Eloge de l'enchantement - Notes sur les Romantiques allemands

Luc-Olivier d’Algange:

Eloge de l'enchantement

Notes sur les Romantiques allemands

Le romantisme allemand fut à la fois une quête et une humeur. La quête romantique, au moins dans ses préférences,  semble mieux connue que son humeur. Par des ouvrages didactiques, parfois hostiles, plus souvent hélas que par les œuvres, nous nous sommes formés, en France, une idée du Romantisme allemand comme d'une quête de l'irrationnel, d'un culte de la Nature et des forces obscures, d'un environnement de brumes et de forêts sur fond d'orchestrations wagnériennes. Nous savons de ces romantiques qu’ils écrivirent des romans d'initiation, qui s'aventurent du côté de l'orient et des arcanes du monde invisible. Les mieux informés, enfin, savent que les romantiques allemands furent aussi des philologues,  des naturalistes, des mythologues qui eurent le souci de recueillir des contes et des légendes et d'esquisser une méditation sur la communauté de destin des Allemands.

La quête romantique, toutefois, ne se laisse pas distinguer de son humeur, qui ne se trouve que dans les œuvres, et relève d'une réalité plus subtile, plus impondérable que les « notions » dont la collecte peut satisfaire l'universitaire mais laisse ne suspens celui qui voudrait, lui aussi, « romantiser » avec les Romantiques, faire siennes leurs aspirations et leurs découvertes; ce qui est sans doute la seule manière de lire qui vaille mieux que l'ignorance.

Avant d'être une théorie, un système, s'il le fut jamais, le Romantisme allemand fut une façon d'être. Pour savants qu'ils eussent été, férus de toute les sciences de leur temps non moins que d'excellents humanistes, connaissant souvent non seulement le grec, le latin, les langues romanes, mais encore le sanscrit et l’hébreu, pour encyclopédiques que fussent leurs curiosités ( ne méconnaissons pas tout ce par quoi l’œuvre de Novalis, par exemple, relève encore du dix-huitième siècle), les Romantiques n’en tinrent pas moins leur modi essendi, leurs façons d’être, leur présence au monde, comme supérieures aux modi intellegendi, aux « modes de connaissance », à l’intelligence didactique ou critique.

A ces poètes-métaphysiciens, qui revendiquèrent la phrase de Goethe : «  Je hais tout savoir qui ne contribue pas à rendre ma vie plus intense », toute science était vaine qui ne fût ordonnée à l’être, autrement dit à une connaissance supérieure, à une sapience à la fois sensible et intelligible qui se laisse traduire non par des systèmes et des doctrines, mais par une qualité d’élégance et d’enchantement, de noblesse et de légèreté à laquelle les esprits pompeux et lourds ne peuvent rien comprendre et qu’ils tiendront toujours, à juste titre, pour ennemie.

Novalis, qui fut bien le contraire d’un esprit chagrin, Novalis qui fut tant aimé des dieux qu’il mourut à l’âge de trente ans, reprochait précisément à la seconde partie du Wilhelm Meister de Goethe ce retour au sérieux, à la vie domestique, au savoir planifié, cette trahison de l’intensité et de la joie, qui éclate, au profit du bonheur qui dure et qui s’étale. Rien n’est plus difficile à définir qu’une humeur, elle est ce « je ne sais quoi », ce « presque rien » dont parlait Fénelon, qui nous emporte. On peut, sans trop prendre le risque de se tromper, la dire juvénile, quand bien même Jean-Paul Richter en perpétua toutes les vertus jusqu’au grand âge). On peut aussi, en hommage à Antoine Blondin, la dire vagabonde. La Lucinde de Schlegel, les Mémoires d’un propre à rien de Joseph von Eichendorf, annoncèrent la couleur : elle sera d’un bleu léger, d’une révolte sans pathos, souvent encline au libertinage, où le sens de la rencontre, du rêve et de l’ivresse avive le monde, délie les langues, dénoue les peurs, et nous précipite, avec impatience, vers le mystère des êtres et des choses.

Ces vertus, chères aux premiers Romantiques allemands, sont d’un genre viril. Elles se nomment liberté et courage, amitié chevaleresque et fidélité, et correspondent assez peu à l’image du Romantique se tordant les mains au clair de lune. L’humeur romantique se laisse aussi approcher par ce que Gobineau dit des « Calenders » dans son roman Les Pléiades, qui fut sans doute largement influencé par les romans de Jean-Paul Richter, et en particulier par Titan, - cet immense entrelacs de songes, d’aventures et de bonheurs. Si la peine et la mélancolie des temps qui nous abandonnent, la nostalgie et la déréliction, la folie même de ceux que frappe la foudre d’Apollon, la tragédie et la mort ne sont pas absente des œuvres romantiques, leur humeur, à qui fréquente leurs œuvres, fut d’emblée à la fantaisie, à l’audace, au rire et à l’ironie.

L’ombre et la lumière, au demeurant, n’existent que l’une par l’autre. Pour les Romantiques allemands, précurseurs, nous y reviendrons, de la logique du tiers-inclus, le Bien et le Mal ne sont pas des entités massive, irréductibles l’une à l’autre qu’affectionnent les esprits schématiques ; les crépuscules contiennent les aurores, et la Nuit dont Novalis écrivit les Hymnes, laisse se réfugier en elle, comme un éclat de lumière dans la prunelle de l’Aimée, tous les secrets du jour.

