An Aristocracy of Industry?
Andrew Fraser’s Reinventing Aristocracy

F. Roger DEVLIN

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

Andrew Fraser
Reinventing Aristocracy:
The Constitutional Reformation of Corporate Governance
Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 1998

If you own even a single share of stock, you have probably been pestered with letters requiring your opinion on matters of corporate policy well beyond your competence to decide. Should the firm add Joe Schmedlep to its Board of Directors? Do you approve the proposal (200 pages long) for the creation of a new subsidiary? Should the company outsource accounting and make its own ball-bearings, or find a ball-bearing supplier and do its own accounting?

You are holding stock in this company for one reason only: you think you might one day be able to sell it for a higher price than you bought it. Your natural reaction to the letter, therefore, is to toss it in the trash. “Rational apathy” is Professor Fraser’s useful term for this.

The company, of course, knows that you will feel this way. So, reducing the demand on your attention to an absolute minimum, they are even telling you how to vote: normally, they “recommend” that you approve all their proposals. Still, you must find a pen, check a box, stuff the paper in an envelope, and mail it in. “No way,” you say; “into the can.”

If you are lucky, the matter will end there. But sometimes the law forbids the company from acting without consulting its owners—and that’s you, as long as you hold their stock. So they may pursue you further. I have known of people on vacation receiving emergency phone calls from frantic boards of directors seeking their views on matters wholly unintelligible to them. “Shareholder democracy,” this is called. Does it sound like any way to run a business? Professor Fraser thinks not, and it is hard to disagree with him.

On the other hand, there also exists a class of persons who take their shareholder rights with extreme seriousness. Armed, perhaps, with a single share of company stock, they march into the annual meeting, head high, and seize the agenda: is the firm protecting the ears of homosexuals in its employ from disagreeable pleasantries? Has it provided reasonable accommodation for deaf, dumb, and blind quadriplegics? Might its manufacturing process bring about the extinction of the critically-endangered Rocky Mountain Stinkweed? Has, in short, the base pursuit of lucre made the greedy capitalists forgetful of justice and righteousness?

Very often, these moral crusaders have bought stock only for the privilege of delivering their tirades. Corporations have been forced to devise procedural methods for limiting such people’s ability to monopolize shareholder meetings. Surely allowing them to push management around would be no way to run a business either. But then isn’t “shareholder democracy” a bit of a sham?

Well, yes it is, says Professor Fraser. His central thesis is that the public would be better served by a smaller, more committed “shareholder aristocracy.” The term aristocracy is “a metaphor for the civic virtues that a free people might expect of their leaders in politics, business and intellectual life” (p. 1). It should not conjure up a picture of effete fops dancing the minuet at Versailles. Fraser’s proposed aristocracy would even be self-selecting rather than hereditary (pp. 21-22).

Fraser quotes Christopher Lasch’s remark that “the value of cultural elites [such as an aristocracy] lay in their willingness to assume responsibility for the exacting standards without which civilization is impossible.” Such an elite must “live in the service of demanding ideals.” Ortega y Gassett similarly writes that “nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us—by obligations, not by rights” (p. 8).

Why, after all, does the prima donna of the shareholders’ meeting strike us as silly? Because he has no obligations toward the company, its employees, its other shareholders, its customers, or the general public. The neo-puritan crusader accuses others and poses demands, but bears no responsibility if his own proposals lead to disaster.

In smaller, family-run businesses the issue of placing responsibility hardly arises; everyone can see that the buck stops with the owner, who also runs his business from day to day. But in the modern corporation described by Berle and Means, characterized by a “separation of ownership and control,” it becomes unclear who is responsible for corporate acts.

The law at least makes clear that it does not hold individual shareholders responsible. This is the principle of limited liability, which only gained widespread acceptance around the middle of the nineteenth century. A company has legal personality, and can be held liable for harm it causes (think of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989). But the individual shareholder cannot be held liable for any amount greater than the value of his stock. Thus, while it is possible to lose all the money you invest in stocks, it is not possible to lose more than that. Would you want to invest in Exxon if you knew you would have to share responsibility for Exxon Valdez-type disasters?

Probably not. Limited shareholder liability has even been credited with causing the industrial explosion of the late nineteenth century. Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University wrote in 1911 that “the limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modern times. . . . Even steam and electricity are less important.” (Some scholars dissent; cf., e.g., Michael S. Rozeff, “Limited Liability” at http://www.lewrockwell.com/rozeff/rozeff28.html.)

Who if not the owners, then, should bear public responsibility for corporate behavior? The next likeliest suspect would seem to be the managers. But they have been notably successful at disclaiming responsibility on the grounds that they are mere agents of the shareholders, and act only upon the objective demands of economic efficiency.

This view finds support from surprisingly many scholars. They believe our dominant form of corporate governance is itself the result of market competition. The Berle and Means model, combining shareholder passivity with managerial irresponsibility, exists today, in other words, because it has proven itself the most economically efficient corporate constitutional model in free competition with all possible alternatives. (Best not ask these theorists to fill you in on the historical details.)

Professor Fraser sarcastically speaks of this view as a “cult of the divine economy” in which sovereignty has slipped from human hands into an impersonal system of economic demands. These demands rule over us like the inscrutable God of the Old Testament (p. 11); the managers function as its priesthood, interpreting and carrying out the divine will. No mere mortal is responsible.

Now, the market undoubtedly does impose some constraints on managerial behavior. But it would be difficult to believe, e.g., that the demands of profitability are what force the entertainment industry to churn out movies which consistently insult the religious and moral sentiments of the majority of American moviegoers. “Diversity training” does not improve efficiency either, but managerial enthusiasm for this fad goes well beyond what could be explained by fear of lawsuits. I will not undertake to determine the precise degree of freedom which the market leaves to managers, but it is certainly greater than zero.

Furthermore, a markedly different corporate structure is the rule in both Germany and Japan, where relatively “permanent” shareholders exercise control over major enterprises (pp. 17, 62).

Professor Fraser distinguishes “accountability for behavior” from “responsibility for actions.” Managers are accountable to shareholders for keeping firms profitable; this involves responding to the objective economic demands of the market. But human action is more than a reaction to circumstances. Managerial decisions affect not merely the profitability of the firms they direct but also the life of the larger society within which their firms operate. Financial accountability is too narrow a notion to substitute for public responsibility.

For example, “whenever risks generated by corporate activity become known, someone must decide how much danger to allow and assess the costs of preventing the danger.” Think of automobile design: morally responsible decisions about safety features may not be economically efficient. “Whenever government has failed to provide a policy of its own, corporate officials decide in ways that are practically binding for the ordinary citizen” (p. x). Just as Henry Ford’s customers were offered the Model T in “any color so long as it’s black,” the public today has neither any voice in nor any recourse from the safety decisions made on their behalf.

The author oddly neglects to mention government regulation at this point. Safety is, in fact, the main pretexts for such regulation, which is often onerous, arbitrary, and of questionable benefit to the public. While others worry that government is strangling private initiative, Professor Fraser baldly asserts that “the problem we face is the appropriation of public power by the corporate sector” (p. 2). Note, however, that he never recommends governmental regulation as a solution to the problem of corporate responsibility.

Safety is merely one example. Corporations today—like governments—allocate values by controlling the distribution of goods, services, honors, statuses, and opportunities. Corporate policies can be made binding and effective through the use of sanctions. These need not involve physical coercion or violence: punishment commonly takes the form of severe economic loss or a psychologically painful loss of social status. In any case, the modern corporation is private only in the formal sense that it remains extra-constitutional (pp. 73-74). Being a law unto itself, it is a legitimate target for constitutional reform.

“Corporate politics continues as a secretive affair conducted in corridors and behind closed doors,” Fraser points out; “our problem is that corporate elites have freed themselves only from constitutional politics. (p. 22). This, he believes, is leading us toward a kind of “neo-feudalism,” in which structures of corporate authority are based upon exchanges of services between persons: a system of private patronage without any place for rational deliberation or public involvement. Resistance by wage-earners would become virtually impossible, due to their economic dependence upon the managerial elite. (Professor Fraser is aware of the “managerial revolution” theory of James Burnham and Sam Francis.)

The author harks back to an older legal tradition which recognized the corporation not merely of a profit-generating system but as a civil body politic—a kind of tiny republic, in fact. In America before about 1840, the business corporation was created by a special act of a state legislature: the charter, which explicitly vested public service functions in it. Turnpikes, e.g., were not merely investments on the part of those who built and operated them, but were also authorized in order to provide a service to the community. Even banks and insurance companies were understood as hybrid amalgams of private interests and public purposes. The charter endowed each corporation with a specific raison d’être, and the corporation could be legally challenged if it acted outside its sphere of competence. Corporate decisions were sometimes voted upon by members according to the principle “one man one vote”; more often, caps were set upon the voting power of the larger shareholders. These constitutional features cannot be explained solely in terms of economic utility (p. 27).

As the nineteenth century progressed, special charters were replaced by general rules of incorporation. The notion of a defined sphere of corporate competence fell by the wayside, so that directors could seize upon any business opportunities that might arise. The principle of “one share one vote” became firmly established, entrenching monied interests. Ordinary shareholders came to be understood not as partners in a common public enterprise, but as passive investors whose preferences are fixed, unitary and homogeneous, viz., to maximize profits (p. 28). This assumed unanimity obviates the need for any deliberation on the public effects of their actions, such as is supposed to occur in a legislature. In Professor Fraser’s terminology, the bourgeois drove the citizen out of corporate life.

The nature of property itself was gradually transformed. Ownership once signified a form of personal dominion over the external things of the world. But property in a corporate entity does not carry with it the right of dominion over the physical plant and equipment, which remain the property of the corporation conceived as an entity distinct from the shareholders. Corporate shares establish instead a complex set of relationships between persons (pp. 18, 77). So complex, indeed, that a stockholder today would need to make an advanced study of international finance just to understand what it is he owns.

Yet Fraser notes the interesting circumstance that it is still illegal for a shareholder to sell his voting rights in a corporation. Such behavior is seen, perhaps inconsistently, as a violation of duty. Even corporate raider T. Boone Pickens “has been moved to outrage at the corrupt practice of vote selling, describing it as ‘un-American’ and akin to ‘prostitution’” (p. 37).

One thing these residual scruples may indicate is a still widespread feeling that the public good cannot safely be entrusted to a body of men motivated wholly by individual self interest and not liable for the effects of their actions. What is needed is a counterweight to managerial power which operates more effectively than our inherited system of an annual general shareholders’ meeting.

Professor Fraser’s central proposal is to establish a special class of corporate shares conferring both voting rights and responsibilities for corporate conduct. The ordinary investor will be able to buy stock up to some certain limit just as before. Meanwhile, “propertied persons could trade less diversity in their investment portfolios for the opportunity to play an active civic role in the governance of a narrower range of corporate enterprises” (p. 19). They would be expected to deliberate regularly with other shareholders and pass binding resolutions according to the principle “one man one vote.” This recognizes that the corporate enterprise involves deliberative rationality and not merely the pooling of economic assets. Such a voting procedure would counteract the plutocratic tendency of current corporate law.

Professor Fraser derives his model from classical aristocracy, an exclusive group of peers charged with public duties; but his proposal is a “reinvention” of aristocracy in that the peerage would not be a hereditary caste. In fact, his aristocracy would be entirely self-selected, and other investors would be free to exclude themselves from the order of corporate citizens. Such self-exclusion, “far from being arbitrary discrimination, would in fact give substance and reality to one of the most important negative liberties we have enjoyed since the end of the ancient world, namely, freedom from politics” (p. 22).

The central purpose of his proposal is to restore the role of collective deliberation in the conduct of public affairs, and he sees the ostensibly “private” corporate world as the venue where this can best be achieved today. “It may still be possible,” he concludes, “to govern corporations in the public interest without relying solely on the heavy hand of the nanny state” (p. 21).

Professor Fraser does not recommend simply imposing his republican model on all existing corporations:

It would be more useful to experiment with the concept in corporate enterprises whose business has an obvious public service dimension. Media corporations come immediately to mind. If media corporations have become surrogates and not just vehicles for public opinion, it may not be unreasonable to expect those firms to be governed in accordance with republican principles. So far the courts have not explained how a few autocratic media moguls can be expected to use their freedom from state interference to enhance rather than to corrupt the civic culture of constitutional democracy.

He goes on to mention “hospitals, universities and even prisons . . . tobacco, liquor and gambling interests . . . weapons manufacturers and defense industries generally” (p. 50).

The active shareholders would have to give up limited liability; they would be fully liable for the actions of managers under their direction. They “would become a political surrogate for the elusive ‘directing mind’ that the law requires as the sine qua non of corporate criminal liability. By holding active shareholders responsible for criminal misdeeds, the law could encourage them to create and sustain internal justice systems capable of preventing or punishing unlawful behavior by agents and employees of the firm” (p. 72).

The agonistic dimension of citizenship offers the real possibility of self-fulfillment, along with the dramatic risk of personal disaster. If Aristotle was right in claiming that man is a political animal, civic action may not be motivated solely by the hope of extrinsic rewards but also by the opportunity to exercise in public powers of reasoned speech and dramatic action [where] individuals compete for glory and recognition in the eyes of their peers. (p. 16)

Not to mention that their words would carry more weight than those of the itinerant one-share moralizers of today’s general shareholders’ meetings.

If the Western “democracies” were to implement Professor Fraser’s reform proposal, what could we expect? My guess is that the racial composition of shareholder boards would instantly become the biggest issue in politics and clog the courts with litigation. For similar reasons, I would be more enthusiastic about internal corporate judicial proceedings if I did not know that kangaroo-courts were already busy meting out punishment to white men who “offend” their colleagues. Professor Fraser is thinking of Cato and George Washington, but we would be more likely to get stuck with Al Sharpton and Catharine MacKinnon.

But these reservations are meant more in criticism of the present state of our civilization than of Professor Fraser, a contributor to TOQ who has gained international notoriety for defending the late White Australia policy to his ideologically besotted fellow-countrymen. A reading of Reinventing Aristocracy proves that long before emerging as a lightening rod for the “anti-racist” left, he had already demonstrated himself an independent thinker with an uncommon degree of political imagination.

TOQ Online, April 26, 2009

L'accueil critique de "Bagatelles pour un massacre"

L'accueil critique de Bagatelles pour un massacre

Ex: http://lepetitcelinien.blogspot.com/

 

C’est un passionnant dossier de presse que propose André Derval. Toutes les grandes signatures ayant traité de Bagatelles à l’époque de sa sortie y sont réunies : de Brasillach à Gide en passant par Léon Daudet, Charles Plisnier, Lucien Rebatet ou Marcel Arland. Et d’autres qui ont sombré dans l’oubli aujourd’hui mais qui détenaient une autorité certaine à l’époque, tels André Billy ou Gabriel Brunet.
Ce dossier atteste que l’accueil du livre fut beaucoup moins clivé qu’on ne l’imagine aujourd’hui. Ainsi, les lecteurs, voire les rédacteurs, actuels du Canard enchaîné seraient sans doute étonnés d’apprendre que leur hebdomadaire commenta Bagatelles pour un massacre de manière très favorable : « Un livre libérateur, torrentiel et irrésistible » [sic]. C’est que, dans les années trente, l’antisémitisme était répandu dans tous les milieux, de la droite à la gauche. À ce propos, on peut regretter que, dans l’introduction, Derval s’abstienne de situer le livre dans son contexte politique. Soit, en France, un climat délétère suscité par les agissements en vogue sous la IIIème République. Évoquant les circonstances de la parution du livre, il se borne à rappeler la déception de Céline face au piètre accueil critique de Mort à crédit. Divers autres spécialistes de l’écrivain ont, eux, fourni bien des clefs permettant de comprendre la genèse du pamphlet. Tel célinien évoque « sa haine de la guerre, et par ricochet sans doute son antisémitisme (duplicité, « internationalisme » et avidité des banquiers et marchands de canons, synonymes de juifs) ¹ », tel autre explique son engagement « par le fait que, d’un naturel très personnel et volontaire, Céline n’était ni lâche ni hypocrite et n’était pas homme à rester sur les gradins quand d’autres se font étriper dans l’arène ². » Rien de tel sous la plume d’André Derval qui trace du pamphlétaire un portrait univoque. Ce n’est pas exonérer Céline de ses excès que de rappeler ses motivations réelles : la hantise d’une nouvelle guerre européenne (considérée par lui comme fratricide) et la défense d’une esthétique.
En revanche, l’intérêt du recueil est de donner à voir l’éventail de la réception critique, notamment celle émanant de la presse d’information juive. À ce propos, aucun des articles parus dans l’hebdomadaire belge L’Avenir juif n’a été référencé dans les bibliographies céliniennes. Apportons donc notre contribution à cette étude de l’accueil critique de Bagatelles en signalant l’un des articles publiés par ce journal. L’auteur n’y cache pas sa surprise de constater que l’imprécateur antisémite est « précisément Céline, le même qui, dans son Voyage, nous donna tout de même l’impression que sa révolte contre un ordre social où l’on s’accommode si allègrement de tant d’injustices ne relevait pas du dilettantisme verbal, d’autant plus qu’il sut trouver souvent des accents bouleversants parce que si indiciblement humains. » Et d’ajouter : « Nous nous sommes trompés. M. Céline n’est qu’un sinistre cabotin ³ ».

Marc LAUDELOUT

• André Derval, L’accueil critique de Bagatelles pour un massacre, Écriture, coll. « Céline & Cie », 2010.

1. Jean-Paul Louis in Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Lettres à Marie Canavaggia, 1936-1960, Gallimard, coll. « Les Cahiers de la Nrf » [Cahiers Céline 9], 2007, p. 328.
2. François Gibault in Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Céline et l’actualité, 1933-1961, Gallimard, coll. « Les Cahiers de la Nrf » [Cahiers Céline 7], 2003, p. 8.
3. N. Gutter, « Bagatelles pour un massacre », L’Avenir juif [Anvers – Bruxelles], 3ème année, n° 92, 11 mars 1938, p. 4d.

 

Etats-Unis: l'imposture messianique

ETATS-UNIS : L'IMPOSTURE MESSIANIQUE

Nicole Guétin

Cet ouvrage s'attache à analyser l'influence du religieux sur la politique américaine. Il focalise l'attention sur un principe commun que l'on qualifiera de messianisme, compte tenu de l'environnement religieux dans lequel naquit et vit encore la nation américaine. Il s'agit d'esquisser l'évolution de ce concept, une constante dans les préoccupations spirituelles, intellectuelles et sociales du peuple américain, depuis sa période coloniale jusqu'à nos jours. Cette conviction d'œuvrer selon les desseins d'une autorité divine a imprégné l'idéologie nationale et influencé sa politique étrangère.

ISBN : 2747572285

Nombre de pages : 126

Date : 11- 2004

Jack Malebranche’s Androphilia: A Manifesto

Derek Hawthorne

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

Jack Malebranche (Jack Donovan)
Androphilia: A Manifesto
Baltimore, Md.: Scapegoat Publishing, 2006

Near the end of Androphilia, Jack Donovan writes “It has always seemed like some profoundly ironic cosmic joke to me that the culture of men who love men is a culture that deifies women and celebrates effeminacy. Wouldn’t it make more sense if the culture of men who are sexually fascinated by men actually idolized men and celebrated masculinity?” (p. 115).

He has a point there. As Donovan notes, homosexual porn is almost exclusively focused on hypermasculine archetypes: the lumberjack, the marine, the jock, the cop, etc. (I am going to employ the term “homosexual,” despite its problematic history, as a neutral term to denote same-sex desire among men. I am avoiding the term “gay,” for reasons that will soon be apparent.) So why are homosexuals, who worship masculine men, so damn queeny? Most straight men (and women too) would offer what they see as the obvious answer: homosexuals are not real men. They are a sort of strange breed of womanly man, and it is precisely the otherness of masculine men that attracts them so. This is, after all, the way things work with straight people: men are attracted to women, and vice versa, because they are other. We want what we are not. Therefore, if a man desires another man then he must not be a real man.

What makes this theory so plausible is that so many self-identified homosexuals do behave in the most excruciatingly effeminate manner. They certainly seem to be not-quite-men. Donovan thinks (and I believe he is correct) that it is this womanish behavior in homosexuals that bothers straight men so much – more so, actually, than the fact that homosexuals have sex with other men in the privacy of their bedrooms.

Donovan objects to effeminacy in homosexuals as well, but he sees this effeminacy as a socially-constructed behavior pattern; as a consequence of the flawed logic that claims “since we’re attracted to what’s other, if you’re a man attracted to a man you must not be a real man.” Having bought into this way of seeing things, the “gay community” actually encourages its members to “camp it up” and get in touch with their feminine side. They think they are liberating themselves, but what they don’t see is that they have bought into a specific set of cultural assumptions which effectively rob them of their manhood, in their own eyes and in the eyes of society.

