affirmé que le premier navire pourrait être construit fin 2013 et le deuxième en 2015. Les chantiers navals russes devant être en mesure de construire seuls les autres bâtiments dès l’année 2016.

Il est donc plausible, et souhaitable, que l’année franco-russe se termine par un accord commercial et politique majeur.  Pour le président français l’enjeu est de taille, sur un plan financier, le prix d’un bateau avoisinant les 500 millions d’euros, mais également sur un plan politique, afin de prouver que la ré-intégration de l’OTAN en 2009 n’a pas ôté toute souveraineté à la France. Du côté russe, l’acquisition est importante d’un point de vue militaire, mais aussi sur le plan géopolitique, la Russie se donnant ainsi pleinement les moyens d’atteindre l’objectif de la politique entamée en mars 2000 : rester une puissance de premier plan.

* Alexandre Latsa, 33 ans, est un blogueur français qui vit en Russie. Diplômé en langue slave, il anime le blog DISSONANCE, destiné à donner un « autre regard sur la Russie« .

Ria Novosti

Evola on Zen & Everyday Life

Evola on Zen & Everyday Life

Translation anonymous, revised by Greg Johnson

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

Eugen Herrigel
Zen in the Art of Archery
New York: Vintage, 1999
[Zen nell’arte del tirar d’arco (Turin: Rigois, 1956)]

Kakuzo Okakura
The Book of Tea
Stone Bridge Press, 2007
[II Libro del Te (Rome: Fratelli Bocca, 1955)]

Zen_P.jpgThe first of these little books, translated into Italian from German, is unique of its kind, as a direct and universally accessible introduction to the spirit the fundamental disciplines and behavior of the civilization of the Far East, especially Japan. Herrigel is a German professor who was invited to teach philosophy in a Japanese University, and decided to study the traditional spirit of the country in its most typical living forms. He took a special interest in acquiring an understanding of Zen Buddhism, and strange as it may seem, he was told that the best way to do so was to study the traditional practice of Archery. Herrigel therefore untiringly studied that art for no less than five years, and the book describes how his progress therein and his gradual penetration into the essence of Zen proceeded side by side with archery, conditioning one another reciprocally, leading to a deep inner transformation of the author himself.

The essence of Zen as a conception of the world is, as is known, its special interpretation of the state of nirvana which, partly through the influence of Taoism, is understood in Japan not as a state of evanescent ascetic beatitude, but as something indwelling, an inner liberation, a state free from the fevers, the ordeals, the bonds of the ego, a state which may be preserved while engaged in all the activities and in all the forms of everyday life itself. Thanks to it, life as a whole acquires a different dimension; it is understood and lived in a different way. The “absence of the ego” upon which, in conformity with the spirit of Buddhism, Zen insists so strongly, is not however akin to apathy or atony; it gives rise to a higher form of spontaneous action, of assurance, of freedom and serenity in action. This may be compared to a man who holds on convulsively to something and who, when he lets it go, acquires a higher serenity, a superior sense of freedom and assurance.

After calling attention to all these points, the author notes the existence in the Far East of traditional arts that both arise from this freedom of Zen and offer the means for attaining it through the training required to practice them. Strange as it may seem, the Zen spirit dwells in the Far Eastern Arts taught by the Masters of painting, serving tea, arranging flowers, archery, wrestling, fencing, and so forth. All these arts have a ritual aspect. There are, moreover, ineffable aspects thanks to which true mastery in any of these arts cannot be attained unless one has acquired inner enlightenment and transformation of ordinary self-consciousness, which makes mastery a kind of tangible sacrament.

Thus Herrigel tells us how in learning to draw the long bow, little by little, through the problems involved in this art as it is still taught in Japan, he came to the knowledge and the inner understanding that be sought. He realized that archery was not a sport but rather a kind of ritual action and initiation. To acquire a thorough knowledge of it one had to arrive at the elimination of one’s ego, overcome all tension, and achieve a superior spontaneity. Only then was muscular relaxation paradoxically joined to maximum strength; the archer, the bow, and the target became one whole. The arrow flew as if of its own accord and found its target almost without being aimed. Stated in these terms, the mastery attained is a degree of spirituality, or “Zen,” not as theory and philosophy but as actual experience, as a deeper mode of being.

By describing situations of this kind, based on personal experience, Herrigel’s little book is important not only because it introduces the reader to the spirit of an exotic civilization, but also because it enables us to view in a new light some of our own ancient traditions. We know that in antiquity, and to some extent in the Middle Ages also, jealously guarded traditions, elements of religion, rites, and even mysteries were associated with the various arts. There were “goods” for each of these arts and rites of admission to practice them. The initiation to crafts and professions in certain guilds and “collegia” proceeded along parallel lines with spiritual initiation. Thus, to mention a later case, the symbolism proper to the mason’s art of the medieval builders served as the basis for the first Freemasonry, which drew from it the allegories for the proceedings of the “Great Work.” It may therefore be that in all this the West once knew something of what has been preserved to this day in the Far East in such teachings as “the way of the bow” or “the art of the sword,” held to be identical with the “way of Zen” in a singularly positive form of Buddhism.

The Author of the second little book, to the Italian edition of which we now turn, is a Japanese interested above all in aesthetic problems, who has studied the modern schools of art in Europe and America but has remained faithful to his own traditions and has engaged in a resolute and efficient action in his own country against the introduction of Europeanizing tendencies. His Il Libro del Te confirms in the central part devoted more closely to the subject under consideration, what we have just been saying.

There have been close connections in the Far East between Zen, the “tea schools” and the “tea cult” (the term used by the author to designate this is “teaism,” an infelicitous word given that “theism” indicates in our countries every religion based on the notion of a personal God). Indeed it is claimed that the tea ceremonial as elaborated in Japan in the 16th century was derived from the much more ancient Zen rite of drinking tea from one single cup before the statue of Bodhidharma. Generally speaking this ceremonial rite is one of the many forms in which the Taoist principle of “completeness in the fragment” is expressed. Lu-wu in his book Cha-ching had already asserted that in preparing the tea the same order and the same harmony must he observed that from the Taoist standpoint reigns in all things.

The author adds that it is part of the religion of the art of life. “The tea became a pretext for the enjoyment of moments of meditation and happy detachment in which the host and his guests took part.” Both the site and structure of the rooms built for this special purpose—the tea-rooms (sukiya)—follow the ritualistic principle; they are symbolic. The variegated and partly irregular path that, within the framework of the Ear Eastern art of gardening, leads to the tea-room is emblematic of that preliminary state of meditation that leads to breaking all ties to the outer world, to detachment from the worries and interests of ordinary life.

The style of the room itself is of refined simplicity. In spite of the bare and poverty-stricken appearance it may offer to Western eyes, it follows in every detail a precise intention. The selection and the use of the right materials call for infinite care and attention to detail, so much so that the cost of a perfect tea room may be greater than a whole casement. The term “sukiya”—the author says—originally meant “the house of imagination,” the allusion being not to wandering fancies but to the faculty of detaching oneself from the empirical world, of recollecting oneself and taking refuge in an ideal world.

Other expressions used by the Masters of Tea rite are “the house of emptiness” and “the house of asymmetry.” The first of these expressions traces back directly to the notion of the Void proper to Taoist metaphysics (and here we may recall also the part played by this notion, almost as a key or background in the “aerial” element of Far Eastern painting). The expression “house of asymmetry” refers to the fact that some detail is always intentionally left unfinished and care is taken to arrange things to give the impression of a lacuna. The reason for this is that the sense of completeness and harmony must not arise from something already fixed and repeatable, but must be suggested by an exterior incompleteness which impels one to conceive them inwardly by means of a mental act.

The author deals also of the connections existing between the art of tea and that of selecting and arranging the flowers in the sukiya, here again in conformity with symbolism and a special sensibility. Often one single flower rightly selected and placed is the only ornament of the “house of emptiness.”

Lastly the author reminds us that a special philosophy of daily life is accessory to the tea ritual, so much so that in current Japanese parlance a man lacking in sensibility to the tragi-comical sides of personal life is said to be “lacking in tea,” while those who give way to uncontrolled impulses and feelings are said to have “too much tea.” This brings one back to that ideal of balanced, subtle, and calm superiority, which plays so large apart in the general attitude of the man of the Far East.

If we think of the wide use made of tea in the West, and of the circumstances of this use in our social life, more especially among fashionable circles, it would be natural to draw comparisons which would show that, even in this seemingly commonplace field, as on the plane of ideas, all things of the Orient are diminished when imported into the Western world.

East and West, vol. 7, no. 3, October 1956, pp. 274–76

00:05 Publié dans Traditions | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : tradition, traditions, zen, japon, traditionalisme, julius evola | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

March on Fiume

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MARCH ON FIUME

Excerpted from Hakim Bey’s T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism

Ex: http://www.freespeechproject.com/

“To die is not enough.”
— D’Annunzio

When pressed about his political allegiance, Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863-1938) refused to commit himself. “My undertaking may seem rash and alien to my art and style of life,” he wrote to his publisher, “but… people must realise that I am capable of doing anything.” After his election to Italy’s Chamber of Deputies he showed his contempt for the parliamentary circus by rarely attending the sessions, and behaving unpredictably when he did. Nicknamed “the deputy of beauty”, D’Annunzio watched the parliamentary debates as an artist rather than a participant. Originally elected to the Chamber as a ‘rightwing’ nationalist, he had no trouble crossing the floor to vote — and sit with — members of the ‘extreme left’.

Plagued by creditors, D’Annunzio settled in France in 1910 to concentrate on his writing and art. Since the 1890s he had enjoyed mass appeal and on returning to Italy in 1915 he was greeted by some one hundred thousand admirers. A strong supporter of Italy’s involvement in the First World War, D’Annunzio, aged fifty-two, volunteered for active service in the trenches. A daring aviator, he led bombing raids, losing an eye in an aeroplane accident. In a final act of heroism, as the war drew to a close, he flew as far as Vienna and there dropped propaganda pamphlets from his aeroplane.

 At the Peace Conference of 1919, Italy claimed the port of Fiume on the grounds of self-determination. Little aroused the indignation of so many Italians as much as the question of Fiume. The US, Britain and France argued that Fiume be included in Yugoslavia and occupied the port. A group of young army officers begged the war hero D’Annunzio to seize Fiume for Italy. On September 12 he marched from Rome at the head of a thousand black shirted legionaries; the Allied troops withdrew and D’Annunzio, who announced his intention of remaining in the city until it was annexed by Italy, assumed control of the port city as the ‘Commandante’.

 Within a few weeks some seven thousand legionaries and four hundred sailors had joined him. They saw in D’Annunzio a heroic alternative to the sedentary parliamentarians they despised. For them the Commandante’s Fiume became “the symbol of a moral, political and social rejection of the entire established order.” The legionaries called for the freedom of all oppressed people and viewed with interest the Soviet experiment in Russia. They were open to an alliance with the syndicalists, anarchists and Socialists. D’Annunzio established contacts with Sean O’Kelly, the future President of Ireland, who then represented Sinn Fein in Paris; with the Egyptian nationalists; and with the Soviet government. Lenin referred to D’Annunzio as one of the only revolutionaries in Italy.

 In asserting the independence of Fiume, Gabriele D’ Annunzio denounced the big powers, especially British imperialism:

 Fiume is as invincible as she has ever been. True, we may all perish beneath her ruins, but from these same ruins the spirit will rise again strong and vigorous. From the indomitable Sinn Fein of Ireland to the Red Flag which unites cross and crescent in Egypt, rebellions of the spirit, catching fire from our sparks, will burn afresh against the devourers of raw flesh, and the oppressors of unarmed nations. The voracious Empire which has possessed itself of Persia, Mesopotamia, New Arabia and a greater part of Africa, and yet is never satisfied, can, if it so wishes, send its aviator-murderers against us, just as in Egypt it was not ashamed to massacre insurgents, who were armed with nothing more than sticks.”

 Many of D’Annunzio’s emblems were later taken over by Mussolini. The legionaries’ black shirts derived from the tunics of first world war shock troops. Garibaldi, the father of modern Italy, had made all Italians familiar with the idea of a coloured shirt as a symbol of a liberating cause. Even the word Fascio, from which is derived Fascism, meaning “group” or “association” (literally “bundle”), had long been used by the Italian leftwing. In 1872 Garibaldi had founded a Fascio Operaio, and in 1891 an extreme leftwing group was set up known as Fascio dei Lavoratori.

 For fifteen months the Commandante held out against Allied protests and an Italian government blockade. Then on 24 December 1920, “the Christmas of Blood” as D’Annunzio called it, 20,000 troops moved against D’Annunzio’s 3,000.

 While it lasted, the short lived Free State of Fiume, under the direction of Commandante D’Annunzio, stood as a heroic, passionate revolt against mediocrity. For in the words of D’Annunzio:

 “Blessed are the youths who hunger and thirst for glory, for they shall be satisfied.”
Gabriele D’Annunzio

“Everything in life depends upon the eternally new. Man must either renew himself or die.”
— D’Annunzio

 Gabriele D’Annunzio, Decadent poet, artist, musician, aesthete, womanizer, pioneer daredevil aeronautist, black magician, genius and cad, emerged from World War I as a hero with a small army at his beck and command: the “Arditi.” At a loss for adventure, he decided to capture the city of Fiume from Yugoslavia and give it to Italy. After a necromantic ceremony with his mistress in a cemetery in Venice he set out to conquer Fiume, and succeeded without any trouble to speak of. But Italy turned down his generous offer; the Prime Minister called him a fool.

 In a huff, D’Annunzio decided to declare independence and see how long he could get away with it. He and one of his anarchist friends wrote the Constitution, which declared music to be the central principle of the State. The Navy (made up of deserters and Milanese anarchist maritime unionists) named themselves the Uscochi, after the long-vanished pirates who once lived on local offshore islands and preyed on Venetian and Ottoman shipping. The modern Uscochi succeeded in some wild coups: several rich Italian merchant vessels suddenly gave the Republic a future: money in the coffers! Artists, bohemians, adventurers, anarchists (D’Annunzio corresponded with Malatesta), fugitives and Stateless refugees, homosexuals, military dandies (the uniform was black with pirate skull-&-crossbones — later stolen by the SS), and crank reformers of every stripe (including Buddhists, Theosophists and Vedantists) began to show up at Fiume in droves. The party never stopped. Every morning D’Annunzio read poetry and manifestos from his balcony; every evening a concert, then fireworks. This made up the entire activity of the government. Eighteen months later, when the wine and money had run out and the Italian fleet finally showed up and lobbed a few shells at the Municipal Palace, no one had the energy to resist.

 D’Annunzio, like many Italian anarchists, later veered toward fascism — in fact, Mussolini (the ex-Syndicalist) himself seduced the poet along that route. By the time D’Annunzio realized his error it was too late: he was too old and sick. But Il Duce had him killed anyway — pushed off a balcony — and turned him into a “martyr.” As for Fiume, though it lacked the seriousness of the free Ukraine or Barcelona, it can probably teach us more about certain aspects of our quest. It was in some ways the last of the pirate utopias (or the only modern example) — in other ways, perhaps, it was very nearly the first modern TAZ [Temporary Autonomous Zone].

 I believe that if we compare Fiume with the Paris uprising of 1968 (also the Italian urban insurrections of the early seventies), as well as with the American countercultural communes and their anarcho-New Left influences, we should notice certain similarities, such as: — the importance of aesthetic theory (cf. the Situationists) — also, what might be called “pirate economics,” living high off the surplus of social overproduction — even the popularity of colorful military uniforms — and the concept of music as revolutionary social change — and finally their shared air of impermanence, of being ready to move on, shape-shift, re-locate to other universities, mountaintops, ghettos, factories, safe houses, abandoned farms — or even other planes of reality. No one was trying to impose yet another Revolutionary Dictatorship, either at Fiume, Paris, or Millbrook. Either the world would change, or it wouldn’t. Meanwhile keep on the move and live intensely.

lundi, 29 novembre 2010

Brève histoire de l'oligarchie en Russie

oligrusse.jpg

Brève histoire de l'oligarchie en Russie

Le mot oligarque symbolise à lui tout seul l'histoire de la Russie de ces vingt dernières années et nous le trouvons utilisé pour désigner tout et n'importe quoi. Ce terme qui, au milieu des années 90, était synonyme de puissance et était ouvertement revendiqué est aujourd'hui récusé par les grandes fortunes de Russie, tant il est lié aux pires heures de l'ère Eltsine.

L'oligarchie a fortement évolué tout au long de la période. Certains oligarques sont tombés dans l'oubli, d'autres ont fui ou sont en prison. Les plus pragmatiques se sont adaptés en renonçant à toute prétention politique, ce qui rend d'autant le terme inadéquat pour les désigner aujourd'hui. C'est Boris Berëzovski, l'éminence grise du Président Eltsine, qui popularise pour la première fois le terme en 1996, lors d'un entretien donné au "Financial Times". Il qualifie ainsi lui-même les sept banquiers qui ont réuni leurs moyens afin de permettre à Boris Eltsine d'être réélu Président. La misère et l'anarchie dans lesquelles était plongée la Russie, rendait un deuxième mandat peu probable pour ce piètre gestionnaire. Ces sept banquiers prétendaient contrôler plus de 50% de l'économie russe. On les surnomma "semibankirschina". Ce terme était l'adaptation contemporaine de celui de « Sémiboyarschina », les sept boyards qui trahirent le Tsar et livrèrent Moscou aux envahisseurs polonais en 1610. En 1996, il s'agit pour ces banquiers de sauver les actifs industriels, malhonnêtement privatisés pendant les premières années de l'ère Eltsine, d'un possible retour des communistes au pouvoir.

Après s'être enrichis en détournant les fonds publics, grâce à la complicité d'hommes politiques haut-placés, ces hommes d'affaires se sont ensuite emparés pour des sommes ridicules, de pans entiers du patrimoine industriel russe, notamment dans le secteur des ressources
naturelles. En ces temps troubles, pour assurer la sécurité physique du produit de leur prédation, ils s'associèrent avec les mafias qui avaient éclos un peu partout en Russie.

Ces mafias constituaient également des entités économiques disposant de liquidités considérable à un moment où celles-ci faisaient justement défaut, et où tout était à vendre. Le plus célèbre de ces mafieux fut Anatoli Bykov, qui prit part à la guerre de l'aluminium.

Boris Abramovitch Berëzovski, homme d'affaires russo-israélien, est le plus connu de ces oligarques. Sa fortune trouve son origine dans la vente frauduleuse des voitures produites par la société d'Etat AvtoVaz, plus connue en Europe sous le nom de LADA. Il parvient ensuite à se rapprocher de la "famille" Eltsine. Il s'empare alors d'actifs pétroliers et industriels, puis de la gestion de la compagnie Aéroflot, qu'il amène au bord de la faillite.

L'éditeur de la version russe du magazine "Forbes", le russo-américain Paul Klebnikov, lui consacre un ouvrage très critique, « le parrain du Kremlin ». Sa liberté de parole lui vaut d'être assassiné le 9 juillet 2004 à Moscou. Le soutien ouvert de Paul Klebnikov à la politique de restauration de l'Etat de Vladimir Poutine explique que son assassinat a eu très peu d'écho en France, contrairement à celui d'Anna Politovskaïa deux ans après.

Vladimir Alexandrovitch Goussinski, est également un homme d'affaires russo-israélien. Sa fortune provient de la banque qu'il fonde en 1989, et de son alliance avec le maire de Moscou, Youri Loujkov. Il fonde le premier groupe de médias privé et regroupe ses activités au sein de «Média Most». Il livre à Boris Berëzovski un combat à mort au début des années 90, puis se réconcilie avec lui en 1996, afin de soutenir la candidature d'Eltsine. Il est un membre éminent du congrès juif mondial, et fonde avec Mikhaïl Friedman, le congrès juif russe. La
crise de 1998 l'affaiblit durablement.

Vladimir Olegovitch Potanine, dont le poste au ministère du commerce extérieur, lui permet de s'enrichir considérablement et de créer son groupe financier, INTERROS, et sa banque, ONEXIM est un autre oligarque fameux. En 1995, il est le concepteur du système de prêts contre actions, qui permet aux banquiers d'acquérir à peu de frais des pans entiers de l'industrie russe. Pour quelques centaines de millions de dollars prêtés à l'Etat russe à la limite de la banqueroute, les oligarques s'emparent alors d'actifs qui en valent plusieurs milliards. Vladimir Potanine, grâce à ce système, s'empare de Norilsk Nickel.

Mikhaïl Borisovitch Khodorkowski débute sa carrière comme membre influent du Komsomol de Moscou (organisation de jeunesse soviétique où étaient recrutées les futurs cadres du parti communiste). C'est grâce aux fonds de cette organisation et à ses liens avec le parti communiste, qu'il fonde sa banque, la MENATEP. Il s'empare ensuite des actifs de la compagnie Yukos grâce au système prêts contre actions.  La privatisation de Yukos est émaillée de nombreux assassinats et se fait au mépris le plus absolu du droit des actionnaires minoritaires, notamment étrangers. Le maire de Neftyougansk, où se trouve le plus gros actif de Yukos, et qui avait entrepris une grève de la faim pour obtenir le paiement des taxes dues à sa ville au bord de la ruine, est assassiné le 26 juin 1998, jour de l'anniversaire de Khodorkowski. Le chef de la sûreté de Yukos, Alexeï Pitchouguine, est toujours en prison pour ce crime. Ceux qui s'apitoient sur le sort de l'oligarque en pensant qu'il paie très cher des opérations financières feraient bien de s'informer sur les crimes de sang de l'ère Khodorkowski. Khodorkowski se lie avec les milieux d'affaires états-uniens et dépense sans compter auprès des agences de communication pour se construire une image positive, abusant les très complaisants médias occidentaux.

Mikhaïl Maratovitch Friedman reste encore aujourd'hui l'un des plus puissants hommes d'affaires russe. Avec son associé Piotr Aven, ministre du commerce extérieur au début des années 90, il fonde le groupe consortium "Alfa", dont les fleurons sont la banque "Alfa" et la compagnie pétrolière "TNK".

Vladimir Victorovitch Vinagradov privatise à son profit la banque d'état "Inkombank" en 1993. Il disparaît de la scène politico-économique après la banqueroute de sa banque, lors de la crise de 1998.

Alexander Pavlovitch Smolenski, condamné à l'époque soviétique pour divers trafics refait lui surface en créant la banque "Stolichny". La privatisation à son profit de la banque d'état AGROPROM, lui permet de fonder "SBS AGRO", première banque privée et deuxième banque de Russie. En 1998, la banque est emportée par la crise et ruine plusieurs millions de petits épargnants. Il perd alors toute influence politique, même s'il conserve sa fortune.


Ces sept banquiers ne sont pas les seuls hommes riches et influents de l'ère Eltsine, mais ce sont eux les "faiseurs de rois". Ils ont construit leur fortune sur le triptyque "Tchénovnik" (responsable politique), mafieux, homme d'affaires. On trouve également dans les provinces russes, des oligarques locaux très puissants, ayant construit leur pouvoir sur la même base.

La crise de 1998 entraîne la disparition de deux des sept banquiers, Vinogradov et Smolenski. Une nouvelle génération apparaît alors sur les ruines de la Russie d'après la crise. Ils ont fait leur fortune dans les années 90 et sont alors au sommet de leur puissance. Ils sont plus jeunes que la première génération, mais ils lui sont très liés.

Les plus célèbres sont Mikhaïl Prokhorov, partenaire de Vladimir Potanine au sein de Norilsk Nickel, Roman Abramovitch lié à Boris Berëzovski, et Oleg Déripaska, homme-lige des frères Mikhaïl et Lev Tchernoï au sein de Russki Alumini. C'est également à cette époque que les hommes d'affaires commencent à prendre leur distance avec les mafieux qui les ont protégés.

Au début des années 2000, les oligarques se trouvent, comme en 1996,face au risque de retour au pouvoir des communistes. Même avec un contrôle quasi complet de la presse russe, les oligarques ont besoin d'un candidat crédible pour défendre leurs intérêts. Ils jettent leur dévolu sur un homme, dont la loyauté pour le Président Eltsine, leur laisse supposer qu'ils le manipuleront aussi facilement que le Président sortant. Porté par sa victoire en Tchétchénie, Vladimir Poutine est ainsi élu Président le 26 mars 2000. Mais pour les oligarques, c'est le début de la fin.

 

Après l'élection de Vladimir Poutine à la présidence en mars 2000, la grande question qui anime la presse occidentale est de savoir si le nouveau Président sera une marionnette entre les mains des oligarques. Etonnamment, plus Vladimir Poutine fera rentrer les oligarques dans le rang, plus il se sera la cible des attaques de cette presse, qui quelques mois auparavant, dénonçait leur emprise sur la Russie.

Le premier à faire les frais du changement de pouvoir est Vladimir Goussinski, dont les médias avaient attaqué Vladimir Poutine durant les élections. Il s'enfuit en Espagne, puis en Israël en juillet 2000. Le holding « Média-Most », criblé de dettes est démantelé et finit entre les mains du monopole gazier public, Gazprom. Ce même mois de juillet 2000, le Président Poutine convoque les oligarques pour leur annoncer les nouvelles règles auxquelles ils doivent se soumettre, s'ils ne veulent pas avoir à rendre compte de leurs multiples prédations. Ces règles sont au nombre de quatre :

  • Payer les impôts.
  • Arrêter l'évasion fiscale.
  • Réinvestir les profits des sociétés en Russie.
  • Enfin et surtout, ne plus faire de politique.

La plupart des oligarques sentent le vent tourner et se soumettent aux nouvelles règles. Deux des sept banquiers tentent pourtant de s'opposer à la volonté du nouveau Président. Le premier est Boris Berëzovski, l'ancienne éminence grise d'Eltsine, qui n'admet pas son déclassement. Mais Vladimir Poutine dirige désormais la Russie d'une main de fer. Il purge rapidement l'administration présidentielle, et sait qu'il peut compter sur le soutien des structures de forces. En 2001 Berëzovski est contraint de fuir à Londres. Il complote depuis la capitale anglaise et devient un ennemi juré du Kremlin. Il finance toutes les formes d'opposition à Vladimir Poutine, en Russie comme à l'étranger. Il soutient la prise de pouvoir de Mikhaïl Saakhachvili en Géorgie en 2003, puis la révolution orange en Ukraine en 2004. Il soutient le terroriste tchétchène Akhmed Zakaïev, réfugié également à Londres. Il promet régulièrement de grandes révélations sur Vladimir Poutine, sans que rien de concluant ne soit jamais publié. Il bénéficie en outre de la protection des services secrets anglais.