Il y aurait un livre entier à écrire sur l’ironie romantique. Cette ironie n’est point le ricanement de la certitude ou de la supériorité, l’antiphrase didactique et condescendante de Voltaire, mais une reconnaissance de la nature double, visible-invisible, du réel. Tout sens apparent divulgue, à celui qui s’y rend attentif, un sens caché. Toute apparence est transparence. Le monde n’est pas cette prison de convenances ou cette autre prison que serait une liberté dépourvue de sens. Le monde nous parle. Pour les Romantiques allemand, le langage que le monde nous adresse à travers les cristaux de neige, les murmures des feuillages ou les rumeurs de la mer n’est pas radicalement différents de celui dont nous autres humains usons et mésusons à loisir. Cette similitude, cette parenté est, pour les Romantiques allemands, une leçon d’humilité et de prodiges. Elle témoigne d’un accord possible entre le monde et l’homme, elle annonce des solitudes immensément peuplées d’âmes.

« La nature ne montre pas, ne dissimule pas, mais fait signe » écrivait Héraclite. Le Grand-Œuvre des Romantiques allemands sera le déchiffrement de ces signes, - déchiffrement dont l’humour, comme en témoignent le Contes de Hoffmann, n’est pas exclu. Tant qu’il est possible de rire, à travers l’herméneutique elle-même, rien n’est perdu. Les Romantiques allemands sont d’autant moins obscurantistes que l’interprétation qu’ils proposent des apparences et des signes, des textes sacrés (dont font partie les œuvres des poètes) est infinie. La sapience romantique est aussi peu administrative que possible. Le jeu de symboles et des correspondances, ne s’y trouve ni réglementé, ni instrumentalisé.

On pourrait dire, dans un apparent paradoxe, que ce qui sauve les Romantiques allemands de l’obscurantisme, c’est précisément cette défiance pour le rationalisme. Le culte de la « déesse Raison », dont on connaît les ravages, leur fut largement étranger. Le fou n’est pas celui auquel la raison fait défaut, mais bien celui qui a tout perdu sauf la raison. Toutefois, se défier de la raison n'interdit point d'être logicien ni de faire de la logique un instrument de spéculation et de prospection. L'accusation d'obscurantisme habituellement portée contre eux tient d'autant moins que ceux qui la formulent furent bien souvent les héritiers ou les instigateurs du totalitarisme moderne. Que le réel soit dialogique, pour reprendre le mot de Gilbert Durand, voire, polyphonique et gradué, - et avec une grande part d'imprévisible, - qu'il y eût une interdépendance entre la connaissance, celui qui connaît et la chose connue, que les ombres soient colorées et nos âmes chatoyantes et « tigrées » pour reprendre l'admirable formule de Victor Hugo, que les frontières entre la réalité et le songe soient indécises, que les métaphores soient à l'œuvre, qui changent les feuillages en serpents d'or, les amoureuses en sirènes, les arbres en patriarches, que les dieux puissent surgir et transparaître, que la parole soit donnée aux hiboux ou aux chats, que la différence entre les fées et les libellules puisse n'être, en certains cas, que de pure convenance, tout cela qui appartient au patrimoine imaginaire, ne reste point sans ouvrir des perspectives d'avenir, de nouvelles logiques et de neufs enchantements.

Peu encline à la linéarité, on ne saurait dire si la pensée romantique fut davantage tournée vers le passé ou vers l'avenir. Bien plus que rectiligne, la pensée romantique est encline à l'arborescence, à la sporade, à la spirale. « Grains de pollen », les pensées se dispersent, mais chacune d'elle tient en elle, mystérieusement, le ressouvenir de son origine. Ainsi, les Romantiques allemands ne furent ni progressistes, ni passéistes, ni excessivement confiant dans le « sens de l'histoire », ni adeptes d'une pure théorie de la décadence. Issus d'une tradition de l'intériorité, d'une spiritualité « paraclétique » illustrée par Angélus Silesius, Franz von Baader ou Jacob Böhme, ils répugnaient à se croire enchainés à quelque déterminisme historique: l'Histoire, avec des bonheurs divers, était en eux.

Certains critiques, non sans pertinence, ont distingué, chez les Romantiques allemands, deux courants, l'un « révolutionnaire » et quelque peu napoléonien, et l'autre, « réactionnaire», tourné vers l'anamnesis, l'ésotérisme, la recherche des fondements de « l'Allemagne secrète », ainsi que le nommera Stefan George. Ces deux courants, toutefois, s'opposent moins qu'il n'y paraît. Ce qui paraît juste, c'est de discerner un glissement, qui est moins d’ordre politique que mythologique. Peu à peu s'éloignant du dix-huitième siècle, de l'euphorie d'une Révolution vue de loin, Prométhée cède la place à Hermès. A la logique du voleur de feu (qui, par Hegel, est aux soubassements du marxisme qui voit en Prométhée la figure tutélaire des révolutions) succède le « feu de roue » des Alchimistes, les feux tournants de l'athanor, qui sont à la fois l'âme et le monde, l’intériorité et l'extériorité.

