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mercredi, 14 octobre 2015

Individus sous influences: une société de moutons?

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Individus sous influences: une société de moutons?

Auteur : C.B & Stéphane Hairy 

Ex: http://zejournal.mobi

“Nous sommes dans une société de moutons”, “les gens vont dans le sens de la majorité”,  “la population se laisse influencer par les médias de masse”…  qui n’a jamais entendu ce genre de propos au sujet de notre société ? Pourtant, l’opinion, les comportements, attitudes, croyances, ou sentiments d’un individu sont loin d’être strictement régies par l’influence des masses. Il existe aussi l’influence minoritaire, qui au contraire du conformisme, nous influence en profondeur. En effet, nous sommes émerveillés par certaines personnes qui font avancer nos idées, nous aident au quotidien ou nous impressionnent intimement. Nous sommes prêts à suivre certains leaders que nous considérons comme étant aptes et légitimes à nous montrer une direction à suivre ou même à diriger nos vies. Nous sommes même dans certains cas, complétement sous emprise d’une personnalité, comme le sont certains humains “fans” de personnalités connus.

Nous allons donc essayer de comprendre le fonctionnement de ces influences pour tenter de répondre à LA question existentielle, celle que l’on se pose tous les matins en prenant les transports, celle qui nous traverse l’esprit en voyant nos contemporains s’enivrer dans une décadence profonde, la question cosmique  : sommes-nous de vrais moutons ?

1 – Influence des masses

Il existe effectivement ce que l’on appelle l’influence majoritaire, que l’on appelle communément le conformisme. Ce processus est celui de l’influence des opinions, comportements, perceptions, d’une majorité sur une minorité de gens. Récemment, des psychologues de l’Université de Princeton ont étudié ce qui se passe dans notre tête lorsque nous sommes en situation sous l’influence d’une majorité. Une structure cérébrale (l’insula) semble déterminer l’abandon de l’analyse personnelle au profit de la posture conforme aux attentes du groupe. Cette insula est réputée centraliser des informations de nature émotionnelle en provenance du corps, et s’activer lorsque l’individu sent peser la menace d’être exclu de son groupe d’appartenance.

Le paradoxe de Condorcet.

Nicolas de Condorcet, philosophe et mathématicien, avait déjà montré au XVIIIe siècle que le système électoral livre des décisions sensées, à condition que les électeurs soient ignorants des décisions prises par leurs voisins (paradoxe de Condorcet). Autrement dit, il faut savoir se protéger du « biais de conformité ».

C’est aussi ce qu’a montré une étude réalisée dans l’entre-deux tours de l’élection présidentielle française de 2012. Quelques 1 000 votants étaient interrogés sur leurs intentions de vote au second tour. Dès lors qu’on leur présentait les résultats d’un sondage fictif allant dans le sens contraire de leur intention initiale, ils changeaient d’opinion dans 25 pour cent des cas, pour rallier l’avis majoritaire exprimé par le sondage.

L’expérience de Asch.

L’expérience la plus célèbre est celle de S. Asch (en 1951) ; elle démontre que même lorsqu’il y a une réponse évidente à donner, un individu va donner une réponse fausse et absurde juste parce que la majorité des gens qui constituent son groupe a fourni cette réponse là.

Les psychosociologues (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955 ; Moscovici, Mucchi-Faina & Maass, 1994) s’accordent à dire que si l’individu se conforme autant c’est à cause de la comparaison sociale qu’il opère lorsqu’il n’est pas d’accord avec la majorité : il souhaite éviter le conflit pour surtout ne pas être rejeté par le groupe…

VIDEO: Expérience de Asch, le conformisme

(Le psychologue S. Asch montre que dans une simple tâche perceptive consistant à comparer les longueurs de différents segments de droite, la connaissance de l’avis majoritaire suffit à faire prendre des décisions absurdes à des individus qui, isolés, répondent correctement.)

Cette expérience des lignes de Asch est célèbre et est souvent instrumentalisée pour démontrer que les individus sont des moutons qui se rallient à une idée dominante, majoritaire. Or, ce n’est pas tout à fait vrai, l’influence majoritaire est superficielle car elle agit sur les comportements et non sur les pensées des individus. Agir n’est pas penser. Dire que l’on pense pareil que son groupe ne signifie pas qu’on pense effectivement comme eux. En effet, dans les expériences de Asch, on voit que les personnes se focalisent sur les enjeux sociaux de la situation (que va-t-il se passer si je réponds différemment d’eux ? quelle sera ma place ?), au lieu de traiter  la véracité des réponses données par le groupe.

Mais alors, quelle genre d’influence agit sur les opinions et pensées des individus ?

 

(Le type d’image que l’on se fait du conformisme pour exprimer notre capacité à être influencé par les masses)

2 – Influence des minorités

Si le conformisme engendre le fait que les personnes se rallient à l’opinion de la majorité, cet effet n’est souvent présent qu’en public (face au regard des autres) et non au-delà. Il existe à l’inverse l’influence d’une personne ou d’une minorité qui induit une réelle persuasion et une modification profonde de notre jugement qui persiste dans le temps : c’est l’influence minoritaire. Là où la majorité agit en surface, la minorité modifie en profondeur.

Le psychosociologue S. Moscovici a été le premier à s’intéresser à l’influence minoritaire : comment un individu ou une minorité de personnes peut-elle exercer une influence sur un groupe ou sur une majorité ? Son ambition est de comprendre l’apparition des faits historiques tels que le développement du féminisme, la révolution copernicienne ou encore l’impact de Martin Luther King, Galilée, Nelson Mandela…

(Discours le plus célèbre de Martin Luther King “I have a dream”, prononcé le le 28 août 1963, devant le Lincoln Memorial, à Washington, D.C).

Des expériences illustrent la prégnance de cette influence de la minorité, comme celle de Moscovici, Lage et Naffrechoux (1969). Les expérimentateurs démontrent que même si un individu va se comporter en répondant conformément dans un premier temps, il sera par la suite influencé de manière inconsciente en modifiant ses perception et opinion sur les choses.

Pour comprendre l’influence minoritaire, il faut se pencher sur le caractère inconscient des phénomènes d’influences en partant sur la notion de conflit. Lorsqu’on est confronté à une opinion qui diffère de la sienne, on éprouve un certain conflit interne. Les individus ont tendance à fuir ce type de tension et recherchent le consensus. La majorité compte précisément sur ce malaise pour engendrer la conformité.
De son côté, le comportement ferme et confiant de la minorité instaure le doute, attire l’attention, signale l’existence d’un point de vu alternatif, démontre l’attachement de la minorité à sa position et annonce que le seul moyen de sortir du conflit consiste à prendre en considération son point de vue. Pour S. Moscovici, la minorité force la majorité à analyser le contenu de son message de manière approfondie, puisque le traitement de l’information suppose, pour invalider l’opinion adverse, de s’y pencher et de la comprendre. Ce sont ces activités qui nous préparent à un processus d’intégration de l’information et d’appropriation des idées.

Selon Moscovici, la minorité agissante se définit par 5 styles de comportements et c’est l’interprétation de ces styles de comportement de la minorité par la majorité qui permet à l’influence d’opérer.

Les 5 styles sont :

Investissement et visibilité : c’est l’importance que le sujet ou la minorité accorde à son objectif ou à ses idées. La visibilité de l’implication est importante ainsi que la sincérité du sacrifice personnel et de la haute estime des buts poursuivis.

Autonomie : c’est l’indépendance du jugement et des attitudes et cela reflète la détermination selon ses propres principes.

Consistance : c’est le fait de maintenir toujours la même idée, être catégorique, avoir et maintenir une position cohérente.

Rigidité : C’est la version “dure” de la consistance. Il faut adopter un modèle comportemental assuré pouvant parfois aller jusqu’à l’extrémisme. Moscovici explique qu’un comportement qui se situerait à mi-chemin entre la rigidité et la souplesse serait le meilleur moyen pour influencer quelqu’un.

Équité : elle rend compte du souci de la minorité d’établir des relations réciproques avec la majorité.

3 – Comparaison : Influence de la majorité VS. Influence de la minorité.

Lorsqu’un individu se sait l’objet d’une influence, il éprouve un sentiment d’ambivalence, c’est à dire, qu’il peut ressentir deux sentiments pourtant opposés ou contradictoires. Cependant selon que la source d’influence émane d’une minorité ou d’une majorité, cette ambivalence n’est pas la même :

- Face à une majorité, les individus expriment plutôt une attirance publique et une réserve ou une hostilité privée.

- Face à une minorité, les individus peuvent éprouver dans le même temps une hostilité publique, une admiration, voir même une envie privée.

En fait, c’est en se défendant sur le plan conscient d’une influence qu’on augmente les chances d’être influencé sur le plan non conscient. Il s’agit donc d’un réel paradoxe puisque plus on résiste à un agent d’influence, plus on a de risque de lui céder sur le long terme.

L’influence latente et différée est propre à l’influence minoritaire. Car le traitement de l’information des minorités innovantes (dans le sens où elles changent de l’opinion majoritaire) suppose, qu’il faut invalider certaines idées, s’ouvrir à de nouveaux messages et faire preuve de compréhension. C’est pour cette raison que l’influence des minorités est plus ancrée en profondeur et s’installe dans vos idées, dans votre manière de voir le monde. Contrairement à l’influence des masses qui impacte votre comportement mais n’a pas d’influence sur vos idées, il s’agit d’un suivisme qui n’engendre pas de changement notable sur votre manière de voir le monde.

Documentaire sur le conformisme social: Testez votre cerveau : Le conformisme social

4 – En conclusion, les minorités ont une influence plus profonde sur les individus mais…

… la majorité peut également les influencer sur le plan des attitudes et convictions.
Et oui, comme rien n’est simple dans notre machine cognitive humaine, les influences sont multiples ! Hélas nous restons sujets à la “moutonnerie” et nous sommes ainsi profondément influencés par la majorité, à savoir les opinions dominantes…
Mais comment sommes-nous influencés par cette majorité ? par nos propres actes !

Car l’acte de se conformer publiquement et de manière répétée est un facteur d’engagement. Or plus on est engagé et plus on adhère à l’idée dominante : c’est ce qu’on appelle la théorie de la rationalisation, qui consiste à rationaliser ses actes pour expliquer ses conduites d’une part, mais surtout pour éviter l’état de conflit interne entre ce que vous pensez et votre comportement devant les autres (dissonance cognitive). Cette rationalisation se manifeste par le fait que les attitudes deviennent une conséquence du comportement et non l’inverse.

Ainsi, lorsqu’on se conforme publiquement (par exemple au travail, acquiescer devant les autres collègues lorsque votre patron exprime son opinion qui pourtant est bien différente de la votre, est un acte qui vous engage). Vous modifiez votre façon de penser en faveur de l’idée dominante afin d’auto-justifier votre comportement. De même, le fait de répéter cet acte de conformisme est également un facteur qui vous engage en faveur de celui-ci.
Pour en savoir plus sur les facteurs d’engagement, nous vous invitons à lire le psychosociologue C. Kiesler. Ces techniques d’engagement (dîtes de manipulation) sont notamment utilisées par les managers de grands groupes industriels et dans le commerce.
En conclusion, nous sommes tous des sujets sous influences, mais contrairement à l’idée répandue ce n’est pas l’influence de la majorité (médias de masse, opinions répandues, etc.) qui est la plus prégnante sur nos opinions mais l’influence des minorités (petits groupes, personnes, dissidents).


Ceci-dit, si on ne veut pas être influencés par la majorité – être un mouton quoi -, il faut se défendre des actes que nous poussent à faire cette majorité (exemple d’acte généré par une majorité : une grande partie de la population pense qu’il faut voter aux élections pour favoriser la démocratie en France). Le suivisme permet de ne pas “s’engager”, de ne jamais changer d’opinion, en d’autres termes, de se faire manipuler par la majorité dominante.
Le libre arbitre est un mythe mais commencer par s’empêcher d’agir dans un sens contraire à nos convictions est un bon début !

Is the European Union a U.S. Puppet?

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Is the European Union a U.S. Puppet?

The architects of the European Union argue that their construction is an unprecedented achievement following the fratricidal conflicts of the World Wars. Indeed, never before have sovereign nation-states freely consented to forming such a trade bloc and currency union. Furthermore, advocates of European integration argue that the Union’s common citizenship, promotion of regional identity, and open internal borders have softened the harsh lines between national identities. Many Identitarians have welcomed these aspects of the EU as a healthy manifestation of “implicit whiteness.”[1]

The EU, however, has more often been an object of contempt for most nationalists as impotent or as a destructive emanation of American power.[2] Indeed, for them the EU is not a manifestation of European sovereignty, but is rather an enforcer of the blank-slatist and globalist ideology which is leading to the physical replacement and reduction to minorityhood of indigenous Europeans in their own homelands. In this article I hope to shed light on this complex problem, disentangling the American role and indigenous European agency in the emergence of the EU as a decidedly “liberal” project.

The Traditional Critique: An Americano-Globalist Project

USA-UE-W-161x300.jpgThe traditional nationalist critique of existing European integration is that, far from reflecting European identity and interests, the project is a fundamentally anti-European one based on globalist ideology and American power.

This critique would cite the interwar Austro-Japanese writer Count Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi, who argued that European unity would pave the way for the genocide of the indigenous peoples of Europe through universal miscegenation and the creation of the “Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, similar in its appearance to the Ancient Egyptians.” This would be an Endlösung to the racial question, so to speak.[3] Coudenhove-Kalergi specifically praised Jews for their leading role as “a spiritual nobility of Europe.” These feverish speculations were not merely those of a marginal, alienated half-caste, given that Coudenhove-Kalergi was formally recognized for his decades of activism by being awarded the first Charlemagne Prize by the city of Aachen in 1950, the official honor for mainstream Europeanism.

The nationalist critique could further cite the French cognac salesman and CIA-funded political operator Jean Monnet, no doubt the most influential postwar advocate of European integration and the first president of the European Coal and Steel Community. Monnet was not only clearly an expression of American and corporate power – European unity as the destruction of borders restraining international capitalism and getting the West Europeans in marching order for eventual war with the Soviet Union – but also saw the “European Community” as a mere intermediary step to a kind of global government.[4]

Nationalists would further argue that the European Union has used its power to undermine the homogeneity and sovereignty of European nations. In particular, the EU’s so-called “European values” are based on an anti-national and neoliberal ideology, hell bent on promoting blank-slatist and politically-correct censorship legislation, tearing down national borders, deracinating national bourgeoisies, and making states beholden to financial markets under the euphemistic label “market discipline.” The most symbolically shocking recent example of this has been the big Western European states’ decision during the current migrant crisis to impose a redistribution of Afro-Islamic settlers across Europe, including against unwilling and innocent Central European nations.

The EU’s geopolitical impact in this respect is undeniable. There are strong economic incentives for poorer nations to join the “European club,” with carrots such as access to the Common Market, funding from the EU budget (with net transfers of up to 2 percent of GDP), and unlimited immigration opportunities to the wealthier countries. These promises, which can be considered a form of bribery, have had a considerable effect in undermining nationalist regimes in southern Europe and Russian influence in Serbia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

French Attempts to “Turn” the European Project

The European Union however cannot simply be reduced to an American emanation, if only because European politicians – and in particular French ones – have sought to turn it into a genuinely independent power. This was evident in President Charles de Gaulle’s push for an almost non-aligned foreign policy based on cooperation with the Third World, rapprochement with West Germany, and emancipation of Europe from the United States of America.

In practice however, the General failed to pry the insecure West Germans from the United States and the achievements for Europe were singularly modest: The exclusion of Great Britain – considered to be an American Trojan horse – from the European Economic Community, the securing of substantial mostly German-funded subsidies for French farming under the Common Agricultural Policy, the maintenance of moderate tariffs at about 0.5 percent of GDP,[5] and the blocking of any further “Atlanticist” integration with the veto. De Gaulle was clearly more successful in securing some narrow French interests rather than broader European ones.[6]

De Gaulle’s failure is indeed humbling. Francis Parkey Yockey no doubt said more in a passing comment on the ambiguities of the General’s career and his brand of French nationalism than many hundreds of pages of official Gaullist hagiography: “De Gaulle wants more: he wants to be equal to the masters who created him and blew him up like a rubber balloon.”[7]

Later, President François Mitterrand would go further than ever in pushing for European integration – above all the creation of a common currency, the euro – in a kind of grand experiment meant to finally and really establish a European sovereignty, make Franco-German war impossible, and emancipate Europe from the “exorbitant privilege” of the U.S. dollar.[8] This was a rare example of visionary, almost transcendental politics, at least by the standards of these otherwise lifeless bourgeois regimes concerned with no more than money-chasing (although, characteristically, this materialistic ambition largely reduced “European unity” to . . . money, and was based on the lie that this would increase GDP, and hence, lead to more money). The French also persistently pushed to create a “Europe de la défense” as a rival to NATO in the 1990s, but in practice this rather nebulous concept amounted to a few, mostly minor, EU military operations and more-or-less inspired multilateral military-industrial projects.

Thus, many of the specifics of European integration were not designed by the Americans, notably on agricultural and monetary[9] policies, but rather reflected Franco-German compromise. More broadly the project is also one of Europe’s indigenous national bourgeoisies seeking to rationalize relations between their capitalist economies.

Apologists of the European Union then argue that it is a genuinely independent power. This has often been grossly exaggerated, no doubt in a crude attempt to legitimize the entity and dull Europeans’ awareness of their rapid and programmed decline in power and influence around the world.[10] Nonetheless, there is truth to the EU’s claims of economic power as a trade bloc, wherever there is consensus. This has arguably given Europeans certain advantages of scale not available to their smallish nation-states. American and Asian companies must respect the Common Market’s regulations (consumer, health, environmental . . .). Brussels directly negotiates trade agreements with other capitals (notably with Washington[11]), conducts anti-dumping/anti-subsidy investigations against China, and imposes sanctions against Russia. Finally, even the largest multinationals (Google, Goldman Sachs . . .) may fear the injunctions and potential multi-billion euro fines of the European Commission’s Competition authorities.

Most significantly, the EU has occasionally used its power against U.S. interests. In 2001, the European Commission blocked the merger of GE and Honeywell, two American firms, to prevent an aerospace oligopoly. The firms respected this ruling, despite the fact that U.S. authorities had approved the merger, so as to not be excluded from the European market. In 2002, the EU retaliated against U.S. tariffs on steel, leading the Bush Administration to back down the following year. What’s more, the euro has emerged as a rival reserve currency to the U.S. dollar[12] and has been used as a trading currency by various anti-American regimes – such as Cuba, North Korea, and Syria – instead of the dollar. The EU is also financing Galileo, a satellite navigation project meant to give Europeans strategic autonomy from America’s Global Positioning System. The European Union is then not wholly American in its origins and has taken some, albeit modest, anti-American actions.

“The small, miserable Europe of today”

On the whole however, we would have to admit that the European Union’s achievements as a Weltmacht, especially with regard to independence from the U.S., are a very thin gruel indeed. In practice, the EU’s theoretical status as “soft economic superpower” (if that is not already a contradiction in terms) is mitigated by the fact that the participating nation-states are ultimately sovereign, insofar as they have armies and administrations, and so could in principle withdraw or disobey at any time.

The European Union then functions somewhat like the United States did under the Articles of Confederation, the German Confederation, or the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth under the liberum veto. No consensus – because a foreign power (the U.S., China, Russia . . .) bribes or intimidates a national government to provide a veto or because of any national unilateral action – and the thing falls into irrelevance or outright collapse. One wonders what Carl Schmitt would have made of all this . . .

A rather miserly form of “power” indeed. Belgian Rexist leader and Volksführer der Wallonen Léon Degrelle’s assessment [2] from the 1970s appears as relevant as ever: “The small, miserable Europe of today, of this impoverished Common Market, cannot give happiness to men.” Again a National Socialist critique, in a single sentence, gets to the heart of a problem and cuts through so much of the turgid theological prose to be found in “EU studies.”

What’s more, the singular attempt to create a kind of European sovereignty, the euro, has thus far proved a continuous embarrassment and at times even an existential problem. In practice, while the European Central Bank is in some respects a worthy rival to the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Eurozone ultimately has thus far increased Europeans’ dependency on financial markets and vulnerability to speculation by Wall Street, the City of London, and others. The Eurozone has neither the solidary community of a nation nor the power and responsibility of a state. Instead, there is a kind of perpetual leaderless chaos and constant recrimination between peoples. An anti-Führerprinzip and anti-Volksgemeinschaft, if you will. This is indeed a startling illustration of the power and relevance of the nation-state.

America: Forger of “European” Consensus

The European Union – often termed an usine à gaz – is then little more than an enabler and reflection of consensus among its nation-states. But what shapes the cultural and political consensus in Europe? It is obvious that, above all, cultural and political consensus in Europe, insofar as these exist, has been largely shaped by American military, cultural, and diplomatic power. This is evident both historically and up to the present day.

Eurmerica [3]

The Transatlantic Market . . . “Help!!!”

Above all, it is the United States – in alliance with Joseph Stalin to whom Franklin Roosevelt gave half of Europe at Yalta –  which destroyed the native French and German governments during the Second World War and imposed bourgeois and anti-nationalist regimes. The Gaullo-Communist coalition won the “Franco-French civil war” against the French State of Vichy on the back of Anglo-American bombing and invasion, purging the Right in France. The Allies “reeducated” the Germans towards anti-Nazism and self-hatred through a systematic campaign of total war against the German people (including incineration of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, the ethnic cleansing of 9 million Germans, the mass rape of German women, systematic political persecution of National Socialists and historical revisionists, and ongoing military occupation). The corrupt French Fourth Republic and the traumatized German Federal Republic, both born from the loins of a corrupted America, founded the European Communities on a particular anti-national and Atlanticist basis at the instigation of U.S.-funded agents like Jean Monnet and in the shadow of the Soviet threat.