Le deuxième oligarque à ne pas accepter la nouvelle donne est Mikhaïl Khodorkowski. Les médias occidentaux, alimentés par les agences de communication américaines ont, à tort, attribué l'arrestation de l'oligarque à de prétendues ambitions politiques, et ont tâché d'en faire un nouveau Soljenitsyne. Khodorkowski tombe pour des motifs moins glorieux. A partir de 2003, Il se met à financer toutes les oppositions possibles à la Douma, des communistes jusqu'aux libéraux. Il espère ainsi former un groupe parlementaire lequel lui permettrait de bloquer la réforme fiscale qu'a entreprise Vladimir Poutine. Entre 2003 et 2004, la taxation des bénéfices des compagnies pétrolières russes est effectivement passée de 5% à 30% en moyenne. L'oligarque a également l'intention de faire entrer massivement des compagnies américaines dans l'actionnariat de Youkos, que ce soit Chevron ou Exxon. Enfin, il veut s'affranchir du monopole du transport des hydrocarbures de « Transneft » et construire avec les Chinois, un pipeline qui relierait directement ses forages à la Chine. Il est peu vraisemblable que Khodorkowski ait eu une ambition politique personnelle, il était trop intelligent pour ne pas savoir qu'il représentait tout ce que le peuple russe haïssait. La condamnation de Khodorkowski et de ses associés, extrêmement populaire auprès des Russes, marque réellement la fin du système oligarchique en Russie. Il semble en outre que Vladimir Poutine considère personnellement, que Khodorkowski doive payer pour les crimes de sang trop nombreux qui ont entouré la privatisation de Youkos, notamment celle du maire de Youganskneft, le jour de l'anniversaire de l'oligarque. C'est dans ce sens que Vladimir Poutine a comparé dernièrement la situation de Khodorkowski à celle d'Al Capone, ce mafieux américain, condamné non pas pour ses crimes de sang, improuvables, mais pour fraude fiscale.

L'exemple de Khodorkowski porte ses fruits, les conglomérats de matières premières paient désormais leurs taxes. Le Kremlin en profite pour remettre la main sur plusieurs actifs industriels. Ceux de Youkos passent sous le contrôle de la compagnie publique Gazprom en 2004. En 2005, Sibneft, la compagnie de Berëzovski puis d'Abramovitch est également rachetée par Gazprom et devient Gazpromneft.

Des sept banquiers de 1996, il n'en reste que deux. L'un des deux, Vladimir Potanine, a annoncé en février 2010, qu'il léguera sa fortune de plus de $5 milliards, à des œuvres de bienfaisance. Le second est Mikhaïl Friedman, dont on annonce la chute depuis plusieurs années sans qu'elle se soit produite pour l'instant. La jeune génération des Déripaska, Abrahmovitch ou Prokhorov a abandonné la politique au profit des affaires, des stations de ski et des clubs de football. De plus, la crise de 2008 a affaibli durement Déripaska, qui ne doit la préservation de son empire qu'au prêt de $4,5  milliards que lui accorde le gouvernement russe au travers de la VnechEconomBank.

Comme un signe des temps, Dimitri Medvedev et Vladimir Poutine ont annoncé le lancement d'une vague de privatisations, mais cette fois, elles rapporteront plus de $40 milliards à l'état russe, et permettront à des sociétés étrangères d'entrer dans le capital et la gestion de ces sociétés. Le temps des oligarques est désormais révolu, aucun homme d'affaire russe, si riche soit-il, n'a plus les moyens de faire élire le Président de la Fédération de Russie. Contrairement aux affirmations romanesques de Pierre Avril dans le Figaro, ceux qu'il appelle les « nouveaux oligarques » sont en fait des hommes d'affaires, qui sont certes très proches du gouvernement et en ont profité pour accroître leur fortune, mais n'influent pas sur les décisions politiques. Ce défi que Vladimir Poutine a réussi à relever, vaincre les oligarchies dont certaines l'avaient mené au pouvoir, est exactement le même qui se pose aujourd'hui à Viktor Ianoukovitch en Ukraine et... à Barack Obama aux Etats-Unis.

Xavier Moreau

Suisse: succès du référendum pour l'expulsion des criminels

Suisse : succès du référendum pour l’expulsion des criminels étrangers

Ex: http://tpprovence.wordpress.com/

Flyer_JUDC_district_Monthey.jpgLe référendum d’initiative populaire «Pour le renvoi des criminels étrangers» a été approuvé aujourd’hui par 53 % des votants. Ce texte prévoit la suppression des méandres législatifs qui actuellement faisaient que très peu de criminels étrangers finissaient par être expulsables.

Pour torpiller ce projet de référendum, un contre-projet concocté par le gouvernement et une majorité du Parlement avait été lancé et était également soumis au vote aujourd’hui ; il prévoyait de durcir les lois actuelles mais en conservant les méandres législatifs qui empêchent l’expulsion de la plupart des criminels étrangers. Ce contre-projet a été repoussé par 54% des votants mais a certainement fait perdre des voix au projet initial.

L’Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC) qui était à l’initiative de ce référendum s’est retrouvée seule pour le soutenir, face au gouvernement, à tous les autres partis et à la quasi-totalité des médias. C’est une nouvelle victoire pour ce parti populiste qui avait déjà fait gagner l’année passée le référendum pour l’interdiction des minarets en Suisse.

Rappelons qu’en France une loi pour l’expulsion des criminels étrangers à été supprimée par Nicolas Sarkozy quand il était Ministre de l’Intérieur.

Warum kriminelle Migranten unsere Rettung sind

PK080418_JustizSkandalurteile.jpg

Warum kriminelle Migranten unsere Rettung sind
Ellen KOSITZA - Ex: http://www.sezession.de/

Sich über Namen, für die einer im Normalfall wenig kann, auszulassen, gilt als ähnlich unfein wie öffentliches Lästern über Äußerlichkeiten. Sei’s drum, ich gehe davon aus, daß Malte Lehming ein Problem mit seinem Namen hat. Psychologen wissen, daß Leute, die etwa „Klein“ und Maus“ heißen – zweifellos anständige Namen! –, im Schnitt stärker nach Rebellion streben und gewissermaßen aufsässiger auftreten als solche, die „Groß“ oder „Hund(t)“ heißen.

Mein Verdacht ist, daß sich jemand mit Namen Lehming eventuell sowohl von den bekannten Gerüchten, die mit Lemmingen verbunden werden, mit aller Kraft absetzen will als auch von Eigenschaften, die man mit „Lehm, lehmig“ assoziiert, einem trägen, amorphen, schwerfälligen Stoff.

Zu dieser These würde passen, daß Malte Lehming ausgerechnet als „Meinungschef“ beim Tagesspiegel reüssiert und in dieser Funktion hauptsächlich „klare Kante“ zeigen will, und zwar auf Teufel-komm-raus. Hauptsache, mal was „Widerborstiges“ sagen, Sinn, Zweck und Verstand spielen da selten eine Rolle. In seinem „Kontrapunkt“ vom 16.11. hat sich der Profilierungswütige einmal mehr selbst übertroffen.

Man lese:

In Berlin gibt es ausländische Jugendbanden. Das ist ein Problem. Noch größer wäre das Problem, wenn es sie nicht gäbe.

Sie sind jung, mutig, mobil, hungrig, risikobereit, initiativ. Solche Menschen braucht das Land. Natürlich ist es nicht schön, wenn Jugendliche – ob mit türkischem oder libanesischem Hintergrund – in den Straßen von Berlin Banden bilden, Reviere verteidigen und mit Messern hantieren. Aber hinter der Kritik an ihrem Verhalten verbirgt sich oft bloß der Neid derer, die Vitalität als Bedrohung empfinden, weil sich die eigene Mobilität auf den Wechsel vom Einfamilienreihenhaus in die Seniorenresidenz beschränkt. Lieber ein paar junge, ausländische Intensivtäter als ein Heer von alten, intensiv passiven Eingeborenen.

Nebenbei soll es solche „jungen, mutigen, initiativen…“  Jugendbanden ja auch außerhalb Berlins geben. Man hörte davon aus östlichen Bundesländern. Dürfte man wohl entsprechend umformulieren: „Natürlich ist es nicht schön, wenn Jugendliche – ob mit Glatzen und Springerstiefeln oder in unauffälligen Klamotten wie Kapuzenpullis und Palästinensertüchern – in den Dörfen und Kleinstädten Vorpommerns Banden bilden, mit Messern hantieren, Reviere verteidigen; aber: “?

Weiter Lehming, nun mit absurden Vorstellungen bürgerlicher Bildungswelten:

Jugendbanden? Igitt! So tönt es voll Abscheu und Empörung just aus jenen bürgerlichen Wohnzimmern, wo das Video des Musicals „West Side Story“ in keiner Sammlung fehlt und „Maria“, „Tonight“ und „America“ in Originalsprache auswendig mitgesungen werden können. In dem Tanzfilm befehden sich zwei Banden, die amerikanischen „Jets“ und die „Sharks“, die aus Puerto Rico zugewandert sind. (…) Gerade das Wilde und Gesetzlose der beiden Gangs, plus der sich auf die Ethnie gründende Zusammenhalt ihrer Mitglieder, machen den Charme des Stückes aus. (…) Demographisch, das weiß man, steht Deutschland vor dem Super-Gau.

Hier fügte ein Kommentator, an Lehming gerichtet, ein:

„Intellektuell auch.“

Lehming ist nun keineswegs ein linker Vogel, der nicht anders kann. Er ist nur immer sehr durcheinander. Zuletzt hatte er die USA um ihre attraktive, erfolgreiche, „vitale“ und „mobile“ Tea-party-Bewegung (die er eigentlich genauso gut als dicke, weiße „Altersheimer“ mit Verlustängsten bezeichnen hätte können) beneidet. Möglicherweise stellen die „mobilen, intiativen“ Türkenbanden für ihn einfach das gültige deutsche Pendant zur ähnlich (wenn auch anders) „initaitven“ Tea-Party- dar?

Jedenfalls, für Deutschland findet Lehming:

Eine solche Gesellschaft braucht vor allem junge, tatkräftige, durchsetzungsfähige, agile Menschen, um das psychologische Gesamtgefüge auszugleichen. Ein Volk, das schnurstracks in die Seniorenrepublik der Schneeköpfe tapst, schafft sich in der Tat selbst ab. Zu Recht beklagen wir die Kriminalität vieler ausländischer Jugendgangs. Aber das Maß an Phantasie, Mut und Vitalität, was deren Mitglieder oft aufbringen, zeigt auch: In diesen Menschen steckt, im Gegensatz zu den mentalen Altersheimern, noch ein Wille, ein Drang. Das sollten wir zu würdigen lernen – und uns fragen, wie wir die positiven Eigenschaften der Jugendlichen trennen können von den negativen Zielen, auf die sie sich richten. Wenn Deutschland nicht einmal mehr Jugendbanden hat, ist alles zu spät.

Wie es um das „psychologische Gesamtgefüge“ des Herrn Lehming bestellt ist, will ich gar nicht wissen. „Ein Wille, ein Drang“ scheinen irgendwie vorhanden zu sein, ein klitzekleiner Dachschaden möglicherweise auch. Da ich mich nun schon auf seinen Namen kapriziert habe  möchte ich (Kositza, slaw., heißt übrigens Ziege) dem doch auch noch ein Gesicht geben. Dieser Mann macht mir Angst.

Rede aan het graf van Louis Gueuning (06/11/2010)

Rede aan het graf van Louis Gueuning (06/11/2010)

Ex: http://www.kasper-gent.org/

Beste vrienden,

Vandaag zijn we hier in Henegouwen samen gekomen om Louis Gueuning te herdenken. Louis Gueuning, hij die de leer van het Verdinaso trouw bleef tot aan zijn dood. Hij die tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog trouw bleef aan zijn eigen volk. Hij die blijvend gestreden heeft voor een hereniging van alle Nederlanden.

Vandaag beste vrienden, herdenken wij Louis Gueuning. En misschien vind u het wel raar dat deze toespraak gehouden wordt namens KASPER, een recent gestichte studentenvereniging waarvan de leden zelfs nog niet geboren waren toen Louis Gueuning zijn ziel gescheiden werd van zijn lichaam.

Wel beste vrienden, dit is inderdaad niet de normale gang van zaken. Wij stellen vandaag vast dat twee tot drie generaties verloren zijn gegaan in een seculariserende, liberale, materialistische en democratische tijdsgeest. In de voorbije decennia hebben deze volksverscheurende krachten ons aloude Nederlandse volk door elkaar geschud, in de hoop een nieuwe orde te kunnen stichten waar alles beter zou worden. Helaas was dit een fabeltje. Mede onder druk van de Koude Oorlog werden de Nederlanden in een demo-liberale chaos gedrukt die vandaag de dag resulteert in complete wanorde.

Het is in deze wanorde dat de jeugd van vandaag haar tradities, haar volk, haar Nederlandse en Europese eigenheid terug tracht te vinden. Een nieuwe generatie, geboren na het einde van de Koude Oorlog en bijhorende demo-liberaals keurslijf, staat op. Wij stellen vast dat vele sociale proefprojecten uit de naoorlogse periode gefaald hebben. Democratisering van het onderwijs, multiculturaliteit, Vaticanum II, privatisering, globalisering, … en ga zo maar door. Ons volk gelooft niet meer en kent zijn geloof niet meer. Ons volk kreunt onder volksvreemde multiculturaliteit. Ons volk leest niet meer. Onze scholen leren niets meer. Onze Leiders zijn volksvreemd geworden. Onze Leiders leiden ons niet meer. Onze Koningshuizen zijn marionetten geworden van de partijpolitieke elite. Ons volk zingt niet meer. Ons volk is doofstom geworden voor hun eigen cultuur en tradities.

In deze toestand van wanorde stellen wij als jeugd vast dat onze generatie smacht naar een nieuwe tijd, een nieuwe orde. Onze jeugd denkt graag nostalgisch terug aan een tijd waar volk en orde nog samen gingen, een tijd die wij helaas nooit gekend hebben. Het is in deze geest dat de ideeën van grote personen zoals Louis Gueuning ons een frisse, en vaak zelfs actuele, invalshoek bieden. Een invalshoek die wij dienen te gebruiken om vertrekkende vanuit de bestaande wanorde een nieuwe orde op te bouwen, een nieuwe orde die de toekomst van ons Dietse volk kan verzekeren.

Zo stichtte Louis Gueuning het Albrecht- en Isabellecollege, een eliteschool waarvan hij directeur werd. Vandaag zien we eens te meer waarom elitescholen nodig zijn. Er zijn allesvernietigende krachten aan het werk, waarbij zogenaamde vaardigheden boven kennis worden geplaatst. Waarbij de jeugd zijn Cathechismus niet meer kent. Waarbij de jeugd zijn volkslied niet meer kent. Waarbij de jeugd de hiërarchische verhouding met zijn leerkracht niet langer aanvaard. Waarbij de jeugd zijn klassieke filosofie niet meer kent. Waarbij tucht, orde en discipline vervangen worden door anarchie en wanorde.
Het idee van een eliteschool vormt een noodzakelijke uitweg willen wij de toekomstige generaties een schoolse opvoeding geven die hen toestaat een groot en groots Nederlands volk te vormen.

Ook plaatste Louis Gueuning het begrip personalisme sterk naar voor. In deze visie zijn individu en gemeenschap niet tegengesteld aan elkaar, maar wederzijds versterkend. Ze werken samen ter verwezenlijking van hogere waarden, zoals waarheid, goedheid, schoonheid, het absolute. Waarden die de liberale maatschappij als ouderwets omschrijft, maar die meer dan noodzakelijk zijn om ons volk te verheffen.

Het personalisme vormt de gulden middenweg tussen individualisme en collectivisme, twee methodes die de laatste decennia veelvuldig beproefd zijn en die hun ondeugd langzamerhand bewezen hebben. Hier, in onze Nederlanden, groeit onze jeugd vandaag op in een alsmaar individualistischer wordende maatschappij. De personalistische ideeën van Louis Gueuning vormen een wondermooie uitweg uit deze crisis.

Ook het begrip roeping stond centraal in het denken van Louis Gueuning. Iedere mens heeft een unieke roeping in zijn leven en in de maatschappij, die hij zo goed mogelijk moet invullen. Op deze manier is de maatschappij voedingsbodem voor én resultante van zichzelf ontplooiende individuen. Een waarlijk vrij mens dient zich namelijk te ontdoen van alle individualisme en liberalisme, een waarlijk vrij mens stelt zijn eigen ontplooiing ten dienst van het volk. De wanorde van vandaag tracht de volkse ontplooiing te vernietigen en stelt op een individualistische wijze enkel de eigen ontplooiing voorop, vaak enkel en alleen ten dienst van materiële waarden. Ook hier moeten wij als jeugd tegen strijden. Ook hier biedt het denken van Louis Gueuning een zeer waardevol aanknopingspunt.

Verder is er ook nog de staatsvisie. Ons Dietse volk wordt verscheurd door broedertwist en schande, aangedreven door partijpolitieke idiotismen en foutieve volksbegrippen. Hiertegenover staat de Heel-Nederlandse gedachte, een gedachte die ook centraal stond in het denken van Louis Gueuning. Alle historische Nederlanden verenigen, een machtige en stromende gouden delta te midden van Europa vormen, ook dit is een uitdaging waar de generaties van morgen voor staan.

 

Onze generatie staat klaar om de erfenis van Louis Gueuning op te nemen. Onze jeugd dient op te staan en in staat te zijn om op de wanordelijke demo-liberale puinhoop van vandaag de nieuwe Nederlanden van morgen te stichten. Wij dienen niet te wanhopen beste vrienden, maar hoopvol naar de toekomst te kijken. Zo zien wij dat onze jeugd zijn traditionele Rooms-Katholieke geloof weer aan het terugvinden is. Zo zien wij dat onze jeugd weer grootse staatskundige gedachten durft te verkondigen. Zo zien wij dat onze jeugd het materialisme van zich tracht af te werpen. Wij zien dat onze jeugd terug durft op te komen voor het solidarisme en personalisme als alternatief voor het kapitalisme en het individualisme. Wij zien dat onze jeugd de destructieve partijpolitieke geest  van zich af wil werpen en waarlijk vrij wil worden. De weg is nog lang, maar moge de geest van Louis Gueuning leven, groeien en bloeien!

Geschreven en uitgesproken door Thomas B. , Vice-Praeses KASPER 2009-2011, aan het graf van Louis Gueuning te Mainvault (Aat), 6 november 2010.

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Greek & Barbarian

Greek & Barbarian

F. Roger DEVLIN

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories
Edited by Robert B. Strassler
New York: Pantheon, 2007

Independent scholar Robert Strassler has produced far and away the best English edition aimed at the general reader of the work which remains the fountainhead of the Western historical tradition. Let us hope there is still a fit audience out there for it—men, that is, capable of learning what Herodotus has to teach. Generations of schoolboys at British public schools, German Gymnasia, and American rural academies once read his Histories to learn who they were—in other words, what it meant to be men of the West.

On a first approach, Herodotus’s great work appears a confusing welter of names, colorful stories, digressions, and miscellaneous ethnographic information. I have taught the work to undergraduates and remember students valiantly struggling to discuss “that one King of Wherever, who was fighting that tribe, whatever they were called . . .” In reality, the narrative is carefully—indeed intricately—structured, but in a manner that only becomes clear after repeated readings. What Strassler has done is provide a wealth of maps, indices, cross references, notes, illustrations, and appendices which reduce the preliminary mental effort required merely to grasp this overall structure. The reader can thus proceed more quickly to genuine historical understanding.

It is remarkable that no one in the small, overspecialized world of academic classical studies has ever bothered to attempt such a project. Strassler himself fetchingly admits: “I am not a scholar of ancient Greek and indeed can barely parse a simple sentence in that language” (xlvi). He commissioned a new translation for this edition by Andrea Purvis of Duke University. It is not “dazzling,” as the publisher’s blurb claims, but perhaps something better: unpretentiously accurate, and less mannered than its nearest competitor, David Grene’s 1987 version.

Herodotus grew up in Halicarnassus, an important trading center on the edge of the Greek world, where Greek and Barbarian came into frequent contact. He traveled widely, visiting Egypt as well as many Greek cities; he interviewed public figures and veterans of the events he recounts and gave public readings of his work, which he called the “Inquiries” (historiē in Greek). His great theme is the contrast between Greek and Barbarian, and more particularly the struggle of Greek freedom with Asiatic despotism. The narrative is designed from the beginning to culminate in a description of the successful Greek struggle to repel the Persian invasions of 490 and 480 BC.

Herodotus, like most ancient writers, was concerned with freedom primarily in a political sense. He says nothing about freedom of commerce or religion or conscience or of individual action. All of these may be fine things, but they are ideals which belong to a later age.

During the Cold War, many were inclined to cite the greater efficiency of the market economy as the fundamental distinguishing trait of the West, proudly pointing to our groaning supermarket shelves and favorably contrasting them with Soviet bread lines. Persons used to this way of viewing matters will be especially liable to a feeling of cognitive dissonance when reading Herodotus, who constantly stresses the wealth of oriental despotisms; whereas “in Hellas,” according to one Greek quoted in the Histories, “poverty is always and forever a native resident” (Book 7: chapter 102).

An especially famous and illustrative story, not less significant for being probably unhistorical, concerns Solon the Athenian lawgiver and Croesus of Lydia (immortalized in the expression “rich as Croesus”). After proudly displaying his wealth to his Athenian visitor, Croesus hopefully asks whether Solon in all his travels has “yet seen anyone who surpasses all others in happiness and prosperity?” Solon disappoints him by naming a number of Greeks who lived in relatively moderate circumstances. Croesus indignantly asks “are you disparaging my happiness as though it were nothing? Do you think me worth less than even a common man?” Solon explains that no judgment can be made while Croesus is still alive, for reversals of fortune are too common. (1:30-32) Croesus eventually attempts to conquer the Persians, but is defeated by them and deprived of his kingdom.

The Asiatics as portrayed by Herodotus might be described, for lack of a better word, as accumulators. This applies no less to political power than to wealth. “We have conquered and made slaves of the Sacae, Indians, Ethiopians, Assyrians, and many other great nations” says one Persian grandee matter of factly, “not because they had committed injustices against Persia, but only to increase our own power through them” (7:8). In other words, they are believers in what a contemporary neoconservative journalist might call “national greatness.” They build larger monuments than the Greeks and undertake vast projects such as diverting rivers. It never seems to occur to them that anything might become too big or too organized. When they attempt the conquest of Greece, Herodotus shows them becoming encumbered by their vast baggage trains, unable to moor their multitude of ships properly in tiny Greek coves—generally crushed beneath their own weight like a beached whale as much as they are defeated by the Hellenic armies.

A related Asiatic trait is a failure to acknowledge human limitations. When Xerxes’ invasion is delayed by stormy weather at the Hellespont, he orders the beachhead scourged and branded. His slaves are instructed to say: “Bitter water, your Master is imposing this penalty upon you for wronging him. King Xerxes will cross you whether you like it or not” (7:35). Similarly, there is no real place in the Asiatic’s thought for death, because it is the ultimate limitation on human planning and power. Xerxes weeps while reviewing his army as it occurs to him that all his men will be dead in a hundred years, but decides he must simply put the matter out of his mind.

The Solonian view of happiness as a life well lived from beginning to end, by contrast, begins with the fundamental fact of human finitude. It is this characteristically Greek view which Aristotle eventually formalized and extended in his discussion of happiness (eudaimonia) in the Nicomachian Ethics, and which has continued to influence the best minds of Christendom to this day. The modern “consumerist” mentality, by contrast, might be understood as a relapse into Asiatic barbarism.

The Persians make efforts to buy off Greek leaders. Herodotus describes the wealth of a Persian Satrap named Hydarnes, and then recounts his advice to some Spartan envoys passing through his province on the way to the Persian capitol:

“Lacedaemonians, why are you trying to avoid becoming the King’s friends? You can see that the King knows how to honor good men when you look at me and the state of my affairs. This could be the same for you if only you would surrender yourselves to the King, since he would surely think you to be good men and allow each of you Greek territory to rule over.” To this they replied, “Hydarnes, you offer us this advice only because you do not have a fair and proper perspective. For you counsel us based on your experience of only one way of life, but you have had no experience of the other: you know well how to be a slave but have not yet experienced freedom, nor have you felt whether it is sweet or not. But if you could try freedom, you would advise us to fight for it, and not only with spears, but with axes!” (7:135)

When the envoys arrive in Susa,

At first the King’s bodyguards ordered them and actually tried to force them to prostrate themselves before the King; but they refused to do so, saying that they would never do that, even if the bodyguards should try to push them down to the ground headfirst, since it was not their custom [nomos] to prostrate themselves before any human being. (7:136)

King Xerxes, by contrast, is a great believer in “leadership:” if he were alive today, one might picture him topping the bestseller lists with books on his “Seven Principles of Effective Leadership.” Before invading Greece, he asks:

How could 1,000 or even 10,000 or 50,000 men, all of them alike being free and lacking one man to rule over them, stand up to an army as great as mine? Now if they were under the rule of one man, as is our way, they would fear that man and be better able, in spite of their natural inclinations, to go out and confront larger forces, despite their being outnumbered, because they would then be compelled by the lash. But they would never dare to do such a thing if they were allowed their freedom! (7:103)

At the Battle of Salamis, he has a throne erected for himself on a prominent hill, convinced that his men will fight best knowing they are under his watchful eye.

Herodotus leaves us in no doubt where he stands on this issue; he relates in his own voice that

the Athenians increased in strength, which demonstrates that an equal voice in government has beneficial impact not merely in one way, but in every way: the Athenians, while ruled by tyrants, were no better in war than any of the peoples living around them, but once they were rid of tyrants, they became by far the best of all. Thus it is clear that they were deliberately slack while repressed, since they were working for a master, but that after they were freed, they became ardently devoted to working hard so as to win achievements for themselves as individuals. (5:78)

This comparative lack of emphasis on leadership does not mean the ancients were egalitarian levelers. All successful enterprises must be organized hierarchically, because this is what allows men to coordinate their efforts. The Greeks, in fact, made a proverb of a line from Homer’s Iliad: “Lordship for many is no good thing; let there be one ruler.” Moreover, they greatly honored men who performed leadership functions successfully.

Public offices were, however, always distinguished from the particular men holding them. They did not regard their magistrates as sacred, and none ever claimed to be descended from Zeus. Aristotle defined political freedom as “ruling and being ruled in turn.” In battle, Greek captains fought in a corner of the phalanx beside their men; they could be difficult for an enemy to distinguish.

