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dimanche, 23 septembre 2012

The Crisis of the West and the Decline of Culture

Gwendolyn Taunton :

The Crisis of the West and the Decline of Culture

Ex: http://www.primordialtraditions.net/

"Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit". - Nietzsche

Primordial Traditions BlogWe of the Western world are rapidly forgetting our own culture– for the majority of people the history ofEurope begins and ends with World War II. The phenomenon behind this rising knowledge void is a topic worthy of study itself, for it is not an isolated random incident, but rather a strategy born of ressentiment and revolt against the status quo of the past. The principle cause of the continuing decline of the Occident in world status is born from the fruit of rebellion and the impact of this attack on culture in Western countries will continue to grow until the core of the problem can be satisfactorily resolved.

In this regard the root cause is easily traced back to an earlier source, and I purpose that the current decline began not with a slow disintegration, but was rather born from an arrogance of excess, for all excess inevitably creates decadence - the interior degeneration which begins from within as any civilization begins to erode.

Prior to the advent of modernity, a classical education followed by a sojourn atOxfordorCambridgewas deemed to be the most prestigious educational route. We find here a remarkably different scholastic climate than that which is reflected in current academia; in this era we find education firmly under the rule of the aristocrat - the cultivated man, well versed in Latin, resplendent with knowledge in Classical Literature, and with all the hubris of a Classical Grecian Hero, for like all pride this was to result in a great downfall. This ‘ideal’ scholar of the era, did not indulge in practical form of study or work, for it was deemed ‘unseemly’ for a gentlemen of this standing to participate in work of such a nature. Education and refinement were held to be proof of their status over those who studied work of a more practical nature. They then chose to stigmatize those who worked and studied in these areas – namely the scientists. It was the aristocratic scholar whom excluded the ‘impure’ scientists to work and study in separate areas and separate institutions – regulating them into an enforced lower class of academia, devoid of any respect or recognition.  Prior to the 1900s, science was not deemed to be suitable for the proper education of a gentleman, and the subject faced a great struggle to gain any form of parity within the curriculum. And it is with this original persecution that the downfall of the humanities and culture begins, for all revolution is born of persecution, the master class was destined to be overthrown…and in turn excluded.

C.P. Snow initiated the backlash against the academic disciplines of arts and humanities by publishing his ‘The Two Cultures’  - a series of lectures which call for an outright revolt in academia against the humanities and arts disciplines. Snow had a deep antipathy towards ‘literary intellectuals’ partially based on his personal experiences. In his later works, Snow would even go so far as to refer to literary intellectuals as what he describes as “Natural Luddites”. What Snow heralds is the advancement of a “industrial-scientific revolution’ which he believes is polarized against the work of literary and cultural intellectuals. Gaining popularity and support quickly, this work came to be regarded as seminal literature of modernity – with disciples of Snow appearing in almost every corner of tertiary level academic institutions, the days of the classical scholar he so despised were abruptly becoming numbered.

Now the full consequences of this have come into effect - humanity, the qualities which make us truly human - are regressing. The height of social etiquette is Facebook, the pinnacle of drama - YouTube, and Twilight reigns supreme in literature. Fools use blogs as tools for slander an act like apes on the internet instead of cultivating honor and respect. We have become mindless uncultured automatons who  have no interest in self-betterment or anything noble. Spirituality has become a vessel for organizations to promote esoteric/religious secrets which have no content but are rather employed for unscrupulous authors to justify their sexual fetishes and every core of true faith has ripped screaming form the womb of the Goddess. 

Our highest form of art? A vomit of color on canvas - a moment of 'self expression', a release of emotion, but without the talent. Sculpture?A pile of spray painted socks in the corner of the room. Music? A single drum beat on repeat and a little boy crying 'Baby'. The degradation of the arts has cost us severely; we must now live in a world bereft of beauty. The degradation of the humanities in turn has created a generation of people whom lack the fundamental higher qualities which make them human - their highest aspirations are food, sex, and consumerism.

How do we rectify this, solve the riddle of a world where art and culture are being siphoned away? There is a simple solution - we continue to create. We draw our pens, our paintbrushes and our instruments and we weld them not as tools but as weapons. The pen is mightier than the sword and music charms even the most savage beast - in world where culture and the arts have been reduced to the lowest valued elements in society, we do the most rebellious thing possible.

We show them what we can do.   

00:05 Publié dans Traditions | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : tradition, traditionalisme | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

Vintila Horia, l’esilio e il sogno di una grande patria europea

Vintila Horia, l’esilio e il sogno di una grande patria europea

La scrittore rumeno, autenticamente nazionalista, è tra i dannati della letteratura

Romano Guatta Caldini

Ex: http://rinascita.eu/

VintilaHoriaBustEC.jpgSono innumerevoli gli autori relegati nel limbo dell’editoria, un po’ perché le loro tesi sono considerate politicamente scorrette, dalla massa degli utili idioti che popolano il mondo della critica letteraria, un po’ perché questi scrittori vengono sempre etichettati come impresentabili, a causa dei loro percorsi esistenziali che non corrispondono al cliché dell’intellettuale “democratico”. Fra i dannati della letteratura, un posto di primo piano lo occupa sicuramente Vintila Horia, il déraciné per eccellenza.


Il tema dell’esilio – in Horia – è una costante. Lui, scrittore autenticamente di destra, è il simbolo di quella generazione di intellettuali che, dopo il tramonto dei fascismi e l’instaurarsi delle dittature comuniste nell’est Europa, passarono tutta la vita lontani dalla madre patria. Sebbene, durante la giovinezza, Horia non abbia mai contemplato l’ipotesi di tornare in Romania – il Paese d’origine che lo condannò ai lavori forzati con l’accusa di propaganda fascista – il richiamo della “terra dei padri” influì notevolmente sulla sua produzione letteraria. “Incominciò allora - scrive Horia - il mio vero esilio come un processo di anacoretismo, cioè come un processo di separazione da tutto quello che io ero stato”. Fra i suoi scritti ricordiamo: “Dio è nato in esilio”, “Gli impossibili”, “La rivolta degli scrittori sovietici”, “Il cavaliere della rassegnazione”, “La settima lettera” ed “Una donna per l’Apocalisse”.


Per un esiliato la vita è fatta di incessanti peregrinazioni, alla ricerca - forse inconsapevole - di un’Itaca perduta per sempre. Italia, Austria, Francia, Spagna: furono molte le mete toccate da Horia nel suo percorso di viandante, nell’Europa martoriata dal secondo conflitto mondiale prima e dalla guerra fredda poi. E sono proprio le persone incontrate sulla via i personaggi dei suoi romanzi, come Clara, la bella esule polacca co-protagonista – con Horia “Io narrante” - de “Gli impossibili”. Entrambi in fuga dal comunismo e dai fantasmi del passato, Vintila e Clara si incontrano a Losanna, città che ha dato da sempre rifugio ai perseguitati politici. “Due esiliati - scrive il curatore de Gli Impossibili, per le edizioni Il Borghese - due creature strappate dalla violenza della guerra e dalle aberrazioni della politica al loro Paese; ciascuno spera di ritrovare, nell’amore, la patria, cioè, la fine della solitudine”.