Donovan argues, plausibly, that homosexual attraction should be seen as a “variation in desire” among men (p. 21). Homosexuals are men — men who happen to be attracted to other men. Their sexual desire does not make them into a separate species of quasi-men. This is a point that will be resisted by many, but it is easily defended. One can see this simply by reflecting on how difficult it is to comprehend the homosexuals of yore in the terms we use today to deal with these matters. There was, after all, unlikely to have been anything “queeny” (and certainly not cowardly) about the Spartan 300, who were 150 homosexual couples. And the samurai in feudal Japan were doing it too — just to mention two examples. These are not the sort of people one thinks of as “sensitive” and who one would expect to show up at a Lady Gaga concert, were they around today. It is unlikely that Achilles and his “favorite” Patroclus would have cruised around with a rainbow flag flying from their chariot. These were manly men, who happened to sexually desire other men. If there can be such men, then there is no necessary disjunction between homosexuality and masculinity. QED.

In essential terms, what Donovan argues in Androphilia is that homosexuals should reject the “gay culture” of effeminacy and reclaim masculinity for themselves. Ironically, gay culture is really the product of an internalization of the Judeo-Christian demonization of same-sex desire, and its insistence that homosexuality and masculinity are incompatible. Donovan wants gays to become “androphiles”: men who love men, but who are not defined by that love. “Gay men” are men who allow themselves to be defined entirely by their desire, defined into a separate segment of humanity that talks alike, walks alike, dresses alike, thinks alike, votes alike, and has set itself apart from “breeders” in fashionable urban ghettos. “Gay” really denotes a whole way of life “that promotes anti-male feminism, victim mentality, and leftist politics” (p. 18). (This is the reason Donovan often uses “homo” instead of “gay”: gay is a package deal denoting much more than same-sex desire.) He argues that in an effort to promote acceptance of men with same-sex desire, homosexuals encouraged others to regard them as, in effect, a separate sex — really, almost a separate race. “Gay,” Donovan remarks, is really “sexuality as ethnicity” (p. 18). As a result, gay men have cut themselves off from the fraternity of men and, arguably, trapped themselves in a lifestyle that stunts them into perpetual adolescence. Donovan asks, reasonably, “Why should I identify more closely with a lesbian folk singer than with [straight] men my age who share my interests?”

Many of those who have made it this far into my review might conclude now that Androphilia is really a book for homosexuals, and doesn’t have much to say to the rest of the world. But this is not the case. Donovan’s book contains profound reflections on sexuality and its historical construction (yes, there really are some things that are historically constructed), the nature of masculinity, the role of male bonding in the formation of culture, and the connection between masculinity and politics. This book has implications for how men — all men — understand themselves.

Donovan attacks head-on the attempt by gays to set themselves up as an “oppressed group” on the model of blacks and women, and to compel all of us to refrain from uttering a critical word about them. He attacks feminism as the anti-male ideology it is. And he zeroes in on the connection, taken for granted by nearly everyone, between gay culture and advocacy of left-wing causes. Androphilia, in short, is a book that belongs squarely on the political right. It should be no surprise to anyone to discover that Donovan has been busy since the publication of Androphilia writing for sites like Alternative Right and Spearhead.

Donovan himself was a part of the gay community when he was younger, but never really felt like he belonged. He so much as tells us that his desire for men is his religion; that he worships masculinity in men. But it seemed natural to Donovan that since he was a man, he should cultivate in himself the very qualities he admired in others. His desire was decidedly not for an “other” but for the very qualities that he saw, proudly, in himself. (He says at one point, “I experience androphilia not as an attraction to some alien opposite, but as an attraction to variations in sameness,” p. 49).

Donovan is certainly not alone. It’s natural when we think of homosexuals to visualize effeminate men, because those are the ones that stand out. If I asked you to visualize a Swede you’d probably conjure up a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordic exemplar. But, of course, a great many Swedes are brunettes (famous ones, too; e.g., Ingmar Bergman). The effeminate types are merely the most conspicuous homosexuals. But there also exists a silent multitude of masculine men who love men, men whom no one typically pegs as “gay.” These men are often referred to as “straight acting” — as if masculinity in a homosexual is necessarily some kind of act. These men are really Donovan’s target audience, and they live a tragic predicament. They are masculine men who see their own masculinity as a virtue, thus they cannot identify with what Donovan calls the Gay Party (i.e., “gay community”) and its celebration of effeminacy. They identify far more closely with straight men, who, of course, will not fully accept them. This is partly due to fear (“is he going to make a pass at me?”), and partly, again, due to the prevailing view which equates same-sex desire with lack of manliness. The Jack Donovans out there are lost between two worlds, at home in neither. Loneliness and sexual desire compels such men to live on the periphery of the gay community, hoping always to find someone like themselves. If they have at all internalized the message that their desires make them less-than-men (and most have), then their relationship to masculinity will always be a problematic one. They will always have “something to prove,” and always fear, deep down, that perhaps they are inadequate in some fundamental way.

Androphilia is therapy for such men, and a call for them to form a new identity and group solidarity quite independent of the “gay community.” On the one hand, Donovan asserts that, again, homosexuality should be seen as a “variation in desire” among men; that homosexuals should see themselves as men first, and not be defined entirely by their same-sex desire. On the other hand, it is very clear that Donovan also has high hopes that self-identified androphiles will become a force to be reckoned with. He writes at one point, “While other men struggle to keep food on the table or get new sneakers for Junior, androphiles can use their extra income to fund their endeavors. This is a significant advantage. Androphiles could become leaders of men in virtually any field with comparative ease. By holding personal achievement in high esteem, androphiles could become more than men; they could become great men” (p. 88).

Is Jack Donovan — the androphile Tyler Durden — building an army? Actually, it looks more like he’s building a religion, and this brings us to one of the most interesting aspects of Androphilia. Repeatedly, Donovan tells us that “masculinity is a religion,” or words to that effect (see especially pp. 65, 72, 76, 80, 116).

A first step to understanding what he is talking about is to recognize that masculinity is an ideal, and a virtue. Men strive to cultivate masculinity in themselves, and they admire it in other men. Further, masculinity is something that has to be achieved. Better yet, it has to be won. Femininity, on the other hand, is quite different. Femininity is essentially a state of being that simply comes with being female; it is not an accomplishment. Women are, but men must become. If femininity has anything to do with achievement, the achievement usually consists in artifice: dressing in a certain manner, putting on makeup, learning how to be coy, etc. Femininity is almost exclusively bound up with being attractive to men. If a man’s “masculinity” consisted in dressing butch and not shaving, he would be laughed at; his “masculinity” would be essentially effeminate. (Such is the masculinity, for example, of gay “bears” and “leatherman.”) Similarly, if a man’s “masculinity” consists entirely in pursuing women and making himself attractive to them, he is scorned by other men. (Ironically, such “gigolos” are often far more effeminate mama’s boys than many homosexuals.) No, true masculinity is achieved by accomplishing something difficult in the world: by fighting, building something, discovering something, winning a contest, setting a record, etc. In order for it to count, a man has to overcome things like fear and opposition. He has to exhibit such virtues as bravery, perseverance, commitment, consistency, integrity, and, often, loyalty. Masculinity is inextricably tied to virtue (which is no surprise — given that the root vir-, from which we also get “virile,” means “man”). A woman can be petty, fickle, dishonest, fearful, inconstant, weak, and unserious — and still be thought of as 100% feminine.

A woman can also be the butchest nun, women’s lacrosse coach, or dominatrix on the planet and never be in any danger of someone thinking she’s “not a real woman.” With men, it’s completely different. As the example of homosexuals illustrates, it is quite possible to have a y chromosome and be branded “not a real man.” Masculinity, again, is an ideal that men are constantly striving to realize. The flip side of this is that they live in constant fear of some kind of failure that might rob them of masculinity in their eyes or the eyes of others. They must “live up” to the title of “man.” Contrary to the views of modern psychologists and feminists, this does not indicate a “problem” with men that they must somehow try to overcome. If men did not feel driven to make their mark on the world and prove themselves worthy of being called men, there would be no science, no philosophy, no art, no music, no technology, no exploration.

“But there would also be no war, no conflict, no competition!” feminists and male geldings will shriek in response. They’re right: there would be none of these things. And the world would be colorless and unutterably boring.

As Camille Paglia famously said, “If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.” She also said “There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.” What this really means is that given the nature of men, we can’t have Mozart without Jack the Ripper. So be it.

It should now be a bit clearer why Donovan says that “masculinity is a religion.” To quote him more fully, “masculinity is not just a quality shared by many men, but also an ideal to which men collectively aspire. Masculinity is a religion, one that naturally resonates with the condition of maleness. Worship takes place at sports arenas, during action films, in adventure novels and history books, in frat houses, in hunting lodges” (p. 65).

Earlier in the book he writes: “All men appreciate masculinity in other men. They appreciate men who are manly, who embody what it means to be a man. They admire and look up to men who are powerful, accomplished or assertive. . . . Men respectfully acknowledge another man’s impressive size or build, note a fierce handshake, or take a friendly interest in his facial hair. . . . Sportscasters and fans speak lovingly of the bodies and miraculous abilities of their shared heroes. . . . While straight men would rather not discuss it because they don’t want to be perceived as latent homosexuals, they do regularly admire one another’s bodies at the gym or at sporting events” (p. 22). None of this is “gay,” “latently gay,” or “homoerotic.” This is just men admiring manliness. One of the sad consequences of “gay liberation” (and Freudian psychology) is that straight men must now police their behavior for any signs that might be read as “latency.” And gay liberation has destroyed male bonding. Just recently I re-watched Robert Rossen’s classic 1961 film The Hustler. In the opening scene, an old man watches a drunken Paul Newman playing pool and remarks to a friend, “Nice looking boy. Clean cut. Too bad he can’t hold his liquor.” No straight man today would dream of openly admiring another man’s appearance and describing him as “nice looking,” even though there need be nothing sexual in this at all.

Of course, there is something decidedly sexual in androphilia. The androphile admires masculinity in other men also, but he has a sexual response to it. An androphile may admire all the same qualities in a man that a straight man would, but the androphile gets turned on by them. Here we must note, however, that although the straight man admires masculinity in men he generally spends a lot less time reflecting on it than an androphile does. And there are innumerable qualities in men (especially physical qualities) which androphiles notice, but which many straight men are completely oblivious to. In fact, one of the characteristics of manly men is a kind of obliviousness to their own masculine attractiveness. Yes, straight men admire masculinity in other men and in themselves — but this is often not something that is brought fully to consciousness. No matter how attractive he may be, if a man is vain, his attractiveness is undercut — and so is his masculinity. Men are attractive — to women and to androphiles — to the extent that their masculinity is something natural, unselfconscious, unaffected, and seemingly effortless. Oddly, lack of self-consciousness does seem to be a masculine trait. Think of the single-minded warrior, uncorrupted by doubt and introspection, forging ahead without any thought for how he seems to others, unaware of how brightly his virtue and heroism shine.

What all this means is that androphilia is masculinity brought to self-consciousness. To put it another way, the androphile is masculinity brought to awareness of itself. It is in the androphile that all that is good and noble and beautiful in the male comes to be consciously reflected upon and affirmed. It is in androphiles like Jack Donovan that the god of masculinity is consciously thematized as a god, and worshipped. Masculinity is a religion, he tells us again and again.

Now, I said a few lines earlier that lack of self-consciousness seems to be a masculine trait. If in androphiles a greater self-consciousness of masculinity is achieved, doesn’t this mean that androphiles are somehow unmasculine? Actually what it means is that they are potentially hyper-masculine. It is true that we admire unselfconscious figures like Siegfried or Arjuna, because they seem to possess a certain purity. But such men are always ultimately revealed to be merely the plaything of forces over which they have no control. Greater still then a naïve, unselfconscious purity is the power of an awakened man, who consciously recognizes and cultivates his virtues, striving to take control of his destiny and to perfect himself. This is part and parcel of the ideal of spiritual virility Julius Evola spoke of so often.

The difference between Siegfried and Arjuna is that the latter had the god Krishna around to awaken him. Krishna taught him that he is indeed a plaything of forces over which he has no control. But Arjuna then affirmed this, affirmed his role in the cosmic scheme as the executioner of men, and became the fiercest warrior that had ever lived.

Most men unconsciously follow the script of masculinity, pushed along by hormones to realize the masculine ideal — usually only to find the same hormones putting them in thrall to women and, later, children. Androphiles consciously recognize and affirm masculinity, and because their erotic desires are directed towards other men, they have the potential to achieve far more in the realm of masculine accomplishment than those who, again, have to “struggle to keep food on the table or get new sneakers for Junior.” Thus, far from being “unmasculine,” androphiles have it within their power to become, well, Overmen. Androphiles have awakened to the god in themselves and other men. There is an old saying on the Left Hand Path: “There is no god above an awakened man.” There is also no man above an awakened man. So much for the idea that a man’s love for other men is a badge of inferiority.

Implicit in the above is something I have not remarked on thus far, and that Donovan does not discuss: the duality in the masculine character. It is a rather remarkable thing, as I alluded to earlier, that testosterone both makes a man want to fight, to strive, and to explore — and also to inseminate a woman and tie himself down to home and family. Of course, without that latter effect the race would die out. But it is nevertheless the case that men are pulled in two directions, just by being men: towards heaven and towards earth. To borrow some terms from Evola again, they have within themselves both uranic and chthonic tendencies. Modern biologists have a way of dealing with this: they insist that all of life is nothing but competition for resources and reproduction. Thus, all of men’s uranic striving, all of their quest for the ideal, all of their adventures and accomplishments, are nothing more than ways in which they make themselves more attractive to females. This is sheer nonsense: nothing but the mindset of modern, middle-class, hen-pecked professors projected onto all of nature.

The truth is that men strive to realize the ideal of masculinity in ways that not only have nothing to do with the furtherance of the species, but are often positively inimical to it. Perhaps the best and most extreme example of masculine toughness one could give is the willingness of the samurai to disembowel themselves over questions of honor. Men strive for ideals, often at the expense of life. Masculinity has a dimension that can best be described as supernatural — as above nature. Women are far more tied to nature than men are, and this (and not sexist oppression) is the real reason why it is almost exclusively men who have been philosophers, priests, mystics, scientists, and artists. It is woman’s job to pull man back to earth and perpetuate life.

One way to look at androphilia is that it is not just the masculine come to consciousness of itself, but the masculine ridding itself of the “natural.” This “natural” side of the man is not without value (again, without it we would go extinct), but it has almost nothing to do with what makes men great. The androphile is free to cultivate the truly masculine aspects of the male soul, because he is free of the pull of the feminine and of the natural. This has to have something to do with why it is that so many great philosophers, artists, writers, mystics, and others, have tended to be androphiles. In 1913, D. H. Lawrence wrote the following to a correspondent: “I should like to know why nearly every man that approaches greatness tends to homosexuality, whether he admits it or not: so that he loves the body of a man better than the body of a woman — as I believe the Greeks did, sculptors and all, by far. . . . He can always get satisfaction from a man, but it is the hardest thing in life to get one’s soul and body satisfied from a woman, so that one is free for oneself. And one is kept by all tradition and instinct from loving a man.”

The androphile, again, is masculinity brought to consciousness of itself — and in him, it would seem, much else is brought to consciousness as well. For what else are science, philosophy, religion, art, and poetry but the world brought to consciousness of itself? These things — which are almost exclusively the products of men — are what set us apart and make us unique as a species. Human beings (again, almost exclusively men), unlike all other species, are capable of reflecting upon and understanding the world. We do this in scientific and philosophical theories, but also in fiction, poetry, and painting. Some of us, of course, are more capable of this than others — capable of achieving this reflective stance towards existence itself. And it would seem that of those men that are, some carry things even further and become fully aware of the masculine ideal that they themselves represent. And they fall in love with this. Sadly, androphile writers, artists, poets, etc., have often bought into the notion that their desire for other men makes them unmasculine and, like Oscar Wilde, have shoe-horned themselves into the role of the decadent, effeminate aesthete.

I think that when Donovan describes masculinity as a religion this is not just a desire to be provocative. I think he does experience his admiration for men as sacred. If this is the case, then it is natural for men who feel as he does to insist that such a feeling cannot be indecent or perverse. Further, it is natural for them to wonder why there are men such as themselves. What I have tried to do in the above reflections (which go beyond what Donovan says in his book) is to develop a theory of the “cosmic role,” if you will, of the masculine itself, and of the androphile. I believe Donovan is thinking along the same lines I am, though he might not express things the same way. He writes at one point:

Masculinity is a religion, and I see potential for androphiles to become its priests — to devote themselves to it and to the gods of men as clergymen devote their lives to the supernatural. What other man can both embody the spirit of manhood and revere it with such perfect devotion? This may sound far-fetched, but is it? If so, then why? Forget about gay culture and everything you associate with male homosexuality. Strip it down to its raw essence — a man’s sexual desire for men — and reimagine the destiny of that man. Reimagine what this desire focused on masculinity could mean, what it could inspire, and who the men who experience it could become. (p. 116)

There is much else in Androphilia that is well-worth discussing, though a review cannot cover everything. Particularly worthy of attention is Donovan’s discussion of masculinity in terms of what he calls physical masculinity, essential masculinity, and cultural masculinity. Then there is Donovan’s discussion of masculine “values.” These really should be called “virtues” (especially given the etymology of this word — mentioned earlier — Donovan his missed a bit of an opportunity here!). The language of “values” is very modern. What he really has in mind is virtues in the Aristotelian sense of excellences of the man. Donovan lists such qualities as self-reliance, independence, personal responsibility, achievement, integrity, etc. He starts to sound a bit like Ayn Rand in this part of the book, but it’s hard to quarrel with his message. The book ends with a perceptive discussion of “gay marriage,” which Donovan opposes, seeing it as yet another way in which gays are aping straight relationships, yearning narcissistically for society’s “approval.”

This is really a superb book, which all men can profit from, not just androphiles. If one happens to be an androphile, however, one will find this is a liberating and revolutionary work.

On achète bien les cerveaux... Sur la publicité et les médias

 

On achète bien les cerveaux...

Sur la publicité et les médias

Ex: http://zentropa.splinder.com/

"Les liens des régies publicitaires avec les neurosciences prouvent que la fabrication de "cerveaux humains disponibles" chers à Patrick Le Lay, le président de TF1, est devenue une réalité des médias. Une idéologie est à l’oeuvre : elle vise à nous rendre étrangers à nous-mêmes pour faire de nous des cibles normées en fonction d’intérêts marketing.

Je suis l’auteur d’un livre dont vous n’entendrez probablement jamais parler dans vos journaux, à la télévision ou même à la radio. Son nom ? On achète bien les cerveaux (édition Raisons d’agir, 2007). Il ne s’agit pas d’un opuscule tendancieux ou d’un brûlot d’extrême gauche ou d’extrême droite. Simplement, c’est un livre qui prétend apporter une analyse critique sur un phénomène qui rythme notre quotidien : l’omniprésence massive de la publicité et ses conséquences sur les médias. Le titre fait bien sûr référence à la phrase prononcée en 2004 par Patrick Le Lay, le PDG de TF1, sur le « temps de cerveau humain disponible » que le patron de la chaîne s’enorgueillit de vendre à Coca-Cola. Je suis allée enquêter dans le cœur même de la machinerie publicitaire de la Une. Et ce dont je me suis aperçue, c’est que la commercialisation du cerveau du téléspectateur n’est pas un phantasme ou un abus de langage. C’est le reflet de la plus stricte vérité si l’on en croit les propos de neurologues qui travaillent aujourd’hui pour les principaux médias, dont TF1, sur l’impact de la publicité dans la mémoire.

Le temps n’est plus où l’on se contentait de tests et de post-tests pour prouver l’efficacité des messages publicitaires. Face à des nouveaux médias comme Google ou Yahoo, qui proposent à l’annonceur de payer pour chaque contact transformé en trafic et de suivre le client à la trace, les grands médias cherchent à montrer qu’ils arrivent à pénétrer l’inconscient des consommateurs. A l’instar des grands annonceurs américains, ils ont confié à une société spécialiste des sciences cognitives, Impact Mémoire, le soin d’explorer ce que le cerveau retient dans la communication publicitaire. Pour cela, les « neuromarketers » ont recours à une machine uniquement utilisée jusqu’à présent à des fins médicales, pour détecter les tumeurs par exemple : l’imagerie à résonance magnétique (IRM). Que disent les expériences menées en laboratoires ? Que la zone du cerveau réactive aux images publicitaires, le cortex prefrontal médian, est associée à l’image de soi et à la connaissance intime qu’on a de soi-même (c’est la région cérébrale qui est affectée lorsqu’il y a des troubles de schizophrénie par exemple). En activant le cortex prefrontal médian, les neuromarketers cherchent donc à réussir l’alchimie parfaite : l’opération qui consiste à transformer tout amour de soi en tant que soi - le narcissisme - en amour de soi en tant qu’autre - une cible publicitaire. La publicité vise donc à nous rendre en quelque sorte étrangers à nous-mêmes pour modeler en nous des comportements normatifs qui épousent les intérêts des firmes commerciales.