What allowed Greeks to combine effective organization with political freedom? Herodotus suggests it was a kind of “rule of law.” As a Greek advisor explains to Xerxes:

Though they are free, they are not free in all respects, for they are actually ruled by a lord and master: law [nomos] is their master, and it is the law that they inwardly fear—much more so than your men fear you. They do whatever it commands, which is always the same: it forbids them to flee from battle, and no matter how many men they are fighting, it orders them to remain in their rank and either prevail or perish. (7:104)

In order to appreciate what is being said here, it is important to understand what is meant by law, or nomos. If it were possible to make intelligible to Herodotus such modern legal phenomena as executive orders, Supreme Court decrees, or annually updated administrative regulations, it is more than doubtful whether he would have considered them examples of nomos. These are simply instruments of power, not much different from what existed in the Persian Empire or any despotism. A “rule of law” in this sense makes no particular contribution to freedom. In fact, much of the West’s current predicament results from our traditional respect for law being converted into a weapon against us, rendering us subject to a regime of arbitrary commands disguised as “law” and concocted by an irresponsible power elite hostile to our interests.

It is essential to nomos that it be superpersonal. Often the word can be translated “custom,” which helps one understand that it cannot be decreed by any man, whether King or Hellenic magistrate. Freedom under nomos is not lack of a master, as Herodotus makes clear, but the capacity for self-mastery. In battle, it extends even to the point of demanding total self-sacrifice.

This helps to explain why wealth is dangerous to freedom; the man who becomes used to gratifying his desires comes to be ruled by desire and loses his capacity for self-mastery and sacrifice. When an earlier King of Persia is threatened by rebellion, Herodotus shows him being advised as follows:

Prohibit them from possessing weapons of war, order them to wear tunics under their cloaks and soft boots, instruct them to play the lyre and the harp, and tell them to educate their sons to be shopkeepers. If you do this, sire, you will soon see that they will become women instead of men and thus will pose no danger or threat to you of any future rebellion. (1:155)

The limitations of the Asiatic leadership principle become evident when an Asiatic army loses its leader. It is liable to cease being an army—to become a rabble, a mob of individuals incapable of organization or initiative. A famous episode from later Greek history makes clear how the Greek way was different: In 401 BC, about a generation after Herodotus’ death, an army of ten thousand Greek mercenaries marched into the heart of the Persian Empire in support of a rival candidate for the Imperial title. Their leader was killed in battle and they were stranded hundreds of miles deep in hostile territory. A Persian representative came to accept their surrender and collect their weapons, and was flummoxed to learn the Greeks had no intention of handing any weapons over. Instead, they simply met in assembly and elected a new leader for themselves—exactly as they were accustomed to do in the political assembles of their home cities. They proceeded to fight their way back to Greece with most of them surviving, and the entire might of the Persian Empire was insufficient to stop them. It is safe to say that no Persian army could have equaled the feat.

This spirit of independence and self-reliance did not last forever. The Greek cities wore out their strength through decades of fighting with one another. In 338, they finally fell to Philip, King of Macedon. By 291, Athenians were celebrating the triumphal return of a Macedonian general to their city in hymns describing him as a “living god.” He used the Parthenon to house his harem. Economic historians tell us that the overall Greek standard of living was higher in this later age, however.

Today we see a traitorous leadership consciously abandons our heritage of freedom to a barbarism worse than Persian, buying us off with the bread and circuses of television, shopping malls, and tax subsidies for collaborators, punishing the few who offer even verbal resistance. The reader who still has a mind to do something about this situation might find some lessons in the pages of Herodotus. He would be well advised to take a little time from our current plight to reacquaint himself with what Western man has been.

TOQ Online, April 19, 2009

The Doctrine of Higher Forms

The Doctrine of Higher Forms

Sir Oswald MOSLEY

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

1311427.jpgSince the war I have stressed altogether five main objectives. The true union of Europe; the union of government with science; the power of government to act rapidly and decisively, subject to parliamentary control; the effective leadership of government to solve the economic problem by use of the wage-price mechanism at the two key-points of the modern industrial world; and a clearly defined purpose for a movement of humanity to ever higher forms.

It is strange that in this last sphere of almost abstract thought my ideas have more attracted some of the young minds I value than my practical proposals in economics and politics. The reason is perhaps that people seek the ideal rather than the practical during a period in which such action is not felt to be necessary. This is encouraging for an ultimate future, in which through science the world can become free from the gnawing anxiety of material things and can turn to thinking which elevates and to beauty which inspires, but the hard fact is that many practical problems and menacing dangers must first be faced and overcome.

The thesis of higher forms was preceded by a fundamental challenge to the widely accepted claim of the communists that history is on their side. On the contrary, they are permanent prisoners of a transient phase in the human advance which modern science has rendered entirely obsolete. Not only is the primitive brutality of their method only possible in a backward country, but their whole thinking is only applicable to a primitive community. Both their economic thinking and their materialist conception of history belong exclusively to the nineteenth century. This thinking, still imprisoned in a temporary limitation, we challenge with thinking derived from the whole of European history and from the yet longer trend revealed by modern science. We challenge the idea of the nineteenth century with the idea of the twentieth century.

Communism is still held fast by the long obsolete doctrine of its origin, precisely because it is a material creed which recognizes nothing beyond such motives and the urge to satisfy such needs. Yet modern man has surpassed that condition as surely as the jet aircraft in action has overcome the natural law of gravity which Newton discovered. The same urge of man’s spiritual nature served by his continually developing science can inspire him to ever greater achievement and raise him to ever further heights.

The challenge to communist materialism was stated as follows in Europe: Faith and Plan:

What then, is the purpose of it all? Is it just material achievement? Will the whole urge be satisfied when everyone has plenty to eat and drink, every possible assurance against sickness and old age, a house, a television set, and a long seaside holiday each year? What other end can a communist civilization hold in prospect except this, which modern science can so easily satisfy within the next few years?

If you begin with the belief that all history can be interpreted only in material terms, and that any spiritual purpose is a trick and a delusion, which has the simple object of distracting the workers from their material aim of improving their conditions—the only reality—what end can there be even after every conceivable success, except the satisfaction of further material desires? When all the basic needs and wants are sated by the output of the new science, what further aim can there be but the devising of ever more fantastic amusements to titillate material appetites? If Soviet civilization achieves its furthest ambitions, is the end to be sputnik races round the stars to relieve the tedium of being a communist?

Communism is a limited creed, and its limitations are inevitable. If the original impulse is envy, malice, and hatred against someone who has something you have not got, you are inevitably limited by the whole impulse to which you owe the origin of your faith and movement. That initial emotion may be well founded, may be based on justice, on indignation against the vile treatment of the workers in the early days of the industrial revolution. But if you hold that creed, you carry within yourself your own prison walls, because any escape from that origin seems to lead towards the hated shape of the man who once had something you had not got; anything above or beyond yourself is bad. In reality, he may be far from being a higher form; he may be a most decadent product of an easy living which he was incapable of using even for self-development, an ignoble example of missed opportunity. But if the first impulse be envy and hatred of him, you are inhibited from any movement beyond yourself for fear of becoming like him, the man who had something which you had not got.

Thus your ideal becomes not something beyond yourself, still less beyond anything which now exists, but rather, the petrified, fossilized shape of that section of the community which was most oppressed, suffering, and limited by every material circumstance in the middle of the nineteenth century. The real urge is then to drag everything down toward the lowest level of life, rather than the attempt to raise everything towards the highest level of life which has yet been attained, and finally to move beyond even that. In all things this system of values seeks what is low instead of what is high.

So communism has no longer any deep appeal to the sane, sensible mass of the European workers who, in entire contradiction of Marxian belief in their increasing “immiseration,” have moved by the effort of their own trade unions and by political action to at least a partial participation in the plenty which the new science is beginning to bring, and towards a way of living and an outlook in which they do not recognize themselves at all as the miserable and oppressed figures of communism’s original workers.

The ideal is no longer the martyred form of the oppressed, but the beginning of a higher form. Men are beginning not to look down, but to look up. And it is precisely at this point that a new way of political thinking can give definite shape to what many are beginning to feel is a new forward urge of humanity. It becomes an impulse of nature itself directly man is free from the stifling oppression of dire, primitive need.

The ideal of creating a higher form on earth can now rise before men with the power of a spiritual purpose, which is not simply a philosophic abstraction but a concrete expression of a deep human desire. All men want their children to live better than they have lived, just as they have tried by their own exertions to lift themselves beyond the level of their fathers whose affection and sacrifice often gave them the chance to do it. This is a right and natural urge in mankind, and, when fully understood, becomes a spiritual purpose.

venus_milo_ac-grenoble.jpgThis purpose I described as the doctrine of higher forms. The idea of a continual movement of humanity from the amoeba to modern man and on to ever higher forms has interested me since my prison days, when I first became acutely aware of the relationship between modern science and Greek philosophy. Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thesis which gives it strength; mankind moving from the primitive beginning which modern science reveals to the present stage of evolution and continuing in this long ascent to heights beyond our present vision, if the urge of nature and the purpose of life are to be fulfilled. While simple to the point of the obvious, in detailed analysis it is the exact opposite of prevailing values. Most great impulses of life are in essence simple, however complex their origin. An idea may be derived from three thousand years of European thought and action, and yet be stated in a way that all men can understand.

My thinking on this subject was finally reduced to the extreme of simplicity in the conclusion of Europe, Faith and Plan:

To believe that the purpose of life is a movement from lower to higher forms is to record an observable fact. If we reject that fact, we reject every finding of modern science, as well as the evidence of our own eyes. . . . It is necessary to believe that this is the purpose of life, because we can observe that this is the way the world works, whether we believe in divine purpose or not. And once we believe this is the way the world works, and deduce from the long record that it is the only way it can work, this becomes a purpose because it is the only means by which the world is likely to work in future. If the purpose fails, the world fails.

The purpose so far has achieved the most incredible results—incredible to anyone who had been told in advance what was going to happen—by working from the most primitive life forms to the relative heights of present human development. Purpose becomes, therefore, quite clearly in the light of modern knowledge a movement from lower to higher forms. And if purpose in this way has moved so far and achieved so much, it is only reasonable to assume that it will so continue if it continues at all; if the world lasts. Therefore, if we desire to sustain human existence, if we believe in mankind’s origin which science now makes clear, and in his destiny which a continuance of the same progress makes possible, we must desire to aid rather than to impede the discernible purpose. That means we should serve the purpose which moves from lower to higher forms; this becomes our creed of life. Our life is dedicated to the purpose.

In practical terms this surely indicates that we should not tell men to be content with themselves as they are, but should urge them to strive to become something beyond themselves. . . . To assure men that we have no need to surpass ourselves, and thereby to imply that men are perfect, is surely the extreme of arrogant presumption. It is also a most dangerous folly, because it is rapidly becoming clear that if mankind’s moral nature and spiritual stature cannot increase more commensurately with his material achievements, we risk the death of the world. . . .

We must learn to live, as well as to do. We must restore harmony with life, and recognize the purpose in life. Man has released the forces of nature just as he has become separated from nature; this is a mortal danger, and is reflected in the neurosis of the age. We cannot stay just where we are; it is an uneasy, perilous and impossible situation. Man must either reach beyond his present self, or fail; and if he fails this time, the failure is final. That is the basic difference between this age and all previous periods. It was never before possible for this failure of men to bring the world to an end.

It is not only a reasonable aim to strive for a higher form among men; it is a creed with the strength of a religious conviction. It is not only a plain necessity of the new age of science which the genius of man’s mind has brought; it is in accordance with the long process of nature within which we may read the purpose of the world. And it is no small and selfish aim, for we work not only for ourselves but for a time to come. The long striving of our lives can not only save our present civilization, but can also enable others more fully to realize and to enjoy the great beauty of this world, not only in peace and happiness, but in an ever unfolding wisdom and rising consciousness of the mission of man.

The doctrine of higher forms may have appealed to some in a generation acutely aware of the divorce between religion and science because it was an attempted synthesis of these two impulses of the human movement. I went so far as to say that higher forms could have the force of a science and a religion, in the secular sense, since it derived both from the evolutionary process first recognized in the last century, and from the philosophy, perhaps the mysticism, well described as the ‘eternal becoming’, which Hellenism first gave to Europe as an original and continuing movement still represented in the thinking, architecture and music of the main European tradition.

To simplify and synthesize are the chief gifts which clear thought can bring, and never have they been so deeply needed as in this age. A healing synthesis is required, a union of Hellenism’s calm but radiant embrace of the beauty and wonder of life with the Gothic impulse of new discoveries urging man to reach beyond his presently precarious balance until sanity itself is threatened. The genius of Hellas can still give back to Europe the life equilibrium, the firm foundation from which science can grasp the stars. He who can combine within himself this sanity and this dynamism becomes thereby a higher form, and beyond him can be an ascent revealing always a further wisdom and beauty. It is a personal ideal for which all can try to live, a purpose in life.

We can thus resume the journey to further summits of the human spirit with measure and moderation won from the struggle and tribulation of these years. We may even in this time of folly and sequent adversity gain the balance of maturity which alone can make us worthy of the treasures, capable of using the miraculous endowment, and also of averting the tempestuous dangers, of modern science. We may at last acquire the adult mind, without which the world cannot survive, and learn to use with wisdom and decision the wonders of this age.

I hope that this record of my own small part in these great affairs and still greater possibilities has at least shown that I have ‘the repugnance to mean and cruel dealings’ which the wise old man ascribed to me so long ago, and yet have attempted by some union of mind and will to combine thought and deed; that I have stood with consistency for the construction of a worthy dwelling for humanity, and at all cost against the rage and folly of insensate and purposeless destruction; that I have followed the truth as I saw it, wherever that service led me, and have ventured to look and strive through the dark to a future that can make all worth while.

Source: http://www.oswaldmosley.com/higher-forms.htm

dimanche, 28 novembre 2010

Nobelprijswinnaar niet welkom in Turkije

Ex: http://www.telegraaf.nl/buitenland/

Nobelprijswinnaar niet welkom in Turkije
Van onze correspondent
ISTANBOEL -  De Britse schrijver V.S. Naipaul, die in 2001 de Nobelprijs
voor de Literatuur won, kan vanwege zijn kritiek op de islam niet deelnemen
aan een internationale literaire bijeenkomst in Istanboel.

naipaul_wife_prize_photo.jpgAanvankelijk was de in Trinidad geboren Naipaul als eregast uitgenodigd voorhet European Writers Parliament, een groot internationaal literair evenement dat vandaag in Istanboel van start gaat. Toen dat bekend werd, protesteerde een groep Turkse schrijvers fel en dreigde met een boycot.

De komst van Naipaul zou "een belediging zijn voor moslims", vanwege eerdere uitlatingen van de schrijver over de islam.

Zo heeft de Nobelprijswinnaar eens gezegd dat islamisering een vorm van
kolonisatie is die rampzalige gevolgen met zich meebrengt. Dat zou volgens
Naipaul vooral gelden voor mensen die zich tot de islam bekeren, omdat ze
hun afkomst en eigen verleden moeten verloochenen.

Volgens de Turkse dichter en filosoof Hilmi Yavuz beledigt de schrijver met
zulke opmerkingen de islam en moslims. Daarom is zijn komst naar het
literaire evenement niet gewenst, aldus Yavuz. Vele andere Turkse schrijvers
zijn dezelfde mening toegedaan. "De uitnodiging aan Naipaul moet worden
ingetrokken en men moet de schrijver vertellen wat daarvan de reden is",
aldus Özdenören. "De aanwezigheid van Naipaul is een belediging voor
moslims", aldus de linkse Turkse schrijver Cezmi Ersöz.

De organisator van het evenement, Ahmet Kot, probeerde nog de protesterende
Turkse schrijvers tegemoet te komen door Naipaul niet meer als eregast te
verwelkomen. Naipaul zou alleen de openingsspeech houden. Het
compromisvoorstel mocht niet baten. De protesterende Turkse schrijvers
hielden voet bij stuk. Daarna hebben het organisatiecomité en Naipaul
gezamenlijk besloten dat het beter is dat hij thuisblijft.

Les dirigeants turcs: vrais islamistes et faux bisounours

Les dirigeants turcs: vrais islamistes et faux bisounours

Jean-Gilles MALLIARAKIS

Ex: http://www.insolent.fr/

erdogan-davutoglu-hasa-hz_-peygamber-mi-1011101200_l.jpgOn peut reprocher, certes, beaucoup de choses aux dirigeants turcs mais on doit leur reconnaître une qualité. Ils se préoccupent avant tout, pour ne pas dire exclusivement, de l'idée qu'ils se font du destin de leur pays.

On l'a vu encore à la faveur des réunions de Lisbonne du 20 novembre. Beaucoup d'observateurs croient découvrir une dérive les éloignant quelque peu de la vieille alliance atlantique. Mais en fait plus on analyse leur action et plus on finit par en considérer le sérieux.

I. Quelques mots d'abord sur le pouvoir civil en Turquie

Il existe bien évidemment, des nuances, des débats et même des contradictions parmi les dirigeants politiques d'Ankara et au sein des élites d'Istanbul.

Les détenteurs du pouvoir politique civil actuel se situent dans la mouvance d'un courant islamique précis. Ne les confondons ni avec les terroristes qui ont ouvertement déclaré la guerre au monde occidental, ni même avec les rétrogrades "salafistes" rêvant de revenir au monde de ceux qu'ils appellent leurs pieux ancêtres. Ce courant d'idées a toujours voulu rénover, moderniser un pays, et ceci dès la fin de l'Empire ottoman. La doctrine remonte Saïd Nursi et aux "nourdjous" (1). Son réformisme s'oppose à celui des jeunes-turcs et à leurs continuateurs actuels qui brandissent le drapeau du kémalisme et de sa laïcité. Essentiellement croyant, il entend refaire de sa patrie une grande puissance en s'appuyant sur l'islam et en sortant celui-ci de son archaïsme. Il tentera de convaincre, l'un après l'autre, les maîtres du pouvoir, à commencer par le sultan. Il s'adresse à une nation fondamentalement différente des peuples du Proche-Orient, soumis aux sultans-califes de Constantinople à partir du XIVe siècle. Son espace de rêve va "de l'Adriatique [et c'est en cela qu'il met l'Europe en danger] à la Muraille de Chine". Il se reflète donc aujourd'hui dans le parti "AK" qui tient le gouvernement [Ergogan] et la présidence de la république [Abdullah Gül]. Son journal "Zaman" constitue la meilleure source de données sur le pays. est inspiré depuis des années par Fethullah Gülen. Plusieurs fois arrêté dans son pays natal pour ses activités anti-laïques, celui-ci est depuis 1999 installé aux États-Unis. Certes ce chef de file se prononce, par exemple, pour le dialogue interreligieux et contre le terrorisme.

Mais il faut la naïveté, et l'ignorance sans faille des responsables occidentaux, pour le définir comme "modéré". D'ailleurs, on se souviendra que naguère cette étiquette passe-partout servait déjà à désigner les Saoudiens, mesurés certes, mais seulement dans leur modération. Pour l'avenir comprenons avant tout que ce pouvoir agit et agira en toute circonstance pour réislamiser le pays à long terme, notamment par le biais de l'éducation.

II. Les Turcs participaient donc, comme tous les autres pays membres du pacte, à la réunion de l'Otan qui s'est tenu à Lisbonne le 20 novembre.

Le traité fondateur a été signé en 1949. Il tendait alors à répondre au "coup de Prague" opéré par les Soviétiques l'année précédente. Contemporain de l'écriture par Jules Monnerot de sa "Sociologie du communisme" (2), il souffre, – par rapport à cette analyse puissante, qui vaut aujourd'hui encore pour comprendre l'entreprise islamiste, – d'une bien plus forte obsolescence.

En particulier, on se réunissait entre alliés de l'OTAN, puis on rencontrait les dirigeants russes pour adopter le "nouveau concept stratégique" impulsé par la diplomatie des États-Unis.

Celle-ci s'accroche évidemment encore, sous l'impulsion de Hillary Clinton, à l'idée d'une "alliance avec les musulmans modérés". Soulignons à cet égard que cette doctrine a notamment permis le développement, avec le soutien américain, de l'Organisation de la conférence islamique, qui réclame depuis 1970 "la libération de Jérusalem" en vue de laquelle elle a été constituée. Ceci tend sans doute à une convergence politico-financière avec les émirs du pétrole. En revanche il ne semble pas besoin de poser au spécialiste de la politologie new-yorkaise pour saisir les forces qui s'y opposent. Elles exercent une influence plus notoire encore chez les élus du parti démocrate qu'au sein des républicains.

De nombreuses et grandes questions préoccupaient les intervenants.

Selon les pays, et selon les opinions, les médias ont pu mettre ainsi l'accent sur l'évolution du conflit en Afghanistan, sur le désir d'en sortir, sur l'intervention d'unités blindées sur le terrain de ce conflit, sur la lutte anti-terroriste en général, ou sur la mise en place d'un bouclier anti-missiles destiné à lutter contre le danger nucléaire des États-voyous, désignant la Corée du nord et l'Iran.

Dans ce contexte, comment ne pas comprendre le désir des principaux participants d'associer la Russie aux efforts de l'alliance occidentale. Malgré les difficultés des dernières années, certains voudraient tenir pour un simple contretemps l'intervention dommageable contre la Géorgie et les pressions de Moscou sur ce qu'on y appelle "l'étranger proche". Ce rapprochement fait partie des évolutions incontournables à [plus ou moins long] terme.

III. Les réserves turques

On ne trouve cependant jamais de si bonne ambiance qu'on ne puisse gâcher. Cette roborative constatation du regretté Witold Gombrowicz répond à l'affirmation un peu utopique chère au ministre turc Ahmet Davutoglou, qu'on ne peut énoncer autrement qu'en basic english "no problem with out neighbours".

Avant, pendant et après la réunion de Lisbonne, Abdullah Gül, accompagné de son épouse voilée, faisait part (3) des réserves que son pays pose à l'évolution "globale" de l'alliance. À son retour il déclarait avoir "sauvé" les principes fondateurs défensifs de l'organisation. Ce disant, du reste, il ne semble pas avoir pris connaissance du traité d'origine qui, certes, prévoit une intervention en cas d'attaque contre un quelconque des alliés, ses navires ou ses aéronefs, mais fait également référence à la démocratie. L'Espagne franquiste en était tenue à l'écart. L'évolution actuelle de l'Alliance correspond à une nécessité. Il se révélera de plus en plus difficile à Ankara de vouloir ménager ses relations avec divers pays islamistes, et notamment avec l'Iran

À Lisbonne le fossé apparu depuis 2003 avec l'arrivée au pouvoir de l'équipe Erdogan-Gül, a continué de se creuser avec l'occident.

M. Gül a particulièrement voulu marquer ses distances avec l'Europe. Son ondoyante diplomatie continue à marteler son contentieux avec un membre de l'Union européenne, la république de Chypre. Il la rend toujours responsable majeur des nombreux blocages et déboires de la candidature, à laquelle on fait pourtant mine d'accorder de moins en moins d'importance.

Du point de vue européen on doit donc mesurer les dangers.

Rappelons les.

Le plus ancien péril, d'ordre territorial, porte traditionnellement sur les confins balkaniques de notre continent.

Aujourd'hui cela pèse sur l'archipel grec de la mer Égée, sur la Thrace occidentale ou sur une partie de la Bulgarie, où la Turquie revendique son droit de protéger les "pomaks". Ne doutons pas non plus que les orthodoxes des Balkans ne doivent se faire aucune illusion quant au soutien à attendre des occidentaux. Qu'il s'agisse des Américains, des Européens, des Britanniques ou même des Russes, personne ne lèvera le petit doigt pour les défendre en dépit de toutes les assurances théoriques du droit international.

Or le fait même que le Dr Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secrétaire général turc de l'Organisation de la conférence islamique depuis 2004, ait fait inscrire (4) le "soutien aux musulmans" des Balkans comme objectif mondial des 56 pays membres souligne la réalité des menaces qui pèsent à terme sur les deux États européens limitrophes de la Turquie et sur la région.

Pendant de nombreuses années Bülent Ecevit était ainsi apparu comme le principal porte-parole de la gauche républicaine turque. En 1974, à la tête d'un gouvernement auquel s'associa le vieux chef islamiste Necmettin Erbakan, il commence par supprimer l'interdiction de la culture du pavot en Anatolie. Puis il envahit Chypre en invoquant son droit d'y protéger la minorité turque. Ceci en fait pendant quelque temps une sorte de héros national.

Or, c'est seulement en septembre 2002, sur la chaîne turque TRT que Bülent Ecevit le reconnut lui-même, pour la première fois depuis plus d'un quart de siècle. Cette occupation par l'armée d'Ankara en 1974 du nord de la république de Chypre, et qui dure encore, correspondait exclusivement à des motifs stratégiques. Autrement dit tous les arguments en faveur des Chypriotes musulmans servaient de simples prétextes. Cette minorité représentait 18 % de la population de l'île, colonie de la Couronne britannique. Les Anglais avaient cru bon de l'organiser et de l'instrumentaliser pour contrecarrer, après la seconde guerre mondiale, la revendication des Grecs. (5)

Mais les périls se concentrent de plus en plus sur d'autres dossiers et notamment sur l'influence que la Turquie exerce et exercera sur les communautés immigrées, revendiquant l'ensemble des gens supposés "d'origine musulmane", dans la vie politique de plusieurs pays en manipulant le poids électoral et le chantage du communautarisme.

On ne peut donc pas évaluer jusqu'où ira sa dérive hors de l'Otan.

On doit mettre dès aujourd'hui un terme à cette incongruité de la candidature à l'Union européenne. (6)
JG Malliarakis

2petitlogo

Le renversement du monde / Politique de la crise

« Le renversement du monde - politique de la crise »

Un livre de Hervé Juvin

par Michel Geoffroy

Ex: http://www.polemia.com/

 

9782070130511.jpgIl est difficile de résumer en quelques mots l'ouvrage d'Hervé Juvin Le renversement du monde. Il faut le lire tout simplement. Car ce livre marquera.
Il est comme un fleuve tumultueux, comme un torrent : il vous saisit dès les premières pages et ne vous lâche plus. Car ce fleuve charrie des trésors. En 260 pages, écrites d'une langue vive, claire, ponctuées de formules qui frappent comme l'éclair, Hervé Juvin embrasse tout, explique tout et traite de l'état du monde dans une approche remarquablement non réductionniste : économique, mais aussi sociale, culturelle, géopolitique ou ethnologique et bien sûr politique. Le monde se renverse effectivement car le voile de l'utopie marchande se déchire brutalement .

C'est une crise ? Non Sire c'est une révolution

La révolution qui vient, c'est celle de la fin de la prétention du marché libéré de toutes les entraves à fonder une société. La révolution du libre échangisme mondialiste n'est qu'une sinistre utopie, paravent des intérêts anglo-saxons : elle n'aboutit qu'à la destruction des sociétés qui ont la naïveté de croire à ses tabous. Elle sème partout des décombres. Le libre échangisme mondialiste signifie aussi la rupture entre le capitalisme – de plus en plus financier - et la démocratie. C'est un renversement par rapport aux siècles précédents, où libéralisme et démocratie cheminaient de concert. C'est la raison principale de l'impasse dans laquelle se trouve l'Europe.

