Bulletin célinien n°418 (mai 2019)
Sommaire :
Carnaval à Sigmaringen (mars 1945)
Malaparte et Céline
Quand Kaminski taillait un costume à Céline
Raymond Giancoli dans sa correspondance avec Albert Paraz.
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Bulletin célinien n°418 (mai 2019)
Sommaire :
Carnaval à Sigmaringen (mars 1945)
Malaparte et Céline
Quand Kaminski taillait un costume à Céline
Raymond Giancoli dans sa correspondance avec Albert Paraz.
par Marc Laudelout
Andrea Lombardi est sans nul doute le célinien le plus actif d’Italie. Outre un blog entièrement dédié à son auteur de prédilection, on lui doit plusieurs ouvrages dont une superbe anthologie, richement illustrée, éditée en 2016 par son association culturelle “Italia Storica”. Depuis plusieurs années, il n’a de cesse de rendre accessible au lectorat italien des textes peu connus de Céline (dont sa correspondance) mais aussi des témoignages et des études littéraires qu’il réunit dans des ouvrages de belle facture.
Aujourd’hui, il publie une plaquette réunissant les pièces du dossier polémique qui opposa Céline à Roger Vailland. Celui qui joua le rôle d’arbitre fut Robert Chamfleury (1900-1972), de son vrai nom Eugène Gohin. Comme chacun sait, il était locataire de l’appartement juste au-dessous de celui de Céline, au quatrième étage du 4 rue Girardon, à Montmartre. Après la guerre, il réfutera Vailland et affirmera que Céline était parfaitement au courant de ses activités de résistant. Au moment critique, Chamfleury lui proposa même un refuge en Bretagne. Dans une version antérieure de Féerie pour une autre fois, Céline le décrit (sous le nom de “Charmoise”) « cordial, compréhensif, conciliant, amical ». Sa personnalité est aujourd’hui mieux connue : parolier et éditeur de musique, Robert Chamfleury était spécialisé dans l’adaptation française de titres espagnols ou hispano-américains. Il fut ainsi une figure marquante de l’introduction en Europe des compositeurs cubains, et des rythmes nouveaux qu’ils apportaient. Il travaillait le plus souvent en duo avec un autre parolier, Henri Lemarchand. Lequel préfaça La Prodigieuse aventure humaine (1951, rééd. 1961) de son ami qui, sur le tard, rédigea plusieurs ouvrages de vulgarisation scientifique et de philosophie des sciences. Céline lui accusa réception avec cordialité de cet ouvrage et l’invita à venir le voir à Meudon. Dans sa plaquette, Andrea Lombardi reproduit la version intégrale de la lettre que Chamfleury adressa au directeur du Crapouillot, telle qu’elle parut, pour la première fois, dans le BC en 1990.
Un biographe de Céline a admis qu’il a fait preuve de « suspicion systématique » [sic] envers son sujet ¹. C’est aussi le seul à avoir mis en cause le témoignage de Chamfleury, instillant même le doute sur ses activités de résistant. Les auteurs du Dictionnaire de la correspondance de Céline précisent, eux, qu’il « appartenait au bloc des opérations aériennes, responsable donc de nombreuses missions de parachutage ». En fait, c’est plutôt le témoignage de Roger Vailland qu’il eût fallu mettre en question. Dans un livre de souvenirs publiés en 2009, Jacques-Francis Rolland, qui appartenait au même réseau de résistance que Vailland, le qualifia de « mélange de forfanterie, d’erreurs, de fausses assertions, affligé par surcroît d’un style indigne de l’auteur qui n’était manifestement pas dans son état normal lorsqu’il bâcla son pensum, l’un des pires de sa “saison” stalinienne » ².
• Andrea LOMBARDI (éd.), Céline contro Vailland (Due scrittori, una querelle, un palazzo di una via di Montmartre sotto l’Occupazione tedesca), Eclettica, coll. “Visioni”, 2019, 83 p., ill. Traduction des textes français : Valeria Ferretti. Couverture illustrée par Jacques Terpant (10 €)
11:39 Publié dans Littérature, Livre, Livre, Revue | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : livre, revue, céline, littérature, lettres, lettres françaises, littérature française | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
par Christopher Gérard
Ex: http://archaion.hautetfort.com
Moins de deux ans après le magnifique et très-subversif L’Homme surnuméraire, le Nantais Patrice Jean propose son cinquième roman, Tour d’ivoire, dont le décor, et en fait l’un des personnages principaux, est Rouen, la ville de Gustave Flaubert. Comme dans son précédent roman, le héros, Antoine, est un déclassé, un lettré « surnuméraire » qui a fait le choix de la pauvreté volontaire pour se consacrer, stricto sensu, à une revue littéraire, confidentielle comme son nom l’indique, Tour d’ivoire. Un raté en somme, selon les critères aujourd’hui en vogue, qu’accompagne son ami ( ?) Thomas, encore plus intraitable sur la pureté de l’engagement en faveur de l’art pour l’art. Tout le roman tourne autour du dialogue, tantôt véhément, tantôt muet, entre ces deux hommes : faut-il céder, ne fût-ce que d’un pouce, aux sirènes, même postmodernes ?
Antoine a donc choisi l’obscurité, décevant ainsi son épouse, qui le largue (et cesse de jouer au mécène) et, bientôt, sa fille Blandine, que viendra consoler l’attentionné Thomas. Il vivote dans un HLM de la Grand’Mare (hilarants tableautins du « vivre-ensemble ») et se contente de CDD à la médiathèque Arthur Rainbow (!), l’un des décors du roman – prétexte pour l’auteur à une description aussi comique que glaçante du dispositif d’infantilisation des masses et de leur encadrement « culturel ». Notre bibliothécaire tranche d’avec ses jeunes collègues, acquis à la culture du divertissement et conscients de leur rôle dans le dressage « citoyen » de leurs usagers. Il fera, ô surprise, l’objet d’une dénonciation en règle pour un article littéraire de sa revue consacré à un écrivain qui, dans un français parfait, ose évoquer l’actuel chaos migratoire et ses conséquences sans l’enthousiasme ni la cécité de commande.
Avec un calme courage, Patrice Jean s’attaque à la doxa dominante, usant tour à tour de la cruauté du polémiste et de la douceur toute en sensibilité de l’artiste - un tueur en dentelles. L’une des questions qu’il pose est celle de la place de la culture authentique, vécue non comme docile consommation de produits estampillés culturels mais bien comme quête désintéressée du beau et du vrai, comme métamorphose. Comment résister à la méthodique profanation de la littérature ? Comment éviter son fatal déclassement dans un monde où l’argent est tout, où l’industrie culturelle dicte le mauvais goût et la bonne pensée : « A quoi bon psalmodier le bréviaire de l’exigence spirituelle dans un monde livré au néant de la matière, sous le soleil de la marchandise victorieuse, à l’ombre du divertissement ricaneur ? »
Doué d’un jolie vis comica, l’impeccable styliste qu’est Patrice Jean* réussit ses descriptions de types humains, comme le progressiste, qui, pour recevoir une gratification narcissique (« susucre ») affiche de manière pavlovienne sa « révolte » au service du Bien (« papatte ») et qui, dans un désir éperdu de Vertu, s’arroge le pouvoir de cataloguer, et donc de condamner, une personne, même inconnue de lui, selon l’idée qu’il se fait d’elle, au gré de ses humeurs ou de ses intérêts : « En ce monde perdu, est-il plus sotte façon, plus lâche posture, que celle où l’on abdique la dignité du doute pour revendiquer, moralement, la supériorité d’être dans le vrai et le bien, au-delà des interrogations, dans le confort d’un choix juste et solide, jamais remis en cause ? »
Nihil novi depuis Tartuffe & Trissotin, certes, mais, aujourd’hui, ces ligues de rééducation, véritables bataillons de termites, sont légion, et servies par l’électronique, et défendues par des élites de pacotille.
Tout cet ambitieux roman, rédigé dans une langue limpide, charpentée par un compagnon du devoir devenu maître, pousse le lecteur à s’interroger sur notre crépuscule et sur la nature de la littérature comme défense et illustration du monde invisible, comme quête ascétique d’une forme d’excellence.
Christopher Gérard
Patrice Jean, Tour d’ivoire, Editions rue Fromentin, 244 pages, 21€.
* J’ai buté sur une seule scorie : un « tacler » par trop journalistique … sans doute utilisé avec ironie.
Que nenni ! En près de trois cents pages, Patrice Jean, philosophe qui enseigne dans un lycée de Saint-Nazaire, livre avec L’Homme surnuméraire un grand roman, qui restera tant que subsistera, horresco referens, une élite raffinée. Double, et même triple, ce roman se révèle celui d’un virtuose de la narration, qui parvient sans peine aucune à enchâsser deux récits complémentaires en gommant toute trace d’échafaudage. Le premier narre la trahison vécue par un père de famille, agent immobilier de son état, un brave homme que sa femme et ses enfants trouvent trop ringard à leur (détestable) goût et abandonnent au bord du chemin comme un animal de compagnie qui aurait fait son temps. Pour pouvoir fréquenter des charlatans de l’Université, sa femme le quitte sur les conseils de sa meilleure amie, une écervelée ; de honte, ses enfants ne lèvent même plus leur regard sur lui. Serge Le Chenadec est ce petit-bourgeois de province, ce rescapé du monde d’avant ostracisé et nié par des mutants et qui, un moment tenté par le suicide (Quai Voltaire, à deux pas de l’appartement où se donna la mort Henry de Montherlant), vivra une sorte de miracle en retrouvant une amie de lycée, Chantal, vieille fille sans charme qui pratique, elle, le plus pur amour oblatif. Mais cette belle histoire n’est qu’un roman… qui agit, et comment !, sur les personnages de l’autre roman contenu dans l’œuvre. Ceux-ci, des intellectuels prolétarisés (une enseignante et un nègre, pardon un rewriter), dérivent, l’une en acceptant les avances d’un immonde mandarin de l’imposture matérialiste et égalitaire, le Grand Universitaire (traduit en vingt-quatre langues) qui annone Derrida & Genette à tout bout de champ, l’autre en pasteurisant, narines bouchées, des chefs-d’œuvre de la littérature, expurgés de tout élément sexiste, xénophobe, blablabla. Sombreront-ils avec leur époque ?
Roman subversif en diable, L’Homme surnuméraire tranche, entre autres, par le calme courage avec lequel son auteur pulvérise le dispositif académique de contrôle littéraire, ses stratégies d’intimidation, son stérilisant jargon, ses cuistres, mixtes de Trissotin, Tartuffe et Torquemada naguère dénoncés par Michel Mourlet. Entre les technocrates de la culture, hommes de pouvoir pratiquant la morbide accumulation d’un savoir désincarné, et les hommes en trop, grains de diamant qui rayent les rouages de la méga-machine, Patrice Jean choisit le camp de la liberté, suivant en cela les traces de Gombrowicz, cité en exergue du roman : « l’art devra se débarrasser de la science et se retourner contre elle ». Souvent hilarant, toujours émouvant, il excelle dans l’art de la satire, par le truchement d’une ironie suprêmement socratique et d’un style limpide. Plus grave, il défend, contre l’abaissement spirituel, un héritage fondé non sur le morcellement et la séparation post-modernes, mais bien sur « l’agglomération, la construction, la permanence ».
L’Homme surnuméraire ? Un splendide exemple de subversion classique, un livre romain.
Christopher Gérard
Source : archaion.hautetfort.com
Patrice Jean, L’Homme surnuméraire, Editions rue Fromentin, 276 pages, 20€.
10:06 Publié dans Littérature, Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (1) | Tags : patrice jean, christopher gérard, littérature, littérature française, lettres, lettres françaises, livre | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
2) Tale passo è la presentazione universale del concetto della Vita di ogni organismo dello Spirito, sia nel microcosmo come nel macrocosmo: l’uomo, l’universo, la Romanità… Pensare in guisa intensa i concetti profondissimi ivi presenti, conduce alla comprensione dell’Intero significato della Tradizione di Roma, proprio perché Realtà vivente.
3) Tale conoscenza non è sapere se non è innanzitutto uno stato dell’essere; lo stato dell’essere è vedere l’Invisibile, che è l’Indicibile, ma per colui che è Essere non è che l’Uno, l’Istante che è fuori dal tempo: colui che vive nella dimensione dello Spirito è nel tempo pur essendo, nella radice, fuori dal tempo, vedrà il Divenire che è Essere, come indica l’enigmatico sorriso dell’Apollo di Veio, Egli, sorridendo della nostra stupidità, accenna, svela e rivela la Verità: l’Assoluto, il Divino è semplicemente ciò che tu vedi e che sei! Tu però non lo sai!
4) Roma, nella sua essenza metafisica, nella sua potenza spirituale, nella sua eterna presenza come Simbolo dell’Ordine Cosmico, come Umbelicus Mundi, come Asse che non vacilla dell’Europa, è ciò che tu vedi se lo sei! È ciò che è se tu lo fai, lo vivi e lo crei, in ogni momento, in ogni Istante della tua vita, che sarà così il Rito filosofico interiore, come creazione costante del Kathekòn in quanto Limes nei confronti delle Tenebre e quindi iniziazione all’Eterno.
5) È, quindi, necessario, oggettivamente necessario, come legge dello Spirito, acquisire il “mutamento di punto di vista”, di “stato mentale” in cui consiste, in buona sostanza, quello che Evola definisce lo stato dell’Essere interiore e, quindi, la sua manifestazione esterna che è la “Visione del mondo” che, se è necessario possedere in termini virtuali o potenziali, atteso che la stessa non si acquisisce sui libri né con altri strumenti se non la si possiede in potenza sin dalla nascita come “forma interna o carattere”, è vero anche che tutto ciò, secondo proprio il principio fondamentale della nostra Tradizione, che è il comando apollineo di Delfi: “conosci te stesso!”, deve essere però consapevolmente conosciuto e cioè esperimentato divenendo concretamente esso stesso!
Si conosce solo ciò che si è e si è solo ciò che si conosce. Gli Dei non esistono a priori (per fede) ma esistono solo se si conoscono e si conoscono solo se si esperimentano, quindi esistono solo per colui il quale li esperimenta, cioè li vive e quindi li conosce; nel senso che, pur esistendo da sempre, per colui il quale non li conosce Essi non esistono. Tale è il significato della frase: “I Greci non credevano negli Dei; poiché li vedevano!”
6) Se si vuole vivere l’esperienza spirituale dell’agire e della conseguenziale visione, tipica dell’Ascesi dell’Azione che qualifica la Romanità, della realizzazione, mediante il Rito giuridico-religioso, “del fenomenico per effetto della azione magica sul Numenico”, è necessario Sapere-Vedere (non guardare…) che il Sé, la Mente, il Pensiero, che è l’Invisibile, è il Numenico e che solo agendo nell’Invisibile, cioè nel Pensiero e sul Pensiero, nella Mente e sulla Mente, nell’Animo e sull’Animo, cioè agendo sulla Causa, che è lo Spirito, creando la Forma in essa Causa, la stessa Forma si riverbera, si riflette nello specchio che è il fenomenico e cioè il Mondo e così esso appare ed è conforme, identico al Numenico cioè al Pensiero che lo ha causato e ciò dimostra, tale processo dimostra che la paideia ed il mos majorum, sono la causa generatrice del Mondo, della Res Publica, dell’Ordine Giuridico-Religioso e quindi Politico: che è l’Idea realizzata nella storia di Juppiter Optimus Maximus. Tutto ciò è vero solo se è stato della Mente, che è stato dell’Essere, ed è vero solo se si è conseguenzialmente l’Uomo Nuovo, Uomo che pensa, vede e quindi è l’Uomo aperto al Mondo, l’Uomo che non dice e non pensa mai in termini di “Io” ma sempre in termini del Noi, perché sente e sa di essere Noi; poiché la Romanità è Noi!
7) Essere Noi (ed è il secondo “momento dello Spirito”) significa entrare nel Mondo, superare e vincere la falsità dualistica dell’Io e del Mondo, del soggetto e dell’oggetto, della Trascendenza e della Immanenza ed essere quindi realtà spirituale, esistenziale e concreta e quindi Intero che è, secondo la nostra Tradizione classica Greco-Romana, l’Athanòr nella Filosofia Ermetica, l’Uno il Tutto nella Tradizione Platonica, la Res Publica Universale nella Romanità, l’Intero medesimo e cioè l’Assoluto nel significato che ha rivelato la Sapienza di Hegel. Tale è secondo la cultura tradizionale il vivere che coincide con l’essere che è il pensare, significando ciò Roma come l’Idea Vivente e si ritorna al principio secondo cui il Pensiero è il Tutto essendo la Causa di Tutto, atteso il fatto che, se non vi è il mutamento di “stato”, il “Risveglio”, anche il Mondo continua ad essere caos ed oblio, oscurità e nebbia: solo nel “momento” in cui si “conosce se stessi”, il Mondo è salvo, il Mondo è Cosmos, Ordine, Unità; anzi il Sapere e l’Essere lo stato corrispondente, consente di acquisire la Conoscenza che quell’Ordine e quella Unità del Mondo ci sono da sempre, ab aeterno, solo che non lo si sapeva poiché non lo si era.
Giandomenico Casalino
09:51 Publié dans Livre, Livre, Traditions | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : romanité, rome, rome antique, antiquité romaine, tradition latine, traditions, livre | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Spirito classico - cristianesimo: le tesi di Walter Friedrich Otto
Giovanni Sessa
Ex: https://www.ereticamente.net
Nel corpo della cultura europea scorre sangue «pagano». A muovere dal Settecento, filosofi, storici delle religioni e artisti, si sono prodigati nel tentativo di far riemergere le sorgenti più arcaiche della nostra cultura, richiamando l’attenzione sul suo effettivo ubi consistam. Anzi, questo sforzo è ancora in corso: si pensi, tra i tanti esempi che si possono fare in tema, alla valorizzazione del mondo pre-cristiano, presentata, nella propria opera, da Evola o, più recentemente, da autori quali Marc Augé e Alain de Benoist. Un ruolo rilevante, in tal senso, nel secondo decennio del «secolo breve», lo ha svolto il filologo svevo e storico delle religioni, Walter Friedrich Otto. Il suo lavoro più noto, Gli Dei della Grecia, fu in qualche modo preparato da un libro che egli pubblicò nel 1923, Spirito classico e mondo cristiano, di cui è recentemente apparsa la seconda edizione italiana, per i tipi de L’arco e la Corte (per ordini: arcoelacorte@libero.it, pp. 174, euro 15,00). Si tratta, come ricorda Giovanni Monastra, nell’informata e stimolante Prefazione, di un testo nel quale l’autore mostrò, in tutta la sua forza e con invidiabile spessore erudito, l’attrazione empatica per il mondo classico e, in particolare, per la religiosità ellenica.
La potenza teorica del volume, la si spiega tenendo in debito conto alcuni dati biografici dell’autore, riferiti opportunamente dal prefatore. Otto si formò a Tubinga, nel medesimo Stift teologico nel quale avevano studiato Hegel, Schelling ed Hölderlin. Dopo aver seguito brillanti studi filologici, a Monaco incontrò il filosofo Klages e frequentò gli ambienti del Kreis di Stefan George. Fu, inoltre, attratto dagli studi di Leo Frobenius, dai quali trasse l’idea del Weltbild (immagine del mondo), che gli permise di decodificare l’essenza della civiltà ellenica. Fu vicino agli ambienti aristocratico-conservatori e, perciò, antinazisti, della Germania segreta: ciò lo costrinse ad insegnare in un’Università «periferica», quella di Könisberg, dove rimase fino all’arrivo dell’Armata rossa nel 1944. Fu sottoposto, dopo la guerra, ad una serie di controlli preventivi, ma evitò l’epurazione e continuò ad insegnare fino al momento del decesso avvenuto nel 1958. Frequentò, tra gli altri, Heidegger, Kerény e Pettazzoni.
In Spirito classico e mondo cristiano, sono presenti: «lampeggianti intuizioni e utili indicazioni che consentono di vedere con occhi nuovi il mondo religioso ellenico» (p. 13). Otto cerca, in ogni modo, di far parlare i Greci e i loro dei, con la voce che gli fu propria. Fino ad allora, infatti, il clamore millenario prodotto dalla cultura dei vincitori, nella contesa storica sviluppatasi nel IV secolo d.c., quella cristiana, aveva impedito di cogliere il senso ultimo della visione del mondo ellenica. La critica al cristianesimo di Otto è radicale, i toni polemici decisamente aspri, in alcuni passaggi rasentano l’invettiva. Per questo, successivamente, il filologo non si riconobbe del tutto in tali affermazioni e non volle che questo studio fosse nuovamente pubblicato (la precedente edizione italiana uscì nel 1973, ad insaputa della figlia dello studioso). Il libro è scritto sotto il segno di Nietzsche. Come il filosofo dell’eterno ritorno, anche Otto distinse l’originario insegnamento del Cristo, insieme a Socrate considerato ultimo esempio di vita persuasa, dalla successiva dottrina cristiana, esito del travisamento teologico operato dalla tradizione paolino-agostiniana. In ogni caso, quale idea ha Otto della religio greca?