On le sait depuis Jean Baudrillard et John Kenneth Galbraith, la société de consommation ne peut exister sans son corollaire publicitaire. Car seule la publicité crée dans les têtes une urgence fantasmatique et pavlovienne sans laquelle il n’est pas de tension consumériste : c’est parce que je suis sans cesse sollicité par un univers euphorisant, rempli de symboles de bonheur, que je tends vers la jouissance de l’acquisition matérielle. De cette tension naît un désir structurant dans la mesure où il permet à l’individu d’exister en tant qu’homo consumans. Adhérer aux valeurs de l’imagerie publicitaire - « On vous doit plus que la lumière », « Vous n’irez plus chez nous par hasard », « Parce que je le vaux bien » -, c’est communier aux nouvelles icônes des temps modernes. Il s’agit de prendre corps dans l’espace collectif, de se transfigurer dans une identité à la fois plurielle et, puisqu’elle s’adresse à moi en tant que cible, singulière. L’essayiste François Brune parle d’une « volonté de saisie intégrale de l’individu dans ce qu’il a d’anonyme ». D’où un principe clé de la domestication des esprits : chacun cherche à se ressembler en tant que tribu consommatrice. C’est en effet parce que je renonce à mon appartenance à une identité universelle pour m’inscrire dans une fonctionnalité « tribalisée » que j’abdique de ma citoyenneté au profit d’un label de consommateur tel que l’entend l’ordre marchand. Ce faisant, la publicité permet la mutation d’une société de classes vers autant de cibles qu’il y a d’intérêts et de positions économiques à défendre. Elle vise la reproduction et la permanence de stéréotypes inhérents à tout message établi en fonction d’un statut supposé sur l’échelle sociale.

Seulement, puis-je réellement me retrouver dans cette incessante musique d’ambiance que je n’ai pas sollicitée ? Comme l’a montré Bernard Stiegler dans De la misère symbolique (éditions Galilée, 2004), « on ne peut s’aimer soi-même qu’à partir du savoir intime que l’on a de sa propre singularité ». Or les techniques marketing, parce qu’elles me donnent à entendre et à voir des sons et des images identiques à celles de mon voisin, me construisent une histoire qui est semblable à celle de mes congénères. Comme tel, c’est bien à un effondrement de la conscience individuelle et à une dissolution du désir que nous conduit l’idéologie publicitaire : « Mon passé étant de moins en moins différent de celui des autres parce que mon passé se constitue de plus en plus dans les images et les sons que les médias déversent dans ma conscience, mais aussi dans les objets et les rapports aux objets que ces images me conduisent à consommer, il perd sa singularité, c’est-à-dire que je me perds comme singularité ».( De la misère symbolique, op. cit. p. 26). Selon Bernard Stiegler, le règne hégémonique du marché entraîne inexorablement la ruine d’un « narcissisme primordial » en ce sens qu’il induit un « conditionnement esthétique » qui est aussi une « misère libidinale et affective ». En s’identifiant à la cible publicitaire à laquelle il est supposé appartenir, le consommateur consent par là même à la dissolution de son désir individuel dans un « nous » artificiel créé pour les besoins d’édification du marché des classes dominantes.

De ce conditionnement va naître une nouvelle socialité phantasmatique qui amène le consommateur à se sentir déterminé beaucoup moins par son groupe de classe, son origine sociale, que par des aspirations collectives véhiculées par les médias. Ce n’est d’ailleurs pas tant des emblèmes statutaires que cherche à promouvoir la publicité que des rapports imaginaires qui permettent à l’individu d’exister virtuellement dans le regard de ses contemporains. Tout est prétendument accessible, y compris le luxe, puisque je ne suis plus prisonnier de mon statut mais libéré par ma consommation. A la vieille division archaïque entre dominants et dominés doivent venir se substituer des communautés de désirs susceptibles de reconstruire un « nous entièrement fabriqué par le produit ou le service » comme dit Stiegler.

L’ homo economicus est en quelque sorte consommé par ce qu’il consomme. Il se jette à corps perdu dans l’addiction consumériste, non pas tant dans une course éperdue à l’avoir, comme on le croit souvent, mais pour être. Car le bonheur publicitaire apporte une forme de plénitude fugace dans une société privée de repères politiques et esthétiques. Après la fin proclamée des idéologies et l’avènement d’une classe moyenne de plus en plus compromise par des tensions inégalitaires, il structure notre être de façon rituelle en permettant la transfiguration d’un « je » devenu anarchique, incontrôlé, en un « nous -cible » standardisé et resocialisé.

Créée en 1836 pour aider les journaux à mieux se vendre aux masses populaires, la publicité s’impose aujourd’hui comme le mode de financement principal, voire exclusif, des médias à l’ère numérique. Le consommateur accepte avec insouciance cette manne providentielle qui lui permet d’accéder à des contenus. Mais en connaît-il vraiment le prix ? Information altérée au profit d’intérêts économiques, positionnements éditoriaux déterminés par les perspectives de recettes des annonceurs, campagnes véhiculant des stéréotypes sociaux... Parce qu’elle structure de façon incontestée notre inconscient collectif, la publicité est devenue un vecteur non plus seulement de revenus mais de sens... Les médias tendent à se transformer en zélés prédateurs d’une clientèle-proie pour le compte de leurs principaux clients. Des neurosciences au travestissement des contenus, tout est mis en place pour parvenir à cet objectif. Ce livre se propose d’étudier comment l’instrument économique d’une démocratisation de l’information s’est peu à peu mué en outil politique d’une domination économique."

Marie Bénilde

Olivier Bardolle - Petit traité des vertus réactionnaires

Olivier Bardolle - Petit traité des vertus réactionnaires

 

 

Ex: http://lepetitcelinien.blogspot.com/

Vient de paraître chez L'Editeur, ce Petit traité des vertus réactionnaires d'Olivier Bardolle, que nous vous conseillons.

Présentation de l'éditeur
En Occident, depuis près d'un demi-siècle, les idées progressistes tiennent le haut du pavé. Il semblerait pourtant que l'on redécouvre aujourd'hui certaines vertus à la pensée réactionnaire. Ne serait-ce qu'une capacité de résistance certaine aux ravages de l'hypermodernité et aux bienfaits immodérés de la pensée unique. Sans tomber dans le manichéisme propre à l'époque, ce petit traité, particulièrement tonique, dénonce les fausses valeurs avec jubilation et poussera chacun, qu'il se prétende de droite ou de gauche, à réviser son catéchisme idéologique. C'est ainsi qu'Eric Naulleau, réputé de gauche, n'a pas hésité à préfacer ce texte en toute indépendance d'esprit. A lire sans modération

L'auteur
Olivier Bardolle, né en 1952, est un essayiste reconnu et un interlocuteur recherché (on l'a vu plusieurs fois dans l'émission de Frédéric Taddeï, Ce soir ou jamais). Du Monologue implacable (Ramsay, 2003) à De la prolifération des homoncules sur le devenir de l'espèce (L'Esprit des Péninsules, 2008) ou à ce Petit traité des vertus réactionnaires, Olivier Bardolle tisse, dans la lignée de Philippe Muray (à qui ce dernier ouvrage est dédié), le portrait de l'hypermodernité avec sagacité, ironie, mordant et, ce qui n est pas encore interdit : érudition. Chacun de ses essais épingle la bien-pensance et les idées toutes faites de ses chers contemporains.

Olivier Bardolle, Petit traité des vertus réactionnaires, L'Editeur, 2010.
Commande possible sur Amazon.fr.

 

Les origines du communisme expliquent bien des choses

Les origines du communisme expliquent bien des choses

Dans quelques jours sortira de presse une réédition (1) que je crois capitale. Il s'agit en effet d'une "Histoire du communisme" publiée sous ce titre en 1848. Autrement dit, on y découvre le Communisme avant Marx. Ceci nous montre ce que va devenir à nouveau la même utopie. On se complaît à penser désormais que "Marx est mort". Pourtant nombre de bons esprits cherchent à le réhabiliter. Et, sous divers faux nez, ils tenteront de le faire de plus en plus impunément.

Pour plusieurs générations, et depuis un siècle, le mot communisme n'a eu de sens que pour désigner les disciples du prophète du British Museum. Plus précisément encore, parmi eux, il désigne ceux qui, à la suite de Lénine et de Trotski, ont choisi la violence "accoucheuse de l'Histoire". Tous les sympathisants de cette interprétation du marxisme professent, comme chacun devrait le savoir, un profond mépris pour la sociale démocratie. (2)

La même année, où le livre de Sudre était publié (3) paraissait le fameux Manifeste communiste. Il était écrit par Marx et Engels, à la demande d'une petite organisation révolutionnaire. Celle-ci s'appelait initialement la ligue des Justes. Or cette quasi secte prétendra dès lors rompre avec la grande tradition de l'utopie communiste, celle que Marx appelle dédaigneusement "socialisme utopique".

On sait la suite. Ou plutôt on croit la connaître. Car l'expérimentation marxiste puis léniniste ne fait que confirmer toute l'Histoire de l'Utopie ; elle n'en forme que la continuation.

Alfred Sudre en suit la trame, à partir du Platon de "La République", admirateur des institutions de Sparte et de la Crète. Dès l'échec de sa propre théorie, lui-même la remet en cause.

Il examine ensuite toutes les hérésies, folies, et autres aventures sectaires du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance. Certaines, à tort, et Alfred Sudre le démontre, ont été accusées, – y compris les chrétiens de l'Antiquité tardive, y compris certains ordres monastiques, et aussi les cathares, – de vouloir l'abolition de la propriété privée. D'autres ont bel et bien préfiguré le bolchevisme. Ainsi les anabaptistes de Münzer, responsables de la terrible Guerre des paysans qui ravagea l'Allemagne du sud au XVIe siècle, propageront leur pestilence jusqu'en Amérique.

De même, l'Utopie de Thomas More, apparue en 1516 en Angleterre, contient en germe toutes les idées subversives ultérieures. Marx ne leur donnera qu'un vernis de théorie économique. Son apparente pertinence se veut tirée des fondateurs classiques de cette discipline : Adam Smith et David Ricardo. Le co-auteur du Manifeste lui-même reconnaît que sa pensée tend à associer l'économie anglaise, la philosophie dialectique allemande et ce qu'il considère comme le socialisme français.

Ce mot de "socialisme" est en effet apparu en France au XIXe siècle. Il revient à Pierre Leroux, auquel Alfred Sudre consacre son dernier chapitre de lui avoir donné en 1834 sa signification contemporaine.

Les représentants de celui-ci se trouvent particulièrement actifs, aux côtés de "communistes" et utopistes plus caractérisés, comme Cabet et Fourrier dans les milieux révolutionnaires français. Et ces derniers vont, précisément en cette même année 1848, où toute l'Europe est secouée d'une vague de révolutions, les unes nationales, les autres républicaines, mettre l'accent, d'une façon toute particulière sur la dimension sociale des événements. Ce dernier point, combiné avec d'autres intentions philosophiques, conférera au marxisme tel que nous l'avons connu, tel qu'il subsiste malheureusement encore dans une partie résiduelle de l'intelligentsia, son apparence d'originalité

De nos jours, 20 ans après l'effondrement du "communisme", le sens que le XXe siècle donnait à ce mot se trouve peu à peu oublié. Cette chose, ce fait sociologique que Jules Monnerot décrira en 1949 comme "l'entreprise" (3) marxiste-léniniste, ose dire de la dictature de son "parti" qu'elle correspond à celle du "prolétariat".

Il peut donc sembler à certains que rien de bien nouveau ne soit apparu dans la sphère des idées.

Auteur de cette "Histoire du communisme" avant Marx, Alfred Sudre montre à vrai dire la permanence, depuis l'Antiquité grecque et le Moyen Âge européen de deux familles de doctrines sociales dans l'Histoire des idées. Elles se sont affrontées, de tous temps, depuis "la République" de Platon.

Face à ceux qui, très majoritaires, reconnaissent le droit de propriété, s'affirment les partisans de la communauté. Les intéressées apprécieront beaucoup, de nos jours, que cette dernière doctrine consistât le plus souvent en la mise en commun, par les hommes, des biens mais aussi des femmes, considérées comme leur appartenant.

Parmi les mérites de cet ouvrage, on lui doit aussi un chapitre particulièrement passionnant, résumant les aspects les plus radicaux de l'œuvre de Pierre-Joseph Proudhon pour qui j'ai toujours éprouvé une grande tendresse. Alfred Sudre nous permet de retrouver des citations réjouissantes. Quand il aborde le point de vue de l'économiste, Proudhon devient lumineux, presque irréfutable.

Ici j'en choisirais une seule (4):

"Le communisme, pour subsister, supprime tant de mots, tant d'idées, tant de faits, que les sujets formés par ses soins n'auront plus le besoin de parler, de penser, ni d'agir : ce seront des huîtres attachées côte à côte, sans activité ni sentiment, sur le rocher de la fraternité. Quelle philosophie intelligente et progressive que le communisme !"

… mais je ne voudrais pas déflorer ce que le livre souligne par ailleurs.

Oui, les origines du communisme expliquent bien des choses.

JG Malliarakis

Apostilles

1. Jusqu'au 15 octobre les lecteurs de l'Insolent peuvent commander directement ce livre de 459 pages proposé en souscription au prix franco de port de 18 euros. Il sera ultérieurement commercialisé au prix de 25 euros.
2. On retrouve la trace d'un tel dédain à l'époque de la refondation du "nouveau" parti socialiste (c'est-à-dire de l'actuel), de son congrès fondateur d'Epinay, et du programme commun de 1972 rédigé par Jean-Pierre Chevènement. À noter que dès 1976, ce dernier osera assurer que "si le Général [De Gaulle] était vivant, il soutiendrait le programme commun de la gauche."
3. Son sous-titre original le présente comme une "réfutation historique des utopies socialistes". Très rapidement épuisé, cet ouvrage reçut en mai 1849 le prix Montyon décerné l'Académie française et fit l'objet cette année-là d'une seconde édition aux dépens de Victor Lecou, rue de Bouloi, imprimé par Gustave Gratiot, rue de la Monnaie. Quoique réimprimé depuis, dans divers pays non-francophones, par procédé "anastatique", il avait été, durant des décennies, superbement ignoré de l'édition et plus encore des bibliographies parisiennes.
4. Cf. sa "Sociologie du communisme" où, caractérisant cette aventure révolutionnaire il y voit (Tome Ier) "l'islam du XXe siècle"
5. Cf. "Histoire du communisme avant Marx" par Alfred Sudre page 356.

Vous pouvez entendre l'enregistrement de cette chronique
sur le site de Lumière 101

"Le Héros" de Baltasar Gracian

« LE HÉROS », de Baltasar GRACIÁN

 

Traduit de l’espagnol, préfacé et annoté par Catherine VASSEUR

Par Pierre Marcowich

Ex: http://www.oswald-spengler-le-retour.net/

 

 

 

   

Écrit vers 1636 par un jésuite espagnol, Baltasar GRACIÁN, l’ouvrage « LE HÉROS » (1), petit opuscule de 104 pages, nous enseigne comment devenir un personnage hors du commun, non pas en trompant son entourage, contrairement à l’enseignement de MACHIAVEL, mais en combattant ses penchants. 

C’est en acquérant le sens de l’honneur qu l’on parvient à réussir. Telle est la thèse de l’auteur. L’honneur ! C’est donc bien un Espagnol qui a écrit ce livre.  

On peut comprendre son entreprise, si l’on sait que Baltasar GRACIÁN fut, en 1644, l’aumônier militaire des troupes espagnoles qui battirent près de la ville de LÉRIDA les troupes françaises qui tentaient de s’emparer de la CATALOGNE pour le compte du Roi de France, LOUIS XIV, âgé de 6 ans, le Cardinal MAZARIN exerçant la réalité pouvoir. On dit qu’il y fit preuve d’une grande bravoure. 

L’auteur nous propose de pratiquer toutes les vertus de l’honneur dans la vie mondaine pour parvenir au succès. Cependant, Baltasar GRACIÁN ne semble pas trop croire à l’efficacité absolue de sa recette, puisqu’à la fin du livre, le lecteur apprend que le « héros » est finalement banni, ostracisé par la société, parce que, peut-être, les hommes du commun ne peuvent pas le comprendre. 

Mais le bannissement inéluctable du « héros » de Baltasar GRACIÁN, qui, plus tard, va récidiver avec un autre ouvrage (EL CRITICON en 1651), est peut-être aussi le pressentiment de l’incompréhension sévère qu’il allait rencontrer, de la part de ses supérieurs de l’Ordre des Jésuites, soucieux de ne pas donner prise aux critiques des jansénistes qui tenaient alors le haut du pavé « médiatique ». 

Pour exposer les qualités de son Héros, tel qu’il l’envisage, Baltasar GRACIÁN prend pour exemples des héros incontestables que l’Histoire a reconnus et dont il fait ressortir les qualités de chacun que le héros doit adopter. Tout au long de l’ouvrage, Baltasar GRACIÁN fait défiler tout de son ouvrages des héros, tels que  TIBÈRE, LOUIS XI, ISABELLE LA CATHOLIQUE, le Roi SALOMON, ALEXANDRE, CÉSAR, CHARLES VII (« le roi de Bourges »), le GRAND TURC, PHILIPPE II (d’Espagne), et bien d’autres encore. 

Voici, succinctement exposées, les principales règles qu’il nous propose : 

1) ne jamais dévoiler toutes les ressources dont on dispose ;

2) dissimuler sa sensibilité ;

3) faire preuve d’intelligence ;

4) montrer de la grandeur dans ses actes ;

5) disposer d’un goût en conformité avec son rang ;

6) ne jamais se trouver le second dans son art ;

7) être le meilleur avec excellence ;

8) être réaliste dans ses engagements ;

9) rechercher l’emploi où l’on se trouvera le meilleur ;

10) évaluer sa chance (fortune) et celle de ses adversaires ;

et ainsi de suite. Les qualités sont présentées en gradation, chacune par rapport à la précédente, jusqu’à la 17^ème qualité, le « bouquet final », par laquelle il est exigé que le héros doit pratiquer une sorte d’émulation avec les héros du passé. 

Ce sont donc 17 qualités que le héros doit cumulativement posséder.  

On est droit de se demander pourquoi de si grands efforts, quasi surhumains, alors que le héros va finir banni, ostracisé par son entourage, tel un moderne ALCIBIADE, dont Baltasar GRACIÁN évoque formellement la figure. (2) 

Dans sa préface, Catherine VASSEUR nous donne une clef pour comprendre la problématique de Baltasar GRACIÁN : 

« Car la sagesse, la puissance, le courage, la sainteté, les terres inconnues ont déjà été conquis par ceux qu’il cite en exemple. Le héros de Baltasar GRACIÁN est l’héritier d’un monde qui n’est plus à conquérir. Aussi lui reste-t-il à se conquérir soi-même. » (3) (souligné par P.M.) 

 

 

Gerd Bergfleth: critique des Lumières palabrantes

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1986

 

Gerd Bergfleth: critique des Lumières palabrantes

 

Les essais et articles de Gerd BERGFLETH, philosophe et penseur d'avant-garde qui vit à Tübingen, méritent une ample attention. Quand on les lit, quand on y réfléchit, on admettra qu'ils nous offrent une réelle expérience euphorique et euphorisante. Ces textes constituent une véritable déclaration de guerre à l'Aufklärung vulgaire qui a stérélisé la pensée allemande de notre après-guerre.

 

Comme Jean BAUDRILLARD à Paris, BERGFLETH (qui à préfacé et explicité l'édition allemande de L'échange symbolique et la mort, livre paru chez Gallimard en 1976) tente de sortir de l'impasse où nous a égaré cette pensée dominante marquée du sceau de la raison raisonnante. BERGFLETH veut des thèmes nouveaux. Il résume sa pensée iconoclaste en dix thèses qu'il baptise "Dix thèses pour une critique de la Raison". Il y constate la faillite de la Raison en tant qu'instance dominante de la philosophie et proclame le divorce entre sa vision personnelle et l'Aufklärung de la gauche de facture habermasienne. BERGFLETH s'insurge contre cette pensée propre à la gauche libérale des années 70 et croit pouvoir annoncer la fin de l'alliance entre la Raison, couplée à ses interdits, et le pouvoir, porté par les technocrates. Il écrit: "Décisive est la Subversion de la domination de la Raison et de la Raison de la domination par la nature humaine". Il faut pour cela redécouvrir le rêve et la folie, l'érotisme et les passions. En bref, ce qu'il faut retrouver, c'est la plénitude totale de notre nature humaine, que l'industrie de la consommation et la bourgeoisie ont domestiquée.