Seuls les européens ont oublié qui ils sont

Le libre échangisme mondialiste n'aboutit qu'à la destruction des hommes, réduits à l'état d’eux mêmes, interchangeables, donc sans qualité ni raison de vivre. Mais, mauvaise nouvelle, ce mal ne frappe plus que les seuls occidentaux. Les occidentaux sous direction anglo-saxonne croyaient pourtant qu'en diffusant leurs techniques et leurs produits, ils soumettraient le reste du monde à leur idéologie. Mais la bonne nouvelle, c'est que cette illusion se déchire aussi : le reste du monde s'est approprié les sciences et les techniques occidentales, mais les chinois restent des chinois, les indiens restent des indiens et les musulmans restent des musulmans. Seuls les européens ont oublié qui ils sont. Et en outre, ils sont de moins en moins nombreux, alors que les autres peuples redécouvrent la vertu du nombre. Le réveil promet d'être brutal. Vae victis !

« L’insurrection de la différence »

Ce livre dresse aussi le constat de décès d'une certaine Europe, réduite au contrat et au marché. Mais il trace aussi, et c'est son mérite, les voies du renouveau : préférence régionale et nationale, localisme, retour de la régulation politique, réciprocité, défense des identités.

Le monde qui vient sera en effet celui de « l'insurrection de la différence » : comme l'écrit l'auteur « le temps est revenu des séparations vitales, des discriminations fécondes, de la frontière fondatrice ». La ligne de fracture ne va plus séparer comme dans le passé les peuples entre eux, mais bien d'un côté les partisans de l'utopie mondialiste et de l'autre les défenseurs des identités et de la diversité du monde. Et cette ligne de fracture passe au travers des sociétés elles même. Elle marque le retour de l'histoire et de la politique, c'est à dire de la violence.

A lire et à relire absolument !

Michel Geoffroy
17/11/2010

Hervé Juvin, Le renversement du monde ? - politique de la crise, Editions Gallimard, 23 septembre 2010, 264 p. 17,90 euros

Voir aussi : « Les limites de l'utopie multiculturelle »

Correspondance Polémia – 22/11/2010

Josef Schüsslburner: Konsensdemokratie

Josef Schüßlburner: Konsensdemokratie
Felix MENZEL - http://www.sezession.de/

In der aktuellen Staffel der Reihe kaplaken hat der Jurist Josef Schüßlburner die „Konsensdemokratie“ hinterfragt. Sezession hat ihm drei Fragen dazu gestellt. Schüßlburner erklärt in diesem kurzen Gespräch, warum Deutschland ein Korrektiv zur linken Mitte braucht und wie es um die Erfolgsaussichten einer rechten Partei steht.

Herr Schüßlburner, wie wirkt es sich auf unseren Staat aus, wenn die großen Volksparteien kaum noch Unterschiede aufweisen?

18615_0.jpgDie ideologische Konvergenz der sich über die „Mitte“-Verortung für das Volk setzenden Volks-Parteien belegt, daß sich das „eherne Gesetz der Oligarchie“ (Robert Michels) durchgesetzt hat. Es hat sich eine politische Klasse mit einer einheitlichen Weltsicht gebildet, die sich gegenüber maßgeblichen Forderungen aus dem Wahlvolk, das die Oligarchie über eine „Konsensdemokratie“ zu vertreten beansprucht, immunisiert. Die Tendenz zur Oligarchie bestätigt an sich die rechte Weltsicht gegenüber linken „demokratischen“ Wunschvorstellungen, jedoch ist es zum Zwecke der Wahrung des demokratischen Charakters der parlamentarischen Demokratie erforderlich, diesem „ehernen Gesetz“ entgegenzuwirken. Die Linke hat kein Interesse, da sie ja die Ideologie der oligarchischen Mitte bestimmt.

Warum braucht eine funktionierende Demokratie eine starke Linke und eine starke Rechte?

Der offene Links-Rechts-Antagonismus wirkt dem „ehernen Gesetz der Oligarchie“ entgegen und garantiert den repräsentativen Charakter der parlamentarischen Demokratie. Die Tatsache, daß diese repräsentative Situation in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland nicht gegeben ist, ergibt sich auch aus offiziösen Verlautbarungen, wonach 30 Prozent der Bevölkerung etwa ein „geschlossenes rechtes Weltbild“ und dergleichen haben würden, was ja gerade bei einem Verhältniswahlrecht dazu führen müßte, daß etwa ein Drittel der Bundestagsabgeordneten ein solches Weltbild haben sollten.

Diese Divergenz von Volk und Repräsentanten zeigt auch, daß die Demokratie in der Bundesrepublik ihren klassischen Anspruch nicht einlöst, die Freiheit des Volkes zu garantieren. Diese Freiheit zeigt sich neben der Tatsache, daß man sich etwa als „rechts“ einstufen darf, ohne durch Antidiskriminierungsgesetze diskriminiert zu werden, nicht zuletzt daran, daß dem Wahlvolk klare Alternativoptionen zur Verfügung stehen, welche sich dann auch in politischen Entscheidungen niederschlagen.

Aufgrund der aktuellen Debatte um eine „Sarrazin-Partei“ muß natürlich noch eine Frage folgen: Glauben Sie, daß sich in den nächsten Jahren eine erfolgreiche Rechtspartei bilden könnte?

Der Verwirklichung einer normalen westlichen Demokratie mit einem freien und offenen Links-Rechts-Antagonismus stehen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland starke Hindernisse entgegen. So sorgt das Konzept eines post-demokratischen „Europa“, das die Oligarchisierung beschleunigt, ohnehin dafür, daß die Wahlentscheidungen und damit das eigentlich demokratische Element immer weniger relevant werden, was allerdings mit einer ideologischen Aufwertung von Demokratie zu einer Zivilreligion einhergeht. Man muß auch einräumen, daß diese Zivilreligion der Oligarchie, die insbesondere in der „Bewältigung“ besteht, ihre Untertanen doch sehr im Griff hat. Vereinfacht: Ohne einen deutschen Berlusconi wird es nicht möglich sein, die nur freiheitliche Demokratie der linken Mitte in eine freie Demokratie des offenen Links-Rechts-Antagonismus zu überführen.

Vielen Dank für das Gespräch!

Comunità e Comunitarismo

Comunità e Comunitarismo

di Luca Lionello Rimbotti

Ex: http://www.centroitalicum.it/

index.jpgLa lotta che l’individualismo liberaldemocratico ha ingaggiato per demolire ogni realtà e rappresentazione comunitaria ha il significato di un finale regolamento di conti tra l’umano e il disumano. Al fondo, si apre una divaricazione tra visioni del mondo che è oltre la sociologia, oltre la storia, investendo l’antropologia e la vita di base di ognuno. Chi cura l’appartenere e percepisce il legame, avverte la precisa sensazione, e la avverte come verità di evidenze, che l’individuo è preceduto da qualcosa che lo connota e lo distingue, cioè la comunità che gli dona individuazione anche come singolo soggetto, e senza la quale l’essere non è appunto individuabile, non è descrivibile, non rivela nulla di sé, se non la solitudine astratta e il nonsenso concreto. Chi giudica che la società venga prima dell’individuo pensa socialmente, pensa comunitariamente, pensa plurale. Chi invece giudica che sia l’individuo a venire prima della società ragiona in termini di monade semplice e ottusa: l’essere umano assembrato casualmente, riunito in folla per necessità e bisogno. I “contrattualisti”, quei liberali che pensano la società come nata dall’incontro dei meri bisogni, costituiscono i grandi demolitori moderni dell’idea comunitaria. Coloro che da secoli tendono l’insidia ad ogni costituirsi di tessuti relazionali e di legami politici e metapolitici. Essi pensano unicamente entro categorie individuali: l’interesse, la sicurezza, il profitto.


Costoro sono ancora tra di noi a recare danno. Con le iniezioni di emigranti ad alto dosaggio il pensiero unico è vicino alla meta di creare un mondo di disgregazione, in cui abbia rilievo sociale unicamente l’individuo e invece alle comunità – storiche, geografiche, etniche – venga costantemente innalzata la forca, come a isole di conservatorismo, di oscurantismo, di razzismo da demonizzare e perseguitare. Dopotutto, ancora oggi è in pieno svolgimento la lotta ottocentesca tra la comunità e la società. E, come un paio di secoli fa, abbiamo i poteri centrali assolutisti che minano le realtà locali, le svellono e le annichiliscono a suon di immigrazione e di propaganda “multietnica”: il che vuol dire “anti-etnica”. La società è quel luogo in cui tutte le identità vengono negate e in cui la Modernità compie il suo prodigio cosmopolita. La comunità è al contrario quel luogo in cui l’identità viene protetta con le unghie e coi denti, in cui i patrimoni biostorici vengono rivendicati, le appartenenze si armano a difesa e si rinsaldano. Il dominio assoluto del pensiero neo-illuminista prevede la disintegrazione della realtà di popolo, alla quale si sostituisce quella di popolazione, la massa priva di volto e di carattere. «Storicamente, la filosofia illuminista – ha scritto recentemente de Benoist – se l’è presa prima di tutto con le comunità organiche, delle quali attaccava il modo di vita considerandolo impregnato di “superstizioni” irrazionali e di “pregiudizi”, proponendosi di sostituirle con una società di individui».
Questo lavoro secolare è prossimo alla realizzazione finale. Anche se, nel frattempo, qua e là per l’Europa si colgono sintomi di risveglio della “provincia” profonda, partiti “contadini” che nascono, movimenti di difesa etnica che sembrano muovere i primi passi, magari ottenendo anche buoni risultati elettorali a scorno dell’europeismo bancario e mondialista.


Il comunitarismo organico ha poco a che vedere con la linea di pensiero di eguale nome che ad esempio in America raccoglie qualche avversario del liberismo. Laggiù, si tratta ancora e di nuovo di un equivoco: far passare per anti-liberale ciò che è di fatto libertario e “democratico” nel senso deteriore, depotenziato, del termine. Il “comunitarismo” made in Usa è un balocco intellettuale nato in qualche campus, è il vezzo di qualche professor e l’esca di qualche outsider, non ha la sostanza di un retaggio concreto e non è per nulla radicato a realtà etniche e storiche connotate. Per comunitarismo, qui da noi in Europa, si intende da sempre un’altra cosa. L’appartenenza a una bio-storia con tanto di geografia, di lingua, di paesaggio e di tradizione. Non un metodo “democratico”, ma un fatto antropologico. In Europa, il comunitarismo non è un’opzione nata in aule universitarie di alternativa borghese, ma una realtà sgorgata dalla terra e dalla storia, un accumulo secolare che alla fine ha dato una somma totale: l’identità. In Europa la “regione” è un fatto. E l’autogoverno microcomunitario è storia. Gli assolutismi illuministi vecchi e nuovi negano questo fatto e questa storia, ma essi esistono ugualmente e vivono, più o meno sottotraccia. Gli imperi erano sistemi di “regioni”, di regionalismi comunitari, di città libere, di comunità di villaggio, di assemblee locali, di autogestione delle economie, di cooperazione sociale, di suddivisione del lavoro, di corporazoni di mestiere, di statuti autonomi, di competenze ereditate. L’Europa delle nazioni, nata dal feudalesimo comunitario, è il frutto della solidificazione politica delle diverse comunità viventi. I centralismi giacobini, adusi alla violenta negazione della “periferia”, oggi ripetono la loro aggressiva politica di spoliazione identitaria attraverso strumenti artificiali, semi-massonici, del tipo del baraccone mondialista di Bruxelles, epicentro della voluta dis-integrazione.
In Europa, persino le dittature totalitarie sono state fortemente comunitariste – in senso non solo nazionale, ma di territorialità locale. Ad onta di un potere centrale forte (ma che certi storici hanno invece definito “debole”), esse dettero fiato politico alla comunità di zona, alla regione, fino alla vallata o al territorio storico, al Gau, al Kreis, alla circoscrizione, al distretto. Per dire, persino il fascismo “centralista” e autoritario riconosceva le “piccole patrie”, incoraggiava il tradizionalismo locale, l’identificazione territoriale, addirittura i dialetti, i folcklori, gli immaginari contadini legati alla zolla, e al suo interno poterono avere il loro ruolo riconosciuto proto-leghismi ben strutturati, del tipo di “Strapaese”. Si santificavano i luoghi dell’identità, da Fiume alla Dalmazia, e si sacralizzavano i diversi ceppi etnici: le “forti genti del Cadore”, i “fanti della Peloritana”...E persino il Terzo Reich, anzi, proprio il Terzo Reich, con un imprinting di tipo propriamente neoimperiale, fece una politica di disgregazione dello Stato nazionale liberalmassonico e di riscoperta delle aggregazioni etniche: la Slovacchia, la Vallonia, le Fiandre, l’Austria tornata “marca orientale” come nel Medioevo, il Voralpenland – che, alla maniera di un Gianfranco Miglio quarant’anni dopo, concepiva solidarismi transnazionali, macroregionali, di aree geografiche omogenee – e si pensava niente di meno che a riesumare qualcosa come la Borgogna, l’Alvernia, il Gotenland, etc. Per dire, ai congressi del partito, si recitava una preghiera patriottica – lo Spatengruss – in cui ogni comunità di schiatta proclamava la sua provenienza (Pomerania, Slesia, Renania...) e recava una manciata della sua terra, da fondere simbolicamente a tutte le altre...e questo molto prima che Bossi raccogliesse nell’ampolla l’acqua del Po alle feste popolari della Lega Nord.... L’Europa nata dal crollo sovietico è andata spontaneamente in questa direzione, senza stare a sentire i diktat globalisti: gli Stati artificiali nati dai trattati di pace – come la Cecoslovacchia o la Jugoslavia – si sono disintegrati automaticamente e hanno dato vita a quello che già esisteva nel 1941: la Croazia, la Slovacchia, la Boemia- Cechia, la Serbia...persino l’Ucraina indipendente, quale l’aveva concepita lo Stato Maggiore guglielmino nel 1918, è risorta tale e quale. I nazionalismi oggi rilanciati, i regionalismi recentemente rianimati, dalla Corsica alle Fiandre, dalla Catalogna alla Padania alla Bretagna, sono il segnale di un comunitarismo di nuovo vivace e concreto, l’unico vero, l’unico storicamente rilevabile. Che bene o male è popolo, suolo comune e storia condivisa.


Tutto questo ci parla di due volontà, due direttrici in opposizione tra loro. Da un lato il termitaio di Cosmopoli, dall’altro la comunità. Dalla più grande, lo Stato nazionale o possibilmente un domani la federazione tra Stati polarizzati da un forte centro politico-simbolico, fino alla più piccola, la famiglia, il nucleo parentale, il ceppo ereditario. Cosa del tutto naturale è che i cosmopoliti abbiano in odio questo comunitarismo territoriale, che lo infamino quale rifugio di ogni male: gretto conservatorismo, causa di “frammentazione sociale”, di chiusura autistica al mondo...mentre la verità è all’opposto. Soltanto una matura consapevolezza identitaria, fortemente difesa e rinsaldata di fronte agli assalti della Modernità, è in grado di garantire continuità alle differenze. Dove regna l’indistinto, lì si ha davvero non il “multiculturalismo”, ma la soppressione di ogni cultura.


Contrariamente a quanto pensa de Benoist, non ritengo che l’ascesa recente delle comunità sia «concomitante all’esaurimento dello Stato nazionale ». Lo Stato nazionale, anche quello scompaginato dei nostri giorni, è tutt’altro che alla fine del suo ruolo storico. E i nuovi comunitarismi che sorgono al suo interno ne testimoniano, a mio parere, anziché il declino, il rafforzamento e l’immutato significato di essenziale contenitore. Come di cosa viva, che non sta in piedi per apparato burocratico, ma per convivenza conciliatrice tra realtà omogenee ma differenziate, simili ma non necessariamente uguali, che tendono all’affermazione, alla visibilità, al riconoscimento. Il regionalismo non nega, ma presuppone lo Stato nazionale. In assenza di qualche forma imperiale di Europa, o di un unico potere che gestisca l’autorità di tutto il continente – poiché l’autorità sovrana può essere solo una e indivisa - lo Stato nazionale è il perfetto veicolo delle differenziazioni comunitarie. In questo contesto, gli imbrogli lessicali, che tendono a separare concettualmente la comunità organica tradizionale da un supposto “comunitarismo” progressista, non fanno parte della scena storica, ma di quella di una tarda ideologia post-marxista, alla ricerca disperata di un rilancio qualsiasi. Sono asserzioni fuori contesto, che saltano a pie’ pari e per pregiudizio egualitarista ogni tratto qualificante, ogni centro di individuazione, in primis il dato etnico-biologico che dà forma fisica al contenuto culturale. Il “comunitarismo” che oggi ha qualche voce in capitolo negli Stati Uniti, è chiaramente un altro mondo, che nulla ha a che fare con il fenomeno europeo di cui ha usurpato il nome. Di là dall’Atlantico, chiunque può dirsi “comunitarista” a poco prezzo. Anche tra i più tenaci globalizzatori si può sempre trovare qualcuno che dica di avere una sfumatura un po’ diversa...come dire, meno appiattita sul liberismo, più “di base”, ma pur sempre alla maniera americana: “comunitaristi”, a quei livelli, si può essere senza alcun impegno, dai Clinton a certi confessionalismi bacchettoni, fino ai famosi neoconservatives...notoriamente portatori di un “comunitarismo” morale, chiesastico, alla quacchera, che nulla accomuna al senso della vera comunità solidale totale: questa prevede una stirpe ben connotata, un territorio, una tradizione, una Kultur. Il falso “comunitarismo” all’americana è un codice razionale, è la riproposta del vecchio “patto sociale” di sicurezza tra individui e gruppi, di matrice illuminista, è insomma la solita minestra sui “diritti”, è un tragico universalismo e non un sano e realistico relativismo. Riecheggia in queste formule il prepotere repubblicano dei giacobini e il patriottismo debole dei costituzionalisti puritani. Lo stesso MacIntyre, il campione di questa versione contraffatta di “comunitarismo”, che pure seziona l’universalismo liberale nelle tradizioni particolari e che parla di ritorno ad Aristotele, in fondo non fa che ripresentare la nostalgia americana – un po’ reazionaria e molto bigotta – per tutte quelle belle civic virtues celebrate dal Tocqueville...Aristotele, in tutto questo, davvero non c’entra. Lui aveva in mente un’altra cosa, la sua – se vogliamo dirla tutta - era la filosofia politica della comunità gerarchica e guerriera che non si vergogna di parlare chiaro, fino al punto di limitare il privilegio dell’appartenenza ai soli eredi di un retaggio antropologico preciso.


Poiché, tradizionalmente, per l’appunto, l’appartenenza alla comunità è un privilegio, e per nulla un diritto. Ciò che, in Europa, si è da qualche secolo incaricato di dare forma politica a questo privilegio è lo Stato nazionale. Può non piacere, ma è così. Qui il federalismo è altra cosa da quello americano. Il federalismo europeo è concettualmente e storicamente più un impero che una confederazione...lo stesso suono delle parole indica l’opposizione dei significati: da una parte, sacrale comunità giurata di eredi; dall’altra, profana aggregazione di individui per interesse, sulla base del contratto costituzionale. Due universi incomunicanti.


È chiaro che lo Stato nazionale a cui facciamo riferimento, come al migliore contenitore delle differenze di sotto-aggregazione regionalistica, non è quello liberaldemocratico. Questo si nega votandosi all’autodistruzione multietnica. Lo Stato nazionale, al contrario, se è “nazionale” di fatto e non di nome, non può non essere innestato sull’omogeneità di base delle sue componenti. Si ha in vista cioè una differenziazione tra simili, non una convivenza coatta tra dissimili. Oggi occorre diffidare di certi sposalizi morganatici tra post-marxisti e neo-liberali. Sono nozze d’interesse che producono una figliolanza ibrida e di sesso incerto: l’ideologia “comunitarista” così concepita rappresenta un ulteriore stadio di sfaldamento dei significati. La comunità vera e reale, e non quella disegnata sulle cattedre, vive nel segno di poche, ma certissime cose. Significa comunanza di nascita, di terra su cui si vive, di progetti e di destini condivisi, di lavoro inteso a tutti i livelli: dalla produzione materiale alla solidarietà sociale, dal volontariato reciproco alla protezione e alla sicurezza. E fino alla sovranità popolare vera, all’autogestione degli spazi, dei sistemi e dei programmi di vita. Il luogo è il recinto del legame. Un limes lo circonda, lo individua, lo rende percepibile. Questo luogo è lo spazio comunitario in cui un popolo vive e vuole vivere, creando la sua ineguagliabile, irripetibile identità.

Alexis Carrel: A Commemoration

Alexis Carrel:
A Commemoration, Part 1

Kerry BOLTON

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

[M]en cannot follow modern civilization along its present course, because they are degenerating. They have been fascinated by the beauty of the sciences of inert matter. They have not understood that their body and consciousness are subjected to natural laws, more obscure than, but as inexorable as, the laws of the sidereal world. Neither have they understood that they cannot transgress these laws without being punished.

They must, therefore, learn the necessary relations of the cosmic universe, of their fellow men, and of their inner selves, and also those of their tissues and their mind. Indeed, man stands above all things. Should he degenerate, the beauty of civilization, and even the grandeur of the physical universe, would vanish. . . . Humanity’s attention must turn from the machines of the world of inanimate matter to the body and the soul of man, to the organic and mental processes which have created the machines and the universe of Newton and Einstein.[1]

acarrel.jpgAlexis Carrel, an observer of the material universe, was one among a unique lineage of scientists who sought out solutions to what they considered were the primary problems confronting the modern world. For Carrel the material progress that was jumping by leaps and bounds from the 19th century across into his century was causing moral, physical and spiritual degeneration. While scientists, then as now overspecialized, and devoid of a broad perspective, were making new discoveries in the physical and social sciences, problems of degeneration and its ultimate consequences were not being sufficiently addressed in a holistic manner.

Within the same lineage of genius that was to consider these problems, we might also include Jung and Konrad Lorenz, Raymond Cattell, and the new generation of sociobiologists. For example Lorenz, the father of ethology, also applying his observations of the natural world to the state of modern man, came to conclusions analogous to those of Carrel, and also attempted to warn of the consequences:

All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening understanding of the natural world that surrounds him, his technological, chemical and medical progress, all of which should seem to alleviate human suffering . . .  tends instead to favor humanity’s destruction.[2]

For Jung there were problems for humanity inherent in his modern Civilization insofar as the unconscious is a layered structure each representing different eras of history from the primeval to the present. Therefore much about the psyche comes from the past, including the distant past, and there are aspect of the psyche that are not attuned to modern Civilization. Man’s psyche has not in totality caught up with the Civilization that he has created.[3] It was also a problem that Carrel sought to resolve.

However, what is even more unique about Carrel, is the extent to which he departs from the atheism of certain of today’s sociobiolgists (Richard Dawkins being an obvious example) giving the spiritual and metaphysical primary acknowledgement, as did Jung in his departure from Freudian psychoanalysis.

Scientific Background

Carrel was born in Lyons om June 28, 1873, and died in Paris on November 5, 1944. Graduating with a doctorate from Lyons, he taught operative surgery at the University, and worked at Lyon Hospital, which included experimental work. From 1906 he worked at the Rockefeller Center for Medical Research, New York, where he undertook most of his experiments in surgery, and was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1912 for developing a method of suturing blood vessels.

During World War I Carrel served as a Major in the French Army Medical Corps and co-invented the widely used Carrel-Dakin method of cleaning deep wounds, which was particularly effective in preventing gangrene and is credited with saving thousands of lives.

Carrel’s studies centered around tissue and organ transplantation, in 1908 devising methods for the transplanting of whole organs. In 1935 he invented in collaboration with US aviator and bio-mechanic Charles Lindbergh a machine for supplying a sterile respiratory system to organs removed from the body.

Carrel received honors throughout the world for his pioneering medical work, which has laid the basis for today’s organ transplant operations; his work with tissue cultures also having contributed significantly to the understanding of viruses and the preparation of vaccines.

In 1935, at the instigation of a group of friends, Carrel wrote Man the Unknown which caused antagonism with the new director of the Rockefeller Institute, Herbert S. Gasser. In 1939 Carrel retired and his laboratories and Division of Experimental Surgery were closed.

When World War II erupted Carrel returned to France as a member of a special mission for the French Ministry of Health, 1939–1940. Returning briefly to the USA, Carrel went back to France in 1941 via Spain. Although declining to become Minister of Public Health, he became Director of the Carrel Foundation for the Study of Human Problems, which was established by the Vichy Government, a position he held until his death. Here young scientists, physicians, lawyers, and engineers came together to study economics, political science, and nutrition, reflecting the eclectic nature of the holistic approach Carrel insisted upon as being necessary for the diagnosis and treatment of Civilization.

When the Allied forces occupied France in August, 1944, Carrel was suspended from his post and accused of being a “collaborator.”[4] Although he was cleared of charges of “collaboration,” embittered by the accusations he died two weeks later of a heart attack.[5]

Man the Unknown

The book for which the great physician had already received ridicule in 1935 in a quip-filled sneer in Time Magazine, but that became a world-wide bestseller, and the one most commonly associated with Carrel, is Man the Unknown, a scientific diagnosis of the maladies of modern civilization.[6].

Like Jung and Lorenz, the fundamental question for Carrel was that man’s morality and soul were not in accord with his modern civilization, his industrialization, and mass production. This was having a degenerating effect morally, physically, and spiritually.

As a physiologist Carrel explains the constitution of man physiologically and mentally, but these are just the material manifestations from which moral and spiritual lessons must be drawn in reconstituting civilization in accord with man’s spiritual and moral natures, which include an innate religious sense and a mysticism that has been enervated by materialism. Hence some of the questions posed by Carrel are:

We are very far from knowing what relations exist between skeleton, muscles, and organs, and mental and spiritual activities. We are ignorant of the factors that bring about nervous equilibrium and resistance to fatigue and to diseases. We do not know how moral sense, judgment, and audacity could be augmented. What is the relative importance of intellectual, moral, and mystical activities? What is the significance of aesthetic and religious sense? What form of energy is responsible for telepathic communications? Without any doubt, certain physiological and mental factors determine happiness or misery, success or failure. But we do not know what they are. We cannot artificially give to any individual the aptitude for happiness. As yet, we do not know what environment is the most favorable for the optimum development of civilized man. Is it possible to suppress struggle, effort, and suffering from our physiological and spiritual formation? How can we prevent the degeneracy of man in modern civilization? Many other questions could be asked on subjects which are to us of the utmost interest. They would also remain unanswered. It is quite evident that the accomplishments of all the sciences having man as an object remain insufficient, and that our knowledge of ourselves is still most rudimentary.[7]

A primary concern for Carrel was with the artificiality of modern civilization, from modes of dwelling to food production, including the factory raising of hens, questions which have in just recent years come into vogue with the “Left.” The question of factory and other forms of work drudgery and their adverse impact upon both menial and mental workers is regarded by Carrel as a major issue of concern in having a degenerative effect.