Clara entra nella vita di Horia come una cometa, come un bagliore sfuggente che illumina – per un brevissimo lasso di tempo, l’esistenza dello scrittore rumeno. Nella solitudine interiore di lei, Horia trova ristoro, nella sofferenza provocatale da un passato popolato di fantasmi, l’autore trova le proprie radici, un contatto, seppur effimero, con la lontana Romania. Ed è così, attraverso un viaggio a ritroso nel tempo che Horia ripercorre le tappe che lo hanno portato a Losanna. Un percorso angosciante che partendo dalla casa paterna - ormai spazzata via dal regime comunista – arriva fino all’avvenimento che segnò la svolta negli orientamenti politici dell’autore: l’assassinio, in mezzo alla folla, di tre legionari della Guardia di Ferro.


Come per i suoi connazionali, Emil Cioran e Mircea Eliade, anche per Horia il successo arriverà durante il suo soggiorno forzato all’estero. Nel “60, con la pubblicazione del suo capolavoro, “Dio è nato in esilio”, ad Horia venne assegnato il Premio Gouncourt, il più noto riconoscimento letterario di Francia. Eppure, anche questa volta, i fantasmi del passato tornarono a riscuotere il proprio tributo. Dopo la vittoria del Gouncort, Horia venne invitato a farsi fotografare con il funzionario, dell’ambasciata rumena a Parigi, addetto alle relazioni. Un tentativo, da parte del regime comunista, di riavvicinare lo scrittore. Horia, però, rifiutò l’esortazione e, a quel punto, dalle pagine de L’Humanité scattò una campagna stampa tendente a screditarlo. Il quotidiano marxista, imbeccato dall’inteligencja rumena, mise in atto un violento attacco che, ricordando i trascorsi fascisti dello scrittore, ebbe come risultato la restituzione del premio. “Se il libro di Vintila Horia meritava il Premio Goncourt - si legge nel retro di copertina della pubblicazione italiana del libro “Dio è nato in esilio” - perché i giudici, dopo averlo assegnato secondo tutte le regole, non seppero difendere la loro decisione? E se il libro non meritava il premio, perché gli fu assegnato? La Romania comunista ha cercato fino all’ultimo momento di recuperare Vintila Horia, che vive in esilio per non vivere in una Romania comunista. (…) Si ripeté per Vintila Horia la discriminazione già usata coi militari e gli intellettuali tedeschi: quelli che hanno aderito al comunismo sono illibati e stimabili, chi si rifiuta di farlo è reprobo”.

Aspetto poco conosciuto, dell’autore rumeno, è il suo stretto legame con l’Italia. Nel ‘39, infatti, appena ventiquattrenne ed in seguito alla laurea in giurisprudenza conseguita a Bucarest, Horia venne inviato a Roma, in qualità di addetto stampa della Legazione del Regno di Romania a Roma. Qui conoscerà Papini con cui, nel tempo, instaurerà un prolifico rapporto lavorativo, culturale e naturalmente, di amicizia. A Perugia lo scrittore avrà l’occasione di seguire i corsi di Letteratura e filosofia, almeno fino al suo trasferimento all’ambasciata di Vienna. Da qui, dopo la caduta del regime pro-Asse del Maresciallo Ion Antonescu e il conseguente instaurarsi - in Romania - di un governo filo-sovietico, venne rinchiuso in un campo di concentramento, per diplomatici del Terzo Reich, a Maria Pfarr, in Austria.


Liberato dagli inglesi, nel ‘45, Horia tornò in Italia, a Bologna. Ed è nel capoluogo emiliano che lo scrittore prese la decisione emotivamente più devastante della sua vita: non fare mai più ritorno in una Romania trasfigurata dal comunismo. Durante il periodo nel “bel paese”, lo scrittore collaborò a diverse riviste, come “L’Ultima” ed il “Perseo”, e ad alcuni quotidiani, tra cui “il Tempo” e “Roma”. Da menzionare sono i saggi - di Horia - sui pensatori anticonformisti italiani: l’amico Giovani Papini ed il Barone Julius Evola.


Moderno Ulisse, lo scrittore rumeno non smise mai di viaggiare, tenendo conferenze nelle università di Buenos Aires, Madrid, Parigi e Santiago del Chile. Come molti uomini legati ai fasti, dell’epopea rivoluzionaria nazionale dei regimi fascisti europei, anche Horia si trasferì in Argentina, più precisamente a Buenos Aires dove, grazie all’aiuto di Papini, poté trovare un’occupazione presso un’università locale. La morte lo colse in Spagna, dove aveva trovato rifugio, grazie al governo franchista.


Vintila Horia non tornò mai in Romania e, forse, fu proprio per la sua condizione di apolide che nel tempo sviluppò una sorta d’inter-nazionalismo di stampo europeista. Infatti, durante un’intervista rilasciata a Gianfranco De Turris, Horia dichiarò: “Mi considero uno scrittore europeo. Credo che la mia vera patria, e la patria di noi tutti, italiani, romeni, spagnoli o francesi, sia – in fondo – l’Europa”.


12 Settembre 2012  - http://rinascita.eu/index.php?action=news&id=16691

samedi, 22 septembre 2012

Tout le monde est atteint...

 

Tout le monde est atteint...


Images

 

00:05 Publié dans Affiches | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : facebook, caricature | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

Revolutionary Sikh: The Last Words of Udham Singh

Revolutionary Sikh: The Last Words of Udham Singh

Who Was Udham Singh?

164841.jpgUdham Singh, a revolutionary nationalist, was born Sher Singh on 26 December 1899, at Sunam, in the then princely state of Patiala. His father, Tahal Singh, was at that time working as a watchman on a railway crossing in the neighbouring village of Upall. Sher Singh lost his parents before he was seven years and was admitted along with his brother Mukta Singh to the Central Khalsa Orphanage at Amritsar on 24 October 1907. As both brothers were administered the Sikh initiatory rites at the Orphanage, they received new names, Sher Singh becoming Udham Singh and Mukta Singh Sadhu Singh. In 1917, Udham Singh’s brother also died, leaving him alone in the world.

Udham Singh left the Orphanage after passing the matriculation examination in 1918. He was present in the Jallianvala Bag on the fateful Baisakhi day, 13 April 1919, when a peaceful assembly of people was fired upon by General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer, killing over one thousand people. The event which Udham Singh used to recall with anger and sorrow, turned him to the path of revolution. Soon after, he left India and went to the United States of America. He felt thrilled to learn about the militant activities of the Babar Akalis in the early 1920′s, and returned home. He had secretly brought with him some revolvers and was arrested by the police in Amritsar, and sentenced to four years imprisonment under the Arms Act. On release in 1931, he returned to his native Sunam, but harassed by the local police, he once again returned to Amritsar and opened a shop as a signboard painter, assuming the name of Ram Muhammad Singh Azad. This name, which he was to use later in England, was adopted to emphasize the unity of all the religious communities in India in their struggle for political freedom.