A la marche forcée du sens de l'Histoire, Novalis, Chamisso, Jean-Paul, préfèreront la promenade où, quelquefois, et comme par inadvertance, le vagabondage se change en pèlerinage, où la simple inclination au voyage devient une quête du Graal. On pourrait dire que le courant « hermésien » de l'Encyclopédie de Novalis s'oppose au courant prométhéen de la phénoménologie de l'Esprit de Hegel, comme, en retour, la volonté planifiante, étatique, hostile à la bigarrure du monde, s'oppose à la contemplation, au recueillement. Les choses, bien sûr, ne sont pas aussi simple, et il y eut bien un « hégélianisme de droite » qui, de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam à Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron, tenta de donner à la procession hégélienne de l'Esprit une dimension verticale, et, pour tout dire, gnostique. Force est cependant de reconnaître qu'en sa postérité, comme le sut montrer Michel Le Bris, l'œuvre de Hegel engendra les philosophies et les idéologies les plus closes, poussant la raison triomphante à la folie et les hommes à la servitude.

Paradoxalement, ce passage de Prométhée à Hermès, du rationalisme à une sorte de sapience holistique, ajoute à la pensée romantique une finesse questionnante, un scepticisme, un « je ne sais quoi » de pyrrhonien qui fera toujours défaut à la lignée rivale, demeurée fidèle à l'hybris du voleur de feu.

Il y a davantage de question que de réponses dans les «grains de pollen » de Novalis, et si peu d'acrimonie et de ressentiment, que son œuvre nous apparaît aujourd'hui venir d'un autre monde. Voici belle lurette que les hommes n'écrivent plus sans haïr, au point que bien souvent  la haine, le dépit, la rancœur semblent les seuls moteurs de leur écriture. Le fiel est ce qui demeure lorsque les enchantements ont disparu.

Au-delà la de leurs diversités qui sont grandes et qui rendent bien difficiles d'en parler en quelques pages, les Romantiques allemands, des plus sombres aux plus clairs, des plus rieurs aux plus tourmentés, des plus optimistes aux plus pessimistes, sont tous des hommes, et des femmes, de l'enchantement. Ces enchantements peuvent, eux aussi, être lumineux ou ténébreux, tels de douces brises sur la joue ou de noirs ensorcellements, des rencontres éblouies avec des paysages italiens, de suaves ensommeillements dans les bras des amantes ou des combats furieux contre des dragons; ces enchantements peuvent être austères ou dionysiaques, nous pencher de longues nuits sur des grimoires ou nous lancer dans de folles fêtes de fleurs ou de flamme; ces enchantements peuvent nous perdre ou nous sauver, peu importe, nous porter au-devant du monde sensible, dans les fracas, ou nous rassembler dans le silence d'une méditation mathématique, ils n'en demeurent pas moins la ressource commune à la tous les Romantiques allemands, leur irréfutable singularité, leur étrangeté dans un monde aussi désenchanté que le nôtre.

Nous sommes désormais si loin de tout enchantement que certains de nos intellectuels ont fait de l'enchantement l'ennemi par excellence: il facile de se faire un ennemi de qui ne règne plus ! Véritable arrière-garde, ces « intellectuels » (par antiphrase) persistent à batailler contre ce qui ne demeure plus qu'aux marges extrême de la vie. Dans ce monde planifié, rationalisé, médiatisé, dans ce technocosme surveillé, informatisé, où jamais la part du secret ne fut si rabougrie, ils voudraient encore nous persuader que l'enchantement est ce Mal à l'origine de tous les maux, ce germe du totalitarisme qu'il faut écraser avant qu'il ne s'éploie. Le désenchantement, la démystification, la déconstruction sont leurs grandes affaires, tout ce qui est numineux ou sacré est leur adversaire, comme si la grande « ruée vers le bas » et vers l'horreur n'était pas le démocratique produit du nihilisme et de l'hybris de la volonté, de la raison  idolâtrée, planificatrice. Comme si de ne s'émerveiller de rien et de dénigrer toute chose, les hommes s'en trouvaient être meilleurs !

C'est méconnaître que l'enchantement est d'abord ce qui nous dénoue, ce qui nous surprend, ce qui sollicite notre hospitalité. C'est ne pas voir que l'enchantement est une « approche », ou, plus exactement, cette émotion qui survient au moment de l'approche, - à cette seconde magique où nous nous délivrons de nous-mêmes, de notre narcissisme individuel ou collectif, pour recevoir du monde un signe de bienvenue.

Voir dans l'enchantement un Mal est un étrange désespoir et ce désespoir mélangé d'optimisme historique ne laisse pas d'être inquiétant. Les Romantiques allemands pressentirent ce monde déserté des Anges et des Dieux, ce monde sans messagers, où plus rien n'advient de l'autre côté des apparences. Mais si plus rien ne doit advenir, alors les apparences ne sont plus des apparences, mais des murs de néant. D'où l’élan romantique vers les prodiges, qui sont en nous tout autant que dans le monde: « Il est étrange, écrit Novalis que l'homme intérieur n'ait été considéré que d'une manière si misérable et qu'on en ait traité que si stupidement. La soi-disant psychologie est aussi une de ces larves qui ont usurpé dans le sanctuaire la place réservée aux images véritables des dieux... Qui sait quelles unions merveilleuses, quelles générations étonnantes sont encore renfermées en nous-mêmes ? »

L'entendement humain apparaît aux Romantiques allemands comme un instrument prodigieux et méconnu, un stradivarius dont on se servirait comme d'un tambourin avant de le laisser brisé et à l'abandon. Refuser l'enchantement, c'est ainsi refuser non seulement le poème, le chant des sirènes, mais la spéculation elle-même, l'Intellect dans ses plus hautes œuvres. Il y a, certes, un danger dans le chant, comme dans la pensée, on peut s'y perdre mais ce danger est le propre de l'humain et sans doute n'est-il point si grand que le danger que recèle, pour la beauté de la vie, le culte bourgeois de la sécurité à tout prix.