The environment which has molded the body and the soul of our ancestors during many millenniums has now been replaced by another. This silent revolution has taken place almost without our noticing it. We have not realized its importance. Nevertheless, it is one of the most dramatic events in the history of humanity. For any modification in their surroundings inevitably and profoundly disturbs all living beings. We must, therefore, ascertain the extent of the transformations imposed by science upon the ancestral mode of life, and consequently upon ourselves.[8]

The environment, including accommodation and working conditions, while materially very much better than those of our ancestors, has become artificial, is not rooted to any community, or family; no craft or individual creativity is involved. “Everywhere, in the cities, as well as in the country, in private houses as in factories, in the workshop, on the roads, in the fields, and on the farms, machines have decreased the intensity of human effort.” The types of food available is an important aspect considered by Carrel, and one which has in recent years been brought up especially by “Green” politicians[9] in the West. It is an example of what Carrel means by the material abundance yet simultaneous lowering of quality of modern civilization leading to human degeneration rather than elevation:

The aliments of our ancestors, which consisted chiefly of coarse flour, meat, and alcoholic drinks, have been replaced by much more delicate and varied food. Beef and mutton are no longer the staple foods. The principal elements of modern diet are milk, cream, butter, cereals refined by the elimination of the shells of the grain, fruits of tropical as well as temperate countries, fresh or canned vegetables, salads, large quantities of sugar in the form of pies, candies, and puddings. Alcohol alone has kept its place. The food of children has undergone a profound change. It is now very artificial and abundant. The same may be said of the diet of adults. The regularity of the working-hours in offices and factories has entailed that of the meals. Owing to the wealth which was general until a few years ago, and to the decline in the religious spirit and in the observance of ritualistic fasts, human beings have never been fed so punctually and uninterrupted.[10]

Now of course the problems of artificial diet of which Carrel was warning seventy-five years ago have reached the point of almost tragic-comic proportions with the virtually global phenomena of “fast food,” and the obesity problem that is becoming a real health issue in the West.[11]

The consequences not only of abundant – albeit un-nutritious food – coupled with an ease of life and the advances in medicine that have eliminated many diseases have paradoxically seen an increase in degenerative nervous diseases:

But we are confronted with much graver problems, which demand immediate solution. While infantile diarrhea, tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid fever, etc., are being eliminated, they are replaced by degenerative diseases. There are also a large number of affections of the nervous system and of the mind. In certain states the multitude of the insane confined in the asylums exceeds that of the patients kept in all other hospitals. Like insanity, nervous disorders and intellectual weakness seem to have become more frequent. They are the most active factors of individual misery and of the destruction of families. Mental deterioration is more dangerous for civilization than the infectious diseases to which hygienists and physicians have so far exclusively devoted their attention.[12]

What Carrel is suggesting throughout is that quantity has been substituted for quality, from food to arts. It is a problem arising from the mass nature of liberalism and socialism, and of capitalism, that also bothered the literati at the turn of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries,[13] and has continued apace with the technological advances of communications over just the past few years. Universal education and the mass communication of literature etc. has expanded the reading public for example, but has not encouraged the maintenance of cultural standards. Mass-marketing requires quantity and a fast turnover whether in computers or in what now passes for “literature” and “art.”

In spite of the immense sums of money expended on the education of the children and the young people of the United States, the intellectual elite does not seem to have increased. The average man and woman are, without any doubt, better educated and, superficially at least, more refined. The taste for reading is greater. More reviews and books are bought by the public than in former times. The number of people who are interested in science, letters, and art has grown. But most of them are chiefly attracted by the lowest form of literature and by the imitations of science and of art. It seems that the excellent hygienic conditions in which children are reared, and the care lavished upon them in school, have not raised their intellectual and moral standards.

Modern civilization seems to be incapable of producing people endowed with imagination, intelligence, and courage. In practically every country there is a decrease in the intellectual and moral caliber of those who carry the responsibility of public affairs. The financial, industrial, and commercial organizations have reached a gigantic size. They are influenced not only by the conditions of the country where they are established, but also by the state of the neighboring countries and of the entire world. In all nations, economic and social conditions undergo extremely rapid changes. Nearly everywhere the existing form of government is again under discussion. The great democracies find themselves face to face with formidable problems—problems concerning their very existence and demanding an immediate solution. And we realize that, despite the immense hopes which humanity has placed in modern civilization, such a civilization has failed in developing men of sufficient intelligence and audacity to guide it along the dangerous road on which it is stumbling. Human beings have not grown so rapidly as the institutions sprung from their brains. It is chiefly the intellectual and moral deficiencies of the political leaders, and their ignorance, which endanger modern nations.[14]

Carrel in his preliminary remarks concludes with one of the primary symptoms of cultural decay, that of declining birthright, which Spengler and others have commented upon in the same context also, and it is a problem taken up again in Man The Unknown and in his posthumously published Reflections on Life. Indeed, as this is written there have been some media remarks and commentary of New Zealand having the second highest abortion rate in the developed world (after Sweden) and as usual ‘sexual health experts’ are trotted out to offer superficial explanation such as lack of adequate sex education for the young (which according to the experts should begin at pre-school level).[15]

Finally, we must ascertain how the new mode of life will influence the future of the race. The response of the women to the modifications brought about in the ancestral habits by industrial civilization has been immediate and decisive. The birth rate has at once fallen. This event has been felt most precociously and seriously in the social classes and in the nations which were the first to benefit from the progress brought about, directly or indirectly, by the applications of scientific discoveries. Voluntary sterility is not a new thing in the history of the world. It has already been observed in a certain period of past civilizations. It is a classical symptom. We know its significance.[16]

Spengler wrote of this problem also as symptomatic of the senile “Winter” cycle of a Civilization where woman repudiates her womanliness in her desire to be “free.” There arises the phenomena of the “sterility of civilized man.”[17] “The continuance of the blood-relation in the visible world is no longer a duty of the blood and the destiny of being the last of the line is no longer felt as a doom.”[18] While the “primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother….,” in Late Civilization there emerges “emancipated woman,” and in this cycle which lasts for centuries, there is an “appalling depopulation,” and the whole cultural pyramid crumbles from the top down.[19]

Carrel’s premise, reminiscent of the passage previously quoted from Jung, is:

Modern civilization finds itself in a difficult position because it does not suit us. It has been erected without any knowledge of our real nature. It was born from the whims of scientific discoveries, from the appetites of men, their illusions, their theories, and their desires. Although constructed by our efforts, it is not adjusted to our size and shape.[20]

The mental cost for the workers caused by mass industrialization are addressed by Carrel in terms that are not found by the democratic and Marxist champions of the proletariat, yet Carrel well after his death, has been smeared as an inhumane “Nazi.”

In the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physiological and mental state of the workers has been completely neglected. Modern industry is based on the conception of the maximum production at lowest cost, in order that an individual or a group of individuals may earn as much money as possible. It has expanded without any idea of the true nature of the human beings who run the machines, and without giving any consideration to the effects produced on the individuals and on their descendants by the artificial mode of existence imposed by the factory. The great cities have been built with no regard for us. The shape and dimensions of the skyscrapers depend entirely on the necessity of obtaining the maximum income per square foot of ground, and of offering to the tenants offices and apartments that please them. This caused the construction of gigantic buildings where too large masses of human beings are crowded together. Civilized men like such a way of living. While they enjoy the comfort and banal luxury of their dwelling, they do not realize that they are deprived of the necessities of life. The modern city consists of monstrous edifices and of dark, narrow streets full of gasoline fumes, coal dust, and toxic gases, torn by the noise of the taxicabs, trucks, and trolleys, and thronged ceaselessly by great crowds. Obviously, it has not been planned for the good of its inhabitants.[21]

These are questions that have never been resolved, either by capitalist or by communist states. Despite our increased standards of living—albeit largely based on debt—the “banality of luxury” has been accepted as desirable as modern man has adapted to, rather than resisted, the pervasive era of mass production and consumption as the new universal religion. The aspects described by Carrel as he observed them in 1935, have multiplied by many times.

Notes

1. Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown (Sydney: Angus and Robertson Ltd., 1937); Preface, xi.

2. Konrad Lorenz, Civilized Man’s Eight Deadly Sins (1974), 26. The full text is online at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/34473621/Konrad-Lorentz-Civiliz.... The basic question asked by ethologists in regard to the behavior patterns of a species is: “What for?” Lorenz asks what the answer is when such a question is applied to many behavior patterns of modern Civilization. (p. 4).

3. Jung wrote of this schizoid state: “Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The ‘newness’ of the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. Body and soul therefore have an intensely historical character and find no place in what is new. We are very far from having finished with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity and primitivity as our modern psyches pretend. Nevertheless we have plunged into a cataract of progress which sweeps us into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots.” C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 263.

4. “Alexis Carrel,” http://www.pbs.org/wnet/redgold/innovators/bio_carrel.html

5. Alexis Carrel, Reflections on Life (Hawthorn Books 1952), “The author and his book,” http://chestofbooks.com/society/metaphysics/Reflections-O...

6. The full text of the 1939 Harper’s edition of Man the Unknown can be read online: http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/030310carre...

7. Man the Unknown, ch. 1: 1, “The Need for a better knowledge of man.”

8. Man the Unknown, ch. 1: 3.

9. E.g. New Zealand’s retiring Green Party Member of Parliament Sue Kedgley, was particularly noted for her campaigns on the chemical adulteration of food.

10. Man the Unknown, ch. 1: 3.

11. Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation (Middlesex: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2001).

12. Man the Unknown, Ch. 1: 4.

13. K. R. Bolton, Thinkers of the Right (Luton: Luton Publications, 2003).

14. Man the Unknown.

15. That “sex education” of the proportions advocated by the “experts” has for decades been practised by Sweden, which nonetheless tops all states in terms of abortion rates, seems to have been missed by the “experts.” The major myth of the “experts” in accounting for New Zealand’s high abortion rate is that most abortions are performed among poorly educated Polynesian/Maori teenagers. The median age for abortions in 2009 was 24. Over 50% were of European origin. Statistics New Zealand: Abortion Statistics Year Ended December 2009, http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/health/abortion...

16. Man the Unknown, ch. 1: 4.

17. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, 1926, (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971), 103.

18. The Decline of the West, 104.

19. The Decline of the West, 105.

20. Man the Unknown, ch. 1: 4.

21.  Man the Unknown.

Alexis Carrel:
A Commemoration, Part 2

Our life is influenced in a large measure by commercial advertising. Such publicity is undertaken only in the interest of the advertisers and not of the consumers. For example, the public has been made to believe that white bread is better than brown. Then, flour has been bolted more and more thoroughly and thus deprived of its most useful components. Such treatment permits its preservation for longer periods and facilitates the making of bread. The millers and the bakers earn more money. The consumers eat an inferior product, believing it to be a superior one. And in the countries where bread is the principal food, the population degenerates. Enormous amounts of money are spent for publicity. As a result, large quantities of alimentary and pharmaceutical products, at the least useless, and often harmful, have become a necessity for civilized men. In this manner the greediness of individuals, sufficiently shrewd to create a popular demand for the goods that they have for sale, plays a leading part in the modern world.[1]

These problems of modern civilization were addressed during the Medieval era, under religious sanction, and under organization sanction via the Guilds, and yet our era is regarded as “progressive” and full of unlimited possibilities and that of the past as superstition-ridden and ignorant.

Man is for Carrel first a spiritual being, who has entered a degenerative state through artificial behavior patterns induced by industrialization.

The definition of good and evil is based both on reason and on the immemorial experience of humanity. It is related to basic necessities of individual and social life. However, it is somewhat arbitrary. But at each epoch and in each country it should be very clearly defined and identical for all classes of individuals. The good is equivalent to justice, charity, beauty. The evil, to selfishness, meanness, ugliness. In modern civilization, the theoretical rules of conduct are based upon the remains of Christian morals. No one obeys them. Modern man has rejected all discipline of his appetites. However, biological and industrial morals have no practical value, because they are artificial and take into consideration only one aspect of the human being. They ignore some of our most essential activities. They do not give to man an armor strong enough to protect him against his own inherent vices.

In order to keep his mental and organic balance, man must impose upon himself an inner rule. The state can thrust legality upon people by force. But not morality. Everyone should realize the necessity of selecting the right and avoiding the wrong, of submitting himself to such necessity by an effort of his own will. The Roman Catholic Church, in its deep understanding of human psychology, has given to moral activities a far higher place than to intellectual ones. The men, honored by her above all others, are neither the leaders of nations, the men of science, nor the philosophers. They are the saints–that is, those who are virtuous in a heroic manner. When we watch the inhabitants of the new city, we fully understand the practical necessity of moral sense. Intelligence, will power, and morality are very closely related. But moral sense is more important than intelligence. When it disappears from a nation the whole social structure slowly commences to crumble away. In biological research, we have not given so far to moral activities the importance that they deserve. Moral sense must be studied in as positive a manner as intelligence. Such a study is certainly difficult. But the many aspects of this sense in individuals and groups of individuals can easily be discerned. It is also possible to analyze the physiological, psychological, and social effects of morals. Of course, such researches cannot be undertaken in a laboratory. Field work is indispensable. There are still today many human communities which show the various characteristics of moral sense, and the results of its absence or of its presence in different degrees. Without any doubt, moral activities are located within the domain of scientific observation.[2]

Alexis_Carrel_02.jpgWhile Carrel has been deemed since 1944 to be a “fascist,” a “collaborator,” and a “Nazi,” his championing of the individual rather than the mass does not sit well with stereotypical images. Like others skeptical of democracy and equality, he opposed the leveling tendencies of the modern era, be they in the form of capitalism or Marxism, both of which had accepted the same formulation of man and society, Carrel in Reflections on Life calling the Liberal bourgeois the elder brother of the Bolshevist.

Modern society ignores the individual. It only takes account of human beings. It believes in the reality of the Universals and treats men as abstractions. The confusion of the concepts of individual and of human being has led industrial civilization to a fundamental error, the standardization of men. If we were all identical, we could be reared and made to live and work in great herds, like cattle. But each one has his own personality. He cannot be treated like a symbol.[3]

One symptom of mass society is that of mass education, and Carrel here focuses on the role of the family and especially the mother as the prime educator of the child before any institution. This championing of the family rather than the State is contrary to all collectivist schemes, which seek to eliminate the family as an obstacle to State totality.

Children should not be placed, at a very early age, in schools where they are educated wholesale. As is well known, most great men have been brought up in comparative solitude, or have refused to enter the mold of the school. Of course, schools are indispensable for technical studies. They also fill, in a certain measure, the child’s need of contact with other children. But education should be the object of unfailing guidance. Such guidance belongs to the parents. They alone, and more especially the mother, have observed, since their origin, the physiological and mental peculiarities whose orientation is the aim of education. Modern society has committed a serious mistake by entirely substituting the school for the familial training. The mothers abandon their children to the kindergarten in order to attend to their careers, their social ambitions, their sexual pleasures, their literary or artistic fancies, or simply to play bridge, go to the cinema, and waste their time in busy idleness. They are, thus, responsible for the disappearance of the familial group where the child was kept in contact with adults and learned a great deal from them.[4]

It is relevant to note here that the family was indeed the basis of the Vichy regime that sought a “National Revolution” based on the dictum “Work, Family, Homeland.” Among the family-orientated measures of the Vichy regime was the “Mother-at-home” allowance,[5] the type of legislation that is still being sought in the Western democracies. The “family allowance” increased with the birth of each child.[6] Maternity welfare provided for women to be taken by a hospital one month before and one month after the birth of a child,[7] a measure that would today in our liberal “welfare states” now seem utopian.

Likewise, Carrel lamented the phenomena of mass production and man as factory fodder, where there was once craft centered on a religious ethos rather than a strictly economic one.

The neglect of individuality by our social institutions is, likewise, responsible for the atrophy of the adults. Man does not stand, without damage, the mode of existence, and the uniform and stupid work imposed on factory and office workers, on all those who take part in mass production. In the immensity of modern cities he is isolated and as if lost. He is an economic abstraction, a unit of the herd. He gives up his individuality. He has neither responsibility nor dignity. Above the multitude stand out the rich men, the powerful politicians, the bandits. The others are only nameless grains of dust. On the contrary, the individual remains a man when he belongs to a small group, when he inhabits a village or a small town where his relative importance is greater, when he can hope to become, in his turn, an influential citizen. The contempt for individuality has brought about its factual disappearance.[8]

Again, Carrel seems to be alluding in his ideal for a return to the medieval ethos. And again, one finds here also that Carrel’s social critique is far from misanthropic, as has been more recently claimed by his post-mortem “anti-fascist” avengers. He is a physician trying to diagnose and treat the cancerous growth of the mass tyranny of the modern era.

Carrel’s conclusion is that man, who has transformed the material world through science, is also capable of transforming himself. But he will not transform himself without necessity, because he has become complacent amidst the artificial lifestyle of industrial civilization.

While surrounded by the comfort, the beauty, and the mechanical marvels engendered by technology, he does not understand how urgent is this operation. He fails to realize that he is degenerating. Why should he strive to modify his ways of being, living, and thinking?[9]

Carrel regarded the Great Depression as a fortuitous opportunity, because of the undermining of public confidence in the economic system, which might impel people to seek a redirection.

Has not modern life decreased the intelligence and the morality of the whole nation? Why must we pay several billions of dollars each year to fight criminals? Why do the gangsters continue victoriously to attack banks, kill policemen, kidnap, ransom, or assassinate children, in spite of the immense amount of money spent in opposing them? Why are there so many feeble-minded and insane among civilized people? Does not the world crisis depend on individual and social factors that are more important than the economic ones? It is to be hoped that the spectacle of civilization at this beginning of its decline will compel us to ascertain whether the causes of the catastrophe do not lie within ourselves, as well as in our institutions. And that we will fully realize the imperativeness of our renovation.

…The spontaneous crash of technological civilization may help to release the impulses required for the destruction of our present habits and the creation of new modes of life.[10]

What Carrel called for was the creation of a new ruling state of renaissance men who would be educated in all the arts and sciences, having renounced ordinary life to form a ruling class better capable of creating a new civilization in keeping with man’s true nature, than can politicians and plutocrats.

Indeed, the few gifted individuals who dedicate themselves to this work will have to renounce the common modes of existence. They will not be able to play golf and bridge, to go to cinemas, to listen to radios, to make speeches at banquets, to serve on committees, to attend meetings of scientific societies, political conventions, and academies, or to cross the ocean and take part in international congresses. They must live like the monks of the great contemplative orders, and not like university professors, and still less like business men. In the course of the history of all great nations, many have sacrificed themselves for the salvation of the community. Sacrifice seems to be a necessary condition of progress.[11]

Eugenics was also a significant aspect of Carrel’s beliefs, and the matter for which he is most smeared, although eugenic ideas among physiologists at that time were the norm, and what Carrel advocated was on par with the sterilization measures already undertaken by many states of the USA,[12] and was at that time even advocated by socialists, as was particularly the case in Sweden. Hence, Carrel stated:

Eugenics may exercise a great influence upon the destiny of the civilized races. Of course, the reproduction of human beings cannot be regulated as in animals. The propagation of the insane and the feeble-minded, nevertheless, must be prevented. A medical examination should perhaps be imposed on people about to marry, as for admission into the army or the navy, or for employees in hotels, hospitals, and department stores. However, the security given by medical examination is not at all positive. The contradictory statements made by experts before the courts of justice demonstrate that these examinations often lack any value. It seems that eugenics, to be useful, should be voluntary. By an appropriate education, each one could be made to realize what wretchedness is in store for those who marry into families contaminated by syphilis, cancer, tuberculosis, insanity, or feeble-mindedness. Such families should be considered by young people at least as undesirable as those which are poor. In truth, they are more dangerous than gangsters and murderers. No criminal causes so much misery in a human group as the tendency to insanity. Voluntary eugenics is not impossible. […]None should marry a human being suffering from hidden hereditary defects. Most of man’s misfortunes are due to his organic and mental constitution and, in a large measure, to his heredity. Obviously, those who are afflicted with a heavy ancestral burden of insanity, feeblemindedness, or cancer should not marry. No human being has the right to bring misery to another human being. Still less, that of procreating children destined to misery.[13]

It is clear that for all the slander against Carrel as a eugenicist, his position on the matter was moderate for the time, and was to be voluntary, based on a combination of education and financial rewards. However, also of great importance in Carrel’s system was education and culture.

Children must be reared in contact with things which are the expression of the mind of their parents. It is imperative to stop the transformation of the farmer, the artisan, the artist, the professor, and the man of science into manual or intellectual proletarians, possessing nothing but their hands or their brains. The development of this proletariat will be the everlasting shame of industrial civilization. It has contributed to the disappearance of the family as a social unit, and to the weakening of intelligence and moral sense. It is destroying the remains of culture. All forms of the proletariat must be suppressed. Each individual should have the security and the stability required for the foundation of a family.[14]

Elsewhere Carrel writes again of the undesirability of mass proletarianization and the need for a new economic system:

The artisan, on the contrary, has the legitimate hope that some day he may become the head of his shop. Likewise, the peasant owning his land, the fisherman owning his boat, although obliged to work hard, are, nevertheless, masters of themselves and of their time. Most industrial workers could enjoy similar independence and dignity. The white-collar people lose their personality just as factory hands do. In fact, they become proletarians. It seems that modern business organization and mass production are incompatible with the full development of the human self. If such is the case, then industrial civilization, and not civilized man, must go.[15]

In the same paragraph Carrel emphasis the basic social unit as being the family, predicated on sound and lasting marriage for the raising of healthy children, and the education of women geared to raising children.

Marriage must cease being only a temporary union. The union of man and woman, like that of the higher anthropoids, ought to last at least until the young have no further need of protection. The laws relating to education, and especially to that of girls, to marriage, and divorce should, above all, take into account the interest of children. Women should receive a higher education, not in order to become doctors, lawyers, or professors, but to rear their offspring to be valuable human beings.[16]

Feminism has resulted in what we might call the proletarianization of women, whether in menial or intellectual arenas, as increasing numbers especially over the past several decades have opted for jobs rather than children, even for the sake of their social life, or have been leaving child bearing to increasingly later ages until procreation becomes a problem. If Carrel were alive today, he would undoubtedly have much to say about the decline fertility rates among males also, perhaps looking at environmental and nutritional factors for explanations. At any rate the question of food quality is broached by Carrel several times in Man the Unknown, for example:

We now have to reestablish, in the fullness of his personality, the human being weakened and standardized by modem life. Sexes have again to be clearly defined. Each individual should be either male or female, and never manifest the sexual tendencies, mental characteristics, and ambitions of the opposite sex. Instead of resembling a machine produced in series, man should, on the contrary, emphasize his uniqueness. In order to reconstruct personality, we must break the frame of the school, factory, and office, and reject the very principles of technological civilization.

The effect of the chemical compounds contained in food upon physiological and mental activities is far from being thoroughly known. Medical opinion on this point is of little value, for no experiments of sufficient duration have been made upon human beings to ascertain the influence of a given diet. There is no doubt that consciousness is affected by the quantity and the quality of the food.[17]

Carrel, as a social-physician in the closing paragraphs of his seminal work again shows that what he was advocating was of a humane character; that he was not a social-Darwinist with a disregard for the weaker elements of society:

The brutal materialism of our civilization not only opposes the soaring of intelligence, but also crushes the affective, the gentle, the weak, the lonely, those who love beauty, who look for other things than money, whose sensibility does not stand the struggle of modern life. In past centuries, the many who were too refined, or too incomplete, to fight with the rest were allowed the free development of their personality. Some lived within themselves. Others took refuge in monasteries, in charitable or contemplative orders, where they found poverty and hard work, but also dignity, beauty, and peace. Individuals of this type should be given, instead of the inimical conditions of modern society, an environment more appropriate to the growth and utilization of their specific qualities.[18]

Notes

1. Man the Unknown.

2. Man the Unknown, ch. 4: 3.

3. Man the Unknown, ch. 7: 10.

4. Man the Unknown, ch. 7: 10.

5. Decree of October 11, 1940.

6. Laws of November 18, 1940; February 15, 1941.

7. Law no. 3763, September 2, 1941.

8. Alexis Carrel, Man the Unknown, ch. 7: 10.

9. Man the Unknown, ch. 7: 10., ch. 8: 1.

10. Man the Unknown, ch. 7: 10.

11. Man the Unknown,  ch. 8:3.

12. Indiana became the first US state to enact a sterilization law in 1907, directed towards the “feebleminded.” In 1927 the US Supreme Court ruled 8 to  that sterilization laws for the mentally handicapped were not unconstitutional, Justice Holmes writing of the decision: “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” As late as 1970 the Nixon Administration increased Medicaid funding for the voluntary sterilization of low-income Americans. The last forcible sterilization occurred in the USA in 1981, in Oregon, under the direction of the Oregon Board of Eugenics. Social democratic Sweden was particularly active with a eugenic sterilization program from 1934, the laws not being repealed until 1976. Around 31,000 had been sterilized, by far the majority forcibly.

13. Man the Unknown, ch. 8:7.

14. Man the Unknown, ch. 8:7.

15. Man the Unknown, ch. 8:12.

16. Reflections on Life, ch. 8: 12.

17. Reflections on Life, ch. 8: 12.

18. Reflections on Life, ch. 8: 12.

Alexis Carrel:
A Commemoration, Part 3

Three of Carrel’s books were published posthumously, Reflections on Life[1] being particularly instructive in further explicating Carrel’s views on civilization. Here Carrel states that the great problem of the day is for man to increase not only his intelligence, but also a robustness of character and morality, and to maintain a spiritual outlook, these qualities having atrophied and failed to keep pace with technical evolution.[2] Based on his experiments and observations Carrel states that the organism is greatly malleable and changed by circumstances of environment. This two-way interaction between environment and genes seems often to be overlooked in a dichotomy existing between genetic determinists and environmental determinists. Therefore, what Carrel presents is a synthesis, writing:

The formation of body and mind depends on the chemical, physical and psychological conditions of the environment and on physiological habits. The effects of these conditions and these habits on the whole make-up of the individual ought to be exactly studied with reference to all activities of body and mind.[3]

Throughout his life he also emphasized the importance of the spiritual and the religious, and he remained a Christian.

