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lundi, 20 mai 2013

The Enlightenment from a New Right Perspective

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The Enlightenment from a New Right Perspective

 

By Domitius Corbulo

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

“When Kant philosophizes, say on ethical ideas, he maintains the validity of his theses for men of all times and places. He does not say this in so many words, for, for himself and his readers, it is something that goes without saying. In his aesthetics he formulates the principles, not of Phidias’s art, of Rembrandt’s art, but of Art generally. But what he poses as necessary forms of thought are in reality only necessary forms of Western thought.” — Oswald Spengler 

“Humanity exists in its greatest perfection in the white race.” — Immanuel Kant

Every one either praises or blames the Enlightenment for the enshrinement of equality and cosmopolitanism as the moral pillars of our times. This is wrong. Enlightenment thinkers were racists who believe that only white Europeans could be fully rational, good citizens, and true cosmopolitans.

Leftists have brought attention to some racist beliefs among Enlightenment thinkers, but they have not successfully shown that racism was an integral part of Enlightenment philosophy, and their intention has been to denigrate the Enlightenment for representing the parochial values of European males. I argue here that they were the first to introduce a scientific conception of human nature structured by racial classifications. This conception culminated in Immanuel Kant’s anthropological justification of the superior/inferior classification of “races of men” and his “critical” argument that only European peoples were capable of becoming rational and free legislators of their own actions. The Enlightenment is a celebration of white reason and morality; therefore, it belongs to the New Right.

In an essay [2] in the New York Times (February 10, 2013), Justin Smith, another leftist with a grand title, Professeur des Universités, Département d’Histoire et Philosophie des Sciences, Université Paris Diderot – Paris VII, contrasted the intellectual “legacy” of Anton Wilhelm Amo, a West African student and former slave who defended a philosophy dissertation at the University of Halle in Saxony in 1734, with the “fundamentally racist” legacy of Enlightenment thinkers. Smith observed that a dedicatory letter was attached to Amo’s dissertation from the rector of the University of Wittenberg, Johannes Kraus, praising the “natural genius” of Africa and its “inestimable contribution to the knowledge of human affairs.” Smith juxtaposed Kraus’s broad-mindedness to the prevailing Enlightenment view “lazily echoed by Hume, Kant, and so many contemporaries” according to which Africans were naturally inferior to whites and beyond the pale of modernity.

Smith questioned “the supposedly universal aspiration to liberty, equality and fraternity” of Enlightenment thought. These values were “only ever conceived” for a European people deemed to be superior and therefore more equal than non-whites. He cited Hume: “I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men to be naturally inferior to the whites.” He also cited Kant’s dismissal of a report of something intelligent that had once been uttered by an African: “this fellow was quite black from head to toe, a clear proof that what he said was stupid.” Smith asserted that it was counter-Enlightenment thinkers, such as Johann Herder, who would formulate anti-racist views in favor of human diversity. In the rest of his essay, Smith pondered why Westerners today “have chosen to stick with categories inherited from the century of the so-called Enlightenment” even though “since the mid-20th century no mainstream scientist has considered race a biologically significant category; no scientist believes any longer that ‘negroid,’ ‘caucasoid,’ and so on represent real natural kinds.” We should stop using labels that merely capture “something as trivial as skin color” and instead appreciate the legacy of Amo as much as that of any other European in a colorblind manner.

Smith’s article, which brought some 370 comments, a number from Steve Sailer, was challenged a few days later by Kenan Malik, ardent defender of the Enlightenment, in his blog Pandaemonium [3]. Malik’s argument that Enlightenment thinkers “were largely hostile to the idea of racial categorization” represents the general consensus on this question. Malik is an Indian-born English citizen, regular broadcaster at BBC, and noted writer for The GuardianFinancial TimesThe Independent, Sunday Times, New StatesmanProspectTLSThe Times Higher Education Supplement, and other venues. Once a Marxist, Malik is today a firm defender of the “universalist ideas of the Enlightenment,” freedom of speech, secularism, and scientific rationalism. He is best known for his strong opposition to multiculturalism.

Yet this staunch opponent of multiculturalism is a stauncher advocate of open door policies on immigration [4]. In one of his TV documentaries, tellingly titled Let ‘Em All In (2005), he demanded that Britain’s borders be opened to the world without restrictions. In response to a report published during the post-Olympic euphoria in Britain, “The Melting Pot Generation: How Britain became more relaxed about race [5],” he wrote: “news that those of mixed ethnicity are among the fastest-growing groups in the population is clearly to be welcomed [6].” He added that much work remains to be done “to change social perceptions of race.”

This work includes fighting against any immigration objection even from someone like David Goodhart, director of the left think tank Demos, whose just released book, The British Dream [7], modestly made the observation that immigration is eroding traditional identities and creating an England “increasingly full of mysterious and unfamiliar worlds.” In his review (The Independent [8], April 19, 2013) Malik insisted that not enough was being done to wear down the traditional identities of everyone including the native British. The solution is more immigration coupled with acculturation to the universal values of the Enlightenment. “I am hostile to multiculturalism not because I worry about immigration but because I welcome it.” The citizens of Britain must be asked to give up their ethnic and cultural individuality and make themselves into universal beings with rights equal to every newcomer.

It is essential, then, for Malik to disassociate the Enlightenment with any racist undertones. This may not seem difficult since the Enlightenment has consistently come to be seen — by all political ideologies from Left to Right — as the source of freedom, equality, and rationality against the “unreasonable and unnatural” prejudices of particular cultural groups. Malik acknowledges that in recent years some (he mentions George Mosse, Emmanuel Chuckwude Eze, and David Theo Goldberg) have blamed Enlightenment thinkers for articulating the modern idea of race and projecting a view of Europe as both culturally and racially superior. By and large, however, Malik manages (superficially speaking) to win the day arguing that the racist statements one encounters in some Enlightenment thinkers were marginally related to their overall philosophies.

A number of thinkers within the mainstream of the Enlightenment . . . dabbled with ideas of innate differences between human groups . . . Yet, with one or two exceptions, they did so only diffidently or in passing.

The botanist Carolus Linnaeus exhibited the cultural prejudices of his time when he described Europeans as “serious, very smart, inventive” and Africans as “impassive, lazy, ruled by caprice.” But let’s us not forget, Malik reasons, that Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae “is one of the landmarks of scientific thought,” the first “distinctly modern” classification of plants and animals, and of humans in rational and empirical terms as part of the natural order. The implication is that Linnaeus could not have offered a scientific classification of nature while seriously believing in racial differences. Science and race are incompatible.

Soon the more progressive ideas of Johann Blumenbach came; he complained about the prejudices of Linnaeus’ categories and called for a more objective differentiation between human groups based on skull shape and size. It is true that out of Blumenbach’s five-fold taxonomy (Caucasians, Mongolians, Ethiopians, Americans and Malays) the categories of race later emerged. But Malik insists that “it was in the 19th, not 18th, century that a racial view of the world took hold in Europe.”

Malik mentions Jonathan Israel’s argument that there were two Enlightenments, a mainstream one coming from Kant, Locke, Voltaire and Hume, and a radical one coming from “lesser known figures such as d’Holbach, Diderot, Condorcet and Spinoza.” This latter group pushed the ideas of reason, universality, and democracy “to their logical conclusion,” nurturing a radical egalitarianism extending across class, gender, and race. But, in a rather confusing way and possibly because he could not find any discussions of race in the radical group to back up his argument, Malik relies on the mainstream group. He cites David Hume: “It is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the acts of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains the same in its principles and operations.” And George-Louis Buffon, the French naturalist: “Every circumstance concurs in proving that mankind is not composed of species essentially different from each other.” While Enlightenment thinkers asked why there was so much cultural variety across the globe, Malik explains, “the answer was rarely that human groups were racially distinct . . . environmental differences and accidents of history had shaped societies in different ways.” Remedying these differences and contingencies was what the Enlightenment was about; as Diderot wrote, “everywhere a people should be educated, free, and virtuous.”

Malik’s essay is pedestrian, somewhat disorganized, but in tune with the established literature, and therefore seen by the public as a compilation of truisms against marginal complaints about racism in the Enlightenment. Almost all the books on the Enlightenment have either ignored this issue or addressed it as a peripheral theme. The emphasis has been, rather, on the Enlightenment’s promotion of universal values for the peoples of the world. Let me offer some examples. Leonard Krieger’s King and Philosopher, 1689–1789 (1970) highlights the way the Enlightenment produced “works in which the universal principles of reason were invoked to order vast reaches of the human experience,” Rousseau’s “anthropological history of the human species,” Hume’s “quest for uniform principles of human nature,” “the various tendencies of the philosophes’ thinking — skepticism, rationalism, humanism, and materialism” (152-207). Peter Gay’s The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (1966) is altogether about how “the men of the Enlightenment united on . . . a program of secularism, humanity, cosmopolitanism, and freedom . . . In 1784, when the Enlightenment had done most of its work, Kant defined it as man’s emergence from his self-imposed tutelage, and offered as its motto: Dare to know” (3). Norman Hampson’s The Enlightenment (1968) spends more time on the proponents of modern classifications of nature, particularly Buffon’s Natural History, but makes no mention of racial classifications or arguments opposing any notion of a common humanity.

kant.jpgRecent books are hardly different. Louis Dupre’s The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (2004), traces our current critically progressive attitudes back to the Enlightenment “ideal of human emancipation.” Dupré argues (from a perspective influenced by Jurgen Habermas) that the original project of the Enlightenment is linked to “emancipatory action” today (335). Gertrude Himmelfarb’s The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (2004), offers a neoconservative perspective of the British and the American “Enlightenments” contrasted to the more radical ideas of human perfectibility and the equality of mankind found in the French philosophes. She brings up Jefferson’s hope that in the future whites would “blend together, intermix” and become one people with the Indians (221). She quotes Madison on the “unnatural traffic” of slavery and its possible termination, and also Jefferson’s proposal that the slaves should be freed and sent abroad to colonize other lands as “free and independent people.” She implies that Jefferson thought that sending blacks abroad was the most humane solution given the “deep-rooted prejudices of whites and the memories of blacks of the injuries they had sustained” (224).

Dorinda Outram’s, The Enlightenment (1995) brings up directly the way Enlightenment thinkers responded to their encounters with very different cultures in an age characterized by extraordinary expeditions throughout the globe. She notes there “was no consensus in the Enlightenment on the definition of the races of man,” but, in a rather conjectural manner, maintains that “the idea of a universal human subject . . . could not be reconciled with seeing Negroes as inferior.” Buffon, we are safely informed, “argued that the human race was a unity.” Linnaeus divided humanity into different classificatory groups, but did so as members of the same human race, although he “was unsure whether pigmies qualified for membership of the human race.” Turgot and Condorcet believed that “human beings, by virtue of their common humanity, would all possess reason, and would gradually discard irrational superstitions” (55-8). Outram’s conclusion on this topic is typical: “The Enlightenment was trying to conceive a universal human subject, one possessed of rationality,” accordingly, it cannot be seen as a movement that stood against racial divisions (74). Roy Porter, in his exhaustively documented and opulent narrative, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (2000), dedicates less than one page of his 600+ page book to discourses on “racial differentiation.” He mentions Lord Kames as “one of many who wrestled with the evidence of human variety . . . hinting that blacks might be related to orang-utans and similar great apes.” Apart from this quaint passage, there is only this: “debate was heated and unresolved, and there was no single Enlightenment party line” (357).

In my essay, “Enlightenment and Global History [9],” I mentioned a number of other books which view the Enlightenment as a European phenomenon and, for this reason, have been the subject of criticism by current multicultural historians who feel that this movement needs to be seen as global in origins. I defended the Eurocentrism of these books while suggesting that their view of the Enlightenment as an acclamation of universal values (comprehensible and extendable outside the European ethnic homeland) was itself accountable for the idea that its origins must not be restricted to Europe. Multicultural historians have merely carried to their logical conclusion the allegedly universal ideals of the Enlightenment. The standard interpretations of Tzvetan Todorov’s In Defence of the Enlightenment (2009), Stephen Bronner’s Reclaiming the Enlightenment (2004), and Robert Louden’s, The World We Want: How and Why the Ideals of the Enlightenment Still Eludes Us (2007), equally neglect the intense interest Enlightenment thinkers showed in the division of humanity into races. They similarly pretend that, insomuch as these thinkers spoke of “reason,” “humanity,” and “equality,” they were thinking outside or above the European experience and intellectual ancestry.

What about Justin Smith, or, since he has not published in this field, the left liberal authors on this topic? There is not that much; the two best known sources are two anthologies of writings on race, namely, Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (1997), edited by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze; and The Idea of Race (2000), edited by Robert Bernasconi and Tommy Lott. Eze’s book gathers into a short book the most provocative writings on race by some Enlightenment thinkers (Hume, Linnaeus, Kant, Buffon, Blumenbach, Jefferson and Cuvier). This anthology, valuable as it is, is intended for effect, to show how offensively racist these thinkers were. Eze does not disprove the commonly accepted idea that Enlightenment thinkers were proponents of a universal ethos (although, as we will see below, Eze does offer elsewhere a rather acute analysis of Kant’s racism). Bernasconi’s The Idea of Race is mostly a collection of nineteenth and 20th century writings, with short excerpts from Francois Bernier, Voltaire, Kant, and Blumenbach. The books that Malik mentions (see above) which connect the Enlightenment to racism are also insufficient: George Mosse’s Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (1985) is just another book about European anti-Semitism, which directs culpability to the Enlightenment for carrying classifications and measurements of racial groups. David Goldberg’s Racist Culture (1993) is a study of the normalization of racialized discourses in the modern West in the 20th century.

There are, as we will see later, other publications which address in varying ways this topic, but, on the whole, the Enlightenment is normally seen as the most critical epoch in “mankind’s march” towards universal brotherhood. The leftist discussion of racist statements relies on the universal principles of the Enlightenment. Its goal is to uncover and challenge any idea among 18th century thinkers standing in the way of a future universal civilization. Leftist critics enjoy “exposing” white European males as racists and thereby re-appropriate the Enlightenment as their own from a cultural Marxist perspective. But what if we were to approach the racism and universalism of the Enlightenment from a New Right perspective that acknowledges straightaway the particular origins of the Enlightenment in a continent founded by Indo-European [10] speakers?

This would involve denying the automatic assumption that the ideas of the philosophes were articulated by mankind and commonly true for every culture. How can the ideas of the Enlightenment be seen as universal, representing the essence of humanity, if they were expressed only by European men? The Enlightenment is a product of Europe alone, and this fact alone contradicts its universality. Enlightenment thinkers are themselves to blame for this dilemma expressing their ideas as if “for men of all times and places.” Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), writing at the same time as Kant, did question the notion of a cosmopolitan world based on generic human values. He saw in the world the greatest possible variety of historical humans in different regions of the earth, in time and space. He formulated arguments against racial rankings not by questioning their scientific merits as much as their reduction of the diversity of humans to one matrix of measurement and judgment. It was illusory to postulate a universal philosophy for humanity in which the national character of peoples would disappear and each human on earth would “love each other and every one . . . being all equally polite, well-mannered and even-tempered . . . all philanthropic citizens of the world.”[1] Contrary to some interpretations, Herder was not rejecting the Enlightenment but subjecting it to critical evaluation from his own cosmopolitan education in the history and customs of the peoples of the earth. “Herder was among the men of the Enlightenment who were critical in their search for self-understanding; in short, he was part of the self-enlightening Enlightenment.”[2] He proposed a different universalism based on the actual variety and unique historical experiences and trajectories of each people (Volk). Every people had their own particular language, religion, songs, gestures, legends and customs. There was no common humanity but a division of peoples into language and ethnic groups. Each people were capable of achieving education and progress in its own way from its own cultural sources.

From this standpoint, the Enlightenment should be seen as an expression of a specific people, Europeans, made up of various nationalities but nevertheless in habitants of a common civilization who were actually conceiving the possibility of becoming good citizens of Europe at large. In the words of Edward Gibbon, Enlightenment philosophers were enlarging their views beyond their respective native countries “to consider Europe as a great republic, whose various inhabitants have attained almost the same level of politeness and cultivation” (in Gay, 13).

Beyond Herder, we also need to acknowledge that the Enlightenment inaugurated the study of race from a rational, empirical, and secular perspective consistent with its own principles. No one has been willing to admit this because this entire debate has been marred by the irrational, anti-Enlightenment dogma that race is a construct and that the postulation of a common humanity amounts to a view of human nature without racial distinctions. Contrary to Roy Porter, there was a party line, or, to be more precise, a consistently racial approach among Enlightenment thinkers. The same philosophes who announced that human nature was uniform everywhere, and united mankind as a subject capable of enlightenment, argued “in text after text . . . in the works of Hume, Diderot, Montesquieu, Kant, and many lesser lights” that men “are not uniform but are divided up into sexes, races, national characters . . . and many other categories” (Garret 2006). But because we have been approaching Enlightenment racism under the tutelage of our current belief that race is “a social myth” and that any division of mankind into races is based on malevolent “presumptions unsupported by available evidence [11],” we have failed to appreciate that this subject was part and parcel of what the philosophes meant by “enlightenment.” Why it is so difficult to accept the possibility that 18th century talk about “human nature” and the “unity of mankind” was less a political program for a universal civilization than a scientific program for the study of man in a way that was systematic in intent and universal in scope? It is quite legitimate, from a scientific point, to treat humans everywhere as uniformly constituted members of the same species while recognizing their racial and cultural variety across the world. Women were considered to be intrinsically different from men at the same time that they were considered to be human.

Not being an expert on the Enlightenment I found recently a book chapter titled “Human Nature” by Aaron Garrett in a two volume work, The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy [12] (2006). There is a section in this chapter dealing with “race and natural character”; it is short, 20 pages in a 1400 page work, but it is nevertheless well researched with close to 80 footnotes of mostly primary sources. One learns from these few pages that “in text after text” Enlightenment thinkers proposed a hierarchical view of the races. Mind you, Garrett is stereotypically liberal and thus writes of “the 18th century’s dubious contributions to the discussion of race,” startled by “the virulent denigrations of blacks . . . found in the works of Franklin, Raynal, Voltaire, Forster, and many others.” He also playacts the racial ideas of these works as if they were inconsistent with the scientific method, and makes the very unscientific error of assuming that there was an “apparent contradiction” with the Enlightenment’s notion of a hierarchy of races and its “vigorous attacks on the slave trade in the name of humanity.”

Just because most Enlightenment thinkers rejected polygenecism and asserted the fundamental (species) equality of humankind, it does not mean that they could not believe consistently in the hierarchical nature of the human races. There were polygenecists like Charles White who argued that blacks formed a race different from whites, and Voltaire who took some pleasure lampooning the vanity of the unity of mankind. But the prevailing view was that all races were members of the same human species, as all humans were capable of creating fertile offspring. Buffon, Cornelius de Pauw, Linnaeus, Blumenbach, Kant and others endorsed this view, and yet they distinctly ranked whites above other races.

Liberals have deliberately employed this view on the species unity of humanity in order to separate, misleadingly, the Enlightenment from any racial connotations. But Linnaeus did rank the races in their behavioral proclivities; and Buffon did argue that all the races descended from an original pair of whites, and that American Indians and Africans were degraded by their respective environmental habitats. De Pauw did say that Africans had been enfeebled in their intelligence and “disfigured” by their environment. Samuel Soemmering did conclude that blacks were intellectually inferior; Peter Camper and John Hunter did rank races in terms of their facial physiognomy. Blumenbach did emphasize the symmetrical balance of Caucasian skull features as the “most perfect.” Nevertheless, in accordance with the evidence collected at the time, all these scholars asserted the fundamental unity of mankind, monogenism, or the idea that all races have a common origin.

Garrett, seemingly unable to accept his own “in text after text” observation, repeats the standard line that Buffon’s and Blumenbach’s view, for example, on “the unity and structural similarity of races” precluded a racial conception. He generally evades racist phrases and arguments from Enlightenment thinkers, such as this one from Blumenbach: “I have allotted the first place to the Caucasian because this stock displays the most beautiful race of men” (Eze, 1997: 79). He makes no mention or almost ignores a number of other racialists [13]: Locke, Georges Cuvier, Johann Winckelmann, Diderot, Maupertuis, and Montesquieu. In the case of Kant, he says it would be “absurd” to take some “isolated remarks” he made about race as if they stood for his whole work. Kant “distinguish between character, temperament, and race in order to avoid biological determinism” for the sake of the “moral potential of the human race as a whole.”

kant-german-philosopher-from.jpgActually, Kant, the greatest thinker of the Enlightenment, “produced the most profound raciological thought of the 18th century.” These words come from Earl W. Count’s book This is Race, cited by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze in what is a rather good analysis of Kant’s racism showing that it was not marginal but deeply embedded in his philosophy. Eze’s analysis comes in a chapter, “The Color of Reason: The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant’s Anthropology [14]” (1997). We learn that Kant elaborated his racial thinking in his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View [15] (1798); he introduced anthropology as a branch of study to the German universities together with the study of geography, and that through his career Kant offered 72 courses in Anthropology and/or Geography, more than in logic, metaphysics and moral philosophy. Although various scholars have shown interest in Kant’s anthropology, they have neglected its relation to Kant’s “pure philosophy.”

For Kant, anthropology and geography were inseparable; geography was the study of the natural conditions of the earth and of man’s physical attributes and location as part of this earth; whereas anthropology was the study of man’s soul, his psychological and moral character, as exhibited in different places on earth. In his geography Kant addressed racial classifications on the basis of physical traits such as skin color; in his anthropology he studied the internal structures of human psychology and the manner in which these internal attributes conditioned humans as moral and rational beings.

Kant believed that human beings were different from other natural beings in their capacity for consciousness and agency. Humans were naturally capable of experiencing themselves as self-reflecting egos capable of acting morally on the basis of their own self-generated norms (beyond the determinism which conditioned all other beings in the universe). It is part of our internal human nature to think and will as persons with moral agency. This uniquely human attribute is what allows humans to transcend the dictates of nature insofar as they are able to articulate norms as commandments for their own actions freed from unconscious physical contingencies and particular customs. As rational beings, humans are capable of creating a realm of ends, and these ends are a priori principles derived not from the study of geography and anthropology but from the internal structures of the mind, transcendental reason. What Kant means by “critical reason” is the ability of humans through the use of their minds to subject everything (bodily desires, empirical reality, and customs) to the judgments of values generated by the mind, such that the mind (reason) is the author of its own moral actions.

However, it was Kant’s estimation that his geographical and anthropological studies gave his moral philosophy an empirical grounding. This grounding consisted in the acquisition of knowledge about human beings “throughout the world,” to use Kant’s words, “from the point of view of the variety of their natural properties and the differences in that feature of the human which is moral in character.”[3] [16] Kant was the first thinker to sketch out a geographical and psychological (or anthropological) classification of humans. He classified humans naturally and racially into white (European), yellow (Asians), black (Africans) and red (American Indians). He also classified them psychologically and morally in terms of the mores, customs and aesthetic feelings held collectively by each of the races. Non-Europeans held unreflective mores and customs devoid of critical examination “because these people,” in the words of Eze, “lack the capacity for development of ‘character,’ and they lack character presumably because they lack adequate self-consciousness and rational will.” Within Kant’s psychological classification, non-Europeans “appear to be incapable of moral maturity because they lack ‘talent,’ which is a ‘gift’ of nature.” Eze quotes Kant: “the difference in natural gifts between various nations cannot be completely explained by means of causal [external, physical, climatic] causes but rather must lie in the [moral] nature of man.” The differences among races are permanent and transcend environmental factors. “The race of the American cannot be educated. It has no motivating force; for it lacks affect and passion . . . They hardly speak, do not caress each other, care about nothing and are lazy.” “The race of the Negroes . . .  is completely the opposite of the Americans; they are full of affect and passion, very lively, talkative and vain. They can be educated but only as servants . . . ” The Hindus “have a strong degree of passivity and all look like philosophers. They thus can be educated to the highest degree but only in the arts and not in the sciences. They can never arise to the level of abstract concepts . . . The Hindus always stay the way they are, they can never advance, although they began their education much earlier.”

Eze then explains that for Kant only “white” Europeans are educable and capable of progress in the arts and sciences. They are the “ideal model of universal humanity.” In other words, only the European exhibits the distinctly human capacity to behave as a rational creature in terms of “what he himself is willing to make himself” through his own ends. He is the only moral character consciously free to choose his own ends over and above the determinism of external nature and of unreflectively held customs. Eze, a Nigerian born academic, obviously criticizes Kant’s racism, citing and analyzing additional passages, including ones in which Kant states that non-Europeans lack “true” aesthetic feelings. He claims that Kant transcendentally hypostasized his concept of race simply on the basis of his belief that skin color by itself stands for the presence or absence of the natural ‘gift’ of talent and moral ‘character’. He says that Kant’s sources of information on non-European customs were travel books and stories he heard in Konigsberg, which was a bustling international seaport. Yet, this does not mean that he was simply “recycling ethnic stereotypes and prejudices.” Kant was, in Eze’s estimation, seriously proposing an anthropological and a geographical knowledge of the world as the empirical presupposition of his critical philosophy.

With the publication of this paper (and others in recent times) it has become ever harder to designate Kant’s thinking on race as marginal. Thomas Hill and Bernard Boxill dedicated a chapter, “Kant and Race [17],” to Eze’s paper in which they not only accepted that Kant expressed racist beliefs, but also that Eze was successful “in showing that Kant saw his racial theory as a serious philosophical project.” But Hill and Boxill counter that Kant’s philosophy should not be seen to be inherently “infected with racism . . . provided it is suitably supplemented with realistic awareness of the facts about racism and purged from association with certain false empirical beliefs.” These two liberals, however, think they have no obligation to provide their readers with one single fact proving that the races are equal. They don’t even mention a source in their favor such as Stephen J. Gould [18]. They take it as a given that no one has seriously challenged the liberal view of race but indeed assume that such a challenge would be racist ipso facto and therefore empirically unacceptable. They then excuse Kant on grounds that the evidence available in his time supported his claims; but that it would be racist today to make his claims for one would be “culpable” of neglecting the evidence that now disproves racial classifications. What evidence [19]?

They then argue that “racist attitudes are incompatible with Kant’s basic principle of respect for humanity in each person,” and in this vein refer to Kant’s denunciation, in his words, of the “wars, famine, insurrection, treachery and the whole litany of evils” which afflicted the peoples of the world who experience the “great injustice of the European powers in their conquests.” But why do liberals always assume that claims about racial differences constitute a call for the conquest and enslavement of non-whites? They forget the 100 million killed in Russia and China, or, conversely, the fact that most Enlightenment racists were opponents of the slave trade. The bottom logic of the Hill-Boxill counterargument is that Kant’s critical philosophy was/is intrinsically incompatible with any racial hierarchies which violate the principles of human freedom and dignity, even if his racism was deeply embedded in his philosophy. But it is not; and may well be the other way around; Kant’s belief in human perfectibility, the complete development of moral agency and rational freedom, may be seen as intrinsically in favor of a hierarchical way of thinking in terms of which race is the standard bearer of the ideal of a free and rational humanity.

It is quite revealing that an expert like Garrett, and the standard interpreters of the Enlightenment generally, including your highness Doctor Habermas, would ignore Kant’s anthropology. A recent essay by Stuart Elden, “Reassessing Kant’s geography [20]” (2009), examines the state of this debate, noting that Kant’s geography and anthropology are still glaringly neglected in most newer works on Kant. One reason for this, Elden believes, “is that philosophers have, by and large, not known what to make of the works.” I would specify that they don’t know what to make of Kant’s racism in light of the widely accepted view that he was a liberal progenitor of human equality and cosmopolitanism. Even Elden does not know what to make of this racism, though he brings attention to some recent efforts to incorporate fully Kant’s anthropology/geography into his overall philosophy, works by Robert Louden, Kant’s Impure Ethics (2000); John Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (2002), and Holly Wilson, Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology (2006). Elden pairs off these standard (pro-Enlightenment, pro-Kant) works against the writings of leftist critics who have shown less misgivings designating Kant a racist. All of these works (leftists as well) are tainted by their unenlightened acceptance of human equality and universalism. They cannot come to terms with a Kant who proposed a critical philosophy only for the European race.

There is no space here for details; some of the main points these authors make are: Kant’s anthropology and geography lectures were part of Kant’s critical philosophy, “devoted to trying to enlighten his students more about the people and world around them in order that they might live (pragmatically as well as morally) better lives” (Louden, p. 65). The aim of these lectures, says Wilson, on the cultures and geography of the world was “to civilize young students to become ‘citizens of the world’” (p. 8). Kant was a humane teacher who cared for his students and expected them to become cognizant of the world and in this way acquire prudence and wisdom. “Kant explicitly argues that the anthropology is a type of cosmopolitan philosophy,” writes Wilson, intended to educate students to develop their rational powers so they could think for themselves and thus be free to actualize their full human potentiality (5, 115). This sounds very pleasant yet based on the infantile notion that knowledge of the world and cosmopolitanism, wisdom and prudence, are incompatible with a racial understanding. To the contrary, if Kant’s racial observations were consistent with the available evidence at the time, and if masses of new evidence have accumulated since validating his views, then a critical and worldly philosophy would require us to show understanding towards Kant’s racism, which does not mean one has to accept the subjective impressionistic descriptions Kant uses. Hiding from students the research of Philippe Rushton, Richard Lynn, Charles Murray, Arthur Jensen, among others, would negate their ability to become free enlightened thinkers.

Elden brings the writings of Bernasconi and David Harvey, agreeing with them that Kant played “a crucial role in establishing the term ‘race’ as the currency within which discussions of human variety would be conducted in the 19th century.” He agrees too that Kant’s racism is “deeply problematic” to his cosmopolitanism, and that earlier responses by Kantians to swept aside his racism as “irrelevant” or “not to be taken seriously” are inadequate. Elden thinks however that scholars like Louden and Wilson have risen to the leftist challenge. But what we get from Louden is the same supposition that Kant’s philosophy can be made to meet the requirements of humanitarianism and egalitarianism simply by discarding the racist components. This constitutes a confounding of the actual Enlightenment (and the authentic Kant) with our current cultural Marxist wish to create a progressive global civilization. Louden even makes the rather doleful argument that Kant’s monogenetic view of the races, the idea that all humans originated from a common ancestor, “help us reach our collective destiny.” Kant’s monogenetic view is not an adequate way to show that he believed in a common humanity. The monogenetic view is not only consistent with the eventual differentiation of this common species into unequal races due to migration to different environments, but it is also the case that Kant specifically rejected Buffon’s claim that racial differences could be reversed with the eventual adaptation of “inferior” races to climates and environments that would induce “superior” traits; Kant insisted that the differences among races were fixed and irreversible regardless of future adaptations to different environmental settings. Louden’s additional defense of Kant by noting that he believed that all members of the human species can cultivate, civilize, and moralize themselves does not invalidate Kant’s view that whites are the model of a universal humanity.

So many otherwise intelligent scholars have willfully misled themselves into believing that Enlightenment thinkers were promoters of egalitarianism and a race-less cosmopolitan public sphere. We do live in a time of major deceptions at the highest levels of Western intellectual culture. We are continually reminded that the central idea in Kant’s conception of enlightenment is that of “submitting all claims to authority to the free examination of reason.”[4] [21] Yet the very ideals of the Enlightenment have been misused to preclude anyone from examining freely and rationally the question of race differences even to the point that admirers of the Enlightenment have been engaged in a ubiquitous campaign to hide, twist beyond clarity, and confound what Enlightenment thinkers themselves said about such differences. White nationalists should no longer accept the standard interpretation of the Enlightenment. They should embrace the Enlightenment and Kant as their own.

Notes

[1] Gurutz Jáuregui Bereciartu, Decline of the Nation State (1986), p. 26.

[2] Hans Adler and Ernest Menze, Eds. “Introduction,” in On World History, Johan Gottfried Herder: An Anthology (1997): p. 5

[3] These words are cited in Stuart Elden’s “Reassessing Kant’s geography,” Journal of Historical Geography (2009), a paper I discuss later.

[4] Perpetual Peace. Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal, eds. Johan Bohman and Mathias Lutz Bachman. The MIT Press, 1997.

