Populism seeks to rescue popular government from corrupt elites. Naturally, the elites strike back. The most common accusation from elite commentators is that populism is “anti-democratic.” As Yascha Mounk frames it, populism is “the people vs. democracy.” I argue that populism is not anti-democratic, but it is anti-liberal. (See Donald Thoresen’s review of Mounk’s The People vs. Democracy here [2].)
Many critics of populism accuse it of being a form of white identity politics, and many critics of white identity politics accuse it of being populist. Populism and white identity politics are distinct but sometimes overlapping phenomena. I will argue, however, that populism and white identity politics complement one another, so that the strongest form of white identity politics is populist, and the strongest form of populism is identitarian. But first, we need to clarify what populism really is.
Political Ideology or Political Style?
One of the more superficial claims about populism is that it is not a political ideology but simply a “political style.” An ideology is a set of principles. A political style is a way of embodying and communicating political principles. The idea that populism is merely a political style is based on the observation that there are populisms of the Left and the Right, so how could it be a unified ideology? Of course, there are also liberalisms of the Left and Right, but this does not imply that liberalism is merely a style of politics rather than a political ideology.
Principles of Populism
Just as Right and Left liberalism appeal to common political principles, Right and Left populists also have the same basic political ideas:
- All populists appeal to the principle of popular sovereignty. Sovereignty means that a people is independent of other peoples. A sovereign nation is master of its own internal affairs. It can pursue its own ends, as opposed to being subordinated to the ends of others, such as a foreign people or a monarch. The sovereignty of the people is the idea that legitimate government is “of the people, by the people, for the people,” meaning that (1) the people must somehow participate in government, i.e., that they govern themselves, and (2) the state acts in the interest of the people as a whole, i.e., for the common good.
- All populists politically mobilize on the premise that popular government has been betrayed by a tiny minority of political insiders, who have arrogated the people’s right to self-government and who govern for their own factional interests, or foreign interests, but not in the interest of the people as a whole. Populists thus declare that the political system is in crisis.
- All populists hold that the sovereignty of the people must be restored (1) by ensuring greater popular participation in politics and (2) by replacing traitorous elites with loyal servants of the people. Populists thus frame themselves as redeeming popular sovereignty from a crisis.
Two Senses of “the People”
When populists say the people are sovereign, they mean the people as a whole. When populists oppose “the people” to “the elites,” they are contrasting the vast majority, who are political outsiders, to the elites, who are political insiders. The goal of populism, however, is to restore the unity of the sovereign people by eliminating the conflict of interests between the elites and the people.
Ethnic and Civic Peoplehood
There are two basic ways of defining a people: ethnic and civic. An ethnic group is unified by blood, culture, and history. An ethnic group is an extended family with a common language and history. Ethnic groups always emerge in a particular place but do not necessarily remain there. A civic conception of peoplehood is a construct that seeks to impose unity on a society composed of different ethnic groups, lacking a common descent, culture, and history. For instance, civic nationalists claim that a person can become British, American, or Swedish simply by government fiat, i.e., by giving them legal citizenship.
Ethnic nationalism draws strength from unity and homogeneity. Ethnically defined groups grow primarily through reproduction, although they have always recognized that some foreigners can be “naturalized”—i.e., “assimilated” into the body politic—although rarely and with much effort. Civic nationalism lacks the strength of unity but aims to mitigate that fact with civic ideology and to offset it with strength in numbers, since in principle the whole world can have identity papers issued by a central state.
A civic people is a pure social construct imposed on a set of particular human beings that need not have anything more in common than walking on two legs and having citizenship papers. Civic conceptions of peoplehood thus go hand in hand with the radical nominalist position that only individuals, not collectives, exist in the real world.
An ethnic people is much more than a social construct. First of all, kinship groups are real biological collectives. Beyond that, although ethnic groups are distinguished from other biologically similar groups by differences of language, culture, and history, there is a distinction between evolved social practices like language and culture and mere legislative fiats and other social constructs.