Egli era convinto che i poemi omerici: «contenessero il paradigma più alto della concezione olimpica del divino» (p. 14). Quella omerica era religio virile, fiera, senza uguali nella storia delle religioni. Punto apicale mai più raggiunto, in quanto in essa gli dei venivano invocati in piedi, il greco guardava negli occhi, senza alcun timore reverenziale i propri numi. Non conosceva le genuflessioni cristiane ed asiatiche, di fronte al divino. Questo era inteso quale manifestazione improvvisa, suscitante, al medesimo tempo, meraviglia e sconcerto. La coscienza del singolo era conciliata con i ritmi e le misure che si manifestavano nel cosmo, nessun greco conobbe mai la “cattiva coscienza”, triste novità introdotta dal cristianesimo. Con la sua irruzione si iniziò ad avvertire: «una opposizione tra il mondo sconvolto e disperato dell’anima, agitata sempre da tormenti e turbamenti […], e il mondo olimpico della forma» (p. 16). La natura, avvertita in precedenza quale epifania del divino, venne progressivamente esperita in termini desacralizzati e ridotta alla mera dimensione della quantità.
I Greci, al contrario, non conobbero mai la fides, la loro religio della forma era, in realtà, un susseguirsi di esperienze, di realizzazioni del sacro, da parte dell’uomo. Il tratto politeista consentiva loro di apprezzare i diversi volti dell’Uno e di viverli, di farne esperienza. A ciò contribuivano il mito e il culto. Nel secondo: «è l’uomo che si innalza al Divino, vive e agisce in comunione con gli dei; nel mito è il divino che scende e si fa umano» (p. 21). Il rapporto uomo-dio si manifestava, come rilevato da Rudolf Otto, nell’endiadi Io-Esso. Si trattava, pertanto, di una relazione centrata sull’ethos, sul modo d’essere (Evola avrebbe detto “razza dello spirito”) e non sul pathos, sulla dimensione emotiva e sentimentale. Il trionfo del cristianesimo rese esplicito che il mondo antico aveva perso la propria anima, vale a dire quest’atteggiamento paritetico degli uomini nei confronti degli dei. Ecco perché alla «buona novella» aderirono gli ultimi, i diseredati e le donne, che divennero strumenti mortiferi per lo spirito classico. In quel frangente, pochi tentarono una resistenza. Si ersero in pochi, ricorda Otto, sulle rovine di un mondo al tramonto per proclamarne la grandezza, tra essi Giuliano Imperatore. Monastra ipotizza, e la cosa va segnalata, che Evola, avrebbe potuto trarre il titolo del suo, Gli uomini e le rovine, proprio da un passo del libro del filologo tedesco, che certamente lesse.
Condividiamo l’esegesi della relazione paganesimo-cristianesimo che questo volume presenta. Forse, come rileva il prefatore, è eccessivo sostenere, come fece Otto, l’unicità religiosa della Grecia. Resta il fatto, però, che la loro fu una religione della realtà: «alla quale risulta del tutto estranea la “fede” in qualcosa di “totalmente altro”» (p. 33). In conclusione, vogliamo qui ricordare quanto, a proposito dell’originario cristianesimo, ebbe a sostenere il filosofo Andre Amo: questa religione avrebbe rappresentato un ritorno dei culti agrari, cosmici, che nel mondo antico si era mostrati a latere del dionisismo, di contro al rigido monoteismo ebraico, imparentato con la religione apollinea. Un considerazione non dissimile da quella fatta propria dal tedesco, alcuni anni dopo la pubblicazione dello Spirito classico e il mondo cristiano.
Giovanni Sessa
09:40 Publié dans Livre, Livre, Traditions | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : walter f. otto, mythologie, mythologie grecque, grèce antique, antiquité grecque, esprit classique, classicisme, christianisme, traditions, paganisme | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Comme lors de la chronique de février dernier, il ne sera pas aujourd’hui question d’une figure européenne, mais d’une personnalité déjà évoquée à l’occasion de la deuxième chronique en date du 31 janvier 2017, à savoir Jean Thiriart (1922 – 1992).
La sortie en 2016 dans la collection « Qui suis-je ? » chez Pardès de Thiriart par Yannick Sauveur suscita un regain de curiosité autour de ses idées. Jusqu’alors, on ne disposait que d’Un Empire de quatre cents millions d’hommes, l’Europe. La naissance d’une nation, au départ d’un parti historique chez Avatar sorti en 2007. Paru à l’origine en 1964, cet essai qui présente quelques points toujours actuels par exemple « pas de liberté politique individuelle sans indépendance économique personnelle (p. 108) » n’en demeure pas moins daté.
Ne disposer que de ce seul ouvrage aurait été préjudiciable pour l’activisme grand-européen si les excellentes éditions nantaises Ars Magna n’avaient pas produit un fantastique effort de publication sur et autour de Jean Thiriart. Le prophète de la grande Europe, Jean Thiriart (2018, 484 p., 32 €) contient des entretiens (dont un, célèbre, avec Juan Peron en exil à Madrid), des articles de Thiriart ainsi que quatre textes sur lui. L’empire qui viendra (2018, 168 p., 28 €) comprend une préface de Claudio Mutti, un entretien méconnu de Thiriart en 1987 et divers textes géopolitiques. L’Empire euro-soviétique de Vladivostok à Dublin (2018, 191 p., 28 €) se compose, en dehors de quelques entretiens, d’articles du milieu des années 1980 et la version écrite d’une fameuse discussion à Moscou en août 1992 avec Egor Ligatchev, responsable d’une faction conservatrice au sein du Parti communiste russe. S’y trouvent aussi des notes d’un essai inachevé consacré à un hypothétique ensemble euro-soviétique. À la fin de l’année 2018 est cependant paru aux Éditions de la plus grande Europe L’Empire euro-soviétique de Vladivostok à Dublin, préfacé et annoté par Yannick Sauveur (2018, 337 p., 25 €), soit la version intégrale d’esquisses parfois bien avancées.
Il est indéniable que Jean Thiriart soutenait des positions hétérodoxes au sein de l’anticonformisme intellectuel. Athée résolu, ce faustien – il préférait cependant le terme de « prométhéen » – affirme sans ambages que « le politique, c’est la gestion intelligente de l’homme tel qu’il est, pour ce qu’il est. C’est un effort qui doit tendre à une société cohérente, solidaire, cohésive, efficace, en évolution constante (version de Yannick Sauveur, p. 164) ».
Cet infatigable militant qui connut l’aisance professionnelle et la quiétude privée ne cessa d’agir en faveur d’une union géopolitique continentale paneuropéenne réelle. Reconnaissant volontiers sa dette à l’égard du penseur libéral Vilfredo Pareto, ce lecteur attentif de Machiavel considérait que « l’Union soviétique a hérité du destin historique de la principale puissance continentale (version d’Ars Magna, p. 96) ». Dès 1979, il salue l’intervention de l’Armée Rouge en Afghanistan. Dans « L’Union soviétique dans la pensée de Jean Thiriart », José Cuadrado Costa le range parmi les nationaux-bolcheviks, ce qui est quelque peu réducteur. Jean Thiriart savait dépasser les clivages, y compris au sein des droites radicales.
Rares sont en effet ceux qui effectuent à ces temps de relance de la Guerre froide « une critique positive de l’URSS (version de Yannick Sauveur, p. 185) » et pensent que « l’agrandissement de l’URSS vers Dublin et Cadix relève de la perspective historique (Idem, p. 188) ». Jean Thiriart croît que « l’Empire euro-soviétique sera une construction géopolitique parfaite comme le fut l’Empire romain, comme l’était la première République pour Sieyès. Conception de géohistorien chez moi, dénuée de toute passion (Id., p. 69) ». Il regrette en revanche que l’Union soviétique n’ait pas annexé après 1945 la Pologne, la Roumanie, la Yougoslavie, la Hongrie, l’Allemagne de l’Est, etc. La Bulgarie a failli devenir en 1979 une 16e république soviétique… « La forme grand-européenne exige plusieurs modifications des concepts ou habitudes mentales communistes, écrit Jean Thiriart : la stupide et dangereuse théorie des nationalités (multi-nationalités) doit faire place à la supranationalité, l’Empire (version d’Ars Magna, p. 66). »
Il parie enfin que « l’Empire euro-soviétique – une nécessité pour l’URSS – ne sera pas possible en l’absence d’un nouveau concept, celui d’imperium euro-soviétique. Il se charpente autour de deux règles : la garantie de l’« omnicitoyenneté » et l’État-Nation extensif grâce à un “ nationalisme politique ” (“ peuple politique ” opposé en tant que tel à peuple racial, à peuple linguistique, à peuple religieux, à peuple culturel, etc.) (version de Yannick Sauveur, p. 223) », ce qui implique à l’instar du modèle républicain laïque assimilationniste français qu’il ne cesse d’admirer une forme restreinte de cosmopolitisme, voire un mondialisme relatif et partiel, dans le cadre d’un grand espace continental représenté par cette République impériale euro-soviétique.
Remarquable doctrinaire grand-européen, Jean Thiriart s’inspirait finalement de l’exemple national et républicain turc. Son vœu le plus cher aurait-il été de devenir le Mustapha Kemal Atatürk de la très grande Europe ?
Au revoir et dans quatre semaines pour une chronique consacrée à une nouvelle grande figure européenne.
Georges Feltin-Tracol
• Chronique diffusée le 23 avril 2019 à Radio Courtoisie dans le cadre du « Libre-Journal des Européens » de Thomas Ferrier.
09:52 Publié dans Géopolitique, Livre, Livre, Théorie politique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : européisme, continentalisme européen, europe, affaires européennes, jean thiriart, yannick sauveur, livre, théorie politique, politologie, sciences politiques, philosophie politique | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Vilfredo Frederigo Samaso, marquis de Pareto, est né le 15 juillet 1848 à Paris. Son père y est en exil pour avoir participé à un complot républicain à Gênes. La réhabilitation paternelle lui permet d’entreprendre ses études à Gênes et Turin. Après avoir soutenu une thèse de physique, il devient ingénieur et directeur technique de deux sociétés, l’une ferroviaire, l’autre métallurgique.
Déçu par l’engagement politique, Vilfredo Pareto se lance dans l’étude de la théorie économique, rencontre Léon Walras en 1891 et obtient une chaire d’économie politique à Lausanne en 1893. Il se passionne ensuite pour la sociologie et publie notamment Les Systèmes socialistes. Il soutient Mussolini. Il est nommé sénateur du royaume d’Italie le 23 mars 1923, mais il meurt quelques mois plus tard (le 19 août) à Céligny, face au lac Léman.
Un lycée Pareto existe à Lausanne et j’y ai rencontré Giuseppe Patanè, avec qui j’ai organisé en 1976 une commémoration de la répression de la révolte de Budapest par les chars soviétiques (1956). Patanè avait deux fils : Fabrizio, très sympathique, fort discret et d’un bon niveau, et Massimo, jeune érudit m’ayant fait découvrir que le syndicalisme mussolinien n’avait rien à envier à celui des régimes situés à gauche et intouchable à l’époque dans des medias tendancieux.
L’évocation du syndicalisme permet de faire une transition vers la pensée de Georges Sorel (d’un an plus vieux que Pareto) et vers l’intérêt que suscite l’auteur de Réflexions sur la Violence chez Jean-Pierre Blanchard, pasteur militant de la cause identitaire et auteur de Vilfredo Pareto, génie et visionnaire.
À propos de Sorel, l’auteur rappelle « qu’il a introduit un célèbre distinguo entre force et violence, la force ayant pour but d’imposer un ordre social, alors que celui de la violence est de le détruire (p. 118) ». J’attire aussi l’attention des lecteurs sur l’annexe où Jean-Pierre Blanchard développe l’hypothèse d’une cohabitation inattendue de Nietzsche et de Marx chez Sorel, ce dernier ayant donc pu permettre de « faire mariage » à « l’aristocratie nationaliste réactionnaire » et au « bourgeois communiste révolutionnaire (p. 136) ».
Le brillant exposé de la sociologie parétienne par le pasteur Blanchard est préfacé par Georges Feltin-Tracol qui espère que l’ouvrage de 2019 sera « l’hirondelle printanière », messagère d’un « renouveau des études parétiennes ! (p. 18) ». Car il faut bien reconnaître l’optimisme excessif de Jules Monnerot et de son pronostic des années 1960 sur « une remontée de la cote Pareto à la bourse des valeurs intellectuelles de l’Europe (p. 17) ».
Et ce malgré l’intérêt jamais démenti de la « Nouvelle Droite » à travers l’admiration vouée à Pareto par Georges Henri-Bousquet (ouvrage paru chez Dalloz en 1971), les références d’Alain de Benoist dans son Vu de droite (1977) et la revue Nouvelle École (1981), les allusions de Louis Pauwels dans son Blumroch l’Admirable (1976) et même, assez récemment, l’influence parétienne observable chez Guillaume Faye dans Mon Programme (2012).
« Toute population sociale est composée de deux couches, une couche inférieure qui comprend tous ceux qui ne réussisent que médiocrement dans la vie et une couche supérieure, l’élite, qui comprend tous ceux qui réussissent, dans quelque domaine que ce soit, et qui se divise en deux : l’élite non gouvernementale et l’élite gouvernementale. » Le pasteur Blanchard précise que, si de bons éléments émergent de la « couche inférieure » et que des membres de « l’élite », « gouvernementale » ou non, s’avèrent défaillants, « la décadence menace toute société qui ne pratique pas la mobilité sociale, la circulation des élites (p. 108) ». L’Establishment britannique fournit un bon exemple de cette « mobilité sociale », mais aussi l’Église catholique, comme le souligne pertinemment en page 73 Éric Zemmour dans son Destin français. Deux ans après le décès de Pareto, le Grand d’Espagne Miguel de Unamuno parle d’« agonie du christianisme » (1925).
Un deuxième stade de la « régression des castes dominantes (Julius Evola) » sévit déjà à travers la simple « magistrature d’influence » exercée par les derniers monarques issus de la noblesse. Ainsi s’exprime l’historien liégeois Léon Balace pour décrire les rois des Belges qui règnent sans gouverner et qui se contentent désormais de pérorer sur l’utopique vivre-ensemble, tant au niveau de leur petite patrie fracturée qu’à celui de la grande et illusoire fraternité mondialiste. L’élite gouvernementale désignée par Vilfredo Pareto est celle de la troisième fonction (en termes duméziliens) ou des « hommes de gestion » (dans le lexique de Raymond Abellio). Les producteurs ne sont pas seulement économiques, mais aussi culturels. Ceux-ci composent l’essentiel de l’élite non gouvernementale (presse, écrivains, artistes de toutes disciplines, animateurs des industries du divertissement, du spectacle et du luxe).
La quatrième fonction des « hommes d’exécution » (Abellio) ne s’est mise en valeur que le temps d’une brève parenthèse historique avec la complicité des penseurs de type sartrien, trop rarement éveillés à l’inanité du déterminisme socio-économique : « Valéry est un intellectuel petit-bourgeois, mais tout intellectuel petit-bourgeois n’est pas Valéry. » Peut-on encore attendre aujourd’hui de la nouvelle caste médiatique dominante ce type de jugement nuancé dont même Sartre était encore capable ? Le mondialisme qu’elle cherche à imposer correspond parfaitement à la nation parétienne de « dérivation », à savoir un ensemble de « manifestations verbales [qui] s’éloignent de la réalité [tout en ayant] une valeur persuasive bien supérieure au raisonnement objectif (p. 67) ».
« Voici ce qui est plus grave : toutes ces idées pures, toutes ces théories, ces doctrines, nous en connaissons la vanité, et l’inexistence au point de vue objectif (p. 81). » Ces lignes du Pasteur Blanchard mettent en exergue le « pragmatisme » de Vilfredo Pareto, dont le préfacier Georges Feltin-Tracol rappelle qu’il est « une référence revendiquée [par Jean Thiriart] dans le cadre de son État central grand-européen (p. 17) ». C’est une raison supplémentaire de lire l’excellent ouvrage de Jean-Pierre Blanchard sur l’auteur du Traité de sociologie générale (1916).
Note complémentaire
Dans une excellente contribution d’août 2018 au site Rédacteurs RH, David Rouiller évoque « l’autre tiers-mondisme », différent de celui qui s’est exprimé dans les livres de Frantz Fanon et de Jean Ziegler et dans les conférences de Bakou (1920) et de Bandœng (1955). On peut l’appeler tiers-mondisme « de Droite », à l’intérieur duquel David Rouiller sépare encore l’ivraie du « fatras » d’Alain Soral et le bon grain de la « Quadricontinentale » de Thiriart et des positions de Guénon et d’Evola en faveur des cultures traditionnelles détruites par la modernité. David Rouiller souligne toutefois que l’installation de Guénon en terre musulmane d’Égypte peut inciter certains guénoniens à développer un « philo-islamisme de Droite », comme le fit aussi la revue évolienne Totalité en 1979 avec son éloge d ela révolution iranienne.
Toujours en août 2018 et sur le même site, David Rouiller aborde la question de « l’avènement du Cinquième État », stade ultime de la « régression des castes dominantes » (Julius Evola). À la manœuvre de ce processus semble opérer une large fraction de ce que Pareto appelle « l’élite non gouvernementale ». Les anciens intellectuels soutenant le prolétariat sont remplacés par les partisans du « chaos social » (René Guénon), une sorte de nouvelle caste dont les contours sont toutefois difficiles à cerner ainsi que le notait déjà dans un article de 1980 le regretté Guillaume Faye.
Daniel Cologne
• Jean-Pierre Blanchard, Vilfredo Pareto, génie et visionnaire, préface de Georges Feltin-Tracol, Dualpha Éditions, coll. « Patrimoine des héritages », 2019, 152 p., 23 €.
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Après Nietzsche, Benny Lévy et Pierre Boutang, Rémi Soulié continue sa pérégrination littéraire avec un recueil de méditations, d’aphorismes et de réflexions au titre énigmatique. Par « racination », il part en quête de nos racines généalogiques (ne parle-t-on pas d’« arbre » ?), anthropologiques et culturelles de la pérennité albo-européenne. Il juge ce terme préférable à celui d’« identité ». « Dans la démocratie marchande, l’identité est une part de marché et de l’« offre politique » parmi d’autres, comme la sécurité ou la souveraineté, ni plus, ni moins (p. 81). »
Il devine et s’inquiète en effet de l’acception explosive qu’il recèle parce qu’« il est aussi une façon haineuse de vivre son particularisme et son universalisme (p. 105) ». « Dès lors que l’affirmation identitaire est une réaction aux flux, à la mondialisation hors-sol, poursuit-il, elle reste prisonnière des termes qu’elle combat, comme la contre-révolution de la révolution ou l’alter-mondialisme de la mondialisation (p. 84). »
Ces objections n’empêchent pas Racination d’être un bel hymne chthonien aux terroirs, en particulier au Rouergue natal de l’auteur. Originaire de Decazeville, ville de charbon, Rémi Soulié se considère « par nomination, un autochtone, un indigène (p. 36) ». En ces temps de tyrannie douçâtre, c’est osé et courageux. Son cas s’aggrave en puisant chez Vico, Hölderlin et Heidegger. En outre, crime ô combien suprême !, il clame son amour charnel pour le cher Pays noir; cette patrie charnelle où « la francisation y fut tardive et l’occitan parlé plus pur (p. 64) ».
Occitanophone, l’auteur en devient d’autant plus suspect aux yeux du républicanisme hexagonal sourcilleux. Ainsi dépeint-il « Marianne, la femme sans corps, lestée de son poids de chair, la femme de tête, la vache barriolée de Zarathoustra (p. 136) ». L’effervescence patriotarde ne fascine pas ce lointain compatriote de Louis de Bonald. « Au sens moderne donc révolutionnaire, jacobine, républicain, français, la nation se réduit à une idée et à une volonté, peau de chagrin qui ne garde même plus le souvenir de la gens non plus que du peuple, auxquels ont été substitués des artefacts agglomérés. Au peuple fictif une souveraineté et des droits fictifs; rapt puis viol des libertés réelles et des franchises au pays des Francs (p. 73). »
Oui, cette République à vocation universaliste et cosmopolite infecte la France, pervertit son esprit et corrompt ses peuples natifs. Elle participe au désenchantement de l’Hexagone et à sa dépolitisation. « On ne mesure sans doute pas, avant la République, ce que nous fit perdre un roi qui se déclara “ Roi des Français ” et non plus “ Roi de France ”, comme si un roi ne l’était pas aussi des sources et des forêts, des fées et des montagnes, des ciels et des chemins (pp. 104 – 105). » Conséquence de l’« insupportable modernité de la nation et, a fortiori, du nationalisme, dont sont exempts la cité, l’empire et le royaume : la prose des codes y a défait la poésie des fées (p. 76) ». Nous payons au prix fort la traîtrise de l’usurpateur Louis-Philippe d’Orléans et de l’idée impériale plus que mitigée de Napoléon Ier, empereur des Français.
L’auteur raille donc avec justesse « un pléonasme, la “ société ouverte ”, conçue comme un antipode symbolique de la “ communauté ” (p. 17) ». Cette dernière est en réalité synonyme d’enracinement. Rémi Soulié n’hésite pas à en rappeler la signification. « L’enracinement désigne rien moins, pour les mortels, que l’identité de l’être et de l’habitation (p. 26). » Par ailleurs, il « implique une dimension communautaire et organique, mais, aussi, la conscience d’un héritage à faire fructifier, donc, la mémoire d’une dette à l’endroit de ceux qui nous ont précédés : l’homme se pense lui-même comme un débiteur, non un créancier, un homme de devoirs avant d’être un sujet de droits (pp. 24 – 25) ».
Attention, toutefois, pas de méprise, ni d’amalgame ! Racination n’est nullement un manifeste politique. C’est plutôt un questionnement poétique dans son sens étymologique primordial, à savoir poiesis (« faire, créer »), afin de réagir au chaos ambiant. « Faute de poètes […] il est impossible que l’ordre règne, le poème étant la véritable “ force de l’ordre ” (p. 109). » Le recours poétique s’impose au moment où « le règne antéchristique se caractérise par la volonté de réaliser le paradis – falsifié, par nature – sans Dieu et d’instaurer le règne de l’Homme – sans Dieu -, donc, de la Bête (p. 161) ».