 


 

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

 

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/05/the-enlightenment-from-a-new-right-perspective/

 

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Kant_Portrait.jpeg

[2] essay: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/why-has-race-survived/

[3] Pandaemonium: http://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/on-the-enlightenments-race-problem/

[4] open door policies on immigration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenan_Malik

[5] The Melting Pot Generation: How Britain became more relaxed about race: http://www.britishfuture.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-melting-pot-generation.pdf

[6] welcomed: http://www.britishfuture.org/blog/mixed-britain-will-the-census-results-change-the-way-we-think-and-talk-about-race/

[7] The British Dream: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1843548054/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1843548054&linkCode=as2&tag=kenanmalikcom-21

[8] The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-british-dream-by-david-goodhart-8578883.html

[9] Enlightenment and Global History: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/04/enlightenment-and-global-history/

[10] Indo-European: http://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2012/12/where-is-the-historical-west-part-1-of-5/

[11] presumptions unsupported by available evidence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

[12] The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy: http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-History-Eighteenth-Century-Philosophy-Haakonssen/dp/0521418542

[13] other racialists: http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/foutz-racism.shtml

[14] The Color of Reason: The Idea of ‘Race’ in Kant’s Anthropology: http://books.google.ca/books?id=moH_07971gwC&pg=PA200&lpg=PA200&dq=%E2%80%9CThe+Color+of+Reason:+The+Idea+of+%E2%80%98Race%E2%80%99+in+Kant%E2%80%99s+Anthropology%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=Q9-oKv3Wks&sig=QDcpHumNboU6TrfmWYfZCdjPyss&hl=en&sa=X&ei=rHSOUbebCNWz4AP87YCwDA&sqi=2&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CThe%20Color%20of%20Reason%3A%20The%20Idea%20of%20%E2%80%98Race%E2%80%99%20in%20Kant%E2%80%99s%20Anthropology%E2%80%9D&f=false

[15] Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View: http://books.google.ca/books/about/Kant_Anthropology_from_a_Pragmatic_Point.html?id=MuS6WI_7xeYC&redir_esc=y

[16] [3]: http://www.counter-currents.comfile:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.IE5/F9Q4VNXE/The%20Enlightenment%20from%20a%20New%20Right%20Perspective%20(1).rtf#_ftn3

[17] Kant and Race: http://www.faculty.umb.edu/lawrence_blum/courses/465_11/readings/Race_and_Racism.pdf

[18] Stephen J. Gould: http://menghusblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/stephen-jay-gould-myth-and-fraud/

[19] What evidence: http://www.jehsmith.com/philosophy/2008/09/phil-498629-rac.html

[20] Reassessing Kant’s geography: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748808000613

[21] [4]: http://www.counter-currents.comfile:///C:/Users/Owner/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.IE5/F9Q4VNXE/The%20Enlightenment%20from%20a%20New%20Right%20Perspective%20(1).rtf#_ftn4

 

vendredi, 17 mai 2013

Robert E. Howard & the Heroic

 

RobertEHoward.jpg

Robert E. Howard & the Heroic

By Jonathan Bowden

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

Editor’s Note:

The following text is a transcript by John Morgan of a lecture by Jonathan Bowden, “Robert Erwin Howard: Pulpster Extraordinaire,” given at the 26th New Right meeting in London on Saturday, April 17, 2010. The audio is available on YouTube [2].

Unfortunately, significant portions of the audio were cut off at the beginning of the second and third segments on YouTube. For the purposes of publishing this essay in the Pulp Fascism [3] collection, I also removed some 2,300 words of digressive material. If anyone has access to a complete copy of the lecture, please contact me. Also, if you have any corrections or if you can gloss the passages marked as unintelligible, please contact me at editor@counter-currents.com [4] or simply post them as comments below. If and when a complete transcript can be assembled, we will publish it here as well. 

I’ll be talking about Robert Ervin Howard. A while back, I had a talk about H. P. Lovecraft, Aryan mystic, and he was one of a triumvirate of writers who wrote for a fantasy magazine called Weird Tales, a pulp magazine; they were incredibly cheaply produced magazines in the 1930s, with quite good art, graphic sort of art, printed on cheap bulk newsprint paper which was very acidic and fell apart very quickly. And yet three writers, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Ervin Howard, and Howard Phillips Lovecraft have survived and been inducted into literature. I saw in my local library that Penguin Classics, or Modern Classics, the ones with the grey covers, now include Robert Erwin Howard’s Heroes in the Wind, from Kull to Conan: The Best of Robert E. Howard as a book. Penguin Classics, you see? So it begins as a pulp, and a hundred years later it’s redesignated as literature.

Howard is a very interesting figure. He only lived 30 years. He was born in 1906 and shot himself with a revolver in the head in his car, outside his home, when he was 30 years of age. We’ll get on to that afterwards. He wrote 160 stories, and the interesting thing about these stories is that they are pre-civilized in their settings, they’re barbaric, they’re ultra-masculine stories, and they deal with many themes which have been so disprivileged from much of mainstream liberal humanist culture that they no longer exist.

Howard had a range of heroes and wrote in most popular genres. He wrote to make money, but he began as a poet, and a poetic and sort of Saturnalian disposition influenced his work and his friendship, by correspondence, with Lovecraft, and to a lesser extent, Clark Ashton Smith, throughout his life. He was of Irish descent, and he was born in a town which became a boom town in the oil booms of the early 20th century in Texas. For those of you who don’t know, Texas is enormous. England fits into Texas twelve times, and Britain, eight times. He was born in Peaster, Texas, and spent some of his early life in a town called Brownwood, a quintessentially small-town American, which is the experience of most white Americans through the settlement of Western civilization in North America. The state capital, of course, is Austin, and you have the big cities like Houston, Dallas, and Galveston.

Now, Howard hated the oil booms, and what happened. When the oil boom happened to Cross Plains, a town of about 1,200 with a mayor and so on, morphed into a large, sprawling, lawless place of about 10,000. An enormous number of prospectors and drillers and criminals and people seeking easy money, all heavily armed of course, came in to Cross Plains. The town burst out beyond its limits in all directions. Oil was discovered everywhere. Fortunes were made, and fortunes were lost.

At the time he was born, lynchings were still in vogue right across the South and the ex-Confederate states. Everyone displayed and carried weapons openly. Sometimes the Rangers, as they were called, a man alone in the sun with a rifle, was basically all you had of semi-ordered civilization. People don’t realize how, if you like, wild and open certain parts of the United States were, certainly until the 1860s, 1870s.

The psychological experience of an intuitive and sympathetic and radically imaginative young man like Howard invests the tall Texan story, and stories of prospectors and ranchers and drillers in the oil industry, and Texas Rangers and Marshals and so on, with an added piquancy. His family supported the Confederacy in a previous generation, and he was mildly descended from certain Confederate commanders.

His attitude towards life is expressed in the stories, which is why they survived. The stories are like lucid dreams. You walk straight into them, and the action begins. Most of them were dreams, and in a way, most critics believe Howard’s an oral creator. He’s in the oral, folklorist, and narrative-oriented tradition. He’s a storyteller par excellence. It’s said he wrote at night, and he used to chant the stories to himself, which of course is a very old Northern European and Nordic tradition. It’s the idea of the skald. It’s the idea that things are illuminated to you, and you speak because you hear the voice.

He had a series of masculine heroes beginning with certain Celtic and Pictish/Scotch-Irish heroes such as Bran Mak Morn and so on; Conan, the hero that he’s most associated with, whose name, of course, is abstracted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s middle name. Howard would take from all sorts of roots, many of which related to heroic, Celtic, Indo-European elements which he imagined to exist in his own past.

robEHow.jpgHe was very influenced by G. K. Chesterton’s dictum at the beginning of the 20th century that myth is the commingling of emotional reality with what is understood to be fact. If you mix together eras and peoples, but you keep the emotional truth of the substance of what we perceive their lives to have been, then you can influence the present and the future. It’s noumenal truth, as Aristotle said 2,000 years ago, the idea that certain things are artistically and emotionally true irrespective of what you think about them factually.

His most famous series of stories, the Conan stories that he wrote pretty much towards the end of his life, were based upon a false yet true/factual world history, the so-called Hyborian Age that he created for himself. Maps of the Hyborian Age have been produced, and they are based upon a realistic sociology, ethnography, geological history, and a coherent view of economics. The country of Aquilonia that Conan ends up conquering at the end of the mythos is partly Britain. The Picts are partly the Scots, of course, covered in woad, barbaric, kept out by a wall, that sort of thing.

War is the dynamic of all of Howard’s fiction, and his attitude towards life was conflict-oriented. His stories are described as ultra-masculine and non-feminist stories. Unkind critics say that they’re Barbara Cartland for men, where all women are beautiful, all men are heroic, where magic works instead of science, and where force decides all social problems, and there is a degree to which the genre which he has founded, called sword and sorcery—of which one supposes J. R. R. Tolkien, an Oxford professor, is the senior representative in the 20th century—is an example of the literary and the heroic in contemporary letters. It’s interesting to notice that the early great texts of the Western civilization, Homer, Beowulf, are deeply heroic, and yet over time, the heroic imprimatur within our language and within our sensibility dips.

It’s said that boys aren’t interested in reading at school, and that 80 to 90% of those who do English literature courses in further educational colleges and universities, the tertiary sector, are women. It’s said that men don’t disprivilege literature, and it’s also said in the West that boys get bullied if they’re regarded, as Howard was when he was younger, as sissies because they read too much, and this sort of thing.

I think one of the problems is that literature that appeals to men is often not the concern of the people who run these sorts of educational establishments. If the sort of people that influenced Howard, people like Noyes, people like Robert W. Service, people like Byron, people like Kipling, people like the heroic imperialist literature of William Henley, who was the basis for Long John Silver in Treasure Island, and was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, a man who could go from bonhomie to murderous rage with a click of your fingers, as Silver does in Treasure Island, of course, because he moves from extreme malevolence to a sort of Cockney paternalism in the same breath. Now, if this literature was normative much further down the social and the educational scale, one would imagine that boys and youngish men would be much more interested in literature as a whole.

Howard essentially sold stories from about the age of 20, certainly 19. He started writing when he was 9, and the interesting thing about him is that his stories are not really derivative. There are connections to enormous writers that were prominent at the time, principally Jack London, but Howard emerged fully-formed and had his own voice from the very beginning.

London’s a very interesting figure, because London’s often been associated, truthfully and yet forcefully, with the extreme Left. Trotsky, of course, wrote an introduction to his famous dystopia of American life called The Iron Heel, and yet London, as George Orwell intimated in one of his essays, was proto-fascistic, and was in many ways a Left nationalist, or even a National Bolshevik, or somebody who would be now described as a Third Positionist. London’s positions were those of socialism from the outside, but also a form of socialism, with and without quotation marks, that was Right-wing rather than Left-wing, and was both national and racial. The interesting thing about London’s discourse is the radicalism of the racialism. [. . .]

We had at the last meeting, or the meeting before last, a speaker from Croatia called Tomislav Sunić who wrote a book which I edited a long time ago, actually, called Homo Americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age. Among the very important points about that book is his recognition, as a European ex-Catholic in his case, of the Protestant fundamentalist nature of the United States. I think this is a crucial point to understand the United States. The influence of contemporary Jewry in the United States is due to the fact that it’s a Protestant fundamentalist country and many, many Americans really believe in their deep and even subconscious mind that the viewpoint that they are a self-chosen elect to rule by right, by divine imprecation, is so deep in their consciousness, the idea as Pentecostalists sing, that “we are Zion,” goes so far down that the difference between their identity and their group specificity and their militant patriotism and that of a small country in the Middle East, and people who didn’t begin to emigrate en masse into the United States until the latter stages of the 19th century, and only really began to have major socioeconomic impact, particularly culturally, in the first quarter to a third of the 20th century makes these things, to my mind, easier to understand.

Now, Protestant fundamentalism doesn’t seem to have scratched Howard very much, and yet one of his heroes is a Puritan called Solomon Kane, and Solomon Kane, who comes between Bran Mak Morn, Kull, and Conan, is in some ways his first major hero. Solomon Kane is very, very interesting because he’s one of these Protestant extremists of the 1620s—well, they’re set before—but that’s when the movement comes to power in the Cromwellian Interregnum in England, and yet stretches way back into the previous century, and yet in a strange way he’s an outsider, even in that movement.

Kane dresses all in black with a little white sort of a bib round his neck. He’s extraordinarily heavily armed, as most of the Puritans were, had a sword on either side, had pistols in the belts, had a knife in the boot, because you were fighting for the Lord, you see! “I am the flail of the Lord.” They had these endless quotes, largely from the Old Testament, but to a degree from elements of the New, which they would roll out on occasions when they had to justify what they were about to do, and that their instincts wanted to do, in a way that nothing could restrain them.

There’s a famous moment in Northern Ireland, when James Callaghan was Northern Irish Secretary under Wilson in the late 1960s, slightly sympathetic to Social Democratic, Catholic nationalism in Northern Ireland, as part of the local movement was then, but in a very moderate way, and then said in a concerned and perplexed way to the Reverend Ian Paisley, who softened a bit as he’s got older, and in turn wanted to be Prime Minister of Northern Ireland before he died, he said to Paisley that, “But we’re all the children of God, Reverend,” and Paisley said, “No! Nooooo!” He said, “We are the children of wrath!

And that is the attitude of those Puritan extremists, loyal to the Old Testament in many ways. Men of a sort of always implacable fury, and elements of their dictatorship, under Cromwell of course, were increasingly maniacal. The banning of Shakespeare, our greatest writer. When an English national revolutionary movement bans the country’s greatest-ever writer, you do begin to think there’s something slightly wrong, don’t you, no? Similarly, the flogging of actors under the New Model Army in Newcastle for performing Shakespeare, these were the latter stages, these were the Buddhas of Bamiyan moments, weren’t they really, of these English revolutionaries of the 1640s, or what was really going on.

Now, the sort of Puritanism that Howard puts into this character is different, because Howard’s character, Solomon Kane’s a loner, a man who always fights for his own cause, but when he hears those almost voluptuous pagan stirrings in the background, it’s always Christianized, and it’s always put in a Protestant context.

Cromwell once had a phrase: “I disembowel you for Christ’s love.” And that’s what he said in the Putney Debates. When the parliamentary side won the Civil War, the whole New Model Army, which of course was a revolutionary army of that time—no brothels, no drinking; in the Royal army, you went to the back, and there was endless entertainment at the back of the battlefront. With the Puritan armies, there was none of that. You went to the back, and there was no drinking, and there was a chap ranting at you about whether you’d sinned that day.

It was less fun, but at the same time, when they raised their pikes together, not in a higgledy-piggledy way, or one bloke at the back didn’t want to, but they raised them together, as one unit. They would all chant, “God is our strength.” Cromwell understood as Shaw said early in the 20th century that a man who has a concept of reality that is metaphysically objectivist, a man who believes in something as absolute truth is worth fifty men. And that’s the type of revolutionary ideology that these people then had.

But at the Putney Debates, there was a debate about how the country should go, and Ireton and the other supreme commanders were there. Under Cromwell they committed regicide of course, they killed the King, so the future of the country was theirs. There was another tendency known as the Levellers, who in some ways of course were retrospectively the first socialists, so-called because they wanted to level down distinctions. There was an even more radical movement called the Diggers that came along later. But Cromwell told Ireton, “Either we hang them or they will hang us.” And that’s the Levellers. And at the end of the Putney Debates, the army moves aside, the Cromwellian regime has been established, and the Levellers are hanging on the trees. So Cromwell had got his way.

The importance of Protestantism to the United States, in a complicated way, is the reason why there has never been an extreme Right-wing movement of any great success in the United States, except in a localized way like the Klan to deal with particular circumstances at a particular time. America, you could imagine, is ripe for such a movement, as Australia always has been, and yet there has not been one, not really. Not a national movement. There were figures in the 1930s: there was the Silver Shirt movement; there were Father Coughlin’s radio broadcasts, which had all sorts of interesting ramifications in American life, as Catholic priest giving the radical Right to essentially a Protestant nation, which of course set up a cultural tension and contradiction in and of itself.

There are also interesting liberal counterparts to this. Most people remember Orson Welles’ treatment of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, when the Martians invade New York, and then he admitted it was a fiction retrospectively, and tens of thousands of ninnies leave New York because they think the Martians are landing. “Gee, they’re up the road!” And they get the pickup truck, and they go. And then they broadcast later that it was all a stunt and it was an artistic show, and people shouldn’t take it literally.

Welles deliberately did that to discredit Coughlin. He said afterwards, “We did it because too many people believed everything that fascist priest was telling them on the radio, so we proved them, don’t believe what you hear that comes out of the radio.” And that’s a purely sort of aesthetic response to the impact that sort of thing had.

robEHow2.jpgYet still movements lie there, Aryan Nations, National Alliance, these sorts of movements, very small, very isolated, geographically and in other ways. National Alliance was quite interesting because it morphed from Youth for George Wallace. That’s how it started, and then it took various transformatory steps until it emerged as a very hard-line group under the late Dr. William Pierce at a later date.

And this culture of extreme Protestantism—which contained elements which are to the Right of almost anything you’ve ever seen, mentally, psychologically, conceptually—seems partly, because, of its extreme individualism, to be incapable of generating radical Right mass movements. Most Americans still adopt a deliberately materialist, liberal humanist and individualist way of looking at life. They divide into two basic political parties that have switched over during the course of the last two centuries. Don’t forget in the 19th century the Republican Party was the party of the nominal Left, and the Democrats were red. The Democrats were conservatives who supported states’ rights—not the right to secede, but certainly the right to own slaves. The party led by a man who’s proud to have ex-slaves in his own family, the present President, would have actually, in a strange sort of way, not been able to join the Democrat Party in the 19th century, and yet the switch around, that you can vote in each other’s primaries, and that “Isn’t everyone a Democrat? Isn’t everyone a Republican?,” hence the meaninglessness of the names, adds to this sort of feeling that you get in the contemporary United States that all that matters is money and social success. America’s very important, because America, of course, dominates this country now culturally and geopolitically. We can’t almost do anything without them, and all the wars that we’re now dragged into are due to American hegemony.

But the repudiation of parts of American power should never blind ourselves to the cultural excellence of what many white Americans have achieved, both for their group and individually. If you actually look at all the radical Right literature, the alternative side of an isolationist and American nationalist posture, there is some great work there by people like William Gayley Simpson, who wrote an enormous book of over a thousand pages called Which Way Western Man? Again, without going on a tangent too much, he’s a very interesting man because he’s an ex-Trappist monk. He began as a liberal and an aching humanist whose heart bled for the Third World and who had all the correct sort of UN-specific attitudes, and gradually he changed step by step by step, and he ended up, if not a member then a fellow traveler, of the National Alliance. That is quite a change. That is quite a leap. But it is also true that tens and tens of thousands of educated Western people who are liberal-minded now will have to change their views, will have to begin to change their mindset in this and the coming generation if Western civilization is virtually not to slide off the cliff. [. . .]

Now, to return to Howard, Howard’s writing, by the end of his sort of period, and don’t forget that he was sort of mature at 22 and dead at 30, he produced 160 stories, 15, 16 volumes basically, and other fragments. There was an unfinished fantasy novel called Almuric, the early Celtic stories, Bran Mak Morn and the others morphed into Solomon Kane. There were associated Westerns and humorous stories. There were some detective stories, but he never particularly liked that genre, although his attitude towards life was hard-boiled. There were also some Crusader stories as well, and some slightly mythological stories about a sort of white man in the East called Gordon, presumably named after the Gordon of Khartoum, but actually an American, and these were the old Borak stories set in Afghanistan, where he goes native and fights along sort of inter-tribal and group-based and clan lines in that context.

Howard’s attitude toward politics is quite complicated and not entirely logical, and primarily emotional. He supported the New Deal because he believed the American economy had collapsed and something needed to be done. He argued strongly with H. P. Lovecraft, he was more of a “reactionary” in these respects, a classical liberal, didn’t like the Roosevelt and the people around him, didn’t like intervention in the market in that sort of Protestant, American way. He felt that you fail commercially, you suffer punishment, because God has chosen that punishment for you. Destiny involves sacrifice.

The irony is that the banks have been saved in the United States by Bush, costing trillions of dollars, but the metaphysic which founded the country would have allowed all of those banks to fail, all of those banks to fail and all those bankers to hang themselves and throw themselves off buildings. That happened in 1929, and then you rebuild quickly, because the pure, American, sort of Randian view is that capitalism is an insatiable animal and vortex of energy, and if people go to pot, if people lose everything they have, if as a trader, an insurance agent I vaguely knew years ago at Lloyd’s, lost all his money in the Names scandal, and goes there on a Sunday and unlocks the door and goes down to the toilets and sits there and drinks Domestos and kills himself and is found by the cleaners, Africans probably, on Monday morning, and his senior partner in Lloyd’s said, “Well, that’s capitalism for you.” And that’s it! What goes up goes down! This was the view that founded the United States

And yet the irony is, why have these Western politicians intervened, why have they saved these structures: few collateral damage moments, Lehman Brothers; they’ve charged Goldman Sachs with fraud. Well, that’s a bit late, isn’t it, really? And yet why have they intervened? They’ve intervened because of the voting danger. The fact that there are radical parties on the fringe of all Western societies, everyone knows who they are, that people could vote for in a major moment of fiscal/physical/moral/emotional distress, and the whole Western clerisy that’s bought into the contemporary liberal package knows that. Many of these parties are actually quite moderate in relation to the traditions they come out of, but they terrify the present establishment that often sees the more populist ones as just the start of something worse that’s coming behind, see?

And there’s also a certain guilt there as well, because these people are well aware of what’s happened to Western societies because they’ve been running them for 70 years. This idea it’s all an accident, “I didn’t really mean it,” and the turning of Western societies into a sort of version of Brasília, en masse with a tiny, little elite at the top that’s creaming most of the goodies off for themselves.

I’m not an egalitarian in any sense, but it’s interesting to note that this country’s slightly more unequal now than it was in 1910 in terms of 90% of all equity and all capital and all wealth is owned by the top 10%, and the top 2% of that 10%, and yet the society has changed out of all recognition, 1910 to 2010. Most Western people born in the first [unintelligible] part of the 20th century would not believe the transformation of the West just in a lifetime, basically, after they died. And it occurred because of the extraordinary wars, largely amongst ourselves, that we fought in the 20th century that also gave outsider ideologies like Communism their chance to vulture-like pick over the defeat and the carrion corpses of what was left.

The heroic attitude towards man and society that Howard’s work depicts exists virtually nowhere except as play and pleasure in computer games for boys and adolescents, in comic books and so on. The areas of life where that sort of ethos remains, the armed forces, the army, navy, and air force of most contemporary Western societies, particularly their specialist or elite forces, in Britain the Special Air service, the naval equivalent the Special Boat Service, and all of those novels, these Andy McNab sort of novels about the heroic and this sort of thing, which are lapped up by a largely male audience, largely male audience. Other than that, there is not really the imprimatur of the heroic in Western life, the extraordinary demilitarization of Western life, hardly ever see a policeman, hardly ever see soldiers. When do you ever see British forces? And that’s because they’re always outside the country as globalist mercenaries fighting American and Zionist wars all over the world. They’re never seen here, and many of their commanders don’t want them here, either, because they regard parts of British life as so irretrievably decadent that they actually want to keep their troops away from much of what’s happened in relation to the society. There are towns in Berkshire where a lot of the military stay, like Arborfield and these sorts of towns, where it’s quite clear there’s a sort of military zone and there’s a civilian zone. You all know what British towns are like on Friday, Saturday night: no police; they’re all in their vans; they’re all in the station; they’re at home; they’re filling in forms. They wear yellow bibs when they’re out, but when you want one, you can never see them, can you?

And a lot of our older people are, let’s face it, frightened to go into town and city centers on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, certainly after 6. And why is this happening? It’s partly happening because the concept that Howard’s fiction deals with, masculinity, has been completely disprivileged, completely demonized and rerouted in contemporary liberal life. Hostility to masculinity, certainly as defined, say, before 1950 is very considerable, and it’s had a very corrosive effect ideologically, aesthetically. Men can have their own pleasures in various zones, which are sort of sneered at and disprivileged, but the centrality of the heroic as a myth for life has largely gone.

The way to explicate something like Howard, as I did with Lovecraft before, is to maybe to concentrate on one of their stories. With H. P. Lovecraft I chose “The Dunwich Horror,” and with Howard I would choose “Rogues in the House,” which was published in Weird Tales in the early ’30s. One fantasy critic has called it the greatest fantasy story of the 20th century, but that’s just one individual’s opinion. It’s relatively early in the Conan series.

Conan is a northern barbarian, and because everything’s fused together in Howard, he’s got slightly Nordic, Germanic, and slightly Celtic traits. He’s an outsider, but he has a clean code of masculine barbarism. Civilization is always seen as slightly weak-kneed and sybaritic to Howard. And yet at the same time, barbarism has its own inner order.

Now, there are counter-factual and countercultural elements there that will be used by social anthropologists in a totally different context, like Lévi-Strauss and others, in the middle of the 20th century, but Howard means it in a different way.

There’s a Left-wing streak to Howard, as there was to London, a siding with the outsider, with those ruined by capitalism, by tramps. London’s book about the East End is one of the most extraordinary books about mass poverty before George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London and “How the Poor Die,” were quite extraordinary works. A poor little hospital in Paris before any sort of socialized medicine, where those who were in the bottom 10%, their corpses were just thrown on the ground! And they died in agony, and they kick you away and put another one on top. This is how the poor die! And Orwell said to this chap in this hospital, “But look at the state they’re in!” And he said, “Well, they gave up slavery. Here’s another batch.” This was the attitude then. This is why things like the labor movement, even in the United States in an attenuated way, were created, to correct that imbalance as it’s seen from the bottom.

The far Right, of course, always wanted not the class war of the contemporary Left, but to socialize mass life in a way that preserved the traditions of the civilization of which we’re a part, that brought on what was excellent about the past and yet realized that the 50% of people who own no capital, the 50% of people who are largely excluded from all center-Right parties’ definition of patriotism, are part of the country, are part of the nation, fight the country’s wars for the most part when they’re asked to do so, and therefore have to be within the remit of social consideration in relation to education, health, and other matters.

My explanation for Howard’s support of the New Deal and that type of politics largely is along those sorts of lines. It’s the sort of apolitical chap who likes country and western in a Midwestern state and supports socialized medicine up to a point, as long as it’s not too costly, doesn’t like Obama, and supports our troops, you see. But it’s in a sort of apolitical zone which has got no real knowledge above that. Some of the instincts are right, but the ideological formulation in which that takes place is likely wrong, because even these wars—do you think Iraq was fought for ordinary white Americans? Do you think Afghanistan has anything to do with ordinary families living in Nebraska or Nevada or Kansas? None of these wars have anything to do with them at all. Even the Black Muslims have worked out that white gentiles largely are second-class citizens now in the society that they created. But that’s another story, and I’d just like to concentrate on Howard.

This particular story concerns Conan from the outside, Conan as perceived by an aristocrat and fop called Murilo. Howard’s a little bit of a Nordicist. He thinks southern Europeans are a bit foppish in comparison to northern Europeans. There’s a streak of this, and some of the society is seen to be Italy, Corinth, Zamora, but they’re not. But they seem to be Italy.

Well, there’s this Italian city-state that’s run by a corrupt priest called Nabonidus, who’s known as the Red Priest. These myths are set, these stories, mythologically encoded, are set before the beginning of recorded history and after the sinking of Atlantis, possibly a fantasy itself. So he sets them far back enough that he can do whatever he wants with them, but at the same time he can import a large amount of retrospective historical insight.

The interesting thing is the Machiavellianism of the politics of these stories. All of these societies are run extremely ruthlessly and are run completely for the power interests of the people in charge. The nationalities don’t really matter, but they are, if the gloves are off, as marauding and vengeful as their own leaders who they represent at a lower level. Truly Howard believes, with the Roman dictator Sulla, that when the weapons are out, the laws fall silent.

Now, Murilo is a courtier, a relatively corrupt courtier, in this city-state, and Nabonidus comes to him one day at a royal council meeting and gives him a small casket that contains a severed ear. And this is a warning, as it would be if a Renaissance prince in post-Medieval Italy, gave it to a rival, and it’s, “Clear off. Get out of the city-state as quickly as possible. I’m giving you one day.” And Murilo wonders what he’s going to do. He can flee, but he’s not a coward, why should he leave his own city? And in any case he’s got lots of rackets on the go, you know, so he wants an out, and he thinks, “I need to assassinate Nabonidus,” who runs the drunken King as a sort of priest/philosopher-king/leader of a native death cult within the city like a puppet master controls his dog.

So he needs a vassal, and he finds it in the prisons of the city where a young, heathen, northern barbarian has been captured and lays there in chains after various escapades and thefts, and this is a young man of 19 called Conan, who’s twice the size of a normal man. All Howard’s heroes are physically enormous, and all incredibly violent, although they all have an honor code of their own which is interesting, particularly towards the end of the story, what you might call an innate code of masculine morality and honor which is part and parcel of natural law.

The Social Darwinian view that was spread throughout mass culture, particularly these types of fictions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is not entirely true as all prisons and all armies testify, there’s a code of honor and morality even in very extreme male behavior. Rapists are always amongst the most disprivileged in any prison. Men who attack and feed on women, for example, in very all-male and male-concentric cultural spaces are always disprivileged, always disliked, and that’s because of innate feelings about how, in a very traditionalist way, what we call partly a sexist way now, men should treat women, and these things pre-date all modern ideas and are partly innate, and in some ways, because Howard is such an instinctualist, he brings these sorts of forces to the fore.

Now, Nabonidus wants Murilo to leave the city. Murilo hires Conan to murder Nabonidus. Nabonidus is [unintelligible]. Conan is in his cell sucking some beef off a bone, and besides, Nabonidus is an upper-class priest—so why not murder him for money, he’s an adventurer?—so he decides to go with Murilo on this plot. As always with Howard, a synopsis never does justice to the sort of the lucid dreaming of the story itself. Howard always said that he was there and that Conan was next to him like an old soldier dictating his stories, some of which will be tall stories as well.

Now, Murilo then hears that Conan has been captured because the guard that he bribed to get him out of the prison has been arrested on another offense. Conan’s actually escaped in another way and joins Murilo later. Murilo, desperate, a Borgia without any sort of a family fortune decides to murder Nabonidus himself, so he creeps up to his fortified estate, which is on the edge of town, described in this Gothic way—it’s dark, it’s sepulchral, it’s moonlit, there’s an enormous dog that roams the grounds.

Remember Conan Doyle’s stories? There’s always this enormous mastiff that the villain has that roams the grounds to bring people down, but Watson shoots on Holmes’ behalf usually at the end. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is extraordinarily amusing because the hound is covered with phosphorous to make it glow in the dark when it races after some poor chap who’s looking back, terrified, on a sort of West Country moor, and yet phosphorous is so poisonous that, the dog licks itself all the time, one lick and its dead. But these stories are metaphorical. They’re extreme exercises in the imagination. They’re not concerned with these pettifogging details of which critics make too much.

Now, Murilo creeps into the garden and, horror of horrors, what does he find? He finds the dead body of the dog, and it looks as though it’s been savagely mauled in a way by something he doesn’t understand, by some weird thing or ape or monster. He then proceeds into the house and finds much of it wrecked. Nabonidus is nowhere to be seen, and one of his servants, Joka, has been murdered.

Suddenly he gets into the inner chamber of Nabonidus’ villa, which is modeled on a Renaissance palace essentially, and he sees the Red Priest, so named because he wears this red cowl, sitting on a throne, made of alabaster, and everything’s heavy and ornamental, a bit like those Cecil B. DeMille films from the ’30s, everything extraordinarily overdone and luxuriant. And he creeps up to Nabonidus to stab him, and the figure turns, and it’s a were-thing, or a monster, something of the imagination. It’s not human at all, simian rather than human. And Murilo faints, and then the story closes.

This story’s in three acts. Traditionally, like a lot of Western drama, like Dante’s Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise, you’ve got this three-pronged triadic element, the thesis, the antitheses, the synthesis at the end. So that’s the first part.

The second part is Murilo awakens in dungeons or interconnected corridors underneath Nabonidus’ house, manse, mansion. He crawls along a corridor and somebody hisses, and it’s Conan. He’s come into the house to murder Nabonidus because Murilo’s going to pay him, and because he’s a member of a cult that he dislikes and so on. Murilo scents his hair, like the young aristocrats of his era, and Conan’s senses are so acute that he detects that with his nostrils, and that’s the reason he doesn’t attack him in the darkness.

They both decide to, they swear loyalty to each other—don’t forget this is an oral culture where bonds and legal sanctions are expressed orally. Howard despised the element of modern life where people say anything they want just to get their own way at any particular time. In pre-modern, say Nordic societies, the oath or something which is given verbally with strength is as binding as any legal document ever could be, even more so.

Conan and Murilo proceed looking for Nabonidus. They come out into the body of the house, which as I said resembles just sort of Renaissance, Florentine palace, and they see Nabonidus stripped, semi-naked and wounded, in a neighboring corridor, and they wonder what has replaced him up inside the house.

And what has happened, as he in a dazed way explains once he returns to full consciousness, is that his servant, who’s this ape that he’s taken from one of the outlying countries in Howard’s imaginary kingdoms, has supplanted him as the master in the house. Howard, to a moderate degree, believed in science, believed in evolution, it was very much almost  a cult then, as was eugenics, and Thak as he’s called, this ape-man who wears the red because he’s supplanted the human he wanted to supplant, has thrown his master, Nabonidus, into the pit and has seized control of the house. Thak sits, waiting for them to come out of the pit because there’s a bell underneath there in the pits that they’ve crossed, a trap basically, and he knows humans are down there, and he’s waiting for them.

Nationalists emerge. There’s an interesting political element here, because Nabonidus is a very corrupt ruler and has the King in his thrall, so nationalists of the city-state—you could be a nationalist and of a city-state because it was the unit of civilization essentially, and a country would be city-states federated together. Attempts to assassinate Nabonidus in a way that Murilo wanted to, Thak deals with them. The story fast-forwards in a very filmic way, because Howard is a visualizer. The male brain is visual and always thinks in images. And these sorts of stories are extraordinarily cinematographical in their nature and their forward, pumping lucidity.