Par ailleurs, l'enchantement romantique est fort loin de sa caricature. Il n'est point cet abandon aux forces de la vie et de la nature, ce panthéisme primaire, cette passivité végétale ou infrahumaine, ce culte de la Magna Mater ou ce fondamentalisme écologique que ses adversaires dépeignent avec complaisance : « Bien des gens, écrit Novalis, s'attachent à la nature, parce que, comme des enfants gâtés, ils craignent leur père et cherchent un refuge auprès de leur mère ». S'il importe d'apprendre à manier la baguette magique de l'analogie, ce n'est pas au détriment de la déduction, mais en contraste avec elle, sachant que « les contrastes sont des analogies inversées ». Ainsi, « la vie des dieux est mathématique » mais « c'est en l'humain que se manifeste l'empire des cieux ».

Pour le Romantique, la science chante comme les nombres et rien n'est véritablement abstrait. « Chaque descente du regard en soi-même est, en même temps, une ascension, une assomption, un regard vers l'extérieur véritable ». L'enchantement est ce point, cette frontière incertaine où le monde intérieur et le monde extérieur se rencontrent. Nous pouvons choisir de lutter contre le monde, de le prendre à bras le corps, de le défier, mais, en dernière instance, cette joute est nuptiale. Entre l'élan prométhéen et la sagesse d'Hermès, il est un accord possible, que Novalis, avec génie, résume en une seule phrase: « Nous ne nous comprendrons jamais entièrement; mais nous ferons et nous pouvons bien plus que nous comprendre ».

Luc-Olivier d'Algange

Charlie Hebdo Rides Again

Charlie Hebdo Rides Again

 

Israel Shamir

 

Ex: https://www.unz.com

The French President stepped on a rake for the second time, and was duly slapped in the face by its long handle. French products went off the shelf in the Arab and Turkish shops; heads chopped off in the midst of pandemics; a lot of animosity, anger, smacking of a civil war. Vous l’avez voulu, you asked for it, Emmanuel Macron! We saw it in 2015, why did you push “Replay”? Anyone can step on a rake once, but to repeat this mistake? It is not a sign of a smart guy, unless this response is exactly what he wanted.

Macron is surely a smart guy. He had a few good practical reasons to provoke French Muslims. Not an ideological man, he wanted to steal the right-wing electorate of Mme Le Pen. They are known for hating foreigners, first of all the large Muslim population of the republic. The Muslims do not fit the self-image of a Frenchman, the slim man in beret and mackintosh with a baguette under his arm. It was not hard to make this Muslim population angry, and then to manifest Macron’s iron fist in dealing with them, and voila! the nationalist voters are in the pocket of the French president.

The replay was jumpstarted by Charlie Hebdo. This small satirical magazine of little artistic value usually publishes bad taste cartoons of public loo wall quality. It wouldn’t survive but for grants and government subsidies. It is so minor that it would not be noticed either but for the mainstream media that bring its message to the last immigrant banlieue. Now they have republished some nasty cartoons aimed at the Prophet Muhammad. The immigrants and their children didn’t enjoy this premeditated insult to their faith. Think about having a good laugh over the Holocaust in the presence of a Jewish person and you’ll understand. Even peaceful and calm people dislike being offended. However, the publication was of little importance, as opposed to Macron’s public and well-covered support for it. He positively celebrated this publication and added a few well-chosen and offensive phrases against Islam. This was the ringer.

Tartuffe would be proud of Macron who declared that Charlie Hebdo is the true carrier of the French Republican spirit and its love for unbridled freedom of speech. It would be bad enough if true, but it is not. France, and the entire world, is now in the middle of a huge offensive against free speech. Facebook banishes accounts and removes posts, Google shadow bans sites, the venerable Unz.com has been both banned on Facebook and shadow-banned on Google. President Trump has his tweets removed or appended with a health warning on Twitter. The proposed new hate law of Scotland would make it a crime to express opinions likely to cause discomfort even within the four walls of your own home. For a long time it has been a crime to say “hateful things” in the public space, and in the UK there are a hundred thousand “hate crimes” a year committed, according to the thought police.

France is leading the assault against free speech. French Writer Hervé Ryssen Jailed for Criticizing Jews;French Court Sentenced Alain Soral to Pay Jewish Organization $158,500 for Re-Releasing 128-Year-Old Book – say the recent headlines. The new French law bans “hate speech” on social media. The law obliges platforms and search engines to remove offensive content – including religious bigotry – within 24 hours or risk a fine of up to €1.25m. This law, and other hate laws are applied in defence of Jews, but strangely do not defend Muslim or Christian sensibilities.

The chief editor of Charlie Hebdo is aware of this discriminatory order and approves of it. A Spiked journalist reports on meeting him: “Biard[the editor] is not in favour of unregulated speech. He supports French laws that outlaw Holocaust denial, and is sympathetic towards laws on hate speech. He approves of prosecution of French comedian Dieudonné, who has been arrested numerous times for saying the Shoah wasn’t important.” You may not speak against Jews, but attacking the faith of poor Muslim immigrants is perfectly all right, for they are people of no importance, and they should learn who is their boss and what is the true faith of their new homeland (a hint: it is not Christianity). If they make trouble it is even better for they can be hit hard.