Ethnic peoples exist even without their own states. There are many stateless peoples in the world. But civic peoples do not exist without a state. Civic polities are constructs of the elites that control states.
Populism and Elitism
Populism is contrasted with elitism. But populists are not against elites as such. Populists oppose elites for two main reasons: when they are not part of the people and when they exploit the people. Populists approve of elites that are organically part of the people and function as servants of the people as a whole.
Populists recognize that people differ in terms of intelligence, virtue, and skills. Populists want to have the best-qualified people in important offices. But they want to ensure that elites work for the common good of the polity, not for their own factional interests (or foreign interests). To ensure this, populists wish to empower the people to check the power of elites, as well as to create new elites that are organically connected to the people and who put the common good above their private interests. (For more on this, see my “Notes on Populism, Elitism, and Democracy [9].”)
Populism and Classical Republicanism
When political scientists and commentators discuss the history of populism, most begin with nineteenth-century agrarian movements like the Narodniki in Russia and the People’s Party in the United States. But nineteenth-century populism looked backward to the republics of the ancient world, specifically the “mixed regime” of Rome.
Aristotle’s Politics is the most influential theory of the mixed regime. (See my “Introduction to Aristotle’s Politics” here [10].) Aristotle observed that a society can be ruled by one man, a few men, or many men. But a society can never be ruled by all men, since every society inevitably includes people who are incapable of participating in government due to lack of ability, for instance the very young, the crazy, and the senile.
Aristotle also observed that the one, few, or many could govern for their factional interests or for the common good. When one man governs for the common good, we have monarchy. When he governs for his private interests, we have tyranny. When few govern for the common good, we have aristocracy. When the few govern for their private interests, we have oligarchy. When the many govern for the common good, we have polity. When they govern for their factional interests, we have democracy.
It is interesting that for Aristotle, democracy is bad by definition, and that he had to invent a new word, “polity,” for the good kind of popular rule that was, presumably, so rare that nobody had yet coined a term for it.
Aristotle recognized that government by one man or few men is always government by the rich, regardless of whether wealth is used to purchase political power or whether political power is used to secure wealth. Thus popular government always empowers those who lack wealth. The extremely poor, however, tend to be alienated, servile, and greedy. The self-employed middle classes, however, have a stake in the future, long-time horizons, and sufficient leisure to participate in politics. Thus popular government tends to be stable when it empowers the middle classes and chaotic when it empowers the poorest elements.
Finally, Aristotle recognized that a regime that mixes together rule by the one, the few, and the many, is more likely to achieve the common good, not simply because each group is public spirited, but also because they are all jealous to protect their private interests from being despoiled by the rest. Aristotle was thus the first theorist of the “mixed regime.” But he was simply observing the functioning of actually existing mixed regimes like Sparta.
One can generate modern populism quite easily from Aristotle’s premises. Aristotle’s idea of the common good is the basis of the idea of popular sovereignty, which means, first and foremost, that legitimate government must look out for the common good of the people.
Beyond that, Aristotle argued that the best way to ensure legitimate government is to empower the many—specifically the middle class—to participate in government. The default position of every society is to be governed by the one or the few. When the elites govern selfishly and oppress the people, the people naturally wish to rectify this by demanding participation in government. They can, of course, use their power simply to satisfy their factional interests, which is why democracy has always been feared. But if popular rule is unjust, it is also unstable. Thus to be stable and salutary, popular rule must aim at the common good of society.
The great theorist of popular sovereignty is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In his On the Social Contract, Rousseau claims that the General Will is the fount of sovereignty and legitimacy. What is the General Will? The General Will wills the common good. The common good is not a convention or construct of the General Will but rather an objective fact that must be discovered and then realized through political action.
Rousseau distinguishes the General Will from the Will of All. The General Will is what we ought to will. The Will of All is what we happen to will. The Will of All can be wrong, however. Thus we cannot determine the General Will simply by polling the people.
Rousseau even holds out the possibility that an elite, or a dictator, can know the General Will better than the populace at large. But no matter how the General Will is determined—and no matter who controls the levers of power—political legitimacy arises from the common good of the people.