Rémi Soulié pose ainsi les prolégomènes d’un « État poétique », précurseur d’un « Empire du Soleil » si cher à Frédéric Mistral. Loin, bien loin, très loin donc des remugles politiciens et de l’écume électoraliste…
Georges Feltin-Tracol
• Rémi Soulié, Racination, Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2018, 210 p., 23 €.
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« Robert Denoël avait toutes les qualités d’un grand éditeur
et on peut rêver à ce qu’eût été son destin
si la guerre, suivie de cette mort tragique,
n’avait pas mis un terme à une vocation contrariée
par les vicissitudes du temps »
La carrière d’éditeur de Robert Denoël débute le 30 juin 1928 et s’achève le 2 décembre 1945. Durant ces dix-sept années d’activité, il a publié quelque 700 livres à différentes enseignes. Il fût l’éditeur de Louis-Ferdinand Céline et pour cela, assassiné à la fin de la IIe Guerre mondiale. Qui était vraiment Robert Denoël ? On trouvera des réponses à la question dans cette enquête ; Jean Jour s’est attaché à remonter aux sources, tout homme étant le fruit de ses origines et de son éducation. Pour cette figure secrète et sulfureuse de l’édition, il s’agissait de s’affranchir d’un milieu provincial figé : celui de la bourgeoisie catholique des années vingt : à travers son existence tumultueuse, ce sont tous les dessous terribles de l’édition, des années de guerre, des règlements de comptes politiques et financiers qui nous sont racontés avec talent par un auteur qui n’a cure du politiquement correct.
Préface de Marc Laudelout, directeur du Bulletin célinien, du livre de Jean Jour Robert Denoël, un destin, désormais disponible aux éditions Dualpha.
Alors que Bernard Grasset, Gaston Gallimard ou René Julliard ont depuis belle lurette leur biographe, aucune étude approfondie n’existe encore sur Robert Denoël. Le livre de l’Américaine Louise Staman, paru en 2002, s’attache surtout à éclaircir le mystère de son assassinat. C’est dire si Jean Jour s’aventure sur un terrain en friche et manifestement périlleux, compte tenu des circonstances de la disparition de cet éditeur.
Tragique destin que celui de ce jeune Liégeois qui n’aura pu exercer sa profession que durant une quinzaine d’années. Pour beaucoup, il demeure le découvreur de Céline auquel son nom demeure associé. Et pourtant nombreuses sont les œuvres importantes du XXe siècle qu’il aura publiées : L’Hôtel du Nord d’Eugène Dabit, Héliogabale d’Artaud, Tropismes de Nathalie Sarraute, Les Beaux Quartiers d’Aragon, Les Décombres de Rebatet, Le Bonheur des tristes de Luc Dietrich, Les Marais de Dominique Rolin, Notre-Dame des Fleurs de Jean Genet, pour ne citer que les plus connues.
On a parfois traité Denoël d’opportuniste. C’est ne pas voir qu’il fut viscéralement éditeur, très tôt soucieux de diversifier sa production, de publier des livres de qualité à une époque où la concurrence était rude, et d’assurer la pérennité de sa maison. Il réussit même à damer le pion à ses illustres confrères dans la course aux prix littéraires, récoltant sept Prix Renaudot – dont le fameux Voyage au bout de la nuit – en une décennie. Il fut aussi l’un des premiers éditeurs à publier des textes psychanalytiques, notamment ceux de René Allendy, Otto Rank et Marie Bonaparte.
Jean Jour a raison d’écrire que sa vie d’éditeur se caractérisa par une incessante course à l’argent. Toujours sur le fil du rasoir, Denoël n’eut jamais les moyens de ses ambitions. C’est sans doute ce qui le perdit, étant sans cesse contraint de faire des concessions. Ceci concerne tout aussi bien la diffusion de ses livres que la publication de titres plus ou moins imposés par les circonstances, ou, plus fâcheux encore, la cession de parts de sa société à des tiers qui se révéleront encombrants, voire dangereux.
Il dut également se colleter à Céline. On sait que son auteur vedette n’était guère accommodant, ne craignant pas de mettre en péril la survie même de la maison d’édition par une redoutable avidité pécuniaire. Lorsqu’en 1936, Céline adresse, par huissier, une assignation en bonne et due forme à son éditeur, celui-ci le met en garde : « Si vous persistez dans votre attitude, vous réussirez simplement à me jeter par terre, sans obtenir un franc. En effet, l’affaire Denoël & Steele est hypothéquée pour 200 000 frs et elle doit 50 000 frs au fisc. Quand on aura vendu aux enchères, il ne restera rien pour les autres créanciers. Les bouquins se vendront au camion à raison de 80 frs les 1 000 kilos et tout le bénéfice que vous en aurez tiré sera d’avoir ruiné un homme qui, peut-être, vous a fait quelque bien. »
Terrible aveu qui montre à quel point Denoël se trouve alors tenaillé entre une situation financière difficile et le manque de souplesse de Céline qui se vantera plus tard d’avoir été l’auteur le plus exigeant sur le marché. Mais s’il abreuvait volontiers son éditeur de sarcasmes, cela ne l’empêchera pas, plus tard, de lui rendre un juste hommage : « Un côté le sauvait… il était passionné des Lettres… il reconnaissait vraiment ce travail, il respectait les auteurs. »
Nul éloge comparable, sous la plume de Céline, à l’égard de Gaston Gallimard, faut-il le préciser ?
Qui était vraiment Robert Denoël ? On trouvera des réponses à la question dans cette enquête qui s’est attachée à remonter aux sources, tout homme étant le fruit de ses origines et de son éducation. Le fait que Jean Jour soit également natif de Liège lui aura permis de mieux appréhender cette figure secrète. Il s’agissait aussi de comprendre cette volonté farouche de s’affranchir d’un milieu provincial figé : celui de la bourgeoisie catholique des années vingt.
Et si Denoël a marqué l’histoire littéraire des années qui ont suivi, c’est grâce à une forte personnalité qui lui permit de vaincre bien d’obstacles : « Le physique de l’homme traduit le caractère. Tête romaine, figure romantique, mais empreinte d’énergie. Les yeux observateurs, sous les lunettes, pétillent d’esprit ». Ainsi le voit un compatriote venu lui rendre visite dans son bureau directorial, trois ans seulement avant sa disparition.
Robert Denoël avait toutes les qualités d’un grand éditeur et on peut rêver à ce qu’eût été son destin si la guerre, suivie de cette mort tragique, n’avait pas mis un terme à une vocation contrariée par les vicissitudes du temps.
Journaliste, Jean Jour (1937-2016) est né sur l’île d’Outremeuse, à Liège, patrie de Simenon, et en a retenu tout le côté pittoresque. Il est l’auteur d’une cinquantaine de livres très divers et a traduit plusieurs romans américains.
Robert Denoël, un destin de Jean Jour, éditions Dualpha, collection «Vérités pour l’Histoire», dirigée par Philippe Randa, 246 pages, 27 euros. Nombreuses illustrations. Pour commander ce livre, cliquez ici.
11:26 Publié dans Littérature, Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : livre, jean jour, robert denoël, louis-ferdinand céline, céline, france, littérature, littérature française, lettres, lettres françaises, marc laudelout | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
par Philippe Grasset
Ex: http://www.europesolidaire.com
Plutôt que le commenter nous-mêmes, nous préférons reprendre ici quelques extraits de l'article que vient de publier Philippe Grasset dans DeDefensa, notre lecture régulière. http://www.dedefensa.org/article/chute-libre
JPB
29 avril 2019 – J'ai lu le livre dont on parle beaucoup, Crépuscule de Juan Branco. Tout le monde sait ce dont il s'agit : la description de l'ascension de Macron par un homme (un jeune homme) qui précise bien entendu qu'il appartint à ces réseaux qui firent le boulot, et qui en est sorti par choix moral pour “entrer en dissidence”, pour “lâcher le morceau”, – ce qu'il fait avec minutie. Ici, je ne veux pas parler de l'auteur, de ses diverses révélations (ou “révélations”), des diverses situations décrites, des personnes impliquées, mais seulement de l'impression générale concernant disons une “atmosphère”, que j'ai éprouvée à la lecture de son livre. S'il y a pour moi du vrai dans ce livre, je veux dire du fondamentalement vrai, c'est là que je l'y trouve.
Lui-même, Branco, dans une interview que j'ai visionnée (Thinkerview, le 13 mars 2019), m'est apparu sous un jour favorable : parlant bien, droitement, avec naturel, d'une façon convaincante quant au récit qu'il nous donne. La phrase qui, à son avis, résume aussi bien Crépuscule que son sentiment général sur ces gens qui forment à la fois une partie importante “de nos élites” et les réseaux qui ont fabriqué et mis Macron sur orbite, c'est celle-ci, p.310 : « Ces gens ne sont pas corrompus. Ils sont la corruption. »
La phrase me va parfaitement parce qu'elle est à la fois abrupte puisque sans la moindre échappée possible de l'état de corruption pour les gens qu'elle décrit, à la fois singulière parce qu'elle décrit des gens qui, “étant la corruption” qui est une chose spécifique (partie du Système), en sont encore plus les prisonniers que ceux qui rencontrent épisodiquement la corruption. Cette ambiguïté sonne juste et contribue pour beaucoup à me faire accepter l'hypothèse que Branco dit le vrai.
Quel est le résultat pour mon compte ? C'est-à-dire, qu'est-ce que je retiens de ce livre ? Que la phrase citée est exactement descriptive : nous avons le spectacle d'un énorme tourbillon crisique qui est la corruption elle-même, bien plus qu'une étude des corrompus (et des corrupteurs par conséquent). On retient moins les êtres que la façon d'être de multiples acteurs dont on retient plus ou moins les noms et qu'on a de grandes difficultés à situer les uns par rapport aux autres, on s'imprègne d'un climat bien plus que l'on observe des événements. Tous, d'une certaine façon, ils pourraient être anonymes, tant leurs comportements semblent correspondre à une mécanique dont on croirait bien volontiers (c'est mon cas) qu'elle les dépasse et les manipule. Bien sûr, il y a les ambitieux, les manipulateurs, les énormes fortunes qui les tiennent tous et alimentent tout cela, et puis l'élu, – notre-président, – habile comme un aigrefin et bien mis comme un chauffeur de maître, et au fond absolument insignifiant, qui pourrait aussi bien être Tartempion, Boudu, ou bien encore Bouvard & Pécuchet. Je le répète parce que je l'ai ressenti à chaque page, ils me font bien rire ceux qui rient des Français comme on rit des moutons qui se laissent tondre, parce que dans cette affaire les élites sont bien plus moutonnières et menées à la baguette d'une entité énorme qui se nomme corruption que les citoyens soi-disant moutonniers.
Philippe Grasset
11:36 Publié dans Actualité, Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : actualité, livre, juan branco | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Review:
Martin Lichtmesz & Michael Ley (eds.)
Nationalmasochismus [2]
Steigra: Antaios Verlag, 2018
In the Platz der deutschen Einheit (German Unity Square) in Düsseldorf, someone has covered the street name with Simone de Beauvoir Platz. This is one example among many that anyone living in the Federal Republic of Germany may encounter – evidence of the hatred of their country which some Germans feel. Evidence is all around. Now a book has been published stating and stressing this tendency of Germans to despise their birthright and identity.
Reviewing National Masochismus (National Masochism) places me in an awkward position. I have no wish to be ungracious about the competent and intelligent writers who have contributed to the collection of essays which make up the book, and it may be seen as disloyal to react negatively towards any attempt to take to task what is here described as the “masochism” of the European. Besides, there is an inherent tendency – even a kind of protocol – which insists that those concerned about the predicament of the white race should praise anyone on the same side for their efforts regardless of their quality. The downside of this is that Right-wingers reviewing the writing of people “on their side” lack critical discrimination.
Putting protocol to one side, I believe that National Masochismus is neither a useful nor enjoyable book. It is not poorly written, not untruthful, nor irrelevant, but it offers the reader little new insight and no hope (there are many insights here, but most have been made many times before; of hope, there is none whatsoever that I could find). National Masochismus simply has nothing positive to offer its readers. It is for the most part tedious to read, depressing, and is neither enjoyable nor of practical use, unless one believes enjoyment or practical use can be obtained through having the failings and pathological tendencies of one’s nation or race exposed and condemned with ever more lurid and bizarre examples.
National Masochismus is a collection of nine essays by eight different writers, most but not all of them on the subject of national masochism. Martin Lichtmesz, who has written two of the nine essays, is the author of the book Rassismus, which I have already reviewed for Counter-Currents [3]. In Rassismus, Lichtmesz sought to demonstrate that the bugbear of “racism” used to such effect in contemporary dialogue – or better said, contemporary abuse – is an American import. Lichtmesz called “racism” the “American nightmare.” This collection of essays might have pointed out (but did not) that German masochism, originating in the “shame” of Auschwitz, has spread out to become a European nightmare. What was once a typically German sense of shame about the German past has been gradually extended to embrace the entire West. Europe is saddled with a sense of shame about Europe and Europe’s past, shame about colonialism, shame about slavery, shame about fascism, and shame about racism. Germany had Auschwitz; Portugal, France, and Britain had colonies. Spain has the Conquista. Each white nation to its shame.
The first essay by Lichtmesz (photo) is an overview of the notion of national masochism. In medical terms, masochism is the desire to obtain and/or the pleasure obtained from pain administered either by oneself or by others to oneself. The earliest use of the expression “national masochism,” according to Lichtmesz, comes from the actor Gustav Gründgens – ironic, if true – since the central figure in Klaus Mann’s Mephisto, Hendrik Höfgen, is a thinly-disguised Gründgens, and that book is a case study in German shame. The novel is about an actor who makes his peace with National Socialism for the sake of his professional career, drawing a parallel between Gründgens working in Germany after 1933 and Faust selling his soul to Mephistopheles for twenty-four years of youth, pleasure, and success. However, this theme had already been appropriated with vastly more skill, talent, and subtlety in his father Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus. Klaus Mann worked for American propaganda during the war and committed suicide in 1949. He himself might serve as an exemplary case of German self-loathing.
It is true, as Lichtmesz urges – as many have before him – that the German sense of guilt and shame at being German exceeds that of other European nations. This extreme self-loathing has its roots in the so-called Umerziehung (reeducation) that was carried out in post-war education and propaganda. It is not difficult to find examples to substantiate the case that the rejection of National Socialism in Germany is more than the rejection of a political doctrine; it is in fact a form of masochism, a mental sickness. Lichtmesz offers the example of Philippe Ruch to illustrate his point. Ruch was born in Dresden in 1981 and is the leader of an “alternative” arts troupe. In the manifesto of what he calls the group’s “aggressive humanism,” Ruch raves about himself and his fellow Germans. I have tried to render the awkward style of the original German in English:
We are the country of organizers and creators of the Holocaust. Our ancestors exterminated millions of people. They bumped off millions of innocent civilians. It cannot be repeated often enough: Germany struck the severest blow against humanity in the history of the human race. The moral core of the Federal Republic is the oath to ensure that genocide is banished for all time. The right to enjoy privileges as a German goes hand in hand with the awareness of a unique moral imperative. All those who do not live their lives in awareness of that imperative are politically illegitimate, they bask in a legitimation to which we only have a right on the assumption of that oath (p. 219).
This sort of writing substantiates Lichtmesz’s thesis that German self-loathing in respect of their own past is pathological, and borderline insane.
The second chapter of the book is an essay by Michael Ley, writing, as he says, in the tradition of the Enlightenment. Unlike Left-wing commentators and activists, Ley, who is Jewish, is consistent in his faith in the Enlightenment principles of free speech, individualism, and human rights, for he draws the logical conclusion from his rationalist and Enlightenment beliefs that Islam poses a direct threat to those beliefs. Trying to live in harmony and peace with this religion, so Ley, is a fatal delusion. The reader is confronted again with an example to illustrate the pathological dimensions of German – or in this case Christian – self-abnegation. In Ley’s example, the Archbishop of Cologne commissioned a life-sized model of an Islamic migrants’ boat to be set up outside Cologne Cathedral. Ley goes so far (p. 35) as to describe the demolition of intact buildings as a continuation of the “collective suicide” of the West, of which ignoring Islam’s challenge is the latest manifestation.
Dr. Michael Ley
Ley’s essay throws up the conundrum regarding Israel. Should those defending a European identity against Islamic migration identify with Israel on the grounds that the enemy of my enemy is my friend? In light of the Islamic mass migration into Europe now taking place, many Right-wingers who were formerly sympathetic to Islam – as in, for example, supporting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets – have now veered towards sympathy for Israel. The late Guillaume Faye and Steve Bannon come to mind.
In the third chapter, Michael Mannheimer begins his contribution, which is entitled “Vom Nationamasochismus zum nationalen Suizid” (From National Masochism to National Suicide), with an example of what must be regarded as derangement in this statement by a journalist named Wiglaf Droste (p. 41):
The German people have the moral duty to die out, and quickly. Every Pole, Russian, Jew, Frenchman, Black African, and so on has as much right to live on the German land – which has been talked about as though it were holy or blessed – as any German, if not more so (Heinz Nawratil, Kult mit der Schuld [Munich: Universitas, 2012], p. 9).
Michael Mannheimer, who is a leading critic of Islam and who has been subjected to many attacks by the Left, does not subscribe – as do many critics of Islam, such as Guillaume Faye – to the view that Israel is a bastion for the defense of the West (on his blog, he recently published a piece suggesting that the Christchurch massacre may be a Mossad “false flag”). He focuses on the reality of demographics, and cites the sobering fact that in 1950, ninety percent of the population of West and East Germany was ninety-nine percent German, but that in 2018, forty percent (!) of those living in Germany have non-German roots. The turnaround year is projected to be 2035, when more than half the population of Germany will be non-German (p. 43). If he differs with Ley concerning Israel, Mannheimer concurs entirely in drawing attention to the activity of the so-called anti-fascists, whom he describes as “a weapon to crush alternative political opinions,” and especially that no demonstration against Islam or against the replacement of the native population of Germany can take place without the presence of professional anti-fascists (p. 56). It seems to this reviewer that the anti-fascists are a European export to the United States, where they are known by their German abbreviated form as “antifa” – a Coca-Cola infection in reverse.
Mannheimer is a friend of the Federal Republic’s Constitution, a point about which many readers may part company with him, but it is hard to disagree that the government of the Federal Republic and its supporters has begun to abandon its former sense of duty to abide faithfully to the spirit and letter of that Constitution. Mannheimer notes:
The Merkel government is now breaking German laws practically on a daily basis, massively supported by the media, churches, and unions. She is breaking Article 20, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution, which binds all governments to uphold existing law (p. 61).
Whereas in the past, the Bonn and Berlin governments could at least claim that they were acting within the bounds of the constitutional rights accorded to them in the establishment of the Federal Republic in 1949, Merkel’s unilateral decisions, which even Right-wingers sometimes implausibly interpret as a “mistake,” is a breach of the provisions of the Constitution, and therefore illegal. Mannheimer regards the failure of the Bundestag to oppose Merkel as capitulation to what Josef Isensee called a Staatsstreich (coup) (p. 61):
A coup from above is a breach of the Constitution on the part of an organ of the state. It can result from inactivity, be it that of institutions set up by the Constitution being cleared away, be it that Constitutional duties are not fulfilled . . . If the organs responsible widely fail to guarantee the free individual safety and security, they will have lost their right to expect obedience from their subjects, and resistance (Widerstandsfall) is the order of the day (Josef Isensee, Das Legalisierte Widerstandsrecht [When Resistance is Legal] [Bad Homburg: Gehlen, 1969], p. 28).
Mannheimer believes that Germany has shifted from being a parliamentary democracy to become what he calls a “parliamentary dictatorship” (p. 62):
Even the politicians of the old conservative parties seem to be intoxicated by their own decline. The slightest opposition to the collective suicide of one of the greatest cultures and nations of the world will be declared “Nazi” or “racist” by a phalanx of politics, the media, and the church (p. 68).
The fourth essay, by Caroline Sommerfeld, brings some humor into what is a deadly earnest subject, and one treated with unrelenting earnestness in most of this book. She considers the psychological implication of the book’s title, namely the manifestation of the pathology of the drive to spiritual, and ultimately biological, self-harm that has germinated in the soil of the modern German psyche. Her essay is not only the sole amusing contribution, but it is the only piece which seems to me to approach the subject from an original perspective and in an original way. The style is discursive, even chummy, and the perspective very personal. Much of the contribution is an account of dialogues she had with her husband, or other people she knows. First, the reader is introduced to a supposedly “conservative” married couple in Berlin. A well-to-do mother is talking to the mother, Caroline Sommerfeld:
She: I think it is a good thing that there are always more brown children. At some stage, blonds will have died out.
Me: And you think that is good?
She: What is good about being blond? The white race has done so much wrong on this planet that it’s a good thing if it dies out (p. 71).
Sommerfeld humorously describes the reductio ad absurdum of the “blonde and blue-eyed,” Buddhistically-inclined, well-to-do mum. This mother rejects racialism for reasons which take fatalism to an altogether new level:
And so you think it is important to maintain white genes? Look, in a hundred years all people will be of mixed blood, and that’s good. Anyway, I see things in a Buddhist way, with no enemies – only teachers on the way. And you need to think globally. One day, humanity will have died out; the Sun will expand, and the whole planet will be destroyed (p. 72).