In fact, the immediate postwar regimes of Europe – while formally “antiracist” – only fully lost their ethnic consciousness over many years.[13] This reflected the steady rise of the blank-slatist, individualist-egalitarian, and multiculturalist Left, on the back of the ’60s cultural revolution and  American cultural power. This modern liberalism is a kind of auto-immune disorder: Europeans’ otherwise healthy instinct to purge “the bad,” necessary in any society, is channeled against those very people, patriots, who would preserve the organic integrity of their societies. This ideology – whatever weight one ascribes in its origins to indigenous French and American liberal trends or to Jewish cultural power[14] – has metastasized and achieved a certain autonomy in the European Union, and in particular in the Western states, as synonymous with the fameux “European values.”

The United States is, depressing as this may be, the single biggest contributor to “cultural consensus” among European nations today, through the profound influence in both elite and mass culture of Hollywood, the Ivy Leagues, pop music, prestigious print publications, and so on. Common European culture today stems not from our Greco-Roman and Indo-European myths, not from Christian religion and the churches, not even from our Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophy, but from the lowest American culture, produced by a notoriously deceitful elite. Nor is our common culture provided by Europe’s official multilateral cultural projects like the Franco-German TV channel Arte and the channel Euronews, which have markedly limited audiences. The steady, and now almost complete, rise of English as the European lingua franca, however useful the language of Shakespeare might otherwise be, has also furthered Anglo-American cultural hegemony.

Indeed, the center-left Jewish historian Tony Judt has observed that the Shoah has emerged as the central focal point of historical remembrance in Western European nations:

Far from reflecting upon the problem of evil in the years that followed the end of World War II, most Europeans turned their heads resolutely away from it. [. . .] Today, the Shoah is a universal reference. The history of the Final Solution, or Nazism, or World War II is a required course in high school curriculums everywhere. Indeed, there are schools in the US and even Britain where such a course may be the only topic in modern European history that a child ever studies. There are now countless records and retellings and studies of the wartime extermination of the Jews of Europe: local monographs, philosophical essays, sociological and psychological investigations, memoirs, fictions, feature films, archives of interviews, and much else. Hannah Arendt’s prophecy would seem to have come true: the history of the problem of evil has become a fundamental theme of European intellectual life.[15]

This centrality – which not coincidentally serves to stigmatize European ethno-nationalisms everywhere and apologize for Jewish ethno-nationalism in Israel and Jewish privilege in general – unquestionably reflects both American victory in the Second World War and the influence of American culture, rather than indigenous European trends.

Finally, the United States shapes the political consensus in the European Union through its unparalleled diplomatic power. Washington thus can typically block any major joint European action against American or Israeli interests (see the divided European reaction over the 2003 Iraq War and the failure to pass significant EU sanctions against Israel). What’s more, to the extent Europeans do adopt a common foreign policy, this tends to be shepherded by Washington and thus serve American geopolitical imperatives (e.g. the still-existing project of Turkish EU membership and the EU sanctions against Iran and Russia).

Conclusion: Towards a European Europe

The European Union then is not a counterweight to American power and, on the contrary, substantially reflects a European political consensus shaped by the United States. All that said, the history of the EU makes me rather optimistic about the prospects for our Continent if only the American Empire’s influence could be eliminated and we could become psychologically and culturally sovereign. Then Europeans would actually start thinking about their survival, rather than dully going along with their decline on the back of Hollywoodian propaganda and the false sense of security provided by NATO.

Europe alone, I dare to hope, would be able to forge a new cultural consensus[16] which would allow us to flourish again. We can easily imagine a new Europe in which our nations would organize to defend their sovereignty, notably in the economic sphere, to create cultural projects promoting European civilization and pride (a retooled Arte), to create a genuine European spiritual and cultural elite (a reformed Erasmus student exchange program going beyond an academic pretext for drunkenness abroad), and to use the European ingenuity of Airbus to defend our southern borders rather than those of corrupt Arab oligarchs [4]. Yes, the European is a creative breed and, once he identifies a problem, few are so idealistic and ingenious in reaching solutions.

Notes

1. See Guillaume Durocher, “Is the EU ‘racist’?: Implicitly White Themes in EU Ideology & Propaganda,” North American New Right,  July 2, 2015. http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/07/is-the-eu-racist/ [5]

2. This theme has been most successfully popularized in France by the anti-EU and anti-American nationalist François Asselineau, who leads the Union Populaire Républicaine. Asselineau has also sought to portray the EU as a kind of crypto-Nazi construct on the grounds that Walter Hallstein, the first president of the European Commission, was a “Nazi lawyer” under the Third Reich . . . See also Guillaume Durocher, “Is the EU ‘fascist’?,” North American New Right, June 15, 2015. http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/06/is-the-eu-fascist/ [6]

3. Another prominent miscegenationist theory was that of Mexican thinker and politician José Vasconcelos who called for the creation of la Raza Cósmica, a kind of a super-race composed of the best of European, African, and Asian blood. Vasconcelos believed that European blood would be more prominent in such a race. This theory can be considered a mystical rationalization for Mexico as a failed nation and continues to lend its name to the National Council of La Raza, the leading Hispanic ethnic lobby. See also Matt Parrot, “Cosmic America,” North American New Right, December 13, 2010. http://www.counter-currents.com/2010/12/cosmic-america/ [7]

4. Monnet’s American connections and the wider context of the heady days of postwar European federalism are discussed in detail in Richard J. Aldrich, “OSS, CIA and European unity: The American committee on United Europe, 1948-60,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, 8:1, March 1, 1997, 184-227. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/aldrich/publications/oss_cia_united_europe_eec_eu.pdf [8]

5. Gabriele Cipriani, “Financing the EU Budget: Moving Forwards or Backwards,” Centre for European Policy Studies (2014), 5. http://www.ceps.eu/system/files/Financing%20the%20EU%20budget_Final_Colour.pdf [9]

6. In this respect, we can also cite French semi-withdrawal from NATO, eviction of U.S. troops from French soil, and the creation of an independent French strategic nuclear deterrent (the force de frappe) – that at least France might survive the eventual Soviet-American nuclear war.

7. Francis Parkey Yockey, “The World in Flames: An Estimate of the World Situation,” February 1961. http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/07/the-world-in-flames-an-estimate-of-the-world-situation/ [10]

8. Discussed at length in Guillaume Durocher, “François Mitterrand: European Statesman, anti-American, & Judeophobe,” North American New Right, August 18, 2015. http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/08/francois-mitterrand/ [11]

9. Indeed, elite American economic commentators – whom we have to observe are largely Jewish – were overwhelmingly skeptical and even bemused by the Eurozone project, which we might deem to be yet another example of typically goyishe impractical idealism.

10. The postwar founders of the European Communities had incredible “federalist” pretensions despite an almost total lack of sovereign powers, their resources being reduced to the good will of national governments, U.S. support, and a secretariat in Brussels. Unbelievably overstated claims of the EU’s power and influence as a Weltmacht have been made in recent years, typically by Atlanticist pundits and professors who know they will be rewarded for going with the grain and flattering Eurocratic pretensions. See for example, Mark Leonard, Why Europe Will Run the Twenty-First Century (Public Affairs, 2006) and Andrew Moravcsik, “Europe, the Second Superpower,” Current History, March 10. https://www.princeton.edu/~amoravcs/library/current_history.pdf [12]

11. Namely with the famous Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), formerly known as TAFTA, which has attracted opposition from a wide array of leftists and nationalists, seeming to revive an old undercurrent of anti-Americanism in Europe for whom the U.S. is synonymous with unbridled corporate power and capitalist materialism. This same undercurrent has driven opposition to genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and the “investment firm” Goldman Sachs. Incidentally, in one of his more inspired moments, Bernard-Henri Lévi argued that Danish opposition to  Goldman Sachs was “anti-Semitic” and indeed has argued that anti-Americanism in general is “anti-Semitic” . . .

12. The euro is today a distant second to the U.S. dollar as reserve currency, but nonetheless far ahead of any other.

13. In particular, President de Gaulle privately justified the abandonment of French Algeria on ethno-nationalist grounds, arguing that France could never assimilate tens of millions of Arabs. He remarked that Frenchmen and Arabs would never mix: “Try to integrate oil and vinegar.”

In West Germany, postwar leaders encouraged ethnic German immigration (Aussiedler) back to the fatherland and were highly skeptical of Turkish immigration, with Chancellor Helmut Kohl even having a proposal of halving the Turkish population in Germany through remigration. See Guillaume Durocher, “Merkel’s Betrayal: From the Ethno-National Principle to Afro-Islamized Germany,” The Occidental Observer, September 16, 2015. http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/09/merkels-betrayal-from-the-ethno-national-principle-to-an-afro-islamic-germany-part-1/ [13]

14. See the pioneering work of Professor Kevin B. MacDonald: The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (1st books library: 2002) and “Understanding Jewish Influence I: Background Traits for Jewish Activism.” http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/understandji-1.htm [14]

15. Tony Judt, “The ‘Problem of Evil’ in Postwar Europe,” The New York Review of Books, February 14, 2008.  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/feb/14/the-problem-of-evil-in-postwar-europe/ [15]

16. Incidentally, there is a precedent in European Christendom, which created a cultural consensus among European elites across nations and states. This was a powerful factor of unity, especially against Muslim invasions, whatever one thinks of the wider problems and long-term effects of Christian doctrine.

 

 

 

Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

 

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/10/is-the-european-union-a-u-s-puppet/

 

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/USA-UE-W.jpg

[2] Léon Degrelle’s assessment: http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/06/for-our-part-we-dreamed-of-something-great/

[3] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Eurmerica-e1444667159371.jpg

[4] corrupt Arab oligarchs: http://www.unz.com/isteve/germans-build-anti-arab-fence-for-arabs/

[5] http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/07/is-the-eu-racist/: http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/07/is-the-eu-racist/

[6] http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/06/is-the-eu-fascist/: http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/06/is-the-eu-fascist/

[7] http://www.counter-currents.com/2010/12/cosmic-america/: http://www.counter-currents.com/2010/12/cosmic-america/

[8] http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/aldrich/publications/oss_cia_united_europe_eec_eu.pdf: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/aldrich/publications/oss_cia_united_europe_eec_eu.pdf

[9] http://www.ceps.eu/system/files/Financing%20the%20EU%20budget_Final_Colour.pdf: http://www.ceps.eu/system/files/Financing%20the%20EU%20budget_Final_Colour.pdf

[10] http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/07/the-world-in-flames-an-estimate-of-the-world-situation/: http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/07/the-world-in-flames-an-estimate-of-the-world-situation/

[11] http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/08/francois-mitterrand/: http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/08/francois-mitterrand/

[12] https://www.princeton.edu/~amoravcs/library/current_history.pdf: https://www.princeton.edu/~amoravcs/library/current_history.pdf

[13] http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/09/merkels-betrayal-from-the-ethno-national-principle-to-an-afro-islamic-germany-part-1/: http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2015/09/merkels-betrayal-from-the-ethno-national-principle-to-an-afro-islamic-germany-part-1/

[14] http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/understandji-1.htm: http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/understandji-1.htm

[15] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/feb/14/the-problem-of-evil-in-postwar-europe/: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/feb/14/the-problem-of-evil-in-postwar-europe/

 

 

 

mardi, 13 octobre 2015

Qui aura la peau de Malaparte?

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Qui aura la peau de Malaparte?

Pour Curzio Malaparte, la libération de l’Italie du joug mussolinien par les Alliés est une illusion. L’écrivain y voit plutôt le triomphe du matérialisme et du consumérisme. Surtout, il déplore la misère qui frappe le peuple napolitain en même temps que la décadence dans laquelle se vautrent ses élites.

Dans La peau qui paraît en 1949, Malaparte dresse un tableau sombre de l’Italie post-fasciste. À ses yeux, la libération formelle de l’Italie laisse place à une métamorphose du champ politique qui n’altère en rien la servitude de son peuple. Au fond, il n’y a pas de véritable changement : la cruauté des hommes perdure, avec ou sans Mussolini. La présence des Alliés est perçue comme hostile. Elle apporte avec elle son lot de misère et rajoute un peu plus au chaos qui domine le paysage napolitain. La force de La peau est de nous rappeler que, fascisme ou non, l’humiliation, la destruction et la misère humaine sont consubstantielles à toute offensive politico-militaire et que les violences morales ou physiques ne sont pas l’apanage des dictatures.

Naples est livrée aux plus basses vicissitudes de la part de ses habitants, les corps se négocient pour quelques cigarettes américaines ou contre quelques misérables denrées de subsistance. Corps de femmes, corps d’enfants, tout y passe sans aucune considération pour la dignité humaine. Quand on a faim, on oublie tout. Les mères vendent leurs enfants, et les femmes leur corps, les hommes se murent dans un silence. Tout le monde se découvre, se met à nu sur le marché, à la vue du public. Les corps sont omniprésents, les âmes semblent avoir disparues. C’est à cause de cette peau, cette maudite peau qui exaspère tant Malaparte : « Cela n’a rien à voir, d’être un homme convenable. Ce n’est pas une question d’honnêteté personnelle. C’est la civilisation moderne, cette civilisation sans Dieu, qui oblige les hommes à donner une telle importance à leur peau. Seule la peau compte désormais. Il n’y a que la peau de sûr, de tangible, d’impossible à nier. C’est la seule chose que nous possédions, qui soit à nous. La chose la plus mortelle qui soit au monde. Seule l’âme est immortelle, hélas ! Mais qu’importe l’âme, désormais ? Il n’y a que la peau qui compte. Tout est fait de peau humaine. Même les drapeaux des armées sont faits de peau humaine. On ne se bat plus pour l’honneur, pour la liberté, pour la justice. On se bat pour la peau, pour cette sale peau. » Malaparte dénonce le matérialisme triomphant et déjà anticipe ses dangers, il a assisté à la naissance en direct du consumérisme d’après-guerre et voit de ses propres yeux de quelles infamies sont capables les hommes « pour cette sale peau ».

L’Italie des vainqueurs

Naples est dans l’anarchie, il n’y plus de maître puisque Mussolini est défait. Il en résulte un état de nature quasi hobbesien : l’homme est un loup pour l’homme. La loi du plus fort règne, et les plus forts à Naples et dans toute l’Italie, ce sont les Alliés, plus exactement les soldats américains. Jeunes, beaux, fiers, souriants, les libérateurs regardent ces pauvres Italiens délabrés avec mépris ; « this bastard dirty people », dira le colonel Jack Hamilton.

Les nouveaux conquérants sont pourtant aimés du peuple italien, qui leur réserve un accueil des plus chaleureux notamment lorsqu’ils débarquent à Rome, et ce même si en passant, un char américain écrase un homme, devenu en l’espace de quelques secondes, un drapeau de peau.

Pendant que le peuple souffre des privations et des humiliations, la fine fleur de l’élite italienne aux mœurs légères se réunit dans des salons, les bourgeois pédérastes se griment en marxistes révolutionnaires, plus préoccupés par leurs affaires de mœurs que du sort de leur pays. Malaparte assiste à l’une de ces réunions, puis à une curieuse cérémonie païenne, il en sort éprouvé. «  À mes yeux, Jean-Louis était l’image même de ce que sont, hélas ! certaines élites des jeunes générations dans cette Europe non point purifiée, mais corrompue par les souffrances, non point exaltée, mais humiliée par la liberté reconquise : rien qu’une jeunesse à vendre. Pourquoi ne serait-elle pas, elle aussi, une « jeunesse à vendre » ? Nous aussi, dans notre jeunesse nous avions été vendus. C’est la destinée des jeunes, en Europe, d’être vendus dans la rue par faim ou par peur. Il faut bien que la jeunesse se prépare et s’habitue, à jouer son rôle dans la vie et dans l’État. Un jour ou l’autre si tout va bien, la jeunesse d’Europe sera vendue dans la rue pour quelque chose de bien pire que la faim ou la peur. » La décadence des élites et la bassesse du peuple italien sont tels que la rédemption devient une nécessité. La spectaculaire éruption du Vésuve vient alors purifier, par la lave et la cendre brûlantes, le péché et l’orgueil des hommes.

vesuve9999.jpg

Le Vésuve, symbole d’une justice divine impartiale

Face à l’arrogance américaine et aux vilenies napolitaines, la réaction de la nature et ce qu’elle contient de divin se manifeste dans une éruption volcanique, telle une scène d’Apocalypse, spectacle visuel impitoyable et magnifique à la fois. Le Vésuve, « dieu de Naples, totem du peuple napolitain » se réveille et gronde la terre. Les hommes sont perdus dans les ruelles, les cris, les prières et les supplications fusent sous l’œil impassible du terrible volcan. Pour la première fois, la peau est oubliée, on pense à son âme et à se repentir. Pour la première fois, les GI’s éprouvent un sentiment de crainte, la conscience de leur propre finitude, de leur petitesse. Hommes ou femmes, Américains ou Italiens, vainqueurs ou vaincus, tous sont égaux face à ce seigneur de la mort aveugle et sans pitié.

La loi du plus fort est toujours la meilleure, et c’est bien le Vésuve qui règne depuis des temps immémoriaux. Des scènes d’offrandes pagano-chrétiennes se succèdent dans les jours qui suivent l’éruption, les napolitains sacrifient des animaux, jettent des agneaux, poulets et lapins égorgés « palpitants encore, au fond de l’abîme ». Ils offrent des présents au Vésuve : fromages, gâteaux, pains, fruits et vins sont dédiés à cette divinité terrestre. Un long cortège de femmes, d’enfants et de vieillards monte sur sa pente ornée de sculptures de lave éteinte, alternant entre prières et insultes à l’encontre du volcan. Quand les actions malsaines des hommes atteignent un point de non retour, le Vésuve se réveille : l’hubris humain le tire de sa léthargie. Une fois éteint, désarmé de tout pouvoir de coercition, il redevient un dieu mort.

Un caméléon nostalgique de la grandeur de l’Italie

malaparte-febo.1294907906.jpgL’écrivain risqua sa vie pour libérer son pays de Mussolini dont il fut pourtant proche au départ. Lors d’un discours destiné aux soldats italiens qui combattaient le fascisme, il confie : « Le nom Italie puait dans ma bouche comme un morceau de viande pourrie. » L’écrivain refuse de s’attacher à un patriotisme aveugle et prend le recul nécessaire afin de discerner les tares de son propre pays qui se situent dans le fascisme ou dans le post-fascisme.  Malaparte s’identifie davantage à la Rome antique et à la Renaissance qu’à l’Italie moderne. C’est un homme du passé obnubilé par la richesse culturelle et artistique que lui ont légué les temps anciens : le patriotisme moderne ne semble pas être fait pour lui, le présent le désespère et il ne croit pas en un avenir meilleur. Ce qu’il vit au présent est vulgaire et ignoble, pessimiste résolu et réactionnaire esthétique, il est tourné vers le passé car il est attiré par ce qui est raffiné.

Malaparte est un grand cynique, il aboie pour dénoncer et aime le faire devant les grands hôtels pour déranger les clients, ces consciences tranquilles, bourgeoises, ancrées dans leur confort matériel et intellectuel. Mais son cri animal n’est pas seulement parasite, il est aussi empreint de douleur et de pitié, il crie pour ceux qui ont les cordes vocales sectionnées par la méchanceté et la cruauté humaine, qu’il s’agisse de chiens (son propre chien Fébo dans La peau ) ou d’hommes.

Berliner Historiker warnt: Meinungsdiktatur richtet Deutschland zu Grunde

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Berliner Historiker warnt: Meinungsdiktatur richtet Deutschland zu Grunde

Die aktuelle Flüchtlingskrise zeigt eine Seite von Deutschland, die uns bis vor Kurzem wenige zugetraut hätten: jubelnde Bürger, die Flüchtlinge an den Bahnhöfen empfangen. Bürger, die Flüchtlinge im Alltag unterstützen, ja, sie sogar bei sich zu Hause aufnehmen.

Es gibt aber auch eine andere Seite: Menschen, die glauben, die Flüchtlingskrise könnte Deutschland überfordern. Gerne gehört werden sie nicht. Viele, die sich kritisch über die Einwanderung Zehntausender Flüchtlinge äußern, werden in die rechte Ecke gestellt. Der Publizist und ehemalige Chefredakteur der "Wirtschaftswoche" Roland Tichy hat diese Menschen die "Ja-aber-Nazis" genannt.

Seine These: Ja-aber-Nazis sind wir irgendwie alle. Denn viele Deutschen heißen die Flüchtlinge willkommen und verteidigen das Grundrecht auf Asyl. Sie machen sich aber gleichzeitig Sorgen, ob die Integration der Neuankömmlinge auch wirklich gelingt. Und sie fragen sich, wie viele Menschen Deutschland noch aufnehmen kann.

Nun hat sich der Berliner Historiker Jörg Baberowski die aktuelle Stimmung in Deutschland in Folge der Flüchtlingskrise für die "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" ("NZZ") angesehen - und er kommt zu einem beunruhigenden Ergebnis.

Baberowski ist Professor für die Geschichte Osteuropas an der Humboldt-Universität in Berlin und beschäftigt sich seit Jahrzehnten unter anderem mit der Diktatur in Sowjetrussland.