Theoretically, it is illegal in France to insult Muslim (or Christian) beliefs. The European Court of Human Rights had ruled so explicitly in a judgment in the case of Otto-Preminger-Institut v. Austria: “The respect for the religious feelings of believers guaranteed by Article 9 can legitimately be considered violated by provocative images of objects of religious veneration, such images can be considered a malicious violation of the spirit of tolerance, which should also be a feature of a democratic society.”

In the case of Wingrove v. the United Kingdom:

“… Respect for the religious feelings of believers can become the basis for the state’s legal restriction of the publication of provocative images of objects of religious veneration.”

In the case of Pussy Riot v. Russia:“Given that the applicants’ presentation took place in a cathedral, which is a place of religious worship, the Court considers that (the State’s) interference can be regarded as having the legitimate aim of protecting the rights of third parties.”

Such activities should be illegal, but apparently are not. This unfairness is a source of aggravation: Muslims were laughed out of court when they complained against particularly vile Charlie’s cartoons, but Jews almost always win when they go to court against their denigrators. (Full disclosure: I was also sued by LICRA, the French Jewish body, while my French publisher was financially devastated by their Lawfare).

Thus, France (like the rest of the West) has very little freedom of expression left, and Macron’s claim that Charlie cartoons should be celebrated as a sign of Liberté sounds particularly hypocritical and false, like George Bush’s They hate us for our Freedom. As if that weren’t enough, then came the push to make every Muslim in France aware of this Macron-approved Charlie nastiness. In schools, a lesson was dedicated to educating children in the crude pornography of the cartoons. It was claimed (and I have no way of verifying) that the murdered French teacher had shown cartoons mocking the Prophet for five years every year since 2015, as he did this year after Macron’s speech. He allegedly added another pornographic cartoon and suggested Muslims might leave the classroom if they did not want to be offended. I can imagine the cry (selection! deportation!) if a teacher had suggested that Jewish pupils should leave the room. The upset Muslim parents went to the police and complained. The teacher lodged a counter-complaint alleging defamation. It is difficult to judge now whether the slain teacher was acting as he was obliged to by the authorities, or whether he was especially zealous in delivering the smut.

An 18-year-old youngster of Chechen origin (he had lived in France since he was six) killed him and allegedly decapitated him, and right away the killer was shot dead by police. This created a wave of panic in France, with Macron and Le Pen competing with calls to punish the Muslims. Some Muslim extremists allegedly attacked worshippers in a Nice church and killed three or four of them. This was decried as a false flag action, aimed at terrorising people into accepting the new lockdown, by a prominent radical French site that called for the “refusal of re-containment (or new lockdown) as the only real act of resistance in these troubled times”.

It could be a false flag, for no Muslim group accepted responsibility, and besides, the French secret service has a tradition of killing the perpetrators they sent to do the deed, and the killing of the young Chechen fits their playbook. The next terrorist act, the shooting of a Greek Orthodox priest in Lyon, was also ascribed to bloodthirsty Muslims, until it was discovered that the criminal was a fellow Orthodox ex-monk with some personal grudge against the priest; then the Lyon attack was dropped into the memory hole.

Macron still closed all the churches in France; apparently the government wanted to create the background for a religious war of Christians vs Muslims. Even murkier is the reason why the Chechen rebels/terrorists have been brought to France, as well as Syrian, Libyan and Afghan refugees/terrorists who participated in the bloody civil wars in their lands. They were certainly dangerous.

We know that British intelligence used Libyan refugees with a dubious background to keep meddling in Libyan affairs, and two terrorists, Salman and Hashem Abedi, fled Libya with British government assistance onboard the UK Royal Navy vessel, HMS Enterprise, only to kill and injure many Brits in 2017 in Manchester. We know that the Russians have asked to extradite suspected Chechen terrorists from England and France, but were refused.

It is not likely that these hardened terrorists have been brought to Western Europe in hope of turning them into exemplary citizens, or for humanitarian reasons. It is more probable that they were brought in exactly for the purpose of creating a terrorist underground network, to frighten citizens into obedience. Just like coronavirus, but in another way. Some people are getting killed, but the purpose is achieved: new anti-terrorist acts are enacted and acted upon; more surveillance is introduced. The governments and their security services want to keep us scared, and terrorism is a reliable means for that. It is all part of the war the elites carry out against the nations and against too-unreliable democracy.

Elites are unhappy with us, the people, says Frank Furedi: “Contempt for the people who fail to vote in accordance with their betters’ wishes is one of the main drivers of elite hostility towards democracy today.” They hope “coronavirus will kill populism”, read: democracy, he adds.

You can trust politically incorrect Russians to say it straight. The Russian top banker Herman Gref in his candid speech at SPIEF 2012 said what his Western partners think but never would utter:

“I want to tell you that you are actually saying terrible things. You are proposing to transfer power into the hands of the people. But if people would know all, it will be extremely difficult to manipulate them. People don’t want to be manipulated when they have knowledge. That’s why Kabbalah was a secret teaching for three thousand years. Any mass control implies a manipulation element. How to live, how to manage such a society, where everyone has equal access to information, everyone has the opportunity to receive directly information unless it had been processed through government analysts? How to live in such a society? Your reasoning makes me scary.”