Thak senses that they’ve come up from under the ground, and there are interesting pseudo-scientific elements. The Red Priest, Nabonidus is a scientist and a mage and a magician combined. It’s Religion and the Decline of Magic in some ways if you view it academically. He has this construction of mirrors whereby from one room you can reflect light through tubes that contain small mirrors, and it ends up being able to look into another room, so you can actually look round corners, and they can see Thak, and he can see them.

Because he needs to dispose of the bodies of the nationalists who’ve come into the house, Thak disappears for a time, and Conan and the others seize their chance, and they go up. Nabonidus becomes terrified when all the doors are locked and he can’t find the weapons they need to fight against his servant who’s turned against him.

In the end, Conan has to face off against Thak in this quite extraordinarily violent scene. Howard was one of the most brilliant writers of physical force and conflict between men in the 20th century. There’s little doubt about that. It’s so immediate you’re almost there and it is essentially visual. Conan and Thak have this clash-of-the-gods-type of titanic duel with each other, much like a scene from Homer basically, Hector before the walls of Troy. Thak is done down in the end, and Conan, half-dead, is saluted by Murilo.

Nabonidus then tries to betray both of them, and Conan does for him, really, with a stool. He whips up a stool and throws it into his head, and he falls, and all Conan can say is, “His blood is red, not black,” because in the slums of the city they said the Red Priest’s blood was black because his heart was black, and Conan’s a barbarian and a literalist, you see. “His blood isn’t black.”

There’s an interesting moment when Conan is helped by Murilo because he’s so hurt and wounded in the fight with Thak, and he pushes Murilo aside and says, “A man walks alone. When you can’t stand up it’s time to perish.” That’s not an attitude you heard from the Blair government too often, is it? These are pre-modern attitudes, you see. As somebody on Radio 4 would say now, “But that’s a dangerously exclusionist notion. What about the ill, what about the weak?” And of course in that type of barbaric morality, the strong look after the weak, but only in an assent of being and natural law which is codified on the basis of the morality of strength. That’s what those sorts of civilizations thought and felt.

And the other interesting thing is that he looks down on Thak, this sort of beast, sort of man that he’s killed, and he says, “I didn’t kill a beast tonight, but a man! And my women will sing of him.” And there’s two cultural views of these sorts of things. One is to regard them as remarkable pieces of creative imagination. There is other is to sort of laugh and sneer at them, and think that they represent old-fashioned values that we’ve thankfully gotten rid of, or moved away from.

The stories, with the exception of the Kane stories, are all pre-Christian in the most radical of terms, and yet pre-liberal and liberal secular, which of course in the modern West is what’s replaced Christianity. I would say that contemporary Catholicism is rather like the Protestantism of yesteryear, and Protestantism has become liberalism, and liberalism has morphed, strangely, without the Protestantism that gave it a moral compass, into a form of cultural Marxism, and that’s what we have now.

And yet Howard’s stories are very, very interesting and very dynamic and very much appeal to an imaginative element in certainly a lot of men. The belief in self-definition, the belief in the heroic as a model for life, the belief in strength but with an honor code that saves it from wanton exercise in strength without purpose, and the beliefs that one is part of even a tribe or a community.

In the stories, Conan’s a Cimmerian. He’s from a northern group. He’s always introduced, he’s only got one name, he’s so primal, he doesn’t have any other names. Conan. Like Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, he only had one name. Heathcliff, he doesn’t need any other names. He’s just a force, you see? A force of the female imagination, which is what he is. And in a strange way, the way in which he’s described in that novel by Emily Brontë is very similar to the way Conan’s described, but Conan’s a bit more beefed out, a bit more muscular.

Many films have been made, many TV series have been made, there’s a Conan industry in the 20th century. What Howard would have thought of all that no one knows. He’s there, possibly on a slightly lower tier, but with Tarzan and Doctor Who and James Bond and these other iconic sort of mass popular fantasy figures. Yet in all of them, certainly in this sort of material, there’s a truth to experience, there’s a vividness, there’s a cinematographical and representational reality, and there’s a concern with courage, masculinity, and the heroic which is lacking from most areas of society, and there’s also an honor code, a primitive morality if you like, which goes with it and gives it efficacy and purpose.

The other thing which he differentiates in this type of literature is respect for the enemy. When Terre’Blanche was murdered, I noticed liberals on the BBC giggling and sort of laughing and thinking it was all a jolly joke. These are people who are against the death penalty and believe that murder’s a terrible infraction against human rights, jurisprudence, and all the rest of it. But the sort of cultural space that this work comes out of respects the enemy. Kills the enemy, respects the enemy, which of course is a soldier’s emotion. Many who’ve fought in wars don’t disrespect the enemy. They know what they’re like. British soldiers who’ve fought in the Falklands, American soldiers who’ve fought against Islamist militants, and even some of the militants themselves when they’ve fought against Western warriors, understand the code of the soldier and the code of the warrior on the other side. But many of these men are spiritually, fundamentally similar men in a way, born in other groups.

Men will always fight with each other, and they’re biologically prone to do so. How, in an era of mass weapons of destructive warfare, some existing and others not, that is to be worked through. It is a part of the destiny of the relationship between groups and states. But the hard-wiring that makes men competitive and egotistical and conflict-oriented is ineradicable and irreducible, and modern liberal societies which are based upon the idea of inclusionist love without thought of conflict are sentimental to the point that they will fall apart, bedeviled by their endless contradictions.

And I personally think that if you inculcate yourself, with a bit of irony and estrangement, from some of the elements of the culture of the heroic that certainly subsisted as mainstream cultural fare in our society before 1950, you have a different attitude towards what spews out of the telly every evening, and you have a different attitude towards the sort of culture that you’re living in, and you have a different attitude towards great figures in your own group and even in others, and you have a different attitude towards yourself and the future.

I give you Robert Ervin Howard, 1906 to 1936, a man who walked alone but spoke for an element, not just of America, but what it is to be white, male, Western, and free.

Thank you very much.

 


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URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/05/robert-e-howard-and-the-heroic/

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[3] Pulp Fascism: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/04/forthcoming-from-counter-currents-pulp-fascism/

[4] editor@counter-currents.com: mailto:editor@counter-currents.com

mercredi, 15 mai 2013

Lyon: Conférence de Tomislav Sunic

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Lyon, 25 mai: Conférence de Tomislav Sunic

mardi, 07 mai 2013

Machiavelli & the Conservative Revolution

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Machiavelli & the Conservative Revolution

By Dominique Venner

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

Translated by Greg Johnson

Borne along by the French Spring, the Conservative Revolution is in fashion. One of its most brilliant theorists deserves to be remembered, even if his name has long been maligned. Indeed it is scarcely flattering to be described as “Machiavellesque” if not “Machiavellian.” It can be seen as an aspersion of cynicism and deceit. 

And yet what led Niccolò Machiavelli to write the most famous and the most outrageous of his works, The Prince, was love and concern for his fatherland, Italy. It was published in 1513, exactly 500 years ago, just like Albrecht Dürer’s “The Knight, Death, and the Devil [2].” A fertile time! In the early years of the 16th century, Machiavelli was nevertheless the only one to worry about Italy, the “geographical entity,” as Metternich later said. Then, one cared about Naples, Genoa, Rome, Florence, Milan, and Venice, but nobody cared about Italy. This had to wait a good three centuries. This proves that we should never despair. The prophets always preach in the wilderness before their dreams reach the unpredictable waiting crowds. We and some others believe in a Europe that exists only in our creative memory.

Born in Florence in 1469, died in 1527, Niccolò Machiavelli was a high official and diplomat. His missions introduced him to the grand politics of his time. What he learned, and what he suffered for his patriotism, prompted him to reflect on the art of conducting public affairs. Life had enrolled him in the school of great upheavals. He was 23 years old when Lorenzo the Magnificent died in 1492. The same year, the ambitious and voluptuous Alexander VI Borgia became Pope. He swiftly made one of his sons, Cesare (at that time, the popes cared little for chastity), a very young cardinal and then the Duke of Valentinois thanks to the king of France. This Cesare, gripped by a terrible ambition, cared nothing about means. Despite his failures, his ardor fascinated Machiavelli.

But I anticipate. In 1494 came a huge event that would change Italy for a long time. Charles VIII, the ambitious young king of France, made ​​his famous “descent,” i.e., an attempt at conquest that upset the balance of the peninsula. After being well-received in Florence, Rome, and Naples, Charles VIII then met with resistance and was forced to retreat, leaving a terrible chaos. It was not finished. His cousin and successor, Charles XII, came back in 1500, this time for longer, until Francis I became king. Meanwhile, Florence was plunged into civil war, and Italy was devastated by condottieri greedy for loot.

Appalled, Machiavelli observed the damage. He was indignant at the impotence of the Italians. From his reflections arose The Prince in 1513, the famous political treatise written thanks to its author’s disgrace. The argument, with a compelling logic, seeks to convert the reader. The method is historical. It is based on the confrontation between the past and the present. Machiavelli stated his belief that men and things do not change. This is why the Florentine councilor continues to speak to us Europeans.

Following the Ancients–his models–he believes Fortune (chance), represented by a woman balancing on an unstable wheel, rules half of human actions. But she leaves, he says, the other half ruled by the virtues (qualities of manly boldness and energy). Machiavelli calls for men of action and teaches them how to govern well. Symbolized by the lion, force is the primary means to conquer or maintain a state. But one must also have the cunning of the fox. In reality, one must be both lion and fox. “We must be a fox to avoid traps and a lion to frighten wolves” (The Prince, ch. 18). Hence his praise, devoid of any moral prejudice, of Alexander VI Borgia, who “never did anything, and never thought of doing anything, other than deceiving people and always found a way to do so” (The Prince, ch. 18). However, it is in the son of this curious pope, Cesare Borgia, that Machiavelli saw the incarnation of the Prince according to his wishes, able “to win by force or fraud” (The Prince. ch. 7).

Placed on the Index by the Church, accused of impiety and atheism, Machiavelli actually had a complex attitude vis-à-vis religion. Certainly not devout, he nevertheless went along with its practices but without abdicating he critical freedom. In his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, drawing lessons from ancient history, he questioned which religion best suits the health of the state: “Our religion has placed the highest good in humility and contempt for human affairs. The other [Roman religion] placed it in the greatness of soul, bodily strength, and all other things that make men strong. If our religion requires that we have strength, it is only to be more capable of suffering heavy things. This way of life seems to have weakened the world, making it easy prey for evil men” (Discourses, Book II, ch. 2). Machiavelli does not risk religious reflection, but only a political reflection on religion, concluding: “I prefer my fatherland to my soul.”

Source: http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/2013/04/machiavel-et-la-revolution-conservatrice/ [3]


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

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[3] http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/2013/04/machiavel-et-la-revolution-conservatrice/: http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/2013/04/machiavel-et-la-revolution-conservatrice/

dimanche, 28 avril 2013

1979: l'émission de Bernard Pivot qui a lancé la "nouvelle droite"

1979: l'émission de Bernard Pivot qui a lancé la "nouvelle droite"

jeudi, 25 avril 2013

La radicalité contre la dictature des minorités !...

La radicalité contre la dictature des minorités !...

 

Nous reproduisons ci-dessous un point de vue de Jean-Yves Le Gallou, cueilli sur Polémia et consacré au mouvement populaire et à sa nécessaire radicalisation s'il veut pouvoir ébranler les minorités qui nous gouvernent...

Jean-Yves Le Gallou dirige la fondation Polémia et a récemment publié aux éditions Via Romana un essai percutant intitulé La tyrannie médiatique.

 

La radicalité contre la dictature des minorités

Chaud, chaud, chaud ! Le printemps sera chaud. Car les majorités se révoltent contre la dictature des minorités.

Minorités sexuelles

Il y a, selon l’INSEE, 100.000 couples homosexuels en France, soit 0,3% de la population ; et 10.000 enfants – 0,003% de la population – vivent au domicile de ces couples homosexuels. Une minorité de ces minorités réclame qu’on change des règles multimillénaires pour les adapter à leur situation individuelle ou à leurs caprices. Il est normal que cela suscite une forte exaspération des majorités ! En vérité les homosexuels devraient être reconnaissants aux familles traditionnelles qui défilent contre la dénaturation du mariage : ce sont leurs enfants qui paieront leurs retraites…

Minorités associatives subventionnées 

Les associations LGBT, minorité agissante de la minorité revendicative des minorités sexuelles, veulent régenter le débat public. Au nom de la lutte contre une prétendue « homophobie », il s’agit d’interdire toute prise de position jugée politiquement incorrecte ; en fait, d’empêcher toute critique du mariage homosexualiste à l’image de ce qu’ont réussi les associations « antiracistes » censurant tout débat sur l’immigration. Le tout avec l’argent des contribuables. C’est insupportable au pays de Voltaire.

Minorités ethniques et religieuses

Elles cherchent à imposer dans l’espace public comme dans l’espace privé leurs exigences vestimentaires et leurs interdits alimentaires : refus du porc, abattage hallal pour tous – ce qui suscite la réaction des amis des bêtes et de la France profonde. C’est à Guéret, dans la Creuse, qu’on se mobilise contre la construction d’un abattoir hallal voulu au nom de médiocres intérêts commerciaux, quoique contraire à la loi européenne, aux traditions françaises et à la sécurité sanitaire.

Minorités financières

Elles imposent des réglementations conformes à leurs intérêts mais non à l’intérêt général. Quand les banques, les grandes entreprises et les hyper-riches échappent à l’impôt (tout en bénéficiant des infrastructures techniques, des services publics et des systèmes de protection sociale des Etats), ce sont les classes moyennes qui payent. Ces classes moyennes sont doublement victimes : des excès de l’Etat-providence qu’ils payent mais aussi de la finance-providence qui échappe à l’impôt.

Minorités médiatiques

Moins de 50.000 journalistes, qui informent de moins en moins et qui conditionnent de plus en plus ; qui ne cherchent pas à distinguer l’exact de l’inexact, ni le vrai du faux, mais qui prétendent dire où est le « bien », où le « mal », en louant les « gentils » et en dénonçant les « méchants ». Avec un grand sens de l’à-propos, les personnes manifestant le 28 mars devant France Télévision, protégée par les forces de l’ordre, criaient : « CRS, retourne-toi, la racaille est derrière toi ! » Sans commentaire.

Minorités parlementaires

Moins de 1.000 personnes prétendent avoir le monopole de la fabrication de la loi sans tenir compte du peuple. C’est, certes, la logique de la démocratie représentative mais celle-ci est, hélas, de moins en moins représentative :

-En raison des lois et du calendrier électoral, une partie importante de l’opinion n’est pas représentée ; et les socialistes qui ont, à eux seuls, la majorité de l’Assemblée nationale n’ont recueilli que 16% des électeurs inscrits, lors du premier tour des élections législatives de juin 2012. Un peu court comme majorité pour transformer un homme en femme !

-Le Sénat a voté le projet de loi Taubira à la sauvette. Une loi dont la garde des Sceaux a dit qu’elle portait un « changement de civilisation » mais dont, faute de scrutin public, on ne sait pas individuellement qui l’a votée et qui l’a refusée. Un formidable déni de démocratie voulu par tous les groupes politiques de la majorité comme de l’opposition. Une belle manœuvre qui permet de faire adopter la loi, qui autorise les sénateurs à se faire passer pour « progressistes » auprès des médias parisiens tout en leur permettant individuellement de dire à leurs électeurs d’outre-mer ou des campagnes françaises qu’ils n’ont pas approuvé le « mariage gay ». Belle manœuvre, vraiment, mais qui indigne à juste titre les adversaires de la loi Taubira et tous les démocrates sincères.

-Plus généralement, les hommes politiques les plus en vue représentent de moins en moins leurs électeurs car ce sont des médiagogues, des hommes et des femmes qui cherchent à plaire aux médias plus qu’au peuple, à coups de surenchère politiquement correcte. Telle est la principale cause du discrédit de la démocratie représentative.

Or toutes ces minorités se tiennent et se soutiennent. C’est contre elles que la révolte gronde. Moins d’un an après l’élection de François Hollande la probabilité d’une crise politique majeure est devant nous : la dissolution de l’Assemblée nationale ou la démission du président de la République ne changeraient pas grand-chose. Ce qu’il faut c’est rendre la parole au peuple. Par le référendum d’initiative populaire national et local. A partir de la demande de 500.000 électeurs au plan national et ce sans censure prétendument constitutionnelle. A partir de 7,5% des électeurs au niveau local, sous la seule réserve qu’il s’agisse d’une délibération locale. Bien sûr, ceci devrait s’accompagner d’un rétablissement de la liberté d’expression, de l’arrêt des subventions aux grands lobbys politiquement corrects et du retour au pluralisme des médias.

Le printemps français doit trouver un débouché politique autour de thèmes forts : référendum et démocratie directe ; liberté d’expression et pluralisme des médias ; dénonciation de la dictature des minorités et respect de la majorité populaire. Quant aux manifestants ils ne doivent pas avoir peur de la radicalité car seule la radicalité s’attaque aux racines du mal et propose un ressourcement créateur.

 Jean-Yves Le Gallou (Polémia, 14 avril 2013)

mardi, 23 avril 2013

How are Revolutions Born?

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How are Revolutions Born?

By Dominique Venner 

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

Translated by Greg Johnson

The birth of revolutions is a fascinating, quite relevant, and little-known topic. It was studied by the sociologist Jules Monnerot (1908–1995) after the French events of May 1968 in his book Sociologie de la Révolution [Sociology of Revolution] (Paris: Fayard, 1969). A valuable work for which the author has forged a series of concepts applicable to all situations.

As a sociological study and not one in the history of ideas, Monnerot uses one term, “revolution”—without, of course, ignoring all that separates and opposes the various revolutions of the 20th century:  Bolshevism, Italian Fascism, German National Socialism, the French revolutions of 1944 or 1968. Indeed, he applies the same sociological analysis to these mass phenomena while making a clear distinction between conservative revolutions and deconstructive revolutions.

To begin, Monnerot defines some concepts applicable to any revolution. Firstly, the “historical situation“: it is one we’ll never see twice. This is true for 1789, 1917, 1922, 1933, or 1968. Another complementary notion: the “situation of distress.” It is characterized by uncontrolled disturbances. The social structure is defeated: the elements are no longer in place.

When a society is stable, we can distinguish normal (“homogeneous“) and marginal (“heterogeneous“) social elements. Marginal elements are marginal because they are maintained by the pressure of “homogeneous” elements. When a critical threshold of upheaval is reached, the homogeneous part begins to dissociate. Chaos then becomes contagious.

An interesting observation that applies to conservative revolutions: “the homogeneous, even in dissociation, remains homogeneous.” When the upheaval is radical, “the very foundation of society mounts a demand for power.” Fascism, in 1922 or 1933, for example, was a response to this demand in a highly developed society (industry, science, culture). In such a society, when order collapsed, the conservative elements (homogeneous) become temporarily revolutionary in their desire for order and demanded power.

How do we arrive at a “revolutionary situation“? Monnerot’s synthetic response: deficiency at the top. A regime crisis is characterized by a “plurality of conflicts.” Any exception to the authority of those in power, and disorder becomes endemic. The society “boils over.”

This effervescence is not revolution. It is a phase, a time, with a beginning and an end (a cooling down) when the medium “is no longer combustible.” When the excitement dies down, the same people are not in command (Robespierre was replaced by Napoleon, Trotsky by Stalin, Mussolini by Balbo).

The revolutionary and turbulent condition involves the “masses.” These are momentary coagulations, troops of revolution. To lead the masses, to give them a nervous system, the Jacobins and Lenin (much more efficiently) developed the instrument of the party.

What Leninists called “the radicalization of the masses” is a tendency to politicize those hitherto conformist and little inclined to be passionate about the public good (those who above all ask the state to do the job of the state). When it enters a phase of turmoil, “society is traversed in all directions intense emotional reactions, like iron filings in a magnetic current.”

Situations of distress bring to the fore violent elites: the “subversive heterogenes,” the irregular and marginal that the customary barriers cannot stop. They give the movement the force to break through.

In a revolutionary situation, the painful lack and need of power can force social elements that aspire to order down the road to revolution. “A time comes when the Arditi or young Baltic lancers,[1] previously regarded as reprobates, appear more reassuring than worrisome to the most homogeneous part of the population. They seem to embody, through misfortune, the values ​​of courage, bravery, and character without which there is no great country. . . . Even those who are not supporters think they should be allowed to try.” This is a good summary of exceptional historical situations. But, as Monnerot specified, the “historical situation” is that which never arises twice.

In the France of 2013, we are entering a “historical situation”? Not yet, surely. But there are signs that it may head toward such an unforeseen situation. Will it be all that it promises? It is too early to say. But nothing is impossible.

Source: http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/2013/04/comment-naissent-les-revolution/ [2]

Translator’s Note

1. The Arditi were the Italian shock troops of the First World War, many of whom became Fascist Blackshirts. Baltic lancers probably refer to the German Freikorps veterans who played a similar role in the National Socialist movement. I wish to thank Robert Steuckers for clarifying the latter point. If Monnerot is alluding to a specific individual, please email me at: editor@counter-currents.com.

 


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

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/04/how-are-revolutions-born/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/franceprotest.jpg

[2] http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/2013/04/comment-naissent-les-revolution/: http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/2013/04/comment-naissent-les-revolution/

vendredi, 19 avril 2013

Comment naissent les révolutions?

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Dominique VENNER:

Comment naissent les révolutions?

C’est un sujet passionnant, très actuel et mal connu que la naissance des révolutions. Il avait été étudié par le sociologue Jules Monnerot (1908-1995) après les événements français de Mai 68 dans son livre Sociologie de la Révolution (Fayard, 1969). Travail précieux pour lequel son auteur a forgé une série de concepts applicables à toutes les situations.


S’agissant d’une étude sociologique et non d’une histoire des idées, Monnerot use d’une seule appellation, sans ignorer bien entendu tout ce qui sépare et oppose les différentes révolutions du XXe siècle, bolchevisme, fascisme italien, national-socialisme allemand, révolution de 1944, ou celle de 1968. Il estime en effet que ces phénomènes de foule relèvent de la même analyse sociologique, tout en faisant une nette différence entre révolutions de type conservatrice et révolutions déconstructrices.

Mais d’abord, Monnerot définit quelques concepts applicables à toute révolution. En premier lieu la « situation historique ». Elle est celle que l’on ne reverra jamais deux fois. C’est vrai pour 1789, 1917, 1922, 1933 ou 1968. Autre notion complémentaire : la « situation de détresse ». Elle se caractérise par des troubles non maîtrisés. La structure sociale se défait : les éléments ne sont plus à leur place.

Quand une société est stable, on y distingue des éléments sociaux normaux (« homogènes ») et des marginaux (« hétérogènes »). Les éléments marginaux sont en marge parce qu’ils y sont maintenus par la pression des éléments « homogènes ». Lorsqu’un seuil critique de bouleversement est atteint, la partie homogène commence à se dissocier. On observe alors comme une contagion de chaos.


Remarque intéressante qui s’applique aux révolutions conservatrices : « l’homogène, même en voie de dissociation, reste l’homogène ». Quand le bouleversement est radical, « du fond même de la société monte une demande de pouvoir ». Le fascisme, en 1922 ou 1933, fut par exemple une réponse à cette demande dans une société ayant un haut développement (industrie, sciences, culture). Dans une telle société, quand l’ordre s’est effondré, les éléments conservateurs (homogènes) deviennent provisoirement révolutionnaires par aspiration à l’ordre et demande de pouvoir.


Comment aboutit-on à une « situation révolutionnaire » ? Réponse synthétique de Monnerot : par carence au sommet. Une crise de régime se caractérise par une « pluralité des conflits ». Tout échappe à l’autorité du pouvoir en place, le désordre devient endémique. La société entre en « effervescence ».


L’effervescence n’est pas la révolution. Elle en est une phase, un moment, avec un début et une fin (un refroidissement) quand le milieu « n’est plus combustible ». Quand l’effervescence retombe, ce ne sont plus les mêmes qui sont aux commandes (Robespierre a été remplacé par Napoléon, Trotski par Staline, Balbo par Mussolini).


Situation révolutionnaire et effervescence font intervenir les « masses ». Ce sont des coagulations momentanées, les troupes des révolutions. Pour diriger les masses, leur donner un système nerveux, les jacobins, puis Lénine (en beaucoup plus efficace) ont conçu l’instrument du parti.


Ce que les léninistes appelaient « la radicalisation des masses », est une tendance à la politisation de catégories jusque-là conformistes et peu enclines à se passionner pour la chose publique (elles demandent surtout à l’État de faire son métier d’État). On entre alors dans une phase d’effervescence, « la société est parcourue en tous sens de réactions affectives intenses, comme les grains de limaille de fer par un courant magnétique ».


Les situations de détresse font apparaître sur le devant de la scène des élites violentes : les « hétérogènes subversifs », des irréguliers et marginaux que les barrières habituelles n’arrêtent pas. Ils contribuent à donner au mouvement sa force de rupture.


Dans une situation révolutionnaire, la carence et le besoin douloureux du pouvoir, peuvent jeter sur la voie de la révolution des éléments sociaux qui n’aspirent qu’à l’ordre. « Une heure vient où les Arditi, les jeunes lansquenets du Baltikum, les réprouvés qui le sont de moins en moins, n’apparaissent plus inquiétants, mais rassurants à la partie la plus homogène de la population. Ils semblent incarner à travers le malheur les valeurs de courage, de bravoure  et de caractère sans quoi il n’est pas de grand pays… Même ceux qui ne sont pas leurs partisans pensent qu’il faut laisser faire l’expérience. » C’est un bon résumé des situations historiques d’exception. Mais, comme le précise Monnerot, la « situation historique » est celle que l’on ne revoit jamais deux fois.


Dans la France de 2013, sommes-nous entrés dans une « situation historique » ? Pas encore, bien entendu. Mais des signes attestent que l’on peut se diriger vers une telle situation imprévue. Ira-t-elle jusqu’au bout de ses promesses ? Il est trop tôt pour se prononcer. Mais rien n’est impossible.
 

Dominique Venner

jeudi, 18 avril 2013

“They’re All Rotten!”

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“They’re All Rotten!”

By Dominique Venner

Translated by Greg Johnson

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

This exclamation is probably a bit simplistic, but it sums up the feeling of revulsion spreading today throughout the fair country of France. When taxes were being raised to benefit various electoral constituencies, explosive revelations about the corruption of the minister in charge forced back the increase. This lovely scandal added to the rising anger of a large segment of the public against a clear intent to destroy them, as evidenced by mass immigration policy or the legalization of gay marriage.

Corruption and embezzlement by people in power, the politicians or officials of a bloated administration, is nothing new. Whole libraries have been devoted to the scandals of the successive republics. However, the Fifth Republic has broken all records since it was founded by General de Gaulle, a man of integrity who loved to be surrounded by rogues. It is not just that the temptations became more numerous, fueled by new financial powers granted to elected officials and huge windfalls to administrations, unions, and associations for this or that. No, there was something else.

The reasons for public corruption are manifold. Some are historical. I happen to remember that in the purge trials in the High Court, after 1945, against the ministers of the French State, otherwise known as the Vichy regime, it was impossible to identify a single case of enrichment through fraud or corruption, despite the strenuous efforts of investigators.[1] The men who held power then were certainly criticized in many ways, but, in general, they were imbued with a sense of almost military duty to their country trapped in a situation of extreme distress. No doubt they also knew they were being watched by the large surveillance corps established by the State. The idea of ​​duty then evaporated in many of their successors, who without doubt profited from the real or supposed dangers they faced during the war years.

But, since I wish to invoke the mindset, i.e. the “representations” that we all know exist and determine our behavior, we must surely dig deeper.

Europe since earliest antiquity has always been ruled by the idea that each individual is inseparable from his community, clan, tribe, people, city, empire, to which he is linked by a bond more sacred than life itself. This unquestioned belief, of which the Iliad offers the oldest and most poetic expression, took various forms. Think of the worship of ancestors for whom the city owed its existence, or the loyalty to the prince who was its visible expression.

The first threat was introduced by the individualism of early Christianity. The idea of ​​a personal god emancipated men from the hitherto unquestioned authority of ethnic gods of the city. Yet the Church itself reimposed the idea that the individual will could not order things as it pleased.

Yet the seed of a spiritual revolution had been sown. It reappeared unexpectedly in the religious individualism of the Reformation. In the following century, the rationalist idea of absolute individualism was developed forcefully by Descartes (“I think, therefore, I am”). The philosopher also made central the biblical idea of ​​man as the master and possessor of nature. No doubt, in Cartesian thought, man was subject to the laws of God, but God set a very bad example. Unlike the ancient gods, He was not dependent on a natural order anterior and superior to him. He was the single all-powerful and arbitrary creator of all things, of life and nature itself, according to His sole discretion. If this God was a creator free of all limits, then why not man, who is made his image, as well?

Set in motion by the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries, this idea has no known limits. In it lies what we call “modernity.” This idea assumes that man is his own creator and he can recreate the world as he pleases. There is no other principle than the will and pleasure of each individual. Consequently, the legitimacy of a society no longer depends on its compliance with the eternal laws of the ethnos. It depends only on the momentary consent of individual wills. In other words, society is legitimate only as a contract resulting from a free agreement between parties who are pursuing their own advantage.[2]

If self-interest is the sole basis of the social compact, there is nothing to prevent us from satisfying our interests and appetites, including by filling our pockets if the opportunity is offered by our position. All the more so, given that market society, through advertising, tells us that we are obligated to enjoy ourselves, indeed, that we exist only to enjoy ourselves.

Still, despite this individualistic and materialistic logic, we have long maintained communal ties of birth and fatherland and all the obligations these imply. These ties have been progressively destroyed across Europe in the decades following World War II, while the triumphant consumer society arrived from the United States. Like other European countries, France has gradually ceased to be a nation (based on nationality, common birth) to become an aggregate of individuals united by their pleasures or the ideas they have of their interests. The former obligation to “serve” has been replaced by the general temptation to “serve oneself.” This is the logical consequence of the principle that founds society solely on human rights, thus on each individual’s interests.

And now, before our eyes, this repulsive logic faces a revolt from the depths. We are witnessing the unexpected awakening of all those who, through atavistic reflexes, feel deep down that unquestionable ancestry is what make a clan, a people, or a nation.

Notes

1. See my Histoire de la Collaboration [History of the Collaboration] (Paris: Pygmalion, 2002).

2. Rousseau understood that this was the fault of the social contract. He sought to remedy it by justifying the use of force to compel the reluctant to submit to a problematic “general will.”

Source: http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/2013/04/tous-pourris/ [2]


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

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/04/theyre-all-rotten/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/parisprotest.jpg

[2] http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/2013/04/tous-pourris/: http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/2013/04/tous-pourris/

Systemverbesserung oder Systemüberwindung?

Ob schwarz oder rot, Politiker seien immer das gleiche Gesindel, soll Thomas Bernhard gemeint haben. Dieser Meinung scheinen sich, und zwar nicht allein auf die beiden Erwähnten bezogen, immer mehr aufgeklärte Bürger angeschlossen zu haben.                

Fest steht, den traditionellen Parteien steht das Wasser unterschiedlich bis zum Hals, und ob sie auf ihrer bisherigen Erfolgswelle weiter schwimmen können, wird schon der nächste Herbst zeigen, darf aber stark bezweifelt werden.

Die Gunst der Stunde nützen daher immer mehr Initiativen und Neugründungen, über deren Chancen zumindest in zwei Fällen, dem des Team Stronach in Österreich und dem der Alternative für Deutschland, (ADL) sich schon Zuverlässigeres über deren Chancen sagen ließe. Interessanterweise läßt sich bei beiden Neugründungen neben Demokratiefreundlichkeit und rechtsstaatlicher Reformbereitschaft eine nicht unwesentliche ökonomielastige Orientierung und Motivation erkennen.

Wie weit nun diese beiden und andere Mitbewerber auch wieder nur Partikularinteressen vertreten, könnte sich noch in aller Klarheit zeigen. Aber unabhängig davon ist natürlich jede Neubelebung des politischen Lagers zu begrüßen. Die traditionellen Parteien haben ausgedient, sind ermattet und orientierungslos. Schlimmer noch: sie sind in ihrem weltanschaulichen Kern derart geschwächt, so daß ihnen der Antriebsstoff im Inneren abhanden gekommen ist.

Nun scheint es aber so zu sein, daß der eine oder andere Neo-Parteiführer alles andere als ein erfahrenre politischer Kämpe ist, schon gar nicht ein solcher, der gesamtgesellschaftliche Anstöße im Sinne einer  neuen weltanschaulichen Richtung vorgeben möchte oder könnte.

Wie gesagt, scheint es so. Dazu wäre außerdem, wie zuletzt zwei Beispiele in Österreich gezeigt haben, eine höhere  Kunst der Integrationsleistung erforderlich., was Geld oder Großsprech allein auf Dauer gewiß nicht schaffen können.