Sein Text in der "NZZ" ist eine Abrechnung mit der Regierung Merkel und mit den Medien. Hier sind seine 8 Thesen zur Lage in Deutschland:

1. Die Bundesregierung ignoriert die Sorgen der Bürger

Seit Wochen werde nur noch darüber gesprochen, wie die Integration illegaler Einwanderer bewältigt werden soll. Aber niemand stelle die Frage, ob wir diese Einwanderung überhaupt wollen, schreibt Baberowski.

Er schreibt:

"Stattdessen wird Kritikern, die ihre Stimme gegen den Tugendwahn erheben, von der Obrigkeit mitgeteilt, sie seien herzlos und dürften an der Debatte über die Einwanderung nicht beteiligt werden."

2. In Deutschland herrscht eine Meinungsdiktatur

Es ist vielleicht die stärkste Anklage, die Barberowski in seinem Text vorbringt: "Deutschland ist ein Land ohne Opposition, dessen Regierung wünscht, dass in ihm nur noch eine Sprache gesprochen und nur noch eine Auffassung vertreten werde."

Später im Text konstatiert der Historiker: "Der Untertan soll schweigen und preisen, was ihm die Obrigkeit als Wirklichkeit präsentiert." In Deutschland, so meint Baberowski zumindest, werden abweichende Meinungen nicht mehr toleriert. Wir leben in einer Meinungsdiktatur.

3. Der soziale Frieden ist gefährdet

Baberowski bringt zudem ein Argument vor, das häufig zu hören ist: Die Einwanderungspolitik werde von jenen befürwortet, die wohlhabend seien. Baberowski schreibt: "Der soziale Frieden wird aufs Spiel gesetzt und die Armen werden gezwungen, die Folgen jener ungesteuerten Einwanderung zu bewältigen, die die Wohlhabenden herbeigeredet haben."

luegenpresse-wie-die-menschen-belogen-werden.jpg4. Auch die Medien sind schuld an der Meinungsdiktatur

In Deutschland stehen die Medien bisher - mit wenigen Ausnahmen - hinter der Flüchtlingspolitik von Angela Merkel. Selbst die "Bild"-Zeitung, die über Jahre einen ausländerkritischen Kurs fuhr und keine Gelegenheit ausließ, den Deutschen Angst vor der Zuwanderung zu machen, engagiert sich mittlerweile für die Flüchtlinge. Laut Baberowski ist dieser Einheitsbrei an Meinung aber gefährlich - und die Medien verbannten inzwischen jeden in die rechte Ecke, der sich kritisch äußere.

Baberowski schreibt in der "NZZ":

Wer auf den gesunden Menschenverstand verweist, riskiert Ausgrenzung und Ächtung. Viele schweigen, weil sie nicht wollen, dass man ihnen vorwirft, sie seien rechts – und dürften deshalb am öffentlichen Diskurs nicht beteiligt werden. Wer gegen die Konventionen der Tugendrepublik verstösst, wird nach Dunkeldeutschland verbannt.

Damit spielt der Historiker auf ein Titelbild des "Spiegel" an, das ein helles und ein dunkles Deutschland zeigt. Die einen heißen Flüchtlinge willkommen, die anderen lehnen sie ab. Gegen diese schwarz-weiß-Malerei will Baberoswki vorgehen. Nicht jeder, der sich kritisch über Flüchtlinge äußere, sei gleich ein Nazi.

5. Die Bürger stellen berechtigte Fragen

Das Ergebnis der Meinungsdiktatur ist, dass Probleme verschwiegen werden.

Baberowski schreibt:

"Denn die Probleme verschwinden nicht, nur weil man sie beschweigt. Der Besonnene hätte derzeit an die Politik viele Fragen zu stellen. Warum bricht die Regierung europäisches Recht, und warum setzt sie sich über Gesetze hinweg, die das Asylverfahren regeln? Warum soll eigentlich ein Einwanderer Sozialleistungen beanspruchen können, für die jene, die schon hier sind, jahrzehntelang gearbeitet haben?"

6. Die Folge ist Politik-Verdrossenheit

Wer seine Meinung nicht äußern darf und wer das Gefühl hat, nicht gehört zu werden, wendet sich ab. Und genau das passiert laut Baberowski gerade in Deutschland.

Er schreibt:

"Die Bürger wenden sich ab, weil die Politik sich für sie nicht mehr interessiert. Sie aber müssen die Folgen der Masseneinwanderung bewältigen. Davon wollen jene, die entschieden haben, dass Deutschland ein Vielvölkerstaat werden soll, nichts hören."

7. Auch die osteuropäischen Länder wenden sich von Europa ab

Der Osteuropaforscher Baberowski bringt auch Verständnis für Staaten wie Ungarn und Tschechien auf, die Merkel kritisieren und die gegen die Flüchtlingspolitik aus Brüssel sind. Er schreibt:

"Deutschland hat seine nationale Souveränität aufgegeben und die Entscheidung darüber, wer kommen und wer bleiben darf, in die Hände illegaler Einwanderer gelegt. Davon wollen die Nachbarländer im Osten Europas aus guten Gründen nichts wissen. Denn sie sind der Europäischen Union nicht beigetreten, um ihre nationale Souveränität aufzugeben, sondern um sie zu schützen."

8. Das ist das düstere Fazit von Baberowski:

"Deutschland wird sich bis zur Unkenntlichkeit verändern. Der soziale Frieden und der Zusammenhalt stehen auf dem Spiel ... Die Kanzlerin aber verschließt die Augen vor der Katastrophe, die sie angerichtet hat. Anderenorts sind Politiker schon aus nichti­geren Gründen zurückgetreten."

Man muss mit Jörg Baberowski nicht einer Meinung sein. Seine Argumente hören sollten wir aber - und sie diskutieren. Sie als unzulässig zu verschreien, wäre genau der Reflex, den Baberowski anprangert. Und der kann Deutschland tatsächlich gefährlicher werden als jede Diskussion.

Lesenswert:

Ernesto Milá entrevistado por el blog realmofchaosslavestodarkness

Ernesto Milá

entrevistado por el blog realmofchaosslavestodarkness


Respuestas al cuestionario enviado por el blog realmofchaosslavestodarkness y publicado hace un mes en https://realmofchaosslavestodarkness.wordpress.com/2015/09/16/entrevista-a-ernesto-mila/
 

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1 - En primer lugar, nos gustaría conocer los orígenes de Infokrisis, hace ya más de diez años, y cuáles son los objetivos del blog en el futuro, al menos, inmediatos o a corto plazo.
 
El blog se inició en 2003, no como blog sino como web. Fue de las primeras que se diseñó en España en php. Al cabo de un año, unos hackers la reventaron… así que opté por plataformas que dispusieran de su propio sistema de seguridad. A partir de 2010 el blog está en dos plataformas, la antigua, blogia.com y blogspot (que abrí al percibir que se habían producido nuevos intentos de hackeo).

¿Objetivos? Un blog no es más que una fotografía de lo que uno piensa en cada momento concreto de su vida, de lo que le interesa y le preocupa, de lo que medita y de lo que consume. No hay más objetivo que el opinar sobre la actualidad o reproducir artículos propios que ya se han difundido en otros medios. En este sentido, es también un almacén de trabajos realizados. La falta de tiempo hace que no pueda incorporar material audiovisual ni más comentarios.

Este escaparate de lo que te interesa en cada momento quizás esto pueda servir a alguno como orientación, pero no tengo el más mínimo interés en ser gurú de nada, ni referencia. En momentos de crisis y confusión, cada cual debe buscar su camino.


2 - Hace unos días le preguntábamos a Gustavo Morales si, de finales de la década de los ochenta para acá, notaba cierta evolución en la opinión pública española, un mayor grado de crítica y discrepancia frente a los medios de comunicación o la "política profesional"... No era muy optimista al respecto. Qué piensa Ernesto Milá, ¿estamos mejor o peor que en el 2004 y los inicios de Infokrisis? ¿Hay mejores "mimbres" hoy en España para construir una opción política relevante, respecto a la que teníamos hace diez años?
 
Los medios de comunicación han ido variando con el paso del tiempo y mucho más en la última década con la crisis del papel impreso. Antes tenían opinión y voz propia. Ahora son simplemente la expresión de grupos económicos que tienen poco que ver con la comunicación. La televisión no es más que publicidad y, de tanto en tanto, para que la gente vea los anuncios, alguna cadena coloca incuso programación. En cuanto a la prensa influye poco o nada: hoy ver a alguien comprando un diario empieza a ser un arcaísmo, una excepcionalidad inusual.

En 2003 apenas había en España 2.500.000 de internautas (y parece que fue ayer). Hoy todo el país y por distintas terminales (ordenador, tablet, móvil) tiene acceso a la red… así pues, cabría pensar que existen mayores ocasiones para difundir información libre. Y así es. El problema es que, paradójicamente, la saturación de información mata a la posibilidad de informarse y la falta de espíritu crítico hace el resto. Es el resultado de 50 años de crisis de la educación (que ya se empezó a reflejar en los últimos años del franquismo) que han barrido literalmente el espíritu crítico de las nuevas generaciones.
¿Existen comunicadores dignos de tal nombre? Sí, claro, hay tertulianos más independientes que otros, más lúcidos y más incisivos… pero, no nos engañemos, se trata de excepciones perdidas en el océano de la mediocridad. Por todo ello cabría decir que estamos en peor situación que ayer y en mejor situación que mañana.

El debate político (como el debate cultural, como el debate social y así sucesivamente) es algo desconocido en España. Existen, como máxima, riñas de gayos y peleas al estilo del pressing cacht norteamericano: puro espectáculo. Nada serio. El “estadista”, como el “periodista” que creía en su trabajo de llegar al fondo de las cuestiones e informar a los lectores, son dinosaurios de otro tiempo sustituidos por el diputado mudo y el tertuliano remunerado.
 
3 -Ante la denominada "crisis de los refugiados", se corre el riesgo de que ante el llamamiento lacrimógeno a la solidaridad de los europeos, se refuercen posturas "anti-sistema", no solo euro-escépticas, sino cercanas a partidos de tercera posición, nacionalistas, etcétera... ¿Cuál es su opinión al respecto? ¿Dónde se producirán en un primer momento?
 
Seamos claros en un punto: hay inmigración en Europa porque conviene al capital. Para ganar competitividad en relación a otros actores económicos de la globalización es necesario rebajar salarios (dado que ningún país es dueño de su política monetaria) y eso se hace inyectando cuanta más inmigración, mejor. Se benefician unas patronales y se perjudica al grueso de la comunidad. La cuestión humanitaria solo preocupa a las almas cándidas.

Durante 20 años ha estado llegando inmigración con la excusa de que “pagarían las pensiones de los abuelos”. Bien, esa excusa ya es inutilizable: está claro que la inmigración no solamente no paga pensiones, sino que en sí misma, es un lastre y una aspiradora de recursos económicos. Ahora la excusa de sustitución (necesaria especialmente después de las devaluaciones de la moneda china, país que sí puede practicar una política monetaria propia y guiada por sus intereses) es la “humanitaria”. Vivimos en tiempos de ultra-humanismo, somos “tan humanitarios” que cada vez con más frecuencia de extienden los “derechos humanos”, incluso a las mascotas… Tenemos miles de ONGs subvencionadas que hacen de la “ayuda y la solidaridad” su negocio en lo que se ha dado en llamar “estafa humanitaria”.

Hay que tener en cuenta que la clase política ya no planifica: su horizonte son los cuatro años que median entre unas elecciones y otras. Lo que ocurra luego le tiene sin cuidado. Toda la clase política europea ya no piensa en términos de futuro, ni de bienestar de sus hijos en una generación, ni de lo que ocurrirá después, solamente se mueven en términos de dejar hacer a los actores económicos, preocupándose especialmente de su jubilación, es decir, del patrimonio que gestionarán cuando abandonen el poder.

Obviamente las respuestas euroescépticas, populistas de izquierdas y de derechas, son el resultado de una decepción creciente ante la clase política. Pero es una respuesta muy superficial y en la que no se excluyen regresiones: es decir, aceptaciones finales del esquema neoliberal mundial, de la globalización… En ese esquema la economía está por delante de la política. Si tenemos en cuenta que nunca como hoy han existido tales acumulaciones de capital y nunca como hoy la clase política ha estado compuesta por tantas mediocridades y oportunistas, veremos que la desproporción es absoluta. La aludida falta de espíritu crítico de la población es el coadyuvante necesario para agravar la situación.

Lo dramático es que existen grupos de opinión hartos de la actual situación y que están reaccionando a derecha e izquierda, pero en ningún caso, todavía, tienen fuerza suficiente como para imponerse mínimamente a la actual corriente dictada por los “señores del dinero”. Y el tiempo juega contra ellos: el empobrecimiento cultural, la pérdida de identidad, la disminución del espíritu crítico, el repliegue hacia lo personal, son fenómenos que aumentan de día en día tendiendo a reforzar el sistema.

Céline decía: “Nunca ha votado, no tengo la menor duda de que la mayoría es idiota por tanto sé lo que saldrá de las urnas”. Vale la pena tener todo esto en cuenta a la hora de valorar las posibilidades de la contestación.
 

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4 - Para muchos, la postura "evoliana" es una postura acomodaticia, poco valiente. Tal y como están las cosas, en España, en Europa y Occidente en general, ¿existe la posibilidad de reconducir a las democracias occidentales y recuperar la soberanía nacional, o es una batalla perdida? De producirse, ¿cuáles podrían ser los puntos de inflexión que precipitarían los acontecimientos?
 
Evola lo único que dice es “sigue tu camino”… lo cual implica saber cuál es el camino de cada cual. Somos diferentes: unos más volcados a la acción, otros hacia la meditación, otros hacia el trabajo. Desde Dumézil se sabe que siempre existió una división trifuncional en las sociedades indo-europeas. Hay un Evola (el de Los Hombres y las Ruinas) que habla al hombre de acción. Hay otro Evola (el de Cabalgar el Tigre) que se dirige a otro tipo humano. Esto es fundamental para entender la obra de ste autor.

Dicho lo cual, añadiré que la cuestión sobre si en Europa puede hacerse o no todavía algo, es una vieja cuestión. En los años 50, supervivientes de los antiguos regímenes vencidos y miembros de algunos cuerpos de élite, ya discutían este tema. Existían dos posiciones: mientras Europa esté ocupada a un lado por soviéticos y a otro por norteamericanos, no puede hacerse nada, así que hay que trasladar el teatro de operaciones a Iberoamérica. La otra era, la de utilizar la “idea europea” para crear un nuevo proyecto continental capaz de hacerse un hueco en los escenarios políticos europeos. Este debate prosiguió hasta los años 70 y pertenece a mis recuerdos de juventud.

En la actualidad, Europa está perdida. Se puede tener un lugar bajo el sol de la democracia a condición de evitar todo radicalismo, y ocupando siempre un lugar secundario en la escena política. Es una opción a la espera de que los tiempos mejores. El problema es que la globalización es una apisonadora que mediante la Unión Europea, imposibilita cualquier capacidad de respuesta. Además, sus estructuras y políticas no son democráticas (es decir, no se elijen en votación sino que “surgen” en oficinas tecnocrática que ya no están al servicio de Europa sino del capital).

Desde 1945 la soberanía de los Estados es ficción: los vencedores de entonces (que siguen siéndolo hoy) se arrogaron el derecho de intervenir allí en donde aparezcan “amenazas” para la “comunidad mundial”. Desde 1945 el término “soberanía nacional” está obsoleto. Es un recuerdo, un residuo de la época de las Naciones-Estado. Hoy vivimos el tiempo de la Globalización, un concepto incompatible con cualquier otro que no sea soberanía del dinero. Hace unas décadas se solía decir que en Europa era donde los problemas habían alcanzado su máximo de intensidad, por tanto era aquí en donde antes se reaccionaría y de manera más contundente.

Pero ese planteamiento olvida que no son las Naciones las que reaccionan, sino los pueblos… y el pueblo europeo está tan absolutamente bastardizado y ganado por la ideología humanitarsta-globalizadora como cualquier otro. Es más: de manera empírica hemos podido comprobar que en otros países, especialmente en Canadá o en algunas zonas de Iberoamérica, existen criterios más racionales para la educación y están ausentes los prejuicios que en Europa han alcanzado categoría de dogmas.

No veo qué reacciones en profundidad podría aparecen en Europa, ni en función de qué: si Europa apenas ha reaccionado ante la crisis global iniciada en 2007, abandonad toda esperanza… no reaccionará jamás. El caso griego es sorprendente. Los europeos de hoy no son ya los descendientes de los héroes de las Termópilas, ni de Teotorburgo, no son ni los nobles godos que se propusieron reconquistar España desde los montes astures y el Pirineo catalán, no son hijos de los cruzados, ni herederos de los descubridores: son pobres despistados, débiles, moralmente ganados por el universalismo que han perdido incluso sus instintos naturales (el territorial, el de supervivencia y el de agresividad).

Por otra parte, reaccionar en contra de la globalización defendiendo a los Estados-Nación no parece la mejor fórmula: y la respuesta euroescéptica a la globalización se está haciendo desde los Estados-Nación, mucho más que desde otra perspectiva europea o desde la perspectiva de los “gran espacios” cuya necesidad ya se había puesto de manifiesto a finales de los años 30.
 
5 -En un reciente artículo de Infokrisis, se apostaba muy acertadamente por lo que se denominaría un "trans-partido", ajustado a una realidad social, económica, política y cultural muy diferente a la que hemos conocido hasta ahora. Si no lo entiendo mal, el futuro estaría ahora en fórmulas tipo plataforma o coalición, que aglutinen voluntades en torno a eso que se denomina "ideas fuerza". Algo similar hemos visto dentro del nacionalismo político español, primero con La España en Marcha, y ahora con la coalición entre España 2000, PxC y PxL. Las izquierdas a esto lo han llamado -al menos en Madrid, el caso de Ahora Madrid- "partido instrumental". ¿Podrá el patriotismo político español abandonar las siglas históricas y evolucionar en la misma dirección?
 
Bueno, el artículo que mencionas tiene unos 5 ó 6 años, se publicó inicialmente en la revista IdentidaD, es decir, se escribió al iniciarse la crisis de 2007, pensando que podría a partir de esta crisis se generaría una “respuesta nacional” en todo el continente que abarcaría también a España. No ha sido así.

mila105903-politica.gifVayamos por partes: de las siglas y las iniciativas que mencionas solamente hay dos que tengan un mínimo de actividad y peso, PxC y E2000. El resto son entelequias a las que falta incluso “principio de razón suficiente”: ¿Por qué existe una FE-LaFalange y no está dentro de una sigla común? ¿un Nudo qué es? ¿un partido, un círculo de amigos, qué fórmula legal tiene? ¿Pueden existir coaliciones de cuatro o cinco siglas sin un solo cargo electo y con apenas unos cientos de votos en donde cada parte sea celosa de su “independenci”? Absurdos, solo absurdos y nada más que absurdos con los que no vale la pena perder mucho tiempo. Ganará el partido que tenga los mejores cuadros, los más lúcidos, los mejor preparados, el equipo más dinámico y las ideas más claras: y en mi opinión solamente hay una fórmula, el eje PxC-E2000. Todo lo demás, es demasiado pequeño, oscilante e indefinido, o incluso meros arcaísmos.

Y sí, sigo pensando que la fórmula “partido político” ya no es la adecuada. Plataformas locales unidas en torno a un programa mínimo, vertebradas por una dirección que piense en los mismos términos y en torno a un fuerte liderazgo. No creo, por supuesto que siglas históricas puedan reavivarse en ninguna circunstancia, ni tampoco creo que partidillos que llevan 20 y 30 años funcionando con los mismos líderes y sin obtener un solo éxito, sirve para algo más que para disolverse.

Pero también aquí, te diré, que ando cansado de realizar propuestas, analizar fórmulas y sugerir soluciones e incluso de seguir esta temática. No ostento ningún cargo de dirección en ningún partido y creo que va siendo hora de que las direcciones de los partidos, partidillos y grupos de amigos, demuestren lo que valen y la idoneidad de sus propuestas. En lo que a mí respecta, no tengo nada que añadir ni que proponer.
 
6- Hagamos política ficción, y supongamos que dicha plataforma existe a muy corto plazo, de aquí a las generales... ¿Existe alguna posibilidad de conseguir algún éxito por la vía electoral de aquí a diciembre, o habría que esperar a las europeas de 2019? En tal caso, ¿cómo estará España para entonces, dentro de cuatro años?
 
No creo que en las elecciones de diciembre de 2015 se presente ninguna opción “patriótica” y en caso de presentarse, el fracaso será el habitual en todo lo que se hace con improvisación y sin dos dedos de frente. Las europeas de 2019 están muy lejos y veremos lo que ha sobrevivido. En cuatro años, España estará como hoy… pero un poco peor.

milaPortadaMundoCúbico.jpgCon un 18-20% de la población de origen inmigrante, con el sistema de pensiones colapsado, con 5.000.000 de parados enquistados y un tercio de la población próxima al umbral de la pobreza o por debajo de ella, con un sistema educativo convertido en mero almacenamiento de alumnos, y posiblemente con un segundo estallido de la burbuja inmobiliaria (si miráis en torno a las grandes ciudades, vuelven a verse grúas trabajando, cuando aún quedan 2.500.000 de pisos sin vender…) y cuando las repercusiones de la segunda oleada de crisis de la globalización, la que está en estos momentos estallando en Brasil, afecte particularmente a las empresas de nuestro país… tal será el horizonte que tendremos en 2019.