 

BERGFLETH va encore plus loin: "La Vie ne se réduit pas à la pensée mais nous avons tout de même besoin de la clarté passionnée de la pensée, si nous voulons retrouver une Vie de passions". Gerd BERGFLETH se permet une révolte, s'offre le luxe d'une révolte. Tous ceux qui sentent qu'un tel destin de révolté leur est propre l'accompagneront sur la barricade qu'il dresse. L'enjeu: l'intensité sacrée de la Vie. Les réflexions de BERGFLETH montrent qu'une nouvelle culture est possible. Mieux: qu'une nouvelle culture est nécessaire.

 

Deux essais de BERGFLETH méritent le détour: 1)Der geschundene Marsyas qui évoque les voies qui conduiront, au-delà de la crise des valeurs, à la réconciliation entre la Raison et la Nature et 2) Über linke Ironie, ensemble de réflexions qui, par leur pertinence incisive ébranlent les idées les plus chères à la gauche philosophique, libérale, propagandiste et superficielle. Mais pour les victimes de cet assaut conceptuel, il reste une vigoureuse introduction à Nietzsche, une introduction pour débutants dont les ingrédients proviennent de France. Dans Die zynische Aufklärung BERGFLETH règle ses comptes avec les dogmes et les traditions de cette gauche libérale qui a règné en dictateur impavide depuis la "reeducation" imposée à l'Allemagne vaincue par les armées yankees. L'individuel s'est évanoui dans le néant, telle est la caractéristique la plus méprisable de notre dernière décennie. Idem pour l'idée d'égalité qui a présidé au processus de "démocratisation", au perfectionnement, au nivellement et à l'uniformisation. Citons BERGFLETH: "Dans la notion d'égalité, on trouve entière la tendence à aplatir et araser qui est inhérente à tout universalisme abstrait, dont le propre est d'exterminer toute espèce de différences". Ou encore: "Car la domination de l'égalité équivaut à la domination de la terreur".

 

BERGFLETH le sage, BERGFLETH l'homme qui sait, n'ignore pas, bien sûr, de quel complexe souffre la nation allemande; il écrit à ce propos: "Car sans Heimat personne ne peut vivre, pas même l'homme de gauche; le bourgeoisisme planétaire trouve son pendant dans l'apatridisme, l'Heimatlosigkeit ". Le misérabilisme spirituel de la Bundes- republik méritait d'être agressé et secoué. BERGFLETH s'est chargé de ce boulot salutaire . C'est son grand et immense mérite. Il est devenu un homme dont il faudra tenir compte.

 

Martin Werner KAMP.

 

Gerd BERGFLETH et al., Zur Kritik der palavernden Aufklärung, Matthes & Seitz Verlag, München, 1984, 200 S., 19,80 DM.

La révolte selon Gerd Berglfleth

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1986

 

La révolte selon Gerd Bergfleth

 

Il faut rendre hommage à un petit livre pratique qui n'aborde pas le mic-mac du guignol politicien mais se penche, au fond, sur le politique en soi. Ce livre est l'anthologie d'une révolte, celle de Bernd MATTHEUS et d'Axel MATTHES. Mieux qu'une anthologie, ce livre est une symphonie à la radicalité. Ces textes, cette valse de théories et de littérature tranchée et osée feront vibrer les cœurs hardis, les cœurs qui contestent toutes les formes de médiocrité. Les grands ancêtres, les maîtres éternels de toutes les révoltes y ont contribué en fournissant leurs sentences les plus incisives, les plus mordantes: Bataille et Céline, Hölderlin et Pessoa, Nietzsche et le Marquis de Sade. Les partisans cultivés de la révolte radicale œuvrent ici en commun. Des aphorismes épiques aux essais philosophiques, nous découvrons un thème, celui de la révolte, dans une sarabande de méditations subversives, où l'on se découvre jouisseur et prospecteur. Mais ce menu, les auteurs nous l'offrent avec la prudence qui s'impose; en effet, la lecture n'en est pas aisée. "La révolte est signe. Signe de ce ou celui qui se trouve en dehors de toute espèce d'ordre. La révolte possède de nombreux visages. La révolte est une chose, son expression en est une autre. Il y a la révolte de l'homme sans envergure et celle du démagogue, qui visent à accentuer encore le rabougrissement de l'homme, qui se plaisent à soumettre et opprimer, qui aiment à cultiver la médiocrité et l'esprit grégaire. Mais il y a aussi la révolte de l'esseulé rebelle et rétif. Le soumis qui courbe le cap et celui qui ignore la crainte évaluent le concept de révolte d'une manière fondamentalement différente. Le fait que l'Eglise ait envoyé tous les grands hommes en enfer, est une sorte de "révolte" qui déplaisait déjà souverainement à Nietzsche. Ce que moi j'affirme, c'est la révolte contre tout discours établi sur la révolte". Et Axel MATTHES poursuit: "La radicalité doit pouvoir s'afficher, il faut pouvoir la lire dans des actes, des instants uniques, des gestes, des formes qui témoignent d'une attitude bien particulière et unique... La radicalité n'est pas en fin de compte une question de goût, mais un état d'esprit. Etre radical est une chance: la chance de trouver du neuf".

 

Enfin, voici quelques délicatesses de cette "symphonie à la radicalité":

 

"De tout cela, je déduirais que la voie vers la délivrance conduit à travers l'enfer lui-même, mais seul celui qui devine déjà la délivrance, pourra trouver l'issue" (BERGFLETH).

 

"Qu'aimes-tu donc en fait, toi l'Original? Ma nostalgie." (ROZANOV).

 

"Pour l'homme vraiment religieux, rien n'est péché" (NOVALIS).

 

"Plus l'homme progresse, moins de choses il trouvera, auxquelles il pourra se convertir" (CIORAN).

 

"Se donner ses propres normes et s'y tenir" (Alain de BENOIST).

 

Le lecteur qui voudra trouver un néo-moralisme évitera de lire cette anthologie. Ceux qui, en revanche, cherchent à honorer nos vieux dieux et veulent vivre existentiellement l'audace de la révolte, devront trouver dans cet ouvrage le fil d'Ariane du parfait révolté. Comme MATTHES et MATTHEUS, permettez-vous la révolte !

 

Martin Werner KAMP.

 

Bernd MATTHEUS / Axel MATTHES (Hrsg.), Ich gestatte mir die Revolte, Verlag Matthes & Seitz, München, 1985, 397 S., 22 DM.

Tomislav Sunic sur "Radio Courtoisie"

Sur Radio Courtoisie

Evola’s Metaphysics of War

Derek Hawthorne

 

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

Julius Evola
Metaphysics of War:
Battle, Victory, and Death in the World of Tradition
Aarhus, Denmark: Integral Tradition Publishing, 2007

Italian Traditionalist Julius Evola (1898–1974) needs little introduction to the readers of Counter-Currents. The Metaphysics of War is a collection of sixteen essays by Evola, published in various periodicals in the years 1935–1950.

These essays constitute what is certainly the most radical attempt ever made to justify war. This justification takes place essentially on two levels: one profane, the other sacred. At the profane (meaning simply “non-sacred”) level, Evola argues that war is one of the primary means by which heroism expresses itself, and he regards heroism as the noblest expression of the human spirit. Evola reminds us that war is a time in which both combatants and non-combatants realize that they may lose their lives and everything and everyone they value at any moment. This creates a unique moral opportunity for individuals to learn to detach themselves from material possessions, relationships, and concern for their own safety. War puts everything into perspective, and Evola states that it is in such times that “a greater number of persons are led towards an awakening, towards liberation” (p. 135):

From one day to the next, even from one hour to the next, as a result of a bombing raid one can lose one’s home and everything one most loved, everything to which one had become most attached, the objects of one’s deepest affections. Human existence becomes relative–it is a tragic and cruel feeling, but it can also be the principle of a catharsis and the means of bringing to light the only thing which can never be undermined and which can never be destroyed. [p. 136]

So far, these ideals may seem quite similar to those espoused by Ernst Jünger–and indeed Evola alludes to him in one place in the text (p. 153), and is uncharacteristically positive. (Usually when Evola references a modern author it is almost always to stick the knife in.) However, Evola goes well beyond Jünger, for he adds to this ideal of heroism and detachment a “spiritual” and even supernatural dimension (this is the “sacred” level I alluded to earlier). In essential terms, Evola argues that the heroism forged in war is a means to transcendence of this world of suffering and to identification with the source of all being. He even argues that the hero may attain a kind of magical quality.

Unsurprisingly, Evola attempts to situate his treatment of heroism in terms of the doctrine of the “four ages,” a staple of Traditionalist writings. The version of the four ages most familiar to Western readers is the one found in Ovid, where the ages are gold, silver, bronze, and iron. However, Evola has squarely in mind the Indian version wherein the iron age (the most degraded of all) is referred to as the Kali Yuga. To these correspond the four castes of traditional society, with a spiritual, priestly element dominating in the first age, the warrior in the second, the merchant (or, bourgeoisie, the term most frequently used by Evola) in the third, and the slave or servant in the fourth.

When the bourgeoisie dominates in the third age, “the concept of the nation materializes and democratizes itself”; “an anti-aristocratic and naturalistic conception of the homeland is formed” (p. 24). Ironically, when I read this I could not help but think of fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany. To the liberal mind, fascism and Nazism both are “ultra-conservative” (to put it mildly). From the Traditionalist perspective, however, both are modern, populist movements. And National Socialism especially found itself caught up in reductionist, biological theories of “the nation.” Nevertheless, Evola writes that “fascism appears to us as a reconstructive revolution, in that it affirms an aristocratic and spiritual concept of the nation, as against both socialist and internationalist collectivism, and the democratic and demagogic notion of the nation” (p. 27). In other words, whatever its shortcomings may be, fascism is for Evola a means to restore Tradition. Evola also writes approvingly of fascism having elevated the nation to the status of “warrior nation.” And he states that the next step “would be the spiritualization of the warrior principle itself” (p. 27). Of course, it seems to have been Heinrich Himmler’s ambition to turn his SS into an elite corps of “spiritual warriors.” One wonders if this was the reason Evola began courting members of the SS in the late 1930s (a matter briefly discussed in John Morgan’s introduction to this volume).

Evola tells us that the end of the reign of the bourgeoisie opens up two paths for Europe. One is a shift to the subhuman, and Evola makes it clear that this is what bolshevism represents. The fourth age is the age of the slave and of the triumph of slave morality in the form of communism. The other possibility, however, is a shift to the “superhuman.” As Evola has said elsewhere, the Kali Yuga may be an age of decline but it presents unique opportunities for self-transformation and the attainment of personal power. (“A radical destruction of the ‘bourgeois’ who exists in every man is possible in these disrupted times more than in any other,” p. 137). Those who “ride the tiger” are able not just to withstand the onslaught of negative forces in the fourth age, but actually to use them to rise to higher levels of self-realization. War is one such negative force, and Evola maintains that the idea of war as a path to spiritual transformation is a Traditional view.

According to Evola, the ancient Aryans held that there are two paths to enlightenment: contemplation and action. In traditional Indian terms, the former is the path of the brahmin and the latter of the kshatriya (the warrior caste). Both are forms of yoga, which literally means any practice that has as its aim connecting the individual to his true self, and to the source of all being (which are, in fact, the same thing). The yoga of action is referred to as karma yoga (where karma simply means “action”), and the primary text which teaches it is the Bhagavad-Gita. Evola returns again and again to the Bhagavad-Gita throughout The Metaphysics of War, and it really is the primary text to which Evola’s philosophy of “war as spiritual path” is indebted. The work forms part (a very small part, actually) of the epic poem Mahabharata, the story of which culminates in an apocalyptic war called Kurukshetra. On the eve of battle, the consummate warrior Arjuna (the Siegfried of the piece) surveys the two camps from afar and realizes that on his enemy’s side are many men who are his friends and relations. When Arjuna reflects on the fact that he will have to kill these men the following day, he falters. Fortunately, his charioteer–who is actually the god Krishna–is there to teach him the error of his ways. Krishna tells Arjuna that these men are already dead, for their deaths have been ordained by the gods. In killing them, Arjuna is simply doing his duty and playing his role as a warrior. He must set aside his personal feelings and concentrate on his duty; he must literally become a vehicle for the execution of the divine plan.

One might well ask, what’s in it for Arjuna? The answer is that this following of duty becomes a path by which he may triumph over his fears, his passions, his weaknesses–all those things that tie him to what is ephemeral. Following his duty becomes a way for Arjuna to rise above his lesser self and to connect with the divine. This is not mere piety or “love of God.” It is a way to tap into a superhuman source of power and wisdom. The result is that Arjuna becomes more than merely human.

In fact, Krishna puts Arjuna in a situation in which he must fight two wars. One, the “lesser” war is external–it is the one fought on the battlefield with swords and spears. The other, “greater” war is internal and is fought against the internal enemy: “passion, the animal thirst for life” (p. 52). Evola places a great deal of emphasis on this distinction. What Krishna really teaches Arjuna is that in order to fight the lesser war, he must fight the greater one. Really, unless one is able to conquer one’s weaknesses, nothing else may be accomplished. This opens up the possibility that there may be “warriors” who never fight in any conventional, “external” wars. These would be warriors of the spirit. Evola believes that one can be a true warrior without ever lifting a sword or a gun, by conquering the enemy within oneself. And he mentions initiatic cults, like Mithraism, which conceived of their members on the model of soldiers.

Nevertheless, the focus in The Metaphysics of War is really on actual, physical combat as a means to spiritual transformation. Evola tells us that the warrior ceases to act as an ordinary person, and that a non-human force transfigures his action. The warrior who does not fear death becomes death itself. This is one of the major lessons imparted by Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita. It is not just a matter of “waking up” or becoming tougher and harder (as it is in Jünger). Evola clearly suggests that there is a supernatural element involved, though his remarks are far from clear. He writes that “the one who experiences heroism spiritually is pervaded with a metaphysical tension, an impetus, whose object is ‘infinite,’ and which, therefore, will carry him perpetually forward, beyond the capacity of one who fights from necessity, fights as a trade, or is spurred by natural instincts or external suggestion” (p. 41). Elsewhere Evola states that when the “right intention” is present “then one has given birth to a force which will not be able to miss the supreme goal” (p. 48).  Heroic experiences seem “to possess an almost magical effectiveness: they are inner triumphs which can determine even material victory and are a sort of evocation of divine forces intimately tied to ‘tradition’ and ‘the race of the spirit’ of a given stock” (p. 81).

The suggestion here is that the experience of combat, fought with the right intention, results in a kind of ecstasy (an “active ecstasy” as Evola says on p. 80). The Greek ekstasis literally means “standing outside onself.” In combat one is lifted out of one’s ordinary self and, more specifically, out of one’s concern with the mundane cares of life. One enters into a state where one ceases even to care about personal survival. It is at this point that one has ceased to identify with the “animal” elements in the human personality and has tapped into that part of us that seems to be a divine spark. This is not, however, an intellectual state or “realization.” Instead, it is a new state of being, which pervades the entire person. The ancient Germans called it wut and odhr. And from these two words derive two of the names of the chief Germanic god: Wuotan and Odin. Odin is not, however, conceived simply as the god of war; he is also the god of wisdom and spiritual transformation. In this state of ecstasy, one feels oneself lifted above the merely human; one’s senses and reflexes become more acute, one’s movements more graceful, life suddenly comes into perspective and is seen as the transient affair that it really is, and one feels invincible, capable of accomplishing anything. (A dim simulacrum of this is experienced in athletic competition.) One has, in fact, become a god.

Evola ties this achievement of self-transformation through combat into a “general vision of life,” which he expresses in one of the most memorable metaphysical passages in this small volume:

[L]ike electrical bulbs too brightly lit, like circuits invested with too high a potential, human beings fall and die only because a power burns within them which transcends their finitude, which goes beyond everything they can do and want. This is why they develop, reach a peak, and then, as if overwhelmed by the wave which up to a given point had carried them forward, sink, dissolve, die and return to the unmanifest. But the one who does not fear death, the one who is able, so to speak, to assume the powers of death by becoming everything which it destroys, overwhelms and shatters–this one finally passes beyond limitation, he continues to remain upon the crest of the wave, he does not fall, and what is beyond life manifests itself within him. [p. 54]

Throughout The Metaphysics of War, Evola describes the various virtues of the warrior. These are the characteristics one must have to be effective in battle, and receptive to the sort of experience Evola describes. Again, however, it is very clear that he believes that all those who follow a path of spiritual transformation are warriors. Evola describes the warrior as without any doubt or hesitation; as having a bearing that suggests he “comes from afar”; as holding a world-affirming outlook. The warrior takes pleasure in danger and in being put to the test. (The lesson here for all of us, Evola says, is to find the meaning in adversity, and to take hardships as calls upon our nobility.) The warrior regards as comrades only those he can respect; he has a passion for distance and order; he has the ability to subordinate his passions to principles. The warrior’s relations with others are direct, clear, and loyal. He carries himself with a dignity devoid of vanity, and loathes the trivial.

Above all, however, Evola emphasizes the importance of  detachment:

detachment towards oneself, towards things and towards persons, which should instill a calm, an incomparable certainty and even, as we have before stated, an indomitability. It is like simplifying oneself, divesting oneself in a state of waiting, with a firm, whole mind, with an awareness of something that exists beyond all existence. From this state the capacity will also be found of always being able to commence, as if ex nihilo, with a new and fresh mind, forgetting what has been and what has been lost, focusing only on what positively and creatively can still be done. [p. 137]

Evola offers us a vision of life as a member in a spiritual army. The standard, liberal view of the military is in effect that it is a necessary evil, and that the military and its values are not a suitable model for individual lives or societies. Evola argues instead that true civilization is conceived in heroic and “virile” terms. Readers of Evola’s other works will be familiar with his concept of “spiritual virility.” Mere physical virility is the element in the man that he shares with other male animals. But this is not true or absolute manhood. True manhood is achieved in the spirit, in developing the sort of hardness, detachment, and perspective on life that is characteristic of the warrior. Rene Guenon (a major influence on Evola) called the modern age “the reign of quantity.” It is typical of our time that we have come to see manhood entirely in terms of quantities of various kinds: how many pounds one can bench press or squat; numbers of sexual partners; inches of height; inches of penis; the number of zeros in one’s bank balance; the number of cylinders in one’s engine, etc. Just as in Huxley’s Brave New World, our masters have striven to create a society without conflict; a “nice” and “tolerant” society. And women have invaded virtually every arena of competition that used to be exclusively male, and ruined them for everyone. Under such circumstances, how is spiritual virility to develop? It is no surprise that our conception of virility is a purely physical and quantitative one. Evola evidently saw in fascism a means to awaken spiritual virility in the Italian male. He says that the starting point for fascist ethics is “scorn for the easy life” (p. 62).

Unlike other thinkers on the right, Evola never was particularly interested in biological conceptions of race, because he believed that human nature as such was irreducible to biology. He opposed reductionism, in short, and believed in a spiritual (i.e., non-material) component to our identity. Evola articulates his views on race in much greater detail elsewhere. Here he reminds us of his belief in a “super race” of the spirit: a race of men who are like-souled, and not necessarily like-bodied. Nevertheless, Evola realized the connection between the body and the spirit. He did not believe that all the (biological) races are equally fitted for achieving heroism. What Evola was most concerned to combat was a racialism that reduced heroism or mastery to simple membership in a race defined by certain biological characteristics. For Evola, heroism is really achieved in a step beyond the biological, and in mastery over it.

One will also find little in Evola that celebrates “the nation.” Evola’s ideal of heroism transcends national identity. This comes out most clearly in his discussion of the Crusades: “In fact, the man of the Crusades was able to rise, to fight and to die for a purpose which, in its essence, was supra-political and supra-human, and to serve on a front defined no longer by what is particularistic, but rather by what is universal” (p. 40, italics in original). Having written this, however, Evola immediately realized that the powers that be might see this (correctly) as implying that it is the achievement of heroism as such that is important, not merely the achievement of heroism in service to one’s people. A further implication of this, of course, is that the hero is raised above his people. And so Evola writes in the next paragraph, “Naturally this must not be misunderstood to mean that the transcendent motive may be used as an excuse for the warrior to become indifferent, to forget the duties inherent in his belonging to a race and to a fatherland” (pp. 40-41). Evola is not really being disingenuous here. Taking a cue again from the Bhagavad-Gita, one can say that it is the performance of one’s duty to race and fatherland that is the path to liberation. But as the wise man once said, when the raft takes us to the other shore, we do not put it on our backs and carry on with it. As Rajayoga teaches, there is no god (and certainly no country) above an awakened man. Evola is a fundamentally a philosopher of the left hand path, not a conservative. This individualistic element in him is troublesome for many on the right, and it is one of the primary reasons why he was unable to wholly reconcile himself to fascism.