Herman Gref had been injected with a truth serum, people said after hearing his candid talk. (Here in Russian). Perhaps.

Perhaps the very idea of mass immigration from the war-stricken regions was connected with the elites’ desire to start a low-intensity civil war in their own country while undoing social cohesion achieved by centuries of living together.

Now we shall proceed to a deeper reason why Macron decided to splash some oil onto the ever-glimmering bonfire of strife.

A fluent ideologue of French far-right nationalism is Eric Zemmour, an Algerian Jew. Here is a short article in English giving some background to the man. The Irish Times mistakenly calls him “the son of Jewish “Pied-Noirs”, who emigrated from Algeria when it gained independence from France”. This isn’t so: Pied-Noirs were French colonists in Algeria, while Zemmour is a native Algerian Jew. Instead of being an assimilated Jew as he claims, he is rather a dissimulating Jew: despite being an advocate for Catholic France, he goes to a synagogue, avoids pork and keeps kosher (Jewish dietary laws) at home, but not outside. He says he was a leftist until he discovered Muslims and started his own warfare against them.

He is, and has been, allowed to say such things on French mainstream TV channels for which anybody else would be arrested and imprisoned. He calls for putting an end to immigration (which is reasonable) but he does not stop at this, but speaks of mass deportations, and actually calls for a civil war against French Muslim citizens, while presenting himself as a defender of Catholic France.

His official opponent, the ideologue of liberal France, is Bernard Henri Levi, BHL, another North African Jew, who was instrumental in creating civil wars in Syria and Libya while encouraging Islamist fanatics in these lands to overturn the secular socialist regimes. He is a supporter of immigration, and he lives part of the year in Marrakech, Morocco.

These two Jews are leading France to religious strife, acting on both sides of the divide. Doesn’t it remind us of a Rothschild and a Trotsky, a ruthless banker and a fiery revolutionary, who incited class conflicts from both sides of the social divide, as G.K. Chesterton saw it?

This is the view of a Moroccan-French author, Youssef Hindi, a friend and a co-worker with Alain Soral. He has asserted that Jews have systematically infiltrated Muslim and Christian elites in order to stimulate destructive wars between Muslims and Christians, for the benefit of Jews alone, who will thus be able to settle in the Holy Land, drive out the original inhabitants, and establish a world empire of nations obedient to Jerusalem, which is the ultimate content of Jewish Messianism. Hindi’s West and Islam has the caption “Messianic sources and the genesis of Zionism from medieval Europe to the Clash of Civilizations”.

According to Hindi, Zionism didn’t begin with Theodore Herzl but has deep roots in the Kabbalistic eschatology of the Middle Ages, conveyed and nourished by successive generations of sages, mystics and miracle workers.

Such a sage was Don Isaac Abravanel (born 1437), a subject of the book by Benzion Netanyahu, father of the Israeli Prime Minister and a cult figure for father and son alike. He launched the era of Jewish messianism, says a Haaretz writer. His idea, absorbed and accepted by Benjamin Netanyahu, was the calling for an apocalyptic catastrophe, a “war of the monsters” between Gog and Armilus – symbolising Ishmaelites (Muslims) and Christendom (as Abravanel described, for example, in his work “MayaneiYeshua”). This war will be concluded with a weakening of both sides and the Rise of Jews to world domination, symbolically called ‘The Feast of the Leviathan.’

Carl Schmitt, the great philosopher of his time, said in 1942, that Jews enjoy the colossal global struggle between the monsters, Leviathan (Britain and the US) and Behemoth (Germany): “They gleefully rub their hands waiting for the mutual attrition that would enable the Jews’ domination of the world, or ‘The Feast of the Leviathan.” Will the war between Islam and Christendom now brewing in France allow for the next Feast of the Leviathan?

Perhaps. Avner Ben-Zaken, an Israeli thinker, wrote in his excellent treatment of the subject (here in English) that Benjamin Netanyahu, himself a great adept of Catastrophic Messianism and a believer in the war of Edom and Ishmael as the key to salvation of Jews, visited France in the aftermath of the first Charlie episode and encouraged the French Jewish leadership to act by calling them a “new collective Isaac Abravanel”. Two years later, the French Jewish leadership appointed Emmanuel Macron the President of the Republic, says a French Jewish writer blogging under the name Tsarfat (the Hebrew name for France).

In a long and detailed piece Tsarfat tells of a few prominent Jews (Alain Minc, Serge Weinberg, Jacques Attali, and Bernard Mourad) vouching for Macron with David de Rothschild. In 2011, Macron became a junior partner at Rothschild, earning a substantial salary. He was worth every penny – he tricked Le Monde, he cheated President Hollande, he cheated the French state, he did whatever Rothschild demanded and in return, he has got the presidency of the Republic. He was the new king appointed by the new Abravanel. Now he has to deliver the war between Christendom and Islam, for the supreme glory of Israel.

Eric Zemmour, the fiery far-right spokesman, a commenter with its own prime-time slot on a major TV channel, is the ideal man to lead the psychotic (thanks to Corona panic) France (and Europe) into a religious war between Christendom and Islam. In the war, both major opponents will be broken and weakened, while Israel with its Judaism-for-Goyim, the Holocaust creed will have the upper hand.