Caroline Sommerfeld speaking at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2018
Sommerfeld refers approvingly to Martin Sellner of the Austrian branch of Generation Identity for giving the Western world’s masochistic leaders the designation of sect (p. 73). The greater part of her contribution is taken up with an analysis of discussions she has had with her much older husband. He was born in 1939, she in 1979; their age difference provides her with the opportunity to analyze, as she puts it:
. . . what must have happened after 1945 to account for the narrative of the disappearance of the notion of “my own,” a narrative which includes the dissolving of frontiers, nations, and peoples in the cause of globalization, and in which international solidarity replaces national solidarity, and where there is a worldwide exchange of goods, money, and people, and that this is seen not only as a historical imperative, but to be good in itself and necessary (pp. 78-79).
I disagree that the course of events is primarily presented in terms defined by those who accept globalization as a good in itself. Of course there are those who stress their belief that globalization is ipso facto a good thing, but from my experience, the development is much more often seen as something inevitable; people are resigned to it. It is accepted as an inexorable development, rather as Marx insisted that the collapse of capitalism and its transformation into socialism was scientific and inexorable. However, a shift from optimism to fatalism among proponents of globalism may just reflect a difference between generations among one-worlders, with earlier generations greeting globalization as a step in the constant self-improvement of mankind, and a later generation more dispassionately regarding it as inevitable and ethically neutral; a development for which there is “no alternative,” as Merkel justified her own decisions.
Sommerfeld notes – quite correctly, in this reviewer’s opinion – that a major strategy of those who adhere to what she describes as an “alien paradigm” argue against any right of a nation, people, or race to self-determination or survival by insisting that the race or nation in question is a construct of history, enjoying no objective reality. Here we come back to the idea that those in power belong, if not to a conspiracy, at the very least to a sect (whether they do so consciously or unconsciously, she does not discuss). This sect denies as a matter of strategy the existence of that which it seeks to destroy: the white race. Sommerfeld makes a telling point at the end of her contribution:
We are much too much on the defensive. If pressed to acknowledge Germany’s unending guilt, the answer has to be: What do you like so much about a sense of guilt that you expect everyone to share it? What is so wrong about being far-Right? What is wrong with sexism? What is your problem with anti-Semitism? (p. 94)
She explains that she poses these questions for the purpose of studying her husband’s reaction to them. More’s the pity. I believe such questions should be posed to try and get some answers from the only race in the history of mankind which is busily clamoring for its own destruction.
But why is National Masochismus stressing the obvious – not once, but repeatedly? An apt way of describing what these writers are doing is psychologically flagellating themselves. Masochism, ironically, is on full display in these very writings: the writers relish in talking about German shame, ignorance, and decline. And National Masochismus is over 200 pages long.
For my part, I do not believe that the masochism described here is representative of most Germans. It is the masochism of the opinion-makers, not of a majority of the indigenous citizens. In all my experience of talking with Germans, I have heard at the most extreme that a person “does not care,” or is indifferent toward the fate of blonds or the white race, but I have never heard the wish expressed that blonds would do well to die out, or that it will be grand if everyone becomes coffee-colored. On the contrary, a Communist lady (a card-carrying party member, as it happens) said to me in response to regret I expressed concerning the decline of white people, “If you like blonds so much, you should go ahead and marry a blond and have a bevy of blond children. No one is going to stop you.” Thus, in my experience, it is a minority of Germans who are consciously pathological in the manner described in this book. The masochism is accepted with resignation by millions because it is dictated and urged by authority, and Germans, of all people, tend to believe in the inherent legitimacy of certified authority. The reaction of the average German to the masochism described in this book is less to embrace than to ignore it, offering only by way of submission the token sacrifice of widespread self-deprecation regarding some of the smaller things in life. (Example: “Germans go totally overboard when it comes to tax regulation. It’s typically German to make it so complicated!”)
This book exudes a negativity which works on the assumption that a majority of people are committed to the masochistic pleasures which are described and illustrated here, but the writers fall into the error of confusing the opinions of the elite with the acquiescence of the mass. It is not that I am suggesting that the mass is consciously opposed to what the masochists are doing and the damage they are causing, but rather that they are indifferent to it, and they are not so much “brainwashed” (that favorite mantra of Right-wing critics) as stultified and stupefied. They have other things than their country’s masochism or shame on their minds.
A chapter by Tilman Nagel on the Islamic religion simply stresses the incompatibility of Islam with Western society, and seems hardly relevant to the thesis of the book, unless it is to stress the masochism which indeed is likely to be a factor for people who welcome migrants to their country who will be toxic to their way of life.
The sixth chapter by Michael Klonovsky bears the peculiar sounding title of “Betroffenheitsathleten. Aus den Acta Diurna 2014-2017” (Athletes of Consternation: From the Acta Diurna, 2014-2017). In colorful language, Klonovsky recounts his reaction to daily events and statements which serve to illustrate German masochism. He begins by quoting a statement made by one of Dresden’s mayors that “Dresden was not an innocent city” (p. 119) – a masochistic declaration of a particularly distasteful kind, since it implicitly justifies the three-day destruction of a defenseless refugee city by the RAF and US Air Force, which was a war crime if the term “war crime” itself has any meaning. It was an act of terrorism which, given the extent of the destruction it caused, its cold-blooded determination to murder, and its efficiency and thoroughness in committing murder exceeded every act of Islamic terrorism in modern times by far.
Picture, right: Michael Klonovsky
Klonovsky’s writing style is not unlike that of Tarki and other journalists at the British Spectator: intelligent, angry, snide. He recounts a program about Hans Michael Frank and an interview with his son, Niklas Frank. Niklas Frank takes masochism to new heights by explaining that everywhere he goes, he carries a picture with him depicting his father hanging from the gallows at Nuremberg. That way he can always reassure himself that Daddy “is well and truly dead” (p. 123). This must have been a repeat of an old program, since I remember a German girlfriend of mine being appalled by Niklas Frank when she watched the program on television in the late 1980s.
After describing the perverse show, the book proceeds to offer more examples of German self-loathing. My feeling by this stage was, “Yes, all right! I’ve got the message! You don’t have to go on about it anymore.” But go on about it these writers surely do. Harping on the subject of their own self-hatred is the Right-wing German’s way of being anti-German, and paradoxically fulfilling the role which the victors of 1945 gave to the defeated nation. This book indeed proves how masochistic some Germans are today, by either enjoying the rejection and denouncing of their nation or writing and reading about those who do so.
Another instance of self-loathing cited here (and let this by the last example for the purposes of this review) is the changing of names. Names of schools, institutions, barracks, and street signs are often replaced in order to erase any hint of a tribute to anyone or anything associated with the “dark years” of 1933-1945. Not only are the names of people associated with – or even approved of – by the government of those “dark years” being erased, but those who might in any way be seen as having an unsound connection to them – such as having been a forerunner, for example – is subject to scrutiny, and where deemed appropriate, given the equivalent of an anti-smoking health warning. According to Klonovsky, the list of individuals thus tainted in one German city, Freiburg, includes Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Theodor Körner, Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, and – here one may indeed question the sanity of the masochists – Carl von Linné. Given that the sect of self-loathing whites who decide these things deny the very existence of human races, it is ominous that a cautionary explanation has even been issued against the inventor of the Latin nomenclature for fauna and flora. What is unsound about the hapless Linné? Perhaps it is because he ascribed the various races of man to subspecies status, and thus is considered potentially racist, or perhaps he once spoke disparagingly of broad-nosed, wooly-haired savages.
Has the reader had enough? I dutifully read the entire book, which certainly has trenchant observations and is all-in-all a hard-hitting exposure of what it claims is a national psychological malaise. Siegfried Gerlich rightly points out that Germans suffer, and have always suffered, from a compulsion to plagiarize; maybe it lies in their oft-observed dearth of imagination. But one comment did strike me as simply wrong, however, and its wrongness is significant. In the eighth chapter, Andreas Unterberger states that one finds “real national masochism only in Austria and Germany” (p. 205). I do not know what “real masochism” is, as opposed to “unreal masochism,” but it is a characteristic error of Right-wingers to claim almost with perverted pride that their nation is “worse off” or “further down the road” than other nations. Perhaps this form of nationalistic masochism is especially prevalent among Germans, but it is not unique to them.
In providing an array of writers to express their disdain and bewilderment at their nation’s suicidal self-loathing in different ways, both the editors and contributors of this book provide the paradoxical evidence to back their own argument – namely, that German writers indulge in self-deprecation and self-loathing to a pathological degree.
This book’s contributors disregard two major factors at work which serve to explain the passivity of the mass of Germans in the face of the consistent denigration of their own nation. Perhaps because the book is focused on masochism, they did not consider it relevant, but it offers other causes for the malaise which so often is blamed on the specifically German Umerziehung (reeducation) and Vergangenheitsbewältigung (overcoming the past). I would stress again that I do not share the implicit argument of this book that the masochism displayed by the sect of Federal Republic bigwigs is a widely-held phenomenon, or unique to Germany. In my view, the German masses are indolent and ignorant; too much so to be masochistic.
The first, specifically German, element of the phenomenon is that partly through political propaganda and education (which is more or less the same thing in modern Germany), and partly through folk memory and accounts handed down through the generations, and linked – but not identical to – a sense of guilt, Germans in their great majority are strongly antithetical to war. This means not only wars between nation-states, but war in any form, including war within the state, or even political war at the simplest level of robust rhetoric. As Rolf Peter Sieferle noted in his posthumously published Krieg und Zivilsation (War and Civilization), his study of history at university was marked by an avoidance of the subject of war, and he was amazed when he went to England to see how many books there were on the history of war and war-craft in the London bookshops.
Out of a masochistic sense of shame regarding its military past, Germany eschews war as a topic, and German society regards even public disputes as essentially undesirable. Consensus is the priority of German political life. Consequently, the German Parliament is stupefyingly anodyne. Nothing much happens on the public political stage, and comparatively seldom do prominent personalities clash in public. The important work of horse-trading and lobbying – which is all German politics is – is carried out in committee, unseen by outsiders, and not monitored by the media. German politicians employ a kind of sterile and sanitized language so as not to provoke clashes of personality and principle. The dirty work of engaging in a war against radical Right-wing opponents of the system is left to the “antifa,” whose comportment and even dress significantly plagiarizes and satirizes the historical National Socialists it loves to imagine are all around.
A second factor which is ignored in National Masochismus – albeit not specifically German at all, but which is nowhere more pronounced than in Germany – is the ruling sect’s indifference to the low levels of health and education among large swathes of the population. Not only the rulers of Germany, but also the nationalists and identitarians of different hues who challenge the status quo, do not acknowledge the low state of self-esteem (is that masochism?) and health which characterizes so many Germans. Proponents of multiculturalism frequently seize on this as firstly a reason to “pep up” society by importing labor “which the indigenous population will not do,” and secondly to ridicule the overall inferiority of those opposing immigration and the replacement of the indigenous population by healthy, young “new citizens.”
A cartoon in the national press makes the point: It shows a group of smiling, happy-looking migrants arriving in Germany being confronted by ill-kempt and obese native Germans. “Ihr seid nur hier wegen dem Geld!” (“You are only here because from the money!”) a native German cries. “Nein, wir sind hier wegen des Geldes” (“No, we are here because of the money”), responds the dark-skinned newcomer. The joke mocks the low educational level of many German “nativists,” and especially the inability of many Germans to speak their own language well. It is true that the level of their own language spoken by many Germans is often very low, indeed. For example, it is common to hear what translated would be the equivalent in English to “bigger as,” “because from,” “if I would know,” and the like. Those who advocate for the replacement of the native German population like to stress – if not always as frankly as in the cartoon which I have cited – the low standards of health and education among ethnic Germans as compared to the high levels among many of the “new citizens.” Opponents of immigration either ignore this entirely, or consider such mockery further proof of the elitism of the ruling sect. The issue of the poor health, comportment, and education of the average ethnic German is ignored in this book. A book of 247 pages is published dealing with the way in which Germans “do their country down” as a pathological system of post-war reeducation, but it does not have a word to say about those aspects of German life about which Germans have a genuine reason to be ashamed.
The other side of this is that millions of ethnic Germans are pampered, indolent, and pacifistic. This state of affairs results from the enormous material gains made by post-war Germany and Austria. Practically every citizen can afford a car (and an expensive car at that), every employee enjoys paid holidays of five weeks per year, and lives under stringent rental and employment protection laws, retiring – often at an early age – with a guaranteed pension linked to previous earnings. It is surely obvious that such levels of comfort and financial security tend to make people soft and less inclined to fight for anything, especially as they have much to lose, but it is remarkable the extent to which Germans see no paradox here when they bemoan their lot. It is not always easy to take someone seriously who claims that the country is in rapid decline because of immigrants, and then cites national masochism as the reason, when that same person owns a Mercedes, drinks as much quality wine and beer as he or she wishes, and flies to Thailand on holiday. Thus, Michael Klonovsky – a not altogether oppressed member of the native population – apparently unconscious of the irony, introduces his critique of modern German society by mentioning what he was eating and drinking. He does not name his hotel, but my hunch is there were several stars next to its name:
Yesterday evening, convivially blessed with Wagyu Entrecôte and Châteauneuf-du Pape, I sought out my Berlin hotel. Not properly tired, I managed to avoid the trap of the hotel bat, but not the trap of the television . . . (p. 122)
Germans complain of tax and financial hardship, but changing one expensive car for another every few years is not uncommon (it is very rare to see an old banger on German roads), and the restaurants and cafés in the major cities do a booming business. Health insurance is mandatory. Critics of modern Germany may drown their sorrows in a good meal consisting of the most expensive kind of steak money can buy, accompanied by an exclusive and pricey wine. In terms of well-being, modern ethnic Germans present something of a paradox: many suffer from poor health, and live in accommodations which many Americans would find shockingly cramped; and low levels of property ownership (one of the lowest in Europe) and poor health go hand-in-hand with widespread health insurance coverage, child benefit payments, maternity leave, and rental and employment security. What all these partially contradictory aspects of modern German life have in common, however, is that they lower the fighting spirit of the citizens. The writers of National Masochismus have not a word to say about the lack of national spirit created by comfort and investment as it pertains to the well-being of the state, which ensures docility among the masses in the face of the masochism apparent among the state’s rulers and trendsetters.
The book also fails to make any distinction between the Germany of the immediate post-war years – where the political system of the Third Reich was thrown overboard, but conservative values remained very much in force – and the changes which came in the 1960s, which heralded a wholesale rejection of the puritanism of the ‘50s such that National Socialism and conservatism were regarded as much the same beast to a far greater extent than in other nations. This and much more could have been examined in a book on national masochism, rather than essays concentrating on the threat of Islam. It is not even clear whether this book is only about German national masochism. The title speaks of only national masochism, and most of the book concentrates on Germany, but the last chapter of the book, which is by Martin Lichtmesz, carries the title “White Guilt” and “White Genocide” – expressions very familiar to anyone involved in “the movement” in the United States – and in it, Lichtmesz looks at the devaluation and declining respect for whiteness in the United States.
This book is hard-hitting and at times entertaining, but none of the writers here outline any kind of plan for change, be it ever so vague. What is the purpose of this book other than to underline how dire the situation of white folk is?
The masochism the writers here describe and illustrate with many examples is proof of their own masochism. National Masochismus is a case study in national pathology which discusses no other aspects of the problem other than national masochism to account for the feebleness of the white man, and specifically the German, in the face of long-term racial and territorial dispossession. In an especially disheartening contribution by Siegfried Gerlich on German reeducation (Umerziehung), he quotes the American Vice President Henry A. Wallace: “The German people must learn to unlearn all that they have been taught, not only by Hitler, but by his predecessors in the last hundred years” (p. 169). This book provides ample examples of the success of that unlearning – if not among the German masses, at least among the decision-makers and people of influence. But who among this book’s readers will be greatly influenced by it? What is National Masochismus hoping to achieve? For whom is it even written? Those in prior agreement are unlikely to become more convinced by these texts. It only reinforces what they already believe. And those who hold to the establishment’s narrative will not change their views because of this book. Finally, there is nothing “sexy” enough in any sense of the word to induce the “don’t knows” to read this book and have their opinions swayed.
I look forward to reviewing a book for Counter-Currents which provides not an account of the success of the governing sect, but an account of those who are proposing recipes for change; a report not from pathologists, but from those striving to find a cure and demonstrating the wherewithal to overthrow the masochistic sect.
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Not reading many contemporary French novels, I am not entitled to say that Michel Houellebecq is the most interesting French novelist writing today, but he is certainly very brilliant, if in a somewhat limited way. His beam is narrow but very penetrating, like that of a laser, and his theme an important, indeed a vital one: namely the vacuity of modern life in the West, its lack of transcendence, lived as it is increasingly without religious or political belief, without a worthwhile creative culture, often without deep personal attachments, and without even a struggle for survival. Into what Salman Rushdie (a much lesser writer than Houellebecq) called “a God-shaped hole” has rushed the search for sensual pleasure which, however, no more than distracts for a short while.
Something more is needed, but Western man—at least Western man at a certain level of education, intelligence and material ease—has not found it. Houellebecq’s underlying nihilism implies that it is not there to be found. The result of this lack of transcendent purpose is self-destruction not merely on a personal, but on a population, scale. Technical sophistication has been accompanied, or so it often seems, by mass incompetence in the art of living. Houellebecq is the prophet, the chronicler, of this incompetence.
Even the ironic title of his latest novel, Sérotonine, is testimony to the brilliance of his diagnostic powers and his capacity to capture in a single word the civilizational malaise which is his unique subject. Serotonin, as by now every self-obsessed member of the middle classes must know, is a chemical in the brain that acts as a neurotransmitter to which is ascribed powers formerly ascribed to the Holy Ghost. All forms of undesired conduct or feeling are caused a deficit or surplus or malalignment of this chemical, so that in essence all human problems become ones of neurochemistry.
On this view, unhappiness is a technical problem for the doctor to solve rather than a cause for reflection and perhaps even for adjustment to the way one lives. I don’t know whether in France the word malheureux has been almost completely replaced by the word déprimée, but in English unhappy has almost been replaced by depressed. In my last years of medical practice, I must have encountered hundreds, perhaps thousands, of depressed people, or those who called themselves such, but the only unhappy person I met was a prisoner who wanted to be moved to another prison, no doubt for reasons of safety.
Houellebecq’s one-word title captures this phenomenon (a semantic shift as a handmaiden to medicalisation) with a concision rarely equalled. And indeed, he has remarkably sensitive antennae to the zeitgeist in general, though it must be admitted that he is most sensitive to those aspects of it that are absurd, unpleasant, or dispiriting rather than to any that are positive.
Houellebecq satirises what might be called the neurochemical view of life which is little better than superstition or urban myth. The protagonist and narrator of Sérotonine, an early-middle aged agronomist whose jobs, though rewarding enough financially, have always seemed to him unsatisfactory or pointless. He suffers from the unhappiness that results from his inability to form a long-lasting relationship with a woman, instead having a series of relationships which he sabotages by his impulsive sensation-seeking behaviour. This man goes to a doctor to obtain more of his Captorix, a fictional new serotonergic anti-depressant. The doctor, without enquiring into the circumstances of his life, says to him:
What’s important is to maintain the serotonin at the correct level–then you’ll be all right–but to lower the cortisol and perhaps raise the dopamine and the endorphins would be the ideal.
This is the kind of debased scientistic language that can be heard on conversations on any bus, and reminds me strongly of Peter D Kramer’s preposterous book, Listening to Prozac, which some years back persuaded the public that we are on the verge of understanding so much neurochemistry that we shall soon be able to design our own personalities by means of self-medication.
The novel lacks even the semblance of a plot, being more the fictional memoir of the chagrins of a man (one suspects) very much like the author himself. The protagonist, Florent-Claude (a ridiculous name that he hates) has been in love twice, but has both times ruined the relationship by a quick fling with a passing young woman. Although he has become dependent, at least psychologically, on his Captorix (incidentally, but not coincidentally, a very plausible name for a new drug), he recognises at the end of the book that he is the victim-participant of a culture in which monogamy is hardly to be expected. Speaking of the failure of his relationships, he says:
I could have made a woman happy… In fact, two; I have already told you which. Everything was obvious, extremely obvious, from the first; but we didn’t realise it. Had we surrendered to illusions of individual freedom, of the open life, the infinity of possibilities? That could be, these ideas were in the spirit of the times; we hadn’t formalised them, we hadn’t the desire to do so; we were content to conform to them, to allow ourselves to be destroyed by them.
For me the pleasure of reading Houellebecq is not in the plot, still less in the characterisation which is thin because the protagonist-narrator is so egotistical that he has little interest in anyone else (a trait which we are clearly intended to believe is widespread or even dominant in the modern world). It is rather in the mordant observations that Houellebecq makes on consumerism and its emptiness. Here, for example, Florent-Claude meets Yuku, his former Japanese girlfriend living in Paris, at an airport in Spain where he is temporarily living:
I knew her luggage very well, it was a famous brand that I had forgotten, Zadig and Voltaire or perhaps Pascal and Blaise, whose concept had been to reproduce on its material one of those Renaissance maps in which the landmass was represented very approximately, with a vintage legend reading something like ‘Here be tygers’, anyway it was chic luggage, its exclusivity reinforced by its lack of the little wheels that the vulgar Samsonite cases middle managers have, so it was necessary to wrestle with it, just like with the elegant trunks of the Victorian era.
He continues:
Like all the other countries of Western Europe, Spain was engaged on the mortal struggle to increase productivity and had suppressed all the unskilled jobs that formerly helped to make life a little less disagreeable, at the same time condemning the greater part of its population to mass unemployment. Luggage like this, whether it was Zadig and Voltaire or Pascal and Blaise, only had sense in a society in which porters still existed.