Más inestabilidad política, los mismos niveles de corrupción, la misma deuda impagable, y casi una cuarta parte de origen extranjero. No va a ser, desde luego, una situación como para que la “vieja banda de los cuatro” (PP+PSOE+CU+PNV), ni la “nueva banda de los cuatro” (Podemos+Ciudadanos+Bilbu+ERC) puedan echar cohetes, pero tampoco como para pensar que las masas van a acudir expontáneamente a una opción euroescéptica, identitaria o “patriótica”.

Para que eso ocurra en un plazo máximo de año y medio o dos debería levantarse una bandera que, por el momento, no existe, y que como digo solamente podría partir de PxC y E2000. ¿Por qué insisto en esta idea? Porque son los dos únicos grupos que tienen una mínima presencia institucional… es decir, que tienen algo de contacto con la población. El resto, apenas registran actividad y su ausencia de mínimos resultados electorales indica que carecen de cualquier cordón umbilical con el electorado. Hay que partir de experiencias concretas que hayan supuesto contacto real con los intereses de la población. Cualquier otra cosa se hundirá en medio de la esterilidad más absoluta, por mucho que en algún momento atraigan puntualmente la atención mediática.
 
7 -Recientemente hemos leído sendos artículos en prensa de Juan Manuel de Prada o Fernando Sánchez-Dragó en medios "generalistas", bastante lúcidos, que son toda una excepción dentro del discurso único de periódicos como El País, ABC, El Mundo o La Razón. ¿Cuáles son, en su opinión, otros autores "discrepantes" que, a nivel nacional o internacional, resulten al mismo tiempo accesibles, recomendables y potencialmente "peligrosos" o "dañinos" para el sistema?
 
Drieu la Rochelle decía que “un intelectual no es aquel que piensa, sino el que hace del pensar una profesión”. Estoy de acuerdo con esa definición. Un intelectual tiene la función de un despertador. Es lo máximo a lo que puede aspirar. Cuando un intelectual se levanta, cada día, piensa lo que tiene que escribir. Cientos de cuartillas. Miles al año. Es inevitable que en algunas se acierte. A los nombres que citas se podrían añadir otros que publican en medios de derechas y de izquierdas.

Hubo un tiempo en que los intelectuales cambiaban la historia o al menos influían sobre el devenir histórico y en torno suyo se formaban cuadros que luego serían dirigentes políticos. La Generación del 98, por ejemplo, la del 27, o el círculo de intelectuales  que formó en torno a Maurras en Francia. Esto no ocurre ahora: el intelectual es una voz que clama en el desierto. Influye muy poco en una sociedad que cada vez lee menos. Siempre he afirmado que el avance espectacular del Front National en 1984 y en 2014 no tiene absolutamente nada que ver con los miles de páginas escritas por Alain de Benoist.

Habitualmente el conocido cuento del Rey desnudo (de Andersen… sobre la base de un cuento español del infante don Juan Manuel, El Conde Lucanor) termina con un rey abochornado cuando un “niño” (perífrasis simbólica del intelectual) grita “¡El rey está desnudo!”… Puedo adaptar ese cuento a la modernidad: “tras oír la frase, toda la muchedumbre sigue alabando al rey y el propio rey le tiene absolutamente sin cuidado si está desnudo, vestido de armiño o haciendo el pino”. ¿Moraleja de esta versión del cuento? El intelectual puede predicar en el desierto; nadie le oirá, ni aun entendiéndolo, le prestará mucho más caso que el que se presta a una lluvia de verano. Me permitirás, por tanto, que me abstenga de recomendar autores; hasta un reloj parado acierta la hora dos veces al día. Vale la pena, eso sí, tener cierta curiosidad intelectual y picotear un poco por todas partes, sin ningún tipo de prejuicios, pero lo peor que hoy puede hacerse es tener “autores de referencia”. Tal es otro “signo de los tiempos”.
 
8- Una pregunta breve, y muy directa: ¿Existe la posibilidad de conseguir éxitos electorales sin tener presencia en los medios de comunicación, y más concretamente, en la televisión?
 
Milicia I.jpgCreo que sí. Pero es una falsa cuestión. Logra un clip viral y no necesitarás salir en TV, lo verá mucha más gente y durante más tiempo. Por otra parte, los medios se hacen eco de todo lo que tiene algún tipo de influencia en la sociedad. Siempre. Ningún “patriota” ha aparecido en TV en las últimas décadas simplemente porque, salvo acciones estilo Librería Blanquerna, apenas existe actividad patriótica y la que existe llega poco a la población. La gente que se queja de que Pablo Iglesias subió gracias a la TV, olvida que previamente existieron años de preparación (movimiento de los indignados, 15-M, décadas incluso siendo segundos espadas de Izquierda Unida). Nadie aparece en TV porque sí. Cuando desalojan a un Hogar Social, las cámaras acuden y entrevistan a alguien… hay una excusa para ello.

Harina de otro costal es lo que dicen los entrevistados. En televisión “repite” el que genera audiencia. Y para ello hace falta o ser un payaso (y aceptar ponerse en ridículo delante de la sociedad) o bien ser un provocador (y generar polémica, procurando gritar más que el resto de contertulios). Si alguien tiene un mensaje que difundir no estoy seguro de que la televisión sea el medio más adecuado. Lo que no hay que confundir es “no salir en televisión” con “no hacer nada que interese a la televisión” o con “difundir un mensaje que no interese al televidente”… En realidad, lo primero es la consecuencia de lo segundo.
 
9 - Nos gustaría, por último, que recomendase a los lectores del blog alguna película o algún libro (novela, ensayo, biografía) reciente que considere de interés.
 
Milicia II.jpg¿Novela? Me voy a lo clásico: El viaje al fin de la noche de Louis Ferdinand Céline. Sin duda, la mejor novela escrita en el siglo XX. Hay que leerla para reconocer que este título no es exagerado. ¿Ensayo? Compré El corazón de las tinieblas pensando que tendría alguna relación con la novela de Joseph Conrad. Lo tiene de manera simbólica; un ensayo muy recomendable sobre la estructura del Universo. Sólo apto para lectores seguros de no sufrir angustia existencial al percibir que estamos más próximos al cero que al infinito. ¿Biografía? La de Dionisio Ridruejo. Del fascismo al antifranquismo… interesante para comprender el primer franquismo y la naturaleza de los círculos intelectuales falangistas.

¿Cine? Habitualmente me regalo sobredosis de cine: Misericordia y Profanación ambas de género negro nórdico y con los mismos personajes; Timbuktu de cine minoritario africano, muestra la realidad del yihadismo vista por los que tienen que sufrirla; cine español: La isla mínima (el género negro es el mejor que se hace en España); ¿series? la primera temporada de True Detective, incluso la segunda, ligeramente más baja; ciencia ficción: Interestellar. Humor pausado: Los niños del cura… ¿Para qué seguir? De todas formas, me atrevería a realizar alguna sugerencia: ¿ves TV? No tienes excusa. Solamente un masoquista con una alta capacidad de sufrimiento podría ver series partidas con entre 6 y 15 minutos de publicidad, largometrajes que a medida que se acerca el final aumenta la publicidad hasta lo insoportable. Hay plataformas peer to peer para disponer de cualquier película o serie que te interese, plataformas digitales –Netflix en menos de un mes– que por menos de 10 euros al mes te ofrecen miles de películas, está youTube para ver el Club de la Comedia sin necesidad de comerse a algunos pestiños contratados para hacer bulto y los clips musicales que te interesen. Y un amplio elenco de Documentales de la TV2 que se pueden bajar o ver cuando a uno le dé la gana.


Lo dicho: si sigues viento la TV Odín no te admitirá en el Walhala…

(c) Ernesto Milà - info|krisis - http://info-krisis.blogspot.com  - Prohibida la reproducción de este texto sin indicar origen.
(c) realmofchaosslavestodarkness.wordpress.com/ - Prohibida la reproducción de este texto sin indicar origen.

Le Bien par procuration, summum de la pensée adhérente

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JEAN-LUC NANCY*, LE BIEN PAR PROCURATION

Le summum de la pensée adhérente

Michel Lhomme
Ex: http://metamag.fr

L'affaire Michel Onfray déchaîne les journalistes, c'est normal. Michel Onfray s'est sans doute depuis trop longtemps prêté aux jeux mais qu'elle enrage les métaphysiciens du silence est beaucoup plus surprenant pour ne pas dire proprement indécent. 


000000000000000000000000000000000031o3.jpgL'éloge du « silence des intellectuels » vantés par un des plus bavards - pour ne pas dire le plus baveux - d'entre eux prête à rire. Si Jean-Luc Nancy ne fréquente pas les plateaux de la télévision, il ne s'est en réalité jamais tu. La masse importante de ses publications, sans grande signification d'avenir et qui se vendent d'ailleurs déjà au kilo, en atteste largement. Effectivement, il est peu intervenu dans le débat public mais c'est que si Jean-Luc Nancy s'est tu depuis des années sur les affaires du monde, c'est qu'il a toujours consenti. Il a beau nous la jouer grand intellectuel dans son bureau au-dessus de la mêlée avec le leitmotiv d'Adorno au plafond, "plus de poésie après Auschwitz", il a en réalité toujours trouvé le temps d'écrire pour soutenir les pouvoirs en place.

 
Jean-Luc Nancy n'est pas tout à fait l'ascète ou le vieux sage qu'il voudrait nous faire croire. Mais imbu de son travail pour ne pas dire de sa personne, il se croit occupé à des choses plus sérieuses, en effet il déconstruit, il arrache la tradition et c'est en ce sens là que précisément il n'a cessé de collaborer à ce qui nous arrive, ce désastre que lui-même pressent. Incapable de la moindre analyse géopolitique autre que celle des maîtres - c'est-à-dire en gros le journal de 20 heures ou le 20 minutes de Canal Plus -,  sans courage par carriérisme, il a toujours suivi le courant, il est donc dans le vent compassionnel et il adhère à toutes les manipulations. Jean-Luc Nancy, c'est en quelque sorte le summum de la pensée adhérente, de la pensée qui colle au manche mais qui est fière d'elle-même puisqu'elle a la certitude d'être dans le bien. .Il nous sert donc politiquement un brouet relativiste et cosmopolite, un humanisme de pacotille fondé sur l'émotion directe et la dialectique du fluide ou du nomade. Il joue la pleureuse philosophique, qui a d'ailleurs le toupet de déclarer que les mots, surtout les mots du politique, n'ont plus de sens  intelligible. Justement, les mots conservent leur sens intelligible à mesure que croît le décalage entre ce que les Français voient ou lisent et la réalité qu’ils perçoivent et vivent au quotidien. Il n'empêche selon cette grande âme du Bien par procuration, il s'agit  évidemment d’accueillir avec enthousiasme l’Autre, celui venu d’ailleurs, nimbé de toutes les vertus et paré de toutes les supériorités dont pourraient et même devraient se réjouir des peuples vieillissants et fatigués qu’ils auraient peut-être - mais Nancy n'ose le dire, cela aurait été trop « osé » - pour mission de régénérer. Avouons que le conte philosophique est très mièvre et qu'il ne ferait même pas sourire Voltaire mais il est destiné aux esprits les plus fragiles. Il flatte surtout le Prince qui vous paie. C'est sa fonction première, ce « sens qui fait sens », « cet horizon », cette « ligne de fuite » pour paraphraser les inepties du style post moderniste de la fin de la métaphysique. Avec Nancy, nous n'aurons donc pas un autre son de cloche que celui des « petites chances » Mais encore, il va plus loin. Lui qui déconseillait sûrement à ses élèves de lire Spengler, devient en quelque sorte un décadentiste, un converti néo darwinien à la Jared Diamond, un apocalyptique mais sans Katechon, cédant aux sirènes de la disparition et voyant dans les réfugiés les « messagers de la fin ». 


L’épisode migratoire intensif subi par la France et un certain nombre de nations européennes et son aggravation subite depuis le mois d’août dernier ne doivent évidemment rien au hasard, pas plus que le glissement sémantique de « clandestins » à « réfugiés ». Déjà, nous sommes biens pantois devant un philosophe grand manitou du silence, qui cède sans sourciller, à la novlangue sans avoir l'honnêteté de relever la dérive sémantique du terme « migrants » en « réfugiés » ou de reconnaître au moins qu'il assume ce détournement politique qui n’a rien à voir avec un tic langagier mais qui est imposé par les médias relevant de la propagande.  En fait, Jean-Luc Nancy s'est fait ici le porte-parole de la classe philosophique universitaire et des professeurs de philosophie du secondaire. Ce sont des milieux libéraux particulièrement aliénés qui entonnent en chœur les refrains connus du déficit démographique qu’il convient de combler au plus vite, d’un système social qu’il nous faudrait consolider en accueillant la misère du monde, de la nécessaire solidarité à mettre en œuvre et du grand cœur qu’il convient de porter en bandoulière tout en affichant une exaltation bienveillante devant un fléau de grande ampleur qu’il faudrait feindre de prendre pour une inégalable opportunité. C’est un festival de bons sentiments, de passions désordonnées avec pour fond d'écran la paix universelle de Kant ou un regain de spinozisme anachronique. La philosophie universitaire, fidèle et docile à ses commanditaires aura ici une fois de plus joué son rôle, collaborant, pilonnant sans répit les valeurs, confondant éthique personnelle et éthique politique, serment d'Hippocrate et raison d'Etat sans le moindre sens de la nuance et surtout du bien commun mais aussi encore plus grave sans la moindre parcelle de rationalité. Jean-Luc Nancy qui en bon masochiste aura passé toute sa vie à cracher sur la Raison se mobilise donc pour le lavage de cerveau et le bourrage de crâne avant le grand conflit. On saura le retenir comme le fait que quelles que soient les approximations de Michel Onfray, ce dernier se sera tenu au contraire debout et non couché.  « Accueillez-les », « Le grand défi de l’Europe », les silences bavards de l'intellectuel Nancy sont peut-être les silences de l'attendrissement mais c'est un attendrissement qui, en pleine cavale et inquisition intellectuelle contre Onfray, a choisi son camp. Déjà, cela ne se fait pas entre collègues. 
Quant à soutenir l'accueil inconditionnel des immigrés illégaux, Nancy qui a  travaillé toute sa vie à la mort de la métaphysique finit pourtant en parfait métaphysicien par occulter délibérément la réalité tangible du politique. C'est bien le bon laquais, déférent du cosmopolitisme philosophique et qui ne peut s'empêcher aussi de nous mettre en demeure d’ouvrir grandes les frontières et de profiter de cet horizon indépassable de félicité que représentent la submersion migratoire et la disparition de nos peuples autochtones mais néanmoins dans une vision décadentiste de la fin. L'apôtre du suicide collectif semble ainsi tout émoustillé et ragaillardi par le déferlement massif de la misère du monde aux quatre coins de l’Europe parce qu'il y voit la fin d'un monde. 


On croirait lire du Cioran pour les nuls mais c'est très tristement ce qu'il appelle « penser au présent », sur fond de messagers itinérants qui hélas, ne seront pas des extraterrestres. La pensée a des devoirs et des droits. En tout domaine étudié, la pensée doit se faire l'humble auxiliaire des conditions qu'elle rassemble, pour être libre juge des conséquences qu'elle tire. La pensée fait et défait nos idées. Si les idées exercent l'intelligence, il reste pour chaque vie, à n'être pas intelligent pour rien. 

(*) Philosophe. A paraître: "L'Equivalence des catastrophes. Après Fukushima" (Galilée).

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Dostoevsky: Demonic Rationalism

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Dostoevsky: Demonic Rationalism

In his work Dostoevsky and the Metaphysics of Crime, sociologist Dr. Vladislav Arkadyevich Bachinin analyzes the only seemingly contradictory correlation between Enlightenment rationalism and the rise of infernal forces in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s work Demons. Translated by Mark Hackard.

Ex: http://souloftheeast.org

The Immoral Reason of a Living Automaton

Pyotr Verkhovensky, the cold-blooded cynic who easily transgresses any moral obstacles, represents a special type of criminal, to whom is applicable the philosophical metaphor of “man the machine.”

In 1748 France, Lematrie’s book under that title was released. Its author cast man as a self-winding machine moving along perpendicular lines. In Lametrie’s conception a human being was the direct likeness of a watch or harpsichord, and at the same time subordinated to natural necessity. But possessing instincts, feelings, and passions, he is deprived of a soul. Lametrie assumed that the soul was a term lacking any essential substance whatsoever.

The world in which the machine-man dwells is anthropocentric; there is no place for God. Reality is arranged in accordance with the principles of Newtonian mechanics, and the world presents a mechanical conglomerate of soulless elements. Natural and social processes are moved by one and the same mechanical forces.

The philosophy of machine rationality unfolds as the unique result of the evolution of classical rationalism. The elimination of all metaphysical content prepares the ground both for the arrival of positivism and for the realization of plans for building the future strictly rationalized society with calculated parameters wholly under the control of a directing will. The machine-man and machine-state, which need each other, arise as something resembling Aristotle’s telic reasons, and will directly and gradually determine the development of positivist anthropocentric schematics.

In accordance with the mechanistic picture of the world, there always exists the threat of intentional deformations in the structures of the cosmic order. Objectively there exist possibilities for the violation of measure and harmony, the destruction of order, and the ascent of chaos. A murderer can realize the objective possibility of death that exists for his victim. A thief or robber is capable of realizing the objective possibility of shifting material values in the social space from one set of hands to the other, etc. That is, it stands only for man to apply certain efforts for the possibility of disintegration of existing structures, its movement into reality. At times purely mechanical forces were sufficient for this. Moreover, the higher the degree of mechanism of such enterprises, the less that spiritual, ethical, religious, and similar components are in the mix, and the more effective destructive actions will prove.

Dostoevsky has the philosophy of the machine-man applicable first and foremost to characters who represent practical businessmen smacking of commercial types of the Western model, i.e., to such men as Luzhin, Rakitin, Epanchin, Totsky, Ferdyshchenko, etc. Indifferent to metaphysical reality, they subscribe to Rousseau’s “Geneva ideals” allowing the possibility of “virtue without Christ.” Immersed in the vanity of a graceless, prosaic-pragmatic existence, “having ears, they do not hear, and having eyes, they do not see.” All that comes from on high, from the spheres of metaphysical reality, does not reach their souls, and therefore they are immersed in the darkness of ignorance and incomprehension of the most important meanings of life. The thoughts and feelings of these “Bernards” carry an earthly character and are not directed toward the beyond. They do not like abstract reasoning, considering it an idle pastime. For them as for Lametrie, God and the soul are false moral magnitudes. For them the entire world dwells in the “disenchanted” state of a gigantic conglomerate of soulless elements. Not in one of them does God’s spark gleam. All these men are spiritually impoverished living machines, wound up, however, by a mysterious hand, but as Lev Shestov would say about them, they are not conscious that their life is not life, but death.

Art by Sergei Yukhimov.

Art by Sergei Yukhimov.

In his portrayals Dostoevsky expounds his criticism of the far-from-clean, wholly filthy immoral mind, more precisely the banal and base “Euclidian” reason that is deaf to the metaphysics of moral absolutes, the mind that sees in the soul “only vapor;” that is governed by cold reason alone and views the entire world as a set of tools for the achievement of its vapid objectives.

Among the specimens of the machine-man replicated by Dostoevsky, Pyotr Verkhovensky represents the most odious exemplar. He is calculating, ruthless, and is ready to go the full distance for the achievement of his goals, not stopping at the most vile infamies and crimes.

Criminal reality, inside of which exists Verkhovensky’s true “I,” is distinguished by characteristics such as a harsh aloofness from other evaluative worlds, and most of all from the world of religious, moral, and natural-law absolutes. Second, inherent to it is an acute tension in relations with official-normative evaluative reality. And its third particularity is a faint vulnerability, explained by the fact that for all its antagonistic position, it aspires to copy the structures of legal realities in its own fashion. Just as the devil parodies God, trying to imitate him, the criminal world seeks, for all the caricatured nature of its efforts, to reproduce normative-evaluative stereotypes of the legitimate and sacral worlds, attempting to acquire additional vitatlity at their cost.

It is not accidental that Shatov’s murder in Demons bears the marks of a ritual sacrifice. Along with that it takes the form of a monstrous parody of ancient ritual: instead of the solemnity of a holy rite, there is the filthy lowness of the whole scene; instead of open officiality, there is the cowardly, concealed secret act; instead of calling upon the favor of higher forces, there is a wager on the dark elements of evil, a commiseration of all the participants of the murder through the spilled blood of the victim and mutual fear before one another.

Art by Sergei Yukhimov.

Art by Sergei Yukhimov.

The Normative Space of the Criminal-Political Association

Verkhovensky deliberately forms an enclosed normative-evaluative space of criminal-corporate “morality” with harsh principles of self-organization and self-preservation. He requires that association members’ attitude to their tasks and objectives be extremely serious, not allowing for skepticism, self-irony, or criticism. Violators are immediately punished. Applied violence fulfills a protective function, acting as a means of welding and self-defense for this artificial micro-world.

Aside from similarity in the structure and forms of activity of criminal-political and purely criminal organizations, between the two there are essential distinctions. And so, if a criminal group’s ultimate goals are limited to the resolution of self-interested mercantile tasks, then the goals of criminal-political associations reach far beyond the boundaries of mercantile interests and are oriented toward the achievement of political dominance, by which members of the association cross over into the position of a ruling elite.

If associated criminals, as a rule, do not issue a challenge to the state and the state system but prefer to deal with individual citizens, a criminal-political association boldly steps into antagonism with state power and its institutions.