Udham Singh was deeply influenced by the activities of Bhagat Singh and his revolutionary group. In 1935, when he was on a visit to Kashmlr, he was found carrying Bhagat Singh’s portrait. He invariably referred to him as his guru. He loved to sing political songs, and was very fond of Ram Prasad Bismal, who was the leading poet of the revolutionaries. After staying for some months in Kashmlr, Udham Singh left India. He wandered about the continent for some time, and reached England by the mid-thirties. He was on the lookout for an opportunity to avenge the Jalliavala Bagh tragedy. The long-waited moment at last came on 13 March 1940. On that day, at 4.30 p.m. in the Caxton Hall, London, where a meeting of the East India Association was being held in conjunction with the Royal Central Asian Society, Udham Singh fired five to six shots from his pistol at Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who was governor of the Punjab when the Amritsar massacre had taken place. O’Dwyer was hit twice and fell to the ground dead and Lord Zetland, the Secretary of State for India, who was presiding over the meeting was injured. Udham Singh was overpowered with a smoking revolver. He in fact made no attempt to escape and continued saying that he had done his duty by his country.

On 1 April 1940, Udham Singh was formally charged with the murder of Sir Michael O’Dwyer. On 4 June 1940, he was committed to trial, at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey, before Justice Atkinson, who sentenced him to death. An appeal was filed on his behalf which was dismissed on 15 July 1940. On 31 July 1940, Udham Singh was hanged in Pentonville Prison in London.

Udham Singh was essentially a man of action and save his statement before the judge at his trial, there was no writing from his pen available to historians. Recently, letters written by him to Shiv Singh Jauhal during his days in prison after the shooting of Sir Michael O’Dwyer have been discovered and published. These letters show him as a man of great courage, with a sense of humor. He called himself a guest of His Majesty King George, and he looked upon death as a bride he was going to wed. By remaining cheerful to the last and going joyfully to the gallows, he followed the example of Bhagat Singh who had been his beau ideal. During the trial, Udham Singh had made a request that his ashes be sent back to his country, but this was not allowed. In 1975, however, the Government of India, at the instance of the Punjab Government, finally succeeded in bringing his ashes home. Lakhs of people gathered on the occasion to pay homage to his memory.

The Last Words of Udham Singh

On the 31st July, 1940, Udham Singh was hanged at Pentonville jail, London. On the 4th of June in the same year he had been arraigned before Mr. Justice Atkinson at the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey. Udham Singh was charged with the murder of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the former Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab who had approved of the action of Brigadier-General R.E.H. Dyer at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar on April 13, 1919, which had resulted in the massacre of hundreds of men, women and children and left over 1,000 wounded during the course of a peaceful political meeting. The assassination of O’Dwyer took place at the Caxton Hall, Westminster. The trial of Udham Singh lasted for two days, he was found guilty and was given the death sentence. On the 15th July, 1940, the Court of Criminal Appeal heard and dismissed the appeal of Udham Singh against the death sentence.

Prior to passing the sentence Mr. Justice Atkinson asked Udham Singh whether he had anything to say. Replying in the affirmative he began to read from prepared notes. The judge repeatedly interrupted Udham Singh and ordered the press not to report the statement. Both in Britain and India the government made strenuous efforts to ensure that the minimum publicity was given to the trial. Reuters were approached for this purpose.

The father of Udham Singh, Tehl Singh, was born into a poor peasant family and worked as a Railway Gate Keeper at the railway level crossing at Village Uppali. Udham Singh was born on 28th December, 1899 at Sanam, Sangrur District, Punjab. After the death of his father Udham Singh was brought up in a Sikh orphanage in Amritsar. The massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919 was deeply engraved in the mind of the future martyr. At the age of 16 years Udham Singh defied the curfew and was wounded in the course of retrieving the body of the husband of one Rattan Devi in the aftermath of the slaughter. Subsequently Udham Singh travelled abroad in Africa, the United States and Europe. Over the years he met Lala Lajpat Rai, Kishen Singh and Bhagat Singh, whom he considered his guru and ‘his best friend’. In 1927 Udham Singh was arrested in Amritsar under the Arms Act. The impact of the Russian revolution on him is indicated by the fact that amongst the revolutionary tracts found by the raiding party was Rusi Ghaddar Gian Samachar. After serving his sentence and visiting his home town, Udham Singh resumed, his travels abroad. If it was the Jallianwala Bagh massacre which provided the turning point of his life which led him to avenge the dead, it was Bhagat Singh who provided him with the inspiration to pursue the path of revolutionary struggle.

Echoes of Kartar Singh Sarabha and Bhagat Singh may be found in the words of Udham Singh in the wake of the assassination of O’Dwyer.

‘I don’t care, I don’t mind dying. What Is the use of waiting till you get old? This Is no good. You want to die when you are young. That is good, that Is what I am doing’.

After a pause he added:

‘I am dying for my country’.

In a statement given on March 13th, 1940 be said:

‘I just shot to make protest. I have seen people starving In India under British Imperialism. I done it, the pistol went off three or four times. I am not sorry for protesting. It was my duty to do so. Put some more. Just for the sake of my country to protest. I do not mind my sentence. Ten, twenty, or fifty years or to be hanged. I done my duty.’

In a letter from Brixton Prison of 30th March, 1940, Udham Singh refers to Bhagat Singh in the following terms:

‘I never afraid of dying so soon I will be getting married with execution. I am not sorry as I am a soldier of my country it is since 10 years when my friend has left me behind and I am sure after my death I will see him as he is waiting for me it was 23rd and I hope they will hang me on the same date as he was.’

The British courts were able to silence for long the last words of Udham Singh. At last the speech has been released from the British Public Records Office.

Shorthand notes of the Statement made by Udham Singh after the Judge had asked him if he had anything to say as to why sentence should not be passed upon him according to Law.

Facing the Judge, he exclaimed, ‘I say down with British Imperialism. You say India do not have peace. We have only slavery. Generations of so called civilization has brought for us everything filthy and degenerating known to the human race. All you have to do is read your own history. If you have any human decency about you, you should die with shame. The brutality and bloodthirsty way in which the so called intellectuals who call themselves rulers of civilization in the world are of bastard blood…’

MR. JUSTICE ATKINSON: I am not going to listen to a political speech. If you have anything relevant to say about this case say it.

UDHAM SINGH: I have to say this. I wanted to protest.

The accused brandished the sheaf of papers from which he had been reading.

THE JUDGE: Is it in English?

UDHAM SINGH: You can understand what I am reading now.

THE JUDGE: I will understand much more if you give it to me to read.

UDHAM SINGH: I want the jury, I want the whole lot to hear it.

Mr. G.B. McClure (Prosecuting) reminded the Judge that under Section 6 of the Emergency Powers Act he could direct that Udham Singh’s speech be not reported or that it could be heard in camera.

THE JUDGE (to the accused): You may take it that nothing will be published of what you say. You must speak to the point. Now go on.