Ob es außerdem, wie in einem Fall, genügt, zur Balance und Bündelung einige selbstverständliche moralische oder sonstige Werte als strategischen Punkt voranzustellen? Daß es zwei oder drei entscheidenden Botschaften bedarf, um eine Partei nach vorne zu bringen, ist schon klar. Sind diese aber stark genug um bruchsichere parteiinterne Integration und anhaltende Bindungen zu schaffen? Und wenn, mit welchem gesamtgesellschaftlichem Ziel?

Die Zielfrage des politischen Einsatzes hat jedenfalls mehr zu sein als den EURO in Frage zu stellen oder abzulehnen, hat sogar mehr zu sein als dem Nationalstaat wieder mehr Kompetenzen zu verschaffen. Beides ist wichtig, sogar sehr wichtig, es könnte sich aber an einem entscheidenden Punkt als nicht genügend genug erweisen, dem der Systemfrage. Diese in inhaltlicher wie auch organisatorischer Hinsicht.

Das ist nämlich des Pudels Kern: Wenn, wie Frank Stronach meint, und ich denke bei der ADL wird es ähnlich sein, es nur darum geht „zu einer Systemverbesserung beizutragen“, dann wird eben am Ende gerade jenes System effizienter gemacht und am Leben erhalten, daß uns als Volk und Gesellschaft an den Rand des Abgrundes geführt hat. Also gewissermaßen nicht Systemüberwindung, sondern Systemrettung als Ziel?

Wer aber in der Sackgasse steckt, dem nützt eine Kurskorrektur nicht, er muß umkehren. Er muß die Ursachen einer ganz allgemeinen Fehlentwicklung aufspüren und beseitigen versuchen, die Probleme an der Wurzel anpacken und dazu natürlich  in größeren Zusammenhängen und Zeiträumen denken können.                                         

Spektakuläre Einzelmaßnahmen und spezielle politische Dienstleistungen im Interesse der Verursacher der Krise, die ja in Wirklichkeit total ist,  hielt ich für wenig sinnvoll und noch weniger wünschenswert.

Am Ende des Tages harrt die eine Frage einer Beantwortung: Welches Österreich? Welches Deutschland? Schlaraffenland für Spekulanten, Abzocker, Kriminelle und Scheinasylanten? Spielwiese der Globalisierer? Multikulti-Paradies nach Geschmack rot-grüner oder liberaler Weltverbesserer? Oder souveräner Nationalstaat als Wahrer und Garant kultureller wie nationaler Identität, von am Gemeinwohl orientierter ökosozialer Volkswirtschaft, nicht zuletzt von Rede- und Meinungsfreiheit?                                                                                                                              

Ein solcher, freier und unabhängiger Staat, der bereit ist, in der Besinnung auf die Wurzeln und geschichtlichen Grundlagen der eigenen wie auch der anderen nationalen Kulturen Europas alle geistigen und menschlichen Kräfte für eine wahre europäische Gemeinschaft in einem revolutionärem Ruck  zu mobilisieren, ist gefragt. Von den Neuen auch erwünscht?  Wer den schaffen will, der sollte es laut und deutlich sagen.  Der Glaubwürdigkeit wegen.

lundi, 15 avril 2013

Tous pourris!

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Tous pourris!

par Dominique Venner

Ex: http://zentropaville.tumblr.com/

L’exclamation est un peu facile sans doute, mais elle résume le sentiment d’écœurement nauséeux qui se répand ces temps-ci dans le beau pays de France. Tandis que s’alourdissaient les impôts en faveur de diverses clientèles électorales, explosaient les révélations sur la corruption du ministre chargé de faire rentrer de force ces impôts. Ce joli scandale s’ajoutait à la colère montante d’une large fraction de l’opinion devant une évidente volonté de détruire, dont témoignent la politique d’immigration massive ou le projet de mariage gay.


La corruption et les malversations des gens de pouvoir, politiciens ou agents d’une administration pléthorique, n’est pas une nouveauté. Des bibliothèques entières ont été consacrées aux « affaires » des républiques successives, la Vème ayant cependant battu tous les records depuis sa fondation par le général de Gaulle, un homme intègre qui aimait s’entourer de coquins. Ce n’est pas seulement que les tentations étaient devenues plus nombreuses, alimentées par de nouveaux pouvoirs financiers accordés aux élus et par l’énorme pactole des administrations, syndicats et associations d’aide à ceci ou à cela. Non, il y avait autre chose.


Les raisons de la corruption publique sont multiples. Certaines sont historiques. Il m’est arrivé de rappeler que, lors des procès d’épuration en Haute Cour, après 1945, à l’encontre des ministres de l’État français, autrement appelé régime de Vichy, il fut impossible de relever un seul cas d’enrichissement frauduleux ou de corruption, en dépit des efforts d’enquêteurs acharnés (1). Les hommes qui ont alors exercé le pouvoir  étaient certainement critiquables à de multiples égards, mais, dans l’ensemble, ils étaient imprégnés par une idée presque militaire du devoir à l’égard de leur pays prisonnier d’une situation d’extrême détresse. Sans doute savaient-ils aussi qu’ils étaient surveillés par les grands corps de l’État restés en place. L’idée du devoir s’est ensuite évaporée chez beaucoup de leurs successeurs qui entendaient sans doute rentabiliser les périls réels ou supposés des années de guerre.


Mais, puisque je viens d’invoquer les mentalités, autrement dit les “représentations” que chacun se fait de l’existence et qui conditionnent la façon de se comporter, il faut certainement creuser plus loin encore.


En Europe, depuis l’Antiquité la plus ancienne, avait toujours dominé l’idée que chaque individu était inséparable de sa communauté, clan, tribu, peuple, cité, empire, à laquelle il était lié par un lien plus sacré que la vie elle-même. Cette conscience indiscutée, dont l’Iliade offre la plus ancienne et poétique expression, prenait des formes diverses. On songe au culte des ancêtres à qui la cité devait son existence, ou encore à la loyauté pour le prince qui en était l’expression visible. Une première menace fut introduite par l’individualisme du christianisme primitif. L’idée d’un dieu personnel permettait de s’émanciper de l’autorité jusque-là indiscutée des dieux ethniques de la cité. Pourtant, imposée par l’Église, la conviction se reconstitua qu’aucune volonté particulière ne pouvait ordonner les choses à son gré.


Pourtant le germe d’une révolution spirituelle avait été semé. Il réapparut de façon imprévue avec l’individualisme religieux de la Réforme. Au siècle suivant, se développa l’idée rationaliste d’un individualisme absolu développée avec force par Descartes (« je pense donc je suis »). Le philosophe faisait sienne également l’ancienne idée biblique de l’homme possesseur et maître de la nature. Sans doute, dans la pensée cartésienne, l’homme était-il soumis aux lois de Dieu, mais ce dernier avait donné un fort mauvais exemple. Contrairement aux dieux antiques, il n’était dépendant d’aucun ordre naturel antérieur et supérieur à lui. Il était l’unique créateur tout puissant et arbitraire de toute chose, de la vie et de la nature elle-même, selon son seul vouloir. Si ce Dieu avait été le créateur affranchi de toute limite, pourquoi les hommes, à son image, ne le seraient-ils pas à leur tour ?

Mise en mouvement par la révolution scientifique des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècle, cette idée n’a plus connu de bornes. C’est en elle que réside ce que nous appelons la « modernité ». Cette idée postule que les hommes sont les auteurs d’eux-mêmes et qu’ils peuvent recommencer le monde à leur gré. Il n’y a d’autre principe que la volonté et le bon plaisir de chaque individu. Par voie de conséquence, la légitimité d’une société n’est pas dépendante de sa conformité avec les lois éternelles de l’ethnos. Elle ne dépend que du consentement momentané des volontés individuelles. Autrement dit, n’est légitime qu’une société contractuelle, résultant d’un libre accord entre des parties qui y trouvent chacune leur avantage (2).

Si l’intérêt personnel est le seul fondement du pacte social, on ne voit pas ce qui interdirait à chacun d’en profiter au mieux de ses intérêts et de ses appétits, donc de se remplir les poches si l’occasion lui est offerte par sa position. Cela d’autant plus que le discours de la société marchande, par le truchement de la publicité, fait à chacun l’obligation de jouir, plus exactement de n’exister que pour jouir.

Longtemps, en dépit de cette logique individualiste et matérialiste, le lien communautaire de la naissance et de la patrie s’était maintenu, avec toutes les obligations qui en découlent. Ce lien a été progressivement détruit un peu partout en Europe dans les décennies qui ont suivi la Seconde Guerre mondiale, alors que triomphait la société de consommation venue des États-Unis. À l’instar des autres pays d’Europe, la France a donc cessé peu à peu d’être une nation (fondée sur la natio, la naissance commune) pour devenir un agrégat d’individus rassemblés par leur bon plaisir ou l’idée qu’ils se font de leur intérêt. L’ancienne obligation de « servir » a donc été remplacée par la tentation générale de « se servir ». Telle est la conséquence logique du principe qui fonde la société sur les seuls droits de l’homme, donc sur l’intérêt de chacun.


Et voilà que, sous nos yeux, cette répugnante logique se heurte à une révolte qui vient des profondeurs. Nous assistons à l’éveil inattendu de tous ceux qui, par réflexe atavique, sentent au fond d’eux-mêmes que l’appartenance ancestrale indiscutée est ce qui fonde un clan, un peuple ou une nation.
 

Dominique Venner

 Notes

  1. J’ai rappelé le fait, références à l’appui, dans mon Histoire de la Collaboration (Pygmalion, 2002).
  2. Rousseau avait compris que telle était la faille du contrat social. Il prétendit y remédier en justifiant l’usage de la force pour contraindre les récalcitrants à se soumettre à une problématique « volonté générale »

dimanche, 14 avril 2013

L'enracinement, une arme contre la mondialisation

L'enracinement, une arme contre la mondialisation

00:05 Publié dans Nouvelle Droite | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : enracinement, mondialisation, nouvelle droite | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

samedi, 13 avril 2013

Convergence of Catastrophes by Guillaume Faye

Politics Book Review:

Convergence of Catastrophes by Guillaume Faye,

by Jared Taylor

vendredi, 12 avril 2013

Méridien Zéro - Un homme, un destin : Jean Mabire

Méridien Zéro:

Un homme, un destin :

Jean Mabire

Hegelian Reflections on Body Piercing & Tattoos

pierctatt.jpg

A Little Death:
Hegelian Reflections on Body Piercing & Tattoos

By Greg Johnson

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

It is safe to say that urban youth culture in the contemporary West is pretty much saturated with hedonism. Yet in the midst of all this hedoism, tattooing and body piercing are huge industries, and they hurt.

It is, moreover, shared pain, broadcast to and imposed upon all who see it. It is natural for human beings to feel sympathy for people in pain, or who show visible signs of having suffered pain. Perhaps this is a sign of morbid oversensitivity, but I believe I am not the only person who feels sympathy pains when I see tattoos and piercings, especially extensive ones. Sometimes I actually shudder and look away. Furthermore, am I the only one who finds tattoos and piercings extreme sexual turn-offs?

Sexual sadism and mascochism fit into a larger hedonistic context, since the are merely intensifications or exaggerations of features of normal hetrosexual relations. But what is the place of the non-sexual masochism of body piercing and tattooing in a larger hedonistic society?

This question first occured to me when I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, in which Jody, the wife of the drug dealer Lance, launches into a discourse about piercing. Jody, it is safe to say, is about as complete a hedonist as has ever existed. Yet Jody has had her body pierced sixteen times, including her left nipple, her clitoris, and her tongue. And in each instance, she used a needle rather than a relatively quick and painless piercing gun. As she says, “That gun goes against the whole idea behind piercing.”

Well then, I had to ask, “What is the whole idea behind piercing?” Yes, piercing is fashionable. Yes, it is involved with sexual fetishism. (But fetishism is not mere desire either.) Yes, it is now big business. But the phenomenon cannot merely be reduced to hedonistic self-indulgence. It is irreversible. And it hurts. And apparently, if it doesn’t hurt, that contradicts the “whole idea.”

For Hegel, history begins when a distinctly human form of self-consciousness emerges. Prehistoric man is merely a clever animal who is ruled by his desires, by the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, including the desire for self-preservation. When we enjoy creature comforts, however, we are aware of ourselves as mere creatures.

But human beings are more than clever animals. Slumbering within prehistoric man is a need for self-consciousness. To see our bodies, we need a mirror. To see our self also requires an appropriate “mirror.” For Hegel, the first mirror is the consciousness of others. We see ourselves as we are seen by others. When the reactions of others coincide with our sense of self, we feel pride. When we are treated in ways that contradict our sense of self, we feel anger. Sometimes this anger leads to conflict, and sometimes this conflict threatens our very lives.

For Hegel, the duel to the death for honor reveals the existence of two different and conflicting parts of the soul: desire, including the desire for self-preservation, and honor, which is willing to risk death to find satisfaction. For Hegel, the man who is willing to risk death to preserve his honor is a natural master. The man who is willing to suffer dishonor to preserve his life is a natural slave. For the master, honor rules over desire. For the slave, desire rules over honor. Hegel sees the struggle to the death over honor as the beginning of history, history being understood as a process by which human beings come to self-understanding.

Of course not every road to self-understanding involves an encounter with death. But the primary means by which we understand ourselves is participation in a culture, and civilized life entails countless repressions of our physical desires, countless little pains and little deaths.

According to Hegel, if history is a process of self-discovery, then history can end when we learn the truth about ourselves and live accordingly. And the truth is that all men are free. Hegel’s follower Francis Fukuyama became famous for arguing that the fall of communism and the globalization of liberal democracy was the end of history. But he also followed Alexandre Kojève, Hegel’s greatest 20th-century interpreter, who argued that the end of history would not bring a society of universal freedom, but a society of universal slavery: slavery in the spiritual sense of the rule of desire over honor. And that is a perfect description of modern, hedonistic, bourgeois society.

But there is more to the soul than desire. Thus man cannot be fully satisfied by mere hedonism. The restless drive for self-consciousness that gave rise to history in the first place will stir again. In a world of casual and meaningless self-indulgence, piercing and its first cousin tattooing are thus deeply significant; they are tests; they are limit experiences; they are encounters with something—something in ourselves and in the world—that transcends the economy of desire. To “mortify” the flesh literally means to kill it. Each little hole is a little death, which derives its meaning from a big death, a whole death, death itself. Thus one can see the contemporary craze with body modification as the re-enactment of the primal humanizing encounter with death within the context of a decadent and dehumanizing society. History is beginning again.


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

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/03/a-little-death-hegelian-reflections-on-body-piercing-and-tattoos/

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jeudi, 11 avril 2013

Conférence de Guillaume Faye en Allemagne en 2006

Conférence de Guillaume Faye

en Allemagne en 2006

00:05 Publié dans Nouvelle Droite | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : guillauem faye, nouvelle droite | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

mercredi, 10 avril 2013

„5 to 9“-Konservatismus

protection-famille-e0593.gif

„5 to 9“-Konservatismus

von Greg Johnson

Übersetzt von Deep Roots

English original here [2]

Vor Jahren lieferte mir der Freund, der den größten Einfluß auf mein Erwachen bezüglich Rasse und der Judenfrage hatte, eine ziemlich Klarheit schaffende Unterscheidung zwischen „9 to 5“- und „5 to 9“-Konservatismus. 

Die „9 to 5“-Konservativen beziehen ihren Namen aus dem standardmäßigen Arbeitstag von 9 Uhr morgens bis 5 Uhr nachmittags. Diese Konservativen konzentrieren sich auf den wirtschaftlichen Bereich. Sie möchten die wirtschaftliche Freiheit vor Einmischung durch die Regierung bewahren. Sie konzentrieren sich auch darauf, Steuern zu senken und Widerstand gegen neue Steuern zu leisten, sodaß produktive Menschen mehr von den Früchten ihrer Arbeit behalten können. Kurz, „9 to 5“-Konservatismus ist einfach Wirtschaftsliberalismus. Seine ideologisch reinsten Befürworter in Amerika sind heute die Libertären und die Tea Party.

„5 to 9“-Konservative beziehen ihren Namen vom Rest des Tages. Sie konzentrieren sich darauf, die nicht-ökonomischen Bereiche des Lebens zu bewahren: Familie, Zivilgesellschaft, Religion, Kultur, Geschichte, Umwelt etc.

Viele „5 to 9“-Konservative sind in Wirklichkeit politische Liberale. Zum Beispiel sind Umweltschützer, Bewahrer historischer Dinge und Förderer von fußläufig erreichbaren Gemeinden, von Grundstückserschließungen mit gemischter Nutzung, Architektur mit menschlichem Maßstab und öffentlichen Räumen allesamt objektiv Konservative der „5 to 9“-Sorte (ungeachtet irgendwelcher echt linker Positionen, die sie vielleicht ebenfalls beziehen). Aber politisch tendieren sie dazu, links der Mitte zu sein und mit den kommerziellen Interessen über Kreuz zu sein, die von den „9 to 5“-Konservativen verfochten werden.

Es hat seinen guten Grund, warum die beiden Arten von Konservativen miteinander auf Kriegsfuß sind. Unbegrenzte wirtschaftliche Freiheit neigt dazu, die anderen Bereiche der Gesellschaft zu korrodieren. Am besten versteht man das, wenn man über Arbeitszeiten nachdenkt. In Amerika haben wir heute keine „9 to 5“-Wirtschaft. Wir haben eine 24/7-Wirtschaft.

Als bohemehafter Intellektueller kann ich mich darüber nicht beschweren. Ich finde es sehr bequem, daß ich um 4 Uhr morgens rausgehen kann, um eine Packung Milch von einem Meth-Zombie zu kaufen. Amerikaner, die in Deutschland leben, sind schockiert, daß die meisten Geschäfte um 6 Uhr abends geschlossen und an Wochenenden gar nicht offen sind. Es zwingt sie dazu, tatsächlich vorauszuplanen, eine der vielen Fähigkeiten, die das amerikanische Leben hat erschlaffen lassen.

Der Grund, warum Deutschland und andere Länder die Geschäftszeiten regulieren, ist nicht, daß sie „Sozialisten“ oder „Linke“ sind. Es liegt daran, daß sie „5 to 9“-Konservative sind. Sie begreifen, daß Ladenangestellte Freunde und Familien und Gemeinschaften haben. Die Arbeitszeiten werden reguliert, damit mehr Menschen die Stunden von 5 bis 9 Uhr und die Wochenenden mit ihren Familien und Freunden verbringen können. Ja, solche Gesetze sind uns insofern lästig, als wir Konsumenten sind. Aber wir sind mehr als Konsumenten. Wir haben Familien, Freunde, Gemeinschaften. Oder wir sollten welche haben.

Warum muß die Regierung sich einmischen? Sagen wir, es gibt keine Gesetze, die die Öffnungszeiten von Einzelhandelsunternehmen regeln. Wenn eine Firma beschließt, ihre Öffnungszeiten am Abend auszudehnen, um ihren Marktanteil zu vergrößern, werden andere unter Druck geraten, nachzuziehen. Schließlich werden wir uns durch die Magie des Marktes in eine 24/7-Wirtschaft hineinkonkurrenzieren, in der es ganze Gewerbezweige gibt, in denen die Anfangsjobs, die oft von jungen Leuten besetzt werden, welche Kinder haben (oder haben sollten), die in den treffend „Friedhofsschichten“ genannten Nachtschichten sind.

Vom gesellschaftlichen Standpunkt aus ist dies eine zutiefst destruktive Entwicklung. Und vom wirtschaftlichen Standpunkt aus ist sie ebenfalls destruktiv, nachdem in einem 24-Stunden-Tag dieselbe Menge Milch verkauft wird, wie an einem 10-Stunden-Tag verkauft würde, nur daß alle gezwungen sind, 24/7 die Lichter eingeschaltet und die Gebäude bemannt zu lassen, weil sie sonst ihren Marktanteil verlieren würden.

F. Roger Devlin verwendet eine exzellente Analogie, um die Natur destruktiver Konkurrenz zu veranschaulichen. Stellt euch vor, ihr würdet bei einer Sportveranstaltung sitzen. Es könnte für euch vorteilhaft sein, aufzustehen, um ein aufregendes Spiel zu sehen. Aber wenn eine Person steht, werden andere dazu gezwungen sein, ebenfalls zu stehen. Schließlich werden alle stehen, sodaß der Vorteil des Stehens für jedes Individuum aufgehoben wäre. Jeder wird eine gleich gute Sicht auf das Spiel haben wie am Anfang, aber sie werden es weniger bequem haben… weil sie stehen. Der einzige Weg, diese Art destruktiver Konkurrenz zu stoppen, besteht darin, daß die Verantwortlichen Gesetze dagegen erlassen und durchsetzen. Dasselbe gilt für den wirtschaftlichen Bereich.

Die Idee des „5 to 9“-Konservatismus ist für weiße Nationalisten nützlich, weil wir selber „5 to 9“-Konservative sind. Immerhin sind wir darauf bedacht, unsere Rasse zu bewahren, und wir sind bereit, mit den „9 to 5“-Konservativen zu kämpfen, die uns zerstören, indem sie nichtweiße Arbeitskräfte importieren, die weiße Jobs wegnehmen, oder weiße Jobs in nichtweiße Länder exportieren.

Die Unterscheidung zwischen „5 to 9“- und „9 to 5“-Konservativen ist auch hilfreich, um neue politische Allianzen ins Auge zu fassen – und bestehende zu zerbrechen. In Amerika sind die Großparteien heute Koalitionen, die beide bedeutende Zahlen von „5 to 9“-Konservativen enthalten.

Unter Republikanern tendieren die „5 to 9“-Konservativen dazu, religiöse Konservative und Traditionalisten zu sein. Unter Demokraten tendieren die „5 to 9“-Konservativen dazu, Umweltschützer, Konsumentenschützer, Bewahrer historischer Denkmäler, Neue Stadtplaner und dergleichen zu sein.

In beiden Parteien tendieren die „5 to 9“-Konservativen dazu, überwiegend weiß zu sein. Weiters werden die „5 to 9“-Konservativen in beiden Parteien von den Parteiführern wegen ihrer Wählerstimmen ausgenützt. Und letztendlich wird von den Führern der Großparteien ein Veto gegen Interessen von „5 to 9“-Konservativen eingelegt, weil ihr Hauptfokus die Förderung gesellschaftlich korrosiver Ideologien ist: Wirtschaftsliberalismus bei den Republikanern, Sozialliberalismus bei den Demokraten. Es wäre enorm subversiv/produktiv, wenn “5 to 9”-Konservative sich von der korrosiven Ideologie des Liberalismus befreien könnten, des rechten wie des linken.

Es wäre interessant, „5 to 9“-Konservative aus dem gesamten politischen Spektrum zusammenzubringen, um einen Dialog zu beginnen. Ich denke, sie würden entdecken, daß sie viel mehr gemeinsam haben, als sie glauben. Es ist eine Konversation, an der wir weißen Nationalisten teilnehmen müssen. Wir müssen da sein, um ihnen ihr implizites Weißentum voll zu Bewußtsein zu bringen. Wir müssen ihnen zeigen, daß ihre Werte die Produkte homogener weißer Gesellschaften sind und ohne diese nicht bewahrt werden können. Wir müssen ihnen erklären, daß die Führer der Großparteien sie ausnützen und verraten. Und wir dürfen nicht versäumen ihnen zu erklären, warum beide Parteien jüdische Interessen auf Kosten weißer Interessen verfolgen.

Es ist auch wichtig, ihnen zu helfen zu verstehen, daß vor dem Aufkommen der modernen Verirrungen des wirtschaftlichen und politischen Liberalismus der Mainstream des westlichen politischen Denkens von Aristoteles bis zu den Gründern Amerikas erkannte, daß eine freie Gesellschaft breit gestreutes Privateigentum in stabilem Besitz erfordert, und daß zur Erreichung dieses Zwecks ein gewisses Maß an Wirtschaftsregulierung notwendig ist.

Letztendlich sind weiße Nationalisten mehr als bloße Konservative, denn obwohl eine Menge von dem, was wir wollen, von der Idee des „5 to 9“-Konservatismus abgedeckt werden kann, ist das nicht genug. Von meinem nietzscheanischen/Spengler’schen Standpunkt ist bloßer Konservatismus nicht wirklich eine Alternative zur Dekadenz. Stattdessen ist er eine Form der Dekadenz, denn ein gesunder Organismus bewahrt oder wiederholt nicht bloß die Vergangenheit, sondern trägt sie vorwärts und verwandelt sie in kreativer Weise. Aber politisch gesprochen kommt der Konservatismus zuerst, nachdem unsere Rasse überleben muß, bevor wir uns Sorgen über den Luxus der Selbstperfektionierung machen können.

Source: https://schwertasblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/5-to-9-konservatismus/ [3]


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

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/12/5-to-9-konservatismus/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/GrantWoodFallPlowing.jpg

[2] here: http://www.counter-currents.com/2011/10/5-to-9-conservatism/

[3] https://schwertasblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/5-to-9-konservatismus/: https://schwertasblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/5-to-9-konservatismus/

mardi, 09 avril 2013

Domnique Venner, l'imprévu dans l'histoire

Domnique Venner, l'imprévu dans l'histoire

Eté 1942, hiver 2010 : un échange

Eté 1942, hiver 2010 : un échange

Par Michael O'Meara

English original here [2]

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

medium_heidegger_index.jpgDurant l’été 1942 – alors que les Allemands étaient au sommet de leur puissance, totalement inconscients de l’approche de la tempête de feu qui allait transformer leur pays natal en enfer – le philosophe Martin Heidegger écrivit (pour un cours prévu à Freiberg) les lignes suivantes, que je prends dans la traduction anglaise connue sous le titre de Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister”: [1]

« Le monde anglo-saxon de l’américanisme » – notait Heidegger dans une note à son examen nationaliste/ontologique de son bien-aimé Hölderlin – « a résolu d’anéantir l’Europe, c’est-à-dire la patrie, et cela signifie : [il a résolu d’anéantir] le commencement du monde occidental. »

En anéantissant le commencement (les origines ou la naissance de l’être européen) – et ainsi en anéantissant le peuple dont le sang coulait dans les veines américaines – les Européens du Nouveau Monde, sans le savoir, détruisaient l’essence de leur propre existence – en désavouant leurs origines – en dénigrant la source de leur forme de vie, en se déniant ainsi à eux-mêmes la possibilité d’un avenir.

« Tout ce qui a un commencement est indestructible. »

Les Américains scellaient leur propre destruction en s’attaquant à leur commencement – en tranchant les racines de leur être.

Mais l’Europe – cette synergie unique de sang et d’esprit – ne peut pas être tuée, car son essence, nous dit Heidegger, est le « commencement » – l’originel – le renouvellement – la  perpétuelle refondation et réaffirmation de l’être.

Ainsi, l’Europe resurgit toujours inévitablement – assise sur son taureau, elle resurgit des  eaux, qui la recouvrent lorsqu’elle plonge avec intrépidité dans ce qui est à venir.

Sa dernière position est par conséquent toujours la première – un autre commencement – lorsqu’elle avance vers ses origines – renouvelant l’être non-corrompu de son commencement – lorsqu’elle s’authentifie dans la plénitude d’un avenir qui lui permet de commencer encore et encore.

* * *

L’opposé est vrai aussi.

L’anéantissement de son commencement par l’Amérique lui a révélé son propre manque inhérent de commencement.

Depuis le début, son projet fut de rejeter ses origines européennes – de désavouer l’être qui l’avait faite ce qu’elle était –, quand ses colons évangélistes adoptèrent la métaphore des Deux Mondes, l’Ancien et le Nouveau.

Pour Heidegger, « l’entrée [de l’Amérique] dans cette guerre planétaire n’est pas [son] entrée dans l’histoire ; au contraire, c’est déjà l’ultime acte américain d’a-historicité et d’auto-destruction ».

Pour avoir émergé, conçue de manière immaculée, des jérémiades de sa Mission Puritaine, l’Amérique s’est définie par un rejet de son passé, par un rejet de ses origines, par un rejet de son fondement le plus ontologique – comme si elle regardait vers l’ouest, vers le soleil couchant et la frontière toujours mouvante de son avenir sans racines et fuyant, mythiquement légitimé au nom d’un « Rêve américain » né de l’éthique protestante et de l’esprit du capitalisme.

Les Américains, l’homo oeconomicus rationnel, sans racines et uniforme qui domine aujourd’hui ne s’est jamais soucié de regarder devant lui parce qu’il n’a jamais regardé derrière lui. Passé et futur, racines et branches – tout cela a été déraciné et coupé.

Pas de mémoire, pas de passé, pas de sens.

Au nom du progrès – que Friedrich Engels imaginait comme un « char cruel passant sur des amas de corps brisés » –, l’être américain se dissout dans sa marche désordonnée vers le gouffre béant.

Mais bien que ce soit d’une manière indirecte, c’est à partir de la matrice européenne que les Américains entrèrent dans le monde, et c’est seulement en affirmant l’être européen de leur Patrie et de leur Lignée qu’ils pouvaient s’enraciner dans leur « Nouveau » Monde – sans succomber aux barbares et aux fellahs étrangers à la Mère-Patrie et à la Culture des Ancêtres.

Au lieu de cela, les fondateurs de l’Amérique entreprirent de rejeter leur Mère. Ils la traitèrent d’égyptienne ou de babylonienne, et prirent leur identité d’« élus », de « choisis », de « lumière des nations » chez les nomades de l’Ancien Testament, étrangers aux grandes forêts de nos terres nordiques, envieux de nos femmes aux yeux bleus et aux cheveux clairs, et révulsés par les hautes voûtes de nos cathédrales gothiques.

L’abandon de leur être originel unique fit des Américains les éternels champions de l’amélioration du monde, les champions idéologiques de l’absurdité consumériste, la première grande « nation » du nihilisme.

* * *

Pendant que Heidegger préparait son cours, des dizaines de milliers de chars, de camions et de pièces d’artillerie commençaient à faire mouvement de Detroit à Mourmansk, puis vers le front de l’Est.

Quelque temps plus tard, le feu commença à tomber du haut du ciel – le feu portant la malédiction de Cromwell et les idées de terre brûlée de Sherman –, le feu qui transforma les familles allemandes en cendres, avec leurs belles églises, leurs musées splendides, leurs quartiers ouvriers densément peuplés et d’une propreté éclatante, leurs bibliothèques anciennes et leurs laboratoires de pointe.

La forêt qui a besoin d’un millier d’années pour s’épanouir périt en une seule nuit dans le feu du phosphore.

Il faudrait longtemps – le moment n’est pas encore venu – avant que les Allemands, le Peuple du Milieu, le centre de l’être européen, se relèvent de leurs ruines, aujourd’hui plus spirituelles que matérielles.

* * *

B17G.jpg

Heidegger ne savait pas qu’une tempête apocalyptique était sur le point de détruire son Europe.

Mais suspecta-t-il du moins que le Führer avait fourvoyé l’Allemagne dans une guerre qu’elle ne pouvait pas gagner ? Que non seulement l’Allemagne, mais aussi l’Europe s’opposant aux forces anglo-américaines de Mammon serait détruite ?

* * *

« L’esprit caché du commencement en Occident n’aura même pas un regard de mépris pour cette épreuve d’autodestruction sans commencement, mais attendra que son heure stellaire surgisse de la sérénité et de la tranquillité qui appartiennent au commencement. »

Une Europe réveillée et renaissante promet donc de répudier la trahison de soi accomplie par l’Amérique – l’Amérique, cette stupide idée européenne baignant dans l’hubris des Lumières, et qui devra être oubliée (comme un squelette de famille) quand l’Europe se réaffirmera.

Mais en 1942, Heidegger ne savait pas que des Européens, et même des Allemands, trahiraient bientôt en faveur des Américains, que les Churchill, les Adenauer, les Blum – les lèche-bottes de l’Europe – monteraient au sommet de la pyramide yankee de l’après-guerre, pyramide conçue pour écraser toute idée de nation, de culture et de destin.

C’est la tragédie de l’Europe.

* * *

Dès que l’Europe se réveillera – elle le fera un jour –, elle se réaffirmera et se défendra, ne se laissera plus distraire par le brillant et le clinquant de l’Amérique, ne se laissera plus intimider par ses bombes H et ses missiles guidés, comprenant enfin clairement que toutes ces distractions hollywoodiennes dissimulent un vide immense – ses incessants exercices de consumérisme insensé.

Par conséquent, incapable d’un recommencement, s’étant dénié elle-même un commencement, la mauvaise idée que l’Amérique est devenue se désintégrera probablement, dans les temps de feu et d’acier qui approchent, en parties disparates.

A ce moment, les Américains blancs seront appelés, en tant qu’Européens du Nouveau Monde, à réaffirmer leur « droit » à une patrie en Amérique du Nord – pour qu’ici ils puissent au moins avoir un endroit pour être ce qu’ils sont.

S’ils devaient réussir dans cette entreprise apparemment irréalisable, ils fonderont la nation – ou les nations – américaine(s) pour la première fois non pas comme le simulacre universaliste que les francs-maçons et les déistes concoctèrent en 1776, mais comme la pulsation du sang du destin américain de l’Europe.