AcaHomInco.gifCarrel proceeds with the first chapter to trace the dissolution of traditional communal bonds with the ancestral traditions being undermined from the time of the Renaissance, through to the Reformation, and the revolutions of France and America, enthroning of rationalism and heralding the rise of liberalism and Marxism:

The democratic nations fail to recognize the value of scientific concepts in the organization of communal life. They put their trust in ideologies, those twin daughters of the rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment. Yet neither Liberalism nor Marxism bases itself on an exhaustive observation of reality. The fathers of Liberalism, Voltaire and Adam Smith, had just as arbitrary and incomplete a view of the human world as Ptolemy had of the stellar system. The same applies to those who signed the Declaration of Independence, to the authors of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen as also to Karl Marx and Engels.[4]

At the root of these ideologies of capitalism and socialism alike is economic reductionism, which has given rise to the artificiality of a civilization that Carrel condemned for fostering a weakened state of humanity, physiologically, morally, spiritually, and mentally:

The principles of the Communist Manifesto are, in fact, like those of the French Revolution, philosophical views and not scientific concepts. The Liberal bourgeois and the Communist worker share the same belief in the primacy of economics. This belief is inherited from the philosophers of the eighteenth century. It takes no account of the scientific knowledge of the mental and physiological activities of man we possess today nor of the environment which these activities need for their ideal development. Such knowledge shows that primacy belongs not to economics, but to man’s own humanity. Instead of trying to find how to organize the State as a function of the human, we are content to declaim the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the French Revolution. According to these principles, the State is, above all, the guardian of property; the head servant of banking, industry and commerce.[5]

This liberty has brought nothing real to the multitude of proletarianized masses.

The liberty enjoyed by the majority of men does not belong to the economic, intellectual or moral order. The dispossessed have merely the liberty to go from one slum or one public house to another. They are free to read the lies of one paper rather than another, to listen to opposing forms of radio propaganda and, finally, to vote. Politically they are free; economically they are slaves. Democratic liberty exists only for those who possess something. It allows them to increase their wealth and to enjoy all the various goods of this world. It is only fair to admit that, thanks to it, Capitalism has achieved a vast expansion of wealth and a general improvement in health and in the material conditions of life. But it has, at the same time, created the proletariat. Thus it has deprived men of the land, encouraged their herding together in factories and appalling dwellings, endangered their physical and mental health and divided nations into mutually hostile social classes. The Encylopedists had a profound respect for the owners of property and despised the poor. The French Revolution was directed against both the aristocracy and the proletariat It was content to substitute the rat for the Hon; the bourgeois for the noble. Now Marxism aims at replacing the bourgeois by the worker. The successor of Capitalism is Bureaucracy. Like Liberalism, Marxism arbitrarily gives first place to economics. It allows a theoretical liberty only to the proletariat and suppresses all other classes. The real world is far more complex than the abstraction envisaged by Marx and Engels.[6]

Here, as in many other places of Carrel’s writing, we see this his concern is for humanity, for the poor and oppressed that have been reduced to a mass and meaningless existence in the name of “economic liberty,” and it soon becomes apparent that the Marxists and liberals who smeared Carrel as some type of fiendish Nazi doctor with a depraved outlook on humanity, are either lying or ignorant. If Carrel spoke “against” the proletariat it was in defense of the “worker” as artisan, craftsmen, tiller, and in opposition to a process that continues to deprive man of his humanity:

Human labor is not something which can be bought like any other commodity. It is an error to depersonalize the thinking and feeling being who operates the machine and to reduce him, in industrial enterprise, to mere “manpower.” Homo oeconomicus is a fantasy of our imagination and has no existence in the concrete world.[7]

Carrel’s adherence to the Christian faith as the basis of civilized values is a refreshing surprise from the usual atheism and materialism of scientific social commentators. Carrel maintains that Christianity provides the foundations for social bonds above all other beliefs, whether rationalistic or metaphysical.

In an unknown village of Palestine, on the shores of Lake Tiberias, a young carpenter announced some astonishing news to a few ignorant fishermen. We are loved by an immaterial and all-powerful Being. This Being is accessible to our prayers. We must love Him above all creatures. And we ourselves must also love one another.

A new era had begun. The only cement strong enough to bind men together had been found. Nevertheless, humanity chose to ignore the importance of this new principle in the organization of its collective life. It is far from having understood that only mutual love could save it from division, ruin and chaos. Nor has it realized that no scientific discovery was so fraught with significance as the revelation of the law of love by Jesus the Crucified. For this law is, in fact, that of the survival of human societies.[8]

It was this Christian faith that molded the heroic ethos and chivalry of the West, Christianity providing the feeling of “the beauty of charity and renunciation” above the “savage and lustful appetites.” Man, or better said the Westerner,

was drawn to the heroism which, in the hell of modern warfare, consists in giving one’s life for one’s friends; and in having pity on the vanquished, the sick, the weak and the abandoned. This need for sacrifice and brotherhood became more defined in the course of centuries. Then appeared St. Louis of France, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Vincent de Paul and a numberless legion of apostles of charity.[9]

It is this ethos of individual sacrifice and renunciation which Carrel states has been increasingly obliterated by the ideologies of the modern era, and which is required again to overcome the problems of the present, particularly in developing a ruling caste that he wished to see emerge and live for the service of humanity.

Even in our own base and egotistical age, thousands of men and women still follow, on the battlefield, in the monastery or in that abomination of desolation the modern city, the path of heroism, abnegation and holiness.[10]

“Our civilization,” by which Carrel must mean Western Civilization, “has, in truth, forgotten that it is born of the blood of Christ; it has also forgotten God,” but there remains a basic discernment of the beauty of the Gospels and the Sermon on the Mount.[11] As a scientist Carrel sees Christian morality not as some contrivance to maintain a ruling class, but as reflecting fundamental laws of life that are in accord with nature, and in keeping with the survival imperative. On the other hand just as mistaken are those moralists who see Christianity as negating the need for humanity to act in accordance with the discoveries of nature being revealed by science. [12] Here again, Carrel is proposing a synthesis, rather than a dichotomy. Therefore the Christian commandment against killing is applicable in a broad sense, there being many ways of killing, and the destroyers or killers of humanity include,

The profiteer who sends up the price of necessities, the financier who cheats poor people of their savings, the industrialist who does not protect his workmen against poisonous substances, the woman who has an abortion and the doctor who performs it are all murderers. Murderers, too, are the makers of harmful liquor and the wine growers who conspire with politicians to increase the consumption of drink; the sellers of dangerous drugs; the man who encourages his friend to drink; the employer who forces his workers to work and live in conditions disastrous to their bodies and minds.[13]

Carrel was not preaching any doctrine of pandering to the weak, any more than a misanthropic crushing, but rather one of the strengthening of humanity by disposing of the artificiality that has become the basis of civilization, and has halted human ascent. In this respect there is a certain coincidental resemblance to the Nietzschean over-man, when not misinterpreted or misconstrued as something monstrous. Hence man must again become re-acclimatized to harsh environmental conditions, as a matter of will and self-discipline.

The rules to follow are many, but simple. They consist in leading our daily life as the structure of our body and mind demands. We must learn to endure heat, cold and fatigue; to walk, run and climb in all extremes of weather. We must also avoid as much as possible the artificial atmosphere of offices, flats and motorcars. In the choice of the quantity of food we eat we ought to follow modern principles of nutrition. We should sleep neither too much nor too little and in a quiet atmosphere. . . . We should also accomplish daily, outside of our professional work, some definite task of an intellectual, aesthetic, moral or religious nature. Those who have the courage to order their existence thus will be magnificently rewarded. . . .[14]

As in Man the Unknown, Carrel was concerned with the affects of declining birth rates, as a symptom of decline, which he states has social and economic causes and which can consequently be reversed by the State proving generously for the rearing of healthy children. Education is also required to make eugenically sound and conscious decisions when mating, an issue which is perhaps more than any others raised by Carrel,[15] anathema to liberal sensibilities.

Healthy children and family life proceeds for Carrel on the basis of a reconnection with the soil.

The family must be rooted once more in the soil. Everyone should be able to have a house, however small, and make himself a garden. Everyone who already has a farm should beautify it. He should adorn it with flowers, pave the road which leads to it, destroy the briars which choke the hedges, break up the boulders which hinder the passage of the plow, and plant trees whose branches will shade his great-grandchildren. Finally, the works of art, the old houses, the splendid buildings and cathedrals in which the soul of our forefathers expressed itself must be piously preserved. We should also set ourselves against the profanation of the rivers, the tranquil hills and the forests which were the cradle of our ancestors. But our most sacred duty is to bring about a revolution in teaching which will make the school, instead of a dreary factory for certificates and diplomas, a center of moral, intellectual, aesthetic, and religious education.[16]

The return to the soil was a major aim of the Vichy regime. Uncultivated land could be granted with the aid of state allowances, and freedom from rent for the first three years, and thereafter a rental half that of similar land in the area.[17] State subsidies of up to 50% were available for new farm buildings.[18] Farm laborers, who had been increasingly leaving the land for the cities for better pay, were encouraged to take up farming themselves. State gratuities were given to all farmers who provided rural apprenticeship training, and agricultural education was reorganized, and centers established.[19]

As one should expect for a physiologist attempting to apply his observations of the natural world to the formation of a more natural human social order, the type of society Carrel advocated was what has been called the “organic state,” where each individual is in general part of at least one social organ, from the family outward, each individual and each social organ contributing by their innate character to the well-being of the entire social organism. The organic state is thus analogous to the living human organism where, where the brain – the government – co-ordinates the individual organs for the healthy functioning of the whole organism. This is contrary to the modern era where everyone is divided in to atomized individuals, or competing classes, and a myriad of other self-serving interests, to the detriment of the whole. Carrel repudiated that notion of society being held together by a “social contract” between individuals, as per the idea that has come down to us from liberalism, as the very act of being born makes an individual an automatic part of society. The coming together for common interests into social organs is a natural process.

Every individual is a member of several organismic and organic groups. He belongs to tie family, the village, and the parish and also, perhaps, to a school, a trade union, a professional society or a sports club. Thus a relatively small number of completely developed individuals can have a great influence on many community groups.[20]

Hence, an industrial enterprise, should according to such organic laws function as a social organism rather than as a disharmonic or diseased organism of contending interests, which one might compare to a cancer-afflicted body. What Carrel alludes to in his analogy of the industrial enterprise where solidarity replaces class warfare, is that the worker of an enterprise share in the profits of that enterprise; “when he cooperates in an enterprise which belongs to him and to which he belongs.”[21]

In his concluding chapter Carrel states: “Communities and industrial enterprises should be conceived as organisms whose function is to build up centers of human brotherhood where all are equal in the sense in which the Church understands men’s equality; that is to say, in the sense that all are children of God.”[22]

The suppression of the Proletariat and the liberation of the oppressed should not come about through class warfare but through the abolition of social classes.

What is needed is to suppress the Proletariat by replacing it with industrial enterprise of an organismic character. If the community has an organismic character, it matters little whether the state or private individuals own the means of production, but individual ownership of house and land is indispensable.[23]

One can discern in this organic conception of society the influence of the social doctrine of the Church combined with the observations of the biologist. It is no wonder that Carrel agreed to work with the Vichy Government in attempting to solve social problems, as the Vichy was one of numerous regimes, often inspired by Catholic social doctrine, which attempted to implement the organic or “corporate state.”[24]

What ideology then did Carrel adhere to? Apparently, none that had been operative.

Despite the smear that Carrel was a “Nazi,” he regarded National Socialism, Marxism, and liberalism as all having failed, as had the civilizations of the Classical and Medieval eras.[25] Neither is an entire answer to be found in a religious, scientific or a political system alone. There must be a holistic approach.

The break-up of Western civilization is due to the failure of ideologies, to the insufficiency both of religion and science. If life is to triumph, we need a revolution. We must reexamine every question and make an act of faith in the power of the human spirit. Our destiny demands this great effort; we ought to devote all our time to the effort of living since this is the whole purpose of our being on earth.

All men who are determined to make a success of living in the widest sense should join together as they have done in all times. Pythagoras made the first attempt, but it is the Catholic Church which has hitherto offered the most complete of such associations. We must give up the illusion that we can live according to instinct, like the bees. True, the success of life demands, above all, an effort of intelligence and will. Since intelligence has not replaced instinct we must try to render it capable of directing life.[26]

Carrel reconciles religious faith and metaphysics with science and natural law. Hence the Christian foundations of Carrel’s organic society are reiterated. He states that the reasons the “white races” have failed despite “their Christianity” is because the Christian ethos has not been sufficiently applied in practical terms to the questions presented by science. Carrel ends optimistically however in stating that unlike prior civilizations, this Civilization has the means of diagnosing its ills and therefore has the opportunity of halting the cycle of decay.

For the first time in the history of the world, a civilization which has arrived at the verge of its decline is able to diagnose its ills. Perhaps it will be able to use this knowledge and, thanks to the marvelous forces of science, to avoid the common fate of all the great peoples of the past. We ought to launch ourselves on this new path from this very moment. . . .

Before those who perfectly perform their task as men, the road of truth lies always open. On this royal road, the poor as well as the rich, the weak as well as the strong, believer and unbeliever alike are invited to advance. If they accept this invitation, they are sure of accomplishing their destiny, of participating in the sublime work of evolution, of hastening the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. And, over and above, they will attain all the happiness compatible with our human condition.[27]

Post-Mortem Vilification

Carrel was spared the indignities of the democratic post-war era, and although he was cleared of being a “collaborationist” his doctrine of human ascent with its intrinsic opposition to liberalism, Marxism, capitalism, and rationalism, has made him the subject of smears in more recent years. The renewed “interest” was prompted in 1997 when Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen suggested that Carrel was the founder of ecology, which resulted in a mean-spirited campaign to get streets named after Carrel changed.[28] In 1998 a Left-wing petition was circulated to get the name of rue Alexis-Carrel in Paris changed, with the media quipping about Carrel’s supposed advocacy of brutal “Nazi-style” eugenics measures, and his so-called “dubious role” in wartime France. Hence Ben MacIntyre, journalist, for some reason felt himself qualified to remark that Carrel’s best-seller, Man the Unknown, was “pseudo-science,” one of Carrel’s most callous recommendations apparently having been to advocate the humane execution of the criminally insane.[29]

While it is something of a cliché when writing a tribute to a perhaps long forgotten individual of seemingly prophetic vision, to state that the subject had a message more relevant now than in his own time, this surely is in a myriad of ways a claim that can legitimately be made for Alexis Carrel. The many symptoms of decay he noted in his own time, from the artificiality of industrial life to the chemical adulteration of food, the standardization of life, and the rising rates of abortion are now with Western Civilization in a phase that is acute. [30]

Notes

1. Alexis Carrel, Reflections on Life. The book in its entirety has been published online: http://chestofbooks.com/society/metaphysics/Reflections-O...

2. Reflections on Life, “Preface.”

3. Reflections on Life.

4. Reflections on Life, ch. 1.

5. Reflections on Life, ch. 1.

6. Reflections on Life, ch. 1.

7. Reflections on Life, ch. 1.

8. Reflections on Life, ch. 3:6.

9. Reflections on Life, ch. 3:6.

10. Reflections on Life, ch. 3:6.

11. Reflections on Life, ch. 3:6.

12. Reflections on Life, ch. 4:3.

13. Reflections on Life, ch. 5: 2.

14. Reflections on Life, ch. 5: 3.

15. Reflections on Life, ch. 5: 8.

16. Reflections on Life, ch. 5: 4.

17. Law of August 27, 1940.

18. Law of April 17, 1941.

19. Laws of July 8, 1941, and August 25, 1941.

20. Reflections on Life, ch. 6: 10.

21. Reflections on Life, ch. 6: 10.

22. Reflections on Life, ch. 9: 3.

23. Reflections on Life, ch. 9: 3.

24. Other corporate states directly inspired by Catholic social doctrine included Salazar’s Portugal, Franquist Spain and the Austria of Dollfuss.

25. Reflections on Life, ch. 9: 2.

26. Reflections on Life, ch. 9: 2.

27. Reflections on Life, ch. 9: 3.

28. David Zen Mairowitz, “Fascism a la Monde,” Harper’s, October 1997.

29. Ben MacIntyre, “Paris Left wants eugenics advocate taken off street,” The Times, January 6, 1998.

samedi, 27 novembre 2010

Kaukasische islamisten ronselen Tsjetsjenen in Europa

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Kaukasische islamisten ronselen Tsjetsjenen in Europa

Mechelen l De politie verdenkt de dinsdag in Antwerpen aangehouden
Tsjetsjenen ervan geld en rekruten te hebben geronseld voor het Kaukasisch
Emiraat. Deze organisatie, die een islamitisch emiraat wil vestigen in
Tsjetsjenië, is in 2007 opgericht door Dokoe Oemarov. Ze rekruteert nu leden
in heel West-Europa.

De zeven mannen die werden opgepakt in Antwerpen zijn allemaal aangehouden
door de Mechelse onderzoeksrechter. Drie van hen staan bekend als leden van
Sharia4Belgium. Volgens het federaal parket broedde het zevental op plannen
voor een aanslag in België. Zij verschijnen vrijdag voor de raadkamer in
Mechelen.

Tsjetsjeense militanten plegen zeer frequent kleine aanslagen op lokale
ordehandhavers, maar de afgelopen tien jaar is Rusland herhaaldelijk
opgeschrikt door grote terreurdaden door Kaukasische militanten, zoals de
aanslag eind vorig jaar op een sneltrein van Sint-Petersburg naar Moskou en
de dubbele zelfmoordaanslag dit voorjaar in Moskou.

Volgens officiële cijfers zijn dit jaar 332 gewapende militanten gedood in
de Kaukasus, en 205 agenten en andere ordehandhavers. De situatie is "dicht
bij een staat van oorlog", gaf een hoge Russische officier onlangs toe. De
afgelopen tien jaar is de situatie ook in de buurrepublieken Dagestan en
Ingoesjetië dramatisch verslechterd. De militanten worden volgens experts
vooral gefinancierd vanuit het Midden-Oosten. Maar ook in West-Europa en de
VS wordt geld opgehaald.

Het geweld in de noordelijke Kaukasus is duidelijk geen exclusief Russische
aangelegenheid meer. De uitstraling ervan is steeds vaker merkbaar in
West-Europa, waar tienduizenden Tsjetsjenen wonen.

Vorige maand werd in Denemarken een Tsjetsjeen aangehouden die vermoedelijk
een bombrief wilde sturen naar de krant die controversiële cartoons van de
profeet Mohammed had gepubliceerd. En Duitse inlichtingenbronnen maken al
lange tijd melding van de pogingen van sommige vluchtelingen om geld in te
zamelen voor militanten in de Kaukasus. Ook zou getracht zijn leden te
rekruteren voor de strijd tegen de Russische autoriteiten. Die laten zich,
bij monde van de door het Kremlin geïnstalleerde leider Ramzan Kadyrov, ook
niet onbetuigd. Kadyrov heeft agenten in Europa die Tsjetsjenen 'manen'
terug te keren omdat het nu veilig zou zijn. Sommigen zeggen te zijn
bedreigd. Kadyrov wordt er door Russische critici van beschuldigd met zijn
vijanden af te rekenen, of dat nu kritische mensenrechtenactivisten zijn, of
oud-rebellen die zich tegen hem hebben gekeerd, of zelfs rivaliserende
families in Tsjetsjenië. Vorig jaar werd in Wenen een Tsjetsjeense
vluchteling vermoord die zei te hebben gezien hoe Kadyrov persoonlijk
leiding gaf aan martelingen. De Oostenrijkse politie vond echter geen harde
bewijzen van zijn betrokkenheid.

De lokroep van Tsjetsjeens nationalisme is de wind uit de zeilen genomen
door de installatie van de Kadyrovs in Grozny en de wederopbouw met federaal
geld van Tsjetsjenië. Maar structurele armoede, gebrek aan werk en de
keiharde methodes van de Russische autoriteiten blijken op de hele Kaukasus
een voedingsbodem voor de aanwas van nieuwe rekruten.

© De Volkskrant

What Was, Must Be: Guillaume Faye's "Archeofuturism"

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What Was, Must Be

Guillaume Faye's "Archeofuturism"

 
 
 
One thing that always struck me about William Pierce’s broadcasts is that out of the two hundred or so that he recorded during the late 1990s, only one ever talked about the world he aspired to see following his revolution. One. Worse still, his utopian vision was not at all inspiring, being, for all practical purposes, a return to 1933. This, unfortunately, is not uncommon among those who, in some measure or another, share his ideas—even among those who are far less radical and apocalyptic, and think in terms of a ‘velvet revolution,’ or co-opting, or electioneering.

As I have written on previous occasions, if our camp is to catalyze a transvaluation of values, and eventually cause a purge of the top echelons of academic, media, and political power in the West, those whom we seek to inspire need to be given more than just a return to the past: they also need a vision that is forward-looking, indeed futuristic, even if ultimately founded on archaic principles. Otherwise, our camp will condemn itself to irrelevance, perpetuating the impression many ordinary people have that we are just aging nostalgics, who feel left out in the brave new world of progress and equality, and are reduced to waving an angry fist at modernity because we have no new ideas of our own. ‘Bankrupt’ is the term often used within the mainstream to describe our ideas and morality.

To get anywhere, one needs to know where one is going; and to get others to come along and make the hard journey to one’s paradise, one has to be able to at least describe what it looks like.

This is why I was interested in Guillaume Faye’s book, Archeofuturism, which Arktos Media published for the first time in English translation during the Summer of 2010. Along with Alain de Benoist, Faye is a leading exponent of the Nouvelle Droite, the European New Right. Faye, however, is more radical than de Benoist, who has accused him of extremism. And some say he is also more creative. Until recently, I only knew Faye by name and affiliation, having never taken the trouble to read him. Was it because of that photograph I have seen of him, grey-haired and scowling with bug-like mirror shades? Whatever the answer, I was pleasantly surprised when the present tome revealed that Faye’s outlook is very similar to my own. Indeed, it turns out that in Archeofuturism he articulates positions that I have articulated in some of own my articles. No wonder the book’s editor, John Morgan, was keen on my reviewing it.

Readers will easily infer at least one of the positions Faye and I share, as I have reproduced it in the second paragraph of this review. The difference is one of emphasis: I think archeofuturism is necessary to move forward; Faye thinks of it as the paradigm that must replace egalitarian modernity, come what may.

arch%E9ofuturisme.gifThere is no question for him that the liberal project is doomed: although its proponents paint it as good and inevitable, egalitarian modernity is, in fact, a highly artificial condition, an unsustainable one, which will fall victim to the very processes it set in motion. Faye believes that we are currently facing a ‘convergence of catastrophes’. These include: the colonization of the North by Afro-Asian peoples from the South; an imminent economic and demographic crisis, caused by an aging population in the West, falling birthrates, and unfunded promises made by the democratic welfare state; chaos in the countries of the South, caused by absurd Western-sponsored development and development programs; a global economic crisis, much worse than the depression of the 1930s, led by the financial sector; ‘the surge of religious fundamentalist fanaticism, particularly in Islam;’ ‘the confrontation of North and South, on theological and ethnic grounds;’ unchecked environmental degradation; and the convergence of these catastrophes against a backdrop of nuclear proliferation, international mafias, and the reemergence of viral and microbial diseases, such as AIDS. For Faye, the way out is not through reform, because a system that is contrary to reality is beyond reform), but through collapse and revolution. As a catastrophic collapse is inevitable, revolutionary thought and action must today be post-catastrophic in outlook. He further suggests that inaction on our part will only open European civilization to conquest by Islam.

How does Faye visualize the post-catastrophic Earth? For him, the deprecation of modernity results in a two-tier world, in which most of humanity reverts to traditional or neo-Medieval societies (essentially pre-industrial reservations), while an elite minority—composed of Europeans and South East Asians—rebuilds advanced technological societies across Eurasia and parts of North America. These societies are to be, of course, archeofuturistic—hierarchical and rooted in ethnotribalism, fiercely protectionistic, yet also ones that fully exploit science and technology, even if ‘esoteric,’ non-humanistic versions of them, ‘decoupled from the rationalistic outlook.’ There is to be no global flow of capital, spreading wealth and technology everywhere: the world economy is to be inegalitarian, elitist, based on quality over quantity. There are also to be no nation states: the European Imperium is to comprise over a hundred regions, with their own languages, customs, and garb. The United States is to split in to ethnic regions (Dreamland for the Blacks), and is to stabilize for the most part according to an eighteenth-century agrarian model. The world, in sum, and in contradiction to liberal aspirations, is to become more ethnic and more differentiated, not less.

In other words, if Faye rejects modernity it is not because he a nostalgic who dreams of returning to a bygone golden age, like so many White racial nationalists today; but because he is an elitist who thinks the world must be rebuilt on entirely different foundations—foundations that are more in harmony with nature.

In order so that we may get a better sense of what he means, he concludes the book with a Science Fiction novelette, titled One Day in the Life of Dmitri Leonidovich Oblomov, and set in the year 2073. Interestingly, and to Faye’s credit, the latter does not really describe a utopia, where everyone sings and lives happily ever after; but rather showcases Faye’s imagining of what he considers will be the most likely consequence of an archeofuturist new world order. It has its own unique set of problems, as any reasonable person would expect. Yet for Faye dealing with problems is part of living, and the choice is therefore not between having or not having problems, but which set of problems is preferable to another. In any event, one can well imagine Faye’s archeofuturistic vision will make egalitarian liberals, and perhaps even some White Nationalists, shift uncomfortably in their seats.

Oblomov, however, is just a scenario. As I have previously mentioned, and as Faye states repeatedly, we must not forget about Islam. Faye stresses that it is here, among us, facing us, right now, and that no amount of appeasement or accommodating will cause it to become less of a threat. This is because, he argues, Islam is an inherently intolerant, aggressive, theocratic movement that will abide no religious pluralism. Faye believes that Islam, and for that matter the Afro-Asian immigrants colonizing our continent, must be expelled from Europe, as was done in the past.  ‘Where there is a will, there is a way,’ he states. Naturally this presupposes either deposing the White ethnomasochists, the deluded cosmopolitans, the xenophiles, and the immigration fraudsters, or being ready to replace them once they fall by the weight of their own corruption and the catastrophic consequences of their own ideology.

How do we get there? The first step is understanding where we came from, where we are, and where we are going. Faye begins the book by evaluating the current with which he was formerly affiliated, the Nouvelle Droite, and outlining the factors and ideological errors that led to its loss of vitality and eventual eclipsing by the Front National. He then presents his vision, which includes corrections of some previously held positions. This is followed by a series of politically incorrect statements—fast sniper attacks against the contemporary West that aggregate into a global analysis of its present condition. An outline of Faye’s future world system follows, in incremental order. Finally, the reader is immersed in the finished result through an exercise in fiction.