Nine of these essays were written during the Second World War, and it is interesting to see how Evola situates his understanding of the conflict within his philosophy. In one essay written on the eve of the war, Evola states that “If the next war is a ‘total war’ it will mean also a ‘total test’ of the surviving racial forces of the modern world. Without doubt, some will collapse, whereas others will awaken and arise. Nameless catastrophes could even be the hard but necessary price of heroic peaks and new liberations of primordial forces dulled through grey centuries. But such is the fatal condition for the creation of any new world–and it is a new world that we seek for the future” (p. 68). It is doubtful that the war’s outcome either surprised or demoralized Evola. As noted earlier, he believed strongly in a cyclical view of history, and saw our age as a period of inevitable decline. It could not have surprised him that the combined forces of bourgeois and Bolshevik prevailed. In the final essay of in this volume, published five years after the end of the war, Evola reflects that “what is really required to defend ‘the West’” against the forces of barbarism “is the strengthening, to an extent perhaps still unknown to Western man, of a heroic vision of life” (p. 152).

Evola makes it clear that his position is not an unqualifiedly pessimistic one. The Kali Yuga is not the final age; history is cyclical, and a new and better age will follow this one. In each period, the stage is set for the next. The actions of those who resist this age set the stage for what is to come. Hence, though speaking and acting on behalf of truth may seem futile given the degradation that surrounds us, ultimately our resistance is part of the mechanism of the great cosmic wheel which will, in time, swing things back to truth and to Tradition. In the act of resisting, heroism is born in us and instantly we become creatures who no longer belong to this age, who “come from afar.” We become beacons pointing the way to the future, and simultaneously back to a glorious past. Evola writes that “a teaching peculiar to the ancient Indo-Germanic traditions was that precisely those who, in the dark age, in spite of all, resist, will be able to obtain fruits which those who lived in more favorable, less hard periods could seldom reach” (p. 61).

The Metaphysics of War is required reading for all those interested in the Traditionalist movement. But it will be of special appeal to a certain sort of man, who scorns the easy life and seeks to give birth to something noble and heroic in himself.

Note: The Metaphysics of War is available for purchase here.

Marc Rousset: la nouvelle Europe Paris-Berlin-Moscou

Marc Rousset:

"La Nouvelle Europe Paris-Berlin-Moscou"

Ed. Godefroy de Bouillon

 Présentation de l'éditeur

Sommes-nous des citoyens transatlantiques ou des citoyens paneuropéens ? Pourquoi les Européens devraient-ils s' insérer dans un quelconque Commonwealth du XXIe siècle piloté par Washington ? L Europe ne va pas de Washington à Bruxelles, mais de Brest à Vladivostok. La Russie est européenne par ses vingt-cinq millions de morts qui ont scellé pendant les deux dernières guerres mondiales le destin de l' Europe. Si le catholicisme et l'orthodoxie sont les deux poumons de l'Eglise, ils sont aussi ceux de l Europe. Le contrôle de la Sibérie sera l enjeu stratégique du XXIe siècle entre la Grande Europe et la Chine. La Russie est à la fois l'Hinterland , le Far East de l' Europe par ses grands espaces et un avant-poste par rapport à la Chine et à l' Islam de l Asie centrale. Dans ces régions, l' Européen, c' est le Russe. L objectif ultime à atteindre serait la constitution d un arc boréal paneuropéen de nations qui intégrerait le monde slave et orthodoxe. Il se concrétiserait par le rapprochement entre l' Europe carolingienne, capitale Strasbourg, et la Russie, seule alliance bipolaire capable d arrimer efficacement sur le Rhin et la Moskova cette nouvelle Grande Europe. L ' avenir de l' Europe n' est donc pas dans une Union européenne qui gonfle démesurément, jusqu à en perdre son identité, mais dans la création de deux alliances ouest et est européennes qui s équilibrent mutuellement et rivalisent amicalement.

Biographie de l'auteur

Marc Rousset, diplômé H.E.C, Docteur ès Sciences Economiques, MBA Columbia University, AMP Harvard Business School, a occupé pendant 20 ans des fonctions de Directeur Général dans les groupes Aventis, Carrefour et Veolia. Il est l auteur de Pour le Renouveau de l Entreprise (préface de Raymond Barre, aux Editions Albatros, 1987), de la Nouvelle Europe de Charlemagne (préface d Alain Peyrefitte, aux Editions Economica, 1995, Prix de l Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques) et des Euroricains (préface d Yvon Gattaz de l Institut aux Editions Godefroy de Bouillon, 2001).

 

Et, pour alimenter la polémique, ces observations:

 

"J’ai reçu certaines remarques à propos de mon commentaire de ce livre (*), qui montrent bien que le sujet traité par Marc Rousset  fait débat.

D’abord sur la nécessité d’une entité européenne, indépendante des Etats-Unis d’Amérique et plus proche de la Russie.

Pour Marc Rousset, s’il ne se constitue pas un « noyau carolingien » de 160 millions d’hommes, les nations européennes disparaîtront dans un monde où l’Amérique atteindra 500 millions d’hommes et la Chine 1,3 milliard d’habitants. Cette entité a à la fois vocation et intérêt à se rapprocher de la Russie, pour être en quelque sorte l’hinterland européen de ce pays qui lutte pour sa survie alors qu’il demeure le plus solide rempart de la civilisation européenne.

Sans doute l’auteur ne confond-il pas, dans son analyse, et je me dois de le signaler, ce rapprochement avec une soumission du genre de celle que l’Europe actuelle témoigne aux Etats-Unis. Mais plutôt y voit-il une alliance fondée sur la continentalité, la culture commune, les intérêts convergents.

De même, certains regrettent que ne soit pas détaillée plus avant la thèse de Marc Rousset sur la nécessité d’une langue commune, pour contrer l’anglo-américain actuellement dominant. Pour l’auteur, elle a toujours été nécessaire depuis l’origine des grandes entités et il rappelle avec justesse qu’en Europe ce fut, un moment, le français. Si les Européens n’adoptent pas un langage commun, leurs Etats, dont par exemple la France, ne pourront se défendre contre la contagion actuelle et deviendront à terme des « Louisiane » : l’espéranto devrait, à défaut du français, jouer ce rôle.

Je fais donc ces mises au point par souci d’objectivité.

Mais je persiste et signe : Avons-nous besoin de grands ensembles, constitués de pays qui ont de grandes différences de mœurs et de cultures lesquels sont façonnés par l’Histoire de chacun d’eux et nos intérêts économiques sont-ils toujours convergents ? De solides alliances militaires entre nations libres et souveraines, par exemple sur le modèle du traité de Washington pour l’Otan (quand elle servait à quelque chose), de bons accords commerciaux et de libre-échange ne suffisent-ils pas à assurer la paix et la prospérité aux citoyens de ces nations qui devraient rester indépendantes et n’épouser aucune querelle étrangère ?

Certes, la Russie n’est plus l’Union soviétique et Marc Rousset à raison de le dire. Certes, le bon sens devrait suffire à comprendre que nous avons plus d’affinités avec ce pays chrétien continental dont l’histoire est longue et riche. Mais la réalité est souvent cruelle et la prudence demeure de mise lorsqu’il s’agit de la liberté fondamentale des nations.

Mais le débat est ouvert, grâce à cet ouvrage qui est un vrai pavé dans la mare de la pensée politiquement conforme".

Pierre Millan

Heidegger “The Nazi”

Michael O'Meara

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

Emmanuel Faye
Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935
Trans. Michael B. Smith, foreword Tom Rockmore
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009

National Socialism was defeated on the field of battle, but it wasn’t defeated in the realm of thought.

Indeed, it’s undefeatable there because the only thing its enemies can do to counter its insidious ideas is to ban those thinkers, like Martin Heidegger, whose works might attract those wanting to know why National Socialism is undefeatable and why its world view continues to seduce the incredulous.

Or, at least, so thinks Emmanuel Faye in his recently translated Heidegger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie (Paris: Albin Michel, 2005).

Why, though, all this alarmed concern about a difficult, some say unreadable, philosopher of the last century?

The reason, Tom Rockmore says, is that he lent “philosophical cover to some of the darkest impulses that later led to Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust.”

One.
The Scandal

Faye’s book is part of a larger publishing phenomenon — in all the major European languages — related to the alleged National Socialism of the great Freiburg philosopher.

Like many prominent German academics of his age, Heidegger joined Hitler’s NSDAP shortly after the National Revolution of 1933.

He was subsequently made rector of the University of Freiburg, partly on the basis of his party affiliation, and in a famous rectorial address — “The Self-Assertion of the German University” — proposed certain reforms that sought to free German universities from “Jewish and modernist influences,” reorienting it in this way to the needs and destiny of the newly liberated Volksgemeinschaft.

 

Heidegger’s role as a public advocate of National Socialist principles did not, however, last very long.  Within a year of his appointment, he resigned the rectorship.

As he told the de-Nazification tribunal in 1945, his resignation was due to his frustration in preventing state interference in university affairs, a frustration that soon turned him away from all political engagements.

The story he told to the liberal inquisitors (which most Heideggerians accepted up to about 1988) was one in which a politically naive academic, swept up in the revolution’s excitement, had impulsively joined the party, only to become quickly disillusioned.

The story’s “dissimulations and falsehoods” were, indeed, good enough to spare him detention in a Yankee prison — unlike, say, Carl Schmitt who was incarcerated for two years after the war (though the only “Americans” Schmitt ever encountered there were German Jews in the conquerors’ uniform) — but not good enough to avoid a five-year ban on teaching.

In any case, it has always been known that Heidegger had at least a brief “flirtation” with “Nazism.”

Given the so-called “negligibility” of his National Socialism, he was able, after his ban, to resume his position as Germany’s leading philosopher.  By the time of his death (1976), he had become the most influential philosopher in the Western world.  His books have since been translated into all the European languages (and some non-European ones), his ideas have come to dominate contemporary continental thought, and they have even established a beachhead in the stultifying world of the Anglo-American academy, renowned for its indifference to philosophical issues.

Despite Heidegger’s enormous influence as “the century’s greatest philosopher,” he never quite shed the stigma of his early brush with National Socialism.  This was especially the case after 1987 and 1988.

For in late 1987 a little known Chilean-Jewish scholar, Victor Farìas, produced the first book-length examination of Heidegger’s “brush” with National Socialist politics.

His Heidegger and Nazism was not a particularly well-researched work, and there was a good deal of speculation and error in it.

It nevertheless blew apart the story Heidegger had told his American inquisitors in 1945, revealing that he had been a party member between 1933 and 1945; that his National Socialism was something more than the flirtation of a politically naive philosopher; and that his affiliation with the Third Reich was anything but “fleeting, casual, or accidental but [rather] central to his philosophical enterprise.”

This “revelation” — that the greatest philosophical mind of the 20th century had been a devoted Hitlerite — provoked a worldwide scandal.

In the year following Farìas’ work, at least seven books appeared on the subject.

The most impressive of these was by Hugo Ott, a German historian, whose Martin Heidegger: A Political Life (1994) lent a good deal of historically-documented substance to Farìas’ charges.

In the decades since the appearance of Farìas’ and Ott’s work, a “slew” of books and articles (no one is counting any more) have continued to probe the dark recesses of Heidegger’s scandalous politics.

Almost every work in the vast literature devoted to Heideggerian philosophy must now, in testament to the impact of these studies, begin with some sort of “reckoning” with his “Nazism” — a reckoning that usually ends up erecting a wall between his philosophy and his politics.

In this context, Emmanuel Faye’s book is presently being touted as the “best researched and most damaging” work on Heidegger’s National Socialism — one that aims to tear down the wall compartmentalizing his politics and to brand him, once and for all, as an apologist for “the greatest crime of the 20th century.”

It’s fitting that Faye, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Paris-Nanterre, is French, for nowhere else have Heidegger’s ideas been as influential as in France.

Heidegger began appearing in French translation as early as the late 1930s.  The publication in 1943 of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, based on a misreading of Heidegger, gave birth to “existentialism,” which dominated Western thought in the late 1940s and 1950s, helping thus to popularize certain Heideggerian ideas.

At the same time, French thinkers were the first to pursue the issue of Heidegger’s alleged National Socialism.

Karl Löwith, one of the philosopher’s former Jewish students exiled in France, argued in 1946 that Heidegger’s politics was inseparable from his philosophical thought. Others soon joined him in making similar arguments.

Though Löwith’s critique of Heidegger appeared in Les Temps Modernes, Sartre’s famous journal, the ensuing, often quite heated, French controversy was mainly restricted to scholarly journals.  Faye’s father, Jean-Pierre Faye, also a philosopher, figured prominently in these debates during the 1960s.

It was, though, only with Farìas and Ott that the debate over Heidegger’s relationship to the Third Reich spread beyond the academic journals and touched the larger intellectual public.

This debate continues to this day.

Part of the difficulty in determining the exact degree and nature of Heidegger’s political commitment after 1933 is due to the fact that Heidegger’s thought bears on virtually every realm of contemporary European intellectual endeavor, on the right as well as the left, and that there’s been, as a consequence, a thoughtful unwillingness to see Heidegger’s National Socialism as anything other than contingent — and thus without philosophical implication.

This unwillingness has been compounded by the fact that the Heidegger archives at Marbach are under the control of Heidegger’s son, Hermann, who controls scholarly access to them, hindering, supposedly, an authoritative account of Heidegger’s thinking in the period 1933-1945.

Moreover, only eighty of the planned 120 volumes of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe have thus far appeared and, as Faye contends, these are not “complete,” for the family has allegedly prevented the more “compromising” works from being published.

The authority of Faye’s Heidegger — which endeavors to eliminate everything separating his politics from his philosophy — rests on two previously unavailable seminars reports from the key 1933-34 period, as well as certain documents, letters, and other evidence, which have appeared in little known or obscure German publications — evidence he sees as “proving” that Heidegger’s “Nazism” was anything but contingent — and that this “Nazism” was, in fact, not only inseparable from his thought, but formative of its core.

On this basis, along with Heidegger’s collaboration with certain NSDAP thinkers, Faye claims that the philosophy of the famous Swabian is so infused with National Socialist principles that it ought no longer to be treated as philosophy at all, but, instead, banned as “Nazi propaganda.”

Two.
Faye’s Argument

Heidegger’s seminars of 1933 and 1934, in Emmanuel Faye’s view, expose the “fiction” that separates Heidegger’s philosophy from his politics. For these seminars reveal a brown-shirted fanatic who threw himself into the National Revolution, hoping to become Hitler’s philosophical mentor.

At the same time, Faye argues that Heidegger’s work in the 1920s, particularly his magnum opus, Being and Time (1927), was already infected with pre-fascist ideas, just as his postwar work, however much it may have resorted to a slightly different terminology, would continue to propagate National Socialist principles.

Earlier, however, when the young Heidegger was establishing himself in the world of German academic philosophy (the 1920s), there is very little public evidence of racial or anti-Jewish bias in his work. To explain this, Faye quotes Heidegger to the effect that “he wasn’t going to say what he thought until after he became a full professor.” His reticence on these matters was especially necessary given that his “mentor,” Edmund Husserl, was Jewish and that he needed Husserl’s support to replace him at Freiburg.

(For those militant Judeophobes who might think this is somehow compromising, let me point out that Wilhelm Stapel [1882-1954], after also doing a doctorate in Husserlian phenomenology, was a Protestant, nationalist, and anti-Semitic associate of the Conservative Revolution who played an important early role in NSDAP politics.)

Faye nevertheless claims that Heidegger’s early ideas, especially those of Being and Time, were already disposed to themes and principles that were National Socialist in nature.

In Being and Time, for example, Heidegger rejects the Cartesian cogito, Kant’s transcendental analytic, Husserlian phenomenology — along with every other bloodless rationalism dominating Western thought since the 18th century — for the sake of an analysis based on “existentials” (i.e., on man’s being in the world).

Like other intellectual members of Hitler’s party, Heidegger disparaged all forms of universalist thought, dismissing not only notions of man as an individual, but notions of the human spirit as pure intellect and reason.

In repudiating universalist, humanist, and individualist thought associated with liberal modernity, Faye’s Heidegger is seen not as contesting the underlying principles of liberal modernity, which he, as a former Catholic traditionalist, thought responsible for the alienation, rootlessness, and meaninglessness of the contemporary world. Rather he is depicted as preparing the way for the “Nazi” notion of an organic national community (Volksgemeinschaft) based on racial and anti-Jewish criteria.

Revealingly, this is about as far as Faye goes in treating Heidegger’s early thought. In fact, there is very little philosophical analysis at all of Being and Time or any other work in his book. Every damning criticism he makes of Heidegger is based on Heidegger’s so-called affinity with National Socialist themes or ideas — or what a liberal defending a Communist would call guilt by association.

Worse, Faye lacks any historical understanding of National Socialism, failing to see it as part of a larger anti-liberal movement that had emerged before Hitler was even born and which influenced Heidegger long before he had heard of the Führer.

For our crusading anti-fascist professor, however, the anti-liberal, anti-individualist, and anti-modern contours of Heideggerian thought are simply Hitlerian — because of their later association with Hitler’s movement — unrelated to whatever earlier influences that may have affected the development of his thought. Q.E.D.

Faye, though, fails to make the case that Heidegger’s pre-1933 thought was “Nazi,” both because he’s indifferent to Heidegger’s philosophical argument in Being and Time, which he dismisses in a series of rhetorical strokes, and, secondarily, because he doesn’t understand the historical/cultural context in which Heidegger worked out his thought.

More generally, he claims Heidegger negated “the human truths that are the underlying principle of philosophy” simply because whatever doesn’t accord with Faye’s own liberal understanding of philosophy (which, incidentally, rationalizes the radical destructurations that have come with the “Disneyfication, MacDonaldization, and globalization” of our coffee-colored world) is treated as inherently suspect.

Only on the basis of the 1933-34 and ‘34-35 seminars does Faye have a case to make.

For the Winter term of 1933-34 Heidegger led a seminar “On the Essence and Concepts of Nature, History, and State.” If Faye’s account of the unpublished seminar report is accurate (and it’s hard to say given the endless exaggerations and distortions that run through his book), Heidegger outdid himself in presenting National Socialist doctrines as the philosophical basis for the new relationship that was to develop between the German people and their new state.

Like other National Socialists, Heidegger in this seminar views the “people” in völkisch terms presuming their “unity of blood and stock.”

Faye is particularly scandalized by the fact that Heidegger values the “people” (Volk) more than the “individual” and that the people, as an organic community of blood and spirit, excludes Jews and exalts its own particularity.

In this seminar, Heidegger goes even further, calling for a “Germanic state for the German nation,” extending his racial notion of the people to the political system, as he envisages the “will of the people” as finding embodiment in the will of the state’s leader (Führer).

Faye contends that people and state exist for Heidegger in the same relation as beings exist in relation to Being.

As such, Heidegger links ontology to politics, as the “question of all questions” (the “question of being”) is identified with the question of Germany’s political destiny.

Heidegger’s rejection of the humanist notion of the individual and of Enlightenment universalism in his treatment of Volk and Staat are, Faye thinks, synonymous with Hitlerism.

Though Faye’s argument here is more credible, it might also be pointed out that Heidegger’s privileging of the national community over the interests and freedoms of the individual has a long genealogy in German thought (unlike Anglo-American thought, which privileges the rational individual seeking to maximize his self-interest in the market).

The second seminar, in the Winter term of 1934-35, “On the State: Hegel,” again supports Faye’s case that Heidegger was essentially a “Nazi” propagandist and not a true philosopher. For in this seminar, he affirms the spirit of the new National Socialist state in Hegelian terms, spreading the “racist and human-life destroying conceptions that make up the foundations of Hitlerism.”

In both courses, Faye sees Heidegger associating and merging philosophy with National Socialism.

For this reason, his work ought not to be considered a philosophy at all, but rather a noxious political ideology.

Faye, in fact, cannot understand how Heidegger’s insidious project has managed to “procure a planetary public” or why he is so widely accepted as a great philosopher.

Apparently, Heidegger had the power to seduce the public — though on the basis of Faye’s account, it’s difficult to see how the political hack he describes could have pulled this off.

In any case, Faye warns that if Heidegger isn’t exposed for the political charlatan he is, terrible things are again possible. “Hitlerism and Nazism will continue to germinate through Heidegger’s writings at the risk of spawning new attempts at the complete destruction of thought and the extermination of humankind.”

Three.
Race and State

 

Martin Heidegger, 1889 - 1976

From the above, the reader might conclude that Faye’s Heidegger is a wreck of a book.  And, in large part, it is, as I will discuss in the conclusion.

However, even the most disastrous wrecks (and this one bears the impressive moniker of Yale University Press) usually leave something to be salvaged.  There are, as such, discussions on the subjects of “race” and “the state,” which I thought might interest TOQ readers.

A) Race

National Socialism, especially its Hitlerian distillation, was a racial nationalism.

Yet Heidegger, as even his enemies acknowledge, was contemptuous of what at the time was called “biologism.”

Biologism is the doctrine, still prevalent in white nationalist ranks, that understands human races in purely zoological and materialist terms, as if men were no different from the lower life forms — slabs of meat whose existence is a product of genetics alone.