Populism and Representation
Populism is often associated with “direct” as opposed to “representative” democracy. Populists tend to favor referendums and plebiscites, in which the electorate as a whole decides on important issues, as opposed to allowing them to be decided by representatives in parliament. In truth, though, there is no such thing as direct democracy in which the whole of the people acts. Even in plebiscites, some people always represent the interests of others. Thus democracy always requires some degree of representation.
One can only vote in the present. But a people is not just its present members. It also consists of its past members and its future members. Our ancestors matter to us. They created a society and passed it on to us. They established standards by which we measure ourselves. And just as our ancestors lived not just for themselves, but for their posterity, people today make decisions that affect future generations. Thus in every democratic decision, the living must represent the interests of the dead and the not yet born.
Moreover, within the present generation, some are too young to participate in politics. Others are unable due to disability. The basic principle for excluding living people from the electorate is that they would lower the quality of political decision-making. However, they are still part of the people, and they have genuine interests. Thus the electorate must represent their interests as well.
Beyond that, there are distinctions among competent adults that may lead to further constriction of the electorate, again to raise the quality of political decision-making. For instance, people have argued that the franchise should be restricted to men (because they are the natural guardians of society or because they are more rational than women), or to people with property (because they have more to lose), or to people with children (because they have a greater stake in the future), or to military veterans (because they have proven themselves willing to die, if necessary, for the common good). But again, all of those who are excluded from the franchise are still part of the people, with interests that must be respected. So they must be represented by the electorate.
Thus even in a plebiscite, the people as a whole is represented by only a part, the electorate. Beyond that, unless voting is mandatory, not every member of the electorate will choose to vote. So those who do not vote are represented by those who do.
Thus far, this thought experiment has not even gotten to the question of representative democracy, which takes the process one step further. An elected representative may stand for hundreds of thousands or millions of voters. And those voters in turn stand for eligible non-voters, as well as those who are not eligible to vote, and beyond that, those who are not present to vote because they are dead or not yet born. The not-yet-born is an indefinite number that we hope is infinite, meaning that our people never dies. It seems miraculous that such a multitude could ever be represented by a relative handful of representatives (in the US, 535 Representatives and Senators for more than 300 million living people and untold billions of the dead and yet-to-be-born). Bear in mind, also, that practically every modern politician will eagerly claim to be really thinking about the good of the entire human race.
But we have not yet scaled the highest peak, for people quite spontaneously think of the president, prime minister, or monarch—a single individual—as representing the interests of the entire body politic. Even if that is not their constitutional role, there are circumstances—such as emergencies—in which such leaders are expected to intuit the common good and act accordingly.
Thus it is not surprising that cynics wish to claim that the very ideas of a sovereign people, a common good, and the ability to represent them in politics are simply myths and mumbo-jumbo. Wouldn’t it be better to replace such myths with concrete realities, like selfish individuals and value-neutral institutions that let them peacefully pursue their own private goods?
But the sovereign individual and the “invisible hand” are actually more problematic than the sovereign people and its avatars. From direct democracy in small towns to the popular uprisings that brought down communism, we have actual examples of sovereign peoples manifesting themselves and exercising power. We have actual examples of leaders representing a sovereign people, divining the common good, and acting to secure it.
There is no question that sovereign peoples actually exercise power for their common goods. But how it happens seems like magic. This explains why popular sovereignty is always breaking down. Which in turn explains why populist movements keep arising to return power to the people.
Populism and Democracy
The claim that populism is anti-democratic is false. Populism simply is another word for democracy, understood as popular sovereignty plus political empowerment of the many. Current elites claim that populism threatens “democracy” because they are advocates of specifically liberal democracy. (See my review of Jan-Werner Mueller’s What Is Populism? here [15] and William Galston’s Anti-Pluralism here [16].)