That is the first step.

The next step, having read Faye’s text, understood it, reflected, discussed it, and reached individual conclusions, is elucidating how to put the theory into practice—a task that will require our most astute minds and political operators, not to mention funding, courage, and discipline.

I find Faye’s one of the most lucid analyses and statements of a metapolitical proposition I have yet encountered. It is both creative and logically structured. It is both analytical and refreshingly constructive. And it is both intelligent and unflinchingly radical. What is more, the text flows with urgent velocity, thanks to a skilled English translation, and is copiously supplemented with useful informative notes. What more can you ask?

 

Les limites de l'utopie multiculturelle

Les limites de l'utopie multiculturelle

par Philippe d'Iribarne (CNRS)

Ex: http://www.polemia.com/

 

dyn010_original_512_759_jpeg__94544ecf36145dad866e1ac2d8f7f135.jpgLe projet d'instauration d'une société multiculturelle où les cultures, les religions, entreraient en dialogue, s'enrichissant mutuellement de leur diversité, a paru de nature à remplacer avec bonheur l'ancienne recherche d'assimilation de ceux qui venaient d'ailleurs. Les Pays-Bas, la Grande-Bretagne et quelques autres ont été en pointe dans ce domaine. Et voilà que le vent tourne. Comment comprendre la montée d'un populisme xénophobe dans une bonne partie de l'Europe ? Réaction de populations déstabilisées par la crise économique mondiale et en quête d'un bouc émissaire ? Ou effet des limites d'une utopie ?

Les exemples vivants de sociétés multiculturelles dotées d'une certaine pérennité ne manquent pas : l'ancien empire turc, la grande époque d'El Andalus ; de nos jours, le Liban, l'Inde, les Etats-Unis. Qu'ont-elles de commun ? Une forte ségrégation entre les diverses communautés qui les composent et de grandes inégalités. De leur côté, les sociétés que l'on célèbre pour leur aspect égalitaire, tels les sociétés d'Europe du Nord ou le Japon, sont traditionnellement marquées par une grande homogénéité culturelle. Et, là où, comme en Europe du Nord, cette homogénéité disparaît, le populisme xénophobe est en pleine expansion.

Deux raisons au moins rendent plus que difficile d'incarner le rêve d'une société multiculturelle qui serait peu ségrégée et égalitaire.

Pas de lois neutres au regard de la diversité des cultures

Il n'existe pas d'institutions, de lois (le système politique, le fonctionnement de la justice, le droit du travail, etc.), qui soient neutres à l'égard de la diversité des cultures. Dans les sociétés pleinement multiculturelles, le cadre légal et institutionnel (en particulier la législation de la famille) est fonction de l'appartenance communautaire de chacun. Fidèles à cette logique, certains proposent que, dans les pays européens, la charia régisse l'existence des populations d'origine musulmane. On est vite conduit, dans cette voie, à la coexistence de communautés dont chacune fournit un cadre à l'existence de ses membres et exerce un strict contrôle sur cette existence. L'enfermement communautaire qui en résulte paraît bien peu compatible avec l'idéal d'une société de citoyens vivant dans un espace public commun et dont chacun est libre de ses choix culturels dans une vie privée qu'il mène à l'abri de toute pression.

Société multiculturelle et forte ségrégation

De plus, dans une société à la fois multiculturelle et peu ségrégée, où aucun territoire spécifique n'est assigné à chaque communauté, une rencontre des cultures s'opère au quotidien au sein d'une large sphère sociale : dans l'habitat, à l'école, dans le monde du travail. La manière dont chacun mène son existence, le monde d'images, de sons, d'odeurs qu'il contribue ainsi à produire, affecte l'environnement matériel et symbolique où baignent ses concitoyens. Comme l'a montré Pierre Bourdieu dans La Misère du monde, la coexistence, dans un même espace, de populations dont les manières de vivre se heurtent (par exemple parce qu'elles ont des conceptions très différentes de la frontière entre l'univers des sons qui font partie d'une existence normale et celui des bruits qui insupportent) est source de vives tensions. Quelles que soient les politiques de mixité sociale et ethnique dans l'habitat, la liberté que conserve chacun de choisir son lieu de résidence dans la mesure de ces moyens conduit de fait toute société multiculturelle à une forte ségrégation. En France, même si on est encore loin de la logique de ghetto américaine, on a déjà des zones où plus des trois quarts des jeunes sont issus de l'immigration. Pendant ce temps, dans un monde du travail où le « savoir être » est l'objet d'exigences croissantes, où il s'agit de plus en plus de s'engager dans des collectifs au sein desquels il importe de s'entendre à demi-mot, où des formes contraignantes de hiérarchie s'imposent, le fait que certains ne soient pas prêts à se conformer aux attentes de la culture malgré tout dominante rend leur intégration problématique.

Ne pas mentir aux nouveaux venus

En fin de compte, l'utopie d'une société multiculturelle dissuade de tenir un discours de vérité aux nouveaux venus et à ceux qui en sont issus, de leur dire, en toute franchise, à quelles conditions ils pourront être reconnus comme membres à part entière de leur nouvelle patrie, de les aider à découvrir ses codes. L'ouverture à l'Autre doit inciter à accompagner avec humanité ceux qui doivent emprunter le chemin difficile de l'adaptation à un autre monde, non à leur mentir.

Philippe d'Iribarne
directeur de recherche au CNRS
Les Echos.fr
17/11/2010

Voir aussi : « Le renversement du monde –politique de la crise »

Correspondance Polémia – 22/11/2010

Kauft China künftig keine US-Staatspapiere mehr?

Kauft China künftig keine US-Staatspapiere mehr?

F. William Engdahl

Ex: http://info.kopp-verlag.de/

 

Unter Hinweis auf die jüngste Entscheidung der US-Notenbank Federal Reserve, weitere 600 Milliarden Dollar zu drucken, um die taumelnden Wall-Street-Banken und den Immobiliensektor zu stützen, hat die chinesische Ratingagentur Dagong vor wenigen Tagen das Kreditrating für amerikanische Staatsanleihen heruntergestuft. Wenn die People’s Bank of China, die chinesische Zentralbank, dieser Einschätzung folgt und entsprechend weniger US-Staatspapiere kauft, dann stehen dem Dollar harte Zeiten bevor. Es kommt nicht überraschend, dass sich New Yorker Hedgefonds und Spekulanten genau in diesem kritischen Moment anschicken, eine neue Runde finanzieller Kriegsführung gegen Europa zu richten, dieses Mal wegen der prekären Lage einiger irischer Banken.

 

 

AnleihenpapierUSDollar.jpgDie Kreditrating-Agentur Dagong Global Credit, Chinas konservative Antwort auf das Monopol der von Amerika kontrollierten Agenturen Moody’s und Standard & Poor’s, hat vor wenigen Tagen die Qualität der Staatsverschuldung der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika heruntergestuft; sie betrachtet die jüngste »Quantitative Lockerung« als absichtliche Abwertung des Dollar.

Dagong bewertet die amerikanischen Versuche, sich durch die Ausgabe von Anleihen den Weg aus den Schulden zu bahnen, mit großem Vorbehalt. Die Agentur kritisiert vor allem die, wie sie sagt, konkurrierende Abwertung der Währung und prognostiziert für die USA eine »lang anhaltende Rezession«.

In ihrer Erklärung heißt es: »Um die Krise im eigenen Land zu bewältigen, greift die US-Regierung zu der extremen wirtschaftlichen Politik, den US-Dollar um jeden Preis abzuwerten; dieser Schritt weist auf das tiefsitzende Problem in der Entwicklung und im Managementmodell einer nationalen Ökonomie hin. Es könnte für die USA schwierig werden, den richtigen Weg zu finden, die US-Wirtschaft wiederzubeleben, wenn die Regierung die Ursache der Kreditklemme und das Entwicklungsgesetz einer modernen Kreditwirtschaft nicht erkennt und weiterhin in dem Denken des traditionellen Wirtschaftsmanagement-Modells verharrt; es ist ein Anzeichen dafür, dass die wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung in eine längerfristige Rezessionsphase eintritt.«

Auf gut Deutsch: Die staatliche chinesische Ratingagentur erklärt, dass sie das Vertrauen in die Stabilität der enormen Bestände an Treasury Bonds, den amerikanischen Staatspapieren, verloren hat. China hat in den vergangenen Jahren Japan als größten Halter amerikanischer Staatsanleihen verdrängt, es wird geschätzt, dass die People’s Bank of China US-Staatspapiere im Wert von 1,4 Billionen Dollar hält.

In ihrer Analyse kommt die Agentur Dagong zu dem Schluss: »Die Gesamtkrise, in die die Welt aufgrund dieser Abwertung des US-Dollars gestürzt werden könnte, macht einen Wirtschaftsaufschwung in den USA noch weniger wahrscheinlich. Da sich keiner der für die US-Wirtschaft maßgeblichen Wirtschaftsfaktoren erkennbar verbessert hat, ist es möglich, dass die USA ihre geldpolitische Lockerung ausweiten, was den Interessen der Gläubiger zuwiderläuft.« Mit Letzteren ist eindeutig China gemeint.

In der Erklärung heißt es noch: »Angesichts der derzeitigen Lage könnten für die Vereinigten Staaten in den kommenden ein bis zwei Jahren nicht vorherzusagende Solvenzrisiken bestehen. Dementsprechend erteilt Dagong die Bewertung ›Ausblick negativ‹ für das in- und ausländische Kreditrating der Vereinigten Staaten.«

Die Herabstufung ist ein echter Paukenschlag, sie entspricht der wachsenden Sorge, die westliche Fondsmanager, einschließlich der amerikanischen Großbank Merrill Lynch, in den vergangenen Tagen bezüglich der Aussichten für die Inhaber von Staatspapieren zum Ausdruck gebracht haben.

Dagong genießt hohes Ansehen als unabhängige Kreditrating-Agentur, die eine konservativere Sicht vertritt als die bekannteren amerikanischen Agenturen. Bis vor Kurzem galt die amerikanische Staatsverschuldung als über jede Kritik erhaben, doch nach Aussage unabhängiger Analysten verschlechtert sich die Lage und wird sich auch in Zukunft weiter verschlechtern.

Just in dem Moment, in dem der Dollar erneut unter Verkaufsdruck gerät, wenden sich amerikanische Hedgefonds und Spekulanten gegen den Euro, dieses Mal geht es gegen Irland als das schwächste Glied. Genauso wie im vergangenen Dezember – als dem Dollar eine schwere Krise drohte – plötzlich auf wundersame Weise die griechische Krise losbrach, was den Dollar kurzfristig entlastete, so entdecken Hedgefonds jetzt, da sich eine neue Dollarkrise anbahnt, dass Irland genauso wie Griechenland die Zahlungsunfähigkeit drohen könnte. Einige Frankfurter Banker sprechen zutreffend von »finanzieller Kriegsführung«. Voller Naivität neigen die Regierungen der EU-Länder zu der Annahme, die New Yorker Finanzmärkte hielten sich an die offenen und transparenten »Spielregeln«. Die jüngsten kritischen Äußerungen von Finanzminister Schäuble über die Währungs- und Wirtschaftspolitik der USA lassen darauf schließen, dass man in Berlin kritisch überdenkt, was wirklich gespielt wird.

Bleiben Sie dran, denn hier bahnt sich ein größeres Drama in den atlantischen Beziehungen an.

 

Quel "Terzo Regno" del socialismo nazionale europeo

Quel “Terzo Regno” del socialismo nazionale europeo

Autore: Luca Leonello Rimbotti

Ex : http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/

moeller.jpgArthur Moeller van den Bruck fu uno dei più alti risultati ideologici conseguiti dallo sforzo europeo di uscire dalle contraddizioni e dai disastri della modernità: fu uno dei primi a politicizzare il disagio della nostra civiltà di fronte all’affermazione mondiale del liberalismo e all’ascesa della nuova anti-Europa, come fin da subito fu giudicata l’America dai nostri migliori osservatori. Di qui una netta separazione del concetto di Occidente da quello di Europa. Il rifiuto dell’Occidente capitalista e della sua violenta deriva antipopolare doveva condurre in linea retta ad una rivoluzione dei popoli europei, ad un loro ringiovanimento, al loro rilancio come vere democrazie organiche di popolo. Come tanti altri ingegni dei primi decenni del Novecento, anche Moeller vide subito chiaro ciò che ancora oggi molti nostri contemporanei non riescono a distinguere: la perniciosità del liberalismo, la mortifera distruttività delle tecnocrazie capitaliste, l’inganno di fondo che dava e dà sostanza a quel centro di decomposizione mondiale, che già allora erano gli USA: falsa democrazia, impero della Borsa, libertà sì, ma unicamente per il dominio delle sette affaristiche.

In una parola, per chiunque avesse occhi per vedere, era evidente che un trucco liberale stava per gettare sui popoli del mondo la sua rete di potere, gestita da minoranze snazionalizzate e apolidi: “L’appello al popolo – scrisse Moeller ne Il terzo Reich, il suo libro più famoso, pubblicato nel 1923 – serve alla società liberale soltanto per sentirsi autorizzata ad esercitare il proprio arbitrio. Il liberale ha utilizzato e diffuso lo slogan della democrazia per difendere i suoi privilegi servendosi delle masse”. Chiaro come il sole! Ottant’anni fa, e con tanta maggiore profondità di analisi politica degli odierni cosiddetti no-global, ci fu qualcuno che centrò in pieno l’obiettivo politico, segnalando con forza quale razza di tarlo stesse corrodendo dall’interno la nostra civiltà … ben più lucidamente di tante “sinistre” – ma anche di tante “destre”… – di allora come di oggi, antagoniste di nome ma complici di fatto.

Il disegno politico di Moeller era preciso: instaurazione di un socialismo conservatore; edificazione di una comunità solidale fortemente connotata dai valori nazionali; avvento di una “democrazia elitaria e organicista”: il tutto, inserito in un quadro di ripresa del ruolo mondiale dell’Europa, gettando uno sguardo di simpatia verso la Russia, il cui bolscevismo Moeller – che fin da giovane fu ammiratore della cultura russa e di Dostoewskij in particolare – giudicava passibile di volgersi prima o poi in un sano socialismo nazionale. Era, questa, l’impostazione generale di quel movimento degli Jungkonservativen che faceva parte della più vasta galassia della Rivoluzione Conservatrice, la dinamica risposta tedesca alla sconfitta del 1918 e alle insidie della moderna tecnocrazia cosmopolita, da cui prese corpo infine il rovesciamento nazionalsocialista.

Il senso ultimo del messaggio ideologico di Moeller è dunque duplice: da un lato, denuncia del dominio dell’economia sulla politica, per cui in Occidente, come egli scrisse, “il rivolgere l’attenzione alla fluttuazione del denaro ha sostituito la preghiera quotidiana”; dall’altro lato, fortissimo impulso alla ripresa della nazione, da incardinarsi su quel moderno corporativismo antiparlamentare in cui lo scrittore tedesco vedeva la vera rappresentanza del popolo, la vera partecipazione alla “comunità di lavoro”. L’occasione di una rinnovata riflessione sul pensiero antagonista di Moeller viene adesso offerta dal libro di A. Giuseppe Balistreri, Filosofia della konservative Revolution: Arthur Moeller van den Bruck (edizione Lampi di Stampa, Milano 2004). Un testo da cui si ricava, ancora una volta e supportata da una preziosa mole di riferimenti scientifici, l’importanza di un progetto politico che non si estingue nella circostanza storica in cui l’autore visse – la Germania guglielmina e poi quella weimariana – ma si presenta a tutt’oggi con la freschezza di un referente politico attualissimo, reso anzi ancora più immediato dal crescente tracollo che negli ultimi decenni ha investito il concetto europeo di nazione sociale.

Moeller ebbe la capacità di risvegliare un sistema ideologico – il socialismo antimarxista – e di collocarlo a fianco del valore-nazione, così da presentare alle masse, stordite dalla doppia aggressione del bolscevismo e del liberalismo capitalista, un modello politico che, se da un lato intendeva rinnovare la società, dall’altro mostrava di volerlo fare senza distruggere i patrimoni di cultura, di socialità e di tradizione comunitaria che l’Europa aveva costruito in secoli di lotte. Tutto questo venne racchiuso dal termine terzo Reich: un’evocazione politica che portava in sé anche una volontà di rigenerazione morale, di rivincita religiosa sul materialismo, e che nascondeva l’antico sogno del millenarismo. Da Gioacchino da Fiore in poi, il “terzo regno” significò aspettativa, non solo religiosa ma anche politica, di un mondo finalmente giusto. Era dunque un mito. E Moeller reinterpretò questo mito in chiave ideologica, mettendolo a disposizione delle masse. Come scrive Balistreri, “il terzo Reich è un mito soreliano”. Questo mito soreliano di attivizzazione del popolo fu infine organizzato politicamente dal Nazionalsocialismo il quale, se non coincise con l’elitarismo e l’impoliticità della Rivoluzione Conservatrice, ne tradusse le istanze teoriche in decisioni politiche, trasformando l’ideologia culturale in politica quotidiana di massa.

Certo, il conservatorismo di Moeller, il suo disegno di una società “dei ceti”, secondo una concezione corporativa conservatrice, rientrava in una tradizione tedesca – quella della Körperschaft, la “comunità dei ranghi sociali” – che esisteva fin dal prussianesimo ottocentesco. E tuttavia la novità del terzo Reich moelleriano consiste nell’abbinare questa tradizione con le esigenze della moderna società di massa. E’ su questo punto che il vecchio conservatorismo doveva diventare il nuovo socialismo. Questo socialismo, come scrive Balistreri riassumendo la concezione moelleriana, “ristabilirà la democrazia nazionale di stampo tedesco, bandendo il liberalismo, il parlamentarismo e il sistema dei partiti, creerà la Volksgemeischaft che si costituirà secondo l’idea dell’articolazione per ceti e corporazioni, e si reggerà in base al Führergedanke“. Moeller aveva compreso che al tentativo di una piccola minoranza di internazionalisti liberali di condurre le nazioni alla sparizione nella “globalità”, si risponde con la nascita di un socialismo dei popoli.

* * *

Tratto da Linea del 12 settembre 2004.

Giuseppe A. Balistreri, Filosofia della Konservative Revolution: Arthur Moeller van den Bruck

Paganismo e Filosofia da Vida em Knut Hamsun e D.H. Lawrence

Paganismo e Filosofia da Vida em Knut Hamsun e D.H. Lawrence

por Robert Steuckers
Ex: http://legio-victrix.blogspot.com/

hamsun_3_1093822a.jpgO filólogo húngaro Akos Doma, formado na Alemanha e nos EUA, acaba de publicar uma obra de exegese literária, na qual faz um paralelismo entre as obras de Hamsun e Lawrence. O ponto em comum é uma "crítica da civilização". Conceito que, obviamente, devemos apreender em seu contexto. Em efeito, a civilização seria um processo positivo desde o ponto de vista dos "progressistas", que entendem a história de forma linear. Em efeito, os partidários da filosofia do Aufklärung [*Iluminismo] e os adeptos incondicionais de uma certa modernidade tendem à simplificação, à geometrização e à "cerebrização". Sem embargo, a civilização mostra-se a nós como um desenvolvimento negativo para todos aqueles que pretendem conservar a fecundidade incomensurável em relação aos venenos culturais, para os que constatam, sem escandalizar-se com isso, que o tempo é plurimorfo; quer dizer, que o tempo para uma cultura não coincide com o da outra, em contraposição aos iluministas quem se afirmam na crença de um tempo monomorfo e aplicável a todos os povos e culturas do planeta. Cada povo tem seu próprio tempo. Se a modernidade rechaça esta pluralidade de formas do tempo, então entramos irremissívelmente no terreno do ilusório.

Desde um certo ponto de vista, explica Akos Doma, Hamsun e Lawrence são herdeiros de Rousseau. Porém, de qual Rousseau? Do que foi estigmatizado pela tradição maurrasiana (Maurras, Lasserre, Muret) ou daquele outro que critica radicalmente o Aufklärung sem que isso comporte defesa alguma do Antigo Regime? Para o Rousseau crítico do Iluminismo, a ideologia moderna é, precisamente, o oposto real do conceito ideal em sua concepção da política: aquele é anti-igualitário e hostil à liberdade, ainda que reivindique a igualidade e a liberdade. Antes da irrupção da modernidade ao longo do século XVIII, para Rousseau e seus seguidores pré-românticos, existiria uma "comunidade sadia", a convivência reinaria entre os homens e as pessoas seriam "boas" porque a natureza é "boa". Mais tarde, entre os românticos que, no terreno político, são conservadores, esta noção de "bondade" seguirá estando presente, ainda que na atualidade tal característica se considere como patrimônio exclusivo dos ativistas ou pensadores revolucionários. A idéia de "bondade" tem estado presente tanto na "direita" como na "esquerda".

Sem embargo, para o poeta romântico inglês Wordsworth, a natureza é "o marco de toda experiência autêntica", na medida em que o homem se enfrenta de uma maneira real e imediatamente com os elementos, o que implicitamente nos conduz mais além do bem e do mal. Wordsworth é, de certa forma, um "perfectibilista": o homem fruto de sua visão poética alcança o excelso, a perfeição; porém dito homem, contrariamente ao que pensavam e impunham os partidários das Luzes, não se aperfeiçoava somente com o desenvolvimento das faculdades do intelecto. A perfeição humana requer acima de tudo passar pela prova do elemento natural. Para Novalis, a natureza é "o espaço da experiência mística, que nos permite ver mais além das contingências da vida urbana e artificial". Para Eichendorff, a natureza é a liberdade e, em certo sentido, uma transcendência, pois permite escapar aos corpetes das convenções e instituições.

Com Wordsworth, Novalis e Eichendorff, as questões do imediato, da experiência vital, do rechaço das contingências surgidas da artificialidade dos convencionalismos, adquirem um importante papel. A partir do romantismo se desenvolve na Europa, acima de tudo na Europa setentrional, um movimento hostil a toda forma moderna de vida social e econômica. Carlyle, por exemplo, cantará o heroísmo e denegrirá a "cash flow society". Aparece a primeira crítica contra o reino do dinheiro. John Ruskin, com seus projetos de arquitetura orgânica junto à concepção de cidades-jardim, tratará de embelezar as cidades e reparar os danos sociais e urbanísticos de um racionalismo que desembocou no puro manchesterismo. Tolstói propõe um naturalismo otimista que não tem como ponto de referência a Dostoiévski, brilhante observador este último dos piores perfis da alma humana. Gauguin transplantará seu ideal da bondade humana à Polinésia, ao Taiti, em plena natureza.

Hamsum e Lawrence, contrariamente a Tolstói ou a Gauguin, desenvolverão uma visão da natureza carente de teologia, sem "bom fim", sem espaços paradisíacos marginais: assimilaram a dupla lição do pessimismo de Dostoiévski e Nietzsche. A natureza nesses não é um espaço idílico propício para excursões tal como sucede com os poetas ingleses do Lake District. A natureza não somente não é um espaço necessariamente perigoso ou violento, mas sim que é considerado aprioristicamente como tal. A natureza humana em Hamsun e Lawrence é, antes de nada, interioridade que conforma os recursos interiores, sua disposição e sua mentalidade (tripas e cérebro inextricavelmente unidos e confundidos). Tanto em Hamsun como em Lawrence, a natureza humana não é nem intelectualidade nem demonismo. É, antes de nada, expressão da realidade, realidade tradução imediata da terra, Gaia; realidade enquanto fonte de vida.

Frente a este manancial, a alienação moderna leva a duas atitudes opostas: 1º necessidade da terra, fonte de vitaldiade, e 2º soçobra na alienação, causa de enfermidades e escleroses. É precisamente nessa bipolaridade em que se deve localizar as duas grandes obras e Hamsun e de Lawrence: 'Benção da Terra', para o norueguês, e 'O Arco-Íris', do inglês.

Em 'Benção da Terra' de Hamsun, a natureza constitui o espaço do trabalho existencial no qual o homem opera com total independência para se alimentar e se perpetuar. Não se trata de uma natureza idílica, como sucede em certos utopistas bucólicos, e ademais o trabalho não foi abolido. A natureza é inabarcável, conforma o destino, e é parte da própria humanidade de tal forma que sua perda comportaria desumanização. O protagonista principal, o camponês Isak, é feio e desalinhado, é tosco e simples, porém inquebrantável, um ser limitado, porém não isento de vontade. O espaço natural, a Wildnis, é esse âmbito que tarde ou cedo há de levar a pegada do homem; não se trata do espaço ou o reino do homem convencional ou, mais exatamente, o delimitado pelos relógios, mas sim o do ritmo das estações, com seus ciclos periódicos. Em dito espaço, em dito tempo, não existem perguntas, se sobrevive para participar do refúgio de um ritmo que nos transborda. Esse destino é duro. Inclusive chega a ser muito duro. Porém em troca oferece independência, autonomia, permite uma relação direta com o trabalho. Outorga sentido, porque tem sentido. Em 'O Arco-Íris', de Lawrence, uma família vive de forma da terra de forma independente, apenas com o lucro de suas colheitas.

Hamsun e Lawrence, nessas duas novelas, nos legam a visão de um homem unido à terra (ein beheimateter Mensch), de um homem ancorado em um território limitado. O beheimateter Mensch ignora o saber livresco, não tem necessidade das prédicas dos meios informativos, sua sabedoria prática lhe é suficiente; graças a ela, seus atos tem sentido, inclusive quando fantasia ou dá rédea solta aos sentimentos. Esse saber imediato, ademais, lhe proporciona unidade com os outros seres.

Desde uma ótica como essa, a alienação, questão fundamental no século XIX, adquire outra perspectiva. Geralmente se aborda o problema da alienação desde três pontos e vista doutrinais:

1º Segundo o ponto de vista marxista e historicista, a alienação se localizaria unicamente na esfera social, enquanto que para Hamsun ou Lawrence, se situa na natureza interior do homem, independentemente de sua posição social ou de sua riqueza material.

2º A alienação abordada a partir da teologia ou da antropologia.

3º A alienação percebida como uma anomalia social.