Quite naturally, Heidegger’s anti-biologism was a problem for Faye, for how was it possible to claim that Heidegger was a “Nazi racist,” if he rejected this seemingly defining aspect of racial thought?

In an earlier piece (”Freedom’s Racial Imperative: A Heideggerian Argument for the Self-Assertion of Peoples of European Descent,” TOQ, vol. 6, no. 3), I reconstructed the racial dimension of Heidegger’s thought solely on the basis of his philosophy.

But Faye, who obviously doesn’t put the same credence in Heidegger’s thought, is forced, as an alternative, to historically investigate the different currents of NSDAP racial doctrine.

In his account (which should be taken as suggestive rather than authoritative), the party, in the year after the revolution, divided into two camps vis-à-vis racial matters: the camp of the Nordicists and that of the Germanists.

The Nordicists were led by Hans K. Günther, a former philologist, and had a “biologist” notion of race, based on evolutionary biology, which sought, through eugenics, to enhance the “Nordic blood” in the German population.

By contrast, the Germanists, led by the biologist Fritz Merkenschlager and supported especially by the less Nordic South Germans, held that blood implied spirit and that spirit played the greater role in determining a people’s character.  (This ought not to be confused with Klages’ “psychologism.”)

The Germanists, as such, pointed out that Scandinavians were far more Nordic than Germans, yet their greater racial “purity” did not make them a greater people than the Germans, as Günther’s criteria would lead one to believe.

Rather, it was the Germans’ extraordinary Prussian spirit (this wonder of nature and Being) that made them a great nation.

This is not to say that the Germanists rejected the corporal or biological basis of their Volk — only that they believed their people’s blood could not be separated from their spirit without misunderstanding what makes them a people.

For the Germanists, then, race was not exclusively a matter of biological considerations alone, as Günther held, but rather a matter of blood and spirit.

(As an aside, I might mention that Julius Evola, whose idea of race represents, in my view, the highest point in the development of 20th-century racial thought, was much influenced by this debate, especially by Ludwig Ferdinand Clauss, whose raciology was a key component of the Germanist conception, emphasizing as it does the fact that one’s idea of race is ultimately determined by one’s conception of human being.)

Faye claims that, in a speech delivered in August 1933, Hitler emphasized the spiritual determinants of race, in language similar to Heidegger’s, and that he thus came down on the side of the Germanists.

The key point here is that, for Faye, the “völkisch racism” of the Germanists was no less “racist” than that of the biological racialists — implying that Heidegger’s Germanism was also as “racist.”

The Germanist conception, I might add, was especially well-suited to a “blubo” (a Blut-und-Boden nationalist) like Heidegger. Seeing man as Dasein (a being-there), situated not only in a specific life world (Umwelt), but in exchange with beings (Mitdasein) specific to his kind, his existence has meaning only in terms of the particularities native to his milieu, (which is why Heidegger rejected universalism and the individualist conception of man as a free-floating consciousness motivated strictly by reason or self-interest).

Darwinian conceptions of race for Heidegger, as they were for other  Germanists in the NSDAP, represented another form of liberalism, based on individualistic and universalist notions of man that reduced him to a disembedded object — refusing to recognize those matters, which, even more than strictly biological differences, make one people unlike another.

Without this recognition, Germanists held that “the Prussian aristocracy was no different from apples on a tree.”

B) The State

As a National Socialist, Faye’s Heidegger was above all concerned with lending legitimacy to the new Führer state.

To this end, Heidegger turned to Carl Schmitt, another of those “Nazi” intellectuals, who, for reasons that are beyond Faye’s ken, is seen by many as a great political thinker.

In his seminar on Hegel, Heidegger, accordingly, begins with the 1933 third edition of Schmitt’s Concept of the Political (1927).

 

There Schmitt defines the concept of the state in terms of the political — and the political as those actions and motives that determine who the state’s “friends” and who its “enemies” are.

But though Heidegger begins with Schmitt, he nevertheless tries to go beyond his concept of the political.

Accepting that the “political” constitutes the essence of the state, Heidegger contends that Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction is secondary to the actual historical self-affirmation of a people’s being that goes into founding a state true to the nation.

In Heidegger’s view, Schmitt’s concept presupposes a people’s historical self-affirmation and is thus not fundamental but derivative.

It is worth quoting Heidegger here:

There is only friend and enemy where there is self-affirmation. The affirmation of self [i.e., the Volk] taken in this sense requires a specific conception of the historical being of a people and of the state itself. Because the state is that self-affirmation of the historical being of a people and because the state can be called polis, the political consequently appears as the friend/enemy relation. But that relation is not the political.

Rather, it follows the prior self-affirmation.

For libertarians and anarchists in our ranks, Heidegger’s modification of Schmitt’s proposition is probably beside the point.

But for a statist like myself, who believes a future white homeland in North America is inconceivable without a strong centralized political system to defend it, Heidegger’s modification of the Schmittian concept is a welcome affirmation of the state, seeing it as a necessary stage in a people’s self-assertion.

Four.
Conclusion

From the above, it should be obvious that Faye’s Heidegger is not quite the definitive interpretation that his promoters make it out to be.

Specifically, there is little that is philosophical in his critique of Heidegger’s philosophy and, relying on his moralizing attitude rather than on a philosophical deconstruction of Heidegger’s work, he ends up failing to make the argument he seeks to make.

If Faye’s reading of the seminars of 1933-34 are correct, than Heidegger was quite obviously more of a National Socialist than he let on. But this was already known in 1987-88.

Faye also claims that Heidegger’s pioneering work of the 1920s anticipated the National Socialist ideas he developed in the seminars of 1933-34 and that his postwar work simply continued, in a modified guise, what had begun earlier. This claim, though, is rhetorically asserted rather than demonstrated.

Worse, Faye ends up contradicting what he sets out to accomplish. For his criticism of Heidegger is little more than an ad hominem attack, which assumes that the negative adjectives (”abhorrent,” “appalling,” “monstrous,” “dangerous,” etc) he uses to describe his subject are a substitute for either a proper philosophical critique or a historical analysis.

In thus failing to refute the philosophical basis of Heidegger’s National Socialism, his argument fails, in effect.

But even if his adjectives were just, it doesn’t change the fact that however “immoral” a philosopher may be, he is nevertheless still a philosopher. Faye here makes a “category mistake” that confuses the standards of philosophy with those of morality. Besides, Heidegger was right in terms of his morals.

Faye is also a poor example of the philosophical rationalism that he offers as an alternative to Heidegger’s allegedly “irrational” philosophy — a rationalism whose enlightenment has been evident in the great fortunes that Jews have made from it.

Finally, in insisting that Heidegger be banned because of his fascist politics, Faye commits the “sin” that virtuous anti-fascists always accuse their opponents of committing.

In a word, Faye’s Heidegger is something of a hatchet job that, ultimately, reflects more on its author’s peculiarities than on his subject.

Yet after saying this, let me confess that though Faye makes a shoddy argument that doesn’t prove what he thinks he proves, he is nevertheless probably right in seeing Heidegger as a “Nazi.”  He simply doesn’t know how to make his case — or maybe he simply doesn’t want to spend the years it takes to “master” Heidegger’s thought.

Even more ironic is the scandal of Heidegger’s “Nazism” seen from outside Faye’s liberal paradigm. For in this optic, the scandal is not that Heidegger was a National Socialist — but rather that the most powerful philosophical intelligence of the last century believed in this most demonized of all modern ideologies.

But who sees or cares about this real scandal?

UN ouvrage fondamental sur la "révolution conservatrice"

 

 

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1999

Un ouvrage fondamental sur la révolution conservatrice

 

Richard FABER (Hrsg.), Konservatismus in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Königs­hau­sen & Neu­mann, Würzburg, 1991, ISBN 3-88479-592-9.

 

Deux contributions de cet ouvrage collectif intéressent directement notre propos: 1) Ri­chard FABER, «Differenzierungen im Be­griff Konservatismus. Ein religionssoziolo­gi­scher Versuch» et 2) Arno KLÖNNE, «"Rechts oder Links?". Zur Geschichte der Nationalrevolutionäre und Na­tionalbolsche­wisten». Richard Faber, dont nous connais­sons déjà la concision, résume en treize points les positions fondamentales du "con­servatisme" (entendu dans le sens alle­mand et non pas britannique):

◊1) le principe de "mortui plurimi", le culte des morts et des anciens, garant d'un ave­nir dans la conti­nui­té, de la durée.

 

◊2) Ce culte de la durée im­plique la no­stal­gie d'un ordre social stable, comme celui d'a­vant la révolution, la réfor­me et la re­nais­san­ce (Hugo von Hofmanns­thal).

 

◊3) Dans l'actualité, cette nostalgie doit con­duire l'homme politique à défendre un or­dre économique "sain", respectant la plu­ralité des forces sociales; à ce niveau, une con­tra­diction existe dans le conservatisme con­temporain, où Carl Schmitt, par exem­ple, dé­nonce ce néo-médiévisme social, com­me un "romantisme politique" inopé­rant, au nom d'un étatisme efficace, plus dur encore que le stato corporativo italien.

 

◊4) L'ordre social et politique dérive d'une re­­pré­sentation de l'empire (chinois, babylo­nien, perse, assyrien ou romain) comme un analogon du cosmos, comme un reflet mi­cro­cosmique du macrocosme. Le christia­nis­­me médiéval a retenu l'essentiel de ce cosmisme païen (urbs deis hominibusque com­munis). La querelle dans le camp con­ser­vateur, pour Faber, oppose ceux qui veu­­­lent un retour sans médiation aux sour­ces originales païen­­nes et ceux qui se con­tentent d'une ré­­pétition de la synthèse mé­dié­vale christia­ni­sée.

 

◊5) Les conservateurs perçoivent le fer­ment chrétien comme subversif: ils veu­lent une re­ligion qui ne soit pas opposée au fonction­nement du politique; à partir de là, se déve­loppe un anti-christia­nisme conservateur et néo-païen, ou on impose, à la suite de Jo­seph de Maistre, l'ex­pé­diant d'une infailli­bi­li­té pontificale pour bar­rer la route à l'impo­li­tis­me évangélique.

 

◊6) Les positivistes comtiens, puis les maur­ras­siens, partageant ce raisonnement, déjà présent chez Hegel, parient pour un catho­li­cis­me athée voire pour une théocratie a­thée.

 

◊7) Un certain post-fascisme (défini par Rü­diger Altmann), observable dans toutes les traditions politiques d'après 1945, vise l'in­té­gration de toutes les composantes de la so­ciété pour les soumettre à l'économie. Ainsi, le pluralisme, pourtant affiché en théo­rie, cè­­de le pas devant l'intégra­tion/ho­mo­loga­tion (option du conservatisme technocrate).

 

◊8) Dans ce contexte, se dé­ve­lop­pe un ca­tholicisme conservateur, hostile à l'auto­no­mie de l'économie et de la so­cié­té, les­quel­les doivent se soumettre à une "syn­thèse", celle de l'"organisme social" (suite p. 67).

 

◊9) Le contraire de cette synthèse est le néo-li­béralisme, expression d'un polythéis­me po­liti­que, d'après Faber. Les principaux re­pré­sentants de ce poly­théis­me libéral sont O­do Marquard et Hans Blumenberg.

 

◊10) Dans le cadre de la dialectique des Lu­mières, Locke estimait que l'individu devait se soumettre à la société civile et non plus à l'autorité po­litique absolue (Hobbes); l'exi­gence de soumission se mue en césarisme chez Schmitt. Dans les trois cas, il y a exi­gence de soumission, comme il y a exi­gen­ce de sou­mission à la sphère économique (Alt­mann). Le conservatisme peut s'en ré­jouir ou s'en insurger, selon les cas.

 

◊11) Pour Fa­ber, comme pour Walter Ben­jamin avant lui, le conservatisme représente une "tra­hi­son des clercs" (ou des intellec­tuels), où ceux-ci tentent de sortir du cul-de-sac des discussions sans fin pour débou­cher sur des décisions claires; la pensée de l'ur­gence est donc une caractéristique ma­jeu­re de la pensée conservatrice.

 

◊12) Faber cri­ti­que, à la suite d'Adorno, de Marcuse et de Ben­jamin, le "caractère affir­ma­teur de la cul­ture", propre du con­ser­va­tisme. Il re­mar­que que Maurras et Maulnier s'engagent dans le combat politique pour pré­server la culture, écornée et galvaudée par les idéo­logies de masse. Waldemar Gu­rian, disciple de Schmitt et historien de l'Ac­tion Fran­çai­se, constate que les sociétés ne peuvent sur­vivre si la Bildung disparaît, ce mé­lange de raffinement et d'éducation, pro­pre de l'é­li­te intellectuelle et créatrice d'une na­tion ou d'une civilisation.

 

◊13) Dans son dernier point, Faber revient sur la cosmologie du conservatisme. Celle-ci implique un temps cyclique, en appa­ren­ce différent du temps chrétien, mais un au­teur comme Erich Voe­gelin accepte explici­te­ment la "plus ancien­ne sagesse de l'hom­me", qui se soumet au rythme du devenir et de la finitude. Pour Voe­gelin, comme pour cer­tains conserva­teurs païens, c'est la pen­sée gnostique, an­cêtre directe de la moder­nité délétère, qui re­jette et nie "le destin cy­clique de toutes choses sous le soleil". La gnose christia­ni­sée ou non du Bas-Empire, cesse de per­ce­voir le monde comme un cos­mos bien or­don­né, où l'homme hellé­ni­que se sentait chez lui. Le gnostique de l'an­tiquité tardive, puis l'homme moderne qui veut tout mo­di­fier et tout dépasser, ne par­vient plus à re­gar­der le monde avec émerveillement. Le chré­tien catholique Voe­gelin, qui aime la cré­a­tion et en admire l'or­dre, rejoint ainsi le païen catholique Maur­ras. Albrecht Erich Günther, figure de la ré­vo­lution conserva­trice, définit le conserva­tis­me non comme une propension à tenir à ce qui nous vient d'hier, mais propose de vi­vre comme on a toujours vécu: quod sem­per, quod ubique, quod omnibus.      

 

Dans sa contribution, Arno Klönne évoque la démarche anti-système de personnalités comme Otto Strasser, Hans Ebeling, Ernst Niekisch, Beppo Römer, Karl O. Paetel, etc., et résume clairement cette démarche en­tre tous les fronts dominants de la pen­sée politique allemande des années 20 et 30.  Le refus de se laisser embrigader est une leçon de liberté, que semble reprendre la "Neue Rechte" allemande actuelle, sur­tout par les textes de Marcus Bauer, philo­so­phe et théologien de formation. Un ex­cel­lent résumé pour l'étudiant qui sou­hai­te s'i­ni­tier à cette matière hautement com­ple­xe (RS).

 

"Toward the White Republic"

Michael O'Meara

 

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

Counter-Currents is proud to announce the publication of our first title:

Michael O’Meara’s
Toward the White Republic
Edited by Greg Johnson
San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2010
160 pages
hardcover: $30

Note: Toward the White Republic will first be released in a signed, numbered hardcover edition of 100 copies.

Release date: August 17, 2010

“Just as in medieval times it was considered high treason to speak of the death of the king, in the United States it is taboo to contemplate the break-up of the ‘one nation, indivisible.’ Yet in this slim volume of essays Michael O’Meara argues that if the white race is to survive on this continent, the American Empire must perish. Secession is rising from the ashes of 1865, and O’Meara is one of its leading prophets.”
—H. A. Covington, author of the Northwest Quartet

“Michael O’Meara is a thinker of great depth and a writer of extraordinary skill. He is impressively erudite, yet in these essays he wears his learning lightly. He is not a pedant trying to dazzle his readers with arcane and esoteric verbiage. He is a revolutionary, who wants to change the world. His idea of the White Republic as the mythic source and aim of radical cultural-racial regeneration may seem too romantic and too risky to the older generation of American paleo-conservatives and European ethno-nationalists. But if the white man is to retrieve his destiny, it is the only way.”
—Tomislav Sunić, author of Homo americanus

CONTENTS

Foreword • iii

From Myth to Revolution
1. Toward the White Republic • 1
2. The Myth of Our Rebirth • 21
3. The Sword • 31
4. The Edge of the Sword • 40
5. Cù Chulainn in the GPO • 47
6. The Northwest Novels of H. A. Covington • 61

Why I am Not a Conservative
7. Why I Write • 71
8. Three Pillars • 77
9. The Next Conservatism? • 87
10. Against White Reformists • 95

Apocalypse American-Style
11. Katrina’s Intimation of the End • 100
12. 2009: Crisis or Opportunity? • 107
13. US, SU: Same Scenario? • 126
14. The Hotrod of the Apocalypse • 140

Call to Arms
15. Foreigners Out! • 148

Index • 151
About the Author • 154

The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire

The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire

"In this book, the distinguished writer Edward Luttwak presents the grand strategy of the eastern Roman empire we know as Byzantine, which lasted more than twice as long as the more familiar western Roman empire, eight hundred years by the shortest definition. This extraordinary endurance is all the more remarkable because the Byzantine empire was favored neither by geography nor by military preponderance. Yet it was the western empire that dissolved during the fifth century. The Byzantine empire so greatly outlasted its western counterpart because its rulers were able to adapt strategically to diminished circumstances, by devising new ways of coping with successive enemies. It relied less on military strength and more on persuasion--to recruit allies, dissuade threatening neighbors, and manipulate potential enemies into attacking one another instead. Even when the Byzantines fought--which they often did with great skill--they were less inclined to
destroy their enemies than to contain them, for they were aware that today’s enemies could be tomorrow’s allies. Born in the fifth century when the formidable threat of Attila’s Huns were deflected with a minimum of force, Byzantine strategy continued to be refined over the centuries, incidentally leaving for us several fascinating guidebooks to statecraft and war.

"The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire is a broad, interpretive account of Byzantine strategy, intelligence, and diplomacy over the course of eight centuries that will appeal to scholars, classicists, military history buffs, and professional soldiers."

Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2009.

Ophef rond Debray's 'Brief aan een Israelische vriend'

Ophef rond Debray’s ‘Brief aan een Israëlische vriend’

Régis Debray  publiceerde zopas zijn ‘Lettre à un ami israélien’. Zijn vroegere Joodse vrienden reageren verontwaardigd.

Claude Lanzmann is woedend op Régis Debray's briefboek.

Régis Debray, ooit de compagnon van Che Guevara en adviseur van de presidenten Allende (Chili) en Mitterrand (Frankrijk) heeft bij Flammarion een nieuw boek gepubliceerd: ‘Lettre à un ami israélien’.

Daarmee heeft hij zich de woede op het lijf gehaald van Claude Lanzmann, de maker van de film ‘Shoah’, ooit een vriend van Debray. Lanzmann zorgde ervoor dat de eerste geschriften van Debray in ‘Les temps modernes’ werden gepubliceerd. In een pas verschenen gesprek met ‘Le Point’ noemt Lanzmann het nieuwe boek van Debray conventioneel, conformistisch en opportunistisch. ‘Debray est totalement dans l’air du temps,’ aldus Lanzmann, die zijn ex-strijdmakker verwijt dat hij alle anti-Israëlische gemeenplaatsen die de media beheersen op elkaar stapelt. Het schelden op Israël is volgens Lanzmann een Pavlov-reflex van de mainstream geworden.

De uitval van Lanzmann wekt geen verbazing, want in het boek van Debray staat hij zelf in de beklaagdenbank. Volgens Debray regisseert Lanzmann de Franse shoa-cultus zo radicaal dat elke kritiek op Israël onmogelijk geworden is. Lanzmann gaat akkoord met Debray’s constatering dat de Franse Jood de ‘chouchou’ van de republiek is en dat Joden een belangrijke rol spelen in het economische en intellectuele leven van de Franse republiek, maar het gaat te ver om daaruit af te leiden dat er een Joodse macht bestaat die haar wil oplegt aan Frankrijk.

Lanzmanns conclusie is dat Debray er verkeerd aan doet om zijn boek een titel te geven die herinnert aan de ‘Lettres à un ami allemand’ van Albert Camus (geschreven tijdens en gepubliceerd na de Duitse bezetting). Volgens Lanzmann ging Camus destijds helemaal tegen de tijdgeest in, terwijl Debray juist met de stroom mee zwemt. Lanzmanns slotsom over Debray’s kennis van Israël: ‘Il n’y comprend rien.’

Ook van de Franse historicus Jean-Christophe Rufin, lid van de Académie Française en ambassadeur in Senegal, krijgt Debray een veeg uit de pan. Debray had Rufin in zijn geschrift verweten dat hij het antizionisme strafbaar wilde maken. Maar Rufin bestrijdt dit en zegt dat hij ooit wilde onderzoeken hoe het komt dat sommige jongeren de Israëlische staat met de Duitse nazi-staat vergelijken, de Israëlische leiders met Hitler en de Palestijnse kampen met Auschwitz. Hier wordt de grens tussen opinie en misdaad overschreden, aldus Rufin, die eraan toevoegt dat men in de landen waar hij verblijft boeken met titels als ‘Israël, het Derde Rijk’ haast openlijk in de handel te verkrijgen zijn. Rufin: ‘Zou Debray ermee akkoord gaan als deze boeken in de supermarkten naast zijn laatste boek opgestapeld zouden liggen?’