Liberal democrats claim to protect the rights of the individual and of minorities from unrestrained majoritarianism. Liberal democrats also defend “pluralism.” Finally, liberal democrats insist that the majority is simply not competent to participate directly in government, thus they must be content to elect representatives from an established political class and political parties. These representatives, moreover, give great latitude to unelected technocrats in the permanent bureaucracy.
Liberal democracy is, in short, anti-majoritarian and elitist. Populists recognize that such regimes can work for the public good, as long as the ruling elites are part of the people and see themselves as its servants. But without the oversight and empowerment of the people, there is nothing to prevent liberal democracy from mutating into the rule of corrupt elites for their private interests and for foreign interests. This is why populism is on the rise: to root out corruption and restore popular sovereignty and the common good.
Populists need not reject liberal protections for individuals and minorities, ethnic or political. They need not reject “pluralism” when it is understood as freedom of opinion and multiparty democracy. Populists don’t even reject elites, political representation, and technocratic competence. Populists can value all of these things. But they value the common good of the people even more, and they recognize that liberal values don’t necessarily serve the common good. When they don’t, they need to be brought into line. Liberals, however, tend to put their ideology above the common good, leading to the corruption of popular government. Ideological liberalism is a disease of democracy. Populism is the cure.
Populism and White Identity Politics
What is the connection between populism and white identity politics? I am both a populist and an advocate of white identity politics. But there are advocates of white identity politics who are anti-populist (for instance, those who are influenced by Traditionalism and monarchism), and there are non-white populists around the world (for instance, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand).
However, even if there is no necessary connection between populism and white identity politics, I wish to argue that the two movements should work together in every white country. White identitarians will be strengthened by populism, and populism will be strengthened by appeals to white identity.
Why should white identitarians align ourselves with populism? Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin argue in National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy that the rise of national populism is motivated by what they call “the Four Ds.” The first is Distrust, namely the breakdown of public trust in government. The second is Destruction, specifically the destruction of identity, the destruction of the ethnic composition of their homelands due to immigration and multiculturalism. The third trend is Deprivation, referring to the collapse of First-World living standards, especially middle-class and working-class living standards, due to globalization. The final trend is Dealignment, meaning the abandonment of the center-Left, center-Right duopolies common in post-Second World War democracies. (For more on Eatwell and Goodwin, see my “National Populism Is Here to Stay [18].”)
The Destruction of identity due to immigration and multiculturalism is a central issue for white identitarians. The Deprivation caused by globalization is also one of our central issues. The only way to fix these problems is to adopt white identitarian policies, namely to put the interests and identity of indigenous whites first. Once that principle is enshrined, everything we want follows as a matter of course. It is just a matter of time and will.
As for Distrust and Dealignment, these can go for or against us, but we can certainly relate to them, and we can contribute to and shape them as well.
Eatwell and Goodwin argue that the “Four Ds” are longstanding and deep-seated trends. They will be affecting politics for decades to come. National populism is the wave of the future, and we should ride it to political power.
Why do populists need to appeal to white identity? It all comes down to what counts as the people. Is the people at its core an ethnic group, or is it defined in purely civic terms? Populists of the Right appeal explicitly or implicitly to identitarian issues. Populists of the Left prefer to define the people in civic or class terms and focus on economic issues. Since, as Eatwell and Goodwin argue, both identitarian and economic issues are driving the rise of populism, populists of the Right will have a broader appeal because they appeal to both identity and economic issues.
The great task of white identitarians today is to destroy the legitimacy of civic nationalism and push the populism of the Right toward explicit white identitarianism.
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La Guerre civile
Dans les années 2000, le livre de John Gray « Les hommes viennent de Mars, les femmes viennent de Vénus » eut en France un succès colossal. Les lecteurs des deux sexes le dévoraient pour essayer de comprendre le sexe opposé. On pouvait surement opposer beaucoup d’arguments à la méthode « vulgarisante » de Gray, mais son objectif était clair : aider les hommes et les femmes à mieux se comprendre pour mieux vivre ensemble, et particulièrement en couple. 