Em Hegel, e mais tarde em Marx, a alienação dos povos ou das massas é uma etapa necessária no processo de adequação gradual entre a realidade e o absoluto. Em Hamsun e Lawrence, a alienação é um conceito todavia mais categórico; suas causas não residem nas estruturas sócio-econômicas ou políticas, mas sim no distanciamento em respeito às raízes da natureza (que não é, consequentemente, uma "boa" natureza). Não desaparecerá a alienação com a simples instauração de uma nova ordem sócio-econômica. Em Hamsun e Lawrence, assinala Doma, é o problema da desconexão, da interrupção, o que tem um traço essencial. A vida social tornou-se uniforme, desemboca na uniformidade, na automatização, na funcionalização extrema, enquanto que a natureza e o trabalho integrado no ciclo da vida não são uniformes e requerem em todo momento a mobilização de energias vitais. Existe imediatidade, enquanto que na vida urbana, industrial e moderna tudo está mediatizado, filtrado. Hamsun e Lawrence se rebelam contra ditos filtros.

Para Hamsun e, em menor medida, Lawrence as forças interiores contam para a "natureza". Com a chegada da modernidade, os homens estão determinados por fatores exteriores a eles, como são os convencionalismos, a luta política e a opinião pública, que oferecem um tipo de ilusão para a liberdade, quando em realidade conformam o cenário ideal para todo tipo de manipulações. Em um contexto tal, as comunidades acabam por se desvertebrar: cada indivíduo fica reduzido a uma esfera de atividade autônoma e em concorrência com outros indivíduos. Tudo isso acaba por derivar em debilidade, isolamento e hostilidade de todos contra todos.

Os sintomas dessa debilidade são a paixão pelas coisas superficiais, os vestidos refinados (Hamsun), signo de uma fascinação detestável pelo externo; isto é, formas de dependência, signos de vazio interior. O homem quebra por efeito de pressões exteriores. Indícios, por fim, da perda de vitalidade que leva à alienação.

No marco dessa quebra que supõe a vida urbana, o homem não encontra estabilidade, pois a vida nas cidades, nas metrópoles, é hostil a qualquer forma de estabilidade. O homem alienado já não pode retornar a sua comunidade, a suas raízes familiares. Assim Lawrence, com uma linguagem menos áspera porém acaso mais incisiva, escreve: "He was the eternal audience, the chorus, the spectator at the drama; in his own life he would have no drama" ("Ele era a audiência eterna, o coro, o espectador do drama; porém em sua própria vida, não haveria drama algum"); "He scarcely existed except through other people" ("Ele mal existia, salvo através de outras pessoas"); "He had come to a stability of nullification" ("Ele havia chegado a uma estabilidade de nulificação").

Em Hamsun e Lawrence, o Ent-wurzelung e o Unbehaustheit, o desenraizamento e a carência de lar, essa forma de viver sem fogo, constitui a grande tragédia da humanidade de fins do século XIX e princípios do XX. Para Hamsun o lar é vital para o homem. O homem deve ter lar. O lar de usa existência. Não se pode prescindir do lar sem provocar em si mesmo uma profunda mutilação. Mutilação de caráter psíquico, que conduz à histeria, ao nervosismo, ao desequilíbrio. Hamsun é, ao fim e ao cabo, um psicólogo. E nos diz: a consciência de si é não raro um sintoma de alienação. Schiller, em seu ensaio Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, assinalava que a concordância entre sentir e pensar era tangível, real e interior no homem natural, ao contrário que no homem cultivado que é ideal e exterior ("A concordância entre sensações e penamente existia outrora, porém na atualidade somente reside no plano ideal. Esta concordância não reside no homem, mas sim que existe exteriormente a ele; trata-se de uma idéia que deve ser realizada, não um fato de sua vida").

Schiller advoga por uma Überwindung (superação) de dita quebra através de uma mobilização total do indivíduo. O romantismo, por sua parte, considerará a reconciliação entre Ser (Sein) e consciência (Bewusstsein) como a forma de combater o reducionismo que trata de encurralar a consciência sob os grilhões do entendimento racional. O romantismo valorará, e inclusive sobrevalorará, ao "outro" em relação à razão (das Andere der Vernunft): percepção sensual, instinto, intuição, experiência mística, infância, sonho, vida bucólica. Wordsworth, romântico inglês, representante "rosa" de dita vontade de reconciliação entre Ser e consciência, defenderá a presença de "um coração que observe e aprove". Dostoiévski não compartilhará dita visão "rosa" e desenvolverá uma concepção "negra", em que o intelecto é sempre causa de mal, e o "possesso" um ser que tenderá a matar ou suicidar-se. No plano filosófico, tanto Klages como Lessing retomarão por sua conta esta visão "negra" do intelecto, aprofundando, não obstante, no veio do romantismo naturalista: para Klages, o espírito é inimigo da alma; para Lessing, o espírito é a contrapartida da vida, que surge da necessidade ("Geist ist das notgeborene Gegenspiel des Lebens").

dh-lawrence_000.jpgLawrence, fiel em certo sentido à tradição romântica inglesa de Wordsworth, crê em uma nova adequação do Ser e da consciência. Hamsun, mais pessimista, mais dostoievskiano (daí sua acolhida na Rússia e sua influência nos autores chamados ruralistas, como Vasili Belov e Valentín Rasputin), nunca deixará de pensar que desde que há consciência, há alienação. Desde que o homem começa a refletir sobre si mesmo, se desliga da continuidade que confere a natureza e à qual deveria estar sempre sujeito. Nos ensaios de Hamsun, encontramos reflexões sobre a modernidade literária. A vida moderna, escreveu, influencia, transforma, leva o homem a ser arrancado de seu destino, a ser apartado de seu ponto de chegada, de seus instintos, mais além do bem e do mal. A evolução literária do século XIX mostra uma febre, um desequilíbrio, um nervosismo, uma complicação extrema da psicologia humana. "O nervosismo geral (ambiente) se apossou de nosso ser fundamental e se fixou em nossa vida sentimental". O escritor mostra-se a nós assim, ao estilo de um Zola, como um "médico social" encarregado de diagnosticar os males sociais com o objetivo de erradicar o mal. O escritor, o intelectual, se embarca em uma tarefa missionária que trata de chegar a uma "correção política".

Frente a esta visão intelectual do escritor, a reprovação de Hamsun assinala a impossibilidade de definir objetivamente a realidade humana, pois um "homem objetivo" é, em si mesmo, uma monstruosidade (ein Unding), um ser construído como se tratasse de um mecanismo. Não podemos reduzir o homem a um compêndio de características, pois o homem é evolução, ambigüidade. O mesmo critério encontramos em Lawrence: "Now I absolutely flatly deny that I am a soul, or a body, or a mind, or an intelligente, or a brain, or a nervous system, or a bunch of glands, or any of the rest of these bits of me. The whole is greater than the part" ("Agora eu nego em absoluto que eu sou uma alma, ou um corpo, ou uma mente, ou uma inteligência, ou um cérebro, ou um sistema nervoso, ou um monte de glândulas, ou qualquer dos restos desses pedaços de mim. O todo é maior do que a parte"). Hamsun e Lawrence ilustram em suas obras a impossibilidade de teorizar ou absolutizar uma visão diáfana do homem. O homem não pode ser veículo de idéias pré-concebidas. Hamsun e Lawrence confirmam que os progressos na consciência de si mesmo não implicam em processos de emancipação espiritual, mas sim perdas, desperdício da vitaldiade, do tônus vital. Em seus romances, são as figuras firmes (isto é, as que estão enraizadas na terra) as que logram se manter, as que triunfam mais além dos golpes da sorte ou das circunstâncias desgraçadas.

Não se trata, em absoluto, de vidas bucólicas ou idílicas. Os protagonistas das novelas de Hamsun e Lawrence são penetrados ou atraídos pela modernidade, os quais, pese a sua irredutível complexidade, podem sucumbir, sofrem, padecem de um processo de alienação, porém também podem triunfar. E é precisamente aqui onde intervem a ironia de Hamsun ou a idéia da "Fênix" de Lawrence. A ironia de Hamsun perfura os ideais abstratos das ideologias modernas. Em Lawrence, a recorrente idéia da "Fênix" supõe uma certa dose de esperança: haverá ressurreição. É a idéia da Ave Fênix, que renasce de suas próprias cinzas.

O paganismo de Hamsun e Lawrence

Sua dita vontade de retorno a uma ontologia natural é fruto de um rechaço do intelectualismo racionalista, isso implica ao mesmo tempo uma contestação silenciosa à mensagem cristã.

Em Hamsun, vê-se com clareza o rechaço do puritanismo familiar (concretizado na figura de seu tio Han Olsen) e o rechaço ao culto protestante pelos livros sagrados; isto é, o rechaço explícito de um sistema de pensamento religioso que prima pelo saber livresco frente à experiência existencial (particularmente a do camponês autosuficiente, o Odalsbond dos campos noruegueses). O anticristianismo de Hamsun é, fundamentalmente, um a-cristianismo: não se propõe dúvidas religiosas ao estilo de Kierkegaard. Para Hamsun, o moralismo do protestantismo da era vitoriana (da era oscariana, diríamos para a Escandinávia) é simples e completa perda de vitalidade. Hamsun não aposta em experiência mística alguma.

Lawrence, por sua parte, percebe a ruptura de toda relação com os mistérios cósmicos. O cristianismo viria a reforçar dita ruptura, impediria sua cura, impossibilitaria sua cicatrização. Nesse sentido, a religiosidade européia ainda conservaria um poço de dito culto ao mistério cósmico: o ano litúrgico, o ciclo litúrgico (Páscoa, Pentecostes, Fogueira de São João, Todos os Santos, Natal, Festa dos Reis Magos). Porém inclusive isto foi agrilhoado como consequência de um processo de desencantamento e dessacralização, cujo começo arranca no momento mesm oda chegada da Igreja cristã primitiva e que se reforçará com os puritanismos e os jansenismos segregados pela Reforma. Os primeiros cristãos se apresentaram com o objetivo de separar o homem de seus ciclos cósmicos. A Igreja medieval, ao contrário, quis adequar-se, porém as Igrejas protestantes e conciliares posteriores expressaram com clareza sua vontade de regressar ao anti-cosmicismo do cristianismo primitivo. Nesse sentido, Lawrence escreve: "But now, after almost three thousand years, now that we are almost abstracted entirely from the rhythmic life of the seasons, birth and death and fruition, now we realize that such abstraction is neither bliss nor liberation, but nullity. It brings null inertia" ("Porém hoje, depois de três mil anos, depois de estarmos quase completamente abstraídos da vida rítmica das estações, do nascimento, da morte e da fecundidade, compreendemos ao fim que tal abstração não é nem uma benção nem uma liberação, mas sim puro nada. Não nos aporta outra coisa além de inércia"). Essa ruptura é consubstancial ao cristianismo das civilizações urbanas, onde não há abertura alguma para o cosmos. Cristo não é um Cristo cósmico, mas sim um Cristo reduzido ao papel de assistente social. Mircea Eliade, por sua parte, referiu-se a um "homem cósmico" aberto à imensidão do cosmos, pilar de todas as grandes religiões. Na perspectiva de Eliade, o sagrado é o real, o poder, a fonte de vida e da fertilidade. Eliade nos deixou escrito: "O desejo do homem religioso de viver uma vida no âmbito do sagrado é o desejo de viver na realidade objetiva".

A lição ideológica e política de Hamsun e Lawrence

No plano ideológico e político, no plano da Weltanschauung, as obras de Hamsun e de Lawrence tiveram um impacto bastante considerável. Hamsun foi lido por todos, mais além da polaridade comunismo/fascismo. Lawrence foi etiquetado como "fascista" a título póstumo, entre outros por Bertrand Russel que chegou inclusive a referir-se a sua "madness": "Lawrence was a suitable exponent of the Nazi cult of insanity" ("Lawrence foi um expoente típico do culto nazista à loucura"). Frase tão lapidária como simplista. As obras de Hamsun e de Lawrence, segundo Akos Doma, se inscrevem em um contexto quádruplo: o da filosofia da vida, o dos avatares do individualismo, o da tradição filosófica vitalista, e o do anti-utopismo e do irracionalismo.

3941.jpg1º. A Filosofia da Vida (Lebensphilosophie) é um conceito de luta, que opõe a "vivacidade da vida real" à rigidez dos convencionalismos, aos fogos de artifício inventados pela civilização urbana para tratar de orientar a vida para um mundo desencantado. A filosofia da vida se manifesta sob múltiplas faces no contexto do pensamento europeu e toma realmente corpo a partir das reflexões de Nietzsche sobre a Leiblichkeit (corporeidade).

2 º O Individualismo. A antropologia hamsuniana postula a absoluta unidade de cada indivíduo, de cada pessoa, porém rechaça o isolamento desse indivíduo ou pessoa de todo contexto comunitário, familiar ou carnal: situa à pessoa de uma maneira interativa, em um lugar preciso. A ausência de introspecção especulativa, de consciência e de intelectualismo abstrato tornam incompatível o individualismo hamsuniano com a antropologia segregada pelo Iluminismo. Para Hamsun, sem embargo, não se combate o individualismo iluminista sermoneando sobre um coletivismo de contornos ideológicos. O renascimento do homem autêntico passa por uma reativação dos recursos mais profundos de sua alma e de seu corpo. A soma quantitativa e mecânica é uma insuficiência calamitosa. Em consequência, a acusação de "fascismo" em relação a Lawrence e Hamsun não se sustenta.

3º O Vitalismo tem em conta todos os acontecimentos da vida e exclui qualquer hierarquização de base racial, social, etc. As oposições próprias do vitalismo são: afirmação da vida/negação da vida; sadio/enfermo; orgânico/mecânico. Daí, que não possam ser reconduzidas a categorias sociais, a categorias políticas convencionais, etc. A vida é uma categoria fundamental apolítica, pois todos os homens sem distinção estão submetidos a ela.

4º O "irracionalismo" lançado sobre Hamsun e Lawrence, assim como seu anti-utopismo, tem sua base em uma revolta contra a "viabilidade" (feasibility; Machbarkeit), contra a idéia de perfectibilidade infinita (que encontramos também sob uma forma "orgânica" nos românticos ingleses da primeira geração). A idéia de viabilidade choca diretamente com a essência biológica da natureza. De fato, a idéia de viabilidade é a essência do niilismo, como apontou o filósofo italiano Emanuele Severino. Para Severino, a viabilidade deriva de uma vontade de completar o mundo apreendendo-o como um devir (porém não como um devir orgânico incontrolável). Uma vez o processo de "acabamento" tendo concluído, o devir detem bruscamente seu curso. Uma estabilidade geral se impõe na Terra e esta estabilidade forçada é descrita como um "bem absoluto". Desde a literatura, Hamsun e Lawrence, precederam assim a filósofos contemporâneos como o citado Emanuele Severino, Robert Spaemann (com sua crítica do funcionalismo), Ernst Behler (com sua crítica da "perfectibilidade infinita") ou Peter Koslowski. Estes filósofos, fora da Alemanha ou Itália, são muito pouco conhecidos pelo grande público. Sua crítica profunda dos fundamentos das ideologias dominantes, provoca inevitavelmente o rechaço da solapada inquisição que exerce seu domínio em Paris.

Nietzche, Hamsun, e Lawrence, os filósofos vitalistas ou, se preferível, "antiviabilistas", ao insistir sobre o caráter ontológico da biologia humana, se opuseram à idéia ocidental e niilista da viabilidade absoluta de qualquer coisa; isto é, da inexistência ontológica de todas as coisas, de qualquer realidade. Bom número deles - Hamsun e Lawrence incluídos - nos chamam a atenção sobre o presente eterno de nossos corpos, sobre nossa própria corporeidade (Leiblichkeit), pois nós não podemos conformar nossos corpos, em contraposição a essas vozes que nos querem convencer das bondades da ciência-ficção.

A viabilidade é, pois, o "hybris" que chegou a seu ápice e que conduz à febre, à vacuidade, à pressa, ao solipsismo, e ao isolamento. De Heidegger a Severino, a filosofia européia se ocupou sobre a catástrofe causada pela dessacralização do Ser e pelo desencantamento do mundo. Se os recursos profundos e misteriosos da Terra ou do homem são considerados como imperfeições indignas do interesse do teólogo ou do filósofo, se tudo aquilo que foi pensado de maneira abstrata ou fabricado mais além dos recursos (ontológicos) se encontra sobrevalorizado, então, efetivamente, não pode nos estranhar que o mundo perca toda sacralidade, todo valor. Hamsun e Lawrence foram os escritores que nos fizeram viver com intensidade essa constante, acima até mesmo de alguns filósofos que também deploraram a falsa rota empreendida pelo pensamento ocidental há séculos. Heidegger e Severiano no marco da filosofia, Hamsun e Lawrence no da criação literária, trataram de restituir a sacralidade no mundo e revalorizar as forças que se esconem no interior do homem: desde esse ponto de vista, estamos diante de pensadores ecológicos na mais profunda acepção do termo. O oikos nos abre as portas do sagrado, das forças misteriosas e incontroláveis, sem fatalismos e sem falsa humildade. Hamsun e Lawrence, em definitivo, anunciaram a dimensão geofilosófica do pensamento que nos ocupou durante toda essa universidade de verão. Uma aproximação sucinta a suas obras se fazia absolutamente necessária no temário de 1996.


Tradução por Raphael Machado

vendredi, 26 novembre 2010

Revue "Identidad" (Espagne): Entretien avec Robert Spieler

Un grand entretien avec Robert Spieler publié dans la revue espagnole Identidad

Illustration art 3 RS.jpg

« Les spéculateurs et la finance internationale sont évidemment coupables dans l’émergence de cette crise, mais le premier responsable est le libéralisme mondialiste, forcément mondialiste et cosmopolite… »

20101111181859-portada.gifNous publions ici le texte de l’entretien accordé par Robert Spieler, Délégué général de la Nouvelle Droite Populaire, à la revue espagnole Identidad…

 

Identidad : Robert Spieler, parlez nous de votre carrière politique. 

 

Robert Spieler : Adhérent d’Ordre Nouveau, à sa fondation en 1969, j’ai rejoint le Parti des Forces Nouvelles (PFN) après la dissolution d’O.N. en 1973. J’ai été adhérent du GRECE et actif dans les milieux de la Nouvelle Droite. J’ai créé en 1981, lors de l’arrivée de la gauche au pouvoir, Forum d’Alsace, qui était le plus important club d’opposition d’Alsace. A la demande de Jean-Pierre Stirbois, j’ai rejoint le Front national en 1985. Je fus élu député et conseiller régional d’Alsace en 1986. J’ai quitté en 1989 le Front national dont je ne supportais pas l’ambiance de cour orientale, pour créer le mouvement régionaliste Alsace d’Abord dont je fus le Président jusqu’en 2008 et qui obtint jusqu’à 1O% des voix aux élections en Alsace. Je fus élu conseiller régional pendant 18 ans et conseiller municipal de Strasbourg pendant 12 ans En 2008, convaincu que la situation dramatique de la France exigeait le rassemblement de toutes les forces de la Résistance nationale et européenne, j’ai contribué à créer la Nouvelle Droite Populaire, dont je suis le délégué général.

 

Id – Pouvez-vous nous définir les objectifs de la NDP ?

 

R.S. : La NDP veut rassembler les forces nationalistes et identitaires, dans le respect des différences de sensibilités, avec pour objectif d’organiser la nécessaire Reconquista.

 

Nous défendons nos identités régionales, nationales et européennes, et voulons une Europe indépendante et puissante, fidèle à ses racines helléniques, celtiques, germaniques et chrétiennes. L’Europe de la puissance que nous espérons n’a bien entendu rien à voir avec l’Europe des nains de Bruxelles. Nous voulons aussi rompre avec l’ultra libéralisme mondialiste, destructeur des emplois européens, et créer une zone économique et commerciale protégée, partenaire de la Russie. Nous devons aussi en finir avec les tutelles étrangères qui asservissent notre continent. La construction d’une puissance militaire et diplomatique européenne implique que les pays européens doivent quitter l’OTAN.

 

Id - Le 9 mai, a eu lieu à Paris une manifestation nationaliste et identitaire qui a rencontré un grand succès.

 

R.S. : La NDP a largement contribué au succès de la manifestation nationaliste et identitaire du 9 mai 2010 qui a réuni à Paris plus d’un millier de militants très déterminés. Il s’agissait d’une première initiative de rassemblement dans la rue des forces nationalistes et identitaires. Nous allons poursuivre dans cette voie. Nul doute qu’en 2011, nous serons trois fois plus nombreux.

 

Id - Que penser de la burka ? L’interdire, ne pas l’interdire ?

 

R.S. : J’ai toujours dit que le problème n’était pas un morceau de tissu, mais ce qu’il recouvre. Ce n’est pas la burka qu’il faut interdire, c’est l’invasion islamique de l’Europe. La Reconquista passe par le départ d’une majorité des immigrés non européens, fussent-ils de nationalité française, espagnole, etc… La nationalité leur a été accordée sous la pression des lobbys antinationaux, contre la volonté de nos peuples. La nationalité leur sera retirée, sauf à ceux qui le méritent, le jour où le Peuple aura pris le pouvoir.

 

Id - L’immigration est-elle un problème religieux ou ethnique ?

 

R.S. : Le problème est ethnique avant d’être religieux. Si les masses africaines qui nous envahissent étaient chrétiennes, cela ne diminuerait pas la menace qui pèse sur la substance même de l’Europe. Ceci dit, l’islam, par sa vision totalitaire représente une redoutable menace qu’il faut impérativement conjurer. L’Europe est aujourd’hui dans un terrible état de faiblesse. L’effondrement démographique de pays tels l’Espagne, l’Italie, l’Allemagne mais aussi la Russie va entraîner la perte, d’ici trente ans, de dizaines de millions de naissances européennes et donc de millions de combattants pour la Reconquista. Seule une révolution nationale et européenne peut redonner à nos peuples l’énergie vitale qui permettra d’entamer le chemin de la renaissance.

 

Id - Sommes nous à la veille de confrontations ethniques ?

 

R.S. : En France, ce sont des centaines de quartiers de nos villes qui sont occupés par les envahisseurs. La police a pour consigne de ne pas les provoquer et de les laisser agir à leur guise dans les zones qu’ils contrôlent. Quand des policiers ou des citoyens réagissent, ils sont impitoyablement persécutés par une justice massivement collaborationniste. Cela fait deux mois, par exemple, qu’un vieux monsieur de 73 ans est en prison, dans le sud de la France, pour avoir tiré sans grosses conséquences sur des Roms qui s’étaient  introduits dans sa maison. Sommes-nous à la veille de confrontations ethniques généralisées ? Certainement. Ces confrontations se produiront quand les autorités voudront reprendre le contrôle des quartiers occupés. Mais ces confrontations débuteront plutôt en Espagne, en Italie ou en Autriche qu’en France ou en Allemagne, deux pays soumis à une véritable dictature de l’ordre moral imposé par les lobbys et leurs porte-serviettes, et dont les citoyens subissent dès leur plus jeune âge un véritable dressage mental.

 

Id - Qui sont les responsables de la crise économique et financière ?

 

R.S. : Les spéculateurs et la finance internationale sont évidemment coupables dans l’émergence de cette crise, mais le premier responsable est le libéralisme mondialiste, forcément mondialiste et cosmopolite.

 

Il faut sortir de la logique ultralibérale et ériger des frontières protectrices autour d’une Europe qui serait partenaire de la Russie. L’importation massive de produits fabriqués en Extrême-Orient dans des pays qui ne respectent aucune norme sociale détruit massivement nos emplois. Il faut réindustrialiser l’Europe. La finance doit être soumise à la volonté politique, et non l’inverse. La banque centrale européenne, qui aujourd’hui n’a de comptes à rendre à personne doit être mise sous tutelle.

 

Id - Vous défendez, contre le jacobinisme les identités régionales…

 

R.S. : La France est le pays le plus jacobin, le plus centralisé d’Europe. Les hauts fonctionnaires parisiens dirigent tout. Il est tout à fait anormal que l’ouverture ou la fermeture d’une maternité soit décidée par un fonctionnaire nommé par l’Etat, et non par la Région concernée. J’ai été conseiller régional d’Alsace durant 18 ans et ai pu mesurer les limites de la pseudo- régionalisation française. Pour donner un seul exemple, les Régions disposent du droit de financer et de construire des lycées, mais n’ont aucune autorité sur le contenu des programmes ni le choix des directeurs d’établissements. Quel intérêt y a-t-il de pouvoir choisir la couleur de la moquette ? Les régions devraient être maîtresses dans les domaines de l’identité régionale, de l’enseignement des langues régionales, de la politique d’aménagement du territoire, de développement économique, de préservation de l’environnement, etc…

 

Les Français envient beaucoup les Espagnols, les Italiens et les Allemands pour l’autonomie dont disposent leurs Régions.

 

Id - Y a-t-il contradiction entre la défense des identités alsacienne, française, européenne ?

 

R.S. : Etre Alsacien, Français et Européen, ce sont trois facettes qui ne sont absolument pas contradictoires de l’identité. Certains se sentent plus régionalistes, d’autres plus nationalistes, certains plus européens.  Nationalistes, régionalistes et partisans de l’Europe de la puissance sont destinés à combattre ensemble l’ennemi commun. Une seule condition : le respect de nos différences.

 

Id - Vous prônez l’axe Paris-Berlin-Moscou ?

 

R.S. : En tant que partisan de l’Europe de la puissance, je pense en effet que l’avenir de l’Europe passe par l’axe Paris-Berlin-Moscou. Sur les plans militaires et diplomatiques, l’Europe est une vassale des Etats-Unis. Il est indispensable que les pays européens quittent l’Otan pour construire une défense européenne partenaire de la Russie. L’Europe n’est en rien concernée par les conflits du Proche-Orient, de l’Afghanistan ou de l’Iran. Que je sache, les Iraniens, les Palestiniens et même les Talibans n’ont aucune responsabilité dans l’invasion que subit l’Europe. La guerre de libération doit être menée sur notre sol, pas en Afghanistan. Et puis, les soldats européens n’ont pas vocation à mourir ni pour Tel Aviv, ni pour Wall Street.

 

Id - Vous êtes un des fondateurs, aux côtés d’autres dirigeants de mouvements européens, de l’association Villes contre islamisation.

 

R.S. : Je suis très motivé à entretenir d’excellentes relations avec les mouvements européens frères : notamment les Flamands du Vlaams Belang, les Catalans de Plataforma Catalunya, les Autrichiens du Fpoe, les Italiens de la Lega Nord, les Allemands de Pro-Köln et bien sûr, les nationalistes espagnols représentés par mon ami Alberto Torresano dans toutes les manifestations de la Résistance en Europe. Cette collaboration des forces identitaires européennes est plus qu’importante. Elle est vitale. Seuls, nous sommes faibles. Unis, nous sommes forts.

 

Id - Un mot aux lecteurs d’Identidad.

 

R.S. : Je salue les valeureux combattants réunis autour de l’excellente revue Identidad et suis fier d’être un de vos camarades.

 

Site de la revue Identidad : cliquez ici

Blog de Robert Spieler : http://robert-spieler.hautetfort.com/