Eric Montana, a French Christian journalist wrote: “Zemmour is a double agent in the service of the Clash of Civilizations and of the Zionist movement which feeds a climate of permanent tension in France. Zemmour works to provoke division and pour fuel on the fire, by outrageously criminalizing some of our compatriots of Muslim faith, and thus endangering civil peace in our country. Zemmour is a public danger who despite his numerous convictions for inciting racial and religious hatred, remains scandalously present in the media, undoubtedly enjoying protection invisible to the naked eye … but yet very real.”

At least we can say that the opponents of Muslims aren’t Christians. For the Charlie Hebdo magazine is explicitly anti-Christian as well as anti-Muslim. One finds there some most obnoxious cartoons offending the Virgin and Christ, as well as the pope and the Church. (They never offended Jews, somehow).

A Christian government would act like the Russians did. A few years ago, Pussy Riot profaned the St Saviour of Moscow in the way that Femen had profaned some great European cathedrals, from Notre Dame de Paris to Strasbourg. The Russian government did not wait for vigilante justice to be meted upon the viragos, but had gave them up to two years of prison. At the same time, the Russian criminal law has been changed to include ‘sacrilege’ among ordinary crimes, by general consent. Since then, such crimes do not occur.

In Charlie’s France, the Femen despoiling the churches were never punished; but a churchwarden who tried to prevent that was heavily fined. France has a long anti-Christian tradition, usually described as “laic” (secular), and its grand anti-Church coalition of Atheists, Huguenots and Jews coalesced in the days of the Dreyfus Affair. It also has a strong Catholic church, but not one calling for a war with Muslims.

The true Christian view of the developments was expressed by Archbishop Theodosius Atallah Hanna of Sebaste in Palestine (he baptised me in 2002). He condemned the targeting of Muslims in France and around the world through degrading paintings and cartoons. “Hate speech aims at serving the policy of divide and conquer. Christians and Muslims must cement a culture of brotherhood and togetherness and we must work together, more than ever before to defeat all the plans and conspiracies that aim at dividing us and at creating discord in our ranks”, said the Palestinian bishop.

P.S. Much attention is given to the exotic way of killing by the alleged terrorists. Actually, beheading is as French as onion soup. Guillotine was the preferred national method of execution (like electric chair in the US). The French beheaded their king and queen. During the Battle for Algeria, French paras famously played football with chopped rebel heads. Napoleon had brought beheading to the Middle East, not vice versa. During his campaign in Egypt, general Bonaparte having learned of an uprising in a village had ordered his adjutant Croisier to go there, surround the entire tribe, kill all men without exception, and bring women and children to Cairo. His orders were promptly carried out. Many children and women who were driven on foot died on the way, and, a few hours later, donkeys laden with sacks appeared on the main square of Cairo. The sacks were opened and the heads of the executed men of the guilty tribe rolled across the square, wrote the historian. Should we say chicken came home to roost?

Israel Shamir can be reached at [e-mail]

This article was first published at The Unz Review.

»Ethnopluralismus – Kritik und Verteidigung«

Ellen Kositza empfiehlt Martin Lichtmesz

 

kanal schnellroda

 

#Ethnopluralismus ist ein Schlüsselbegriff. Bloß: Was ist das eigentlich? Die Gegner sagen: ein versteckter #Rassismus. Wir sagen: Die schwer beschreibbare, jedenfalls unbedingt verteidigenswerte Mischung aus Kultur, Geschichte, Abstammung, Charakter. Martin #Lichtmesz ist der erste, der diesen Begriff, sein Potential und seinen Mißbrauch umfassend darzustellen vermag. Er hat sich über Jahre mit der Vielgestaltigkeit der Völker, mit Abgrenzung und Austausch, mit Dekonstruktion und Verallgemeinerung beschäftigt und verteidigt nun eines unserer zentralen Konzepte auf seine unnachahmliche Art. Ein eminent wichtiges Buch!

 

 

Hier bestellen: https://antaios.de/gesamtverzeichnis-...

Hier die Sezession abonnieren: https://sezession.de/abo

Das Netztagebuch der Sezession: https://sezession.de

Götz Kubitschek bei Sezession im Netz: https://sezession.de/author/goetz-kub...

Benedikt Kaiser bei Sezession im Netz: https://sezession.de/author/benedikt-...

Sezession bei Twitter: https://twitter.com/SiNetz

Benedikt Kaiser bei Twitter: https://twitter.com/benedikt_kaiser

Ellen Kositza bei Twitter: https://twitter.com/EKositza

The Future of Work:
Heart, Hand, & Head

By Morris V. de Camp

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

Review:

David Goodhart
Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020

David Goodhart ^[1] is an upper-class British political centrist who arrived at his views from the Left. He works at a UK think tank called Policy Exchange. He’s the author that first articulated the concept of “Somewheres” vs. “Anywheres ^[2].” He has just published a book that expands upon the Somewheres-Anywheres divide and looks at the changing nature of work in the post-industrial economy plus the populist revolts of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump.

There are two factors to this that are best explained upfront.

Factor #1: De-industrialization has robbed a great many parts of Britain and the United States of an economic base that gives less-educated people decent jobs where they can afford to raise a family. Factor #2: At the same time, a means of sorting and capturing intelligent people to attend an ever-increasing number of universities robs de-industrialized towns of their intelligent young.