In this passage, with typical economy, Houellebecq skewers both the shallowness of a culture in which people obtain their sense of themselves from the visible labels or brands of their possessions, and the absurd but intractable contradictions of our political economy. He of course proposes no solution (perhaps there is none), but it is not the purpose of books such as his to propose solutions. It is enough if he opens our eyes to the problem.
His mordant observations make many people extremely uncomfortable, not because they are inaccurate, but because they are only too accurate and could conceivably lead to unpleasant conclusions, or at least thoughts. They therefore reject the whole: it is the easiest way to deny what one knows to be true. In the following passage, for example, the protagonist (or Houellebecq) describes the owner of a bar in Northern France who has just spent his time—of which there was much—in minutely reading the local newspaper:
The owner had finished Paris-Normandie [the local newspaper] and had launched on just as close a reading of France Football, it was a very thorough reading, such reading exists, I have known people like that who are not satisfied by reading just the headlines, the statements of Édouard Philippe [the current Prime Minister of France] or the amount of Neymar’s transfer fee [Neymar is a famous Brazilian footballer], but want to get the bottom of things; they are the foundation of enlightened opinion, the pillar of representative democracy.
Houellebecq runs an abattoir for sacred cows.
What can be said against his misanthropic, completely disabused view of the modern world? His sex scenes, which for those who have read several of his books now seem like a tic or the public confession of his own deepest fantasies, imply that sex is (and can be) nothing but the brief satisfaction of an urgent desire, as mechanical in its operation as that of a cement mixer. More importantly, it might be said that he concentrates only on the worst aspects of modernity, its spiritual emptiness for example, without acknowledgement of the ways in which life has improved. But this is like objecting to Gulliver’s Travels on the same grounds.
His work, not least Sérotonine, is filled with disgust, as was Swift’s: but it is the kind of disgust that can only emerge from deep disappointment, and one is not disappointed by what one does not care about. There is gallows humour on every page: the personage hanged being Western civilisation.
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La Caballería Espiritual. Un ensayo de Psicología Profunda
(Presentación de Eduard Alcántara)
La Caballería Espiritual. Un ensayo de Psicología Profunda.
La editorial EAS acaba de publicar el ensayo del filósofo y psicólogo Dr. Carlos X. Blanco, La Caballería Espiritual. Este es un texto que, según su prologuista, el profesor Eduard Alcantára, se enmarca plenamente en la Filosofía Tradicional, con numerosos ingredientes de la Psicología Jungiana y otras reflexiones encaminadas a lograr por parte del lector la sanación, el crecimiento interior y el equilibrio orgánico de la psique.
Eduard Alcántara:
Al prologar la presente obra nuestra intención no va a ser la de repetir lugares comunes con lo expresado por el autor. Las jugosas reflexiones, los muy necesarios consejos que ofrece para subsistir y existir dignamente y en armonía con uno mismo y la visión del hombre y del mundo que refleja en estas páginas tampoco tenemos necesidad de reiterarlos en este nuestro prólogo. Y no lo vamos a hacer por tres razones:
Una, porque no pretendemos desvelar, con antelación a su lectura, los contenidos del trabajo de Carlos X. Blanco.
Dos, porque no necesariamente tenemos que identificarnos al 100% con los postulados basilares del pensamiento de nuestro autor, aunque sí recomendemos encarecidamente la lectura de su libro por comulgar con casi todo lo que en él se nos transmite.
Tres, porque lo sustancioso de esta obra nos da pie a extraerle muchas citas de enjundia para reflexionar sobre ellas y para cotejarlas con el prisma de nuestra personal cosmovisión.
Basamos nuestra manera de concebir el mundo y la existencia en la Tradición. Por ello adherimos al Tradicionalismo, así con mayúsculas. Adherimos, pues, a una forma de entender y de vivir el mundo y la existencia que ha empujado al hombre, en determinados momentos de su historia, a encauzar todo su quehacer cotidiano hacia fines Elevados, Suprasensibles, Metafísicos,… y le ha llevado, en consecuencia, a configurar unos tejidos sociales, culturales, económicos y políticos guiados e impregnados hasta la médula por dichos valores Superiores y dirigidos a la aspiración de la consecución de un Fin Supremo, Trascendente.
Adherir al Tradicionalismo presupone aspirar a conformar un Hombre de la Tradición[1]. No creemos que los consejos expuestos por el Sr. Blanco, a lo largo del libro que tenemos la honra de prologar, tengan el de configurar un tipo de hombre disímil al Hombre Tradicional, pues bregar (tal como pretende, encomiablemente, nuestro autor) por evitar que el hombre sucumba a las disoluciones inherentes a nuestro disolvente y alienante mundo moderno es, a la postre, no otra cosa que pugnar por convertirlo en un Hombre de la Tradición. Y para que éste no acabe siendo algo así como un concepto etéreo y quimérico sino un ser con entidad la persona que aspire a construirlo en sí debe ser fiel a las que, en tiempos no disolutos, fueron sus más genuinas raíces y su más sacro origen, pues de faltar éstos su asunción se tornará irremisiblemente irrealizable. En este sentido Carlos X. Blanco no en vano nos señala, en su obra, que “en los mitos de pueblos más diversos se expresa esta necesidad de volver hacia atrás” y que “el hombre es un animal desarraigado, y por ese mismo motivo trascendental, necesita tener raíz”. Asimismo, nos dice que “crear también consiste en seguir fielmente un Arquetipo que el tiempo, el olvido, la futilidad del día a día ha podido dejar enterrado.” El no romper con las raíces es una necesidad ineludible que nos es introducida por el autor con lo que él denomina como “la estrategia de pulgarcito” …ilustrativa imagen para que entre nuestros orígenes más genuinos y remotos y nosotros vayamos siempre dejando un camino de piedrecitas que se constituya en nuestro particular cordón dorado.
Las raíces que deberá hacer crecer el hombre que se niegue a ser vapuleado por la barbarie de la modernidad estarán impregnadas por el halo de lo sagrado, que siempre fue consustancial al Mundo de la Tradición. Pero lo sacro no debe ser percibido como algo extrínseco a uno sino intrínseco a nuestro propio ser. El problema estriba en que aunque forma parte de nosotros (es el Atman, de la tradición hinduista: “el Santo Grial habita dentro de sus corazones y en las profundas simas del alma”, nos enseña Carlos X. Blanco), aunque, decíamos, lo sacro forma parte del alma lo está en forma aletargada y no en acto, contrariamente a lo que acontecía en la Tradición Primordial (en la Edad de Oro, de la que nos hablaba el griego Hesíodo). Despertarlo es el resultado del tránsito por un arduo, metódico y concienzudo camino que en ciertas tradiciones se conoció con el nombre de Iniciación. Despertar el Espíritu que atesoramos es sacarlo de ese estado de ignorancia (o avidja, en término propio al hinduismo) en que él mismo se halla con respecto a su misma esencia. Despertarlo nos llevará no sólo a Conocer a ese Principio Supremo que se halla en el origen del Cosmos sino también a hacernos uno con Él. En tal sentido nos resultan sumamente interesantes asertos de nuestro autor como aquél que dice que “conocer, como ya advirtiera el gran Platón, es ante todo rescatar”; rescatar a atman del olvido y la autoignorancia.
Emprender la vía Iniciática es el único camino que puede llevar al hombre a Conocer. Conociéndose a uno mismo conocerá todos los arcanos del mundo manifestado, porque en nosotros también se hallan todas esas fuerzas sutiles que “estructuran” y armonizan el cosmos. Así, el Sr. Blanco escribe que “La vieja sabiduría ya lo decía: en nosotros llevamos un mundo infinito. Somos un microcosmos”. En nuestro interior cohabitan todos los enigmas del mundo. En este sentido rescatamos pensamientos de nuestro autor como aquél de que “en mí está Todo” o aquél otro de que “todo habita en nosotros”. En la misma línea nos recuerda aquella sentencia del poeta griego Píndaro: “Aprende a ser el que eres”. Y nos señala que “toda transformación verdadera no supone más que un auto-conocimiento. El oráculo de Apolo en Delphos decía: Conócete a ti mismo”. Despertar lo sagrado que hay en nosotros dará sus frutos y, así, ese “seréis como dioses”, que dice el Sr. Blanco, tendrá pleno sentido.
Esa vía de remoción interna que supone la Iniciación huirá del ruido dispersor y buscará el silencio. No sentirá grima ante la soledad, pues ésta le ayudará en su camino de perfección. Nos impele a ello el autor de esta obra con ese “no huyas del silencio”. De la soledad, por el contrario, huye nuestro desnortado hombre moderno (al cual el Sr. Blanco se ha propuesto tender puentes liberadores), pues aquélla le hace toparse con su vacío existencial: “La soledad –dice– resulta insoportable”.
Lo primero por lo que bregará la via remotionis será por descondicionar al hombre con respecto a todo aquello que lo obnubila, lo aliena, lo atormenta, lo esclaviza, lo altera, lo ciega y lo encadena, pues sólo con la mente calma podrá aventurarse en la gnosis de los planos metafísicos de la Realidad y en la identificación ontológica de la persona con ellos.
A este proceso de descondicionamiento lo denominó ‘obra al negro’ o nigredo la tradición hermético-alquímica. También habló de él como de ennegrecimiento o putrefacción, pues de lo que se trata es de pudrir (de eliminar) o, al menos, de dominar todo aquello que aturde a la psique. Carlos X. Blanco parece invitar a transitar por la vía iniciática cuando refiriéndose a su ocurrente Maestro Viajero dice que “cuando partió para dejarnos, todos sus discípulos hemos asumido nuestro traje de peregrinos, y adoptamos como verdadera Casa el camino”. Nuestro autor, igualmente, nos pone en bandeja muchas reflexiones que encajan como anillo al dedo en el meollo del nigredo, pues le podemos leer que “los demonios comenzaron a hacerse más visibles, nítidos. Las neurosis, los complejos, las preocupaciones, todo aquello que tenga que ver con la inseguridad. El Viaje es destructivo en gran medida. Consiste en acabar con todo ese género de basura”. En igual sentido nos comenta que “allá abajo también se agitan monstruos desconocidos, seres adormecidos que pueden un día despertarse y llevarnos con ellos hacia lo más profundo”. También nos escribe que “las zancadillas nos las ponen esos demonios ocultos que trasguean con nuestra existencia” y que “el héroe de verdad es aquel que va a lo más profundo de la Oscuridad. Y después, vuelve” …pues ese bajar a “lo más profundo de la oscuridad” recuerda a la imagen de ‘bajar a los infiernos’, para confrontar en ellos a ese submundo irracional y subconsciente al que se debe domeñar para no sucumbir a su vorágine.
Pero no se trata “tan solo”, por un lado, de pavores, de demonios, de traumas y de miedos o de, por otro lado, pulsiones, pasiones desaforadas, sentimientos exacerbados, emociones cegadoras e instintos subyugantes de lo que el alma/mente ha de liberarse sino que también debe hacerlo con respecto a los paradigmas conceptuales, a los prejuicios incapacitantes, a los falsos mitos, al racionalismo, a los subproductos pseudointelectuales y pseudocientíficos o al método analítico-fenomenológico-dispersador (y no al sintético-unitario-holístico) que la modernidad le ha insuflado. El Sr. Blanco nos brinda pensamientos que a nosotros nos parecen brillantes a la hora de denunciar estas bloqueadoras inoculaciones que la mente sufre sin cesar. Cuanto mayor se hace uno mayor es, también, la dosis de inoculación recibida. Por ello nuestro autor nos dice: “¡Fíjate en los niños, esos seres que también pueden observar durante horas las más insignificantes criaturas del jardín, o las más diminutas estrellas del firmamento! Ellos todavía no han aprendido conceptos para matar su atención y curiosidad”. Y en la misma línea escribe que “la piedra que apartamos en el camino con la punta de nuestra bota, contiene mayor complejidad, infinitamente mayor “densidad” para nuestro entendimiento que todos los armazones conceptuales que el hombre de ciencia construya para entenderla y explicarla”. También le leemos que “los más antiguos pensadores supieron poseer algo más que una mente analítica y calculadora” o que “la verdadera Ciencia, me dijo el Maestro Viajero, no es patrimonio del racionalista estrecho actual que se empeña por hacer encajar los fenómenos en sus esquemas pre-establecidos, en sus niveles de análisis. La verdadera Ciencia, como ya afirmó Aristóteles, no otra cosa es salvo Admiración y búsqueda de lo Universal”.
Superar la nigredo, descondicionarse de las ataduras que se le van tejiendo a la mente, convierten al Iniciado en El Gran Autarca del que, allá por los años ’20 de la anterior centuria, nos habló el italiano Julius Evola. Ese hombre al que el Sr. Blanco pugna por ayudar ya habría salido, a estas alturas del camino andado, del lodazal al que el mundo moderno sumerge al común de los mortales. “Construir un ser pleno es hacerse autárquico”, nos dice el autor de este libro. Y es que hacerse autárquico supone no depender de ninguna atadura interior alienante y/o incapacitante ni tampoco de circunstancias exteriores (estrechos convencionalismos sociales, morales coercitivas,…). Hacerse autárquico equivale a asemejarse al ‘señor de sí mismo’ del que hablaba el taoísmo; justo la figura opuesta al esclavo producto de nuestro mundo moderno. Ahonda, nuestro autor, en la misma idea cuando nos señala que “la garantía de toda supervivencia, no requerir de nadie y de no crearse necesidades superfluas. Estas pulsiones, evidentemente, si son superfluas no son necesidades”.
Muchos son los Tradicionalistas que opinan que este camino de realización interior necesita, sí o sí, de la guía de un maestro espiritual. Así, por ejemplo, lo postulaba el francés René Guénon. Por el contrario, el ya citado Julius Evola sostenía la convicción de que, aunque en la mayoría de los casos se precisaba de ese maestro, en otros casos excepcionales existían personas que (por sus especiales potencialidad espiritual y voluntad) no precisaban de él y podían apostar por una ‘vía autónoma de realización espiritual’. Nos parece que difícilmente se puede ilustrar mejor esta última convicción que cuando el Sr. Blanco escribe que “este autodescubrimiento de la Verdad es como el caminar. Puedes tomar un bastón. Incluso a algunos les resultará imprescindible. Pero no es estrictamente necesario si cuentas con dos buenas piernas”. O cuando aduce que “los Caminos y los Felices Encuentros deben ser buscados por uno mismo”.
No es éste lugar donde seguir desarrollando el meollo de las fases que suceden al nigredo de la tradición hermético-alquímico. Sólo delinearemos, a grandes trazos, que tras aquélla sobrevendría la albedo u ‘obra al blanco’, en la que el hombre descondicionado en la etapa anterior y con la mente/alma ya calma podrá acceder al Conocimiento, y actualización en sí, de la fuerzas sutiles (metafísicas) que no sólo forman parte de la totalidad del cosmos sino también de uno mismo. Tras la albedo vendría la rubedo u obra al rojo, en la que la meta a alcanzar sería la de Despertar ese atman o Principio Eterno que atesora en su fuero interno.
La búsqueda de lo Eterno, de lo Imperecedero, es la búsqueda del Ser. Las culturas y/o civilizaciones Tradicionales eran las Civilizaciones del Ser. Su desaparición lo fue a costa de esta anomalía que es el mundo moderno y sus civilizaciones del devenir, en las que el factor tiempo y su vorágine lo enloquece todo e impide vivir la eternidad y recrear y vivificar mitos formadores que aluden a illo tempore. La materia ha suplantado al Espíritu y el ‘demon de la economía’, con su engranaje envolvente de producción-consumo, anega toda la existencia humana. De forma brillante el Sr. Blanco nos dice al respecto que “La civilización devino en barbarie en cuanto se inventó el reloj.
El mundo de hoy, basado en el Mercado y en el culto a la Técnica, es un mundo que ha enloquecido.
Abundan los que se toman sus horas de placer y ocio como una mera prolongación de su horario de oficina. Se habla de rentabilizar su tiempo y de aprovecharlo. La Edad Media contaba con una más exacta comprensión del tiempo. El tiempo del campesino y del monje se subordinaba a la negación misma del tiempo, esto es, la Eternidad”. También denuncia que “Han montado un mundo de prisas y relojes con el único fin de destruirnos”.
Estas civilizaciones del devenir, para las que la primacía se la lleva el factor tiempo, cae, por pura lógica, en el historicismo (la historia de la humanidad como mera sucesión, a lo largo del vector tiempo, de hechos acaecidos sin ningún tipo de referencia mítica formadora). La concepción lineal de la historia lleva aparejada la idea de progreso continuo. El hombre moderno piensa que una suerte de fatalidad, ante la que ha perdido la libertad, conduce a la humanidad a cada vez mayores cotas de progreso (siempre entendidas, por él, en un sentido material: de acumulación de riquezas). A nuestro entender el hombre sufre una regresión desde unos orígenes sacros a esta postración actual que padece y que lo ha dejado inmerso en el más burdo materialismo. Carlos X. Blanco nos confirma que “culturas dignas, modos de vida nobles, sanos y hermosos, han sucumbido en el altar del Progreso” y que “El Progreso es el enemigo irreconciliable de la Dignidad y de la Espiritualidad”.
Son muchas otras las problemáticas y los temas tratados por el autor de esta obra. El lector es el que tiene que ir sumergiéndose en ellos a través de su lectura. No es tarea nuestra el repasarlos todos en estas líneas; no es el cometido de un prólogo y no hay espacio en él para ello. Encontrará, el dicho lector, mucha luz para el buen alumbrar de su camino existencial. Se trata de no verse abocado a un simple vegetar, a un latir anodino o a un convulsionarse o agitarse sin rumbo y con desazón; Carlos X. Blanco ayudará mucho, con el contenido de sus páginas, para evitarlo.
De entre tantas tan sustanciosas citas como hay en este libro queremos concluir este prólogo con un par más de ellas, por cuanto
señalan al binomio Espíritu/Tradición como las claves de bóveda que, como puntos de referencia insoslayables, deben erigirse en los puntales que rescaten a nuestro actual desasosegado hombre moderno.
A saber:
“(…) tales estrechuras de una psicología estímulo-respuesta quedan relegadas a su condición de juguetes. Juguetes conceptuales y experimentales de unos sabios que han perdido (…) todo sentido espiritual de aquel ser que verdaderamente deberían estudiar: el ser espiritual.”
“(…) ciencia no es Conocimiento. Cualquiera puede saber de esos obreros de laboratorio, vestidos con bata blanca: especialistas en naderías, ignoran de forma feroz la Historia, desprecian la Tradición. (…) hay también en la Tradición el hermoso legado del saber de nuestros predecesores, la bella lección de humildad que nos reporta saber que otros meditaron verdades eternas con mucho mayor tino y mucha mayor hondura de lo que podamos hacer nosotros”.
Eduard Alcántara
[del Prólogo]
Eduard Alcántara
Profesor y experto en Filosofía Tradicional [https://septentrionis.wordpress.com/]
Web de la Editorial EAS: https://editorialeas.com/
Enlace al libro La Caballería Espiritual: https://editorialeas.com/shop/hesperides/la-caballeria-espiritual-por-carlos-x-blanco/
[1] Recomendamos la lectura de la obra de Eduard Alcántara “El Hombre de la Tradición”; 2ª edición, editorial EAS, 2016 (Alicante).
00:11 Publié dans Livre, Livre, Traditions | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : traditions, traditionalisme, chevalerie, livre | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
L’un des plus célèbres penseurs de la Droite radicale européenne fait toujours parler de lui, quarante-quatre ans après sa disparition. Ce penseur est Julius Evola. Nous préférons le qualifier de penseur plutôt que d’intellectuel, terme originellement péjoratif et qui d’ailleurs ferait bien de recouvrir sa définition initiale. Gianfranco de Turris, président de la Fondation Evola en Italie et auteur d’un magistral Elogio e difesa di Julius Evola, nous rappelle qu’Evola fut « peintre et philosophe, poète et hermétiste, morphologue de l’histoire et politologue, critique des mœurs et sexologue, orientaliste et mythologue, spécialiste des religions et de la Tradition. Mais ce fut aussi un alpiniste chevronné,il fut journaliste, conférencier et universitaire (p. 6) ».
Julius Evola est-il toujours actuel ? N’a-t-il pas été relégué dans la poubelle de l’Histoire par les forces de la subversion ? Et, est-ce que ses idées demeurent pertinentes encore aujourd’hui ? « Au début de l’année 2018, le 12 février, le principal quotidien italien de gauche, La Repubblica, publia en première page un article au titre exceptionnel et extravagant : “ Evola et le fascisme inspirent Bannon, le cerveau de Trump. ” […] Le philosophe et politologue russe Alexandre Douguine admit dans plusieurs interviews que sa pensée avait été profondément influencée par celle de Julius Evola […]. Or, le fait est que Douguine est assez proche du président russe, et fut même présenté comme son “ conseiller ” (p. 8). »
Deux exemples plutôt maladroits pour tenter de justifier de l’actualité de la pensée du Baron. Deux éminences grises déchues, l’un publiciste, l’autre « Raspoutine de sous-préfecture », pour reprendre l’amusante expression d’un traducteur à l’ego hypertrophié. Deux agents de l’anti-Europe, l’un national-libérale (sioniste ?) et l’autre néo-eurasiste pan-russe, deux formes de soumission politiques et spirituelles. Bref, rien d’évolien là-dedans. À noter qu’un certain Jason Horowitz s’émut, dès février 2017, de la possible influence d’Evola sur Bannon dans un article intitulé « Steven Bannon cited Italian thinker who inspired fascists ». La pensée de Julius Evola représente toujours un danger pour l’ennemi.