If a criminal group represents a unique form of a “thing-for-itself” and doesn’t conceal its corporate egoism, then a criminal-political association masks its just-as-base interests with a smokescreen of lies about the interests of the people that supposedly concern it.

The latter circumstance, noted Dostoevsky, allowed such men as Verkhovensky to recruit supporters not only from the spectrum of little-educated “losers” and fanatics with an unhealthy lust for intrigue and power, but also to involve young people with a good heart, even if with a “shakiness” in their views. The fate of the latter proved genuinely tragic, since these confidence tricksters, who studied the magnanimous side of the human heart and were able to play on its strings as on a musical instrument, ultimately transformed these youth into criminals.

Dostoevsky lamented that contemporary youth was undefended against “demonism” through maturity of firm convictions and moral hardiness. Among many material drives dominate a higher idea, and a genuine education is replaced with stereotypes of impudent negation through another’s voice, dissatisfaction, and impatience. As a result “even an honest and guileless boy, even one who studied well, could occasionally turn out to be a Nechaevite…that is, again, if he’d come across Nechaev…” (21, 133). To such boys, Nechaevs and Verkhovenskys paint criminal acts as feats of policy.

The fateful transformations that took place in the souls of many “Russian boys” were facilitated by a “time of troubles” itself, which forced Russian civilization at first slowly, and then ever more quickly, to slide down a sloping surface leading from order to chaos.

“In my novel Demons,” wrote Dostoevsky, “I attempted to attempted to express those various and diverse motives by which even the purest of heart and the most guileless people can be drawn to commit the most monstrous villainy. Therein is the horror, that here one can do the most infamous and abhorrent deed, sometimes completely not being a scoundrel! And that’s not among us only, but across the whole world it is so, always and from the beginning of the ages, during times of transition, in times of dislocation in people’s lives, of doubts and negation, skepticism and unsteadiness in basic social convictions. But we have it more than it’s possible anywhere, and namely in our time, and this feature is the most painful and sad feature of our present time. In the possibility of seeing oneself, and even sometimes almost, as a matter of fact, as not a scoundrel, while working clear and inarguable abomination – herein is our contemporary tragedy!” (21, 131)

“Machine” Rationality of a Political Program

Verkhovensky, possessing a strong, mechanical will seeking power, found a just as machine-like political program that corresponded to his nature. Its basic positions amount to the following points:

  • A new type of state with predominantly totalitarian forms of rule is necessary.
  • This state should keep its subjects in constant terror, without ceasing, conducting surveillance of everyone “every hour and every minute.”
  • Since geniuses, talents, and striking individuals represent a threat to the power of “machine-like” leaders by their extraordinary nature, all people will brought to an average level in their development through ideological and police terror, in the course of which Ciceros will have their tongues ripped out, Copernicuses their eyes gouged, Shakespeares stuck down with stones, etc.
  • To come to enactment of this program, it is necessary to begin with the total destruction of everything, in practice carrying out the transition from order to chaos.

Two vectors have united in this criminal-political program – the “machine” rationality of soulless villains with the demonic irrationality of maniacs run amok.

One of the most impressive paradoxes of Verkhovensky’s personality is just that surprising combination of “machine likeness” with a maniacal enthusiasm for destruction. It accords the figure of the political fiend an especially sinister character. With the direct participation of this unfeeling “machine” for producing disorder, events in the novel take the form of an oncoming squall, chaos enthroned, when a dozen murders and suicides are committed, along with several bouts of madness and a grandiose fire from arson. As a result the world enclosed in the novel’s textual frame begins to resemble a monstrous bestiary, where there is an absence of love and mercy, where there is only ruthless struggle of all against all.

Dostoevsky saw one of the sources of this chaos in the philosophical mindsets of rationalistic, materialistic, and atheistic content that penetrated from the West. Falling on Russian soil, the doctrines of Darwin, Mill, Strauss, and other representatives of European “progressive” thought, as a rule were taken in the Slavic consciousness, untried by many centuries of philosophical schooling, as adamantine philosophical axioms. Moreover, practical conclusions were often drawn from them, conclusions the possibility of which Western teachers had not suspected.

Art by Sergei Yukhimov.

Art by Sergei Yukhimov.

Of course, positive knowledge did not directly teach anyone villainy. And if Strauss, Dostoevsky notes with unconcealed irony, denied and mocked Christ, alongside that for man and humanity he demonstrated the most earnest love and desired their most radiant future.

But then here is what seems to me indubitable – give all these contemporary higher teachers the full opportunity to destroy the old society and build a new one – then there will come such darkness, such chaos, something so crude, blind, and inhuman, that the whole construction would collapse under the curses of humanity before it could be completed. Once it has rejected Christ, the human mind can reach the most astounding results. That is an axiom. Europe, at least in the higher representations of its thought, rejects Christ, and as is known, we are obligated to imitate Europe. (21, 132-133)

For Dostoevsky the evaluative-orienting and practical-transforming activity of moral, legal, and political consciousness must be founded on the principles of Theo-centrism. He disseminates the spirit of Theodicy on all spheres of spheres of social and spiritual life without exception. The Western legal consciousness is predominantly anthropocentric, and as a rule does not accept either religious or metaphysical normative-evaluative bases.

These bases are unneeded by machine-man, who discovers by his actions that open immorality, crime, and political Machiavellianism all have one and the same nature. They all begin with the denial of higher principles of being, absolute values, and norms.

lundi, 12 octobre 2015

Threat of Terrorism in Central Asia

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Author: Sofia Pale

Threat of Terrorism in Central Asia

Following the speech of Russian President, Vladimir Putin, which he delivered before the General UN Assembly on September 28, 2015, and the latest developments in Syria it evoked, global mass media engaged in a heated debate over the topic of international terrorism, which is associated these days with the activities of militants of the Islamic State (ISIS). It should be noted that Russia has a well-grounded reason to have concerns over this issue, as it directly involves the integrity of Russia’s eastern border it shares with the post-Soviet states of Central Asia.

Central Asia is a vast region, which includes Afghanistan, Mongolia, the northern regions of Iran, India and Pakistan, the western outreaches of China as well as part of the southern outskirts of Russia and five former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Since any upheaval in the post-Soviet region of Central Asia would inevitably affect Russia, it is no surprise that this sub-region is regarded as vital as far as Russian strategic interests are concerned. This is why Russia’s geopolitical rivals (the US and the member countries of NATO, which often benefit from destabilization of the situation in the post-Soviet Central Asia) strive to spread their influence to that region.

According to experts, radical movements in the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia are apparently being funded and managed by some international powers. For example, since the beginning of the 21st century, the authorities of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan had to deal with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Today this terrorist group, considered to be one of the most notorious, is seen as a threat to all countries of the Central Asia region. Originally, its objective was to achieve the separation of the Fergana valley from Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan and to form an independent Islamic state in its territory. The Fergana valley is a densely populated district with a high unemployment rate, which makes it a perfect “breeding ground” for all sorts of radical organizations and the recruitment of new supporters. If the initial militants’ agenda involved just the establishment of an independent state in the Fergana valley, today they harbor an even more ambitious plan: they want it to become a part of the Islamic Caliphate, which is supposed to include the entire territory of the Middle East and the Caucasus.

In August 2015, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan integrated into ISIS. This organization is proving to be more and more influential in the region and it is continually expanding, taking other smaller militant groups originating from the countries of Central Asia under its wing.

The threat it poses is so intense that on October 1, 2015 Tajikistan’s border patrol guarding the border with Afghanistan was put on full combat alert after Taliban militants, who are members of these terrorist organizations, stormed and seized the city of Kunduz.

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In recent years, there was a noticeable upsurge in the activities of the agents of international terrorist organizations in Kazakhstan. They recruit and train militants. There are militant bases in the territory of the country, where they plot acts of sabotage against neighboring states. Citizens of Kazakhstan participated in the acts of terrorism in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.

To add insult to injury, those who come from the former Soviet republics of Central Asia fight in Syria and Iraq in the ranks of ISIS. Outlook for the future is rather grim since the worst consequence of this situation for the countries of Central Asia is that sooner or later militants will return to their home countries, and the chances are high that having gained experience in war, they would engage in terrorist activities at home.

The threat of terrorism in the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia is exacerbated due to the wide support the radical Islamic movements receive from the local population, who are being “brainwashed” through the massive extremist propaganda. In Russia, this situation is perceived as potentially dangerous because propaganda campaigns are also being conducted among the Muslims residing in the Russian territory. According to some sources, a substantial number of militants originating from Central Asia and currently fighting in the ranks of terrorists in the Middle East were recruited in the Russian Federation, while temporary living in its territory as migrant workers. Adverse living conditions, low wages and discontent with the government in their home countries contribute to the recruiters’ success.

Therefore, the worst-case scenario for Russia (in the context of activities of terrorist organizations) would be the flaring up of armed conflicts, which, causing a stream of refugees to cross Russian borders, would put the country’s stability at risk and disrupt the established trade and political relations with its eastern neighbors.

Should that happen, all those, who fear a “strong Russia,” including the US, would be reaping the fruits. Some facts (and there are plenty) suggest that the US and NATO intelligence agencies were involved in the establishment of some of the most aggressive terrorist organizations. Evidently, there are occasions when geopolitical interests of the US require for “the dirty work” to be done by somebody else, and Islamic terrorists are perfect candidates for this role. It happened more than once that the US, striving to spread its influence to some region, would extend its support to the local extremist and terrorist organizations to overthrow the disfavored regime with their hands.

There are grounds to believe that the West is worried about the growing affinity between Russia and China and could potentially use tension in Central Asia to undermine the positions of the two countries and increase own influence in the region. As it has already been mentioned, Russia would be greatly troubled should a military conflict be sparked in the region. It would also hit China, especially, if the Uighur separatists from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China (more than 15 million people live there, out of which 60% are of Turkic origin and practice Islam) would become active. The US and its NATO allies can (should the circumstances be suitable) promote extremism in the region to reinforce their influence and exert pressure on Russia and China.

What differentiates the contemporary approach of the US intelligence services in their dealing with terrorist groups from the methodology they used to apply in the past is that today terrorists are supposed to be liquidated after they complete their task. But the confidence of western intelligence services in that they can keep terrorists under control is profoundly erroneous. As the Russian President pointed out in his speech at the General UN Assembly, “…those, who flirt with terrorists, deal with cruel but not stupid people who also have their own ambitions and know how to implement them. The Islamic State did not come out of a clear blue sky: it was initially nurtured as an instrument against disfavored secular regimes.”

The threat to the global security is also heightened by the fact that even when NATO and the US publicly declare an uncompromising war on terrorism, they still continue pursuing their own geopolitical interests, and this notion was demonstrated in Iraq and Afghanistan.

By now, ISIS has developed into such a powerful force that it would take joint efforts of all countries to counter it.

Speaking before the General Assembly of UN, Vladimir Putin once again appealed to all countries (and, first of all, the countries of the western hemisphere) to put their ambitions aside and join Russia and its partners in their struggle against the common threat. Will the West accept this invitation or not? It is obvious that if the US and the countries of NATO do not reconsider their positions, terrorism will not be eradicated any time soon.

Sofia Pale, Ph.D. Candidate of Historical Sciences, Researcher with the Center for South-East Asia, Australia and Oceania of Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/10/10/threat-of-terrorism-in-central-asia/

Carl Schmitt in China

Carl Schmitt in China

Schmitt by Muller Chinese trans

The ideas of Carl Schmitt (1888-1985), a man known as ‘the crown jurist of the Third Reich’, have enjoyed enormous currency among mainland Chinese scholars since the 2000s. The role of prominent academics such as Liu Xiaofeng 刘小枫, Gan Yang 甘阳 and Wang Shaoguang 王绍光 in promoting Schmitt’s ideas, and the fact that his theories on the state help legitimise one-party rule, have ensured that China’s ‘Schmittian’ discourse has been both fashionable and profitable (the usually heavy hand of the censors touches only ever so lightly on articles and books inspired by Schmitt).

Schmitt joined the German National Socialist, Nazi, party in 1933 when Adolf Hitler became Reichskanzler of the Third Reich and enthusiastically participated in the purge of Jews and Jewish influence from German public life. The anti-liberal and anti-Semitic Schmitt was a keen advocate of National Socialist rule and he sought to become the Third Reich’s official legal theorist. By late 1936, however, articles in the Schutzstaffel (SS) newspaper Das Schwarze Korps accused him of opportunism and Catholic recidivism. Despite the protection of Herman Göring, Schmitt’s more lofty ambitions were frustrated and thereafter he concentrated on teaching and writing.

Schmitt’s stark view of politics has attracted much criticism and debate in Euro-American scholarship. Thinkers on the left are ambivalent about his legacy, although despite the odeur of his Nazi past, he remains popular among theory-seeking academics. They see Schmitt’s ideas as deeply flawed while acknowledging his acuity and studying his writings for the insights they offer into the limitations of liberal politics, even as they impotently argue from the lofty sidelines of contemporary real-world governmentality.

In China, the reception of Schmitt’s ideas has been more straightforward; after all, even Adolf Hitler has enjoyed a measure of uncontested popularity in post-Mao China. Mainland scholars who seek to strengthen the one-party system have found in Schmitt’s writings useful arguments to bolster the role of the state, and that of the paramount leader (or Sino-demiurge), in maintaining national unity and order.

To date, Schmitt’s Chinese intellectual avatars have neglected a few key concepts in the meister’s oeuvre that could serve well the party-state’s ambitions under Big Daddy Xi Jinping. We think in particular of Schmitt’s views of Grossraum (‘Big Area’), or spheres of influence. Inspired by his understanding of the Monroe Doctrine propounded by the US in support of its uncontested hegemony in the ‘New World’, Schmitt’s Grossraum was to justify the German Reich’s European footprint and legalise its dominion. As China promotes its Community of Shared Destiny 命运共同体 in Asia and the Pacific (see our 2014 Yearbook on this theme), the concept of spheres of influence is enjoying a renewed purchase on the thinking of some international relations thinkers. See, for instance, the Australian scholar Michael Wesley’s unsettling analysis in Restless Continent: Wealth, Rivalry and Asia’s New Geopolitics (Black Ink, 2015).

During her time at the Australian Centre on China in the World in late 2013, the legal specialist Flora Sapio presented a seminar on the subject of Schmitt in China, and she kindly responded to our request to write a substantial essay on this important ‘statist’ trend in mainland intellectual culture for The China Story.

Flora Sapio is a visiting fellow at the Australian Centre on China in the World. Her research is focused on criminal justice and legal philosophy. She is the author of Sovereign Power and the Law in China (Brill, 2010); co-editor of The Politics of Law and Stability in China (Edward Elgar, 2014); and, Detention and its Reforms in China (forthcoming, Ashgate, 2016). — The Editors

___________________

We set up an ideal form [eidos],
which we take to be a goal [telos],
and we then act in such a way
as to make it become fact. [1]

The Schmittian intellectual likes to play Russian roulette but with an intriguing new twist: she believes that a single round has been placed in the revolver but she also knows this may not be the case. In fact, the only one who knows the truth is the Sovereign, a figure whose will the Schmittian cannot fathom. The Sovereign decides who plays the game and how many times. If the Schmittian turns downs this offer that can’t be refused, she would be declared an enemy and shot. Given how this intellectual predicament, masquerading as a position, commits one to always comply with the Diktat of the Sovereign, we must ask ourselves: why have several prominent Chinese intellectuals elected Herr Professor Carl Schmitt, Crown Jurist of the Third Reich, to be their intellectual patron saint?

Fulfilling a dream of wealth and power has been a feature of Chinese history and intellectual life since the late-nineteenth century. Chinese dreams, whether they be those dreamt up around the time of the 1919 May Fourth Movement, or the visions conjured up almost a century later by party-state-army leader Xi Jinping, involve a conviction that China is endowed with a distinctive national essence 国粹. The national essence is to China what the soul is to man. Just as (religious) man seeks to ascend to heaven by cultivating and purifying his soul, China can become wealthy and powerful if its national essence is enhanced and cleansed of polluting influences. The New Enlightenment Movement which emerged following the ideological thaw of the late 1970s saw traditionalism and feudalism being accused of holding China back. In the 1980s, Chinese intellectuals argued over how to revive the nation’s true nature, with many recommending an eclectic combination of Western values, theories and models in the process.[2] The Movement would witness a reversal of fortunes after the 1989 Beijing Massacre. Powerful nationalist sentiments followed in the 1990s, fuelled in part by the state and in part by a reaction to the inequalities of market reform, coupled with the public’s response to external events.

Telling Friend from Enemy 

刘小枫

Liu Xiaofeng

It is against this fast-changing backdrop that China’s Carl Schmitt fever must be situated. It would be wrong to see the ‘invisible hand’ of the State at work behind the fad.[3] The reception of Carl Schmitt by Chinese intellectuals, some of whom are key members of the New Left, was possible only because of the work undertaken by the influential scholar Liu Xiaofeng 刘小枫 (currently a professor at Renmin University in Beijing) to translate, comment on and promote Schmitt’s opera omnia. The holder of a theology doctorate from the University of Basel, Liu argued in his PhD thesis for Christianity to be separated from both its ‘Western’ and ecclesiastical dimensions, thereby allowing Christian thought to be treated purely as an object of academic research. Christian thought, so conceived, could thus be put in dialogue with other disciplines and contribute, among other things, to the modernisation of Chinese society. Liu related the development of Christianity to the development of nations and their identities, reflecting Max Weber’s argument in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, a book that was widely read in Chinese translation and highly influential in 1980s’ mainland intellectual circles.

Liu argued that in China Christianity took root in a unique way and was independent of missionary evangelisation. Liu’s sinicisation of Christian theology enabled the development of a Sino-Christian discourse in mainland intellectual circles focused on solving ‘Chinese problems’.[4] This was, and remains, a discourse that engages with such issues as economic development, social justice, social stability and most important of all, the political legitimacy of Communist Party rule.

Liu calls himself a ‘cultural Christian’, meaning a Christian without church affiliation: one who conducts research on theological arguments and concepts for the benefit of his nation. It is no surprise then that by understanding research in these terms, Liu soon developed a fervid interest in Carl Schmitt. To Carl Schmitt, the state has a theological origin — it must be conceived of as a divine-like entity if it is to hold back chaos and disorder so as to secure peace and prosperity. Schmitt’s thesis also implies that all modern political concepts originate in theology, which in turn makes theology amenable to being treated as a form of statecraft.[5] From the outset, Liu showed himself highly receptive to these Schmittian ideas. We must also note the ease with which the writings of Carl Schmitt succeeded in China. Unlike Chinese scholarship based on Western liberal-democratic models, which was and remains prone to censorship, Chinese aficionados of Schmitt’s ‘friend-enemy’ distinction and his critique of parliamentary democracy were unimpeded in their pursuits.

As a conservative Catholic, Schmitt understood politics (which he termed ‘the Political’, in an attempt to capture its essence) as based ultimately in the friend-enemy distinction. For Chinese intellectuals who had been brought up on Maoist rhetoric,[6] and were familiar with the adaptation of this dyad of friend-enemy 敌我 for post-Maoist political use,[7] Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction had a powerful resonance. This was a distinction that could be used to name any pair of antagonists, as long as the attributes of the named antagonists could be demonstrated to be so thoroughly incommensurable as to make them want to destroy each other, in order for each to preserve its own identity.

The friend-enemy distinction was a central feature of Schmitt’s political and constitutional theory: it grounded his critique of parliamentary democracy as well as his ideas about ‘the state of exception’ and sovereignty. Liberal democracies, Schmitt held, were trapped in false political categories: they ignored the crucial distinction between friend and enemy and therefore exposed themselves to the risk of capture by the interests of wealthy individuals and factions, who would use the state for their own goals rather than for the greater good of the people. According to Schmitt, liberal polities pretended that the government and the people were subject to the demands of reliable legal norms but the pretence was shattered whenever an internal or external enemy threatened the nation and national security. Reliance on parliamentary debates and legal procedures, he argued, posed the risk of throwing a country into chaos because they hampered the adoption of an effective and immediate response.

Schmitt held that sovereignty resides not in the rule of law but in the person or the institution who, in a time of extreme crisis, has the authority to suspend the law in order to restore normality. The authority to declare a state of emergency or Ausnahmezustand thus has unquestioned legitimacy, regardless of whether it takes the form of an actual (written) constitution or an implicit (unwritten) one. Yet how can a sovereign power that exists above and outside the law enjoy any legitimacy? Wouldn’t such a power be self-referential and premised on sheer violence? According to Schmitt, the legitimacy of such a power can be defended if one delinks the concepts of liberalism and democracy. He held that the two were substantially distinct and set about redefining the latter.

Schmitt argued that a polity founded on the sways of popular opinion could hardly be legitimate. He appealed instead to ideas about equality and the will of the people.[8] For Schmitt, political equality meant a relationship of co-belonging between the ruler and the ruled. As long as both ruler and ruled were members of the same group, or ‘friends’ holding identical views about who the enemy was, a polity was democratic. Schmitt held that where the will of the people mirrored the sovereign’s decision, rule was, indeed, by the people. Such a popular will need not be formed or expressed in terms of universal suffrage: the demands made at a public rally were sufficient to convey a popular will at work.[9]

Schmitt’s eclectic definition of the popular will led him to conceive of democracy as a democratic dictatorship. This way of thinking was very attractive to intellectuals who favoured statist and nationalist solutions to political problems and issues of international relations.[10]

Schmitt by Liu Xiaofeng

Why Schmitt? 