UDHAM SINGH: I am protesting. This is what I mean. I am quite innocent about that address. The jury were misled about that address. I am going to read this now.

THE JUDGE: Well, go on.

While the accused was perusing the papers, the Judge reminded him ‘You are only to say why sentence should not be passed according to law.’

UDHAM SINGH (shouting): ‘I do not care about sentence of death. It means nothing at all. I do not care about dying or anything. I do not worry about it at all. I am dying for a purpose.’ Thumping the rail of the dock, he exclaimed, ‘We are suffering from the British Empire.’ Udham Singh continued more quietly. ‘I am not afraid to die. I am proud to die, to have to free my native land and I hope that when I am gone, I hope that in my place will come thousands of my countrymen to drive you dirty dogs out; to free my country.’

‘I am standing before an English jury. I am in an English court. You people go to India and when you come back you are given a prize and put in the House of Commons. We come to England and we are sentenced to death.’

‘I never meant anything; but I will take it. I do not care anything about it, but when you dirty dogs come to India there comes a time when you will be cleaned out of India. All your British Imperialism will be smashed.’

‘Machine guns on the streets of India mow down thousands of poor women and children wherever your so-called flag of democracy and Christianity flies.’

‘Your conduct, your conduct – I am talking about the British government. I have nothing against the English people at all. I have more English friends living in England than I have in India. I have great sympathy with the workers of England. I am against the Imperialist Government.’

‘You people are suffering – workers. Everyone are suffering through these dirty dogs; these mad beasts. India is only slavery. Killing, mutilating and destroying – British Imperialism. People do not read about it in the papers. We know what is going on in India.’

MR. JUSTICE ATKINSON: I am not going to hear any more.

UDHAM SINGH: You do not want to listen to any more because you are tired of my speech, eh? I have a lot to say yet.

THE JUDGE: I am not going to hear any more of that statement.

UDHAM SINGH: You ask me what I have to say. I am saying it. Because you people are dirty. You do not want to hear from us what you are doing in India.

Thrusting his glasses back into his pocket, Udham Singh exclaimed three words in Hindustani and then shouted, Down with British Imperialism! Down with British dirty dogs!’

As he turned to leave the dock, the accused spat across the solicitor’s table.

After Singh had left the dock, the Judge turned to the Press and said:

‘I give a direction to the Press not to report any of the statement made by the accused in the dock. You understand, members of the press?’

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Alain Soral: Political Incorrectness Ideology of Resistance

Alain Soral: Political Incorrectness Ideology of Resistance

Ex: http://openrevolt.info/

(An address pronounced in Villepreux the 2nd of November 2008)

This title implies to answer two prior questions :
1) What is Mondialism ?
2) What is political correctness ?

Let’s start with Mondialism.

Mondialism is not globalization.

Globalization is an inevitable process of material and immaterial exchange due to technological progress. We cannot go against it, and it is not desirable to do so. The rejection of globalization is not a desire of civilizationnal flashback. Not more that degrowth is a desire of recession… It is quite convenient to be able to get to Six-Fours in few hours by TGV and it is joyful to notice that a great number of active members of the Populist Party had the financial means to get there ! No ! What is at issue is Mondialism.

Mondialism is an ideological project, a sort of Laic religion that works to set up a world government through the dissolution of all the Nations of the world into a new humanity. It works to the dissolution of the Nations under the pretence of Universal Peace. The diversity of Nations and people being considered the reasons for wars that have brought bloodshed on Earth since the dawn of humanity…

This process was logically very involved after World War One through the League of Nations. It logically ebbed after the rising dangers that led to World War Two. It came back very strongly on the ruins of Nations after 1945, with NATO and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Short parenthesis : This declaration should not be confused with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which thought those rights in the concrete context of a rooted Nation : The French Nation, on behalf of a civilizationnal model, that J.C Martinez often talk about : The French Universalism. A civilisation with a planetary destiny, alternative to both the Islamic Ummah and the Anglo-Saxon Liberalism…

We then had after World War II two ideological systems, fighting against Nations and people who were considered as intrinsically bellicose : The Russian Socialism, now dead (I will not hammer at it uselessly !) and the American Liberalism, winner until today of the cold war.

The existing Mondialism is therefore twofold : At the same time a depraved ideological project from Enlightnment : A project where Universal Peace and reconciled Humanity through Kantian reason, meant to transcend scholastic obscurantism that came out of Europe’s religious War, finally turned to the obscurantism of Human Rights… Obscurantism of Human Rights… Or, banning the use of reason to criticize all the concrete wrongdoings of this totalitarian process on concrete Humanity, on behalf of blasphemy and heresy…

A Mondialism that is also, at the same time, the ineluctable slope of mercantile society : going from the free entrepreneur’s free entreprise to the Orwellian financial capitalism, where every man is from now on reduced to the role of wage-earner/consumer, enslaved to what Marxism calls : The law of concentration of Capital imposed by the falling rate of profit…

There is then, the convergence of two unifying processes : one that is ideological and thought : the Universal Human Rights, the other one that is economical and undergone : The commodification under the religion of profit. Two processes that blend today in the same project : The project of a World government under the aegis of the Anglo-Saxon Capitalism, on behalf of the ideology of abstract Human Rights…

In shorts : Therefore, Human rights are now the catechism of the dissolution of rooted people and Nations, dedicated to the generalized abstraction of global financial capitalism with a view to its complete World domination.

Domination over our wallets as well as our souls…

Political incorrectness :

This rapid presentation finished, it is quite easy to come to the second definition : What is political correctness ? And then, what is political incorrectness ? The political correctness is everything that accepts to submit, consciously or inconsciously, to the catechism of Human Rights. Political incorrectness is everything that opposes and resists to it !

Human Rightism has nothing to do anymore with the real rights of real people, attached to their local cultures and their Nations (As the passion for Olympic games or Football championship keep showing, since those contests between Nations and between Cities are the ones which are acclaimed). Nowadays, Human Rightism is the ideological armed wing of Mondialism, the smooth talk that comes with all subdues, all oppressions of movements that resist to the economico-ideological Mondialism, whether those are military, political or cultural resistances… Thereby, it is on behalf of Human Rights, leading, of course, to the right of humanitatian intervention and then to Kouchner’s responsibility to protect, that is now bombed the small Serbian Nation, because they resist to the Mondialist steamroller under American control, on behalf of their culture and history… It is on behalf of the totalitarian and bellicose Human Right ideology that is flouted the real rights of the real people everywhere on the planet. Whether the right for Serbians to remain Serbs, but also the right for Muslims to remain Muslims in Iran or Afghanistan…

But it is also on behalf of Human Rights that are dismantled social solidarities within the Nations and their people – the traditionnal social solidarities against Mondialist Capitalism – by substituting workers and middle classes’ social benefits for the social interest of “oppressed” pseudo-minorities (In reality vocal minorities…) : Gay rights, woman’s rights, youth rights, black people rights… Minorities that are just market segments serving the ideological merchant Mondialism, as the Italian ex-trotskyist and now publicist, Mister Toscani, had well illustrated in his excellent adverts “United Colors of Benetton”…

From then on, all resistance to this carving up : Refusal to see the Serbians as ennemies of humanity, whereas they only try to preserve their lifestyle, refusal to see gays as a social class, since the diversity of homosexuals cannot be reduced to a self-proclaimed gay lobby, and since the sodomy remains anyway a private leisure activity… Bref, any refusal to submit to the false pretence of those pseudo-Human Rights, which in reality consist in submitting people to the mondialist domination, is considered by the very same power as crime against humanity ! Here we are ! Sentence for “crime against humanity” that allows evicting from humanity the ones accused of it, reducing them to the level of subhumans and who, then, does not receive anymore those famous rights : The Germans and the Japanese after the war, the Palestinians today, the Iranians tomorrow, the activist and electors from the Front National for the past 30 years… Let’s now talk about the FN.