In dezelfde zin liet de Israëlische diplomaat en historicus Elie Barnavie zich uit in een antwoord dat overigens in Debray’s boek is opgenomen: ‘Tot 1967 heeft de shoa-religie – overigens als anti-imperialistische ideologie – Israël gebaat’. Maar nu is dat juist omgekeerd, aldus Barnavie: ‘Men herinnert aan de dode Joden om de levende Joden nog meer te vernederen. Doen wij de Palestijnen niet aan, wat Hitler met ons deed?’

Piet de Moor

http://knack.rnews.be/nl/actualiteit/nieuws/boeken/nieuws/ophef-rond-debray-s-brief-aan-een-israelische-vriend/article-1194737845339.htm

Fiume o morte! A propos d'un volume collectif sur Gabriele d'Annunzio

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1996

Fiume o morte!

A propos d'un volume collectif sur Gabriele d'Annunzio

 

Gabriele d'Annunzio (1863-1938), au temps de la “Belle époque”, était le seul poète italien connu dans le monde entier. Après la première guerre mondiale, sa gloire est devenue plutôt “muséale”, sans doute parce qu'il l'a lui-même voulu. Il devint ainsi “Prince de Montenevoso”. Un institut d'Etat édita ses œuvres complètes en 49 volumes. Surtout, il tranforma la Villa Cargnacco, sur les rives du Lac de Garde, en un mausolée tout à fait particulier (“Il Vittoriale degli Italiani”) qui, après la seconde guerre mondiale, a attiré plus de touristes que ses livres de lecteurs. En Allemagne, d'Annunzio a dû être tiré de l'oubli en 1988 par l'éditeur non-conformiste de Munich, Matthes & Seitz, et par un volume de la célèbre collection de monographies “rororo”. Aujourd'hui, coup de théâtre, un volume collectif rédigé par des philosophes et des philologues nous confirme que la grand “décadant” a sans doute été le “dernier poète-souverain de l'histoire” (références infra). A quel autre écrivain pourrait-on donner ce titre?

 

La ville et le port adriatique de Fiume (en croate “Rijeka”, en allemand “Sankt-Veit am Flaum”) était peuplée à 50% d'Italiens à l'époque. Les conférences parisiennes des vainqueurs de la première guerre mondiale avaient réussi à faire de cette cité un pomme de discorde entre l'Italie et la nouvelle Yougoslavie. Le Traité secret de Londres, qui envisageait de récompenser largement l'Italie pour son entrée en guerre en lui octroyant des territoires dans les Balkans, en Afrique et en Europe centrale, n'avait pas évoqué Fiume. Le Président Wilson n'avait pas envie d'abandonner à l'Italie l'Istrie et la Dalmatie. Après l'effondrement de l'Autriche-Hongrie, une assemblée populaire proclame à Fiume le rattachement à l'Italie. Des troupes envoyées par plusieurs nations alliées prennent position dans la ville. Des soldats et des civils italiens abattent une douzaine de soldats français issus de régiments coloniaux annamites (Vietnam). Aussitôt le Conseil Interallié ordonne le repli du régiment de grenadiers sardes, seule troupe italienne présente dans la cité. Ce régiment se retire à Ronchi près de Trieste. Là, quelques officiers demandent au héros de guerre d'Annunzio de les ramener à Fiume. Le 12 septembre 1919, d'Annunzio pénètre dans la ville à la tête d'un corps franc. Le soir même, le “Comando”, avec le poète comme “Comandante in capo”, prend le contrôle de la ville. Les Anglais et les Américains se retirent. D'Annunzio attend en vain l'arrivée de “combattants, d'arditi, de volontaires et de futuristes” pour transporter le “modèle de Fiume” dans toute l'Italie.

 

Des festivités et des chorégraphies de masse, des actions et des coups de force symboliques rendent Fiume célèbre. D'Annunzio voulait même débaptiser la ville et la nommer Olocausta (de “holocauste”, dans le sens premier de “sacrifice par le feu”). Sur le plan de la politique étrangère, le commandement de Fiume annonce dans son programme l'alliance de la nouvelle entité politique avec tous les peuples opprimés, surtout avec les adversaires du royaume grand-serbe et yougoslave. L'entité étatique prend le nom de “Reggenza Italiana del Carnaro” et se donne une constitution absolument non conventionnelle, la “Carta del Carnaro”. Son mot d'ordre est annoncé d'emblée: spiritus pro nobis, quis contra nos? (Si l'esprit est avec nous, qui est contre nous?). Le Premier ministre italien de l'époque était Giovanni Giolitti, âgé de 78 ans. Sous son égide, l'Italie et la nouvelle Yougoslavie s'unissent par le Traité de Rapallo. Avant qu'il ne soit ratifié, le héros de la guerre aérienne, Guido Keller, jette sur le parlement de Rome un pot de chambre, rempli de navets et accompagné d'un message sur les événements. Rien n'y fit. L'Italie attaque Fiume par terre et par mer. C'est le “Noël de Sang” (“Il Natale di Sangue”). Le régime de d'Annunzio prend fin, après quinze mois d'existence.

 

Le volume collectif qui vient de paraître en Allemagne n'est pas simplement une histoire de Fiume sous le “Comandante”. La préoccupation des auteurs a été bien davantage d'expliquer les événements de Fiume à la lumière des nouvelles formes “non-conventionnelles” de guerre et de propagande, nées de la première guerre mondiale (par “non-conventionnel”, on entend ici le non respect de la séparation entre combattants et non combattants, entre guerre et paix). Dans les nouvelles technologies de la vitesse (l'avion, la vedette lance-torpilles, les troupes d'assaut), dans les médias (le cinéma) et l'art de la propagande, d'Annunzio était d'une façon ou d'une autre impliqué. Ou en était carrément l'initiateur. En tant qu'aviateur, que commandant de vedettes lance-torpilles, qu'orateur et harangueur, le héros de la première guerre mondiale, couvert de décorations, élevé au grade de lieutenant-colonel, décidait lui-même des missions qu'il allait accomplir. Le philologue Siegert, dans sa contribution (), étudie la renovatio imperii  voulue par d'Annunzio à la lumière de l'histoire de la guerre aérienne entre 1909 et 1940, depuis la journée du vol aérien de Brescia jusqu'à la mort de Balbo.

 

La domination des airs, selon les théories du Général Giulio Douhet, paralysait l'adversaire en détruisant sa logistique. Douhet ne connaissait pas la différence entre l'armée et la population civile, la guerre aérienne réduisant tous les traités à des “chiffons de papier sans valeur”. Ou, comme le formulait Sir Arthur Harris, commandant des flottes de bombardiers britanniques pendant la seconde guerre mondiale, dans son ouvrage de 1947, Bomber Offensive:  . Siegert écrit: «Ce que l'on appelle la “target area bombing” fonde une nouvelle époque de l'histoire de l'Etre. Des choses comme les humains ne sont plus du tout les objets d'une intentio recta, mais les contenus contingents d'un espace standardisé à détruire sur lesquels circulent des objectifs aléatoires». Pendant la guerre, d'Annunzio a survolé Vienne, sur laquelle il a lancé des tracts où il était écrit qu'ils auraient pu être des bombes. Cette action confirmait la possibilité d'une guerre aérienne à outrance et constituait une opération de propagande destinée à frapper l'imagination des Viennois.

 

Pendant la seconde guerre mondiale également, les sociologues affectés au “Strategic Bombing Survey” du Pentagone n'ont pas seulement considéré les tapis de bombes sur les villes allemandes comme un simple moyen de paralyser l'effort de guerre de l'ennemi mais comme un premier pas vers la rééducation de la population du Reich: ainsi, un pas de plus était franchi dans le processus d'effacement des différences entre guerre et paix. Plus généralement, les théories de la guerre aérienne chez d'Annunzio et chez Douhet, puis chez les praticiens anglo-saxons du bombardement des villes à outrance, permettent de lever les frontières, de lancer des opérations sur l'espace tout entier sans tenir compte d'aucune barrière. L'Etat national classique devient ainsi caduc et doit en bout de course être remplacé par une forme néo-impériale, par une renovatio imperii  sur le modèle de Fiume.

 

Dans d'autres contributions de ce volume, notamment celle de Friedrich Kittler sur les “arditi” (les “téméraires”), version italienne de Sturmtruppen allemandes (dont Jünger fit partie) de la première guerre mondiale ou celle de Hans Ultich Gumbrecht sur les “redentori della vittoria” (= les sauveurs de la victoire) nous amènent à porter des réflexions non habituelles sur l'histoire des idées au XXième siècle. Le volume contient également une chronologie de la “guerre pour Fiume” et quelques réflexions sur la guerre aérienne telle que la concevaient d'Annunzio et Guido Keller. Enfin, des textes sur la constitution de Fiume et sur le statut de son “armée de libération”.

 

Ludwig VEIT.

(texte paru dans Criticón, n°152/1996).

 

Hans-Ulrich GUMBRECHT, Friedrich KITTLER, Bernhard SIEGERT (Hrsg.), Der Dichter als Kommandant. D'Annunzio erobert Fiume, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München, 1996, 340 p., DM 58,-, ISBN 3-7705-3019-5.

 

Arnold Gehlen et l'anthropologie philosophique

Arnold Gehlen et l'anthropologie philosophique

Ex: http://metapoinfos.hautetfort.com/

Les éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme viennent de publier Essais d'anthropologie philosophique,un recueil de texte du philosophe allemand Arnold Gehlen. Fondateur de l'anthropologie philosophique, sa réflexion porte sur l'homme en tant qu'"animal inachevé" (Nietzsche) mais "ouvert au monde". Considéré comme un des intellectuels conservateurs les plus importants  de XXème siècle, son oeuvre a été, jusqu'à présent, très peu traduite en français et donc largement ignorée de ce côté-ci du Rhin. Seules les éditions PUF ont publié, il y a tout juste vingt ans, un de ses ouvrages, un recueil de textes intitulé Anthropologie et psychologie sociale. Il convient aussi de noter que la revue Krisis d'Alain de Benoist a traduit un texte de Gehlen, Problèmes psychosociologiques de la société industrielle, dans son numéro consacré à la technique (n°24, novembre 2000).

"Le premier article de ce recueil définit l'anthropologie philosophique comme la science de l'être humain, de concert avec la morphologie, la physiologie, la psychologie, la linguistique, la sociologie, etc. Science philosophique systématique et interdisciplinaire, elle est fondée sur des hypothèses exemptes de toute « métaphysique ». L’homme. Sa nature et sa position dans le monde (1940) présente les plus fondamentales. Deux articles publiés en 1951 et en 1968 leur ajoutent des éléments du pragmatisme anglo-américain et des éléments de la psychanalyse freudienne. L’idée essentielle de Gehlen est que « l’action et les transformations prévues du monde, dont la quintessence porte le nom de "culture", font partie de l’"essence" de l’être humain, et [que], à partir du point d’approche que constitue l’action, on peut en construire une science globale ».

Influencé par Kant, Herder et Fichte, mettant ses pas dans ceux de Jakob von Uexküll et de Konrad Lorenz, l’homme est selon lui une créature qui se maintient en vie par la transformation et l’amélioration permanente des données de la nature. Sa défectuosité biologique est compensée par l’invention technique. Dépourvu de « niche écologique », il s’adapte à tous les milieux, il est capable en dépit d’une pression intérieure immédiate d’ajourner son action ; cette espèce d’hiatus lui permet de la planifier, d’anticiper l’avenir.
Ces thèses ont nourri la réflexion de Jürgen Habermas, Hans Blumenberg, Ernst Tugendhat, Theodor Adorno.

Quand les pollutions, le dérèglement climatique, etc., menacent l’avenir de l’humanité, mais quand aussi s’expriment partout le souci de sa préservation, alors il est temps de découvrir l’anthropologie d’Arnold Gehlen."

Les "dégagements" de Régis Debray

Les dégagements de Régis Debray

Ex: http://metapoinfos.hautetfort.com/

Dégagements est le titre du nouvel essai de Régis Debray qui doit sortir en librairie dans les prochains jours. Il a rassemblé dans ce volume, en particulier, ses carnets publiés dans la revue Médium.

L’essentiel, qui est un certain style, se niche dans les détails. C’est le ton de l’écrivain, celui qui vivifie les mots et stylise la vie.

Régis Debray joue aux quatre coins avec les accidents de la vie. Entre figures tutélaires (Julien Gracq ou Daniel Cordier), et artistes redécouverts (Andy Warhol ou Marcel Proust), entre cinéma et théâtre, expos et concerts, le médiologue se promène en roue libre, sans apprêt ni a priori. Rêveries et aphorismes cruels se mêlent aux exercices d’admiration. Les angles sont vifs, la lumière crue, mais souvent, à la fin, tamisée par l’humour.

Ainsi l’exige la démarche médiologique, tout en zigzags et transgressions, selon la définition un rien farceuse qu’en donne l’auteur : « Un mauvais esprit assez particulier qui consiste, quand un sage montre la lune, à regarder son doigt, tel l’idiot du conte. »

Essayiste, romancier, journaliste et mémorialiste, Régis Debray a notamment publié aux Éditions Gallimard de nombreux essais : Ce que nous voile le voile. La République et le sacré (Hors Série Connaissance, 2004), Le plan vermeil (Hors Série Connaissance, 2004), Supplique aux nouveaux progressistes du XXIe siècle (Hors Série Connaissance, 2006), une pièce de théâtre : Julien le fidèle (collection blanche, 2005), des mémoires : Aveuglantes lumières (collection blanche, 2006). Derniers ouvrages parus : Un candide en Terre Sainte (collection blanche, 2008, Folio n° 4968) et Le moment fraternité (collection blanche, 2009).

 

Dixit Debray

 

Dixit Debray

Ex: http://metapoinfos.hautetfort.com/

A l'occasion de la sortie de Dégagements, son dernier ouvrage publié aux éditions Gallimard, Régis Debray a donné un entretien au magazine Le Point dont voici quelques extraits.

  « Être, à présent, c'est être vu. C'est la caméra qui donne la visibilité sociale, après quoi on est bon pour l'influence, et même pour un ministère. Le système création-édition-critique-médias est devenu un mécanisme d'autocongratulations qui fonctionne en circuit fermé. Quant à nos acteurs, sportifs, chansonniers, animateurs, ils ont la légitimité. Quand Sarkozy pose à côté de son pote Johnny, le patron, c'est Johnny. Il met négligemment la main sur l'épaule de Nicolas. La politique est devenue une filiale parmi d'autres du show-biz. Comme la philosophie, ou ce qui passe pour tel, et le football. Ils font la paire en public et se mettent en ménage dans le privé. Mauvais temps pour les mots. "Casse-toi, pauvre con !" Ceux qui aiment déguster des mots plutôt que déglutir de l'info vont survivre, loin des best-sellers, hors marché, dans des îlots ou des monastères, peut-être dans quelques grandes écoles si celles-ci ne disparaissent pas entre-temps. Mais les Voltaire et les Victor Hugo, dans l'Occident postindustriel, sont technologiquement condamnés. L'intello classique n'est plus fonctionnel. »

 « Les nouveaux philosophes produisent de l'indignation au rythme de l'actualité en désignant au bon bourgeois le méchant du jour - le totalitaire, le franchouillard, l'islamo-fasciste, etc. »

 « J'estime avoir fait mon travail lorsque j'ai éclairé des zones d'ombre, comme la religion, raccordé des champs, proposé des outils de compréhension, en général pour expliquer pourquoi ça ne marche pas et pourquoi ça ne marchera pas beaucoup mieux demain. Mais je n'appelle personne à la conversion. Entre la tour d'ivoire et la course de vitesse avec l'actu, j'espère trouver une troisième voie, que j'appelle le dégagement ou le regard en biais. Je n'ai plus le virus politique, mais je garde un penchant pour les collectifs : j'aime la bande, la revue, la conspiration, le commando. C'est un trait de gauche. On ne se refait pas. »

 «  Le grand retour indigéniste auquel nous assistons à travers quelqu'un comme Evo Morales est bien une revanche de la mémoire sur les tables rases du futurisme occidental. Toutes les révolutions socialistes sont des nationalismes. Mao commence pour de bon avec l'attaque du Japon. Pourquoi les talibans sont-ils forts ? Parce qu'ils sont chez eux envahis par des étrangers, infidèles de surcroît. On ne gagne pas contre une civilisation. »

 «  Le problème, c'est l'évanouissement de l'Europe comme alternative. Voyez l'obamania de nos provinces. Faire d'un patriote américain juste milieu un bon Européen de gauche relève d'une incroyable perte de sens historique. Et géographique. Nous n'avons même plus la force de produire nos propres champions. On s'enamoure en midinette. On dirait qu'en vieillissant l'Europe n'est plus que fleur bleue. Elle regarde l'Oncle d'Amérique en prince charmant, lequel regarde ailleurs, là où les choses se passent : Asie et Pacifique. »

 « Le clivage [droite-gauche] reste, mais il est sociologique ou folklorique, au bon sens du mot. Quant aux idées et aux valeurs, allez vous y reconnaître. [...] Qui eût dit que le patron du FMI, installé à New York, serait un jour la vedette de la gauche française ? Il y a vingt ans, on pouvait reconnaître un homme de droite à sa cravate, à sa boutonnière et à sa coupe bien nette. Aujourd'hui, le casual wear et la barbe de trois jours font uniforme commun. En face de quoi vous pouvez me définir comme un conservateur de gauche, tiers-mondiste vieux jeu, voire gaulliste d'extrême gauche. Cela m'indiffère. »

 « Le handicap de la gauche, en matière d'art, c'est la morale. Le surmoi est assez peu créatif. La droite doit à un certain cynisme d'avoir les coudées franches. Il m'arrive d'avoir plus de plaisir à lire le Journal de Morand, politiquement immonde, que celui de Leiris, moralement impeccable. »

 « Pour sauvegarder votre capacité à être vous-même, faites de l'histoire, sortez de vos frontières et lisez des livres : plus vous maîtriserez les mots, plus vous jouirez des images. »

Bibliographie de Jean-Claude Valla

Jean-Claude Valla et Pierre Vial lors d'un séminaire de "Terre & Peuple"

Bibliographie de Jean-Claude Valla

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

Bibliographie :

• La Civilisation des Incas, Famot, 1976.
• Les Seigneurs de la guerre (avec Dominique Venner, André Brissaud, Jean Mabire, etc.), Famot, 1978.
• Les Grandes découvertes archéologiques du XXe siècle, présentées par Jean Dumont ; Tome 2 : La redécouverte des Celtes – Nouvelles lumières sur les mondes – Les mystères Incas et Mayas : enquêtes et textes de Olivier Launay, Jacques Pons, Jean-Claude Valla, Famot, 1979.
• Affaire Touvier : la contre-enquête, Éd. du Camelot, Paris, 1996.
• La Cagoule : 1936-1937, Éd. de la Librairie Nationale, 2000.
• La France sous les bombes américaines : 1942-1945, Éd. de la Librairie nationale, 2001.
• L’Extrême droite dans la Résistance, 2 vol., Éd. de la Librairie nationale, 2000.
• La Gauche pétainiste, Éd. de la Librairie nationale, 2001.
• Le Pacte germano-sioniste , 7 août 1933, Éd. de la Librairie nationale, 2001.
• Ces Juifs de France qui ont collaboré, Éd. de la Librairie nationale, 2002.
• La Milice : Lyon, 1943-1944, Éd. de la Librairie nationale, 2002.
• Ledesma Ramos et la Phalange espagnole : 1931-1936, Éd. de la Librairie nationale, 2002.
• Georges Valois : de l’anarcho-syndicalisme au fascisme, Éd. de la Librairie nationale, 2003.
• La Nostalgie de l’Empire : une relecture de l’histoire napoléonienne, Éd. de la Librairie nationale, 2004.
• Les Socialistes dans la Collaboration : de Jaurès à Hitler, Éd. de la Librairie nationale, 2006.
• Doriot, Pardès (coll. « Qui suis-je ? »), 2008

Michel Tournier: parcours philosophique

Archives de SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES - 1995

Michel Tournier: parcours philosophique

 

Michel Tournier est un écrivain qui compte et son œuvre peut être abordée selon de multiples perspec­tives. Jean-Paul Zarader a choisi celle de la philosophie dans une étude intitulée Vendredi ou la vie sauvage de Michel Tournier: un parcours philosophique. Il donne ainsi ses raisons: «Cet ouvrage a voulu prendre au sérieux l'affirmation de Michel Tournier: “Je n'écris pas pour les enfants, j'écris de mon mieux. Et quand j'approche mon idéal, j'écris assez bien pour que les enfants aussi puissent me lire”. On s'est donc appliqué a lire Vendredi ou la vie sauvage  et à en esquisser un commentaire, sans ja­mais se référer à cette première version que constitue Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique. Quant au caractère philosophique du commentaire, il résulte d'une simple évidence: c'est que nul ne peut, le voudrait-il, se renier. Or Tournier est philosophe de formation et, loin de renier la philosophie, il n'a ja­mais cessé de la considérer comme la racine de son œuvre littéraire». Cet essai est suivi d'un entretien inédit avec Michel Tournier dont nous citerons un des propos: «Le principal enseignement de l'ethnographie, qui débouche sur l'idéalisme, est qu'il n'y a pas la Civilisation et le reste des sauvages, mais des civilisations, parmi lesquelles la nôtre, celle de la France de 1995 qui ne sera pas tout à fait la même que celle de la France de 1996. Et puis, il y a la civilisation des Eskimos, des Pygmées, des Papous... Il faut étudier ces civilisations. Le drame, c'est que la civilisation occidentale moderne a pour effet de détruire toute autre civilisation qui l'approche. Ainsi les Eskimos, qui avaient une civilisation solide et cohérente dans un milieu très défavorable, se sont effondrés dès lors que les Américains les ont touchés» (Jean de Bussac).