Qu’une call-girl accepte une relation sexuelle pour de l’argent ne dérange pas les féministes. Qu’une carriériste accepte une relation sexuelle avec son supérieur pour obtenir une promotion ne dérange pas les féministes. Ce qui dérange les féministes, ce qui pour elle relève de l’abomination, c’est qu’une femme accepte, parfois, une relation sexuelle par amour pour son mari. 
L’idée de créer une société utopique au moyen du progrès scientifique et technologique remonte à des fondateurs de la philosophie moderne comme Bacon et Descartes, bien que l’idée ait déjà été effleurée par Machiavel. Mais aujourd’hui, les visions de la plupart des gens concernant l’utopie technologique sont dérivées de la science-fiction. A l’exception notable de 
Comme Peter Thiel le dit d’une manière convaincante dans
La plupart des gains de productivité qui viennent de la globalisation économique son tune question de réduction des coûts, réduisant principalement les coûts du travail. Le Tiers Monde a une immense quantité de main d’oeuvre à bon marché. La globalisation économique permet le libre mouvement du travail et du capital. Les entreprises peuvent réduire les coûts de la main d’oeuvre en déplaçant les usines outre-mer ou en important de nouveaux travailleurs pour faire baisser les salaires dans les pays industrialisés.
Malgré vos innombrables activités éditoriales et métapolitiques, nous n’allons pas parler de vous aujourd’hui mais de Guillaume Faye, plus précisément de sa brève nouvelle intitulée „Une journée dans la vie de Dimitri Léonidovitch Oblomov“ qui est parue en traduction allemande dans notre maison d’édition il y a quelques semaines. Sur votre compte Twitter, vous avez annoncé cette parution avec enthousiasme, sinon de manière euphorique. Révélez-nous pourquoi un tel enthousiasme ?
Faye s’intéressait très fort aux projets de chemins de fer, surtout pour la ligne transsibérienne „Baïkal-Amour“, aussi pour les anciens projets allemands de la „Breitspurbahn“, pour l’aérotrain de la France de De Gaulle, pour les projets japonais similaires, etc. Voilà pourquoi Oblomov passe sa journée dans un train, partiellement souterrain. Pour Faye, la tâche première de tout Etat ou de tout Empire était d’organiser des communications ultra-rapides, exactement comme l’empire romain reposait sur ses routes et en dépendait. Mon fils et moi-même fumes un jour très étonné de constater qu’il lisait avec grand intérêt des revues de vulgarisation scientifique traitant de toutes les nouvelles technologies et biotechnologies, comme Science & Avenir, Sciences & Vie, etc. Même si quelques gros malins, croyant tout savoir et se piquant d’être omniscients, considéraient que ce genre de préoccupation était ridicule, je persiste à croire, avec le recul, que les diplômés en sciences humaines, littéraires ou sociologiques, doivent se donner pour hygiène mentale de glaner du savoir sur les révolutions en cours dans les sciences naturelles, physiques, et dans les domaines des hautes technologies (comme la nanotechnologie par exemple), afin de ne pas énoncer des théories boiteuses et incomplètes.
L’intérêt de Faye pour ce type de littérature se repère également dans le livre qui fait suite à L’archéofuturisme, soit L’Archéofuturisme V2.0: Nouvelles cataclysmiques,
Ensuite, il y a la série „Blake et Mortimer“ d’Edgard P. Jacobs, où l’on trouve un „roman graphique“, qui nous décrit et nous dessine un royaume d’Atlantide se situant sous les flots au beau milieu de l’Océan Atlantique, juste en dessous des Açores. Ce royaume sous-marin est dirigé avec sagesse par un vieux Basileus, inspiré par l’harmonie grecque antique, mais, il est simultanément menacé par des barbares surexcités qui entendent prendre le pouvoir et massacrer les Atlantes. Ces barbares finissent par vaincre mais détruisent les barrages qui protègent des flots la cité sous-marine d’inspiration platonicienne qui est alors engloutie par l’océan. Mais les Atlantes et leur Basileus peuvent quitter la Terre à temps à bord de centaines de fusées pour se donner un avenir sur une autre planète.