This implacable mechanic rapidly dismantled ; let’s have a closer look at France and its national movement… This national movement that i joined out of spirit of resistance to Mondialism and which was embodied those past 30 years in the FN, this united movement of national resistance, thanks to Jean Marie Le Pen’s political genius. I take this opportunity to warmly salute him… First remark, understood like this and i would say “well-understood” ! The FN is neither a right nor left-wing movement, since the right refers to the market, so to Mondialism, as much as the left refers to Internationalism, which amount to the same thing… The FN well-understood is therefore essentially a movement of resistance to Mondialism, both at the same time opposed to its right-wing liberal economy and its left-wing Human rightist ideology, the left-wing catechism being the humanist alibi of the economical proces of concentration of Capital and the process of domination by the “masters of the market”…

From this analysis we can logically deduct that if the FN, as a national opposition movement, wants to be coherent, it needs to fight both against the mercantile Mondialism and the political correctness, which is its ideology…

But, this is where i would allow myself a critique on both yesterday’s imprecisions and today’s temptations…

For many years, the FN was politically incorrect in terms of ideas (i am refering to the delightful and useful provocations of our president…) but was unfortunately economicaly way too liberal, which means that the FN was only partly disobedient… Let’s point out that National-Liberalism is an oxymoron, since liberal means “privatized” and when everything is privatized (central banks, public services, army…), the politics loses control of the Nation, even the FN ! Nowadays in the FN, the line between political correctness and Liberalism is rather reversed : Rigorous criticism of economic Mondialism, but renunciation of political incorrectness on behalf of de-demonization, which amount to the same incoherence and the same political impotence : Since submitting to the dictatorship of Human Rights and the blackmail of the crime against humanity is eventually a way to land up naked in the countryside at the hands of Mondialist ideology ! The slogan summarizing best what i want to say, slogan that is permanently thrown and on which we must not give up is the famous “never again” ! Suggesting : “Mondialism or Auschwitz”, and for the recalcitrants, the no less famous reductio ad Hitlerum ! In summary : Political incorrectness is by no means a useless game of provocations. Even if it is not always understood this way, it is the doctrine of resistance to Mondialism. Doctrine of disobedience whitout which the criticism restricted to economic Mondialism is unsufficient, powerless and even incoherent, just as political incorrectness unextended to the criticism of the liberal doctrine… Yesterday’s economic incoherence which is now outdated within the FN, thanks to Marine Le Pen excellent work !

Therefore, not only politically incorrect thoughts must not be abandoned, but at a time when the left, which used to lead the field with Marxism, has abandoned all thoughts, abandoning themselves to the obscurantism of Human Rights… At a time when no one thinks, neither left or right, since the right-wing wheeler-dealers have long ago settled for doing business… We, the nationalists, can regain control in terms of ideas as we are the only efficient critics of the system and we can become, in this desert, the thought leaders of tomorrow and embody the renewal of French genius!
Long live disobedience then!
And long live disobedient France!

Alain Soral

 

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Alain Soral has contributed the introduction to Alexander Dugin’s monumental new work The Fourth Political Theory’s English edition.  Order here and show support for our work at Open Revolt!

 

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Entretien avec Piero San Giorgio

Entretien avec Piero San Giorgio à propos de son nouveau livre Rue Barbare – survivre en ville

Ex: http://mecanopolis.org/

Le premier livre de Piero San Giorgio, Survivre à l’effondrement économique, connaît un succès retentissant. L’auteur, ancien responsable des marchés émergents dans l’industrie high-tech, qui se consacre désormais pleinement au « survivalisme », est persuadé que les problèmes auxquels le monde va devoir faire face dans les dix prochaines années vont entrainer « un effondrement économique massif et global qui ne laissera personne, riche ou pauvre, indemne ».

Avant la parution de son deuxième livre, « Rue Barbare –  survivre en ville », dont nous présentons un extrait à la fin de l’entretien, nous voulions rencontrer une nouvelle fois Piero San Giorgio. Entretien dans un bistrot genevois.

AJD : Piero, votre premier livre connaît un succès retentissant, comment vivez-vous cela ?

Piero San Giorgio : Je suis à la fois surpris, mais finalement pas étonné, car ce succès démontre que je suis en phase avec mon temps, et peut-être même un peu en avance. Sans prétention, je crois pouvoir dire que j’anticipe sur l’état du monde à venir, et si cela peut rendre service, ne serais-ce qu’à une seule personne, je m’en félicite. A titre personnel, je n’ai pas pour autant pris la « grosse tête », comme on dit. Je reste serein, d’une part parce que c’est ma nature profonde, et d’autre par car j’ai devant moi beaucoup de travail à réaliser. Ce premier livre est une introduction et j’ai des nombreux projets pour le futur.

Vous allez publier une deuxième livre pour le mois de novembre, pour lequel vous nous faites la faveur de nous remettre un extrait, que nous publions en fin d’article. Est-ce la suite du premier ?

C’est bien plus que ça. Ce livre est écrit à deux mains, en collaboration avec Volwest. Je pense que le titre, « Rue barbare, survivre en ville », est suffisamment évocateur. Nous nous nous sommes rendu compte que, lorsque la situation économique et sociale ne sera plus tenable et engendrera des troubles importants, ce qui ne va pas manquer d’arriver, tout le monde ne pourra pas se réfugier dans des BAD (Base Autonome Durable) à la campagne ou dans les montagnes, ce qui était le sujet de mon premier ouvrage. Nous avons donc rédigé un livre pratique, qui peut permettre à chacun de trouver les moyens de survivre à l’intérieur des villes.

Certains vous reprochent de surfer sur un climat de peur ambiante, en raison de la crise économique, du chômage, de l’insécurité grandissante… Que leur répondez-vous ?

Malheureusement, ceux qui me font ces reproches ne viennent jamais débattre avec moi. Je ne suis pas un auteur de science fiction. Mon premier livre, comme mes conférences, sont sourcées et documentées. Je ne me base que sur des faits établis, des données réelles et vérifiables et, partant de cela, j’anticipe sur un avenir qui ne peut apparaitre qu’inéluctable pour tous ceux qui sont doués d’un minimum de raison et de bon sens.

Vous pensez-donc que la société telle que nous la connaissons va disparaître au profit d’un chaos généralisé ?