The reasons for Chinese intellectuals’ fascination with Carl Schmitt are straightforward. The related concepts of ‘friend and enemy’, ‘state of exception’ and ‘decisionism’ are simple and usable. Policy advisors and policy-makers can easily apply these concepts in their analysis of situations. Schmitt’s vocabulary can also lend theoretical weight to the articulation of reform proposals, to serve as a source of inspiration or to furnish building blocks in the construction of pro-state arguments in political science and constitutionalism. Moreover, Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction complements and provides justification for the many narratives of nationalism and cultural exceptionalism that have become influential in Chinese scholarship in recent years. These narratives are by no means unique to China but we must note that they are at odds with the universalist and internationalist aspects of Chinese Communism as state doctrine. The gist of the Chinese Schmittian argument is that the world is not politically homogeneous but a pluriverse where radically different political systems exist in mutual antagonism. China, accordingly, is not only entitled to but must find and defend its own path to power and prosperity.

The Chinese Schmittian argument justifies the party-state’s view that Western parliamentary democracy, thick versions of the rule of law, civil society, and the values and institutions of Western constitutionalism are all unsuitable for China. Schmitt’s argument allows those who hold this view to say that such ideas belong to an ‘alien’ liberal cosmopolitanism that is ultimately damaging for the Chinese way of life. In 2013, a state directive dubbed ‘Document 9’, outlined these ideas as posing a serious threat to China’s ‘ideological sphere.’[11]

Carl Schmitt’s views have now become influential in mainland Chinese scholarship and he is frequently quoted as a foreign authority in arguments mounted against ‘liberalism’ and Western or US-inspired models of economic and political development. But the fact that Schmitt’s philosophy premises politics on exclusion and even the physical elimination of the enemy (should such an elimination be deemed necessary to the achievement of an ideological goal), is something never raised in Chinese intellectual discourse. The friend-enemy distinction encourages a stark form of binary thinking. The category of friend, however substantively defined, can be conceived only by projecting its opposite. ‘Friend’ acquires meaning through knowing what ‘enemy’ means. The attributes used to define a ‘friend’ can, as Schmitt pointed out, be drawn from diverse sources. Religion, language, ethnicity, culture, social status, ideology, gender or indeed anything else can serve as the defining element of a given friend-enemy distinction.

The friend-enemy distinction is a public distinction: it refers to friendship and enmity between groups rather than between individuals. (Private admiration for a member of a hostile group is always possible). The markers of identity, however, are relatively fluid because a political community is formed via the common identification of a perceived threat.[13] In other words, it is through singling out ‘outsiders’ that the community becomes meaningful as an ‘in-group’. This Schmittian way of defining a ‘people’ elides the necessity of a legal framework. A ‘people’, as a political community in the Schmittian sense, is primarily concerned about whether a different political community (or individuals capable of being formed into a community) poses a threat to their way of life. For Schmitt, the friend-enemy distinction is a purely political distinction and to be treated as entirely separate from ethics.[14] Since the key concern is the survival of the ‘in-group’ as a ‘people’ and a political community, Schmitt’s argument implies that the elimination of a perceived enemy can be justified as a practical necessity.[15] Hence, those who call themselves Schmittian intellectuals should be aware that Schmitt’s argument is framed around necessity. So long as a there is a necessary cause to defend, any number of deaths can be justified.

Moreover, necessity is premised on antagonism. The friend-enemy distinction grounds every aspect of Schmitt’s thinking about politics and constitutionalism. But this is precisely why Schmittian concepts have inspired some of the most effective analyses of Chinese politics and constitutionalism. Schmitt’s view of sovereignty as requiring the ruler to have the freedom to intervene as necessary for the good of the whole country is of a piece with the ‘statist intellectual trend’ 国家主义思潮 in Chinese scholarship of which Wang Shan 王山 and Wang Xiaodong 王小东 were and remain key proponents.

This movement led to the development of an argument around the importance of ‘state capacity’. In an influential 2001 work, the political scientists Wang Shaoguang 王绍光 and Hu Angang 胡鞍钢 presented ‘state capacity’ as the key to good governance and policy. They argued against democratic decision-making processes by outlining their adverse consequences. According to them, such processes can involve lengthy discussions, leading to delays in policy implementation or even to political and institutional paralysis. They saw ‘the capacity on the part of the state to transform its preference into reality’ as crucial for protecting the nation’s well-being.[16] Since then, there have been many academic publications in mainland China that present ‘state capacity’ with its corollaries of social control and performance-based legitimacy as a viable alternative to parliamentary democracy.

Quotable and Useful Ideas

王绍光

Wang Shaoguang

In a subsequent work provocatively titled Four Chapters on Democracy,[17] Wang Shaoguang pays implicit tribute to Carl Schmitt’s Four Chapters on the Concept Sovereignty. Like Schmitt, Wang rejects representative democracy on the pragmatic and utilitarian grounds that such a system is ultimately incapable of improving the welfare of the entire population. Echoing the Schmittian argument of parliamentarianism’s capture by interest groups, Wang argues that universal suffrage plays into the hands of those endowed with financial means, while reducing the have-nots to the role of passive spectators.

Wang also presents a Schmittian-inspired notion of ‘the people’ as the basis of a responsive democracy, arguing that countries with a strong assimilative capacity and steering capacity (that is, the people united under a strong leader) have a higher quality of democracy. Some of Wang’s vocabulary has come from democratic political theorist Robert Dahl, but it is Schmitt’s argument that underlies Wang’s explanations of responsive democracy and state effectiveness.[18]

The ‘state capacity’ argument advanced by Wang, Hu and others has enjoyed the attention of Western scholarship on contemporary China for a decade or more. It is frequently cited in academic publications about China’s economy, political economy and public administration.

In many of these published studies (in English and other European languages), ‘state capacity’ is treated as having afforded the Chinese government an effective means for accelerating China’s economic development. The evidence of China’s economic success, in turn, has also encouraged some academics to propose that an authoritarian government may be more efficient in delivering economic growth than a liberal-democratic one. It is baffling that among those who hold this view, some have also claimed to ‘support China’s transition to a more open society based on the rule of law and human rights’.[19] If by ‘more open’ they mean greater freedom of the liberal-democratic variety, then this goal is at odds with their argument that the Chinese Communist Party’s one-party system must be strengthened through a range of capacity-building initiatives.

Schmitt’s argument has also been very influential in mainland scholarship on constitutional theory. After Mao, the party-state needed — and to an extent still needs — a distinctively Chinese political ontology. This ontology — or way of conceptualizing and understanding the world — has to include a bipartite political system, in which an extensive party apparatus exists both inside and outside the law, wielding supreme power over the state. Furthermore, this party-state system has to be internally coherent: capable of self-perpetuation to enjoy legitimacy in the eyes of both the Chinese people and foreigners. Chinese legal academics such as Qiang Shigong 強世功, who view constitutionalism in these terms, began in the 2000s to defend their position by deploying the whole arsenal of Schmittian philosophy. The result was a trinity of concepts: ‘the state of exception’, ‘constituting and constituted power’ and ‘political representation by consensus’ (representing respectively the terms State, Movement and People as used by Schmitt in his 1933 work, Staat, Bewegung, Volk), which these academics hailed as the true essence of Chinese law.

When Schmitt is directly quoted, his influence is obvious. But there are scholars such as Cui Zhiyuan 崔之元 who have made tacit use of Schmitt in their theorising about governance and politics in China. Schmitt’s influence is evident in Cui’s understanding of China as a ‘mixed constitution’ involving ‘three political levels’.[20] Similarly, Chen Ruihong’s 陈瑞洪 notion of ‘virtuous unconstitutionality’;[21] Han Yuhai’s 韩毓海 doctrine of ‘constitutionalism in a proletarian state’;[22] Hu Angang’s 胡鞍钢 rebranding of the Politburo as a  ‘collective presidency’;[23] Qiang Shigong’s 强世功 model of ‘shared sovereignty under a party-state leader’,[24] are other prominent Schmittian-inspired arguments to have emerged in the last two decades. These theories belong to different areas of Chinese constitutional scholarship,[25] but they all recast the Schmittian sovereign in Chinese party-state garb. Specifically, each of these theories defends political representation by consensus, linking consensus to broad acceptance of the Diktat of the party-state. In one way or another, they also all present the ‘West’ and its political and legal institutions as unsuited for China.

To date, Western legal scholarship has properly examined neither these influential arguments nor their legal and political ramifications. But there are several scholars who have indicated the relevance of these arguments for China. For instance, Randall Pereenboom presents a useful account of the Chinese legal system as a pluriverse populated by different conceptions of the rule of law.[26] Michael Dowdle has argued, in sympathy with the New Left position, that liberal conceptions of constitutionalism are limited and that there is room for state power to be legitimated in other ways.[27] Larry Catà Backer has conceived the Party and the State as a unitary whole, a theoretical construct inspired by the reality of Chinese institutions, which allows for shuanggui 双规 detention on legal grounds.[28] These works can be read as putting the finger in the wound of some of our own contradictions. We may criticise the Chinese legal system from the purview of an idealised model of the Western legal system but at the same time we cannot avoid dealing with Chinese law as it is discussed and presented, and as it exists within the People’s Republic of China.

Several mainland intellectuals have pointed out that although Chinese Schmittians are fond of attacking the West, they don’t explain why they rely on a German political thinker to do so.[29] This criticism is useful, but it ignores how advocates of indigenous concepts and models, ‘Third Way’ proponents and Western-style liberals alike have yet to examine their uses of a logic that belongs more to Western metaphysics than to indigenous Chinese thought (Confucian or other forms of thinking derived from pre-Qin sources). This Western logic requires one to construct an ideal model of how a political system, a legal system, a society or truly any other entity should be, into which we then attempt to ‘fit’ reality, often without heeding the consequences of doing so.

At any rate, we can see that Schmittian concepts have become far more dominant than liberal ones in mainland legal scholarship. Political moderates such as He Baogang 何包钢[30] have sought to accommodate the arguments of both sides by proposing, for instance, that a constitutional court should have the power to decide on what constitutes a ‘state of exception’, on which the absolute authority of a Schmittian sovereignty is predicated. But such attempts at accommodation only reveal the weakness of the liberal position by comparison with the Schmittian one. Professor He reflects the quandary of those who seek to defend elements of a liberal democratic model (such as judicial independence) within an unaccommodating Schmittian friend-enemy paradigm.

Schmitt und Xi

Since Xi Jinping became China’s top leader in November 2012, the friend-enemy distinction so crucial to Carl Schmitt’s philosophy has found even wider applications in China, in both ‘Party theory’ and academic life. The selective revival of the Maoist rhetoric of struggle to launch a new mass line education campaign on 18 June 2013 is a good example of how the friend-enemy distinction has been adapted for present-day one-party rule.

To see the consequences of Schmittian reasoning, it is important that we consider the motivations behind Carl Schmitt’s privileging of the friend-enemy distinction and absolute sovereignty. Schmitt believed that he was theorising on behalf of the greater good. His philosophy can be rightly described as a political theology because it was inspired by the Biblical concept of kathechon [from the Greek τὸ κατέχον, ‘that what withholds’, or ὁ κατέχων, ‘the one who withholds’] — the power that restrains the advent of the Anti-Christ.[31] Schmitt transposed kathechon into a political register, defining it as the power that maintains the status quo.[32] This power can be exercised by an institution (such as the nation-state) or by the sovereign (whether as dictator or defender of the constitution). A logical consequence of Schmitt’s belief in the kathecon was the conflation of religious and political imagery. Forces which were against a given sovereignty were nothing less than evil enemies sowing the seeds of chaos and disorder. Accordingly, to protect one’s nation or sovereign was a sacred duty and the path to salvation.

We may fundamentally disagree with Chinese intellectuals who have opted to promote a Schmittian worldview. But if we are to defend intellectual pluralism, we must accept that people are free to choose their own point of view. In fact, the emergence of a Chinese Schmittian discourse in academic scholarship augments the current range of Schmittian-inspired arguments produced as much by scholars on the right as on the left in European and American settings.

We must also note that in China, as everywhere else, political differences of the left and right, or between the New Left and liberals, emerge out of and remain largely trapped in a common setting: what may be called a common political-theological paradigm, to use Schmitt’s vocabulary. Political differences are made meaningful in a common setting, out of which people receive and develop their mental schemes, their political vocabularies and the entire universe of concepts for thinking politics. The political-theological paradigm of one-party rule in the People’s Republic of China has ensured that Chinese intellectuals are bound to the mental schemes, vocabularies and concepts that this paradigm has allowed to be generated. What we must bear in mind is that Western ideas must also be accommodated into the paradigm.

Living in a country that has witnessed a rapid rise to economic wealth and global power over three decades, Schmittian intellectuals in today’s China have sought to marry a philosophy that emerged and developed in Germany from the 1920s to the 1940s with ideas about statehood that first became popular in China in the 1980s. This mix of Schmittian thinking and ‘statism’ has now become very influential in Chinese academic circles. But there doesn’t seem to be much concern about the destructive potential of Carl Schmitt’s philosophy.

_____________

Notes:

* The author would like to thank the editors of The China Story, in particular Gloria Davies, for their intellectual and stylistic contributions to this study. Subheadings have been added by the editors.

[1] François Jullien, A Treatise on Efficacy: Between Western and Chinese Thinking, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2004, p.1.

[2] On the New Enligthenment Movement, see Xu Jilin, ‘The Fate of an Enlightenment — Twenty Years in the Chinese Intellectual Sphere (1978–1998)’, Geremie R Barmé and Gloria Davies, trans, East Asian History, n.20 (2000): 169–186. More generally, and critically, see Zhang Xudong, ed., Whither China: Intellectual Politics in Contemporary China, Durham: Duke University Press, 2001, Part I.

[3] The study of European philosophy was not a priority of the Ninth Five Year Plan on Research in the Social Sciences and Philosophy 国家哲学社会科学研究九五规划重大课题, which covered the period from 1996 to 2000, and Liu Xiaofeng’s first publication on Carl Schmitt, a review of Renato Cristi’s book Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism, dates to 1997. See Liu Xiaofeng 刘小枫, ‘Shimite gushide youpai jiangfa: quanwei ziyouzhyi?’ 施米特故事的右派讲法: 权威自由主义? , 28 September 2005, online at: http://www.aisixiang.com/data/8911.html. On the Ninth Five Year Plan, see Guojia Zhexue Shehui Kexue Yanjiu Jiuwu (1996–2000) Guihua Bangongshi 国家哲学社会科学研究九五 (1996–2000) 规划办公室, Guojia Zhexue Shehui Kexue Yanjiu Jiuwu (1996–2000) Guihua 国家哲学社会科学研究九五 (1996–2000) 规划, Beijing 北京: Xuexi chubanshe 学习出版社, 1997.

[4] Liu Xiaofeng 刘小枫, ‘Xiandai yujing zhongde hanyu jidu shenxue’ 现代语境中的汉语基督神学, 2 April 2010, online at: http://www.aisixiang.com/data/32790.html. On Sino-Christian theology, see also Yang Huiling and Daniel HN Yeung, eds, Sino-Christian Studies in China, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006; Pan-chiu Lai and Jason Lam, eds, Sino-Christian Theology: A Theological Qua Cultural Movement in Contemporary China, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010; and, Alexander Chow, Theosis, Sino-Christian Theology and the Second Chinese Enlightenment: Heaven and Humanity in Unity, New York: Peter Lang, 2013. For a mainstream commentary on Chinese Schmittianism, see Mark Lilla, ‘Reading Strauss in Beijing’, The New Republic, 17 December 2010, online at: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/magazine/79747/reading-leo-strauss-in-beijing-china-marx

[5] Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, George Schwab, trans, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005 p.36.

[6] Mao Zedong, ‘On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People’, Selected Works of Chairman Mao Tsetung, Volume 5, edited by the Committee for Editing and Publishing the Works of Chairman Mao Tsetung, Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1977, pp.348–421.

[7] For an exploration of its uses in the field of public security, see Michael Dutton, Policing Chinese Politics: A History, Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.

[8] Carl Schmitt, Dictatorship: From the origin of the modern concept of sovereignty to proletarian class struggle, Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward, trans, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014.

[9] Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, Ellen Kennedy, trans, Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2000; and, Carl Schmitt, Constitutional Theory, Jeffrey Seitzer, trans, Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.

[10] On the statist and nationalist intellectual trend, see  Xu Jilin 许纪霖, ‘Jin shinianlai Zhongguo guojiazhuyi sichaozhi pipan’ 近十年来中国国家主义思潮之批判, 5 July 2011, online at: http://www.aisixiang.com/data/41945.html

[11] ‘Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere. A Notice from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s General Office’, online at: http://www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation.

[12] As, for instance, a relationship of agonism, where the Schmittian enemy becomes an adversary. In this context, see Chantal Mouffe, On the Political. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.

[13] Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, George Schwab, trans, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007, p.38.

[14] Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, pp.25–27.

[15] Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, pp.46–48.

[16] By which Wang and Hu mean: ‘the ratio between the actual degree of intervention that the state is capable of realizing and the scope of intervention that the state hopes to achieve.’ See Wang Shaoguang and Hu Angang, The Chinese Economy in Crisis: State Capacity and Tax Reform, New York: ME Sharpe, 2001, p.190.

[17] Wang Shaoguang 王绍光, Minzhu sijiang 民主四讲, Beijing 北京: Sanlian shudian 三联书店, 2008.

[18] Wang Shaoguang, ‘The Problem of State Weakness’, Journal of Democracy 14.1 (2003): 36-42. By the same author, see ‘Democracy and State Effectiveness’, in Natalia Dinello and Vladimir Popov, eds,  Political Institutions and Development: failed expectations and renewal hopes, London: Edward Elgar, 2007, pp.140-167.

[19] ‘EU-China Human Rights Dialogue’, online at: http://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/china/eu_china/political_relations/humain_rights_dialogue/index_en.htm

[20] Cui Zhiyuan 崔之元, ‘A Mixed Constitution and a Tri-level Analysis of Chinese Politics’ 混合宪法与对中国政治的三层分析, 25 March 2008, online at: http://www.aisixiang.com/data/18117.html

[21] Chen Ruihong 陈瑞洪, ‘A World Cup for Studies of Constitutional Law: a Dialogue between Political and Constitutional Scholars on Constitutional Power’ 宪法学的知识界碑 — 政治学者和宪法学者关于制宪权的对话, 5 October 2010, online at: http://www.aisixiang.com/data/36400.html; and, also Xianfa yu zhuquan  宪法与主权, Beijing 北京: Falü chubanshe 法律出版社, 2007.

[22] Han Yuhai 韩毓海, ‘The Constitution and the Proletarian State’ 宪政与无产阶级国家 online at: http://www.globalview.cn/ReadNews.asp?NewsID=34640.

[23] Hu Angang, China’s Collective Presidency, New York: Springer, 2014.

[24] Qiang Shigong 强世功, ‘The Unwritten Constitution in China’s Constitution’ 中国宪法中的不成文宪法, 19 June 2010, online at: http://www.aisixiang.com/data/related-34372.html.

[25] See also the special issue ‘The Basis for the Legitimacy of the Chinese Political System: Whence and Whither? Dialogues among Western and Chinese Scholars VII’, Modern China, vol.40, no.2 (March 2014).

[26] Randall Peerenboom, China’s Long March Towards the Rule of Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

[27] Michael Dowdle, ‘Constitutional Listening’, Chicago Kent Law Review, vol.88, issue 1, (2012-2013): 115–156.

[28] Larry Catá Backer and Keren Wang, ‘The Emerging Structures of Socialist Constitutionalism with Chinese Characteristics: Extra Judicial Detention (Laojiao and Shuanggui) and the Chinese Constitutional Order’, Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, vol.23, no.2 (2014): 251–341.

[29] Liu Yu 刘瑜, ‘Have you read your Schmitt today?’ 你今天施密特了吗?, Caijing, 30 August 2010, online at: http://blog.caijing.com.cn/expert_article-151338-10488.shtml option=com_content&view=article&id=189:2010-10-08-21-43-05&catid=29:works&Itemid=69&lang=en

[30] He Baogang 何包钢, ‘In Defence of Procedure: a liberal’s critique of Carl Schmitt’s theory of exception’ 保卫程序 一个自由主义者对卡尔施密特例外理论的批评, 26 December 2003,  online at: http://www.china-review.com/sao.asp?id=2559

[31] ‘Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in this time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who know letteth will tell, until he be taken out of the way’. See, The Bible: New Testament, 2 Thessalonians 2: 3-8.

[32] For a simple illustration, see Gopal Balakrishnan, The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt, London: Verso, 2002, Chapter 17. An overview of debates about the role of the katechon and a genealogy of the concept in Carl Schmitt’s political theology can be found in Julia Hell, ‘Katechon: Carl Schmitt’s Imperial Theology and the Ruins of the Future’, The Germanic Review, vol.84, issue 4, (2009): 283-325.

 

Metapolitik bedeutet Revolution

Metapolitik bedeutet Revolution

von Carlos Wefers Verástegui

Ex: http://www.blauenarzisse.de

fa24f9745ef1d31206ce1973dbde487b_L.jpgPortrait Ray Bradbury,​Selin Arisoy (cc)

Metapolitik“ ist ein in rechtskonservativen Medien oft gebrauchter Begriff. Schon der Zusatz „Meta“ zur „Politik“ suggeriert etwas Mystisches, ein über den Dingen Stehendes.

Dabei ist die Metapolitik bei weitem nicht so abgehoben und hochgeistig, wie sie klingt. Auch gibt es keinen „metapolitischen“ Kanon, kein Geheimwissen um die Metapolitik, denn die Namen, die im metapolitischen Diskurs fallen, bestimmen vielleicht über einige Inhalte, hauptsächlich aber geben sie die Richtung an, welche die Metapolitik nach ihnen zu nehmen hat.