« Nous pensons seulement à moitié ce qui est historique dans l’histoire, c’est-à-dire que nous ne le pensons pas du tout, si nous calculons l’histoire et son ampleur en termes de longueur… de ce qui a été, plutôt qu’attendre ce qui vient et ce qui est dans le futur. »

Le commencement, en tant que tel, est « ce qui vient et ce qui est dans le futur », ce qui est l’« historique dans l’histoire », ce qui remonte le plus loin dans le passé et qui surgit loin dans le futur en cours de dévoilement – comme la charge d’infanterie manquée de Pickett à Gettysburg, dont Faulkner nous a dit qu’elle devait être tentée encore et encore, jusqu’à ce qu’elle réussisse.

* * *

« Nous nous trouvons au commencement de la véritable historicité, c’est-à-dire de l’action dans le domaine de l’essentiel, seulement quand nous sommes capables d’attendre ce qui nous est destiné. »

« Ce qui nous est destiné » – cette affirmation de nous-mêmes –, affirme Heidegger, ne viendra que si nous défions la conformité, les conventions, et le conditionnement artificiel pour réaliser l’être européen, dont le destin est le seul à être nôtre.

A ce moment, si nous devions réussir à rester debout, de la manière dont nos ancêtres le firent, nous atteindrons devant nous et au-delà ce qui commence par chaque affirmation futuriste de ce que nous sommes, nous Européens-Américains.

Cette affirmation, cependant, ne sera pas « sans action ni pensée, en laissant les choses venir et passer… [mais] quelque chose qui se tient devant nous, quelque chose se tenant dans ce qui est indestructible (à quoi le voisinage désolé appartient, comme une vallée à une montagne) ».

Car désolation il y aura – dans ce combat attendant notre race – dans cet avenir destiné conservant avec défi une grandeur qui ne rompt pas en pliant dans la tempête, une grandeur certaine de venir avec la fondation d’une nation européenne en Amérique du Nord, une grandeur dont je crains souvent que nous ne l’ayons plus en nous-mêmes et que nous devons donc appeler par les ardents rites guerriers qui étaient jadis dédiés aux anciens dieux célestes aryens, aussi éloignés ou fictionnels qu’ils puissent être devenus.

–Hiver 2010

  Note

1. Martin Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymn ‘The Ister’, trans W. McNeill and J. Davis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 54ff.


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lundi, 08 avril 2013

Pulp Fascism

Pulp Fascism

By Jonathan Bowden 

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

Editor’s Note: 

The following text is a transcription by V. S. of a lecture entitled “Léon Degrelle and the Real Tintin,” delivered at the 21st meeting of the New Right, London, June 13, 2009. The lecture can be viewed on YouTube here [2]. (Please post any corrections as comments below.)

I have given it a new title because it serves as the perfect introduction to a collection of Bowden’s essays, lectures, and interviews entitled Pulp Fascism: Right-Wing Themes in Comics, Graphic Novels, and Popular Literature, which is forthcoming from Counter-Currents.

I proposed this collection and title to Bowden in 2011, and although he wrote a number of pieces especially for it, the project was unfinished at his death. We are bringing out this book in honor of the first anniversary of Bowden’s death on March 29, 2012. 

jb_index.jpgI would like to talk about something that has always interested me. The title of the talk is “Léon Degrelle and the Real Tintin,” but what I really want to talk about is the heroic in mass and in popular culture. It’s interesting to note that heroic ideas and ideals have been disprivileged by pacifism, by liberalism tending to the Left and by feminism particularly since the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s. Yet the heroic, as an imprimatur in Western society, has gone down into the depths, into mass popular culture. Often into trashy forms of culture where the critical insight of various intellectuals doesn’t particularly gaze upon it.

One of the forms that interests me about the continuation of the heroic in Western life as an idea is the graphic novel, a despised form, particularly in Western Europe outside France and Italy and outside Japan further east. It’s regarded as a form primarily for children and for adolescents. Yet forms such as this: these are two volumes of Tintin which almost everyone has come across some time or other. These books/graphic novels/cartoons/comic books have been translated into 50 languages other than the original French. They sold 200 million copies, which is almost scarcely believable. It basically means that a significant proportion of the globe’s population has got one of these volumes somewhere.

Now, before he died, Léon Degrelle said that the character of Tintin created by Hergé was based upon his example. Other people rushed to say that this wasn’t true and that this was self-publicity by a notorious man and so on and so forth. Probably like all artistic and semi-artistic things there’s an element of truth to it. Because a character like this that’s eponymous and archetypal will be a synthesis of all sorts of things. Hergé got out of these dilemmas by saying that it was based upon a member of his family and so on. That’s probably as true as not.

The idea of the masculine and the heroic and the Homeric in modern guise sounds absurd when it’s put in tights and appears in a superhero comic and that sort of thing. But the interesting thing is because these forms of culture are so “low” they’re off the radar of that which is acceptable and therefore certain values can come back. It’s interesting to note that the pulp novels in America in the 1920s and ’30s, which preceded the so-called golden age of comics in the United States in the ’30s and ’40s and the silver age in the 1960s, dealt with quite illicit themes.

One of the reasons that even today Tintin is mildly controversial and regarded as politically incorrect in certain circles is they span much of the 20th century. Everyone who is alive now realizes that there was a social and cultural revolution in the Western world in the 1960s, where almost all the values of the relatively traditional European society, whatever side you fought on in the Second World War, were overturned and reversed in a mass reversion or re-evaluation of values from a New Leftist perspective.

Before 1960, many things which are now legal and so legal that to criticize them has become illegal were themselves illicit and outside of the pedigree and patent of Western law, custom, practice, and social tradition. We’ve seen a complete reversal of nearly all of the ideals that prevailed then. This is why many items of quite popular culture are illicit.

If one just thinks of a silent film like D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation in 1915. There was a prize awarded by the American Motion Picture Academy up until about 1994 in Griffith’s name. For those who don’t know, the second part of Birth of a Nation is neo-Confederate in orientation and depicts the Ku Klux Klan as heroic. Heroic! The Ku Klux Klan regarded as the hero, saving the White South from perdition, from the carpet-baggers, some of whom bear an extraordinary resemblance to the present President of the United States of America. Of course, they were called carpet-baggers because they were mulatto politicians who arrived in the South primarily from the North with certain Abolitionist sponsorship and they arrived with everything they owned in a carpet bag to take over. And that’s why they were called that.

That film, which you can get in any DVD store and buy off Amazon for ten pounds or so, is extraordinarily notorious, but in actual fact, in terms of its iconography, it’s a heroic, dualist film where there’s a force of darkness and a force of light. There’s a masculine individual. There’s people who believe that they’ll sort out problems with a gun. The Bible, in an ultra-Protestant way, is their text. It’s what they base metaphysical objectivism and absolute value upon, and that film is perceived retrospectively as an extreme White Right-wing film although Griffith himself is later to do a film called Intolerance and actually, like a lot of film makers, had quite a diverse range of views irrespective of his own Southern and Texan background.

The thing one has to remember is that the methodology of the heroic can survive even if people fight against various forces in Western life. One of the great tricks of the heroic in the last 40 to 50 years is the heroic films involving icons like Clint Eastwood, for example, as a successor to this sort of archetype of John Wayne and the sort of Western stylized masculinity that he represented. Eastwood often plays individualistic, survivalist, and authoritarian figures; Right-wing existentialist figures. But they’re always at war with bureaucracies and values that are perceived as conservative. One of the ways it tricks, which has occurred since the 1960s, is to reorient the nature of the heroic so that the eternal radical Right within a society such as the United States or elsewhere is the enemy, per se.

There’s a comic strip in the United States called Captain America which began in the 1940s. Captain America is a weedy young man who almost walks with a stick and has arms like branches, and of course a friendly American scientist introduces him to a new secret program where he’s injected with some steroids and this sort of thing and immediately becomes this enormous blond hulking superman with blue eyes. Of course, he must dress himself in the American flag so that he can call himself Captain America. So you get the idea! He has a big shield which has the star of the United States on it and has a sidekick who dies in one of the 1940s comics, but of course these figures never die. They’re endlessly brought back. But there’s a problem here because the position that Captain America and a lesser Marvel Comics equivalent called Captain Britain and all these other people represent is a little bit suspect in an increasingly liberal society, even then. So, his enemy, his nemesis, his sort of dualist alternative has to be a “Nazi,” and of course Captain America has a Nazi enemy who’s called the Red Skull.

The Red Skull is a man with a hideous face who, to hide this hideousness, wears a hideous mask over his hideous face as a double take. The mirror cracks so why not wear a mask, but it’s not a mask of beauty. It’s a skull that’s painted red, and he’s called the Red Skull. He always wears green. So, it’s red and green. He always appears and there’s always a swastika somewhere in the background and that sort of thing. He’s always building robots or cyborgs or new biological sorts of creatures to take over the world. Captain America always succeeds in vanquishing him in the last panel. Just in the last panel. The Red Skull’s always about to triumph until the fist of Captain America for the American way and the American dream comes in at the end.

This mantle of the heroic whereby Right-wing existentialists like Captain America fight against the extreme Right in accordance with democratic values is one of the interesting tricks that’s played with the nature of the heroic. Because the heroic is a dangerous idea. Whether or not Tintin was based on Léon Degrelle there is of course a fascistic element to the nature of the heroic which many writers of fantasy and science fiction, which began as a despised genre but is now, because it’s so commercially viable, one of the major European book genres.

They’ve always known this. Michael Moorcock, amongst others, speaks of the danger of subliminal Rightism in much fantasy writing where you can slip into an unknowing, uncritical ultra-Right and uncritical attitude towards the masculine, towards the heroic, towards the vanquishing of forces you don’t like, towards self-transcendence, for example.

iron_dream.jpgThere’s a well-known novel called The Iron Dream and this novel is in a sense depicting Hitler’s rise to power and everything that occurred in the war that resulted thereafter as a science fiction discourse, as a sort of semiotic by a mad creator. This book was actually banned in Germany because although it’s an extreme satire, which is technically very anti-fascistic, it can be read in a literal-minded way with the satire semi-detached. This novel by Norman Spinrad was banned for about 20 to 30 years in West Germany as it then was. Because fantasy enables certain people to have an irony bypass.

Although comics are quite humorous, particularly to adults, children and adolescents read them, scan them because they sort of just look at the images and take in the balloons as they go across because these are films on paper. They essentially just scan them in an uncritical way. If you ever look at a child, particularly a child that’s got very little interest in formal literature of a sort that’s taught in many European and American schools, they sit absorbed before comics, they’re absolutely enthralled by the nature of them, by the absolute villainy of the transgressor, by the total heroicism and absence of irony and sarcasm of the heroic figure with a scantily clad maiden on the front that the hero always addresses himself to but usually in a dismissive way because he’s got heroic things to accomplish. She’s always on his arm or on his leg or being dragged down.

Indeed, the pulp depiction of women which, of course, is deeply politically incorrect and vampish is a sort of great amusement in these genres. If you ever look at comics like Conan the Barbarian or Iron Man or The Incredible Hulk and these sorts of things the hero will always be there in the middle! Never to the side. Always in the middle foursquare facing the future. The villain will always be off to one side, often on the left; the side of villainy, the side of the sinister, that which wants to drag down and destroy.

As the Hulk is about to hit The Leader, which is his nemesis, or Captain America is about to hit the Red Skull, which is his nemesis, or Batman is about to hit the psychiatric clown called The Joker, who is his nemesis, there’s always a scantily clad woman who’s around his leg on the front cover looking up in a pleading sort of way as the fist is back here. It’s quite clear that these are archetypal male attitudes of amusement and play which, of course, have their danger to many of the assumptions that took over in the 1960s and ’70s.

It’s interesting to notice that in the 1930s quite a lot of popular culture expressed openly vigilante notions about crime. There was a pulp magazine called The Shadow that Orson Welles played on the radio. Orson Welles didn’t believe in learning the part, in New York radio Welles, usually the worse for wear for drink and that sort of thing, would steam up to the microphone, he would take the script, and just launch into The Shadow straight away. The Shadow used to torment criminals. Depending on how nasty they were the more he’d torment them. When he used to kill them, or garrote them, or throttle them, or hang them (these pulps were quite violent and unashamedly so) he used to laugh uproariously like a psychopath. And indeed, if you didn’t get the message, there would be lines in the book saying “HA HA HA HA HA!” for several lines as he actually did people in.

The Shadow is in some ways the prototype for Batman who comes along later. Certain Marxian cultural critics in a discourse called cultural studies have pointed out that Batman is a man who dresses himself up in leathers to torment criminals at night and looks for them when the police, namely the state, the authority in a fictional New York called Gotham City, put a big light in the sky saying come and torment the criminal class. They put this big bat symbol up in the sky, and he drives out in the Batmobile looking for villains to torment. As most people are aware, comics morphed into more adult forms in the 1980s and ’90s and the graphic novel emerged called Dark Knight which explored in quite a sadistic and ferocious way Batman’s desire to punish criminality in a very extreme way.

There was also a pulp in the 1930s called Doc Savage. Most people are vaguely aware of these things because Hollywood films have been made on and off about all these characters. Doc Savage was an enormous blond who was 7 feet. He was bronzed with the sun and covered in rippling muscles. Indeed, to accentuate his musculature he wore steel bands around his wrists and ankles, as you do. He was a scientific genius, a poetic genius, and a musical genius. In fact, there was nothing that he wasn’t a genius at. He was totally uninterested in women. He also had a research institute that operated on the brains of criminals in order to reform them. This is quite extraordinary and deeply politically incorrect! He would not only defeat the villain but at the end of the story he would drag them off to this hospital/institute for them to be operated on so that they could be redeemed for the nature of society. In other words, he was a eugenicist!

Of course, those sorts of ideas in the 1930s were quite culturally acceptable because we are bridging different cultural perceptions even at the level of mass entertainment within the Western world. That which is regarded, even by the time A Clockwork Orange was made by Kubrick from Burgess’ novel in the 1970s, as appalling, 40 years before was regarded as quite acceptable. So, the shifting sands of what is permissible, who can enact it, and how they are seen is part and parcel of how Western people define themselves.

Don’t forget, 40% of the people in Western societies don’t own a book. Therefore, these popular, mass forms which in one way are intellectually trivial is in some respects how they perceive reality.

Comics, like films, have been heavily censored. In the United States in the 1950s, there was an enormous campaign against various sorts of quasi-adult comics that were very gory and were called horror comics and were produced by a very obscure forum called Entertainment Comics (EC). And there was a surrogate for the Un-American Activities Committee in the US Senate looking at un-American comics that are getting at our kids, and they had a large purge of these comics. Indeed, mountains of them were burnt. Indeed, enormous sort of semi-book burnings occurred. Pyramids of comics as big as this room would be burnt by US and federal marshals on judges’ orders because they contained material that the young shouldn’t be looking at.

The material they shouldn’t be looking at was grotesque, gory, beyond Roald Dahl sort of explicit material which, of course, children love. They adore all that sort of thing because it’s exciting, because it’s imaginative, because it’s brutal, because it takes you out of the space of normalcy, and that’s why the young with their instincts and their passion and glory love this sort of completely unmediated amoral fare. That’s why there’s always been this tension between what their parents would like them to like and what many, particularly late childish boys and adolescents, really want to devour. I remember Evelyn Waugh was once asked, “What was your favorite book when you were growing up?” And just like a flash he said, “Captain Blood!” Captain Blood! Imagine any silent pirate film from the 1920s and early ’30s.

Now, the heroic in Western society takes many forms. When I grew up, there were these tiny little comics in A5 format. Everyone must have seen them. Certainly any boys from the 1960s and ’70s. They were called Battle. Battle and Commando and War comics, and these sorts of thing. They were done by D. C. Thomson, which is the biggest comics manufacturer in Britain, up in Dundee. These comics were very unusual because they allowed extremely racialist and nationalist attitudes, but the enemies were always Germans and they were always Japanese.

Indeed, long after the passing of the Race Act in the late 1960s and its follow-up which was more codified and definitive and legally binding in the 1970s, statements about Germans and Japanese could be made in these sorts of comics, which were not just illicit but illegal. You know what I mean, the Green Berets, the commandos, would give it to “Jerry” in a sort of arcane British way and were allowed to. This was permitted, even this liberal transgression, because the enemy was of such a sort.

But, of course, what’s being celebrated is British fury and ferocity and the nature of British warriors and the Irish Guards not taking prisoners and this sort of thing. This is what’s being celebrated in these sorts of comics. It’s noticeable that D. C. Thomson, who has no connection to the DC group in the United States by the way, toned down this element in the comics as they went along. Only Commando survives, but they still produce four of them a month.

In the 1970s, Thomson, who also did The Beano and utterly childish material for children for about five and six as well as part of the great spectrum of their group, decided on some riskier, more transgressive, more punkish, more adult material. So, they created a comic called Attack. Attack! It’s this large shark that used to come and devour people. It was quite good. The editor would disapprove of something and they would be eaten by the shark. There was the marvelous balloons they have in comics, something like, “This shark is amoral. It eats.” And there would be a human leg sticking out of the mouth of the shark. Some individual the editor disapproved of was going down the gullet.

Now, Attack was attacked in Parliament. A Labour MP got up and said he didn’t like Attack. It was rather dubious. It was tending in all sorts of unwholesome directions, and Attack had a story that did outrage a lot of people in the middle 1970s, because there was a story where a German officer from the Second World War was treated sympathetically, in Attack. Because it was transgressive, you see. What’s going to get angry Methodists writing to their local paper? A comic that treats some Wehrmacht officer in a sympathetic light. So, there was a real ruckus under Wilson’s government in about ’75 about this, and so they removed that.

judge-dredd-1.jpgVarious writers like Pat Mills and John Wagner were told to come up with something else. So, they came up with the comic that became Judge Dredd. Judge Dredd is a very interesting comic in various ways because all sorts of Left-wing people don’t like Judge Dredd at all, even as a satire. If there are people who don’t know this, Dredd drives around in a sort of motorcycle helmet with a slab-sided face which is just human meat really, and he’s an ultra-American. It’s set in a dystopian future where New York is extended to such a degree that it covers about a quarter of the landmass of the United States. You just live in a city, in a burg, and you go and you go and you go. There’s total collapse. There’s no law and order, and there’s complete unemployment, and everyone’s bored out of their mind.

The comic is based on the interesting notion that crime is partly triggered by boredom and a sort of wantonness in the masses. Therefore, in order to keep any sort of order, the police and the judiciary have combined into one figure called a Judge. So, the jury, the trial, the police investigation, and the investigative and forensic elements are all combined in the figure of the Judge. So, if Judge Dredd is driving along the street and he sees some youths of indeterminate ethnicity breaking into a store he says, “Hold, citizens! This is the law! I am the law! Obey me! Obey the law!” And if they don’t, he shoots them dead, because the trial’s syncopated into about 20 seconds. He’s given them the warning. That’s why he’s called Judge Dredd, you see. D-R-E-D-D. He just kills automatically those who transgress.

There’s great early comic strips where he roars around on this bike that has this sort of skull-like front, and he appears and there’s a chap parking his car and he says, “Citizen! Traffic violation! Nine years!” and roars off somewhere else. Somebody’s thieving or this sort of thing and he gets them and bangs their head into the street. There’s no question of a commission afterwards. “Twelve years in the Cube!” which is an isolation cell. It’s got its own slang because comics, of course, create their own world which children and adolescents love so you can totally escape into a world that’s got a semi-alternative reality of its own that’s closed to outsiders. If some adult picks it up and looks at it he says, “What is this about?” Because it’s designed to exclude you in a way.

Dredd has numerous adventures in other dimensions and so on, but Dredd never changes, never becomes more complicated, remains the same. He has no friends. “I have no need of human attachments,” he once says in a slightly marvelous line. He has a robot for company who provides most of his meals and needs and that sort of thing. For the rest, he’s engaged in purposeful and pitiless implementation of law and order. One of his famous phrases was when somebody asked him what is happiness, and he says in one of those bubbles, “Happiness is law and order.” Pleasure is obeying the law. And there are various people groveling in chains in front of him or something.

Now, there’ve been worried Left-wing cat-calls, although it’s a satire, and it’s quite clearly meant to be one. For example, very old people, because people in this fantasy world live so long that they want to die at the end, and they go to be euthanized. So, they all queue up for euthanasia. There’s one story where somebody blows up the people waiting for euthanasia to quicken the thing, but also to protest against it. And Judge says, “Killing euthanized is terrorism!” War on terror, where have we heard that before? Don’t forget, these are people that want to die. But Dredd says, “They’re being finished off too early. You’ve got to wait, citizen!” Wait to be killed later by the syringe that’s coming. And then people are reprocessed as medicines, because everything can be used. It’s a utilitarian society. Therefore, everything is used from birth to death, because the state arranges everything for you, even though socialism is condemned completely.

There’s another bloc, it’s based on the Cold War idea, there’s a Soviet bloc off on the other side of the world that is identical to the West, but ideologically they’re at war with each other, even though they’re absolutely interchangeable with each other. But the Western metaphysic is completely free market, completely capitalist, but in actual fact no one works, and everyone’s a slave to an authoritarian state.

There’s also an interesting parallel with more advanced forms of literature here. A Clockwork Orange: many people think that’s about Western youth rebellion and gangs of the Rockers and Mods that emerged in the 1960s at the time. Burgess wrote his linguistically sort of over-extended work in many ways. In actual fact, Anthony Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange after a visit to the Soviet Union where he was amazed to find that, unlike the totalitarian control of the masses which he expected at every moment, there was quite a degree of chaos, particularly amongst the Lumpenproletariat in the Soviet Union.

George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four has an interesting idea, and that is that the proles are so beneath ideology, right at the bottom of society, the bottom 3% not even the bottom 10%, that they can be left to their own devices. They can be left to take drugs. They can be left to drink to excess. They can be left to destroy themselves. Orwell says “the future is the proles” at one point. Remember when Winston Smith looks out across the tenements and sees the enormous washerwoman putting some shirts, putting some sheets on a line? And she sings about her lost love, “Oh, he was a helpless fancy . . .” and all this. And Winston looks out on her across the back yards and lots and says, “If there’s a future, it lies with the proles!” And then he sings to himself, “But looking at them, he had to wonder.”

The party degrades the proletariat to such a degree that it ceases to be concerned about their amusements because they’re beneath the level of ideology and therefore you don’t need to control them. The people you control are the Outer Party, those who can think, those who wear the blue boiler suits, not the black ones from the Inner Party.

TheIronHeel500.jpgThis interconnection between mass popular culture, often of a very trivial sort, and elitist culture, whereby philosophically the same ideas are expressed, is actually interesting. You sometimes get these lightning flashes that occur between absolutely sort of “trash culture,” if you like, and quite advanced forms of culture like A Clockwork Orange, like Darkness at Noon, like Nineteen Eighty-Four, like The Iron Heel, like The Iron Dream. And these sorts of extraordinary dystopian and catatopian novels, which are in some respects the high political literature (as literature, literature qua literature) of the 20th century.

Now, one of the reasons for the intellectual independence of elements in some comics is because no one’s concerned about it except when the baleful eye of censorship falls upon them. A particular American academic wrote a book in the early 1950s called Seduction of the Innocent which is about how children were being depraved by these comics which were giving them violent and racialist and elitist and masculinist stereotypes, which shouldn’t be allowed.

Of course, a vogue for Left wing comics grew up in the 1970s because culture in the United States, particularly men’s culture, is racially segregated in a way which is never admitted. African-Americans have always had their own versions of these things. There are Black American comics. Marvel did two called The Black Panther, and the Black Panther only ever preys on villains who are Black.

There’s another one called Power Man who’s in prison loaded down with chains and a White scientist, who might be Jewish, experiments on him. He’s called Luke Cage and he’s experimented on so he becomes a behemoth. A titan of max strength he’s called, and he bats down the wall and takes all sorts of people on. And yet, of course, all of the villains he takes on, very like the Shaft films which are both about James Bond films which are very similar, all of this material is segregated. It occurs within its own zone.

But you notice the same heroic archetypes return. Yet again there’s a villain in the corner, usually on the left side, Luke Cage has an enormous fist, there’s a sort of half-caste beauty on his leg looking up, staring at him. This sort of thing. It’s the same main methodology. It’s the same thing coming around again.

Although there have been attempts at the Left-wing comic, it’s actually quite difficult to draw upon with any effect. Because, in a way you can criticize comics that are metapolitically Right-wing, but to create a Left-wing one is actually slightly difficult. The way you get around it is to have a comic that’s subliminally Rightist and have the villain who’s the extreme Right. There are two American comics called Sgt. Fury and Sgt. Rock and another one’s called Our Army at War. Sgt. Rock, you know, and this sort of thing. And you know who the villain is because they’re all sort in the Second World War.

The attitude towards Communism in comics is very complicated. Nuclear destruction was thought too controversial. When formal censorship of comics began in America in the 1950s something called the Approved Comics Code Authority, very like the British Board of Film Classification, emerged. They would have a seal on the front of a comic. Like American films in the 1930s, men and women could kiss but only in certain panels and only for a certain duration on the page as the child or adolescent looked at it, and it had to be, it was understood so explicitly it didn’t even need to be mentioned that of course it didn’t even need to be mentioned that it was totally heterosexual. Similarly, violence had to be kept to a minimum, but a certain allowed element of cruelty was permitted if the villain was on the receiving end of it.

Also, the comics had to be radically dualist. There has to be a force for light and a force for darkness. There has to be Spiderman and his nemesis who’s Dr. Octopus who has eight arms. But certain complications can be allowed, and as comics grow, if you like, non-dualist characters emerge.

There’s a character in The Fantastic Four called Doctor Doom who’s a tragic figure with a ruined face who is shunned by man who wants to revenge himself on society because he’s shut out, who ends as the ruler of a tiny little made-up European country which he rules with an iron hand, and he does have hands of iron. So he rules his little Latvia substitute with an iron hand. But he’s an outsider, you see, because in the comic he’s a gypsy, a sort of White Roma. But he gets his own back through dreams of power.

There’s these marvelous lines in comics which when you ventilate them become absurd. But on the page, if you’re sucked into the world, particularly as an adolescent boy, they live and thrive for you. Doom says to Reed Richards, who’s his nemesis on the other side, “I am Doom! I will take the world!” Because the way the hero gets back at the villain is to escape, because they’re usually tied up somewhere with a heroine looking on expectantly. The hero is tied up, but because the villain talks so much about what they’re going to do and the cruelty and appalling suffering they’re going to inflict all the time the hero is getting free. Because you have to create a lacuna, a space for the hero to escape so that he can drag the villain off to the asylum or to the gibbet or to the prison at the end. Do you remember that line from Lear on the heath? “I shall do such things, but what they are I know not! But they will be the terror of the earth!” All these villains repeat that sort of line in the course of their discourse, because in a sense they have to provide the opening or the space for the hero to emerge.

One of the icons of American cinema in the 20th century was John Wayne. John Wayne was once interviewed about his political views by, of all things, Playboy magazine. This is the sort of level of culture we’re dealing with. They said, “What are your political views?” and Wayne said, “Well, I’m a white supremacist.” And there was utter silence when he said this! He was a member of the John Birch Society at the time. Whether or not he gave money to the Klan no one really knows.

There’s always been a dissident strand in Hollywood, going back to Errol Flynn and before, of people who, if you like, started, even at the level of fantasy, living out some of these heroic parts in their own lives. Wayne quite clearly blurred the distinction between fantasy on the film set and in real life on many occasions. There are many famous incidents of Wayne, when robberies were going on, rushing out of hotels with guns in hand saying, “Stick’em up!” He was always playing that part, because every part’s John Wayne isn’t it, slightly differently? Except for a few comedy pieces. And he played that part again and again and again.

Alamo_1960_poster.jpgDon’t forget, The Alamo is now a politically incorrect film. Very politically incorrect. There’s an enormous women’s organization in Texas called the Daughters of the Alamo, and they had to change their name because the White Supremacist celebration of the Alamo was offensive to Latinos who are, or who will be very shortly, a Texan majority don’t forget. So, the sands are shifting in relation to what is permitted even within popular forms of culture.

When Wayne said he was a supremacist in that way he said, “I have nothing against other people, but we shouldn’t hand the country over to them.” That’s what he said. “We shouldn’t hand the country over to them.”

And don’t forget, I was born in ’62. Obama in many of the deep Southern states wouldn’t have had the vote then. Now he’s President. This is how the West is changing on all fronts and on every front. American Whites will certainly be in the minority throughout the federation in 40 or 50 years. Certainly. Indeed, Clinton (the male Clinton, the male of the species) once justified political correctness by saying, “Well, in 50 years we’ll be the minority. We’ll need political correctness to fight that game.”

The creator of Tintin, Hergé, always said that his dreams and his nightmares were in white. But we know that the politically correct games of the future will be Whites putting their hands up in the air complaining because somebody’s made a remark, complaining because they haven’t got a quota, complaining because this form is biased against them, and this sort of thing. They’ll be playing the game that minorities in the West play at the moment, because that’s all that’s left to them. You give them a slice of the ghetto, you predefine the culture (mass, middling, and elite), in the past but not into the future, elements of the culture which are too much reverent of your past don’t serve for the future and are therefore dammed off and not permitted. This is what, in a sense, White people face in America and elsewhere.

One of the great mysteries of the United States that has produced an enormous amount of this mass culture, some of which I have been at times rather glibly describing, is why has there never been a mass serious Right-wing movement of the real Right in the United States. The whole history of the 20th century and before would be different if that had occurred. Just think of it. Not some sort of trivial group, but a genuine group.

Don’t forget, the real position of the American ultras is isolationism. They don’t want to go out into the rest of the world and impose American neo-colonialism on everyone else. They’re the descendants of people who left the European dominion in order to create a new world. Hence, the paradox that the further Right you go in the United States, the more, not pacifist, but non-interventionist you become.

Before the Confederacy, there was a movement called the Know Nothings, and this is often why very Right-wing people in the United States are described as Know Nothings. Because when you’re asked about slavery, which of course is a very loaded and partial question, you said, “Well, I don’t know anything about it.” And that was a deliberate tactic to avoid being sucked in to an abolitionist agenda or a way of speaking that was biased in the political correctness of its own era.

But it is remarkable that although the Confederacy didn’t have the strength to win, if they had won the history of the whole world would be different. The 20th century would have never taken the course that it did.

One of the interesting things about the American psyche, of course, is that many unfortunate incidents, the war that we fought with the United States in 1812, for example, have been completely elided from history. It’s gone! It’s gone! We almost went to war with them in 1896 over Venezuela. That still has slightly interesting intonations even now a century or more on when Joseph Chamberlain was Colonial Secretary. This is again [elided] rather like the Suez incident 1956. There are certain incidents that are played up. And there are anniversaries that are every day on the television, and that you can’t escape from. But there are other anniversaries and other events which have been completely air-brushed from the spectrum and from the historical continuum as if they never occurred.

One episode is the extraordinarily bad treatment of prisoners of war by Americans going way, way back. The Confederates and the Unionists treated each other that way in the Civil War, but the Mexicans certainly got the boot in the 1840s as did the Spanish-Cubans at the turn of the 20th century. Americans beat up every German on principle, including members of Adenauer’s future cabinet when they occupied part of Germany. They just regard that as de rigeur. This frontier element that is there, crude and virile and ferocious, not always wrong, but ultimately fighting in ways which are not in the West’s interests, certainly for much of the 20th century, just gone, is part and parcel of the heroic American sense of themselves.

Where do all of these archetypes ultimately come from? That American popular culture which has gone universal because the deal is that what America thinks today, the world thinks tomorrow. When we allegedly ruled the world, or part of it, in the 19th century, Gladstone once stood in Manchester in the Free Trade Hall and said, “What Manchester thinks today, the world thinks tomorrow.” But now it’s what’s on MTV or CNN today, that the world would like to think is the ruling discourse of tomorrow.

American self-conceptuality is, to my mind, deeply, deeply Protestant in every sense. Even at the lowest level of their popular culture the idea of the heroic man, often a dissident police officer or a rancher or a hero of certain supernatural powers and so forth, but a man alone, a man outside the system, a man whose anti-Establishment, but he fights for order, a man who believes that everything’s settled with a weapon (which is why they always carry large numbers of weapons, these sort of survivalist type heroes). All of these heroes, the ones created by Robert E. Howard, the ones such as Doc Savage and Justice Inc., the Shadow, and all of the super-heroes like Batman.

Superman is interesting. Superman is Nietzschean ideas reduced to a thousand levels of sub-intellectuality, isn’t it? That’s what’s going on. He has a girlfriend who never ages called Lois Lane, who looks 22 now even though she’s about 88 in the trajectory of the script. There’s a villain who’s bald called Lex Luthor who’s always there, always the nemesis, always plotting. Luthor’s reinvented later in the strip as a politician who takes over the city. Superman’s clean and wholesome, you see, whereas the villain becomes a politician. You can see the sort of rhetoric.

luthor-1.jpgLuthor and Superman in the stories are outsiders. They’re both extraterrestrials. Luthor, however, has anti-humanist values, which means he’s “evil,” whereas Superman, who’s partly human, has “humanist” values. Luthor comes up with amazing things, particularly in the 1930s comics, which are quite interesting, particularly given the ethnicity of the people who created Superman. Now, about half of American comics are very similar to the film industry, and a similar ethnicity is in the film industry as in the comics industry. Part of the notions of what is right and what is wrong, what is American and what is not, is defined by that particular grid.