Il est évident que l’œuvre de Julius Evola reste d’actualité, puisqu’elle met en exergue notre européanité d’une part (sur les plans mythologiques, culturels, spirituels, et politiques) et la Tradition d’autre part. « Ses » idées sont d’actualité aussi car il fut un temps où elles furent la norme, l’évidence même. Ceux qui connaissent bien les différents écrits d’Evola peuvent témoigner de la présence constante de la Tradition comme principe ordonnateur et, en ce sens, cosmique. La pensée de Julius Evola est authentiquement de Droite, d’une Droite métaphysique, éternelle, verticale, ordonnée du haut vers le bas. La cohérence entre le verbe et l’action chez Evola suscite le respect et l’admiration : rares sont ceux qui unirent les deux à un tel niveau.
Pénétrer la pensée protéiforme du penseur italien n’est pas forcément chose aisée. Cela peut demander une certaine persévérance mais aussi une entrée adéquate. Par où commencer ? En ce qui nous concerne, nous avons toujours conseillé, dans la mesure du possible, de lire en premier Révolte contre le monde moderne pour avoir, au minimum, le « décor » de la pensée évolienne. Puis Orientations et Les hommes au milieu des ruines nous semblaient être deux ouvrages politiques fondamentaux à lire à la suite du maître-ouvrage mentionné. Mais il s’agit là d’une première approche au caractère politique. Elle ne permet pas d’avoir une vue d’ensemble des thèmes évoliens.
C’est là que toute la pertinence du Petit livre noir s’offre aux néophytes. Et nous ne pouvons que nous réjouir de la réédition augmenté de ce vade mecum grâce à la toute jeune maison d’édition helvète Lohengrin ! Clin d’œil anti-marxiste-maoïste au malheureusement célèbre Petit livre rouge, ce recueil de citations représente probablement l’une des meilleures façons d’aborder l’œuvre d’Evola dans son intégralité. Les extraits – qui furent soumis en leur temps à l’auteur – sont classés dans onze catégories distinctes et sont issus de quasiment tous les ouvrages d’Evola, dont certains toujours en attente d’une traduction française (!) en plus d’articles et de divers entretiens.
La préface de Gianfranco de Turris se veut aussi synthétique que le contenu de l’ouvrage. Turris fait une présentation de l’homme et ses idées qui, ici aussi, sera idéale pour les nouveaux venus. Enfin, la couverture bien que de noire vêtue, arbore dorénavant un magnifique portrait de Julius Evola signé Jacques Terpant, illustrateur et peintre de grand talent. En quatrième de couverture cette citation d’Evola fait figure de programme : « Seule un retour à l’esprit traditionnel dans une nouvelle conscience unitaire européenne pourra sauver l’Occident. » Gageons que la lecture du Petit livre noir éveille une nouvelle génération d’Européens à un tel impératif.
Thierry Durolle
• Julius Evola, Le petit livre noir, édition augmentée, Éditions Lohengrin, 2019, 175 p., 18 €.
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00:47 Publié dans Actualité, Définitions, Entretiens, Livre, Livre, Théorie politique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : bernard plouvier, populisme, démocratie, entretien, livre, théorie politique, politologie, sciences politiques | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
00:18 Publié dans Géopolitique, Livre, Livre, Théorie politique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : géopolitique, livre, théorie politique, politologie, sciences politiques, philosophie politique | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
00:14 Publié dans Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : allemagne, hans-dietrich sander, livre | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities
An excerpt from John Mearsheimer's latest book.
by John J. Mearsheimer
Ex: https://nationalinterest.org
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from the new book The Great Delusion : Liberal Dreams and International Realities by John Mearsheimer.
Liberal hegemony is an ambitious strategy in which a state aims to turn as many countries as possible into liberal democracies like itself while also promoting an open international economy and building international institutions. In essence, the liberal state seeks to spread its own values far and wide. My goal in this book is to describe what happens when a powerful state pursues this strategy at the expense of balance-of-power politics.
Many in the West, especially among foreign policy elites, consider liberal hegemony a wise policy that states should axiomatically adopt. Spreading liberal democracy around the world is said to make eminently good sense from both a moral and a strategic perspective. For starters, it is thought to be an excellent way to protect human rights, which are sometimes seriously violated by authoritarian states. And because the policy holds that liberal democracies do not want to go to war with each other, it ultimately provides a formula for transcending realism and fostering international peace. Finally, proponents claim it helps protect liberalism at home by eliminating authoritarian states that otherwise might aid the illiberal forces that are constantly present inside the liberal state.
This conventional wisdom is wrong. Great powers are rarely in a position to pursue a full-scale liberal foreign policy. As long as two or more of them exist on the planet, they have little choice but to pay close attention to their position in the global balance of power and act according to the dictates of realism. Great powers of all persuasions care deeply about their survival, and there is always the danger in a bipolar or multipolar system that they will be attacked by another great power. In these circumstances, liberal great powers regularly dress up their hard-nosed behavior with liberal rhetoric. They talk like liberals and act like realists. Should they adopt liberal policies that are at odds with realist logic, they invariably come to regret it. But occasionally a liberal democracy encounters such a favorable balance of power that it is able to embrace liberal hegemony. That situation is most likely to arise in a unipolar world, where the single great power does not have to worry about being attacked by another great power since there is none. Then the liberal sole pole will almost always abandon realism and adopt a liberal foreign policy. Liberal states have a crusader mentality hard-wired into them that is hard to restrain.
Because liberalism prizes the concept of inalienable or natural rights, committed liberals are deeply concerned about the rights of virtually every individual on the planet. This universalist logic creates a powerful incentive for liberal states to get involved in the affairs of countries that seriously violate their citizens’ rights. To take this a step further, the best way to ensure that the rights of foreigners are not trampled is for them to live in a liberal democracy. This logic leads straight to an active policy of regime change, where the goal is to topple autocrats and put liberal democracies in their place. Liberals do not shy from this task, mainly because they often have great faith in their state’s ability to do social engineering both at home and abroad. Creating a world populated by liberal democracies is also thought to be a formula for international peace, which would not just eliminate war but greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the twin scourges of nuclear proliferation and terrorism. And lastly, it is an ideal way of protecting liberalism at home.
This enthusiasm notwithstanding, liberal hegemony will not achieve its goals, and its failure will inevitably come with huge costs. The liberal state is likely to end up fi endless wars, which will increase rather than reduce the level of conflict in international politics and thus aggravate the problems of proliferation and terrorism. Moreover, the state’s militaristic behavior is almost certain to end up threatening its own liberal values. Liberalism abroad leads to illiberalism at home. Finally, even if the liberal state were to achieve its aims—spreading democracy near and far, fostering economic intercourse, and creating international institutions—they would not produce peace.
The key to understanding liberalism’s limits is to recognize its relationship with nationalism and realism. This book is ultimately all about these three isms and how they interact to affect international politics.
Nationalism is an enormously powerful political ideology. It revolves around the division of the world into a wide variety of nations, which are formidable social units, each with a distinct culture. Virtually every nation would prefer to have its own state, although not all can. Still, we live in a world populated almost exclusively by nation-states, which means that liberalism must coexist with nationalism. Liberal states are also nationstates. There is no question that liberalism and nationalism can coexist, but when they clash, nationalism almost always wins.
The influence of nationalism often undercuts a liberal foreign policy. For example, nationalism places great emphasis on self-determination, which means that most countries will resist a liberal great power’s efforts to interfere in their domestic politics—which, of course, is what liberal hegemony is all about. These two isms also clash over individual rights. Liberals believe everyone has the same rights, regardless of which country they call home. Nationalism is a particularist ideology from top to bottom, which means it does not treat rights as inalienable. In practice, the vast majority of people around the globe do not care greatly about the rights of individuals in other countries. They are much more concerned about their fellow citizens’ rights, and even that commitment has limits. Liberalism oversells the importance of individual rights.
Liberalism is also no match for realism. At its core, liberalism assumes that the individuals who make up any society sometimes have profound differences about what constitutes the good life, and these differences might lead them to try to kill each other. Thus a state is needed to keep the peace. But there is no world state to keep countries at bay when they have profound disagreements. The structure of the international system is anarchic, not hierarchic, which means that liberalism applied to international politics cannot work. Countries thus have little choice but to act according to balance-of-power logic if they hope to survive. There are special cases, however, where a country is so secure that it can take a break from realpolitik and pursue truly liberal policies. The results are almost always bad, largely because nationalism thwarts the liberal crusader.
My argument, stated briefly, is that nationalism and realism almost always trump liberalism. Our world has been shaped in good part by those two powerful isms, not by liberalism. Consider that five hundred years ago the political universe was remarkably heterogeneous; it included city-states, duchies, empires, principalities, and assorted other political forms. That world has given way to a globe populated almost exclusively by nation states. Although many factors caused this great transformation, two of the main driving forces behind the modern state system were nationalism and balance-of-power politics.
The American Embrace of Liberal Hegemony
This book is also motivated by a desire to understand recent American foreign policy. The United States is a deeply liberal country that emerged from the Cold War as by far the most powerful state in the international system. 1 The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left it in an ideal position to pursue liberal hegemony. 2 The American foreign policy establishment em braced that ambitious policy with little hesitation, and with abundant optimism about the future of the United States and the world. At least at first, the broader public shared this enthusiasm.
The zeitgeist was captured in Francis Fukuyama’s famous article, “The End of History?,” published just as the Cold War was coming to a close. 3 Liberalism, he argued, defeated fascism in the first half of the twentieth century and communism in the second half, and now there was no viable alternative left standing. The world would eventually be entirely populated by liberal democracies. According to Fukuyama, these nations would have virtually no meaningful disputes, and wars between great powers would cease. The biggest problem confronting people in this new world, he suggested, might be boredom.
It was also widely believed at the time that the spread of liberalism would ultimately bring an end to balance-of-power politics. The harsh security competition that has long characterized great-power relations would disappear, and realism, long the dominant intellectual paradigm in international relations, would land on the scrap heap of history. “In a world where freedom, not tyranny, is on the march,” Bill Clinton proclaimed while campaigning for the White House in 1992, “the cynical calculus of pure power politics simply does not compute. It is ill-suited to a new era in which ideas and information are broadcast around the globe before ambassadors can read their cables.”
Probably no recent president embraced the mission of spreading liberalism more enthusiastically than George W. Bush, who said in a speech in March 2003, two weeks before the invasion of Iraq: “The current Iraqi regime has shown the power of tyranny to spread discord and violence in the Middle East. A liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region, by bringing hope and progress into the lives of millions. America’s interests in security, and America’s belief in liberty, both lead in the same direction: to a free and peaceful Iraq.” Later that year, on September 6, he proclaimed: “The advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country. From the Fourteen Points to the Four Freedoms, to the Speech at Westminster, America has put our power at the service of principle. We believe that liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history. We believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty. And we believe that freedom—the freedom we prize—is not for us alone, it is the right and the capacity of all mankind.”
Something went badly wrong. Most people’s view of U.S. foreign policy today, in 2018, is starkly different from what it was in 2003, much less the early 1990s. Pessimism, not optimism, dominates most assessments of America’s accomplishments during its holiday from realism. Under Presidents Bush and Barack Obama, Washington has played a key role in sowing death and destruction across the greater Middle East, and there is little evidence the mayhem will end anytime soon. American policy toward Ukraine, motivated by liberal logic, is principally responsible for the ongoing crisis between Russia and the West. The United States has been at war for two out of every three years since 1989, fighting seven different wars. We should not be surprised by this. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in the West, a liberal foreign policy is not a formula for cooperation and peace but for instability and conflict.
In this book I focus on the period between 1993 and 2017, when the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, each in control of American foreign policy for eight years, were fully committed to pursuing liberal hegemony. Although President Obama had some reservations about that policy, they mattered little for how his administration actually acted abroad. I do not consider the Trump administration for two reasons. First, as I was finishing this book it was difficult to determine what President Trump’s foreign policy would look like, although it is clear from his rhetoric during the 2016 campaign that he recognizes that liberal hegemony has been an abject failure and would like to abandon key elements of that strategy. Second, there is good reason to think that with the rise of China and the resurrection of Russian power having put great power politics back on the table, Trump eventually will have no choice but to move toward a grand strategy based on realism, even if doing so meets with considerable resistance at home.
John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His many books include The Tragedy of Great Power Politics and Conventional Deterrence .
00:56 Publié dans Actualité, Géopolitique, Livre, Livre, Théorie politique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : john j. mearsheimer, états-unis, livre, politique internationale, géopolitique, actualité, théorie politique, politologie, sciences politiques, philosophie politique | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Ex: https://www.sudradio.fr
Matthieu Baumier, écrivain, critique, essayiste et auteur de Voyage au bout des ruines libérales-libertaires (Éditions Pierre-Guillaume de Roux) était l’invité d’André Bercoff le 6 février 2019 sur Sud Radio.
Pour Matthieu Baumier, écrivain, critique, essayiste et auteur de Voyage au bout des ruines libérales-libertaires (Éditions Pierre-Guillaume de Roux), de nos jours, "tout ce qui serait réellement à gauche ou réellement à droite est repoussé aux extrêmes et considéré comme ne pouvant pas faire partie du jeu politique". Matthieu Baumier était l’invité d’André Bercoff le 6 février 2019 sur Sud Radio dans son rendez-vous du 12h-13h, "Bercoff dans tous ses états".
Matthieu Baumier a commencé par expliquer ce qu’est un libéral-libertaire (lib-lib). "J’aime beaucoup la définition que donne Jean-Claude Michéa. Un libéral-libertaire, c’est la conjugaison d’un certain libéralisme économique exacerbé et d’un libéralisme culturel et politique. C’est une religion de l’illimité, l’absence d’autorité, une conception du monde hors sol, sans enracinement", a expliqué Matthieu Baumier.
Il y a néanmoins une différence entre les lib-lib et les bobos. "Le bobo est une personne qui vit dans le monde lib-lib. La différence est que le lib-lib est mondialisé et acteur de cette mondialisation. Le lib-lib est un acteur politique, médiatique, économique ou culturel, tandis que le bobo peut être un citoyen lambda", nous a raconté Matthieu Baumier.
"Il y a le monde réel, dont on ne tient pas compte. Et en lieu et place de ce monde réel est mis en place une image du réel à laquelle on ne peut pas s’opposer. Je crois que ce processus est contre-démocratique. Par exemple, le Président Macron est légitime car il a été élu sur le plan de la démocratie participative. En revanche, le pouvoir politique actuel n’a pas de légitimité parce que la moitié des citoyens français ne sont pas représentés à l’Assemblée nationale", a estimé Matthieu Baumier.
"Nous avons tendance à considérer que le clivage droite-gauche n’existe plus. S’il n’existe plus, il n’existe plus au sein de la pensée libérale-libertaire. Tout ce qui serait réellement à gauche ou réellement à droite est repoussé aux extrêmes et considéré comme ne pouvant pas faire partie du jeu politique. C’est de ce biais que naît la contre-démocratie dans laquelle nous sommes", a poursuivi Matthieu Baumier.
Cliquez ici pour écouter l’invité d’André Bercoff dans son intégralité en podcast.
Retrouvez André Bercoff et ses invités du lundi au vendredi sur Sud Radio, à partir de midi.
00:13 Publié dans Actualité, Livre, Livre, Philosophie, Théorie politique | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : libéralisme libertaire, matthieu baumier, livre, théorie politique, politologie, sciences politiques, philosophie politique | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
par Olivier Meuwly
Ex: https://www.letemps.ch
OPINION. L’auteur américain Mark Lilla prône une gauche réconciliée avec une citoyenneté qui aurait divorcé de ses démons identitaires et de son «narcissisme moralisant», explique l’historien Olivier Meuwly. Une leçon qui vaudrait aussi pour l’Europe.
La notion d’identité est traditionnellement accolée à la droite, surtout la plus extrême. Comme si l’identité ne renvoyait qu’à une ethnie ou une nation qu’il s’agirait de protéger contre une abrasive et universaliste modernité, hostile aux particularismes régionaux. Et si cette notion était plus complexe? Cette interrogation réside au cœur d’un essai du philosophe américain et homme de gauche Mark Lilla, récemment traduit en français*. L’auteur se demande ni plus ni moins, en s’adressant à ses amis membres du Parti démocrate, si la gauche ne se serait pas à son tour ménagé une politique identitaire, bien sûr antagonique à celle prévalant à droite, mais tout aussi mortifère, surtout pour ses propres intérêts. Son livre a été très mal reçu par ses amis politiques…
Mark Lilla estime que la gauche américaine, mais le constat vaut aussi pour l’Europe, a interprété l’individualisme des années 60 et 70 comme la matrice d’une politique orientée vers le moi, dans le prolongement du romantisme néoanarchiste en vogue à l’époque. Alors que la droite reaganienne dérivait vers un libéralisme «néo» vissé sur le profit, la gauche se serait représenté la société non comme un collectif, désormais dépassé, mais comme une juxtaposition de «moi» s’assemblant avec d’autres «moi» au gré de leurs similitudes, raciales, sexuelles, ou autres. Le monde de la gauche se serait ainsi transformé en un univers constitué de groupes partageant une identité dont la défense serait l’unique finalité. Tournant le dos à l’action politique, délégitimée dans le discours soixante-huitard, cette gauche aurait confié à la justice le soin de dresser des digues autour de ces identités pour mieux contourner les défaites enregistrées dans un champ politique de toute façon méprisé. Il est vrai que le système américain n’est pas avare d’opportunités en la matière…
Moralisme identitaire
Engluée dans cette quête identitaire génitrice d’un «politiquement correct» où le simple fait de ne pas adhérer pleinement à ses réquisitions est jugé amoral et donc condamnable, la gauche se réfugie dans l’anathème: l’identité de gauche n’aurait dès lors plus rien à envier à l’identité de droite récupérée par l’aile droite du Parti républicain, avec à la clé un repli identitaire d’obédience «populiste», voire cryptonationaliste.
La grande victime de ce virage identitaire serait l’idée même de citoyenneté que, devant le vide ainsi créé à gauche, la droite n’aurait, selon l’auteur, aucune peine à remplir de ses propres valeurs. Le citoyen s’étant ainsi effacé devant l’individu perçu à travers sa seule identité, le fossé se creuse entre le «nous», au bord de l’effondrement, et le «moi» triomphant. Piège d’autant plus pernicieux pour la gauche que l’individu se définit par des identités multiples que seule la conscience d’une appartenance collective aurait pu transcender. Or l’appartenance personnelle s’impose comme la seule référence, anesthésiant tout discours audible par l’ensemble des Américains.
Le citoyen s’étant effacé devant l’individu perçu à travers sa seule identité, le fossé se creuse entre le «nous», au bord de l’effondrement, et le «moi» triomphant
Mark Lilla s’abstient d’explorer toutes les raisons qui ont poussé la gauche à s’enliser dans ce moralisme identitaire à même de se retourner contre la légitime protection des minorités, mais survalorisant les marges au détriment de l’ensemble. L’égalitarisme ne mine-t-il pas les fondements de l’égalité? Il préfère ne pas aborder la question, douloureuse. Il aurait aussi pu évoquer l’exemple de l’islamo-gauchisme que l’Europe connaît bien et qui a été dénoncé par de nombreux auteurs, pas tous de droite.
Mark Lilla ne manque néanmoins pas de courage et son plaidoyer pour une gauche réconciliée avec une citoyenneté qui aurait divorcé de ses démons identitaires, de ce «narcissisme moralisant» selon ses propres termes, mérite d’être analysé au-delà de sa seule famille politique. Car il ne dit pas qu’articuler un discours sur l’identité est mauvais en soi mais qu’au contraire la défense des identités, nécessaire, ne trouve sa justification ultime que dans la recherche du bien commun. Et ce bien commun se réalise dans le dialogue et le compromis, que Lilla reproche aux démocrates de son pays de négliger. Les social-démocraties européennes devraient être mieux outillées mais elles semblent elles aussi de plus en plus succomber à cet «identitarisme» malheureux.
Concentré sur les identités que la gauche a voulu prendre sous son aile mais sous lesquelles elle menace d’étouffer, l’auteur ne s’intéresse pas à l’identité nationale. Or la gauche peut-elle renouer avec cette citoyenneté réellement universelle sans réinventer un discours sur la nation et ses exigences minimales? Réciproquement, la droite doit réfléchir sur les façons de marier l’identité nationale avec les autres identités, expression de la liberté individuelle, pour ne pas s’illusionner d’une cohésion sociale «bricolée» par la seule grâce d’une nation magnifiée.
* La gauche identitaire. L’Amérique en miettes, Stock.
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par Iure Rosca
Ex: https://echelledejacob.blogspot.com
09:56 Publié dans Actualité, Livre, Livre, Philosophie | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : lucien cerise, neuro-pirates, livre, actualité | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism is a new book by Richard Drake, himself an accomplished historian who teaches at the University of Montana. Although an estimable study, I can predict with certainty that it won’t be making The New York Times’s bestseller list.
The problem is not with the book, but with its protagonist. Even though today Charles Beard is all but forgotten, he remains a reviled and discredited figure—a supposed emblem of irresponsible scholarship. Yet the story of his rise and fall remains instructive.
For several decades prior to World War II, Beard stood alone at the pinnacle of his profession. As a historian and public intellectual, he was prolific, influential, fiercely independent, and equally adept at writing for scholarly audiences or for the general public. Then in the 1940s, during the last decade of his life, his reputation cratered suddenly, savagely, and irrevocably. Like Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein in our own day, almost overnight Beard became a pariah.
Rather than anything as heinous as serial sexual abuse, however, Beard’s offense was to have committed heresy, not once but twice over. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, he opposed U.S. intervention in the European war that had begun in September 1939. And when that conflict ended in 1945 he had the temerity to question the heroic “Good War” narrative that was even then already forming.