La fascination de Faye pour les technologies futuristes, pour l’exploration spatiale et les armes biologiques découle certainement d’une connaissance profonde des „romans graphiques“ belges de Franquin, Jacobs et Hergé. Dans la mouvance en France, il n’était d’ailleurs pas le seul dans ce cas: le musicien et dessinateur Jack Marchal, qui avait inventé le petit peuple des rats noirs néofascistes, avait à l’évidence puisé son inspiration chez le dessinateur wallon Raymond Macherot qui, lui aussi, avait créé un peuple de méchants rats vivant dans les égouts d’une ville imaginaire et en sortaient pour commettre mille méfaits. Ensuite son ami le peintre Olivier Carré et son camarade de combat (du moins au début de sa carrière) Grégory Pons étaient également „tintinophiles“, tout comme l’avocat genevois Pascal Junod (toujours très actif en Suisse romande) et moi-même. Cette influence de la bande dessinée belge ne se perçoit quasiment pas dans les milieux politiques germanophones. Je pense en outre qu’il aurait trouvé cela fantastique si des dessinateurs avaient utilisé les thèmes de son oeuvre métapolitique pour lancer de nouvelles séries de BD sur le marché !
Après la rupture entre Faye et Benoist, je n’ai évidemment pas eu les réflexes imbéciles de la secte, en excommuniant à mon tour mon vieux camarade Guillaume Faye. Nous nous sommes vus en août 1987 en Suisse, où Pascal Junod, qui n’était pas encore un avocat renommé, avait organisé une fête paneuropéenne. Faye y a distribué sa lettre d’adieu et y a rencontré un bon paquet d’amis venus des quatre coins de la France et d’ailleurs. J’ai profité de l’occasion pour l’inviter en septembre à Bruxelles, dans les salons de l’Hôtel Métropole (aujourd’hui fermé pour cause de faillite suite au confinement de ce printemps 2020), afin qu’il puisse y présenter un livre et un thème, La soft-idéologie, qu’il avait travaillé et rédigé avec le grand analyste et stratégiste français des médias et des guerres de quatrième dimension, François-Bernard Huyghe. Faye, à l’époque, avait des contacts avec les cercles académiques les plus prestigieux. Sa conférence à Bruxelles sur la soft-idéologie fut la dernière qu’il fit à une tribune de la mouvance dite de „nouvelle droite“. Ensuite, pour moi, il a disparu, sans traces et sans donner signe de vie, dans le labyrinthe des médias alternatifs, polissons mais toutefois notoirement connus sur la place de Paris, où il joua, entre autres facéties, le rôle de Skyman, une sorte de superman vengeur des opprimés, capable d’organiser les plus désopilants des canulars. 
Il était, sur ce plan, sur la même longueur d’onde qu’Yvan Blot, un très ancien animateur de la nouvelle droite qui avait aussi rompu avec l’inénarrable de Benoist et qui est, hélas, décédé quelques mois avant Guillaume Faye, laissant un vide énorme dans la mouvance, qui n’est guère perçu dans l’espace germanophone, alors que Blot parlait parfaitement l’allemand. Il n’y a guère de querelles sur ce sujet dans les rangs de la nouvelle droite française actuelle: la plupart des activistes et sympathisants sont plutôt pro-russes, y compris bon nombre de catholiques de la vieille droite, bien que quelques-uns, et non des moindres, soutiennent l’ultra-droite ukrainienne (PS d’août 2020: les événements tout récents de Biélorussie modifieront sans doute quelque peu la donne, wait and see). 