C’est plus compliqué que cela et je renvoie vos lecteurs à mon premier ouvrage pour en avoir le détail. Mais, pour résumer, c’est une évidence que les flux énergétiques manquent aujourd’hui pour maintenir une société de consommation telle que nous l’avons connue ces quarante dernières années. Il est certain que la restructuration économique mondiale en cours va provoquer des troubles majeurs. On peut feindre de l’ignorer ou se préparer. C’est un choix personnel, mais qui aura ses conséquences.

Vous démontrez être très disponibles pour vos lecteurs, ce qui est rare pour un auteur. Envisagez-vous, au-delà de l’écriture, une activité de conseil ?

Je ne tiens pas trop à faire du survivalisme un business. Je vais d’ailleurs lever le pied sur les conférences. Je pense en avoir donné suffisamment, et certaines on parfois été organisées par des groupes dont je ne partage pas forcement les opinions politiques, ce qui m’a valu des étiquettes qui, je crois, ne me correspondent pas. Mais ce n’est pas grave, je vais volontiers là où on m’invite pour convaincre le plus grand nombre de familles à se préparer. Je suis disposé à aider tous ceux qui vont dans le sens de la philosophie de vie que j’essaie de mettre en place: autonomie, liberté, indépendance, retour à la terre. Je suis très sollicité, même dans le domaine qui est le votre, celui de la sécurité électronique. Un système d’alarme anti-intrusion adapté ou de la vidéo-protection ainsi que d’autres nouvelles technologies peuvent être des « multiplicateur de forces » et permettre d’assurer une meilleure protection, à condition qu’ils n’empêchent pas de conserver une autonomie énergétique. J’aime cette activité de conseil, mais toutefois ma priorité est de conserver un maximum de temps afin d’être proche de ma famille et des êtres qui me sont chers.

Entretien réalisé par Adrien Jacot-Descombes, pour Swisecurity.ch

Reproduction libre avec indication des sources

Télécharger l’extrait du nouveau livre de Piero San Giorgio

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William Morris, l'arte e il lavoro

William Morris, l'arte e il lavoro

di Alberto Melotto

Fonte: megachip [scheda fonte]

WilliamMorris 20120917

La parola rivoluzione, che noi socialisti siamo così spesso costretti ad usare, suona in modo sinistro alle orecchie della maggior parte della gente, anche se noi ci affanniamo a spiegare che essa non significa necessariamente un cambiamento che si attuerà all’insegna di tumulti e di ogni specie di violenza, così come non potrà significare un cambiamento che si produrrà automaticamente e contro la pubblica opinione ad opera di un gruppo di uomini riusciti in qualche modo a impadronirsi momentaneamente dell’esecutivo. Anche quando spieghiamo che usiamo la parola rivoluzione nel suo senso etimologico, intendendo per essa un cambiamento nelle basi della società, la gente ha paura all’idea di un mutamento tanto vasto che ci supplica di dire riforma e non rivoluzione”. (William Morris)

Signore e signori, ecco a voi William Morris. Artigiano produttore di oggetti di arredamento, poeta, romanziere, affiliato alla confraternita artistica dei preraffaelliti, socialista utopista e profetico. Di rado nell’opera di uno studioso engagé di fine ‘800 si riscontrano, lucidamente evidenziati e confutati, gli snodi e le contraddizioni del movimento operaio novecentesco: il fallimento del modello del socialismo autoritario, l’acquiescenza socialdemocratica verso la rigidità di ruoli voluta dal potere borghese.

Inoltre, Morris sviluppò temi che i posteri non osarono nemmeno affrontare, senza dubbio per timore di sembrare ingenui, naif, poco allineati: la volontà di creare un mondo dove il lavoro sia gioia e creazione artistica, la critica disinvolta allo strapotere della scienza e della tecnologia, la rivalutazione dell’ambiente naturale, l’altra grande vittima, insieme all’uomo, del degrado e dello sfruttamento capitalistico.

Un suo grande ammiratore, Oscar Wilde, raccontava una confidenza fattagli dallo stesso Morris:

“Ho tentato di rendere ogni mio lavoratore un artista, e quando dico un artista intendo dire un uomo”.

Nato in un ambiente benestante, Morris trovò nella cittadella universitaria di Oxford il luogo ideale per lasciarsi affascinare da una miriade di diversi interessi culturali e artistici, e forse proprio per questo motivo non concluse nessun corso regolare di studi. Oltre al socialismo cristiano di Charles Kingsley, poi temporaneamente abbandonato in favore del radicalismo borghese di marca liberale, troviamo l’influsso determinante di John Ruskin, che gli instilla l’amore per l’architettura.

     1. Il lavoro – valorizzazione delle capacità umane, non più strumento di oppressione

In Lavoro utile e inutile fatica, Morris mostra di voler sgombrare il tavolo da tutta una serie di luoghi comuni riguardanti il lavoro, prima di procedere nella direzione del teorizzare una nuova concezione sull’argomento.

È sbagliato, dice Morris, affermare entusiasticamente che ogni lavoro è una benedizione in sé. Congratularsi con il fortunato lavoratore per la sua operosità fa comodo soprattutto a coloro che vivono alle spalle degli altri. Non tutta la popolazione, infatti, è dedita ad attività lavorative, al contrario sussistono enormi differenze al riguardo.

Vi sono i ricchi, gli aristocratici:

che non fanno alcun lavoro: sappiamo tutti che consumano moltissimo senza produrre nulla. Ne consegue che debbono evidentemente essere mantenuti a spese di coloro che lavorano, proprio come i mendicanti, e sono un puro fardello per la comunità”.

Vi è poi l’alta borghesia, la classe che Marx avrebbe definito come “proprietaria dei mezzi di produzione”, la quale è impegnata in una forsennata e feroce gara, in patria e all’estero, per l’accumulo della ricchezza, con l’unico fine di potersi astrarre dal lavoro, e divenire così improduttivi, come sono da secolo gli aristocratici.

Dopo la massa degli impiegati e dei soldati, ecco i lavoratori manuali, obbligati, e questo diviene il punto focale del ragionamento di Morris, a produrre:

articoli lussuosi e stravaganti la cui domanda è legata all’esistenza delle classi ricche e improduttive, oggetti che chi conduce una vita degna e non corrotta non si sognerebbe neppure di volere”.

Morris sostiene dunque che il gusto della sua epoca per gli oggetti della vita quotidiana – mobilio, tendaggi – appare stravolto, avvelenato dai nefasti meccanismi di sfruttamento economico dell’uomo sull’uomo. Questa adulterazione del gusto si diffonde in ogni parte della società, poiché i poveri producono per uso personale dei manufatti che sono ridicole imitazioni del lusso dei ricchi. Tale deformità nel modo di concepire e di conseguenza guardare alle cose che prodotte proviene dalla disarmonica strutturazione del corpo sociale: una classe oziosa di improduttivi che si fa mantenere da un gran numero di schiavi.