Present-day Americans have become so imbued with this narrative as to be oblivious to its existence. Politicians endlessly recount it. Television shows, movies, magazines, and video games affirm it. Members of the public accept it as unquestionably true. From the very moment of its inception, however, Beard believed otherwise and said so in the bluntest terms possible.
For Beard, that narrative echoed a similar line that President Woodrow Wilson had promulgated while justifying U.S. intervention in the prior European war of 1914 to 1918. Back then, the issue at hand, according to Wilson, had been really quite simple: good pitted against evil with freedom, democracy, and prospects of world peace at stake.
Beard had enthusiastically supported Wilson’s war. Only later, especially when reflecting on the terms of the Versailles Treaty, did he develop second thoughts. With many others, Beard soon concluded that the Great War, as it was then called, had never been about freedom and democracy. The actual stakes had related to power, profit, and empire. And rather than advancing the cause of world peace, as Wilson had promised, the war’s outcome merely laid the basis for another bloodletting on an even larger scale.
During the 1920s, Beard began to align himself with the “revisionists”—scholars and journalists who rejected the official line about the origins of the Great War and about why Wilson had abandoned neutrality to fight alongside Great Britain and France. Revisionists disagreed among themselves about many things, but on one point all concurred: on matters related to war, the official story is merely a cover, propaganda concocted for domestic consumption. The purpose of that story is to conceal truth and manipulate popular opinion.
This deep-seated skepticism informed Beard’s perspective on U.S. foreign policy as it evolved after 1933. An early supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt, he recognized that FDR was a supremely gifted politician. Yet he also suspected that the president was a conniving dissembler. When New Deal reforms failed to provide an antidote to the Great Depression, Beard worried that Roosevelt might court trouble abroad. Distracting “giddy minds with foreign quarrels,” as Shakespeare had written in Henry IV, Part 2, offered the prospect of diverting attention from the shortcomings of FDR’s domestic programs.
As Beard saw it, unfolding events confirmed these suspicions. FDR promised peace, yet as the decade progressed, he was maneuvering the United States toward a showdown not only with Nazi Germany but also with the Japanese Empire. In a series of increasingly impassioned books and essays, Beard warned that FDR’s actions were at odds with his words. In the end, his efforts (and those of other anti-interventionists) proved to be of no avail. In December 1941, Roosevelt got the war on two fronts that he had deemed necessary.
My own judgment is that Roosevelt was right: U.S. entry into what became enshrined as World War II was indeed necessary. Yet by no stretch of the imagination does the result qualify as a “Good War.” And here is where Beard’s critique retains relevance.
As Beard pointed out at the time, a war that found the United States allied with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union could not possibly be conducive to freedom and democracy, however loosely defined. Stalin was a mass murderer. The Soviet Union was hostile to every value that America purported to represent. No less than Hitler’s Germany, it was a totalitarian enterprise with ambitions to expand its empire.
Furthermore, just as Beard charged, FDR did indeed lie to the American people about the purposes and implications of U.S. policy. Here is Roosevelt campaigning for a third term in Boston on October 30, 1940: “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” Even by the standards of Donald Trump, this qualifies as a humongous whopper.
Roosevelt also exceeded his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief, the undeclared war waged by the U.S. Navy against German U-boats operating in the North Atlantic in 1941 offering but one example. While professing a commitment to peace, he also put the squeeze on Japan, confronting that nation with a choice of submission or war. When the Japanese opted for the latter, his administration was neither surprised nor disappointed.
Once the war against the Axis powers was fully engaged, Roosevelt sanctioned massive and indiscriminate bombing campaigns, culminating (after his death) in the use of atomic bombs to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Not unlike its adversaries, in waging war, the United States had shelved moral considerations. At home, meanwhile, all the chatter about freedom did not prevent America from maintaining a system of de facto racial apartheid and from locking up in concentration camps minorities deemed less than fully loyal.
None of these inconsistencies in the Good War narrative are secret. In the years since, all have been explored, documented, and discussed in detail. For our purposes, however, what matters is this: from a political perspective, none of them count for beans. Donald Rumsfeld might classify them as known knowns we choose to ignore. Yet it’s an inclination we indulge at our peril.
Today the Good War narrative survives fully intact. For politicians and pundits eager to explain why it is incumbent upon the United States to lead or to come to the aid of those yearning to be free, it offers an ever-ready reference point. Casting World War II as a perpetually relevant story of good versus evil relieves Americans of any obligation to consider how the international order may have changed since Hitler inspired Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Stalin to forge their unlikely ménage à trois.
In that sense, the persistence of the Good War narrative robs Americans of any capacity to think realistically about their nation’s role in the existing world. Instead, it’s always 1938, with appeasement the ultimate sin to be avoided at all costs. Or it’s 1941, when an innocent nation subjected to a dastardly attack from out of the blue is summoned to embark upon a new crusade to smite the evildoers. Or it’s 1945, with history calling upon the United States to remake the world in its own image. Meanwhile, the crimes, misdemeanors, and miscalculations that U.S. policymakers have racked up then and since end up being filed under the heading of irrelevant.
The charge laid against Beard by those who destroyed his reputation was that he was an “isolationist.” This was a malign distortion of Beard’s actual views, albeit one employed time and again ever since to smear anyone daring as Beard did to challenge the prevailing globalist consensus. The very fact that the smear retains political utility seven decades after World War II is a prime example of how the Good War continues to pervert contemporary foreign policy discourse.
There will be those who say that World War II revisionism inevitably involves anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Beard himself disproves this canard, as Richard Drake demonstrates. Beard’s purpose was not to identify scapegoats, but to establish accountability.
Drake’s fine book—itself an exercise in revisionism of the best sort—performs an important service. It invites readers to do what Beard himself strove to do as he kept close watch on events during the 1930s and 1940s: to remain alert to hypocrisy and contradiction contributing to the misuse of American power. In an era awash with fake news, the handiwork not only of policymakers but of the media itself, this task becomes more important than ever.
While World War II may have been necessary, it was not good. It was an epic tragedy from which Americans can learn much with relevance to the present day. But learning assumes a willingness to see beyond myths. Charles Beard shows us where to begin.
Andrew J. Bacevich is The American Conservative‘s writer-at-large. His new book is Twilight of the American Century, published by the University of Notre Dame Press.
10:55 Publié dans Histoire, Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : histoire, états-unis, charles austin beard, pacifisme, politique internationale | | del.icio.us | | Digg | Facebook
Azar Gat, with Alexander Yakobson
Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013
Israeli historian Azar Gat makes the case that ethnic nationalism has deep roots in human history and human nature in this detailed and wide-ranging historical survey of ethnicity and the nation-state. This is a useful book for White Nationalists because it provides an abundance of evidence attesting to the enduring importance of ethnicity and the pitfalls of diversity. I will summarize the most noteworthy points here.
Gat classifies his opponents as “modernists,” who argue that the phenomenon of nationalism is exclusive to the modern era, and “instrumentalists,” Marxists who see nationalism as a form of class-based social manipulation. As he points out, most instrumentalists are also modernists. Common to both viewpoints is the belief that, in the words of Jewish writer Ernest Gellner, “nationalism does not have any very deep roots in the human psyche” (p. 25).
The defining attributes of a nation are ethnic kinship, a shared culture, and self-government. By these criteria, nation-states existed long before nationalism is said to have been “invented.” The technological, economic, and social changes of the modern era had an indelible impact on the political expression of nationalist sentiments, but the nation-state was not a product of modernity.
Local identity was paramount for many pre-modern peoples, but a sense of overarching ethnic identity was also potent. Pre-modern peoples considered themselves distinct entities united by blood ties, language, and a common religion. Gat argues that modern historians exaggerate the extent to which pre-modern ethnic groups were internally divided by linguistic differences. Though local dialects existed, language was generally a powerful unifying factor. Shared religious practices and beliefs were reinforced by a “network of cultic and congregational sites,” as well as wandering bards (p. 11).
Contrary to the instrumentalists, the masses shared in this ethnic identification. Their illiteracy was not an obstacle; ordinary people participated in festivals, dances, and games that celebrated their heritage and reinforced their shared identity. They also fought fiercely against foreign invaders. Even when class relations were acrimonious (which was often the case), the masses invariably sided with their own nobles over foreign commoners. Naturally, we do not have a record of what they thought and felt, but it is significant that the people lent their support to nationalism as soon as they had a voice of their own and were able to participate in politics.
The masses were not “manipulated” to defend their nations. They did so freely and displayed a striking willingness to fight and die for their kinsmen. The impetus behind this phenomenon is humans’ innate preference for their own kind, which Gat discusses in the second chapter. Evolution selected for this trait because it enabled humans to bond more effectively and function better as a group in the face of threats. Kinship in turn emerged as the central organizing principle of human societies.
The nation-state is indeed a recent phenomenon in a broad sense. Anatomically modern humans have been around for two to three hundred thousand years (the genus Homo having emerged around two million years ago), but the first states did not emerge until about five thousand years ago. For most of human history, humans existed as hunter-gatherers whose group affiliation was confined to their respective clans. Local customs and codes of dress and behavior came about as a means to cement these bonds and distinguish between one’s own tribe and foreign tribes. The concept of kinship expanded with the advent of agriculture, which allowed societies to sustain larger populations, but it remained of central importance.
Of course, as Gat notes, the element of culture is equally important. A Dane who is equally related to a given Norwegian as he is to a fellow Dane would likely feel a greater sense of brotherhood with the Dane simply due to their shared cultural background. Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians are genetically very similar to each other, and state formation in Scandinavia could conceivably have followed a different trajectory under different circumstances. Similarly, early Germanic and Slavic ethnic designations were fairly fluid and “experienced a great deal of fusion and fission, mixing older tribal entities and newly formed war bands” (p. 141). One could grant, then, that there is an extent to which identity is socially constructed and subject to historical contingencies. Nonetheless, this does not negate the fact that shared genetic heritage is a necessary condition for nationhood.
The centrality of ethnicity is seen in the kinship between diaspora communities and their respective homelands. For instance, Finland granted citizenship rights to about twenty-five thousand ethnic Finns outside Finland following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It is this sense of kinship (both ethnic and cultural) that motivates people to sacrifice their lives for their countries. Gat writes:
Thus, to the bewilderment of the ideologues of the Second International, when the First World War broke out the workers in each of the belligerent countries enthusiastically threw their lot in with their conational middle- and upper-class “exploiters” and against foreign “fellow workers.” A Frenchman or a German was prepared to kill or be killed for Alsace-Lorraine, whose possession appeared to have no practical bearing on his daily life. (p. 39)
Gat then outlines how proto-nations and early nation-states emerged from tribes and clans, or petty-states/polities. The groupings of Germanic peoples like the Franks and Alamanni, for example, represented the consolidation of many smaller tribes. Although these tribes frequently came into conflict, they banded together in the face of a greater enemy. This contributed to the later emergence of Western European nation-states. In Eastern Europe, the consolidation of tribal groupings following the expansion of early Slavs laid the foundations for Slavic nation-states.
The accumulation of wealth and land afforded by agriculture led to the evolution of more complex social hierarchies. Tribal chiefs became powerful warlords with retinues of younger warriors, and the networks they assembled grew into multilayered chiefdoms that represented an intermediate stage between tribal societies and states. The new aristocracy and emergent state gradually superseded older tribal institutions and affiliations: “States would be a major vehicle of ethnic leveling and assimilation. But they would themselves rely on preexisting ethnic realities” (p. 49). This foundation in kinship bonds “made the state’s work incomparably easier” (p. 65).
One oft-cited example of state formation is the Kingdom of Zulu, which emerged in the nineteenth century as a result of the consolidation of many Nguni-speaking Bantu tribes under the monarch Shaka. Shaka subjugated dozens of tribes and redirected their tribal loyalty to the state. Tribal lands were designated as administrative districts of the kingdom. Shaka also used communal ritual to unite the tribes under his domain.
This example is notable because Zulu society had no contact with Europeans. Though the Kingdom was formed during the modern era, Zulu society was (and still is) very primitive and had barely progressed beyond the Iron Age.
Gat identifies ancient Egypt as the first “national state.” In Egyptian prehistory, “agricultural tribal/chiefly society along the Nile Valley coalesced into small regional polities” (p. 85). It is thought that Egypt’s nomes (territorial districts) roughly preserved the boundaries of these polities. In other words, the Egyptian state emerged from the consolidation of tribes belonging to the same overarching ethnos. Upper and Lower Egypt were united in ca. 3100 BCE, marking the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period. This period witnessed the emergence of hieroglyphs and an official language, state religion (though local deities/cults remained prominent), and a broader Egyptian identity.
It is clear that the Egyptians saw themselves as a distinct people. Reliefs of pharaohs often depict them smiting foreigners. The pharaoh Kamose declares in a stele recounting his campaigns against the Hyksos and the Kushites: “My wish is to save Egypt and to smite the Asiatic!” Texts such as the Prophecies of Neferti and the Admonitions of Ipuwer depict a dystopian scenario in which the pharaoh is bereft of power and foreigners roam the land, leading to chaos and catastrophe.
Sumer, unlike Egypt, was divided into independent city-states, and there was frequent conflict among them. But when a “more starkly foreign threat loomed, city-states which shared ethnic attributes more often than not tended to cooperate against that threat, typically coalescing into formal alliances and confederacies” (p. 69). There is also an argument to be had that ancient city-states (and their medieval/early modern counterparts in Italy) themselves effectively qualify as national states.
Greek city-states likewise possessed a sense of regional and pan-Hellenic identity in addition to their local loyalties. There were four major Greek ethnic groups: Dorians, Ionians, Aeolians, and Achaeans. Dorian city-states, for example, spoke the Doric dialect, cultivated the cults of Helios and Heracles, and were known for their athletic and martial prowess. A similar kinship existed among Ionians. The Athenians came to the aid of fellow Ionian Greeks on the Anatolian coast who revolted against the Persian Empire under Darius I. This act of aggression was largely responsible for triggering the second Persian invasion of Greece. In the face of this foreign threat, Greek city-states united under the banner of pan-Hellenic identity. Some Greek city-states did surrender to the Persians, though they were accused of “medism,” or collaboration with the Persians, which was considered a crime. Athens declared its loyalty to Greece, citing “the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life, to all which it would ill beseem Athenians to be false” (p. 74)
The ancient kingdom of Macedon, founded in the seventh century BCE, can be considered a national state, united by a common Macedonian language and culture. Ordinary Macedonians both comprised the nation’s infantry phalanx and participated in local assemblies on political matters. Classical sources indicate that Macedonians “openly expressed their resentment at Alexander’s increasing reliance on non-Macedonians” (p. 138).
The multinational character of pre-modern empires is sometimes cited as proof that ethnicity and race are modern social constructs. This is highly misleading, because ethnicity played a central role in determining the loyalties of imperial subjects. For example, Gat points out that when Rome invaded North Africa during the Second Punic War, the Numidians (a Berber tribe), though subjects of Carthage, did not hesitate to surrender to the Romans. It was only the Phoenician city-states that remained loyal to Carthage. The Numidians joined forces with the Romans and helped them win the Battle of Zama in 202 BCE.
A similar event occurred when Hannibal invaded Italy some dozen years earlier, prompting many Roman subjects, including Samnites and Greeks in the south and Celts and Etruscans in the north, to stage revolts against the Empire. Only the ethnocultural core of the Empire – the Latins and surrounding Romanized populations in central Italy – remained loyal.
Over time, the core of the Empire extended to the rest of the peninsula as ethnic differences melted away through intermarriage and Romanization. Gat quotes Gibbon:
From the foot of the Alps to the extremity of Calabria, all the natives of Italy were born citizens of Rome. Their partial distinctions were obliterated, and they insensibly coalesced into one great nation, united by language, manners, and civil institutions (p. 120).
The Persian Empire likewise possessed an ethnocultural core reflected among those most loyal to the Empire. Most satraps (provincial governors) and high-ranking officers were Persians or Medes. Others outside this ethnic core rarely displayed a willingness to fight for the Empire. Greek historians recount that non-Persians, when called upon to fight, had to be “driven into battle with lashes” and were not likely to risk their lives on the battlefield (p. 115). The standing army and Imperial Guard consisted of Persians/Medes.
The Seleucid Empire and the Ptolemaic Kingdom were founded on a Greek-Macedonian core from which most of their armies was drawn. When the Ptolemaic Kingdom did recruit soldiers from the native Egyptian population, the Egyptians, trained for war, ended up revolting against the empire.
In the Ottoman Empire, non-Muslims lived in ethnic enclaves called milletts, where they were able to preserve their own language, religious customs, and so on. Foreign subjects were loyal first and foremost to their respective milletts and displayed very little loyalty toward the Empire. With the notable exception of Janissaries, Muslim Turks formed the backbone of the army. Gat does not mention this, but it is perhaps worth noting that one of the most famous Janissaries, Skanderbeg (an ethnic Albanian), deserted the Ottoman army in the Battle of Nish in 1443 and led an Albanian uprising against the Ottoman Empire.
In a similar vein, it was noted by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Portuguese writers that cosmopolitan Malay city-states “suffered militarily from their pluralism, since loyalties were fragmented and only the minority malayos (Malays) could be counted on to fight with the king” (who was himself Malay). This is a theme that persists from civilization’s earliest beginnings to the present day.
Asia has a record of nation-states stretching back several centuries. Japanese nationalism, for instance, was not merely a product of the modernization of the Meiji era. The Japanese state was founded around the middle of the first millennium and has been homogeneous since then. A robust sense of national identity has long pervaded Japanese culture. This applies both to the Japanese samurai, who notably rebuffed two Mongol invasions in the thirteenth century, and to the common people: “While resting on military force, the shogunate (bakufu) relied as heavily on the country’s deeply-entrenched sense of ethnic oneness, which, significantly, no autonomous or even rebellious feudal lord ever challenged” (p. 106).
Pre-modern China qualifies as a national state, as it was ethnically and culturally Chinese. Mass education and mandatory military service served to reinforce loyalty to the state. Chinese writers saw non-Chinese people as distinctly foreign and often portrayed them as inferior. During the Song Dynasty, popular militias staged nationalist rebellions against the Jurchen (Manchurians), who had conquered northern China in 1127. When Zhu Yuanzhang became Emperor following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, he “took special care to eradicate everything Mongol and foreign, nominating only Han Chinese officials and restoring Chinese customs and practices” (p. 100).
The nation-state of Korea has also existed for more than a thousand years. Korea emerged as an independent state in 676. Like Japan, Korea has long possessed a strong national identity and a sense of national uniqueness.
As for Southeast Asia, Gat points out that the disintegration of French Indochina is proof that the nations belonging to the union (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand) perceived themselves as distinct nations founded on a pre-modern national identity that had existed for centuries.
Of course, most Leftist theorists are not interested in delegitimizing nationalism in Asian countries. Their target is Europe, and they have a vested interest in weakening the bonds of European nations. It is not a coincidence that most leading “modernists” (Hans Kohn, Karl Deutsch, Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm) have been Jews.
Ethnic nationalism and the nation-state have several precedents in pre-modern Europe. The kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons is among the earliest. The Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in 731, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written in the late ninth century, attest to the common identity shared by the Anglo-Saxon tribes of England. Though himself a Christian monk, Bede’s sympathies lay with his fellow (pagan) Anglo-Saxons rather than the Christianized native Britons: “even with a monk who laid great store on Britain’s conversion to Christianity, ethnonational affiliation trumped religion in the allegedly primarily religious and non-national Middle Ages” (p. 145). It is also notable that the linguistic regions Bede describes roughly correspond to the modern national borders in Britain.
The first King of England was Alfred the Great. His many accomplishments include defending the Kingdom against Viking invasions, founding the English navy, and establishing legal and educational reforms. England can clearly be said to have been a nation-state by the time of his reign.
By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Anglo-Saxons and their Norman conquerors had begun to cohere into a unified English people. In the mid-fourteenth century, English was reinstated as the language of Parliament and became the language of the elites again.
Scotland, Ireland, and Wales have also long had a distinct national identity. In a letter to the Pope requesting recognition as an independent nation, having recently won the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, the Scots referred to themselves as “Scottorum nacio [natio],” citing their common ancestry and their history of self-government. The wars of Scottish independence were effectively national populist uprisings that drew from all levels of society, from carpenters to aristocrats.
Nation-states began to emerge in Scandinavia during the High Middle Ages. Saxo Grammaticus, author of Gesta Danorum, a chronicle of Danish history, writes that he was motivated by “a passionate zeal to glorify our fatherland” and that “nations [nationes] are in the habit of vaunting the fame of their achievements, and joy in recollecting their ancestors” (p. 155). This patriotic spirit pervades the Norse sagas, in which Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are depicted as distinct nations. Gat notes that most Norse sagas were composed in Iceland and were not patronized, so one cannot claim that their patriotic message was royal propaganda.
Finland and Estonia are unusual in that neither truly became nation-states until the early twentieth century. Nonetheless, both nations possessed a distinct ethnocultural identity, which remained remarkably resilient in spite of their subjugation.
The question of German identity was not a subject of philosophical deliberation prior to the modern era, but the idea of Germanness dates back centuries. Late medieval maps of Germany depict a “German nation” united by language and culture. Martin Luther’s tract written to Germany’s nobles in 1520 is entitled “Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation.” The Holy Roman Empire was effectively “a German-based political order; it was popularly celebrated for its German base in the political lays of Walter von der Vogelweide and the Minnensingers; and authentic historians like Otto of Freising and Alexander von Roes identified imperial history with German history” (p. 161). A sense of German national identity is evident from the Middle Ages onward.