 

Jean-Paul ZARADER, Vendredi ou la voie sauvage de Michel Tournier: un parcours philosophique, Editions Vinci, 1995, (135-141, rue du Mont-Cenis, F-75.018 Paris), 222 pages, 110 FF.

How the West Was Lost

Stephen J. Sniegoski / http://toqonline.com/

Churchill, Hitler, and “the Unnecessary War”
How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World
Patrick J. Buchanan
New York: Crown Publishers, 2008

Many reviewers of the respectable class become unhinged upon seeing the words “unnecessary war” in the title of a book dealing with World War II—in their minds, the “Good War” to destroy the ultimate evil of Hitler’s Nazism.[1] And, of course, Buchanan was already in deep kimchi on this issue since he had expressed a similar criticism of American entry into World War II in his A Republic, Not an Empire.[2]

With this mindset, most establishment reviewers simply proceed to write a diatribe against Buchanan for failing to recognize the allegedly obvious need to destroy Hitler, bringing up the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and other rhetorical devices that effectively silence rational debate in America’s less-than-free intellectual milieu. However, Buchanan’s book is far more than a discussion of the merits of fighting World War II. For Buchanan is dealing with the overarching issue of the decline of the West—a topic he previously dealt with at length in his The Death of the West.[3] In his view, the “physical wounds” of World Wars I and II are significant factors in this decline. Buchanan writes: “The questions this book answers are huge but simple. Were these two world wars the mortal wounds we inflicted upon ourselves necessary wars? Or were they wars of choice? And if they were wars of choice, who plunged us into these hideous and suicidal world wars that advanced the death of our civilization? Who are the statesman responsible for the death of the West?” (p. xi). Early in his Introduction, Buchanan essentially answers that question: “Historians will look back on 1914–1918 and 1939–1945 as two phases of the Great Civil War of the West, when the once Christian nations of Europe fell upon one another with such savage abandon they brought down all their empires, brought an end to centuries of Western rule, and advanced the death of their civilization” (p. xvii).

Buchanan sees Britain as the key nation involved in this process of Western suicide. And its own fall from power was emblematic of the decline of the broader Western civilization. At the turn of the twentieth century, Britain stood out as the most powerful nation of the West, which in turn dominated the entire world. “Of all the empires of modernity,” Buchanan writes, “the British was the greatest—indeed, the greatest since Rome—encompassing a fourth of the Earth’s surface and people” (p. xiii). But Britain was fundamentally responsible for turning two localized European wars into the World Wars that shattered Western civilization.

Contrary to the carping of his critics, Buchanan does not fabricate his historical facts and opinions but rather relies on reputable historians for his information, which is heavily footnoted. In fact, most of his points should not be controversial to people who are familiar with the history of the period, as shocking as it may be to members of the quarter-educated punditocracy.

Buchanan points out that at the onset of the European war in August 1914, most of the British Parliament and Cabinet were opposed to entering the conflict. Only Foreign Minister Edward Grey and Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, held that it was necessary to back France militarily in order to prevent Germany from becoming the dominant power on the Continent. In 1906, however, Grey had secretly promised France support in the event of a war with Germany, which, Buchanan implies, might have served to encourage French belligerency in 1914. However, it was only the German invasion of neutral Belgium—the “rape” of “little Belgium” as pro-war propagandists bellowed—that galvanized a majority in the Cabinet and in Parliament for war.

Buchanan maintains that a victorious Germany, even with the expanded war aims put forth after the onset of the war, would not have posed a serious threat to Britain. And certainly it would have been better than the battered Europe that emerged from World War I. Describing the possible alternate outcome, Buchanan writes:

Germany, as the most powerful nation in Europe, aligned with a free Poland that owed its existence to Germany, would have been the western bulwark against any Russian drive into Europe. There would have been no Hitler and no Stalin. Other evils would have arisen, but how could the first half of the twentieth century have produced more evil than it did? (p. 62)

As it was, the four year world war led to the death of millions, with millions more seriously wounded. The utter destruction and sense of hopelessness caused by the war led to the rise of Communism. And the peace ending the war punished Germany and other members of the Central powers, setting the stage for future conflict. The Allies “scourged Germany and disposed her of territory, industry, people, colonies, money, and honor by forcing her to sign the ‘War Guilt Lie’” (p. 97). Buchanan acknowledges that it was not literally the “Carthaginian peace” that its critics charged. Germany “was still alive, more united, more populous and potentially powerful than France, and her people were now possessed of a burning sense of betrayal” (p. 97). But by making the new democratic German government accept the peace treaty, the Allies had destroyed the image of democratic government in Germany among the German people. In essence, the peace left “Europe divided between satiated powers, and revisionist powers determined to retrieve the lands and peoples that had been taken from them” (p. 95). It was “not only an unjust but an unsustainable peace. Wedged between a brooding Bolshevik Russia and a humiliated Germany were six new nations: Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The last two held five million Germans captive. Against each of the six, Russia or Germany held a grievance. Yet none could defend its independence against a resurrected Germany or a revived Russia. Should Russia and Germany unite, no force on Earth could save the six” (p. 98). It should be noted that Buchanan’s negative depiction of the World War I peace is quite conventional, and was held by most liberal thinkers of the time.[4]

Buchanan likewise provides a very conventional interpretation of British foreign policy during the interwar period, which oscillated between idealism and Realpolitik and ultimately had the effect of weakening Britain’s position in the world. Buchanan points out that Britain needed the support of Japan, Italy, and the United States to counter a revived Germany, but its diplomacy undercut such an alliance. To begin with, Britain terminated its alliance with Japan to placate the United States as part of the Washington Naval Conference of 1922. Buchanan contends that the Japanese alliance had not only provided Britain with a powerful ally but served to restrain Japanese expansionism.

Britain needed Mussolini’s Italy to check German revanchism in Europe, a task which “Il Duce” was very willing to undertake. However, Britain drove Mussolini into the arms of Hitler by supporting the League of Nations’ sanctions against Italy after it attacked Ethiopia in 1935. “By assuming the moral high ground to condemn a land grab in Africa, not unlike those Britain had been conducting for centuries, Britain lost Italy,” Buchanan observes. “Her diplomacy had created yet another enemy. And this one sat astride the Mediterranean sea lanes critical in the defense of Britain’s Far Eastern empire against that other alienated ally, Japan” ( p. 155).

America, disillusioned by the war’s outcome, returned to its traditional non-interventionism in the 1920s, so it was not available to back British interests. Consequently, Britain would only have France to counter Hitler’s expansionism in the second half of the 1930s.

Buchanan provides a straightforward account of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s and Foreign Minister Halifax’s appeasement policy. The goal was to rectify the wrongs of Versailles so as to prevent the outbreak of war. “They believed,” Buchanan points out, “that addressing Germany’s valid grievances and escorting her back into Europe as a Great Power with equality of rights was the path to the peace they wished to build” (p. 201). Buchanan asserts that such a policy probably would have worked with democratic Weimar Germany, but not with Hitler’s regime, because of its insatiable demands and brutality.

Munich was the high point of appeasement and is conventionally considered one of the great disasters of British foreign policy. Buchanan explains Chamberlain’s reasoning for the policy, which was quite understandable. First, morality seemed to be on Germany’s side since the predominantly German population of the Sudetenland wanted to join Germany. Moreover, maintaining the current boundaries of Czechoslovakia was not a key British interest worth the cost of British lives. Finally, Britain did not have the wherewithal to intervene militarily in such a distant, land-locked country.

Churchill, who represented the minority of Britons who sought war as an alternative, believed that support from Stalinist Russia would serve to counter Hitler. Of course, as Buchanan points out, the morality of such an alliance was highly dubious because Stalin had caused the deaths of millions of people during the 1930s, while Hitler’s victims still numbered in the hundreds or low thousands before the start of the war in 1939. Moreover, Communist Russia would have to traverse Rumania and Poland to defend Czechoslovakia, and the governments of these two countries were adamantly opposed to allowing Soviet armies passage, correctly realizing that those troops would likely remain in their lands and bring about their Sovietization. It should also be added that it was questionable whether the Soviet Union really intended to make war on the side of the Western democracies, because Stalin hoped that a great war among the capitalist states, analogous to World War I, would bring about their exhaustion and facilitate the triumph of Communist revolution, aided by the intervention of the Soviet Red Army.[5]

Buchanan concludes that Chamberlain was right not to fight over the Sudetenland but “was wrong in believing that by surrendering it to Hitler he had bought anything but time,” which he should have used to rearm Britain in preparation for an inevitable war (p. 235). Instead, Chamberlain believed that Hitler could be trusted and that peace would prevail.

While Buchanan faults Chamberlain for not properly preparing for war after the Munich Agreement, he does not believe that Munich per se brought on the debacle of war. What did bring about World War II, according to Buchanan, was the British guarantee to defend Poland in March 1939. This guarantee made Poland more resistant to compromise with Germany, and made any British decision for war hinge on the decisions made by Poland. Moreover, as Buchanan points out, “Britain had no vital interest in Eastern Europe to justify a war to the death with Germany and no ability to wage war there” (p. 263).

Buchanan, while citing several explanations for the Polish guarantee, seems to give special credence to the view that Chamberlain was more of a realist than a bewildered naïf. Buchanan holds that a clear analysis of Chamberlain’s words and intent shows that in the guarantee the Prime Minister had not bound Britain to fight for the territorial integrity of Poland but only for its independence as a nation. “The British war guarantee,” Buchanan contends, “had not been crafted to give Britain a pretext for war, but to give Chamberlain leverage to persuade the Poles to give Danzig back” (p. 270). Chamberlain seemed to be “signaling his willingness for a second Munich, where Poland would cede Danzig and provide a road-and-rail route across the Corridor, but in return for Hitler’s guarantee of Poland’s independence” (p. 270). Hitler, however, did not grasp this “diplomatic subtlety” and believed that a German effort to take any Polish territory would mean war. The Poles did not understand Chamberlain’s intent either, and assumed that Britain would back their intransigence and thus refused to discuss any territorial changes with Germany. Buchanan, however, seems to reverse this interpretation of Chamberlain’s motivation when discussing his guarantees to other European countries in 1939, writing that “Chamberlain had lost touch with reality” (p. 278).

In the end, Britain and France went to war with Germany over Poland without the means to defend her. Poland’s fate was finally sealed when Hitler made his deal with Stalin in August 1939, which, in a secret protocol, offered the Soviet dictator the extensive territory that he sought in Eastern Europe.

Some reviewers have claimed that Buchanan excuses Hitler of blame for the war, but this is far from the truth. Buchanan actually states that Hitler bore “full moral responsibility” for the war on Poland in 1939 (p. 292), in contradistinction to the wider world war, though even here the charge of “full responsibility” would seem to be belied by much of the information in the book. For Buchanan points out that the Germans not only had justified grievances regarding the Versailles territorial settlement, but that, despite Hitler’s bold demands, the German-Polish war might not have happened without Britain’s meddling in 1939. Buchanan’s analysis certainly does not absolve Hitler of moral responsibility for the Second World War (much less palliate his crimes against humanity), but it does show that there is plenty of blame to go around.

Buchanan writes that “had there been no war guarantee, Poland . . . might have done a deal over Danzig and been spared six million dead” (p. 293). It is quite possible that after any territorial deal with Poland, Hitler would have consequently made much greater demands against her. Perhaps he would have acted no differently toward Poland and the Polish Jews than he actually did—but the outcome could not have been worse for the Polish Jews, almost all of whom were exterminated during the World War II. And Polish gentiles suffered far more than the inhabitants of other countries that resisted Hitler less strenuously. In short, a war purportedly to defend Poland was an utter disaster for the inhabitants of Poland. It is hardly outrageous to question whether this was the best possible outcome and to attempt to envision a better alternative.

Buchanan shows how World War II was hardly a “Good War.” The Allies committed extreme atrocities such as the deliberate mass bombing of civilians and genocidal population expulsions. The result was the enslavement of half of Europe by Soviet Communism. “To Churchill,” Buchanan writes, “the independence and freedom of one hundred million Christian peoples of Eastern Europe were not worth a war with Russia in 1945. Why, then, had they been worth a war with Germany in 1939?” (p. 373).

Buchanan holds that had Britain not gone to war against Germany, a war between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany would have been inevitable, and that such a conflict would have exhausted both dictatorships, making it nigh impossible for either of them to conquer Western Europe. Although this scenario would not have been a certainty, a military stalemate between the two totalitarian behemoths would seem to be the most realistic assessment based on the actual outcome of World War II. Certainly, the Soviet Union relied on Western support to defeat the Nazi armies; and Germany was unable to knock out the Soviet Union during the lengthy period before American military began to play a significant role in Europe.

Buchanan contrasts the lengthy wars fought by Britain, which gravely weakened it, and the relative avoidance of war by the United States, which enabled it to become the world’s greatest superpower. In Buchanan’s view, the United States “won the Cold War—by avoiding the blunders Britain made that plunged her into two world wars” (p. 419). In the post-Cold War era, however, the United States has ignored this crucial lesson, instead becoming involved in unnecessary, enervating wars. “America is overextended as the British Empire of 1939,” Buchanan opines. “We have commitments to fight on behalf of scores of nations that have nothing to do with our vital interests, commitments we could not honor were several to be called in at once” (p. 423). Buchanan maintains that in continuing along this road the United States will come to the same ruinous end as Britain.

Buchanan’s British analogy, unfortunately, can be seen as giving too much to the position of the current neo-conservative war party. Although I think Buchanan’s non-interventionist position on the World Wars is correct, it should be acknowledged that Britain faced difficult choices. Allowing Germany to become the dominant power on the Continent would have been harmful to British interests—though the two World Wars made things even worse. In contrast, today it is hard to see any serious negative consequences resulting from the United States’ pursuit of a peaceful policy in the Middle East. No Middle East country or terrorist group possesses (or possessed) military power in any way comparable to that of Germany under the Second or Third Reichs, and, at least, Iran and Iraq do (did) not have any real interest in turning off the oil spigot to the West since selling oil is the lifeblood of their economies.

Another important aspect of the book is Buchanan’s attack on the cult of Winston Churchill, who has served as a role model for America’s recent bellicose foreign policy, with President George W. Bush even placing a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office. Buchanan maintains that Churchill, with his lust for war, was the individual most responsible for the two devastating World Wars.

In contrast to the current Churchill hagiography, Buchanan portrays the “British Bulldog” as a poor military strategist who was ruthlessly indifferent to the loss of human life, advocating policies that could easily be labeled war crimes. Churchill proposed both the incompetent effort to breech the Dardanelles in 1915, ending with the disastrous Gallipolli invasion, and the bungled Norwegian campaign of April 1940. Ironically, the failures of the Norwegian venture caused the downfall of the Chamberlain government and brought Churchill to power on May 10, 1940.

Churchill supported the naval blockade of Germany in World War I, which in addition to stopping war materiel prevented food shipments, causing an estimated 750,000 civilian deaths. Churchill admitted that the purpose of the blockade was to “starve the whole population—men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound—into submission” (p. 391). He successfully proposed the use of poisonous gas against Iraqi rebels in the interwar period and likewise sought the use of poison gas against German civilians in World War II, though the plan was not implemented due to opposition from the British military. Churchill was, however, successful in initiating the policy of intentionally bombing civilians, which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Equally, if not more, inhumane, Churchill’s support for the forcible “repatriation” of Soviet POWs to the Soviet Union and the “ethnic cleansing” of Germans from Eastern and Central Europe involved the deaths of millions of people. And, of course, Churchill was willing to turn over Eastern Europe’s millions to slavery and death under Stalinist rule.

Overall, the Buchanan thesis makes considerable sense—though in some cases it assumes a foresight that would not be possible. For example, the pursuit of containment by the United States in the Cold War period, which Buchanan praises, was a policy largely rejected by the contemporary American Right, of which Buchanan was a member. The American Right held that the policy of containment was a defensive policy that could not achieve victory but instead likely lead to defeat—a position best expressed by James Burnham. And, at least up until Reagan’s presidency, the power of the Soviet Union greatly increased, both in terms of its nuclear arsenal and its global stretch, relative to that of the United States. While Buchanan touts Reagan’s avoidance of war, what most distinguished Reagan from his presidential predecessors and the foreign policy establishment was his willingness to take a harder stance toward the Soviets—a difference that terrified liberals of the time. Reagan’s hard-line stance consisted of a massive arms build-up, and, more importantly, an offensive military strategy (violating the policy of containment), which had the United States supporting a revolt against the Soviet-controlled government in Afghanistan. (The policy was begun under President Carter but significantly expanded under Reagan.) Perhaps, if the United States had launched such a policy in the early years of the Cold War, the Soviet Empire would have unraveled much earlier and not been such a threat to the United States. The Soviet Union was obviously the first country that could destroy the United States, and it achieved this lethal potential during the policy of containment. To this reviewer, it does not seem inevitable that everything would have ultimately turned out for the best.

While Buchanan makes a good case that the two World Wars were deleterious to the West, it would seem that they were only one factor, and probably not the primary one, in bringing about the downfall of Western power—a decline that was observed by astute observers such as Oswald Spengler prior to 1914.[6] (Buchanan himself is not oblivious to these other factors but gives a prominent place to the wars.) Moreover, it is questionable if Britain would have retained its empire any longer than it did, even without the wars, given the spread of nationalism to the non-Western world and the latter’s greater rates of population increase compared to Europe. Also, the growing belief in the West of universal equality obviously militated against European rule over foreign peoples.

In sum, Buchanan’s work provides an excellent account of British diplomacy and European events during the crucial period of the two world wars, which have shaped the world in which we now live. It covers a host of issues and events that are relatively unknown to those who pose as today’s educated class, and does so in a very readable fashion. While this reviewer regards Buchanan’s theses as fundamentally sound, the work provides a fount of information even to those who would dispute its point of view.

Forthcoming in TOQ vol. 9, no. 1 (Spring 2009).

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<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1] The phrase “The Unnecessary War” is not placed in quotes on the paper jacket or on the hardback cover but is in quotes inside the book, including on the title page. This tends to make the meaning of the phrase unclear. (I owe this insight to Dr. Robert Hickson who has produced a review of this book, along with others, for Culture Wars, though I present a somewhat different take on the subject.) Buchanan quotes Churchill’s use of the phrase in his memoirs (p. xviii). Churchill wrote: “One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once, ‘The Unnecessary War.’ There never was a war more easy to stop than that which has just wrecked what was left of the world from the previous struggle.” But Churchill meant that the war could have been avoided if the Western democracies had taken a harder line, while Buchanan supports, in the main, a softer approach for the periods leading up to both wars.

[2] Patrick J. Buchanan, A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1999). See also Stephen J. Sniegoski, “Buchanan’s book and the Empire’s answer: Fahrenheit 451!” The Last Ditch, October 13, 1999, http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg7.htm.

[3] Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and Civilization (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

[4] One early critic was the well-known British economist, John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1920).

[5] Viktor Suvorov, Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War? (New York: Viking Press, 1990); Viktor Suvorov, The Chief Culprit: Stalin’s Grand Design to Start World War II (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2008); R. C. Raack, Stalin’s Drive to the West, 1938–1945: The Origins of the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995); R. C. Raack, “Stalin’s Role in the Coming of World War II,” World Affairs, vol. 158, no. 4 (Spring 1996), http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/raack.htm; James E. McSherry, Stalin, Hitler, and Europe: The Origins of World War II, 1933–1939 (Cleveland: World Pub. Co, 1968).

[6] Spengler had developed his thesis of the Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes) before the onset of World War I, though the first volume was not published until 1918.