Morris 2 20120917

Quali caratteristiche dovrebbe, invece, possedere il lavoro per donare speranza all’uomo, invece che causargli pena e sofferenza? Dovrebbe garantirgli la speranza del riposo: per quanto possa essere piacevole, esso comporta tuttavia una certa sofferenza animale nel mettere in moto le proprie energie. Il riposo dovrebbe essere abbastanza lungo, più lungo dello stretto necessario al recupero delle forze, e dovrebbe essere libero da preoccupazioni e da ansie.

Vi è poi la speranza del piacere del lavoro in sé: concetto, questo, rivoluzionario al massimo grado; Morris afferma risolutamente che l’uomo che lavora davvero utilizza le energie della mente e dell’animo oltre a quelle del corpo:

“la memoria e l’immaginazione lo aiutano nel lavoro. Non solo i suoi pensieri, ma anche i pensieri degli uomini delle trascorse età guidano le sue mani, egli crea in quanto parte della razza umana”.

La dimensione della creatività viene valutata come componente fondamentale nel dar corpo e significato all’atto del faticare, dare sfogo alle proprie capacità creative potrà dunque, donare quel piacere che sarà una soddisfazione quotidiana, una quotidiana ricompensa, nella società socialista. In una società di questo tipo, non si assisterà più al fenomeno dello spreco, da Morris certamente detestato: ovvero la produzione di sordidi surrogati per la povera gente che non può permettersi merce di buona qualità, e la produzione di oggetti pacchiani di lusso per i ricchi. Nella concezione di Morris, lo spreco è il volto perverso e malato della ricchezza di pochi, il profitto nato da uno stimolo produttivo insensato e privo di vere ragioni che non siano l’avidità.

     2. Le opzioni di fondo – compromesso socialdemocratico, comunismo e anarchia

Eclettico come soltanto certe figure vittoriane seppero essere, simili ai grandi del rinascimento, William Morris non fu soltanto uomo di pensiero, ma fin dalla gioventù seppe coniugare la passione per l’arte (considerata a torto dal grande pubblico) minore, con una mentalità imprenditoriale decisamente controcorrente, sia dal punto di vista estetico che affaristico.

Morris 3 20120917

Nel 1861, all’età di 27 anni, fondò, nelle sue stesse parole, “una specie di ditta per la produzione di oggetti di arredamento”, alla quale si aggiunse col tempo una piccola ma originale casa editrice. La ditta Morris si dimostrò fedele al suo afflato iniziale, ovvero contribuire all’emancipazione economica e sociale dei suoi dipendenti. Gli operai poterono godere di un migliore salario e partecipare attivamente alla fase creativa. Tale volontà non era del tutto sconosciuta in terra d’Inghilterra, nella prima metà del secolo l’industriale Richard Owen aveva fondato dei laboratori dove i lavoratori potevano partecipare ai guadagni relativi ai frutti delle loro fatiche. L’iniziativa di Owen naufragò tristemente perchè i prodotti non incontrarono i gusti del pubblico.

Tornando a Morris, va detto che egli non si illudeva che iniziative come quella da lui portata avanti potessero influenzare la gran parte dell’avida classe imprenditoriale inglese. Lungi dal concedersi ad un paternalismo dickensiano, Morris riponeva le sue speranze in un’avvenire solcato da un cambiamento radicale nella struttura della società. Per questo avversava strenuamente ogni forma di compromesso socialdemocratico.

Morris seppe riconoscere quelle che sarebbero divenute le linee portanti, i binari della dialettica politica inglese per almeno un secolo a venire: una classe operaia poco interessata all’idea di un cambiamento strutturale di regime in senso socialista, ma attenta ad ottenere relativi miglioramenti in seno al luogo di lavoro (migliori salari, più sicurezza) e più garanzie sul piano della cittadinanza (sanità e istruzione pubblica, pensione). Questo compromesso socialdemocratico, inibitore del conflitto fra le diverse classi e portatore di pace sociale, veniva demandato dai lavoratori in primo luogo all’efficiente azione dei sindacati, delle Trade Unions, che seppero orientare fin da subito le politiche del Labour Party.

È cosa nota che una forte percentuale dei delegati del Labour venivano concessi per Statuto ai rappresentanti delle Trade Unions. Il nostro autore non nascose mai il suo dissenso, venato di disprezzo, per quelli che definiva come dei “palliativi”. Egli non era certo così insensibile da mostrarsi disinteressato a dei miglioramenti immediati nelle condizioni di vita delle classi più umili, ma temeva fortemente che queste limitate riforme venissero percepite come l’obiettivo finale. Questo apparente slancio avrebbe, in realtà, lasciati inalterati i rapporti di subordinazione, anzi di schiavitù, esistenti nella rigida società capitalistica inglese:

“Il fatto di dare a moltissimi, o anche pochi, poveri, una vita un po’ meno disagiata, un po’ meno miserabile dell’attuale, non è certo in sé un bene da poco: ma sarebbe un grave male se incidesse negativamente sugl sforzi dell’intera classe lavoratrice per la conquista di una vera società di eguali … quel che mi chiedo è se la terribile organizzazione della società civile commerciale non stia giocando al gatto col topo con noi socialisti; se la società dell’ineguaglianza non stia accettando il marchingegno pseudosocialista e non lo stia adoperando allo scopo di mantenere quella società in una condizione in qualche modo ridimensionata ma sicura”.

manifesto sl 20120917

Il nostro compito, scrisse nell’articolo A che punto siamo?, è quello di formare i socialisti, di creare i presupposti di una coscienza sociale nuova, una coscienza sociale liberata dall’idea stessa di sfruttamento e di dominio. Fare a meno dei padroni. La sua coerenza lo portò in questo senso ad opporsi all’idea di mandare rappresentanti socialisti nel parlamento di Sua Maestà. Così, quando la Social-Democratic Federation, della quale era membro, nonché tesoriere, si espresse in massa per la partecipazione alle contese elettorali, egli favorì una scissione interna alla Federazione, che portò alla creazione della Socialist League, nel 1884. Testimonianza ricca di pungente sarcasmo di questa divisione è la lettera che Engels scrisse a Bernstein, e della quale riportiamo un passaggio:

“I dimissionari erano Aveling, Bax e Morris, i soli uomini onesti fra gli intellettuali, ma anche i tre più inetti, dal punto di vista pratico (due poeti e un filosofo), che per quanto si cerchi sia dato trovare”.

Certo le parole di Engels si debbono attribuire a un diffuso pregiudizio anti-umanista nella sinistra dell’epoca, resta da dimostrare che il tecnicismo positivista abbia saputo raggiungere risultati pratici di rilievo, a giudicare del disastro organizzativo della Russia di Stalin, Kruscev e Breznev ciò non sembra vero.