Metapolitik, im weitesten Sinne Pädagogik

Die Metapolitik ist zunächst einmal Theorie, die sich aber in der Praxis zu bewähren hat, sie ist also ein Bildungsinhalt im Übergang zur Bildungs– und Erziehungsarbeit. In diesem Sinne ist jede Metapolitik wesentlich eine Ordnung stiftende Pädagogik, die zunächst auf die geistige Selbstorganisation des Individuums abzielt.

Metapolitik als Förderung individuellen Urteilsvermögens soll eine ganz bestimmte Art von Einsicht, nämlich die richtige, in die politischen Belange bringen. Das kann sie aber nur leisten, wenn ihr Erkenntnisanspruch wesentlich und bewusst politischer Natur ist, also zur objektiven Erkenntnis die richtigen Ziele und Wege politischen Handelns vorgibt. Zu diesem Zweck bedient sie sich der Geschichtlichen und überhaupt der Sozialwissenschaften, um die gesellschaftliche und politische Wirklichkeit sowohl zu erkennen als auch in sie einzugreifen.

Sie zerfällt in zwei Teile, deren erster und wichtigster von einer intellektuellen Elite bearbeitet wird. Diese geistige Arbeit betrifft z.B. Entscheidungen über die konkreten Inhalte der Metapolitik sowie deren Ausgestaltung in zur weiten Verbreitung fähiger Lehrform (Propaganda). Der zweite Teil betrifft speziell die im Organisatorischen liegende Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. Dazu gehört die publikumsgerechte Aufbereitung dieser Inhalte, ihre Weitergabe und effektive Verbreitung sowie die Berechnung auf ihre gesellschaftliche Zugkraft. Dabei sollte es gleichermaßen um einzelne Personen, bestimmte gesellschaftliche Zielgruppen sowie um die gesamte Öffentlichkeit gehen. Adressaten der Metapolitik sind deshalb und tatsächlich – alle!

Wege und Abwege der Metapolitik

Die Metapolitik ist kein Einfall von graugesichtigen Einbrötlern, sie verdankt ihr Dasein gegebenen gesellschaftlichen Zuständen, genauer: Missständen. Das es sie überhaupt gibt, ist an sich schon Rechtfertigung genug. Gerade deshalb befindet sie sich an einem Scheideweg. Ein Weg führt zur Anpassung und Unterordnung unter die gegebenen Verhältnisse. Das geschieht einerseits mittels „Geisterbeschwörung“ und sublimierter Indignation (soziologischer Ritualismus), die der ohnmächtig in sein Schicksal gefügte Einzelne zwecks eigener Seelenkur anwendet. Für sich vermeint er sich zwar „im Widerstand“, tatsächlich leistet er aber gar keinen Widerstand, äußerlich hat er sich nämlich sehr wohl angepasst. Und sobald jemand den gegebenen Umständen für angepasst gilt, so ist er das auch, mag sein „Inneres“ sich da gebärden und aufmüpfig sein, wie es will.

Anderseits geschieht Anpassung und Unterordnung dadurch, dass die Ziele und Mittel der Metapolitik in der parteipolitischen Tagesarbeit immer mehr nach unten rutschen, um als leeres Bekenntnis späterhin ein unrühmliches Dasein zu fristen. Am Ende verschwinden sie ganz. Ohne dass es vielleicht in der Absicht nützlicher Organisatoren und aufrichtiger Vereinsnaturen gelegen hätte, fällt die Metapolitik im letzteren Falle unweigerlich dem Opportunismus zu Opfer.

Inwiefern Metapolitik revolutionär ist

Die einzige Alternative zur Anpassung bietet die Metapolitik, wenn sie wirklich und vornehmlich Metapolitik ist, und nicht „Ritualismus“ oder ein hüpfender Punkt auf der Tagesordnung. Metapolitik ist Revolutionismus: Wer „Ja“ zur Metapolitik sagt, hat folglich auch „Ja“ zur Revolution zu sagen. Das reicht schon an sich aus, die Spreu vom Weizen zu trennen. Die Metapolitik ist in die Welt gerufen worden und dazu berufen, einen Missstand zu beseitigen, die Nöte der Zeit richtig zu erkennen und das Falsche durch Anwendung entsprechender Mittel umzustürzen.

Metapolitik ist radikal, weil sie sich eben auf die „Wurzeln“ beruft und die Dinge an den „Wurzeln“ angreifen will. Vom Ganzen, nicht von den Teilen auszugehen, ist radikal. Von der Ursache, nicht von den Wirkungen auszugehen, ist radikal. Darum ist der „Radikalismus“, der Synonym für Metapolitik ist, einer so schiefen, erfolgssüchtigen Zeit wie der unsrigen verpönt. Erfolg hat nämlich nur, wer sich immer gut anpasst, mitgeht, mitschweigt, mitdenkt, mitmacht – das größte Kompliment, welches all die Zyniker, Heuchler, Opportunisten sowie deren lauwarme politische Kundschaft – die philiströse Mitte – der Metapolitik machen können, ist, eben radikal zu sein.

Die Metapolitik muss angefeindet werden

Wenn „Erfolg“ haben heißt, in geruhsamen Frieden, Wohlstand und Erdenglück die „andern“ machen zu lassen, und so das Ganze durch Feigheit und Weichheit zugrunde zu richten, so kann die betonte Friedfertigkeit und Harmoniebedürftigkeit unserer „Mitbürger“ nur ihresgleichen über ihre eigene Niedrigkeit und Nullität täuschen, denn: so einer hat kein Recht, über jemanden zu richten, noch über die Radikalität einer Idee, Person oder Bewegung zu entscheiden.

Wird die „feine“, die mehr theoretisierende Metapolitik schon aufgrund ihrer selbst angefeindet, öffentlich verächtlich gemacht und diffamiert, so ist durchaus davon auszugehen, dass sie auf dem richtigen Weg ist. Wenn sie sich „harmonisch“ in Bestehendes fügte, ohne die Leute zu beunruhigen und zu Verdächtigungen und Bezichtigungen anzureizen, wäre sie selbst nichtig. Nur darf es nicht bei Sticheleien bleiben, die Leute müssen wild und rasend gemacht, wirklich gegen die Metapolitik und gegen ihre Verfechter aufgebracht werden. Und das geht, indem betont offensiv vorgegangen wird. Die Verfechter der Metapolitik müssen kriegerisch auftreten und gegen bestehende Meinungen wüten – ja, wüten.

Der Konflikt hat im Mittelpunkt zu stehen

Die Metapolitik soll dahin wirken, bestehende, bisher schwelende und unter den Teppich gekehrte Konflikte aufzudecken, nach Möglichkeit auszutragen und diejenigen Konflikte zu schüren, die notwendig sind, gesellschaftlich die Spreu vom Weizen zu trennen. Sie setzt den Anfang zu einer Revolution im Kopf, die dafür sorgt, dass den „allgemeinen Wahrheiten“ – Elternhaus, Schule, „Politik“, Presse usw. – nicht mehr geglaubt wird und auch nicht mehr wiederholt wird, was alle gedankenlos wiederholen.

Sie soll trennen, zur Abspaltung führen und somit das Alte, erst für sich, dann für alle anderen, abbrechen. Als ein geistiges Erdbeben ruft die Metapolitik Brüche hervor – genau so aber hat noch jede Revolution begonnen, nämlich dass erst hinterfragt und somit später nicht mehr geglaubt wurde. Den Unglauben an die politische und gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit zu begründen, liegt im Wesen der Metapolitik, nur so ist sie die das Terrain für die Revolution vorbereitende Bereitmachung der Geister und Meinungen.

Zu ihr gehört der politische Realismus

Die Art, in der die Metapolitik einige Dinge verteidigt, andere bekämpft, ist nichts anderes als ein legitimer Kampf, nämlich ums Dasein und um ein Sein. Sie zeitigt den Kampf aus Notwehr, aber auch aus politischem Realismus: der Kampf ist aus keinem Leben, weder aus dem sozialen noch aus dem politischen, wegzudenken.

Nach Heraklit ist der Krieg der Vater aller Dinge – heute würde gegen ihn als Kriegsverherrlicher protestiert, sein Name in der Welt der Wissenschaft unmöglich gemacht werden. Das beweist nur, wie sehr die Welt im Unrecht liegt, wenn sie den Krieg ächtet, die Konflikte zu „managen“ gedenkt oder sie individuellem und kollektivem „Fehlverhalten“ zurechnet.

Die Devise einer kranken Zeit lautet: Wer aufbegehrt oder revoltiert, der ist grundsätzlich verhaltensgestört. Gibt´s keine Therapie, wird repressiv vorgegangen, mit „Ordnungskräften“ und „Ordnungsmitteln“. Die Erfahrung, dass immer mehr Leute „ausrasten“, bzw. dass das „Fehlverhalten“ in der Gesellschaft immer mehr wird, macht niemanden stutzig, der mit der Welt in Einklang steht. Dazu passt auch das Sprüchlein „Wer schreit, schlägt und drangsaliert, der hat schon von sich aus kein Recht“ – wirklich, ist das so? Wer gegenüber einer kecken Dummheit, dem abgeschmacktesten Zynismus oder einer sträflichen Leichtsinnigkeit, und seien sie gesellschaftlich noch so weit verbreitet und akzeptiert, tätig wird, der kann schwerlich im Unrecht sein. Das ist eine wahrhaft metapolitische Erkenntnis.

Charles Maurras & Action Franҫaise

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Charles Maurras & Action Franҫaise

The following text is the transcript by V. S. of Jonathan Bowden’s last lecture, delivered at The London Forum on March 24, 2012. The original title was “Charles Maurras, Action Franҫaise, and the Cagoule,” but since he does not mention the Cagoule, I dropped it from the online version. I want to thank V. S. for transcribing a largely unlistenable audio track, and Michèle Renouf and Jez Turner for making the recording available. 

French Action was largely a newspaper, but it extended out into a political movement between the First and Second World Wars and to a certain extent the second decade of the 20th century just passed, so after the first of those two wars. What made Action Franҫaise so special was the theoretical and literary contribution of Charles Maurras.

Maurras was born in Provence. He was an intellectual who was drawn to a kind of revolutionary tradition in French life. France had always been characterized until the later 19th century by a significant quadrant of the population who rejected the logic of the French Revolution. The French Revolution, which lasted from 1789 until Napoleon’s essential conquest of military power in the French Republic in 1796 and his full dictatorship in 1799 thereafter to 1815, was a period of extraordinary and grotesque change the likes of which European civilization had not seen before. Considerable parts of France, like the Vendée and elsewhere, also fought against the revolutionary tyranny of that time. These were known as the Whites, or the counter-revolutionaries. This tradition of regretting the French Revolution was part of High Catholicism and part of the deep social conservatism of sections of the bourgeoisie that existed in France throughout the existence of the Third Republic.

The Third Republic was created after the collapse of France’s military honor in 1870 when the Prussians badly defeated France in the territorial war between two major European states. The emergence and unification of Prussia on the disemboweled and disinherited torso of modern France was something the French took very much to heart. Particularly in 1871, there was a communistic uprising in Paris known as the Commune which started in a particular period and which French troops put down in an extremely bloody and savage way with the sponsorship of German arms behind them in the rear.

Now, Maurras believed totally in what he called “integral nationalism” or nationalisme intégral. This is the idea that France came first in all things. Regarded as a “Germanophobe” for most of his life, Maurras escaped death after the Second World War during the period of purification when a large number of politicians, collaborators, Vichyites, revisionists, quasi-revisionists, independently minded Right-wing intellectuals, and many people who fought in the Middle East and were involved in some way or another with the Vichy regime were put to death or were hounded from the society. The trial that Maurras had at this particular time was truncated and was laughable in terms of French statute then or since.

The Resistance was very much enamored with the prospect of guillotining Maurras, seeing him as the spiritual father of Vichy. However, there was a degree to which this was an incorrect assessment, because de Gaulle had sat at Maurras’ feet during much of his early life. The interesting thing about Maurras is that he did not just influence the French radical Right, he influenced the entire French Right and he provided all of the families of the French Right, particularly those who looked to a more Orléanist monarchical replacement, those who looked to a Bourbon monarchical replacement (this is the Republic, of course), those who looked to a Napoleonic claim, and those that wanted a different type of Right-wing republic. All of these found in Maurras’ theories sustenance for the soul.

Maurras was released from prison into a hospital in the early 1950s and died soon after. He died in a degree of disgrace, and yet there’s also a degree to which that disgrace was not complete nor did it totally fill the sky. Maurras was removed from the Académie Française, the French Academy, which is the elixir of conservative and reactional and literalist and neo-classical standings in French intellectual life, yet he was reposed by somebody who was almost identical to him given the aged and conservative conspectus of the academy.

There is a degree to which Maurras identified four enemies of the French nation as he perceived them from early on in his political career and before the creation of the Action Française movement, which was an anti-democratic movement and which never took part in parliamentary elections. We shall come on to the view that politics was primary for Maurras, unlike spirituality and religion, in a moment.

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Maurras believed that these four “anti-nations” within France were Protestants, Jews, Masons, and all foreigners living on French territory. He perceived all of France as essentially sacred and universal in expectancy and energy. He believed that the Third Republic was a rotten, bourgeois counterpace that needed to be ripped down and replaced by absolutist, legitimist, and monarchical tendencies. Unlike the post-war radical Right in France which has made peace with the Republic for reasons of electoral viability, such as the Front National for example which never even intimates that it would like to restore the monarchy if it was ever put anywhere near power, Maurras and his associates were obsessed with monarchical restoration. This gave their type of Rightism a deeply reactionary and deeply counter-revolutionary cast of thought, but it is important to realize that these things were significantly popular in large areas of French national life. Large areas of the unassimilated aristocracy, the upper middle class, most of the upper class, and even parts of the essentially middle bourgeoisie, retained a suspicion of the legacy of the French Revolution and wished to see the recomposition of France along monarchical lines. These policies even lasted well into the 20th century, even beyond the Second World War. Even into the 1960s a better part of 5% of the French nation rejected the logic of the French Revolution, which is a quite extraordinary number of people given the fact that the revolutionary inheritance had lasted so long and had been re-imposed upon the country after the revolutions, themselves abortive, in 1848.

Maurras believed that France needed a strong and social Catholicism in order to be viable. This is complicated given his own tendentious hold on religious belief. Maurras, though never an atheist, rejected the early, comforting Catholicism of his childhood youth and was an agnostic for most of his life. This did not prevent him from adopting a viewpoint which was fundamentalist in relation to Catholic rigor and in the belief of what would now be called traditionalist Catholicism since the Vatican II settlement of the early 1960s, which in Catholic terms began to liberalize the Church and adapted it to a modern, secular age inside of France and beyond its borders.

Maurras believed that spirituality was intensely important for a people and without it a people rotted and became as nothing. He therefore supported radical religion as a maximalizing social agenda whilst not believing in it himself. Indeed, he implicitly distrusted much of the Gospel message and found the Old Testament disastrous in its pharisaical illumination.

Maurras believed that Christianity was a useful tool that an elite would make use of in order to create a docile, happy, contented and organic society. This means that the papacy was deeply suspicious of Maurras despite the fact that politically he seemed to be a drummer boy for what they might have been perceived to want. This led to the prorogation of the Action Française movement by the Vatican at a particular time. I believe this occurred in the 1920s and was not rescinded until 1939 by which time Maurras had been elected to the Académie Française. The Vatican was concerned at the agnosticism from the top and the synthetic use of Catholicism as a masking agent and cloaking ideology for Right-wing politics inside France that it otherwise found quite a lot to support in. There were enormous numbers of clergy in the Action Française as a movement, and they were shocked and horrified by the removal of papal support which undercut support for the Action Française from key sectors of French life at a particular time.

Maurras believed in anti-Semitism as a core element of his ideology and beliefs. He believed that Jews should have no role in national life and no role whatsoever in the sort of France which he wished to see. Although they had not been responsible in any sort of way for much of the events of the French Revolution, he believed that their emancipation, as the emancipation had occurred in Germany, Britain, and elsewhere during the 19th century, had led to a collusion of interests which were detrimental to the sacred nature of France.

He was also strongly anti-Protestant and anti-Masonic and had a view of nationality which is regarded almost as simple-minded today. He basically thought that to command a status within the French nation you had to be French in word, in deed, and in prior cultural inheritance. It wasn’t any good to claim that you were French. You had to be French in terms of the self-limiting definitions of what it was to be national. This meant that there were radiating hierarchies within France as within other European societies inside modernity. This was the idea that some people were more French than others and this implicit elitism was always part and parcel of the nature of his movement.

It’s important to realize that there was an intellectual complexity about French Action which commands a considerable degree of respect, especially from a distance. French Action appealed to an enormous number of intellectuals across the spectrum even though it was sold by quasi-paramilitaries in the street. The youth wing and the radical wings of the Action Française movement were known as the Knights of the King, Camelots du Roi, and they sold these publications in the streets, often engaging in ferocious fights with Left-wing street gangs who attempted to crowd the same pitches, particularly in Montmartre in the center of Paris and the centers of other urban areas.

Maurras believed in action in the streets as a part of politics and disprivileged voting, which he thought was sterile, bourgeois, majoritarian, and anti-elitist. One wonders if there was ever a coherent structure to come to power in the Action Française movement and the only way in which this can be corralled with the historical evidence is to see the Action Française as a [inaudible] group for a particular type of restorationist, social conservatism, and Catholicism inside France.

If Maurras’ vision had been successful, you would have had a national France with an extremely strong and powerful monarchy and an extremely strong and powerful, even hermetic Catholic clergy at the heart of the nation. You would have had strong military and other institutions that ramify with other elements of this traditional French power as expressed in Bourbon restorationist and pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary Romantic royalist France.

Maurras believed that to be happy people had to be content in the structures of their own livery and their own inheritance. The inheritance of the French nation was all-important, and this is why he collaborated with Third Republic politicians such as General Boulanger towards the end of the 19th century. He did this in order to undermine the nature of the liberal republic and lead to reforms and authoritarian constitutions within it which would have served his purpose. He supported a large range of bourgeois, radical, and liberal politicians at the time of the First World War, which he thought was a national surprise of glory and a chance for France to redeem herself on the battlefield against a traditional enemy, which he always perceived as Germany.

This is the area where Maurras is most disprivileged by contemporary nationalist thinkers across Europe and even beyond. His obsession with Germany and with Germany’s strength and his belief that France was belittled by any strength in Germany led him to support French arms in both the First World War 1914-1918 and the Second World War 1939-1945. Initially, he supported de Gaulle and de Gaulle’s use of tank warfare in the early stages of the Second World War. Of course, by the time de Gaulle became supreme commander of French forces, France would be decimated on the battlefield and there was nothing left to repair or even to defend. Guderian, who had read all of the theory which de Gaulle had based his own warfare predictions upon, had already trumped that particular card, and the Germans used British and French ideas about tank warfare to defeat both the British Expeditionary Force and the French army in France. Seizing with revolutionary energy the generational gap in the conduct of warfare, the Germans routed and humiliated the French, who had fought them to a standstill in the past in the Great War, in a matter of weeks, by maneuvering around the Maginot Line and by passing through the allegedly impassable Ardennes Forest to appear behind French lines with roving and energetic Panzer squadrons backed by Stuka bombers.

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This catastrophe became a divine and a national surprise to Maurras. Maurras never actively collaborated although nearly all those in his circle would find themselves involved in the Vichy government at one time or another. Vichy began an institutionalization of a revolution from above and a national revolution within France largely permitted under German auspices, particularly in the early years before the radicalization and momentum building of what became the French Resistance under British artillery and the Gaullist movement in opposition and exile.

Maurras believed that the only true purpose of a Frenchman was to enhance the glory of France and all other was tackle and blither. He believed that during the German occupation it was best for French ideologues such as themselves to retreat to his family estate and live there in quietude even though many of his philosophical children collaborated openly with German arms both within and beyond Vichy. People like Laval and Déat with his neo-socialist movement and people like the founder of the French Popular Party, Doriot, the Parti Populaire Français (PPF) all collaborated in various degrees and were influenced by an attraction or repulsion to Maurras’ ideas in one form or another. He was truly the great old man of the French Right by this time.

After the war, the resistance sought to blame Maurras for much of the collaboration that had gone on, including the expulsion of some Jews from France, the international humiliation, as they perceived it, of French subjection to German arms, and the neo-colonial aspects within Europe of German policy in the French nation-state. It’s true to point out, however, that German military rule in France was surprisingly liberal and even benign in comparison to the full-on fury that could be exercised elsewhere in accordance with radical ideologies that had little to do with the calm, cultural intensity when Colonel Abetz met Robert Brasillach for coffee and croissants in a bar in Paris during the French occupation. There was intense collaboration between the young, former students of Maurras like Brasillach, who edited a fascist magazine called Je suis partout which means “I am everywhere,” and cultural Germans such as Abetz who were part and parcel of the German regime that had been installed over Vichy and to one side of it to allow Right-wing Frenchmen to run their own country albeit under German auspices. The relationship was probably somewhat similar to the relationship of American imperialism and its client states in the Third World such as Karzai’s regime in Afghanistan which controls Afghanistan though ultimately beholden to American power in that particular society.