The Hussite Revolution in the Kingdom of Bohemia had a strong nationalist underpinning. It was essentially a national populist movement that united Czechs from all social classes (nobility, intellectuals, peasants, etc.). The wars in turn strengthened national awareness among Czechs. When Jan Has was tried and executed for heresy, Czech barons protested “the dishonor of our nationality and of the Bohemian land” (p. 164). Among the demands of the leaders of the movement was that foreigners be barred from holding civil offices.
Some scholars have argued that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth solely served the interests of the nobility and that Polish identity excluded the peasantry. This notion is itself a modern invention. Polish national identity transcended class: “. . . no one, from Dugosz to Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, denied that peasants were an integral part of the nation, based on one common language” (p. 170). Polish peasants played an important role in fighting the Swedes under Charles XII and were loyal to Poland despite their subjugation.
Russian peasants fared even worse than their Polish counterparts, yet they still identified strongly with Russia and revered the Russian Tsar. The Polish occupation of Russia during the Time of Troubles provoked a large-scale national revolt. A volunteer army of peasants is credited with having expelled Polish forces from the Kremlin in 1612. Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar dramatizes a legend in which one Russian peasant sacrificed his life in order to divert the Polish army.
A twelfth-century chronicler describes the “nations” around the Baltic Sea in his day:
Many nations [naciones] are seated about this sea. The Danes and the Swedes, whom we call Northmen, occupy the northern coast and all the islands it contains. Along the southern shore dwell the Slavic nations [naciones] of whom, reckoning from the east, the Russians [Ruci] are the first, then the Poles who on the north have the Prussians, on the south the Bohemians and those who are called Moravians and the Carinthians and the Sorbs (p. 183).
European nation-states were also referred to as such in ecclesiastic councils in the Late Middle Ages. Each nation had its own vote and was regarded as a distinct entity. Gat writes that there is no evidence for the claim that the word natio had a different meaning in the Middle Ages. The word has always signified “nation,” or a people united by blood and culture.
Hungary was formed in the late ninth century from the consolidation of nomadic Finno-Ugric tribes into a single nation under Árpád, known to Hungarians as “the founder of our homeland.” Hungarian national identity was well-established by the Middle Ages. Istaván Bocskai, leader of a Hungarian uprising against the Habsburgs in 1604, wrote in his manifesto, “It should be demanded that every man who loves his country and fatherland stand up for his nation and hasten against our common enemy” (p. 190). Peasant soldiers and brigands (haiduci) echoed this sentiment: “We owe it to our dear country and nation . . . to rise all together and live or die together” (p. 190). The haiduk movement extended throughout Central and Southeastern Europe and had a strong nationalist character. Haiduci were celebrated in national epics and folklore.
The Reaper’s War is another good example of a national populist uprising. In 1640, Catalonia revolted against Spain and declared itself an independent republic, which was put under French protection. The rebellion was led largely by peasants. Catalan identity persists to this day; in the 2017 Catalan independence referendum, ninety-two percent of voters voted for independence.
Despite immense regional diversity and internal conflict, a pan-Italian identity nonetheless existed long before Italian unification. Machiavelli writes in the final chapter of The Prince (entitled “Exhortation to Seize Italy and to Free Her from the Barbarians”):
The opportunity to provide Italy with a liberator . . . must not be missed. I have no doubt at all that he would be received with great affection in all those regions that have been inundated by the foreign invasions, as well as with a great thirst for revenge, with absolute fidelity, with devotion and with tears of gratitude. . . . This foreign domination stinks in the nostrils of everyone (p. 81).
Greece became an independent nation in 1830 following a nine-year-long war for independence. Peasant militias played a prominent role in the revolution. Gat points out that in the centuries preceding the revolution there were a number of unsuccessful rebellions against Ottoman rule, which failed “not because modernization inaugurated Greek nationalism, but because Ottoman power greatly declined” (pp. 250-251).
Most Balkan countries had a long history of revolting against the Ottoman Empire prior to gaining independence. One notable revolt is the uprising in Banat, in which, according to Serbian folklore, “six hundred villages arose” (p. 251). Gellner admits that nationalist movements in Southeastern Europe “can be seen as constituting a major problem for the theory, given the backwardness of the Balkans by the standards of industrialization and modernity” (p. 251).
France is an interesting case study given its paradigmatic status as a nation formed from a number of ethnicities. Gat attributes the success of French nation-building to both ethnic blending and state-backed cultural assimilation. By the Middle Ages, a distinct national identity had crystallized. The twelfth-century French abbot Suger refers to France as “our land” and “the mother of us all, of the king and of the commoner” (p. 200). The Song of Roland, which dates to the eleventh century, also makes a reference to “sweet France.” The refusal of French nobility to accept an English King (Edward III) as their monarch was what brought about the Hundred Years’ War. Patriotism was not confined to the elites, as the story of Joan of Arc evinces. Another example is that the peasants’ anger over the nobility’s defeat at the Battle of Poitiers, in which the French King was captured, was partly responsible for triggering the peasant uprisings of the mid-fourteenth century. Gat adds that the peasants “raised the banner of and loudly expressed their allegiance to the king of France” (p. 204).
Loyalty to the monarchy was a fluctuating element of French national identity. The monarch became the “focal point” of nationalistic sentiment during the age of absolutism, but French nationalism became more overly populist as dissatisfaction with the monarchy grew. The French people’s patriotism, though, remained a constant.
France can rightly be cited as a successful example of a nation formed from multiple ethnic components, but Gat emphasizes that ethnic diversity is generally an impediment to national unity. Countries like France and England were only able to form a unified national identity through a centuries-long process of ethnic blending and assimilation.
Experiments in forcing different ethnic groups to coexist in one nation have rarely been successful. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia are both good examples. Another example is Cyprus, which began as a binational state but soon was de facto partitioned into two distinct regions; the conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots is ongoing. Coexistence is only truly feasible if there is a clear ethnic majority and if the minority groups are willing to accept their second-class status.
Switzerland is a very rare example of a successful multiethnic state, the exception that proves the rule. Its success cannot easily be replicated because its formation was the result of specific historical contingencies. Switzerland began as a loose military alliance called the Old Swiss Confederation. Central authority was nearly nonexistent, and each canton was a self-governing entity. Switzerland’s mountainous geography further reinforced the autonomy of each canton and prevented political turmoil.
A similar approach has been implemented in Belgium over the past half-century. A series of “state reforms” have transferred more power to the regional scale, granting Flanders and Wallonia more autonomy. This has somewhat eased Belgium’s ethnic tensions, though problems between the regions still exist today, and there is an active Flemish independence movement.
India is another notable example of a multiethnic state. Its success in nation-building can be attributed to its normative Indian identity, that of the country’s ethnolinguistic core, which is upheld by the majority of the population. Nonetheless, India is not free of ethnic conflict (see the Kashmiri Insurgency).
Gat identifies America as a nation founded by Englishmen whose shared heritage was central to American identity. He quotes John Jay:
Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people – a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence (pp. 269-270).
American national identity expanded in the nineteenth century to include Euro-Americans as a whole, creating a distinct American ethnicity. Gat then argues that American identity has since undergone a second shift, incorporating more recent non-white immigrants. He claims that America is an example of a successful multiracial nation whose citizens are united by such things as national holidays, popular tastes, and sports. This is bizarre in light of the rest of the book. Given the many examples of tensions existing between two similar ethnic groups, it is delusional to think that genetically distant races can peacefully coexist in America. To date, America’s experiment in integration has been far from successful.
Gat seems unwilling to discuss the issue of race. It is safer to point out ethnic differences than it is to point out racial differences because one can still maintain the egalitarian pretense that if Italians can become American, non-whites can as well. Of course, the rest of the book does not support this conclusion given its emphasis on kinship and the fact that white ethnic groups are much more genetically similar to each other than they are to other races.
His argument is later undermined again by his discussion of how ethnic homogeneity correlates with the percentage of a nation’s GDP that is directed toward social welfare programs. People are markedly less willing to subsidize welfare programs when they know that their beneficiaries disproportionately belong to an alien group:
Expenditure on social programs totals 14.6 percent of GDP in the United States, as opposed to a European average of 25.5 percent. The authors recognized that these differences, which go back a long way historically, have a variety of causes. They calculate that about half of the difference is . . . rooted in the United States’ ethnic and racial heterogeneity” (p. 322).
Within the United States, welfare policies “vary in proportion to the size of the black population” (p. 322). Race is not the only factor at play here, but this is nonetheless a good indicator that the average white American feels no sense of kinship with blacks, despite the fact that they have lived here for centuries and are well-represented in popular culture (which supposedly defines modern American identity, in Gat’s view).
Apart from the above issue, this book is a great overview of nationalism and the role of ethnicity in history. Nationalism would be legitimate even if it were a recent phenomenon, but it is worth addressing the claims of Leftist theorists, because their ultimate aim is to delegitimize nationalism and bolster the idea that national identity must be transcended. The examples in this book show that “kin-culture” identity is a perennial and universal feature of human civilization, and something that all peoples deserve to uphold.
The conclusion of the book is white-pilling. Most people’s ultimate loyalties still lie with their respective ethnicities and/or nations, and nationalist sentiments today “are anything but non-existent and can be triggered when challenged” (p. 319). This offers cause for optimism for White Nationalists.
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Mark Sedgwick, ed.
Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019
Mark Sedgwick is an English scholar of Western Esotericism and Islam. He is Professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. He is the author of six books, including Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2004), which I can highly recommend, and Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Given the overlap between Traditionalism and other Western Esoteric thought currents and the contemporary radical Right, Sedgwick’s decision to edit this volume makes perfect sense. One simply cannot study contemporary Western Esotericism without encountering and grappling with the far Right.
The book is divided into three parts: Classic Thinkers (Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt, and Julius Evola), Modern Thinkers (Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Paul Gottfried, Patrick Buchanan, Jared Taylor, Alexander Dugin, and Bat Ye’or), and Emergent Thinkers (Mencius Moldbug, Greg Johnson, Richard Spencer, Jack Donovan, and Daniel Friberg).
I found the section on Classic Thinkers to be the best in the book. Each chapter is written by a highly accomplished scholar.
The Spengler chapter is written by David Engels, who has published books in French on historical decline and cycles.
The Jünger chapter is by Elliot Neaman, author of A Dubious Past, Ernst Jünger and the Politics of Literature after Nazism (University of California Press, 1999).
The Schmitt chapter is by Reinhard Mehring, author of the definitive 700-page doorstop Carl Schmitt: A Biography (Polity, 2014). I especially appreciate Mehring’s attention to Schmitt’s mystical and heretical religiosity. (In 1942, Schmitt told Mircea Eliade [2] that René Guénon is “the most interesting man alive today.”) This dimension of Schmitt’s thought is usually glossed over by biographers who simply refer to him as a Catholic thinker. (A very good recent book on Schmitt that foregrounds his heretical theological interests is Peter Uwe Hohendahl’s Perilous Futures: On Carl Schmitt’s Late Writings [Cornell University Press, 2018].)
The Evola chapter is by Thomas Hakl, author of Eranos: An Alternative Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013).
My main quarrels with this section have to do with what it leaves out. There should be chapters on Nietzsche and Heidegger, and at the very least the Evola chapter should have dealt with Guénon as well.
Nietzsche had an immense influence on the entire Conservative Revolutionary movement in Germany, which included Spengler, Jünger, and Schmitt. He also influenced Evola, Benoist, Faye, Dugin, Donovan, Spencer, and me. There simply would not have been a modern radical Right without Nietzsche.
Heidegger was also influenced by Nietzsche and went on to influence Benoist, Faye, Dugin, and me. Indeed, I have argued that Heidegger’s project, beginning in the 1930s, of fashioning a post-nihilist, post-technological, post-totalitarian alternative to National Socialism was the outline of what we call the New Right today.
Guénon belongs because he did more than influence Evola. He is a distinct thinker who made his own impact on the interwar and post-war Right.
The section on Modern Thinkers is also quite informative. I don’t have any major quarrels with the chapters on Benoist, Faye, Gottfried, Buchanan, or Taylor.
I have read only two books by Dugin, but Marlene Laruelle’s essay on his certainly coincides with my impressions. Laruelle describes Dugin as “a chameleon thinker” who can “adapt his discourse to different publics” without commenting upon whether this is consistent with intellectual honesty or ideological consistency. She firmly debunks the idea that he is an influential member of the Kremlin inner circle.
I cannot evaluate the accuracy of Sindre Bangstad’s chapter on “Bat Ye’or and Eurabia,” because I have never read Ye’or. But must note that this chapter has a carping and tendentious attitude that violates Sedgwick’s stated desire to maintain a neutral and scholarly tone. The running heads of the chapter also read “Bay Ye’or and Eurabia.”
There are two major omissions in the Modern Thinkers section: Samuel Francis — who is an original thinker who influenced Gottfried, Buchanan, Taylor, Spencer, and me — and Kevin MacDonald, whose work on the Jewish question is single-handedly responsible for moving this topic from the margins to the center of contemporary far-Right discourse.
The section on Emergent Thinkers is the worst part of the book.
I can’t comment on Joshua Tait’s “Mencius Moldbug and Neoreaction” because I don’t recall ever finishing a Moldberg essay. I did, however, find Tate’s overview fascinating, although I was puzzled that he referred to Evola and Benoist as “irrationalist thinkers” (p. 188). (Is Tate an Objectivist?) I especially appreciated his point that “The overall effect of the language and style of [Moldbug’s] blog is of joining a conspiracy and entering a world of illicit knowledge” (p. 193). There is a definite neoreactionary mystique, and there is no question that such non-intellectual factors contribute to the success and influence of intellectual movements, at least initially.
Naturally, I am flattered that Graham Macklin’s chapter “Greg Johnson and Counter-Currents” was written and included in the book. The author has ably surveyed my works and hits a lot of the highlights. But he tries to paint me as more Old Right than New Right, which is really not accurate or fair, and flatly contradicts the whole tendency of my work, in which I take pains to differentiate my New Right metapolitical approach from Old Right politics. See, for instance, “New Right vs. Old Right [3]” and “The Relevance of the Old Right [4].”
Macklin and I seem to disagree on what differentiates the New Right and the Old Right. I see the distinction as primarily a matter of approach rather than doctrine. New Right and Old Right share a lot of the same political ideas, but they have very different approaches to actualizing them. The primary vehicle of the Old Right is the militant, hierarchical, totalitarian political party. The New Right’s primary vehicle is metapolitics: the transformation of culture to create a consensus supporting the ethnonationalism for all nations. As I conceive it, New Right metapolitics is also consistent with maintaining a large measure of democratic pluralism and respecting the human rights of all people.
Macklin wants to treat the Old Right and the New Right as bodies of ideas. He takes the European New Right as normative and points out my departures from it: my emphasis on race as a biological concept and the legitimacy of the Jewish question as revived by Kevin MacDonald. I am, of course, quite candid about these differences with the European New Right. But that does not alter in any way the fact that I embrace and advocate a New Right metapolitical approach to political change.
What’s more, I have always taken a New Right approach. This fact is implicit in some of the sources that Macklin cites, but I need to make it crystal clear.
I first took an intellectual interest in aspects of the Old Right within the context of scholarly debates about Heidegger. My outlook then as now was essentially (late) Heideggerian. Even in the 1990s, before the publication of Heidegger’s Black Notebooks, it was clear that Heidegger initially thought that National Socialism was an alternative to modern technological nihilism, but eventually he came to see it as just another expression of the same underlying worldview. For Heidegger, nihilism is basically having a false vision of man as being uprooted from nature and history and capable of controlling and consuming them.
The only way to avoid this trap is to move the battle from the political to the metapolitical plane. We need a fundamental transformation of our view of ourselves and our relationship to history and nature. But it is not as simple is manufacturing and promulgating a correct alternative worldview, for such a project itself is a form of technological nihilism. It assumes that the human mind and its machinations can stand behind culture and history and manufacture them according to its designs. Whereas the truth is that history and culture stand behind us. We are shaped by cultural and historical forces we can neither understand nor control.
But once we recognize this fact, i.e., that we are finite beings, rooted in a particular time and place, rather than rootless cosmopolitan citizens of nowhere, the spell of nihilism is broken, which clears a space in which a new dispensation — a new fundamental worldview — can emerge.
Thus Heideggerian metapolitics is not the construction of systems of ideas, ideologies, or -isms. Any worldview we can construct is simply an expression of nihilism, not an alternative to it. But that does not mean that we are impotent. We might not be able to manufacture an alternative, but we can still help one to emerge, first and foremost by owning up to our finitude and rootedness, then by clearing away the detritus of nihilism to create a space in which an alternative might grow.
One can create political policies. One can create legal codes. One can build the damned wall. But it is not in our power to manufacture a new culture. But neither can we manufacture a simple tomato. We can, however, work with forces we ultimately do not understand or control — nature itself — to grow tomatoes. We can clear a space, plant a seed, weed, water, and fertilize — and then wait. We can do the same in the metapolitical realm: clear spaces by deconstructing false ideas, plant identitarian and ethnonationalist seeds, and tend what grows.
That’s what we do here at Counter-Currents. We help people envision new answers to the questions “Who are we?” “What is the right way to live together?” and “How can we get there from here?”
Heidegger did not believe that philosophers or poets are the hidden legislators of mankind, whose machinations create history. But that doesn’t mean we have to shut up and let history do the talking, or sit back and let history do the work. Rather, Heidegger believed that history speaks and acts through us. Philosophers and poets are the first people to become aware of fundamental changes in the Zeitgeist. Thus dissident thinkers and artists proceed historical change not as its creators but as its prophets, awakening and leading people to changes that are already underway. The very fact that we can conceive of fundamentally different ideas may mean that a new dispensation is nearing.
This is the larger context in which my intellectual work has to be placed. Because Macklin has a fuzzy understanding of this, he tends to treat my thinking as a grab bag of Old Right and New Right ideas. When he sent a draft of his chapter to me, I confess I did not think this was particularly problematic. But when I read Mark Sedgwick’s Editor’s Introduction, my blood pressure spiked at the sentence “Among contemporary thinkers of the radical right, only one of any importance (Greg Johnson) expresses any sympathy for Nazism” (p. xiv). This, mind you, is the Introduction to a book which contains a chapter on Richard “Hail Victory” Spencer.
When I asked Sedgwick what gave him this idea, he cited Macklin’s essay.
I have taken great pains to differentiate my New Right approach from the Old Right and to argue that neo-Nazism is a self-marginalizing and self-defeating ideology which, outside of Germany and Austria where it is illegal in any case, is also deeply inauthentic — a symptom of modern rootlessness, not an alternative to it. I hope that Sedgwick sees fit to change this highly misleading remark in the second edition of his book. (Honestly, I would be glad to cede my place in the volume to essays on more deserving figures like Nietzsche, Heidegger, Francis, and MacDonald.)
Tamir Bar-On’s chapter “Richard B. Spencer and the Alt Right” is by far the sloppiest production in the book, and it is also marred by tendentious editorializing.
We learn that “blood and soil” is a “discredited” idea, that Spencer has an “obsession” with race and Jews, and that one aim of Spencer’s “Alt-Right Manifesto” and Unite the Right in Charlottesville is “to intimidate Jews, blacks Mexicans, and other minorities to leave the U.S.”
But Bar-On isn’t wrong about everything, noting for instance that “Spencer is more known for his YouTube videos, tweets, television and newspaper interviews, and university speaking engagements than for any substantive body of intellectual work” (p. 228).
To top it off, the whole essay reads like a hastily assembled and barely edited draft, with occasional fragments of Yoda-like syntax.
“Jack Donovan and Male Tribalism” by Matthew N. Lyons is a well-written and fair-minded overview of Donovan’s masculinist and tribalist ideas, including his one-time association with and subsequent estrangement from White Nationalists and the Alt Right. The essay is marred by a bizarre typesetting error in which the name of the tribal group to which Donovan belongs, the Wolves of Vinland is rendered “wolf of Vinland” at least eight times. This is frankly an embarrassment to Oxford University Press. They really should pull the current edition and reprint it. (Preferably with some edits to Mark Sedgwick’s Introduction as well — hint, hint.)
The last essay, Benjamin Teitelbaum’s “Daniel Friberg and Metapolitics in Action,” quite frankly strikes me as unethical. Teitelbaum is an American Jewish scholar of ethnomusicology and the far Right. He admits that he is a personal friend of Friberg: “I have dined, drunk, and lived with him” (p. 260). But even if he had not mentioned it, it would have been obvious to any reader. Unlike every other chapter in the book, his essay reads like a puff piece.
Indeed, some of it seems to have been written by Friberg himself. Sentences like the following definitely have his bombastic self-promotional touch:
No mention is made, however, of Friberg’s typical departures from these projects under clouds of recriminations about embezzlement, sabotage, doxing, and suspicious contacts with police and antifa. Of course one would not expect Friberg to mention such things, but perhaps an objective scholar would. There is no point in listing all of Teitelbaum’s factual errors, most of which are highly flattering to Friberg. He obviously believed everything that Friberg told him and did not bother to check any of his assertions.
I have no doubt that most of the essays in Sedgwick’s collection would have turned out rather differently if they had been written by personal friends of the subjects, not to mention ghost-written by the subjects themselves. But then the book would have forfeited even the pretense of objectivity, and I doubt very much that Oxford would have chosen to publish it. Frankly, this essay is a carbuncle on the whole project, and Sedgwick should not have included it.
Key Thinkers of the Radical Right is flawed in conception and botched in production. But it does contain a number of excellent essays, and its very existence is a further sign that New Right, White Nationalist, and National Populist ideas are now being taken seriously enough to merit the attention of academic scholars. (Lyons is merely an antifa researcher, but at least he’s well-behaved.) Let’s hope that there is sufficient demand for a new edition so that some of its more egregious flaws can be remedied.
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