Faye a été dans les années 80, le fougueux avocat d’une coopération euro-arabe anti-impérialiste. Un colloque euro-arabe, visant un tel objectif, a eu lieu à l’université de Mons en Hainaut en 1985, auquel deux Allemands de la mouvance nationale-révolutionnaire, autour de la revue Wir Selbst, ont participé: Siegfried Bublies et Karl Höffkes (et, moi, j’étais leur interprète). C’était au temps où le monde arabe était dominé par le nationalisme militaire (Algérie), par le laïcisme, le nassérisme, le baathisme ou l’idéal de la „troisième théorie universelle“ de Khadafi. Depuis lors, la donne a considérablement changé. Les réseaux salafistes et wahhabites saoudiens ont oblitéré toute la scène politico-religieuse arabe. Or le salafisme, le frèrisme et le wahhabisme sont des instruments de l’impérialisme américain tout comme le sionisme. Le salafisme a ébranlé durablement l’Algérie et, plus tard, a déstabilisé l’Egypte et meurtri la Syrie, qui se trouve aujourd’hui dans un bien triste état. Chacun sait aujourd’hui que Brzezinski a soutenu les moudjahiddins afghans et leur a fourni des missiles Stinger, tout en recrutant Ben Laden comme mercenaire saoudien pour combattre les Soviétiques dans les montagnes de l’Hindou Kouch. La situation n’est plus aussi simple, aussi gérable, que dans les années 1980. 
J’ai connu Faye au début de l’année 1976 (ou fin 1975), une journée où il faisait très froid et où il prononçait une conférence à Lille sur l’indépendance énergétique de l’Europe (toujours des thèmes concrets !). Comme je viens de le dire, il était un homme très aimable, amical, toujours bienveillant, jamais agressif. Quand quelqu’un venait à lui en lui faisant entrevoir des perspectives nouvelles, il l’écoutait toujours attentivement (ce fut mon cas, alors que j’étais encore un gamin). Faye avait étudié dans un collège des Jésuites à Angoulême, où il avait reçu une solide formation classique, gréco-latine. De fait, sa culture antique était époustouflante. Il avait lu tout Platon et tout Aristote, avait intériorisé leur savoir et leur sagesse. Plus tard, quand il est venu à Paris pour étudier et qu’il s’est rapproché des cercles premiers de la „nouvelle droite“ dans la capitale française, c’est-à-dire les Cercles Vilfredo Pareto et Oswald Spengler, il s’est mis à lire Jouvenel, Freund, Schmitt et Raymond Ruyer. Plus tard, il découvrit les premiers livres, fondamentaux, de Michel Maffesoli. Ses axes de recherche étaient essentiellement politiques, au sens du politique tel que défini par Aristote, Schmitt et Freund, du politique au sens le plus noble du terme.
Der Autor der Jungen Freiheit, Hinrich Rohbohm, hat zudem für sein Buch System Merkel monatelang im Umfeld von Merkels Familie recherchiert. Demnach lehnte ihr Vater nicht nur die Wiedervereinigung, sondern auch die Gesellschaftsordnung der BRD ab. Am Abendbrottisch der Familie wurde ebenso intensiv über Politik gesprochen wie bei den regelmäßigen Treffen seines politischen »Hauskreises«, an denen auch Angela Merkel rege teilnahm. In Konflikt mit der SED-Diktatur kamen weder die Familie noch Merkel; ganz im Gegenteil, sie waren Teil der privilegierten Oberschicht und besaßen neben einem Dienstwagen auch einen Privatwagen. Ferner waren der Familie zahlreiche Russlandaufenthalte sowie Westreisen gestattet. Der SED-Staat ermöglichte Merkel zudem das Abitur und ein Physikstudium an der »roten« Karl-Marx-Universität in Leipzig, die als deutlich SED-konformer als andere Hochschulen galt. Ein Klassenkamerad Merkels erinnert sich, dass diese am Ende ihrer Schulzeit an den FDJ-Aktivitäten ihrer Abiturklasse führend mitwirkte. Auch an der Karl-Marx-Universität, wo die ideologische Indoktrination stark ausgeprägt war und es von Stasi-Mitarbeitern nur so wimmelte, übernahm sie FDJ-Funktionen. Gemäß Rohbohms Recherchen wurde Merkel von Kommilitonen als FDJ-Funktionärin bezeichnet, die Studenten »auf Linie gebracht« habe.