This process has created a large cognitive elite in both the US and UK. This cognitive elite has an “Anywhere” worldview and they are detached from many of their fellow countrymen. The “Anywheres” are also living in an echo-chamber. They aren’t really cosmopolitan or particularly broad thinkers. (Goodhart doesn’t say this, but belief in “civil rights” shuts down hard thinking, and “civil rights” is the official religion of England and America.)

These elite work “head” jobs and look down upon those who carry out “hand” or “heart” work — i.e. mechanics or nurses. Meanwhile, the proliferation of universities has made degrees less valuable while being required for jobs that don’t really need university-level certifications. Money and time are wasted on schooling by many people.

The solution is to encourage and support the hand and heart work that ordinary people can do. This includes allowing women to prioritize child-rearing and family care over “head” work at some firm. All of this must occur in a situation where parts of the economy are winner-takes-all. In other words, due to globalization, the dozen or so exceptional artists, actors, or businessmen capture the entire market. There is also the increasing job-stealing threat of artificial intelligence.

An Anywhere fighting for his Somewheres?

The book hit close to home. While I’d like to believe that I am a fighter for the Somewheres and small factory towns, the truth is I’m an Anywhere expat from a Rust Belt state. The social circle of my youth is the same way. The men in my ROTC detachment would have fit in neatly in any Union Army regiment at the Hornet’s Nest during the Battle of Shiloh ^[4], but with one exception, all are now living in a McMansion in a high-income area far from the Middle West doing “head” work. We were also officers, so our combat tours were a shade more comfortable than most. None are in industry, although most of us came from families that worked in industry at some point. Thus, everything in my review should be taken from the perspective of an Anywhere hoping he is helping out the Somewheres.

On the broad level, Goodhart takes an entire book to say that people in the skilled trades are overlooked politically. Additionally, there is a job shortage in those trades, especially now that Brexit is closing off Eastern European workers and Trump has clamped down on immigration.

Goodhart encourages apprenticeships, high school shop classes, and trade schools. If you don’t like sitting in class but want to make money, get in the “hand” business. I’d like to add that citizens of all types should encourage in-sourcing jobs and protectionist economic policies.

Vocation

The book raises the question of what a young man should do for a vocation. It is important to note that many jobs in the “head” department aren’t jobs where a person is free to think on their own. These jobs might not pay much either. Goodhart shows many examples of how builders and mechanics are out-earning office workers.

If I can give some advice on what a man should do for a vocation, it would be to first get a solid read on your IQ. If you have an IQ anywhere above 120 you can write your own ticket if you work hard enough. No matter what your IQ is, steer clear from any “friends” that you might have that smoke weed and go around looking for trouble. Those types of people seem cool in junior high, but become less cool as everyone gets older.

The three top professions are medicine, the law, and the clergy. If you feel called to do any of these jobs, don’t pass them up. As far as enlisting, I must state upfront that there are many ways to serve your country outside of the infantry. Some further advice on this can be found here ^[5].

Next, if you can swing it, get advice on what to do from an older male relative. I got very good advice from an uncle about what to do when I was helping him on a construction job on the western prairie. While the route to career success is by twisting staircase and anything can happen, for most people, the choices made in their twenties affect much of their later life.

I personally don’t think that artificial intelligence is going to be the job thief that it is predicted to be. I deeply suspect that most companies that produce “AI software” are really in the gimmick business. The state of AI development is a long way from producing a brigade of Commander Datas ^[6]. However, the field is a good one to get involved in. Managing AI is going to be the new job and increased demand for anyone that knows anything about it. If you want to get involved in that career, start by reading the works of John McCarthy and Patrick J. Hayes ^[7]. They are the pioneers of the field.

No matter head, heart, or hand, you really need to make money. Once you get it, invest it well. Don’t complain about railroad freight rates when you can buy stock in Union Pacific.

This book is written from a centrist position, but it takes into account what white advocates like F. Roger Devlin have been saying for at least 10 years. It also quotes books such as The Bell Curve and Bowling Alone that were taken very seriously in journals like American Renaissance and The Occidental Quarterly. The neo-liberal consensus is crumbling.

Ultimately, Paul’s advice to the Colossians still has merit: “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.”

If you want to support Counter-Currents, please send us a donation by going to our Entropy page ^[8] and selecting “send paid chat.” Entropy allows you to donate any amount from $3 and up. All comments will be read and discussed in the next episode of Counter-Currents Radio, which airs every weekend on DLive ^[9].

Don’t forget to sign up ^[10] for the twice-monthly email Counter-Currents Newsletter for exclusive content, offers, and news.

Article printed from Counter-Currents: https://counter-currents.com

URL to article: https://counter-currents.com/2020/10/the-future-of-work-heart-hand-head/

URLs in this post:

[1] David Goodhart: https://policyexchange.org.uk/author/david-goodhart/

[2] Somewheres” vs. “Anywheres: https://thinktheology.co.uk/blog/article/anywheres_and_somewheres

[3] here.: https://counter-currents.com/2020/07/its-okay-to-be-white/

[4] Battle of Shiloh: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Shiloh

[5] here: https://counter-currents.com/2020/06/to-enlist-or-not-to-enlist/

[6] Commander Datas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_(Star_Trek)

[7] John McCarthy and Patrick J. Hayes: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/mcchay69.html

[8] our Entropy page: https://entropystream.live/countercurrents

[9] DLive: https://dlive.tv/counter-currents

[10] sign up: https://counter-currents.com/2020/05/sign-up-for-our-new-newsletter/