Luthor’s an anti-humanite. Luthor always has these thuggish villains who have several teeth missing and are sort of Lombrosian, and they’re ugly, have broken noses and slanted hats. This is the 1930s. And Luthor says, “I’m sick of the human. We’ve got to transcend the human.” They don’t have words like “transcend” in comics. They say, “go beyond” or something, you know. “We’ve got to go beyond the human. Humans have got to go! I’ve got to replace them with a new species.” And one of his thugs will say, “Way to go, Luthor! This is what we want!” If you notice, you have a comic called Superman, but Superman has liberal values and fights for democracy and the American way, and Luthor, although no one ever says he’s “fascistic,” is harsh, is elitist, is inegalitarian.

You know that the villains have a tendency to punish their own men? You remember Blofeld in the Bond films? One of his own minions will fail him, and he’ll sit in a chair and you know what’s going to happen. A hand strokes the cat with the diamonds around its neck. The villain likes cats, and the cat’s eyes stare on. The finger quivers over the button. And Blofeld, or Luthor, or Dr. Doom, or the Red Skull, or the Joker, or whoever it is, because it’s the same force really, says, “You failed me. There is only one punishment in this organization . . .” Click! The button goes, and there’s an explosion, the bloke screams, goes down in the chair.

There’s a great scene in Thunderball at the beginning where the chair comes up again. It’s empty and steaming, and all the other cronies are readjusting their ties. Blofeld’s sat there, and the camera always pans to his hands, the hands of power. You know, the hands of death, the hands of Zeus, the hands of Henry VIII. The closet would meet, and they’d all be disarmed by guards, but he would have a double-headed axe down by the chair.

It’s said, by American propaganda, that Saddam Hussein once shot his Minister of Health during a revolutionary command council meeting, and the same script had to be continued in the meeting by the Deputy Minister of Health. Just think of how the Deputy Minister felt! Let’s hope he wasn’t wearing gray flannels, because they might have been brown by the end of the cabinet session.

This idea of dualism, moral dualism (ultimately a deeply Christian idea in many ways as well as a Zoroastrian idea) is cardinal for the morality of these comics and the popular films and TV serials and all the internet spin-offs and all of these computer games. Because even when the hero is a woman like Lara Croft and so on, it’s the same methodology coming round and round again. Because adolescent boys want to look at somebody who looks like Lara Croft as she runs around with guns in both hands with virtually nothing on. That’s the sort of dissident archetype in these American pulps going back a long way. It’s just the feminization of heroic masculinity actually, which is what these sort of Valkyries are in popular terms.

Now, the dualist idea is that there’s a force for evil and a force for good, and we know who they are (they are the ones out there!). In The Hulk, the Hulk is green because he’s been affected by gamma rays. The Hulk alternates with a brilliant scientist, but when he’s in his monstrous incarnation—because of course it’s a simplification of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Robert Louis Stevenson’s myth—the Hulk, particularly early on in the comics, is incredibly stupid. If he saw this table in front of him he’d say, “Table. Don’t like table.” And he’d smash it, because Hulk smashes. That’s what he does! He smashes!

The villain in The Hulk is called the Leader. The Leader is the villain. The Leader is all brain. Indeed, the Leader has such a long head that he’s almost in danger of falling over because of the size of his brain. So, like children have to wear a steel brace on their teeth, the Leader wears a steel brace on his head because he’s “too bright.” So, the Leader—notice the Leader is a slightly proto-fascistic, Right-wing, elitist figure, isn’t he? The man who wants to dominate through his mind—is counter-posed by just brute force: the Hulk!

This idea that there’s a force for good and a force for evil and the one always supplants the other, but the one can never defeat the other, because the Leader in The Hulk, the Owl in Daredevil, the Joker in Batman, Dr. Doom in The Fantastic Four, Dr. Octopus and the Green Goblin (another green one) in Spiderman . . . They’re never destroyed. If one of them is destroyed, their son finds their mask in a trunk and puts it on and knows that he wants to dominate the world! And comes back again. They can never be destroyed because they’re archetypes.

The comics hint at a sort of pagan non-dualism partly because they insist upon this good and evil trajectory so much. That’s in some ways when they become quite morally complicated and quite dangerous.

In Greek tragedy, a moral system exists, and it’s preordained that you have a fate partly in your own hands even though it’s decided by the gods. In The Oresteia by Aeschylus, you have a tragedy in a family (cannibalism, destruction, self-devouring) which is revenged and passed through into future generations. So that the Greek fleet can get to Troy, a girl is sacrificed. Clytemnestra avenges herself as a Medusa, as a gorgon against her husband who has killed her own daughter. Then, of course, there’s a cycle of revenge and pity and the absence of pity when the son, Orestes, who identifies with the father, comes back.

In this type of culture, and obviously a much higher level conceptually, it’s noticeable that the good character and the evil character align, are differentiated, merging, replace one another, and separate over the three plays in that particular trilogy.

If you look at real life and you consider any conflict between men, Northern Ireland in the 1970s (we’re British here and many people here are British nationalists). But if you notice the IRA guerrilla/terrorist/paramilitary, the Loyalist guerilla/terrorist/paramilitary . . . One of my grandfathers was in the Ulster Volunteer Force at the beginning of the 20th century, but I went to a Catholic school.

Nietzsche has a concept called perspectivism whereby certain sides choose you in life, certain things are prior ordained. When the U.S. Marine fights the Islamist radical in Fallujah, the iconography of an American comic begins to collapse, because which is the good one and which is the evil one? The average Middle American as he sat reading Captain America zapping the channels thinks that the Marine is the good one, with a sort of 30-second attention span.

But at the same time, the Marine isn’t an incarnation of evil. He’s a man fighting for what he’s been told to fight for. He’s a warrior. There’re flies in his eyes. He’s covered in sweat. He’s gonna kill someone who opposes him. But the radical on the other side is the same, and he sees that he’s fighting for his people and the destiny of his faith. And when warriors fight each other, often there’s little hatred left afterwards, because it’s expended in the extraordinary ferocity of the moment.

This is when this type of mass culture, amusing and interesting and entertaining though it is, begins to fall away. Because whenever we’ve gone to war, and we’ve gone to war quite a lot over the last 10 to 12 years. Blair’s wars: Kosovo. There’s the bombing of the Serbs. Milošević is depicted as evil! Remember those slogans in the sun? Bomb Milošević’s bed! Bomb his bed! Bomb his house! And this sort of thing. Saddam! We’re gonna string him up! The man’s a war criminal! The fact he’d been a client to the West for years didn’t seem to come into it. Hanged. Showed extreme bravery in a way, even though if you weren’t a Sunni in Iraq, definitely, he wasn’t exactly your man.

There’s a degree to which the extraordinary demonization of the Other works. That’s why it’s used. The British National Party won two seats in that election but there was a campaign against it for 12 to 15 days before in almost every item of media irrespective of ideological profile saying, “Don’t vote for these people!” to get rid of the softer protest votes and you’re only left with the hard core. That’s why that type of ideology is used. Maybe humans are hardwired to see absolute malevolence as on the other side, when in actual fact it’s just a person who may or may not be fighting against them.

But what this type of mass or popular culture does is it retains the instinct of the heroic: to transcend, to fight, to struggle, to not know fear, to if one has fear to overcome it in the moment, to be part of the group but retain individual consciousness within it, to be male, to be biologically defined, to not be frightened of death, whatever religious or spiritual views and values that one incarnates in order to face that. These are, in a crude way, what these forms are suggesting. Morality is often instinctual, as is largely true with humans.

I knew somebody who fought in Korea. When they were captured, the Koreans debated amongst themselves whether they should kill all the prisoners. There were savage disputes between men. This always happens in war.

I remember, as I near the close of this speech, that one of Sir Oswald Mosley’s sons wrote a very interesting book both about his father and about his experiences in the Second World War. This is Nicholas Mosley, the novelist and biographer. He was in a parachute regiment, and there’s two stories that impinge upon the nature of the heroic that often appears in popular forms and which I’ll close with.

One is when he was with his other members. He was with his other parachutists, and they were in a room. There was The Daily Mirror, still going, the organ of Left-wing hate which is The Daily Mirror, and on the front it said, “Oswald Mosley: The Most Hated Man in Britain.” The most hated man in Britain. And a chap looked up from his desk and looked at Mosley who was leading a fighting brigade and said, “Mosley, you’re not related to this bastard, are you?” And he said, “I’m one of his sons.” And there was total silence in the room. Total silence in the room, and they stared each other out, and the bloke’s hands gripped The Mirror, and all the other paratroopers were looking at this incident. And after about four minutes it broke and the other one tore up The Mirror and put it in a bin at the back of the desk and said, “Sorry, mate. Didn’t mean anything. Really.” Mosley said, “Well, that’s alright then, old chap.” And left.

The other story is very, very interesting. This was they were advancing through France, and the Germans are falling back. And I believe I’ve told this story before at one of these meetings, but never waste a good story. A senior officer comes down the track and says, “Mosley! Mosley, you’re taking too many prisoners. You’re taking too many prisoners. It’s slowing the advance. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mosley?” And he said, “Sir, yes, I totally understand what you’re saying.” He says, “Do you really understand what I’m saying? You’re slowing the advance. Everyone’s noticing it. Do something about it. Do you understand?” “Sir!”

And he’s off, I guess to another spot of business further down. Mosley turns to his Welsh sergeant-major and says, “What do you think about that? We’re taking too many prisoners.” Because what the officer has told him in a very English and a very British way is to shoot German soldiers and to shoot German prisoners and to shoot them in ditches. What else does it mean? “You’re slowing the advance! You’re taking too many prisoners! You’re not soft on these people, are you, Mosley? Speed the advance of your column!” That’s what he’s saying, but it’s not written down. It’s not given as a formal and codified order. But everyone shoots prisoners in war! It’s a fact! When your friend’s had his head blown off next to you, you’d want revenge!

I know people who fought in the Falklands. And some of the Argentinian Special Forces and some of the conscripts together used dum-dum bullets. Hits a man, his spine explodes. So, when certain conscripts were found by British troops they finished them pretty quickly at Goose Green and elsewhere. This will occur! In all wars! Amongst all men! Of all races and of all kinds! Because it’s part of the fury that battle involves.

One of my views is that is that we can’t as a species, or even as groups, really face the fact that in situations of extremity this is what we’re like. And this is why, in some ways, we create for our entertainment these striated forms of heroic culture where there’s absolutely good and absolutely malevolent and the two never cross over. When the Joker is dragged off, justice is done and Inspector Gordon rings Batman up (because it is he) and says, “Well done! You’ve cleansed the city of a menace.” All of the villains go to an asylum called Arkham Asylum. They’re all taken to an asylum where they jibber insanely and wait for revenge against the nature of society.

I personally think that a great shadow has been cast for 60 years on people who want to manifest the most radical forms of political identity that relate to their own group, their own inheritance, their own nationality, their own civilizational construct in relation to that nationality, the spiritual systems from the past and in the present and into the future that are germane to them and not necessarily to the others, to their own racial and biological configuration. No other tendency of opinion is more demonized in the entire West. No other tendency of opinion is under pressure.

Two things can’t be integrated into the situationist spectacle based upon the right to shop. They’re religious fundamentalism and the radical Right, and they’re tied together in various ways. It’s why the two out-groups in Western society are radical Right-wing militants and Islamists. They’re the two groups that are Other, that are totally outside. The way in which they’re viewed by The Mirror and others is almost the level of a Marvel Comics villain.

I seem to remember a picture from the Sunday Telegraph years ago of our second speaker [David Irving], and I’m quite sure that it’d been re-tinted, at least this is my visual memory of it, to appear darker, to appear more sinister. I remember once GQ did a photo of me years ago when I was in a group called Revolutionary Conservative. That photo was taken in Parliament Square. You know, the square that has Churchill and Mandela in it, that square near our parliament, with Oliver Cromwell over there hiding, [unintelligible] over there hiding further on. That photo was taken at 12:30, and it was a brighter day than this. But in GQ magazine it was darkened to make it look as though it was shot at nine o’clock, and everything was dark, and because it involved so much re-tinting it slightly distorted and reconfigured everything. That’s because these people are dark, you see! They’re the force from outside! They’re that which shouldn’t be permitted!

Whereas I believe that the force which is for light and the force which is for darkness (because I’m a pagan) can come together and used creatively and based upon identity and can lead on to new vistas. But that’s a rather dangerous notion, and you won’t find it in The Fantastic Four when Reed Richards and Dr. Doom do battle, and you won’t find it in Spiderman when Peter Parker and Dr. Octopus (Dr. Otto Octavius) do battle with one another. You won’t see it when the Aryan Captain America is taking on his National Socialist nemesis, the Red Skull. You won’t see it with the Hulk taking on the Leader. You won’t see it in any of these forms. But these forms have a real use, and that is that they build courage.

Nietzsche says at the end of Zarathrustra that there are two things you need in this life. You need courage and knowledge. That’s why Zarathrustra has two friends. He has an eagle, which stands for courage, and he has a snake, which stands for knowledge. And if you can combine those things, and synthesize them, you have a new type of man and a new type of future. And Nietzsche chose the great Persian sage as the explicator of his particular truth, because in the past he represented extreme dualism, but in the future Nietzsche wished to portray that he brought those dualities together and combined them as one heroic force.

Thank you very much! 


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La Tradition dans la pensée de Martin Heidegger et de Julius Evola

Le primordial et l’éternel :
La Tradition dans la pensée de Martin Heidegger et de Julius Evola

par Michael O'Meara 

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

heidegger.jpgL’opposé de la tradition, dit l’historien Dominique Venner, n’est pas la modernité, une notion illusoire, mais le nihilisme [1]. D’après Nietzsche, qui développa le concept, le nihilisme vient avec la mort des dieux et « la répudiation radicale de [toute] valeur, sens et désirabilité » [2]. Un monde nihiliste – comme le nôtre, dans lequel les valeurs les plus élevées ont été dévaluées – est un monde incapable de canaliser les courants entropiques de la vie dans un flux sensé, et c’est pourquoi les traditionalistes associés à l’éternalisme guénonien, au traditionalisme radical, au néo-paganisme, au conservatisme révolutionnaire, à l’anti-modernisme et à l’ethno-nationalisme se rassemblent contre lui.

La tradition dont les vérités signifiantes et créatives sont affirmées par ces traditionalistes contre l’assaut nihiliste de la modernité n’est pas le concept anthropologique et sociologique dominant, défini comme « un ensemble de pratiques sociales inculquant certaines normes comportementales impliquant une continuité avec un passé réel ou imaginaire ». Ce n’est pas non plus la « démocratie des morts » de G. K. Chesterton, ni la « banque générale et le capital des nations et des âges » d’Edmund Burke. Pour eux la tradition n’avait pas grand-chose à voir avec le passé comme tel, des pratiques culturelles formalisées, ou même le traditionalisme. Venner, par exemple, la compare à un motif musical, un thème guidant, qui fournit une cohérence et une direction aux divers mouvements de la vie.

Si la plupart des traditionalistes s’accordent à voir la tradition comme orientant et transcendant à la fois l’existence collective d’un peuple, représentant quelque chose d’immuable qui renaît perpétuellement dans son expérience du temps, sur d’autres questions ils tendent à être en désaccord. Comme cas d’école, les traditionalistes radicaux associés à TYR s’opposent aux « principes abstraits mais absolus » que l’école guénonienne associe à la « Tradition » et préfèrent privilégier l’héritage européen [3]. Ici l’implication (en-dehors de ce qu’elle implique pour la biopolitique) est qu’il n’existe pas de Tradition Eternelle ou de Vérité Universelle, dont les vérités éternelles s’appliqueraient partout et à tous les peuples – seulement des traditions différentes, liées à des peuples différents dans des époques et des régions culturelles différentes. Les traditions spécifiques de ces histoires et cultures incarnent, comme telles, les significations collectives qui définissent, situent et orientent un peuple, lui permettant de triompher des défis incessant qui lui sont spécifiques. Comme l’écrit M. Raphael Johnson, la tradition est « quelque chose de similaire au concept d’ethnicité, c’est-à-dire un ensemble de normes et de significations tacites qui se sont développées à partir de la lutte pour la survie d’un peuple ». En-dehors du contexte spécifique de cette lutte, il n’y a pas de tradition [4].

Mais si puissante qu’elle soit, cette position « culturaliste » prive cependant les traditionalistes radicaux des élégants postulats philosophiques et principes monistes étayant l’école guénonienne. Non seulement leur projet de culture intégrale enracinée dans l’héritage européen perd ainsi la cohésion intellectuelle des guénoniens, mais il risque aussi de devenir un pot-pourri d’éléments disparates, manquant de ces « vues » philosophiques éclairées qui pourraient ordonner et éclairer la tradition dont ils se réclament. Cela ne veut pas dire que la révolte de la tradition contre le monde moderne doive être menée d’une manière philosophique, ou que la renaissance de la tradition dépende d’une formulation philosophique spécifique. Rien d’aussi utilitaire ou utopique n’est impliqué, car la philosophie ne crée jamais – du moins jamais directement – « les mécanismes et les opportunités qui amènent un état de choses historique » [5]. De telles « vues » fournissent plutôt une ouverture au monde – dans ce cas, le monde perdu de la tradition – montrant la voie vers ces perspectives que les traditionalistes radicaux espèrent retrouver.

Je crois que la pensée de Martin Heidegger offre une telle vision. Dans les pages qui suivent, nous défendrons une appropriation traditionaliste de la pensée heideggérienne. Les guénoniens sont ici pris comme un repoussoir vis-à-vis de Heidegger non seulement parce que leur approche métaphysique s’oppose à l’approche historique européenne associée à TYR, mais aussi parce que leur discours possède en partie la rigueur et la profondeur de Heidegger. René Guénon représente cependant un problème, car il fut un apostat musulman de la tradition européenne, désirant « orientaliser » l’Occident. Cela fait de lui un interlocuteur inapproprié pour les traditionalistes radicaux, particulièrement en comparaison avec son compagnon traditionaliste Julius Evola, qui fut l’un des grands champions contemporains de l’héritage « aryen ». Parmi les éternalistes, c’est alors Evola plutôt que Guénon qui offre le repoussoir le plus approprié à Heidegger [6].

Le Naturel et le Surnaturel

Etant donné les fondations métaphysiques des guénoniens, le Traditionalisme d’Evola se concentrait non sur « l’alternance éphémère des choses données aux sens », mais sur « l’ordre éternel des choses » situé « au-dessus » d’elles. Pour lui Tradition signifie la « sagesse éternelle, la philosophia perennis, la Vérité Primordiale » inscrite dans ce domaine supra-humain, dont les principes éternels, immuables et universels étaient connus, dit-on, des premiers hommes et dont le patrimoine (bien que négligé) est aujourd’hui celui de toute l’humanité [7].

La « méthode traditionaliste » d’Evola vise ainsi à recouvrer l’unité perdue dans la multiplicité des choses du monde. De ce fait il se préoccupe moins de la réalité empirique, historique ou existentielle (comprise comme un reflet déformé de quelque chose de supérieur) que de l’esprit – tel qu’on le trouve, par exemple, dans le symbole, le mythe et le rituel. Le monde humain, par contre, ne possède qu’un ordre d’importance secondaire pour lui. Comme Platon, il voit son domaine visible comme un reflet imparfait d’un domaine invisible supérieur. « Rien n’existe ici-bas », écrit-il, « …qui ne s’enracine pas dans une réalité plus profonde, numineuse. Toute cause visible n’est qu’apparente » [8]. Il refuse ainsi toutes les explications historiques ou naturalistes concernant le monde contingent de l’homme.

Voyant la Tradition comme une « présence » transmettant les vérités transcendantes obscurcies par le tourbillon éphémère des apparences terrestres, Evola identifie l’Etre à ses vérités immuables. Dans cette conception, l’Etre est à la fois en-dehors et au-delà du cours de l’histoire (c’est-à-dire qu’il est supra-historique), alors que le monde humain du Devenir est associé à un flux toujours changeant et finalement insensé de vie terrestre de sensations. La « valeur suprême et les principes fondateurs de toute institution saine et normale sont par conséquent invariables, étant basés sur l’Etre » [9]. C’est de ce principe que vient la doctrine évolienne des « deux natures » (la naturelle et la surnaturelle), qui désigne un ordre physique associé au monde du Devenir connu de l’homme et un autre ordre qui décrit le royaume métaphysique inconditionné de l’Etre connu des dieux.

Les civilisations traditionnelles, affirme Evola, reflétaient les principes transcendants transmis dans la Tradition, alors que le royaume « anormal et régressif » de l’homme moderne n’est qu’un vestige décadent de son ordre céleste. Le monde temporel et historique du Devenir, pour cette raison, est relégué à un ordre d’importance inférieur, alors que l’unité éternelle de l’Etre est privilégiée. Comme son « autre maître » Joseph de Maistre, Evola voit la Tradition comme antérieure à l’histoire, non conditionnée par le temps ou les circonstances, et donc sans lien avec les origines humaines » [10]. La primauté qu’il attribue au domaine métaphysique est en effet ce qui le conduit à affirmer que sans la loi éternelle de l’Etre transmise dans la Tradition, « toute autorité est frauduleuse, toute loi est injuste et barbare, toute institution est vaine et éphémère » [11].

La Tradition comme Überlieferung

Heidegger suit la voie opposée. Eduqué pour une vocation dans l’Eglise catholique et fidèle aux coutumes enracinées et provinciales de sa Souabe natale, lui aussi s’orienta vers « l’ancienne transcendance et non la mondanité moderne ». Mais son anti-modernisme s’opposait à la tradition de la pensée métaphysique occidentale et, par implication, à la philosophie guénonienne de la Tradition (qu’il ne connaissait apparemment pas).

La métaphysique est cette branche de la philosophie qui traite des questions ontologiques majeures, la plus fondamentale étant la question : Qu’est-ce que l’Etre ? Commençant avec Aristote, la métaphysique tendit néanmoins à s’orienter vers la facette non-physique et non-terrestre de l’Etre, tentant de saisir la transcendance de différents êtres comme l’esprit, la force, ou l’essence [12]. En recourant à des catégories aussi généralisées, cette tendance postule un royaume transcendant de formes permanentes et de vérités inconditionnées qui comprennent l’Etre d’une manière qui, d’après Heidegger, limite la compréhension humaine de sa vérité, empêchant la manifestation d’une présence à la fois cachée, ouverte et fuyante. Dans une formulation opaque mais cependant révélatrice, Heidegger écrit : « Quand la vérité [devient une incontestable] certitude, alors tout ce qui est vraiment réel doit se présenter comme réel pour l’être réel qu’il est [supposément] » – c’est-à-dire que quand la métaphysique postule ses vérités, pour elle la vérité doit se présenter non seulement d’une manière autoréférentielle, mais aussi d’une manière qui se conforme à une idée préconçue d’elle-même » [13]. Ici la différence entre la vérité métaphysique, comme proposition, et l’idée heideggérienne d’une manifestation en cours est quelque peu analogue à celle différenciant les prétentions de vérité du Dieu chrétien de celles des dieux grecs, les premières présupposant l’objectivité totale d’une vérité universelle éternelle et inconditionnée préconçue dans l’esprit de Dieu, et les secondes acceptant que la « dissimulation » est aussi inhérente à la nature polymorphe de la vérité que l’est la manifestation [14].

Etant donné son affirmation a-historique de vérités immuables installées dans la raison pure, Heidegger affirme que l’élan préfigurant et décontextualisant de la métaphysique aliène les êtres de l’Etre, les figeant dans leurs représentations momentanées et les empêchant donc de se déployer en accord avec les possibilités offertes par leur monde spécifique. L’oubli de l’être culmine dans la civilisation technologique moderne, où l’être est défini simplement comme une chose disponible pour l’investigation scientifique, la manipulation technologique et la consommation humaine. La tradition métaphysique a obscurci l’Etre en le définissant en termes essentiellement anthropocentriques et même subjectivistes.

Mais en plus de rejeter les postulats inconditionnés de la métaphysique [15], Heidegger associe le mot « tradition » – ou du moins sa forme latinisée (die Tradition) – à l’héritage philosophique occidental et son oubli croissant de l’être. De même, il utilise l’adjectif « traditionell » péjorativement, l’associant à l’élan généralisant de la métaphysique et aux conventions quotidiennes insouciantes contribuant à l’oubli de l’Etre.

Mais après avoir noté cette particularité sémantique et son intention antimétaphysique, nous devons souligner que Heidegger n’était pas un ennemi de la tradition, car sa philosophie privilégie ces « manifestations de l’être » originelles dans lesquelles naissent les grandes vérités traditionnelles. Comme telle, la tradition pour lui n’est pas un ensemble de postulats désincarnés, pas quelque chose d’hérité passivement, mais une facette de l’Etre qui ouvre l’homme à un futur lui appartenant en propre. Dans cet esprit, il associe l’Überlieferung (signifiant aussi tradition) à la transmission de ces principes transcendants inspirant tout « grand commencement ».

La Tradition dans ce sens primordial permet à l’homme, pense-t-il, « de revenir à lui-même », de découvrir ses possibilités historiquement situées et uniques, et de se réaliser dans la plénitude de son essence et de sa vérité. En tant qu’héritage de destination, l’Überlieferung de Heidegger est le contraire de l’idéal décontextualisé des Traditionalistes. Dans Etre et Temps, il dit que die Tradition « prend ce qui est descendu vers nous et en fait une évidence en soi ; elle bloque notre accès à ces ‘sources’ primordiales dont les catégories et les concepts transmis à nous ont été en partie authentiquement tirés. En fait, elle nous fait oublier qu’elles ont eu une telle origine, et nous fait supposer que la nécessité de revenir à ces sources est quelque chose que nous n’avons même pas besoin de comprendre » [17]. Dans ce sens, Die Tradition oublie les possibilités formatives léguées par son origine de destination, alors que l’Überlieferung, en tant que transmission, les revendique. La pensée de Heidegger se préoccupe de retrouver l’héritage de ces sources anciennes.

Sa critique de la modernité (et, contrairement à ce qu’écrit Evola, il est l’un de ses grands critiques) repose sur l’idée que la perte ou la corruption de la tradition de l’Europe explique « la fuite des dieux, la destruction de la terre, la réduction des êtres humains à une masse, la prépondérance du médiocre » [18]. A présent vidé de ses vérités primordiales, le cadre de vie européen, dit-il, risque de mourir : c’est seulement en « saisissant ses traditions d’une manière créative », et en se réappropriant leur élan originel, que l’Occident évitera le « chemin de l’annihilation » que la civilisation rationaliste, bourgeoise et nihiliste de la modernité semble avoir pris » [19].

La tradition (Überlieferung) que défend l’antimétaphysique Heidegger n’est alors pas le royaume universel et supra-sensuel auquel se réfèrent les guénoniens lorsqu’ils parlent de la Tradition. Il s’agit plutôt de ces vérités primordiales que l’Etre rend présentes « au commencement » –, des vérités dont les sources historiques profondes et les certitudes constantes tendent à être oubliées dans les soucis quotidiens ou dénigrées dans le discours moderniste, mais dont les possibilités restent néanmoins les seules à nous être vraiment accessibles. Contre ces métaphysiciens, Heidegger affirme qu’aucune prima philosophia n’existe pour fournir un fondement à la vie ou à l’Etre, seulement des vérités enracinées dans des origines historiques spécifiques et dans les conventions herméneutiques situant un peuple dans ses grands récits.

Il refuse ainsi de réduire la tradition à une analyse réfléchie indépendante du temps et du lieu. Son approche phénoménologique du monde humain la voit plutôt comme venant d’un passé où l’Etre et la vérité se reflètent l’un l’autre et, bien qu’imparfaitement, affectent le présent et la manière dont le futur est approché. En tant que tels, Etre, vérité et tradition ne peuvent pas être saisis en-dehors de la temporalité (c’est-à-dire la manière dont les humains connaissent le temps). Cela donne à l’Etre, à la vérité et à la tradition une nature avant tout historique (bien que pas dans le sens progressiste, évolutionnaire et développemental favorisé par les modernistes). C’est seulement en posant la question de l’Etre, la Seinsfrage, que l’Etre de l’humain s’ouvre à « la condition de la possibilité de [sa] vérité ».

C’est alors à travers la temporalité que l’homme découvre la présence durable qui est l’Etre [20]. En effet, si l’Etre de l’homme n’était pas situé temporellement, sa transcendance, la préoccupation principale de la métaphysique guénonienne, serait inconcevable. De même, il n’y a pas de vérité (sur le monde ou les cieux au-dessus de lui) qui ne soit pas ancrée dans notre Etre-dans-le-monde – pas de vérité absolue ou de Tradition Universelle, seulement des vérités et des traditions nées de ce que nous avons été… et pouvons encore être. Cela ne veut pas dire que l’Etre de l’humain manque de transcendance, seulement que sa possibilité vient de son immanence – que l’Etre et les êtres, le monde et ses objets, sont un phénomène unitaire et ne peuvent pas être saisis l’un sans l’autre.

Parce que la conception heideggérienne de la tradition est liée à la question de l’Etre et parce que l’Etre est inséparable du Devenir, l’Etre et la tradition fidèle à sa vérité ne peuvent être dissociés de leur émergence et de leur réalisation dans le temps. Sein und Zeit, Etre immuable et changement historique, sont inséparables dans sa pensée. L’Etre, écrit-il, « est Devenir et le Devenir est Etre » [21]. C’est seulement par le processus du devenir dans le temps, dit-il, que les êtres peuvent se déployer dans l’essence de leur Etre. La présence constante que la métaphysique prend comme l’essence de l’Etre est elle-même un aspect du temps et ne peut être saisie que dans le temps – car le temps et l’Etre partagent une coappartenance primordiale.

Le monde platonique guénonien des formes impérissables et des idéaux éternels est ici rejeté pour un monde héraclitien de flux et d’apparition, où l’homme, fidèle à lui-même, cherche à se réaliser dans le temps – en termes qui parlent à son époque et à son lieu, faisant cela en relation avec son héritage de destination. Etant donné que le temps implique l’espace, la relation de l’être avec l’Etre n’est pas simplement un aspect individualisé de l’Etre, mais un « être-là » (Dasein) spécifique – situé, projeté, et donc temporellement enraciné dans ce lieu où l’Etre n’est pas seulement « manifesté » mais « approprié ». Sans « être-là », il n’y a pas d’Etre, pas d’existence. Pour lui, l’engagement humain dans le monde n’est pas simplement une facette située de l’Etre, c’est son fondement.

Ecarter la relation d’un être avec son temps et son espace (comme le fait la métaphysique atemporelle des guénoniens) est « tout aussi insensé que si quelqu’un voulait expliquer la cause et le fondement d’un feu [en déclarant] qu’il n’y a pas besoin de se soucier du cours du feu ou de l’exploration de sa scène » [22]. C’est seulement dans la « facticité » (le lien des pratiques, des suppositions, des traditions et des histoires situant son Devenir), et non dans une supra-réalité putative, que tout le poids de l’Etre – et la « condition fondamentale pour… tout ce qui est grand » – se fait sentir.

Quand les éternalistes interprètent « les êtres sans s’interroger sur [la manière dont] l’essence de l’homme appartient à la vérité de l’Etre », ils ne pourraient pas être plus opposés à Heidegger. En effet, pour eux l’Etre est manifesté comme Ame Cosmique (le maître plan de l’univers, l’Unité indéfinissable, l’Etre éternel), qui est détachée de la présence originaire et terrestre, distincte de l’Etre-dans-le-monde de Heidegger [23]. Contre l’idée décontextualisée et détachée du monde des métaphysiciens, Heidegger souligne que la présence de l’Etre est manifestée seulement dans ses états terrestres, temporels, et jamais pleinement révélés. Des mondes différents nous donnent des possibilités différentes, des manières différentes d’être ou de vivre. Ces mondes historiquement situés dictent les possibilités spécifiques de l’être humain, lui imposant un ordre et un sens. Ici Heidegger ne nie pas la possibilité de la transcendance humaine, mais la recherche au seul endroit où elle est accessible à l’homme – c’est-à-dire dans son da (« là »), sa situation spécifique. Cela fait du Devenir à la fois la toile de fond existentielle et l’« horizon transcendantal » de l’Etre, car même lorsqu’elle transcende sa situation, l’existence humaine est forcément limitée dans le temps et dans l’espace.

En posant la Seinsfrage de cette manière, il s’ensuit qu’on ne peut pas partir de zéro, en isolant un être abstrait et atomisé de tout ce qui le situe dans un temps et un espace spécifiques, car on ignorerait ainsi que l’être de l’homme est quelque chose de fini, enraciné dans un contexte historiquement conditionné et culturellement défini – on ignorerait, en fait, que c’est un Etre-là (Dasein). Car si l’existence humaine est prisonnière du flux du Devenir – si elle est quelque chose de situé culturellement, linguistiquement, racialement, et, avant tout, historiquement –, elle ne peut pas être comprise comme un Etre purement inconditionné.