Maurras wasn’t guillotined after the war because he significantly told at his trial, “Nobody hates the Germans more than me.” And this is what saved him from the guillotine, because the Resistance, although they were dying to guillotine him and would have given their eyes and teeth for it, because this gnarled, knotty Frenchman was irreducible on that point. So, they gave him life imprisonment instead which, as an old man, was effectively a death sentence in and of itself. When it was read out to him in the court, a steaming Maurras leapt from his seat and declared that, “It was the revenge of Dreyfus!” An otherwise obscure reference, which for those who are culturally knowledgeable about the entire extensive life of Maurras would have realized refers to the Dreyfus case at the end of the 19th century.

This is again an important disjunction between Maurras and much of the rest of the Right. Maurras was not concerned whether Dreyfus was guilty or not of passing secrets and engaging in espionage, of helping a foreign power, and so on. What he was concerned with is the dishonor done to the French judiciary if he was not found guilty and done to the French army and national state society if he was now to get away with this. This idea that an individual could be found guilty for connective and social-organic reasons irrespective of whether they were actually guilty of the offense one-to-one and in the customary nature of normal life is anathema to liberal ideas of the sovereignty of the individual that should be placed in a premium position in relation to all social actions.

Maurras was a fundamentalist anti-Dreyfusard and was part of a campaign spearheaded by elements of the revanchist Catholic Church and post-Boulanger elements in the French Republic to the extent that Dreyfus should be found guilty and executed if possible. For many like Maurras, the actual condemnation of Dreyfus which ensued and his being sent to Devil’s Island in the Caribbean was a minor punishment in comparison to the ingloriousness of the episode for France and what it told you about the conduct of the French national general staff at that time.

The Dreyfus case divided France between brother and brother, between father and children, between man and wife like no other case that had convulsed the nation in the course of its late 19th century/early 20th century development. It was truly one of those instances which define a generation. When Zola wrote J’accuse…! And accused the French police, army and courts of essentially fixing on an unfortunate man and blaming him for the sins of others and deporting him to Devil’s Island as a result of a false charge, he laid an explosive mound at the bottom of French national life which men like Maurras were determined to defuse.

Maurras believed that the English were always perfidious and were always against the divine France, although there were moments when he sought collaboration with English and British figures but always against the more dreaded bogey of Germany. It could be seen from a distance that Maurras’ nationalism has negative and anti-European features, although its simplicity and its purity about who belongs and who doesn’t belong is very clear and is easy to sustain. His views were not particularly racial beyond the fact that France was the leading light of world civilization and had to be treated as such. It was quite clear what he meant by who he was and who he was not, a Frenchman or a French woman, in the era in which he lived. You inherited genealogically what you were from the generations that had lived in the society prior to you and you were a Catholic and you were, to all intents and purposes, a reasonably pious one and you yearned for the return of the monarchy in France as against the secular republican institutions which replaced the monarchical structures of the Bourbon era after the Revolution and again after the Restoration which followed after the Revolution. You were not Protestant and you were not a Mason and you were not a Jew and you were not a foreigner and you were not of foreign mixture, namely of non-national French admixture. These things are quite clear and quite capacious in their reasonableness.

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There’s a degree to which Maurras’ intense nationalism has fueled an enormous amount of the radical Right that exists in the south of Europe and the southeast of Europe and further in Central and Latin America where its ideas have been taken to heart by many Dominican, Costa Rican, Brazilian, and Argentinian nationalist writers and thinkers and academics. His thinking is also most crucial to the development of Catholic societies and, of course, he has little social interplay with the Anglo-Saxon world. Maurras seems to have little to say to Anglo-Saxony, though much to say to the integral nature of the nation which is always the defiant and unyielding France.

Where did Maurras get his opinions from? A strong bourgeois background and an affiliation with the French provinces led to an identification with the rural ideal of France as a place touched by the glory of God, even a deity that he didn’t subscribe to for much of his active life. Maurras believed that France had a new destiny amongst all of the nations on Earth not to bring people together, not to supervise people and not to be loyal to Swiss institutional ideas, as he dismissed the ideas of Rousseau, who was Swiss and strongly influenced by Calvinist and Protestant thinking which he blamed for the French Revolution.

Rousseau once declared in the first line of his social contract that in the prisons of the future men will have “Libertas,” “liberty,” stamped upon their chains. This uniquely Protestant idea whereby even the social organs of direction are there to free the individual from bondage. It’s a notable instant where in Louisiana, in the southern state of the United States, the steel batons that American police use for riot control have “liberty” inscribed upon the baton. This means that there’s the head of a rioter being broken by a riot policeman. You are being beaten over the head with freedom. You are being beaten into freedom! And this uniquely, sort of sado-masochistic and ultra-Protestant view whereby you are being punished in freedom, for freedom, by freedom is a uniquely American take upon the French Revolution. Indeed, handcuffs wielded by many American police forces have “freedom” written upon them. So, as you are handcuffed and beaten you are receiving both liberty and freedom. These are very important ideas which come from the French Revolution.

When you stand before a French court you have to prove your innocence. As everybody knows, the British idea, which transcends the Atlantic and is visible in the jurisprudence of the United States, is that you are innocent before the bar of the courts and you have various barristers there to defend your rights. In France, the opposite is true. In accordance with revolutionary jurisprudence, the state knows best. The state has divulged religiosity to itself. The state is the residual legatee of all ideas of liberty and dispassionate justice. You have to prove your innocence to the state, because if the state argues in a prior way for the possibility of your guilt you must be guilty of something or why else would the state dare to accuse you.

Maurras’ ideas come quite close to certain Anglo-Saxon ideas in his rejection of this idea of the martial, republican and even Protestant French republican state. This means that Maurras seeks help from German and English intellectual critics even as he is unmasking French intellectual culture for its support and tolerance of the French Revolution.

The French Revolution remains the most cardinal event in history as regards the modern history of France. The French Revolution characterized an enormous range of change in European society and in the lifestyle of European man. If you remember, the revolution had quite timid beginnings with the desire for bourgeois reformism and the integration of politicians like Mirabeau in 1789. It then morphed into a more legalistic liberal assembly with a legislative assembly in 1790-1791 which then became the much more revolutionary Convention in 1792-1794. This is the period associated with the Terror and the dominion of Maximilien Robespierre. Robespierre had his rival, Danton, who he sent successfully to the guillotine, but he only preceded him by a matter of a few months, was convulsed by the idea that he was imposing with revolutionary violence the implementation of justice upon France and that he’d been given the right to do so not by God but by a new-fangled Deist cult or religion called the Cult of the Supreme Being. This attempt is the height of the Revolution’s attempt to replace Catholicism with an atheistic cult, whereby reason was worshipped as a goddess and a naked virgin was placed in the [inaudible] with a liberty cap on the high altar in Notre Dame by French revolutionary Jacobins, deeply shocked the sensibility of Catholic France that it had never forgiven Paris for its revolutionary energies which were disliked by much of the rest of society.

For much of French history, Paris had always been the center of revolution even though the French revolutionary anthem, La Marseillaise, came from Marseille to Paris in order to save revolutionary Paris by adding fuel from the most revolutionary and violent part of the provinces who were then fighting against the Whites, or the counter-revolutionaries, as they came to be known.

Napoleon Bonaparte was an equivocal figure for Maurras. He liked the authoritarianism, he liked the glorification of France, but he also saw the extension of French imperialism under Bonaparte’s agency to be anti-French and to ultimately portend to national dishonor. This meant that there was if not a pacifist then a limit to national aggrandizement in Maurras scheme of things. If the nation was crucial to all social development, the nation had borders, and the nation had limits, and authoritarianism inevitably put constraints upon social action, which reminds people that Maurras remains a sort of radical or revolutionary conservative.

Regarded retrospectively as something of a French fascist, Maurras was never fascistic, although his conservativism contained strongly sublimated elements of fascism and quasi-fascism and certain beliefs in the corporate state and certain methodological axes which he would share with movements in Salazar’s Portugal, Mussolini’s Italy, and Franco’s Spain. All of these three regimes were endorsed by Maurras and by the Action Française. Hitler’s movement in Germany and its successful breakthrough there was in no sense endorsed. Indeed, he supported de Gaulle, and he supported mainstream Third Republican politicians who were anti-Hitler just as he supported Clemenceau in the First World War because he was anti-Kaiser.

The threat to France from Germany and the helplessness of France in the face of German military might were abiding themes for Maurras who saw the possibility of defeat on the battlefield as a moral and spiritual defeat for France, although like all quixotic and intuitive nationalists, Maurras believed that France could never be totally defeated. A political system had gone down under the Panzers, a political system had gone down under the Stuka bombers, but France itself was irrational and eternal and would always spring up again.

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Initially, he supported the de Gaullist fight against the Germans. He immediately switched to Vichy and national liberation when he saw that much of what he wanted in policy terms could be instituted under German aegis. The fact that it was under German aegis caused him great psychic pain and wanton disregard. He therefore retreated to his own estates to cover the dichotomy of supporting Vichy at a distance without wishing to be seen to champion its German precursor.

Maurras lived in an era of tumultuous change and violent excess. None more so than the events of the 6th of February 1934. These events, unlike the Paris events of 1968 which have been emblazoned in world history and have counter-parts in Berkeley, California and the streets of Britain and the streets of West Germany as it then was and elsewhere throughout the Western world, have largely been forgotten and have been deliberately dropped down the memory hole, collectively and historically. Maurras, however, was deeply involved in the events of 1934 which were nothing more or less than an attempt to overthrow the French Third Republic by revolution from the Right-wing.

Riddled with scandal and approximating to extreme decay due to the economic lashings of depression from the United States and elsewhere who were beginning to humiliate the French exchequer, the radical Right decided to depose by going onto the streets the French Third Republic in early February 1934. This was awful rioting, and it was very serious and very destructive social rioting by about 100,000 demonstrators from all of the French combat action leagues that then existed in the country. These included the Action Française and the large veteran association from the First World War called Cross of Fire or Croix-de-Feu. It also involved large apolitical veterans’ organizations and smaller, more targeted Right-wing combat veterans’ leagues.

All of these movements marched on Paris and marched on the National Assembly and marched on the presidential buildings in an attempt to overthrow the Third Republic with violent revolutionary activism from the streets. It’s quite remarkable that these events have been excised from history to the degree that they have, particularly as they were to force catalytic change in French political life. Daladier’s regime, which was part of a Left front and Left coalition government collapsed and was replaced by the more general government of the Right.

One of the interesting examples of this period is the fact that, unlike today where the radical Right is shunted off to the side and all the areas of political thought including the moderate Right strive to have nothing to do with it whatsoever, in that era the radical Right infused the mainstream Right and even liberal, center Right elements of the Right were not immune to radical Right-wing ideas. This shows you that politics is about energy and about how you corral and contrast various forms of energy over time. There is no earthly reason why radical forms of opinion, as occurred in the 1960s the other way around on the Left, can’t influence more moderate, more statist, more staid, and more centric forms of opinion. It all depends upon the timing, the character of the men involved and the secondary forces which they can put into play. No one knew this better than Maurras who influenced these structured, highly controlled Right-wing mobs, which is what they essentially amounted to, in their assaults on French liberal bourgeois power at this time.

Sixteen died as a result of the rioting, and over 2,000 were injured, which is a large number of injuries to be sustained in endless fighting with French riot police and French police who turned out en masse to defend the Third Republic. Communists and socialists and trade unionists of the Left also mobilized large counter-demonstrations. Very much akin to events which occurred in Dublin in not too distant a period when there was a concertedly disconcerted attempt by the Civic Guard movement of Eoin O’Duffy to overthrow the post-IRA Fianna Fáil movement which then dominated the Irish Republic. It should be noticed that both societies had a penchant for political violence and for the rhetoric of extremism in the street and both were Roman Catholic societies unlike Britain, which existed of course halfway between these two polities.

The Right failed in both Ireland and France to replicate what had occurred in Portugal, Spain, and Italy, never mind Germany. However, the radical Right had an enormous transforming impact upon the entire Right wing which led a large element of the pre-collaborationist cabinet in the mid- to late-1930s to collaborate once the Vichy government was set up.

Vichy is always described as a regime by historians in an attempt to discredit it in relation to a proper government which is so described. Yet there is a degree to which the Vichy government had the support actively of at least a third of the French. De Gaulle, through a remarkable piece of political [inaudible] to make after the war, said that no one ever collaborated. This is after the purification, of course, which killed many thousands of those who were alleged to have done so. But the trick of saying that no one collaborated allowed the post-war generations to unite over the fact that there was a German occupation, no French collaboration except for a few purists and traitors and a Resistant movement activated from home and abroad. It was a clever and intellectual and ideological start to enable France to recover more quickly after the war and settle differences without being too hawkish or squeamish about it. But there is a degree to which it was a lie and a blatant untruth.

France bore quite a large price for its staunching of social peace after 1945. You have to remember that after 1945 there was no effective Right in France, because the whole of the Right had been allegedly discredited by collaboration. This meant that there was an enormous gap and only classic centrist, conservative movements fielded candidates against the center and Left in the immediate post-war elections.

De Gaulle, of course, was trying to capture the market for existing Right-wing opinion with his movement [inaudible]. De Gaulle had subliminally fascistic credentials for some of his policies and went back to yearnings for a hard man and a strong man to govern France with an iron hand. These go back to General Boulanger and back to the Bonapartism of the 19th century. De Gaulle’s movement with his endless personality cult and military drills and obsession with the cult of the leader certainly had strong fringe associations with the radical Right which he’d never the less repudiated and excoriated both in action and in print.

No internal warfare on the Right has been more striking than the one in France between the legacy of de Gaullist historical tradition and the legacy of collaboration. This again is to be seen in the Algerian War long after Maurras’ death in which the two wings of the French Right fight fanatically with each other. The government and the Civic Action Service movement and the Barbouzes fighting with the official French army against both the Algerian nationalists of the FNA and the ultra Right-wing Secret Army Organization or Organisation de l’armée secrete, which was formed by revolutionary members of the paratroopers and other French regiments firstly in Indo-China and then in Algeria to prevent the removal of Algeria from the French nation.

41e12-dpbWL.jpgFrance and Algeria, of course, were joined at the hip in accordance with the Napoleonic doctrine of Algérie française. In the end, the division had to occur, but at least a million French Algerians, who were totally French of course, pieds noirs, black feet, came back from North Africa to live in the south of France where they became the bedrock for the Front National vote in the deep south of the country in generations to come.

There is also a degree to which Maurras’ influence on the French Right is pervasive, and this is the influence of social Catholicism. At every large FN event there is a ferverous mass. For those not in the know, this is a traditionalist type of Catholicism that rejects Vatican II and settlements around it in the contemporary Catholic Church. It is essentially an old-fashioned, in Protestant terms, smells and bells mass whereby the priest turns hieratically to God and doesn’t look at the congregation and the congregation look at him, or look at his back, and he’s looking up because he’s looking up at that which is exalted and beyond him. This type of social Catholicism which exists in the FN on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, because if you don’t believe in it you don’t have to go along with it, it part and parcel of their appeal to all of those national constituencies which were not buried in 1945 and were not buried in 1789 and were not buried in 1815 but have continued to exist as a vital part of the French nation and of the French national whole.

Maurras’ belief in the integral France – organic, unified, militarized, Catholicized, and hierarchical – was never achieved during his lifetime, but his influence on the French Right-wing and on neo-Bourbon, legitimist, Orléanist, and Bonapartist tendencies of opinion was profound. His influence on French military thinking was also profound, although his influence on Catholicism became strained when Catholic humanists like Jacques Maritain, who had been close to the Action Française for a considerable period, moved away from it in the 1920s. The Papacy moved against Maurras and Action Française because of his doctrine of politics first. Maurras believed that if politics was put first all the other problems that beset France and lead to spiritual difficulties could be changed retrospectively.

However, there was a degree to which this put the cart before the horse. By making himself a declared agnostic and being relatively open about this fact, he played into the hands of certain radical Catholic traditionalists who didn’t like a mass movement that used Catholicism synthetically to cover over political differences of opinion inside France.

He was also guilty of the anti-legitimist claim put forward by many deeply conservative apolitical and asocial French Catholics. This was the view that they should have nothing to do with the bourgeois Third Republic and that they should remain French and Catholic forever irrespective of a wicked regime that could not be stopped from sinning in its own right. Maurras would have nothing to do with this and believed that politics first, second, and third was necessary for the redemption of France.

The idea of monarchical restoration and a return of the French monarchy was not a quaint political ideal as far as Maurras and his immediate supporters were concerned. They believed that only by repudiating the Republic, only by ripping out the accretions of what could be described as the French version of the Bolshevik regime, namely the latter day inheritance of the French republican, revolutionary tradition and all its structures, could the France that he wanted be brought about.

Although post-war forms of the radical Right-wing in France have had to make peace with republicanism in order to survive and contest democratic elections where they have had considerable support, more so than in most other Western European countries, there is a degree to which Maurras was quite technically direct in the issue of the French republican experiment and the mass terror that it induced between 1792 and 1794 which cast the shadow of a guillotine across French revolutionary rhetoric.

Most of the great Right-wing figures, such as Abel Bonnard, look back through Maurras to the great ultramontanist figure, Joseph de Maistre. Joseph de Maistre, who wrote in the late 18th century and earlier, is responsible for the doctrine of papal infallibility up to a point at least in terms of its theoretical mark when it was introduced quite late in the day in 1870 in recognition of extra-Catholic and intra-Catholic disputes.

Maurras was determined to see Catholicism revived within France and put at the heart of the French nation, and he did residually return to the Catholicism of his childhood near to his own deathbed. Whether this was just an insurance policy or was a genuine conversion to the faith with which he had always lingered is open for his biographers to contest.

Maurras was a peppery individual with a sort of reynardical moustache and trimmed beard. He was splenetic and outrageous in debate and commentary. He called for the assassination of many public figures from the editorial mouthpiece of his magazine for which he was given many suspended sentences. When a French politician argued that all of the Right-wing combat leagues should be disarmed in France because he saw the danger of the events of 1934, Maurras called for his assassination in print, which as the calling for an execution of a government minister he was jailed 8 months for his transgression.

Maurras was never afraid to speak his mind about any of the problems that beset France from the Dreyfus case through to the French armies in the First World War to the conduct of the Treaty of Versailles. He also wanted France to impose more rigorous and more judgmental and more harsh and caustic sanctions on Germany, long considered by most historians to be a disastrous maneuver. But there is nothing in relation to what it is to be French beyond which Charles Maurras would not go.

Maurras saw himself as the quiet leader of a counter-revolutionary force in French life that would lead to the institution of an integral nation and an integral nationality above sectional interests and above party interests, which he always despised. The interesting thing about his form of Frenchness is that everyone could have a role in it. All of the minorities which he effectively despised as foreigners, métèques, would actually always have a role within France. It’s just that role would be lesser proportional to who and what they are in relation to the role of the French. Ultimately, his vision was conservative. If you were more French than somebody else, you had more of a say and more of a role. If you were Catholic rather than Protestant or Jewish or something, you had more of a role in France. It is not to say the others would have no role, but they would have a severely restricted and reduced role in relation to those who would supervene over the goddess. The goddess was one of his private terms for France and for the French nation, which was always perceived as a feminine creation and identity by all of its proponents and detractors.

Charles Maurras is so French a figure that he is largely ignored in the Anglo-Saxon and Anglophone world because he’s seen to have little to teach to the rival Protestant, national, and imperial trajectories of these societies. This is arguably true. Maurras has to be seen and judged in French terms and in French terms alone.

Although he never succeeded in the most radical of his aims, part of the regime that existed under Vichy can be seen as the endorsement of many of his ideas although the resistance groups would pitch and the Allied invasion pulled back upon Vichy and led to the end of the collaboration. The irony of Maurras’ tradition and career is that the sort of France he wanted was brought about under the arms and vigilance of the nation he hated more than any other, namely the Germans. This is part of the irony of history, which would not be forgotten on somebody as literate and carefully minded as Charles Maurras.

One of the things that is most striking about Maurras is that the Action Française was read intellectually right across the spectrum. A young, homosexual Jewish author called Marcel Proust, who was later to write one of the most famous books in French literature called Remembrance of Things Past, used to literally run every Friday down to the Camelots du Roi paramilitaries who sold Action Française on the street in order to buy Action Française. When he was asked by a certain dumbfounded bohemian who had met his acquaintance why he did this, he said he did it because it was the most interesting paper in France. This is something which is key to an understanding of people like Maurras and the radical Right cultural tradition that they represented. They were admired by all sorts of people who didn’t share their opinions at all, and that was part of the elixir of their power and their cultural influence. This is why he was elected to the French Academy, the most august and antiquated of French cultural institutions.

508611258.jpgSo, I think it falls upon us, as largely non-French people, to look back upon this traditionalist philosopher of the French radical Right with a degree of quiet appraisal. Maurras was a figure who could be admired as somebody who fought for his own country to the last element of his own breath. He was also somebody who’s own cultural dynamics were complicated and ingenious. To give one cogent example, the Greek play Antigone deals with the prospect of the punishment of a woman by Creon because she wishes to honor the death sacrifice of her brother. This becomes a conflict between the state and those who would seek to supplant the state’s momentary laws by laws which are regarded as matriarchal or affirmative with the chthonian or the fundamental in human life. George Steiner once commented in a book looking at the different varieties of Antigone that most critics of the Left have always supported her against Creon and most socially Right-wing commentators like T. S. Eliot have always supported Creon against Antigone. And yet Maurras supported Antigone against Creon, because she wished to bury her brother for reasons which were ancestral and chthonian and came up from under the ground and were primeval and were blood-related and were therefore more important and more profound than the laws that men had put together with pieces of parchment and bits of writing on paper.

Charles Maurras: hero of France, national collaborator with excellence, we salute you over this time, we remember your contribution to the [inaudible] of a rival nationality!

Thank you very much!

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