Le caractère ouvert de la temporalité humaine signifie, de plus, que l’homme est responsable de son être. Il est l’être dont « l’être est lui-même une question », car, bien que située, son existence n’est jamais fixée ou complète, jamais déterminée à l’avance, qu’elle soit vécue d’une manière authentique ou non [24]. Elle est vécue comme une possibilité en développement qui se projette vers un futur « pas encore réel », puisque l’homme cherche à « faire quelque chose de lui-même » à partir des possibilités léguées par son origine spécifique. Cela pousse l’homme à se « soucier » de son Dasein, individualisant ses possibilités en accord avec le monde où il habite.

Ici le temps ne sert pas seulement d’horizon contre lequel l’homme est projeté, il sert de fondement (la facticité prédéterminée) sur lequel sa possibilité est réalisée. La possibilité que l’homme cherche dans le futur (son projet) est inévitablement affectée par le présent qui le situe et le passé modelant son sens de la possibilité. La projection du Dasein vient ainsi « vers lui-même d’une manière telle qu’il revient », anticipant sa possibilité comme quelque chose qui « a été » et qui est encore à portée de main [25]. Car c’est seulement en accord avec son Etre-là, sa « projection », qu’il peut être pleinement approprié – et transcendé [26].

En rejetant les concepts abstraits, inconditionnés et éternels de la métaphysique, Heidegger considère la vérité, en particulier les vérités primordiales que la tradition transmet, comme étant d’une nature historique et temporelle, liée à des manifestations distinctes (bien que souvent obscures) de l’Etre, et imprégnée d’un passé dont l’origine créatrice de destin inspire le sens humain de la possibilité. En effet, c’est la configuration distincte formée par la situation temporelle, l’ouverture de l’Etre, et la facticité situant cette rencontre qui forme les grandes questions se posant à l’homme, puisqu’il cherche à réaliser (ou à éviter) sa possibilité sur un fondement qu’il n’a pas choisi. « L’histoire de l’Etre », écrit Heidegger, « n’est jamais le passé mais se tient toujours devant nous ; elle soutient et définit toute condition et situation humaine » [27].

L’homme n’affronte donc pas les choix définissant son Dasein au sens existentialiste d’être « condamné » à prendre des décisions innombrables et arbitraires le concernant. L’ouverture à laquelle il fait face est plutôt guidée par les possibilités spécifiques à son existence historiquement située, alors que les « décisions » qu’il prend concernent son authenticité (c’est-à-dire sa fidélité à ses possibilités historiquement destinées, son destin). Puisqu’il n’y a pas de vérités métaphysiques éternelles inscrites dans la tradition, seulement des vérités posées par un monde « toujours déjà », vivre à la lumière des vérités de l’Etre requiert que l’homme connaisse sa place dans l’histoire, qu’il connaisse le lieu et la manière de son origine, et affronte son histoire comme le déploiement (ou, négativement, la déformation) des promesses posées par une prédestination originelle [28]. Une existence humaine authentique, affirme Heidegger, est « un processus de conquête de ce que nous avons été au service de ce que nous sommes » [29].

Le Primordial

Le « premier commencement » de l’homme – le commencement (Anfangen) « sans précédent et monumental » dans lequel ses ancêtres furent « piégés » (gefangen) comme une forme spécifique de l’Etre – met en jeu d’autres commencements, devenant le fondement de toutes ses fondations ultérieures [30]. En orientant l’histoire dans une certaine direction, le commencement – le primordial – « ne réside pas dans le passé mais se trouve en avant, dans ce qui doit venir » [31]. Il est « le décret lointain qui nous ordonne de ressaisir sa grandeur » [32]. Sans cette « reconquête », il ne peut y avoir d’autre commencement : car c’est en se réappropriant un héritage, dont le commencement est déjà un achèvement, que l’homme revient à lui-même, s’inscrivant dans le monde de son propre temps. « C’est en se saisissant du premier commencement que l’héritage… devient l’héritage ; et seuls ceux qui appartiennent au futur… deviennent [ses] héritiers » [33]. L’élève de Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer dit que toutes les questions concernant les commencements « sont toujours [des questions] sur nous-mêmes et notre futur » [34].

Pour Heidegger, en transmettant la vérité de l’origine de l’homme, la tradition défie l’homme à se réaliser face à tout ce qui conspire pour déformer son être. De même qu’Evola pensait que l’histoire était une involution à partir d’un Age d’Or ancien, d’où un processus de décadence, Heidegger voit l’origine – l’inexplicable manifestation de l’Etre qui fait naître ce qui est « le plus particulier » au Dasein, et non universel – comme posant non seulement les trajectoires possibles de la vie humaine, mais les obstacles inhérents à sa réalisation. Se déployant sur la base de sa fondation primordiale, l’histoire tend ainsi à être une diminution, un déclin, un oubli ou une dissimulation des possibilités léguées par son « commencement », le bavardage oisif, l’exaltation de l’ordinaire et du quotidien, ou le règne du triomphe médiocre sur le destin, l’esprit de décision et l’authenticité des premières époques, dont la proximité avec l’Etre était immédiate, non dissimulée, et pleine de possibilités évidentes.

Là où Evola voit l’histoire en termes cycliques, chaque cycle restant essentiellement homogène, représentant un segment de la succession récurrente gouvernée par certains principes immuables, Heidegger voit l’histoire en termes des possibilités posées par leur appropriation. C’est seulement à partir des possibilités intrinsèques à la genèse originaire de sa « sphère de sens » – et non à partir du domaine supra-historique des guénoniens – que l’homme, dit-il, peut découvrir les tâches historiquement situées qui sont « exigées » de lui et s’ouvrir à leur possibilité [35]. En accord avec cela, les mots « plus ancien », « commencement » et « primordial » sont associés dans la pensée de Heidegger à l’essence ou la vérité de l’Etre, de même que le souvenir de l’origine devient une « pensée à l’avance de ce qui vient » [36].

Parce que le primordial se trouve devant l’homme, pas derrière lui, la révélation initiale de l’Etre vient dans chaque nouveau commencement, puisque chaque nouveau commencement s’inspire de sa source pour sa postérité. Comme Mnémosyne, la déesse de la mémoire qui était la muse principale des poètes grecs, ce qui est antérieur préfigure ce qui est postérieur, car la « vérité de l’Etre » trouvée dans les origines pousse le projet du Dasein à « revenir à lui-même ». C’est alors en tant qu’« appropriation la plus intérieure de l’Etre » que les origines sont si importantes. Il n’y a pas d’antécédent ou de causa prima, comme le prétend la logique inorganique de la modernité, mais « ce dont et ce par quoi une chose est ce qu’elle est et telle qu’elle est… [Ils sont] la source de son essence » et la manière dont la vérité « vient à être… [et] devient historique » [37]. Comme le dit le penseur français de la Nouvelle Droite, Alain de Benoist, l’« originel » (à la différence du novum de la modernité) n’est pas ce qui vient une fois pour toutes, mais ce qui vient et se répète chaque fois qu’un être se déploie dans l’authenticité de son origine » [38]. Dans ce sens, l’origine représente l’unité primordiale de l’existence et de l’essence exprimées dans la tradition. Et parce que l’« appropriation » à la fois originelle et ultérieure de l’Etre révèle la possibilité, et non l’environnement purement « factuel » ou « momentané » qui l’affecte, le Dasein n’accomplit sa constance propre que lorsqu’il est projeté sur le fondement de son héritage authentique [39].

La pensée heideggérienne n’est pas un existentialisme

Evola consacre plusieurs chapitres de Chevaucher le tigre (Calvacare la Tigre) à une critique de l’« existentialisme » d’après-guerre popularisé par Jean-Paul Sartre et dérivé, à ce qu’on dit, de la pensée de Heidegger » [40]. Bien que reconnaissant certaines différences entre Sartre et Heidegger, Evola les traitait comme des esprits fondamentalement apparentés. Son Sartre est ainsi décrit comme un non-conformiste petit-bourgeois et son Heidegger comme un intellectuel chicanier, tous deux voyant l’homme comme échoué dans un monde insensé, condamné à faire des choix incessants sans aucun recours transcendant. Le triste concept de liberté des existentialistes, affirme Evola, voit l’univers comme un vide, face auquel l’homme doit se forger son propre sens (l’« essence » de Sartre). Leur notion de liberté (et par implication, celle de Heidegger) est ainsi jugée nihiliste, entièrement individualiste et arbitraire.

En réunissant l’existentialisme sartrien et la pensée heideggérienne, Evola ne connaissait  apparemment pas la « Lettre sur l’Humanisme » (1946-47) de Heidegger, dans laquelle ce dernier – d’une manière éloquente et sans ambiguïté – répudiait l’appropriation existentialiste de son œuvre. Il semble aussi qu’Evola n’ait connu que le monumental Sein und Zeit de Heidegger, qu’il lit, comme Sartre, comme une anthropologie philosophique sur les problèmes de l’existence humaine (c’est-à-dire comme un humanisme) plutôt que comme une partie préliminaire d’une première tentative de développer une « ontologie fondamentale » recherchant le sens de l’Etre. Il mettait donc Sartre et Heidegger dans le même sac, les décrivant comme des « hommes modernes », coupés du monde de la Tradition et imprégnés des « catégories profanes, abstraites et déracinées » de la pensée. Parlant de l’affirmation nihiliste de Sartre selon laquelle « l’existence précède l’essence » (qu’il attribuait erronément à Heidegger, qui identifiait l’une à l’autre au lieu de les opposer), le disciple italien de Guénon concluait qu’en situant l’homme dans un monde où l’essence est auto-engendrée, Heidegger rendait le présent concret ontologiquement primaire, avec une nécessité situationnelle, plutôt que le contexte de l’Etre [41]. L’Etre heideggérien est alors vu comme se trouvant au-delà de l’homme, poursuivi comme une possibilité irréalisable [42]. Cela est sensé lier l’Etre au présent, le détachant de la Tradition – et donc de la transcendance qui seule illumine les grandes tâches existentielles.

La critique évolienne de Heidegger, comme que nous l’avons suggéré, n’est pas fondée, ciblant une caricature de sa pensée. Il se peut que l’histoire et la temporalité soient essentielles dans le projet philosophique de Heidegger et qu’il accepte l’affirmation sartrienne qu’il n’existe pas de manières absolues et inchangées pour être humain, mais ce n’est pas parce qu’il croit nécessaire d’« abandonner le plan de l’Etre » pour le plan situationnel. Pour lui, le plan situationnel est simplement le contexte où les êtres rencontrent leur Etre.

Heidegger insiste sur la « structure événementielle temporelle » du Dasein parce qu’il voit les êtres comme enracinés dans le temps et empêtrés dans un monde qui n’est pas de leur propre création (même si l’Etre de ces êtres pourrait transcender le « maintenant » ou la série de « maintenant » qui les situent). En même temps, il souligne que le Dasein est connu d’une manière « extatique », car les pensées du passé, du présent et du futur sont des facettes étroitement liées de la conscience humaine. En effet, c’est seulement en reconnaissant sa dimension extatique (que les existentialistes et les métaphysiciens ignorent) que le Dasein peut « se soucier de l’ouverture de l’Etre », vivre dans sa lumière, et transcender son da éphémère (sa condition situationnelle). Heidegger écrit ainsi que le Dasein est « l’être qui émerge de lui-même » – c’est le dévoilement d’une essence historique-culturelle-existentielle dont le déploiement est étranger à l’élan objectifiant des formes platoniques [43].

En repensant l’Etre en termes de temporalité humaine, en le restaurant dans le Devenir historique, et en établissant le temps comme son horizon transcendant, Heidegger cherche à libérer l’existentiel des propriétés inorganiques de l’espace et de la matière, de l’agitation insensée de la vie moderne, avec son évasion instrumentaliste de l’Etre et sa « pseudo-culture épuisée » – et aussi de le libérer des idéaux éternels privilégiés par les guénoniens. Car si l’Etre est inséparable du Devenir et survient dans un monde-avec-les-autres, alors les êtres, souligne-t-il, sont inhérents à un « contexte de signification » saturé d’histoire et de culture. Poursuivant son projet dans ces termes, les divers modes existentiels de l’homme, ainsi que son monde, ne sont pas formés par des interprétations venant d’une histoire d’interprétations précédentes. L’interprétation elle-même (c’est-à-dire « l’élaboration de possibilités projetées dans la compréhension ») met le présent en question, affectant le déploiement de l’essence. En fait, la matrice chargée de sens mise à jour par l’interprétation constitue une grande part de ce qui forme le « là » (da) dans le Dasein [44].

Etant donné qu’il n’y a pas de Sein sans un da, aucune existence sans un fondement, l’homme, dans sa nature la plus intérieure, est inséparable de la matrice qui « rend possible ce qui a été projeté » [45]. A l’intérieur de cette matrice, l’Etre est inhérent à « l’appropriation du fondement du là » [46]. Contrairement à l’argumentation de Chevaucher le tigre, cette herméneutique historiquement consciente ne prive pas l’homme de l’Etre, ni ne nie la primauté de l’Etre, ni ne laisse l’homme à la merci de sa condition situationnelle. Elle n’a rien à voir non plus avec l’« indéterminisme » radical de Sartre – qui rend le sens contextuellement contingent et l’essence effervescente.

Pour Heidegger l’homme n’existe pas dans un seul de ses moments donnés, mais dans tous, car son être situé (le projet qu’il réalise dans le temps) ne se trouve dans aucun cas unique de son déploiement (ou dans ce que Guénon appelait « la nature indéfinie des possibilités de chaque état »). En fait, il existe dans toute la structure temporelle s’étendant entre la naissance et la mort de l’homme, puisqu’il réalise son projet dans le monde. Sans un passé et un futur pas-encore-réalisé, l’existence humaine ne serait pas Dasein, avec un futur légué par un passé qui est en même temps une incitation à un futur. A la différence de l’individu sartrien (dont l’être est une possibilité incertaine et illimitée) et à la différence de l’éternaliste (qui voit son âme en termes dépourvus de références terrestres), l’homme heideggérien se trouve seulement dans un retour (une « écoute ») à l’essence postulée par son origine.

Cette écoute de l’essence, la nécessité de la découverte de soi pour une existence authentique, n’est pas une pure possibilité, soumise aux « planifications, conceptions, machinations et complots » individuels, mais l’héritier d’une origine spécifique qui détermine son destin. En effet, l’être vient seulement de l’Etre [47]. La notion heideggérienne de la tradition privilégie donc l’Andenken (le souvenir qui retrouve et renouvelle la tradition) et la Verwindung (qui est un aller au-delà, un surmonter) – une idée de la tradition qui implique l’inséparabilité de l’Etre et du Devenir, ainsi que le rôle du Devenir dans le déploiement de l’Etre, plutôt que la négation du Devenir [48].

« Le repos originel de l’Etre » qui a le pouvoir de sauver l’homme du « vacarme de la vie inauthentique, anodine et extérieure » n’est cependant pas aisément gagné. « Retrouver le commencement de l’existence historico-spirituelle afin de la transformer en un nouveau commencement » (qui, à mon avis, définit le projet traditionaliste radical) requiert « une résolution anticipatoire » qui résiste aux routines stupides oublieuses de la temporalité humaine [49]. Inévitablement, une telle résolution anticipatoire ne vient que lorsqu’on met en question les « libertés déracinées et égoïstes » qui nous coupent des vérités en cours déploiement de l’Etre et nous empêchent ainsi de comprendre ce que nous sommes – un questionnement dont la nécessité vient des plus lointaines extrémités de l’histoire de l’homme et dont les réponses sont intégrales pour la tradition qu’elles forment » [50].

L’histoire pour Heidegger est donc un « choix pour héros », exigeant la plus ferme résolution et le plus grand risque, puisque l’homme, dans une confrontation angoissante avec son origine, réalise une possibilité permanente face à une conventionalité amnésique, auto-satisfaite ou effrayante [51]. Les choix historiques qu’il fait n’ont bien sûr rien à voir avec l’individualisme ou le subjectivisme (avec ce qui est arbitraire ou volontaire), mais surgissent de ce qui est vrai et « originel » dans la tradition. Le destin d’un homme (Geschick), comme le destin d’un peuple (Schicksal), ne concerne pas un « choix », mais quelque chose qui est « envoyée » (geschickt) depuis un passé lointain qui a le pouvoir de déterminer une possibilité future. L’Etre, écrit Heidegger, « proclame le destin, et donc le contrôle de la tradition » [52].

En tant qu’appropriation complète de l’héritage dont l’homme hérite à sa naissance, son destin n’est jamais forcé ou imposé. Il s’empare des circonstances non-choisies de sa communauté et de sa génération, puisqu’il recherche la possibilité léguée par son héritage, fondant son existence dans sa « facticité historique la plus particulière » – même si cette appropriation implique l’opposition à « la dictature particulière du domaine public » [53]. Cela rend l’identité individuelle inséparable de son identité collective, puisque l’Etre-dans-le-monde reconnaît son Etre-avec-les-autres (Mitsein). L’homme heideggérien ne réalise ce qu’il est qu’à travers son implication dans le temps et l’espace de sa propre existence destinée, puisqu’il se met à « la disposition des dieux », dont l’actuel « retrait demeure très proche » [54].

La communauté de notre propre peuple, le Mitsein, est le contexte nécessaire de notre Dasein. Comme telle, elle est « ce en quoi, ce dont et ce pour quoi l’histoire arrive » [55]. Comme l’écrit Gadamer, le Mitsein « est un mode primordial d’‘Etre-nous’ – un mode dans lequel le Je n’est pas supplanté par un vous [mais] …englobe une communauté primordiale » [56]. Car même lorsqu’elle s’oppose aux conventions dominantes par besoin d’authenticité individuelle, la recherche de possibilité par le Dasein est une « co-historisation » avec une communauté – une co-historisation dans laquelle un héritage passé devient la base d’un futur plein de sens [57]. Le destin qu’il partage avec son peuple est en effet ce qui fonde le Dasein dans l’historicité, le liant à l’héritage (la tradition) qui détermine et est déterminé par lui [58].

En tant qu’horizon de la transcendance heideggérienne, l’histoire et la tradition ne sont donc jamais universelles, mais plurielles et multiples, produit et producteur d’histoires et de traditions différentes, chacune ayant son origine et sa qualité d’être spécifiques. Il peut y avoir certaines vérités abstraites appartenant aux peuples et aux civilisations partout, mais pour Heidegger il n’y a pas d’histoire ou de tradition abstraites pour les inspirer, seulement la pure transcendance de l’Etre. Chaque grand peuple, en tant qu’expression distincte de l’Etre, possède sa propre histoire, sa propre tradition, sa propre transcendance, qui sont sui generis. Cette spécificité même est ce qui donne une forme, un but et un sens à son expérience d’un monde perpétuellement changeant. Il se peut que l’Etre de l’histoire et de la tradition du Dasein soit universel, mais l’Etre ne se manifeste que dans les êtres, l’ontologie ne se manifeste que dans l’ontique. Selon les termes de Heidegger, « c’est seulement tant que le Dasein existe… qu’il y a l’Etre » [59].

Quand la métaphysique guénonienne décrit la Vérité Eternelle comme l’unité transcendante qui englobe toutes les « religions archaïques » et la plupart des « religions terrestres », elle offre à l’homme moderne une hauteur surplombante d’où il peut évaluer les échecs de son époque. Mais la vaste portée de cette vision a pour inconvénient de réduire l’histoire et la tradition de peuples et de civilisations différents (dont elle rejette en fait les trajectoires singulières) à des variantes sur un unique thème universel (« La pensée moderne, les Lumières, maçonnique », pourrait-on ajouter, nie également l’importance des histoires et des traditions spécifiques).

Par contre, un traditionaliste radical au sens heideggérien se définit en référence non à l’Eternel mais au Primordial dans son histoire et sa tradition, même lorsqu’il trouve des choses à admirer dans l’histoire et la tradition des non-Européens. Car c’est l’Europe qui l’appelle à sa possibilité future. Comme la vérité, la tradition dans la pensée de Heidegger n’est jamais une abstraction, jamais une formulation supra-humaine de principes éternels pertinents pour tous les peuples (bien que ses effets formatifs et sa possibilité futurale puissent assumer une certaine éternité pour ceux à qui elle parle). Il s’agit plutôt d’une force dont la présence illumine les extrémités éloignées de l’âme ancestrale d’un peuple, mettant son être en accord avec l’héritage, l’ordre et le destin qui lui sont singuliers.

Héraclite et Parménide

Quiconque prend l’histoire au sérieux, refusant de rejeter des millénaires de temporalité européenne, ne suivra probablement pas les éternalistes dans leur quête métaphysique. En particulier dans notre monde contemporain, où les forces régressives de mondialisation, du multiculturalisme et de la techno-science cherchent à détruire tout ce qui distingue les peuples et la civilisation de l’Europe des peuples et des civilisations non-européens. Le traditionaliste radical fidèle à l’incomparable tradition de la Magna Europa (et fidèle non pas au sens égoïste du nationalisme étroit, mais dans l’esprit de l’« appartenance au destin de l’Occident ») ne peut donc qu’avoir une certaine réserve envers les guénoniens – mais pas envers Evola lui-même, et c’est ici le tournant de mon argumentation. Car après avoir rejeté la Philosophie Eternelle et sa distillation évolienne, il est important, en conclusion, de « réconcilier » Evola avec les impératifs traditionalistes radicaux de la pensée heideggérienne – car l’alpiniste Evola ne fut pas seulement un grand Européen, un défenseur infatigable de l’héritage de son peuple, mais aussi un extraordinaire Kshatriya, dont l’héroïque Voie de l’Action inspire tous ceux qui s’identifient à sa « Révolte contre le monde moderne ».

Julius-Evola_7444.jpgBien qu’il faudrait un autre article pour développer ce point, Evola, même lorsqu’il se trompe métaphysiquement, offre au traditionaliste radical une œuvre dont les motifs boréens demandent une étude et une discussion approfondies. Mais étant donné l’argument ci-dessus, comment les incompatibilités radicales entre Heidegger et Evola peuvent-elles être réconciliées ?

La réponse se trouve, peut-être, dans cette « étrange » unité reliant les deux premiers penseurs de la tradition européenne, Héraclite et Parménide, dont les philosophies étaient aussi antipodiques que celles de Heidegger et Evola. Héraclite voyait le monde comme un « grand feu », dans lequel tout était toujours en cours de consumation, de même que l’Etre fait perpétuellement place au Devenir. Parménide, d’autre part, soulignait l’unité du monde, le voyant comme une seule entité homogène, dans laquelle tous ses mouvements apparents (le Devenir) faisaient partie d’une seule universalité (l’Etre), les rides et les vagues sur le grand corps de la mer. Mais si l’un voyait le monde en termes de flux et l’autre en termes de stase, ils reconnaissaient néanmoins tous deux un logos unifiant commun, une structure sous-jacente, une « harmonie rassemblée », qui donnait unité et forme à l’ensemble – que l’ensemble se trouvât dans le tourbillon apparemment insensé des événements terrestres ou dans l’interrelation de ses parties innombrables. Cette unité est l’Etre, dont la domination ordonnatrice du monde sous-tend la sensibilité parente animant les distillations originelles de la pensée européenne.

Les projets rivaux de Heidegger et Evola peuvent être vus sous un éclairage similaire. Dans une métaphysique soulignant l’universel et l’éternel, l’opposition de l’Etre et du Devenir, et la primauté de l’inconditionné, Evola s’oppose à la position de Heidegger, qui met l’accent sur le caractère projeté et temporel du Dasein. Evola parvient cependant à quelque chose qui s’apparente aux vues les plus élevées de la pensée heideggérienne. Car quand Heidegger explore le fondement primordial des différents êtres, recherchant le transcendant (l’Etre) dans l’immanence du temps (le Devenir), lui aussi saisit l’Etre dans sa présence impérissable, car à cet instant le primordial devient éternel – pas pour tous les peuples (étant donné que l’origine et le destin d’un peuple sont inévitablement singuliers), mais encore pour ces formes collectives de Dasein dont les différences sont de la même essence (dans la mesure où elles sont issues du même héritage indo-européen).

L’accent mis par Heidegger sur le primordialisme est, je crois, plus convainquant que l’éternalisme d’Evola, mais il n’est pas nécessaire de rejeter ce dernier en totalité (en effet, on peut se demander si dans Etre et Temps Heidegger lui-même n’a pas échoué à réconcilier ces deux facettes fondamentales de l’ontologie). Il se peut donc que Heidegger et Evola approchent l’Etre depuis des points de départ opposés et arrivent à des conclusions différentes (souvent radicalement différentes), mais leur pensée, comme celle d’Héraclite et de Parménide, convergent non seulement dans la primauté qu’ils attribuent à l’Etre, mais aussi dans la manière dont leur compréhension de l’Etre, particulièrement en relation avec la tradition, devient un antidote à la crise du nihilisme européen.

Notes

[1] Dominique Venner, Histoire et tradition des Européens : 30.000 ans d’identité (Paris : Rocher, 2002), p. 18. Cf. Michael O’Meara, « From Nihilism to Tradition », The Occidental Quarterly 3: 2 (été 2004).

[2] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trad. par W. Kaufmann et R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967), pp. 9-39 ; Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trad. par W. Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1975), § 125. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche : 4. Nihilism, trad. par F.A. Capuzzi (San Francisco: Harper, 1982).

[3] « Editorial Prefaces », TYR : Myth – Culture – Tradition 1 et 2 (2002 et 2004).

[4] M. Raphael Johnson, « The State as the Enemy of the Ethnos », at http://es.geocities.com/sucellus23/807.htm. Dans Humain, trop humain (§ 96), Nietzsche écrit : La tradition émerge « sans égard pour le bien ou le mal ou autre impératif catégorique, mais… avant tout dans le but de maintenir une communauté, un peuple ».

[5] Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trad. par G. Fried et R. Polt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 11.

[6] Bien que Guénon eut un effet formatif sur Evola, qui le considérait comme son « maître », l’Italien était non seulement suffisamment indépendant pour se séparer de Guénon sur plusieurs questions importantes, particulièrement en soulignant les origines « boréennes » ou indo-européennes de la Tradition, mais aussi en donnant au projet traditionaliste une tendance nettement militante et européaniste (je soupçonne que c’est cette tendance dans la pensée d’Evola, combinée à ce qu’il prend à Bachofen, Nietzsche et De Giorgio, qui le met – du moins sourdement – en opposition avec sa propre appropriation de la métaphysique guénonienne). En conséquence, certains guénoniens refusent de le reconnaître comme l’un des leurs. Par exemple, le livre de Kenneth Oldmeadow, Traditionalism : Religion in Light of the Perennial Philosophy (Colombo : The Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies, 2000), à présent le principal ouvrage en anglais sur les traditionalistes, ne fait aucune référence à lui. Mon avis est que l’œuvre d’Evola n’est pas aussi importante que celle de Guénon pour l’Eternalisme, mais que pour le « radical » européen, c’est sa distillation la plus intéressante et la plus pertinente. Cf. Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret History of the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004) ; Piero Di Vona, Evola y Guénon: Tradition e civiltà (Naples: S.E.N., 1985) ; Roger Parisot, « L’ours et le sanglier ou le conflit Evola-Guénon », L’âge d’or 11 (automne 1995).

[7] L’attrait tout comme la mystification du concept évolien sont peut-être le mieux exprimés dans l’extrait suivant de la fameuse recension de Révolte contre le monde moderne par Gottfried Benn : « Quel est donc ce Monde de la Tradition ? Tout d’abord, son évocation romancée ne représente pas un concept naturaliste ou historique, mais une vision, une incantation, une intuition magique. Elle évoque le monde comme un universel, quelque chose d’à la fois céleste et supra-humain, quelque chose qui survient et qui a un effet seulement là où l’universel existe encore, là où il est sensé, et où il est déjà exception, rang, aristocratie. A travers une telle évocation, la culture est libérée de ses éléments humains, historiques, libérée pour prendre cette dimension métaphysique dans laquelle l’homme se réapproprie les grands traits primordiaux et transcendants de l’Homme Traditionnel, porteur d’un héritage ». « Julius Evola, Erhebung wider die moderne Welt » (1935), http://www.regin-verlag.de.

[8] Julius Evola, « La vision romaine du sacré » (1934), dans Symboles et mythes de la Tradition occidentale, trad. par H.J. Maxwell (Milan : Arché, 1980).

[9] Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins, trad. par G. Stucco (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2002), p. 116 ; Julius Evola, « Che cosa è la tradizione » dans L’arco e la clava (Milan: V. Scheiwiller, 1968).

[10] Luc Saint-Etienne, « Julius Evola et la Contre-Révolution », dans A. Guyot-Jeannin, ed., Julius Evola (Lausanne : L’Age d’Homme, 1997).

[11] Julius Evola, Revolt against the Modern World, trad. par G. Stucco (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1995), p. 6.

[12] En accord avec une ancienne convention des études heideggériennes de langue anglaise, « Etre » est utilisé ici pour désigner das Sein et « être » das Seiende, ce dernier se référant à une entité ou à une présence, physique ou spirituelle, réelle ou imaginaire, qui participe à l’« existence » de l’Etre (das Sein). Bien que différant en intention et en ramification, les éternalistes conservent quelque chose de cette distinction. Cf. René Guénon, The Multiple States of Being, trad. par J. Godwin (Burkett, N.Y.: Larson, 1984).

[13] Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, trad. par J. Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 32.

[14] Cf. Alain de Benoist, On Being a Pagan, trad. par J. Graham (Atlanta: Ultra, 2004).

[15] On dit que la métaphysique guénonienne est plus proche de l’identification de la vérité et de l’Etre par Platon que de la tradition post-aristotélicienne, dont la distinction entre idée et réalité (Etre et être, essence et apparence) met l’accent sur la seconde, aux dépens de la première. Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, pp. 9-19.

[16] Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trad. par J. Macquarrie et E. Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), § 6 ; aussi Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture”, dans The Question Concerning Technology and Others Essays, trad. par W. Lovitt (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).

[17] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 6.

[18] Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 47.

[19] Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 41.

[20] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 69b.

[21] Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche: 1. The Will to Power as Art, trad. par D. F. Krell (San Francisco: Harper, 1979), p. 22.

[22] Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 35.

[23] Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism”, dans Pathmarks, prep. par W. McNeil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

[24] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 79.

[25] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 65.

[26] Certaines parties de ce paragraphe et plusieurs autres plus loin sont tirées de mon livre New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe (Bloomington: 1stBooks, 2004), pp. 123ff.

[27] Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism”.

[28] Martin Heidegger, Plato’s Sophist, trad. par R. Rojcewicz et A. Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), p. 158.

[29] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 76.

[30] Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trad. par P. Emad et K. Mahy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), § 3 et § 20.

[31] Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, trad. par A. Schuwer et R. Rojcewicz (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 1.

[32] Martin Heidegger, “The Self-Assertion of the German University”, dans The Heidegger Controversy, prep. par Richard Wolin (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993). Aussi : « Seul ce qui est unique est recouvrable et répétable… Le commencement ne peut jamais être compris comme le même, parce qu’il s’étend en avant et ainsi va chaque fois au-delà de ce qui est commencé à travers lui et détermine de même son propre recouvrement ». Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, § 20.

[33] Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, § 101.

[34] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Heidegger’s Ways, trad. par J. W. Stanley (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 64.

[35] Gadamer, Heidegger’s Ways, p. 33.

[36] Martin Heidegger, Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister”, trad. par W. McNeil et J. Davis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 151.

[37] Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art”, dans Basic Writings, prep. par D. F. Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).

[38] Alain de Benoist, L’empire intérieur (Paris: Fata Morgana, 1995), p. 18.

[39] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 65.

[40] Julius Evola, Ride the Tiger, trad. par J. Godwin et C. Fontana (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2003), pp. 78-103.

[41] Cf. Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trad. par A. Hofstader (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), pt. 1, ch. 2.

[42] Quand Evola écrit dans Ride the Tiger que Heidegger voit l’homme « comme une entité qui ne contient pas l’être… mais [se trouve] plutôt devant lui, comme si l’être était quelque chose à poursuivre ou à capturer » (p. 95), il interprète très mal Heidegger, suggérant que ce dernier dresse un mur entre l’Etre et l’être, alors qu’en fait Heidegger voit le Dasein humain comme une expression de l’Etre – mais, du fait de la nature humaine, une expression qui peut ne pas être reconnue comme telle ou authentiquement réalisée.

[43] Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 68.

[44] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 29 ; Contributions to Philosophy, § 120 et § 255.

[45] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 65.

[46] Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, § 92.

[47] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 37.

[48] Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity, trad. par J. R. Synder (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp. 51-64.

[49] Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 6-7.

[50] Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, § 117 et § 184 ; cf. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, trad. par G. Schwab (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985).

[51] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 74.

[52] Martin Heidegger, “The Onto-theo-logical Nature of Metaphysics”, dans Essays in Metaphysics, trad. par K. F. Leidecker (New York: Philosophical Library, 1960).

[53] Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, § 5.

[54] Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, § 5.

[55] Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 162.

[56] Gadamer, Heidegger’s Ways, p. 12.

[57] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 74.

[58] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 74.

[59] Heidegger, Being and Time, § 43c.

Source: TYR: Myth — Culture — Tradition, vol. 3, ed. Joshua Buckley and Michael Moynihan (Atlanta: Ultra, 2007), pp. 67-88.


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vendredi, 05 avril 2013

Warum ich kein Konservativer bin

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Warum ich kein Konservativer bin

By Michael Polignano

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

Übersetzt von Tobias Schmidt

Am Anfang der Woche spazierte ich mit einer Freundin, die sich selbst als konservativ einschätzte, über den Campus der kalifornischen Universität Berkeley. Wir stimmten in den meisten Inhalten überein, obwohl wir uns in unseren Ansichten über Religion und damit verbundenen Fragen unterscheiden. Ich traf sie zum Mittagessen am Sproul Plaza, Berkeleys traditionellem Brennpunkt für Seifenkisten-Redekunst, wo ein christlicher Hardcore-Redner sich aufgestellt hatte. Der Redner besaß ein großes Schild, das öffentlich verkündete, dass wir entweder „Jesus folgen“ oder „zur Hölle gehen“ sollten. Meine Freundin freute sich, während er auf die Degeneration und den sozialen Zerfall, die in Berkeley vorherrschten, schimpfte. Ich bewunderte den Mann, weil er sich gegen den Trend stemmte, jedoch stimmte ich mit seiner Botschaft nicht überein.

Nach ungefähr einem Jahr im College betrachtete ich mich als einen Katholiken und einen Republikaner. Obwohl ich mit dem Kirchendogma in dessen Gesamtheit nicht übereinstimmte, sah ich nichtsdestotrotz das Christentum als eine Kraft des Guten in einer zunehmend korrupten, verdorbenen und entwurzelten Welt an. Ich besuchte eine jesuitische High School für Jungen und war nicht nur von der erhaltenen Erziehung beeindruckt, sondern auch durch den Versuch der Schule, sowohl den Charakter der Schüler, als auch ihren Intellekt zu entwickeln. Die Jesuiten sind der liberalste Orden der Katholiken und sogar ihre religiösen Klassen waren weit entfernt von Dogmatik, ermutigten mehr zum Hinterfragen und zu kritischen Gedanken, als zu blinder Akzeptanz.

Ich betrachtete auch die Republikanische Partei als die Verteidigerin traditioneller amerikanischer Werte. Ich erinnere mich, dass ich Pat Buchanans Abschlussrede für den 1992er Republikanischen Nationalkonvent im Fernsehen mit meinem Vater zusammen anschaute. Buchanan erschien zur Präsidentenwahl wie eine Entscheidungsschlacht in Amerikas „Kulturkrieg“, der Kampf zwischen jenen, die die amerikanischen Kernwerte zu erhalten wünschten, und jenen, die danach trachteten, sie zu verändern. Er erzählte die Geschichte der zwei Soldaten, die dabei halfen Los Angeles vom schwarzen Mob zurück zu erobern, der, nachdem das Rodney-King-Urteil verkündet worden war, dieses übernommen hatte. Ich war durch seine Worte bewegt, glücklich zu wissen, dass die Republikaner für Patriotismus, Moralität sowie Recht und Ordnung in einer Zeit des Eigennutzes, der Dekadenz und des Rassenstreits standen. Ich unterstützte die Republikaner aus demselben Grund, wie ich die Katholische Kirche unterstützte: nicht wegen dem, wofür sie standen, sondern wegen dem, was so erschien, als stünden sie dagegen. Sie sehen, ich war ein Konservativer. Ich war primär über soziale und kulturelle Dekadenz und Niedergang besorgt und ich sah die Kirche und die Republikaner als Bollwerke dagegen an.

Nur während ich zum College ging, gab ich mich den Republikanern völlig hin. Ich wusste bereits, dass der Multikulturalismus alle Kulturen, die ihm unterworfen waren, verdirbt, doch war ich mir nicht darüber im Klaren, wie viele vielfältigen Beweise die Theorie stützten, dass kulturelle Unterschiede zwischen den Rassen vom Ursprung her nicht rein umweltbedingt waren. Zur selben Zeit machte ich jene Entdeckung, dass die Republikaner sich für die Stimmen der Minderheiten ein Bein ausrissen, die sowieso nahezu sicher für die Demokraten stimmen würden.

Ich schloss so schnell damit ab ein Katholik und ein Republikaner zu sein, wie ich aufhörte, ein Konservativer zu sein.

Heute bin ich nur in einem Sinne ein Konservativer: Ich wünsche die Weiße Rasse zu erhalten. Die konservative Bewegung ist jedoch in dieser Sache kein Verbündeter. Konservative befürworten nicht gerade, dass die Weißen zu einer Minorität werden, doch sind sie nicht gewillt, in Furcht davor “Rassisten“ genannt zu werden, sich dem zu widersetzen. Stattdessen verschwenden Konservative ihre Zeit und Energie damit, wegen weit weniger wichtiger Dinge zu kämpfen: Schulgebet, Abtreibung, Homosexualität, Konföderations-Denkmäler, klassische Erziehung, konstitutionelles Recht, Bildungsgutscheine, etc.

Konservative versagen darin, zu erkennen, dass alles, was in der Westlichen Zivilisation wert ist erhalten zu bleiben, dem kreativen Potenzial des weißen Genpools entspringt. Ist jener Genpool zerstört, werden alle diese Dinge verloren sein. Umgekehrt: Wenn der weiße Genpool bewahrt wird, dann, sogar wenn die gegenwärtige Zivilisation vollständig zerstört ist, dann können wir letztendlich eine neue und sogar bessere Zivilisation erschaffen. Es erscheint lachhaft, darüber besorgt zu sein, ob die westlichen Klassiker in unseren Schulen gelehrt werden, hingegen indifferent zu sein, ob überhaupt noch Weiße da sind, sie zu schätzen, ganz davon zu schweigen, neue zu erschaffen.

Lassen sie uns auf ein paar Dinge schauen, wobei der Konservatismus nichts anderes gegenüber Weißen Nationalisten ist, als eine Belastung.

Abtreibung: Fast alle Konservativen stellen sich reflexartig gegen die Abtreibung. Aus einer rassischen Perspektive jedoch ist die Abtreibung unter den gegenwärtigen Umständen eine gute Sache, einfach deshalb, weil Nichtweiße weit öfter abtreiben als Weiße, dabei den Zeitpunkt hinausschieben, zu dem die Weißen eine Minderheit werden. Derzeit machen Konservative die Tatsache, dass (Fehlgeburten ausgenommen) mehr als ein Drittel der schwarzen Föten laut dem Center of Disease Control abgetrieben werden, zu einem Punkt des Jammerns.

Patriotismus: Die meisten Konservativen sind Patrioten. Weiße Amerikaner, krank durch die Eigennützigkeit und Dekadenz um sich herum, wollen verzweifelt an etwas glauben, das höher als sie selbst ist. Weiße Leute, die in wachsender Zahl vom gegenwärtigen System geopfert werden – welche sich vor Juden verbeugen und Nichtweiße verwöhnen, die sie für ihre Förderung Nichtweißer zuhause besteuern und deren Jobs sie nach Übersee zu den Nichtweißen verfrachten – wünschen immer noch Amerika als ihr Eigen betrachten zu können. Sie klammern sich an das realexistierende Regime, das sie missbraucht und zerstört. Das ist es, warum konservative Amerikaner so leicht zu mobilisieren waren, um nach 9/11 in Afghanistan und Irak zu kämpfen.

Die realexistierenden Juden, die über die fortschreitende Vergiftung unserer kulturellen Atmosphäre präsidieren, die über sämtliche Formen des Patriotismus, außer Zionismus, hohnlächeln, die eine amerikanische Außenpolitik beseitigt haben und jüdische Interessen über amerikanische Interessen gestellt haben, brauchen Geld und Kanonenfutter, um ihre Feinde im Nahen Osten zu töten. So wurden, mit einer zynischen Drehung der Propagandadrehscheibe, unsere „liberalen“ Medien über Nacht „konservative“ und die „patriotischen“ Amerikaner rannten kopflos in den Krieg. (Und praktisch über Nacht produzierte ein anderer Jude ein Buch, um Amerikas „konservative“ Medien zu verurteilen. Jetzt, wo die „gloriosen“ und allzu leichten anfänglichen Schlächtereien an den Afghanen und Irakern vorbei sind und unsere Besatzungsstreitkräfte wie auf dem Präsentierteller für Vergeltungsmaßnahmen der Verwandten der Getöteten sitzen, ist es das Weiße Amerika, das an den Fronten wie unter den Verlusten überrepräsentiert ist. Doch Saddams ultimative Rache könnte die ruinöse Ausdehnung dieses Krieges sein, Kosten, wie gehabt, überproportional getragen von Weißen.

Im Gegensatz zu den Anti-Kriegs-Linken lehne ich den Patriotismus als solchen nicht ab. Tatsächlich denke ich, dass er edel ist. Wogegen ich bin, ist das obszöne Spektakel weißer Amerikaner, die durch ihren Patriotismus manipuliert, ihr Blut und Vermögen in einem Krieg verschwenden, der angestiftet von Juden und zu deren Wohl gekämpft wurde. Patriotismus macht uns gerade für die antiweiße Natur des gegenwärtigen Regimes blind. Es ist Zeit, unseren Patriotismus zu dem Zweck zu transformieren, der es verdient: Unsere Rasse.

Christentum: Die meisten Konservativen sind Christen, sogar jene, die sich nicht oft an das Christentum klammern, obwohl sie es als einen integralen Bestandteil der Westlichen Zivilisation ansehen. Das ist es aber nicht. Das Christentum ist zutiefst fremd für das europäische Herz und seinen Geist. Es ist das Produkt von Juden und degenerierten, rassisch bastardisierten, sich abrackernden Schichten des Römischen Reiches. Es wurde durch ehrgeizige Könige, die sich eine sanftmütigere,  mehr schafhafte Bevölkerung wünschten, die den christlichen Tugenden Vorschub leistet, mit Gewalt über Europa verhängt.

Das Christentum war schon immer dysgenetisch: Es ermutigte die Fähigsten zölibatös zu werden, die Edelsten ihr Blut in sinnlosen Kriegen zu vergießen und am wenigsten wert und fruchtbar zu sein, da sie die Erde in Besitz nehmen sollten. Heute unterstützen christliche Kirchen das explosive Wachstum der nichtweißen Bevölkerungen, ermöglichen Nichtweißen weiße Länder zu überfluten und entwaffnen Weiße beim Widerstand, indem sie ihnen erzählen, dass die rassische Selbstverteidigung keine Tugend sei, nur der rassische Selbstmord. Doch wenn wir sanftmütig geworden sind, sollen wir nichts in Besitz nehmen, wir sollen als Rasse aufhören zu existieren.

Konservatismus ist nichts als überflüssiger Ballast für Weiße Nationalisten. In einer Zeit, in der die gegenwärtigen Trends auf lange Sicht die reale Existenz der Weißen Rasse gefährden, gibt es nur einen moralischen Imperativ und eine politische Notwendigkeit: Unser Überleben. In jeglicher politischen Situation gibt es nur eine Frage die zählt: „Ist das gut für die Weißen?“

9. November 2003

Source: Talking Our Own Side [2]


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mercredi, 03 avril 2013

Sezession, Heft 53

Aktuelle Druckausgabe (11 €):

Sezession, Heft 53, April 2013

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heft53 gross Aktuelle Druckausgabe (11 €): Heft 53, April 2013 Editorial

 

Bild und Text

Verstrickungen
Martin Lichtmesz

Thema

Autorenportrait Cormac McCarthy
Michael Wiesberg

Amerika – Hegemon und Samariter
Thomas Bargatzky

Der Puls Europas
Felix Menzel

Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund
Felix Krautkrämer

Richard Wagners deutsche Sendung
Siegfried Gerlich

Wagner und Nietzsche
Frank Lisson

Wie Frauen in der Sprache (wieder) unsichtbar werden
Werner Sohn

Die große Erzählung
Karlheinz Weißmann

Debatte

Der schmale Grat
Erik Lehnert

Die Spurbreite des schmalen Grates
Götz Kubitschek

Avantgarde, Ästhetik, Revolution
Alex Kurtagic

Bücher

Wagner-Literatur
Siegfried Gerlich

Rezensionen

Vermischtes

Kursbuch 173, Graben für Germanien, Pius-Brüder, Pascal Ormunait

Briefe an alle und keinen

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mardi, 02 avril 2013

Toleranz – Die 9. Todsünde der zivilisierten Menschheit

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Toleranz – Die 9. Todsünde der zivilisierten Menschheit

Götz Kubitschek

ex: http://www.sezession.de/

1973 veröffentlichte Konrad Lorenz Die acht Todsünden der zivilisierten Menschheit, eine kulturkritische, pessimistische Analyse der gesellschaftlichen Verfallserscheinungen und Zivilisationskrankheiten seiner Zeit. Er schrieb diese Analyse entlang der wissenschaftlichen Grundsätze der Ethologie, der von ihm mitbegründeten und ausdifferenzierten Lehre vom Verhalten der Tiere und Menschen. Dieses Verhalten kann in seinem rezenten, also jeweils aktuellen Zustand beobachtet und als die Funktion eines Systems beschrieben werden, »das seine Existenz wie seine besondere Form einem historischen Werdegang verdankt, der sich in der Stammesgeschichte, in der Entwicklung des Individuums und beim Menschen, in der Kulturgeschichte abgespielt hat« (Konrad Lorenz).

Es steht also die Frage im Raum, warum wir Heutigen uns so oder so verhalten, und Lorenz betont an mehreren Stellen seiner Analyse, daß er erst über die Deformierung menschlichen Verhaltens zu der Frage gelangt sei, welche Notwendigkeit eigentlich hinter dem So-Sein des Menschen stehe: »Wozu dient der Menschheit ihre maßlose Vermehrung, ihre sich bis zum Wahnsinn steigernde Hast des Wettbewerbs, die zunehmende, immer schrecklicher werdende Bewaffnung, die fortschreitende Verweichlichung des verstädterten Menschen usw. usf.? Bei näherer Betrachtung aber zeigt sich, daß so gut wie alle diese Fehlleistungen Störungen ganz bestimmter, ursprünglich sehr wohl einen Arterhaltungswert entwickelnder Verhaltens-Mechanismen sind. Mit anderen Worten, sie sind als pathologisch aufzufassen.«

In acht Kapiteln wirft Lorenz seinen ethologisch geschulten Blick auf anthropologische Konstanten und zeitbedingte Entwicklungen und kommt zu verheerenden Ergebnissen: Rundumversorgung und Massenkonsum, Verweichlichung und Überbevölkerung, Indoktrinierbarkeit und genetischer Verfall – all dies trage dazu bei, aus den Menschen eine degenerierende, leicht manipulierbare Masse zu machen. Vom Wunsch einer Höherentwicklung und Veredelung menschlicher Möglichkeiten bleibt nicht viel übrig.

»Maßlos«, »Wahnsinn«, »Fehlleistungen«, »pathologisch«: Man hat Lorenz die Verwendung solcher Vokabeln vorgeworfen und beanstandet, er werte bereits durch seine Wortwahl den Gegenstand, den er doch zunächst bloß zu beobachten habe. Der Vorwurf stimmt: Lorenz weist sich mit seinen Todsünden als konservativer Kulturkritiker aus, der dem Menschen als Masse nicht viel abgewinnen kann und aufgrund seiner Alltags- und Fallstudien einen Niedergang aus einstiger Höhe konstatieren muß. Was aber ist an der Beschreibung von Lorenz anders als an den vielen Kritiken und Analysen, die bis heute das konservative Feuilleton füllen?

Lorenz hat als Naturwissenschaftler harte Fakten zur Hand, mit denen er seine Beobachtungen und Ableitungen stützt. Er geht als Ethologe von Dispositionen aus, die den Menschen wie ein Korsett umklammern. Seinen Genen, seinen Antrieben, Reflexen und phylogenetischen Dispositionen kann er nicht entfliehen, er ist in Zwangsläufigkeiten eingesperrt wie in einen Käfig. Auf Seite 56 in diesem Heft ist das unter dem Begriff »Ver­hausschweinung« einmal polemisch durchdekliniert: Die acht Todsünden sind voll von weiteren Beispielen. Wenn Lorenz etwa die dem Menschen typische Erhöhung der ökonomischen Umlaufgeschwindigkeit und die daraus resultierende Rastlosigkeit in Konsum und Bedarfsbefriedigung als »Wettlauf mit sich selbst« bezeichnet, stellt er als Erklärungsmodell das Prinzip des Regelkreises daneben und zeigt, warum lawinenartige Prozesse aufgrund ausschließlich positiver Rückkoppelung ins Verheerende und letztlich ins Verderben führen. Dasselbe gilt auch für die Überbevölkerung, die Lorenz als die zentrale Todsünde an den Anfang stellt und von der her er die meisten anderen Fehlentwicklungen ableitet, etwa auch »Das Abreißen der Traditionen«: Lorenz beschreibt, wie gefährlich es für die Entwicklung eines Kindes ist, wenn es bei seinen Eltern und in seiner nahen Umgebung vergebens nach rangordnungsmäßiger Überlegenheit sucht und in seinem Streben und seiner Entwicklung ohne (verehrungswürdiges) Ziel bleiben muß. Lorenz macht das Verschwinden unmittelbar einleuchtender Hierarchien zum einen an der modernen Arbeitswelt fest: Die Austauschbarkeit von Mutter und Vater am Schreibtisch ist ein revolutionärer Vorgang der letzten zwei Generationen. Der andere Grund liegt in der Übertragung einer Gleichheitslehre vom Menschen auf möglichst alle Lebensbereiche: »Es ist eines der größten Verbrechen der pseudodemokratischen Doktrin, das Bestehen einer natürlichen Rangordnung zwischen zwei Menschen als frustrierendes Hindernis für alle wärmeren Gefühle zu erklären: ohne sie gibt es nicht einmal die natürlichste Form von Menschenliebe, die normalerweise die Mitglieder einer Familie miteinander verbindet.«

Während nun das gender mainstreaming – das Lorenz noch nicht so nennen konnte – Orgien der Gleichheit zelebriert, Mann und Frau also weiterhin auf Ununterscheidbarkeit getrimmt werden, scheint es mit der pseudo-demokratischen Doktrin nicht mehr überall so aussichtslos gut zu stehen, wie Lorenz es noch vermuten mußte. Wenn sich ihr Zeitalter in der großen Politik seinem Ende zuzuneigen scheint, hat man doch bis in den Kindergarten hinein die Durchsetzung des Abstimmungsprinzips bei gleicher Stimmgewichtung von Erwachsenem und Kleinkind festzustellen. Dies alles scheint einem Abbau der Notwendigkeit einer Entscheidung zu folgen: Wenn die Zeit keine in ihrer Besonderheit wirksam herausmodellierten Männer und Frauen, sondern vor allem in ihrem Einheitsgeschmack und ihrer Funktionstüchtigkeit herausmodellierte Verbraucher erfordert, verhält sich die zivilisierte Menschheit wohl so, wie sie sich derzeit verhält. Und wenn es nichts ausmacht, ob die Fähigen (etwa: die Erzieher) oder alle (etwa: die Kleinkinder) mitentscheiden, dann hat man tatsächlich alle Zeit der Welt und kann die Konsequenzen von Fehlentscheidungen immer wieder ausbügeln – und die beim Ausbügeln neu entstandenen Falten wiederum, und so weiter.

An Beispielen wie dem vom Verlust der Rangordnung und am Hinweis auf eine pseudo-demokratische Doktrin hat sich die Kritik festgebissen. Neben vielen Reflexen gibt es bedenkenswerte Einwürfe, etwa den von Friedrich Wilhelm Korff, der eine Neuausgabe der Todsünden mit einem Nachwort versah. Er schreibt mit viel Sympathie über Lorenz’ provozierendes Buch und weist den Leser auf eine seltsame Unstimmigkeit, ein Pendeln zwischen zwei Ebenen hin. Auf der einen Seite nämlich lasse die aus dem unerbittlichen stammesgeschichtlichen Verlauf herrührende Fehlentwicklung der zivilisierten Menschheit keinerlei Raum für Hoffnung: Etwas, das qua Gen oder Arterhaltungstrieb so und nicht anders ablaufen könne, sei nicht aufzuhalten und nicht korrigierbar. Auf der anderen Seite finde sich Lorenz eben nicht mit der Rolle des kühl diagnostizierenden Wissenschaftlers ab, sondern gerate ins Predigen und formuliere pro Kapitel mindestens einen Aufruf, aus der Kausalkette der zwangsläufigen Entwicklung auszusteigen. Lorenz selbst hat diese Verwischung der Kategorien »Wissenschaft« und »Predigt« in einem »Optimistischen Vorwort« für spätere Ausgaben aufzufangen versucht, indem er etwa auf die Breitenwirkung der Ökologie-Bewegung hinwies, von der bei Verfassen seiner Schrift noch nicht viel zu bemerken war. Im Grund aber bleiben die Todsünden bis heute ein starkes Stück konservativer Kulturkritik.

Was also versuchte Konrad Lorenz mit seinem Buch? Er versuchte auf den permanenten Ernstfall hinzuweisen, den der »Abbau des Menschlichen« (auch ein Buchtitel von Lorenz) verursacht: Das Erlahmen der Abwehrbereitschaft ist der Ernstfall an sich, und der Beweis, daß es längst ernst war, wird durch den tatsächlich von außen eintretenden Ernstfall nur noch erbracht: Kluge Prognosen konnten ihn lange vorher schon absehen.

Es gibt kaum ein besseres Beispiel für dieses Erlahmen der Abwehrbereitschaft als die Umdeutung des Wortes »Toleranz«. Die heutige Form der Toleranz ist die 9. Todsünde der zivilisierten Menschheit. Ob sie in der Notwendigkeit ihrer stammesgeschichtlichen Entwicklung liegt, vermag nur ein Ethologe zu sagen. Festzustehen scheint, daß ihr trotz vielstimmiger Warnrufe und glasklarer Fakten nicht beizukommen ist. Vielleicht ist diese weiche, pathologische Form der Toleranz tatsächlich ein wichtiger Indikator für einen an das Ende seiner Kraft gelangten Lebensentwurf, hier also: den europäischen.

Toleranz ist nämlich zunächst ganz und gar nichts Schwaches, sondern die lässige Geste eines Starken gegenüber einem Schwachen. Während ich hier sitze und vermessen den acht Todsünden von Lorenz eine neunte aufsattle, toleriere ich, daß eine meiner Töchter im Zimmer über mir trotz angeordneter Bettruhe vermutlich einen Tanz einstudiert. Von Toleranz diesen rhythmischen Erschütterungen gegenüber kann ich nur sprechen, weil ich a) einen klaren Begriff von angemessenem Verhalten in mir trage und die Störung als Abweichung von dieser Norm erkenne, b) in der Lage wäre, diese Abweichung nicht zu tolerieren, sondern sie zu beenden, c) sie tatsächlich im Verlauf meines Vater-Seins schon unzählige Male nicht toleriert habe.

Zur Verdeutlichung hilft es, mit allen drei Kriterien ein wenig zu spielen: Wer a) nicht hat, also Angemessenheit und Norm nicht kennt, muß nicht tolerant sein: Er wird jede Entwicklung hinnehmen und sich einpassen oder verschwinden, wenn es gar nicht mehr geht; wer b) nicht kann, der empfundenen Störung und Beeinträchtigung also hilflos gegenübersteht, kann keine Toleranz mehr üben: Er kann bitten und betteln und sich die Haare raufen oder über das Argument und die Mitleidsschiene den anderen zur Rücksichtnahme bewegen. Das Kräfteverhältnis hat sich jedoch verschoben, und wenn der Störer keine Rücksicht nehmen will, bleibt dem Schwächeren nur übrig, sich mit seiner Unterlegenheit abzufinden. Und c)? Toleranz kann kein Dauerzustand sein. Wer den Regelverstoß dauerhaft toleriert, setzt eine neue Regel, weitet die Grenze des Möglichen aus, akzeptiert eine Verschiebung der Norm. Zur Toleranz gehört der Beweis der Intoleranz wie zur Definition des Guten das Böse.

Toleranz ist also eine Haltung der Stärke, niemals eine, die aus einer Position der Schwäche heraus eingenommen werden kann. Wer schwach ist, kann nicht tolerant sein; wer den Mut zur eigentlich notwendigen Gegenwehr nicht aufbringt, kann seine Haltung nicht als Toleranz beschreiben, sondern muß von Feigheit, Rückzug und Niederlage sprechen: Er gibt Terrain auf – geistiges, geographisches, institutionelles Terrain. Es kann – das versteht sich von selbst – ab einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt sinnvoll sein, sich zurückzuziehen und neue Grenzen der Toleranz zu ziehen. Solche Korrekturen und Anpassungen an den Lauf der Dinge hat es immer gegeben, und starre Gebilde haben die Neigung zu zersplittern, wenn der Druck zu groß wird. Aber eine Neuordnung in diesem Sinn ist ein Beweis für Lebendigkeit und nicht einer für Schwäche und das oben beschriebene Erlahmen der Abwehrbereitschaft.

Auch der Spiegel-Kolumnist und Wortführer einer »Achse des Guten« (www.achgut.de), Henryk M. Broder, hält Toleranz für ein gefährliches, weil sprachverwirrendes Wort. In seinem jüngsten Buch übt er die Kritik der reinen Toleranz und schreibt gleich im Vorwort Sätze, die an Deutlichkeit nichts zu wünschen übriglassen: »In einer Gesellschaft, in der ein Regierender Bürgermeister die Teilnehmer einer SM-Fete persönlich in der Stadt willkommen heißt; in einer Gesellschaft, in der ein rechtskräftig verurteilter Kindesmörder Prozeßkostenbeihilfe bekommt, um einen Prozeß gegen die Bundesrepublik führen zu können, weil er noch nach Jahren darunter leidet, daß ihm bei einer Vernehmung Ohrfeigen angedroht wurden; in einer Gesellschaft, in der jeder frei darüber entscheiden kann, ob er seine Ferien im Club Med oder in einem Ausbildungscamp für Terroristen verbringen möchte, in einer solchen Gesellschaft kann von einem Mangel an Toleranz keine Rede sein. Dermaßen praktiziert, ist Toleranz die Anleitung zum Selbstmord. Und Intoleranz ist eine Tugend, die mit Nachdruck vertreten werden muß.«

Das sind klare Worte, die außerdem Broders Montagetechnik veranschaulichen. Sein Buch ist theoretisch schwach und lebt von Fundstücken aus Presse und Internet – mal ausführlich beleuchtet, mal bloß aneinandergereiht. Jeder Schnipsel belegt den bestürzenden Zustand der Verteidigungsbereitschaft selbst der banalsten Werte unseres Volkes, unserer Nation, unseres kulturellen Großraums. Nicht ohne Grund stellt unsere Zeitschrift ihre Begriffsdefinitionen auf der letzten Seite unter ein Motto von Konfuzius: »Zuerst verwirren sich die Worte, dann verwirren sich die Begriffe und zuletzt verwirren sich die Sachen.« Broders Kritik der reinen Toleranz kann als Sammlung gefährlicher Wort- und Begriffsverwirrungen gelesen werden, etwa wenn er neben die Toleranz ein anderes ruiniertes Wort stellt: Zivilcourage. Jeder will ja diese Eigenschaft besitzen, will im entscheidenden Moment »Sophie Scholl« sein (jedoch ohne Fallbeil). Leute wie Wolfgang Thierse aber haben das Wort Zivilcourage bis auf weiteres kaputtgemacht, indem sie während eines Massenauflaufs gegen »Rechts« jedem Teilnehmer Zivilcourage attestierten. Neben einhunderttausend anderen Leuten zu stehen und eine Kerze zu halten, ist jedoch kein Beweis für Mut, es ist allenfalls ein Vorsatz, beim nächsten beobachteten Glatzen-Angriff auf einen schwarzen Mitbürger intolerant zu reagieren. »Toleranz ist gefühlte Zivilcourage, die man nicht unter Beweis stellen muß«, schreibt Broder etwas verwirrend, aber er meint das Richtige, nämliche dasselbe wie Armin Mohler, der stets und vehement davon abriet, Leute schon für ihre guten Vorsätze zu prämieren.

Das Gebot der Stunde ist also die Intoleranz, oder besser: das Lehren und das Erlernen der Intoleranz dort, wo das Eigene in seiner Substanz bedroht ist. Hier können wir ein seltsames Phänomen beobachten: den Sieg der Erfahrung über die Theorie. »So ist es nicht der klassische Spießer, der überall sein fürchterliches Gesicht zeigt, sondern der chronisch tolerante Bildungsbürger, der für jede Untat so lange Verständnis äußert, wie sie nicht unmittelbar vor seiner Haustür passiert« (wiederum Broder). Dann aber! Dann aber! Dann kann man nur hoffen, daß aus Erfahrung klug wurde, wessen Vorstellungsvermögen nicht hinreichte, die Lage des Ganzen (etwa: der Nation) zu seiner eigenen Sache zu machen.

Broders Buch, Ulfkottes neue Schrift oder die Zurüstung zum Bürgerkrieg von Thorsten Hinz: Die Beispiele für die verheerende Auswirkung der reinen Toleranz auf die Verteidigungsbereitschaft und -fähigkeit auch nur unserer eigenen Nation sind längst gesammelt und können gelesen und ausgewertet werden. Aber die Flucht in die 9. Todsünde, die Toleranz, scheint zu süß zu sein, und sie ist wohl angemessen für den Teil der Welt, der »schon Hemmungen hat, sich selbst ›zivilisiert‹ zu nennen, um die anderen nicht zu kränken« (ein letztes Mal: Broder).

mercredi, 27 mars 2013

L’éveil d’une Grande Armée

L’éveil d’une Grande Armée

par Dominique Venner

 
 
L’éveil d’une Grande Armée – par Dominique Venner


Le 24 mars 2013, en interdisant les Champs Élysées à l’immense manifestation des familles françaises contre le mariage gay, le pouvoir a commis une erreur. Les centaines de milliers de manifestants (1 million 400 000 selon les organisateurs) confinés sur l’avenue de la Grande Armée ont vu dans ce nom un symbole : ils se sont sentis comme la « grande armée » des familles françaises qui se lève contre la « loi Taubira » destructrice de notre civilisation !

 
 
 
On peut détruire une civilisation en un instant, d’un trait de plume. Les Français savent cela pour l’avoir éprouvé plusieurs fois dans leur histoire depuis 1789. Ils savent aussi par expérience qu’il faut plusieurs siècles pour rebâtir une civilisation.

 
Mme Taubira (élue indépendantiste de la Gouadeloupe) est contestée au sein de son propre cabinet ministériel, comme l’avait été Mme Rachida Dati, autre gadget exotique du président précédant. C’est un signe des temps de décadence que de nommer à un ministère aussi symbolique que celui de la Justice des personnes si peu concernées par l’identité française et européenne, que leur intention affichée est de la bouleverser.

 
Après la manifestation du 13 janvier (1 million de participants « blancs de blanc », dont beaucoup de femmes et d’enfants), la manifestation du 24 mars a réuni plus de participants encore et toujours aussi blancs. Elle a même débordé largement sur l’avenue Foch et occupé finalement une partie des Champs-Elysées en fin de soirée, au cours d’un « sit-in » à la barbe des CRS impuissants.

 
Il faudrait être aveugle pour ne pas voir dans cette mobilisation sa réalité : une calme révolte de masse contre la destruction de la famille, pilier ultime de notre civilisation européenne. Tout enfant a le droit de savoir d’où il vient, quel est son père et quelle est sa mère. Il n’est pas inutile de rappeler que, très symboliquement, voici 33 siècles, la guerre de Troie avait été provoquée pour faire respecter l’union du roi achéen Ménélas et de son épouse Hélène, enlevée par un prince troyen. Tous les rois de la fédération achéenne avaient fait serment de protéger le mariage d’Hélène et de Mélénas. Aussi s’unirent-ils pour ramener Hélène à son foyer. Et leur guerre eut pour conclusion la destruction de Troie. Elle fut aussi le prétexte de l’Iliade, poème fondateur de notre civilisation.

 
La première grande manifestation du 13 janvier s’était déroulée dans une atmosphère plutôt ludique. Les privilégiés qui nous gouvernent ont traité par le mépris l’appel qui leur était ainsi adressé par cette imposante manifestation contre la loi Taubira.  Et pourtant, aucun parti politique dans la France d’aujourd’hui n’aurait pu réunir un million de manifestants dans Paris. Il y avait là matière à réflexion.

 
C’est pourquoi la seconde manifestation du 24 mars, regroupant une nouvelle fois des familles entières, de jeunes mères et leurs enfants, a été plus tendue que la première. Les aveugles repus qui nous gouvernent, prendront sans doute exemples sur leurs devanciers soviétiques pour traiter avec le même mépris cette indignation populaire qu’ils ne contrôlent pas.

 
Ils commettront là une nouvelle faute. Quand l’indignation mobilise de telles masses, des familles entières, des femmes et de jeunes mères en charge d’enfants, c’est le signe que se trouve transgressée au-delà du supportable une part sacrée de la nation. Il est dangereux de provoquer la révolte des mères !

 
Dominique Venner
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