Non fermarsi fino alla piena realizzazione del socialismo, questa l’aspirazione di Morris, la realizzazione del comunismo. Con questo vocabolo egli intende porre l’accento sul diritto della popolazione ad accedere all’uso dei beni comuni, ovvero le risorse naturali come la terra. Anche sotto questo aspetto possiamo riscontrare la vicinanza del pensiero di Morris al corrente dibattito in seno al filone del pensiero decrescista, Latouche in primis. Tali beni comuni, non devono essere posseduti da singoli individui:

“In caso contrario, i proprietari dei mezzi di produzione saranno necessariamente i padroni di coloro che non possiedono abbastanza da liberarsi dal bisogno di pagare con una parte del proprio lavoro l’uso dei mezzi di produzione medesimi. I padroni o proprietari dei mezzi di produzione possiedono quindi praticamente i lavoratori: molto praticamente perché possono imporgli il genere di vita che devono condurre .. quindi le risorse della natura e la ricchezza usata per la produzione di ulteriore ricchezza, tutto insomma, dovrebbe essere messo in comune.

Quanto ai meccanismi regolatori di questa futura società comunista, Morris si dimostra giustamente restio a fornire indicazioni troppo precise; in lui il desiderio di portare alla partecipazione diretta le masse popolari è così forte e convinto da non lasciar spazio a rigide direttive. Si può solo prevedere come quella società non sarà.

Non verrà abolita qualsiasi forma di autorità, con buona pace dell’ala anarchica più intransigente. L’esercizio di una qualche autorità è pur necessario, ma d’altra parte, i vincoli della futura società comunista saranno volontari. Una volta stabilite alcune grandi linee di principio, si lascerà grande spazio alla:

“varietà di temperamenti, capacità e desideri che esiste fra gli uomini in tutto ciò che non rientra nella sfera delle prime necessità”.


     3. Alcune considerazioni finali

William Morris scrisse un romanzo utopico, News from nowhere, tradotto nella nostra lingua col titolo Notizie da nessun luogo, col preciso intento di raffigurare la società delle donne e degli uomini liberi. S’immagina che il narratore, un uomo di fine ‘800 nel quale è facile individuare un alter-ego dell’autore, venga trasportato magicamente in un futuro distante un centinaio d’anni, in un’Inghilterra liberata, grazie ad un’aspra guerra civile, dal dominio del capitale, un paese dove il benessere e la serenità sono condivisi dall’intera popolazione.

Morris 1 20120917

Va detto che la critica non considera il romanzo fra le vette più alte raggiunte da Morris in campo letterario, forse a causa di una raffigurazione fin troppo idilliaca e manichea di un tempo dove la felicità regna sovrana, tanto da far somigliare l’esistenza ad un “amoroso picnic”.

Ciò non sminuisce la cristallina volontà di pervenire ad una sostanziale rivoluzione, in grado di liberare l’essere umano da ceppi che sono prima di tutto di tipo culturale e psicologico. Morris non si tirò mai indietro, e nonostante le facili ironie engelsiane, seppe partecipare a cruente manifestazione di piazza, pur di accrescere il livello di protesta sociale. In particolare, è nota la sua partecipazione ad una delle tante Bloody Sunday, le domeniche di sangue, di cui è costellata la storia britannica.

In Londra in stato d’assedio, che come gli altri scritti finora citati fa parte della raccolta di articoli intitolata Come potremmo vivere, Morris ci racconta dei fatti del 13 novembre 1887, quando il governo tory-liberale, s’ispirò all’amorevole insegnamento di Bismarck per attaccare i disoccupati che avevano occupato Trafalgar Square.

La sua capacità d’immaginare un futuro e una società diversa ce lo restituisce come un fratello che solo l’ottusità e la parzialità di molto marxismo ci avevano tenuto nascosto, un obiettore di coscienza decrescista ante litteram. Valgano per William Morris le parole di Michail Bakunin:

È ricercando l’impossibile che l’uomo ha sempre realizzato il possibile. Coloro che si sono saggiamente limitati a ciò che appariva loro come possibile, non hanno mai avanzato di un solo passo”.


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vendredi, 21 septembre 2012

Problématique et prospective géopolitiques de la question pakistanaise

 

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Andrea Jacopo SALA:

Problématique et prospective géopolitiques de la question pakistanaise

 

Ce sont les événements qui ont immédiatement suivi la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale qui constituent le point de départ à analyser pour comprendre les tensions qui ont affecté la zone la plus méridionale du continent asiatique. La fin des empires coloniaux et la volonté d’émancipation des nations émergentes ont entraîné un partage nouveau des territoires, tenant compte des réalités culturelles qui, auparavant, avaient cohabité sous une hégémonie étrangère unique, britannique en l’occurrence. On ne peut nullement se référer au découpage arbitraire que les puissances dominantes et coloniales ont imposé car elles sont une des causes premières des tensions qui ont ensanglanté ces pays, lesquels, aujourd’hui encore, présentent des cicatrices difficilement guérissables. Ces cicatrices, béantes, sont autant de bonnes opportunités pour tous ceux qui veulent s’immiscer dans les querelles intérieures et dans les contentieux diplomatiques qui affectent ces pays du Sud et du Sud-est de l’Asie, comme si les castes dirigeantes de l’Occident avaient la nostalgie du statut colonial d’antan, que ces jeunes nations ont rejeté; ces castes préfèrent encore et toujours contrôler ces pays indirectement, au bénéfice de leurs prorpes intérêts, plutôt que de prendre acte, sereinement, des maturations et des changements qui se sont effectués au fil du temps.

 

Il faut donc esquisser un bref panorama historique des événements les plus marquants qui ont accompagné la désagrégation de l’ancien “Raj” britannique, ainsi que de leurs conséquences directes, puis il faut passer au tamis toutes les problématiques liées au terrorisme, car ce terrorisme est un des moyens les plus utilisés pour intervenir dans et contre les choix politiques posés par les anciennes colonies britanniques, aussi pour s’immiscer dans les potentialités émergentes germant dans ces pays mêmes et pour freiner ou ralentir les nouvelles perspectives géopolitiques qui se révèlent réalisables depuis quelques temps.

 

Après le “Raj” britannique

 

Le “Raj” britannique des Indes (au pluriel!), on le sait, a été subdivisé en deux pays, le Pakistan et l’Inde, en 1947. C’était l’aboutissement de cette longue lutte indienne pour l’indépendance qui s’était radicalisée dans les années 20 et 30 du 20ième siècle, lutte dont les vicissitudes sont bien connues du public occidental grâce à la fascination qu’avait exercée sur bien des esprits la forte personnalité politique et spirituelle que fut Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Parallèlement au Parti du Congrès National Indien (PCNI), dont le “Mahatma” (Gandhi) était le membre le plus influent, existait aussi le Parti de la Ligue Musulmane (PLM), dirigé par Mohammed Ali Jinnah, tout aussi âpre dans sa lutte contre le colonialisme britannique. Dans une première phase de la lutte pour l’indépendance indienne, le PLM était allié au PCNI puisqu’ils avaient des objectifs communs. Mais, dès que les Britanniques promirent de résoudre la question indienne en renonçant à toutes prérogatives coloniales dans la région, les rapports entre le leader musulman et Gandhi se sont détériorés: tandis que le “Mahatma”, inspiré par les thèses théosophiques, rêvait d’une seule et unique nation indienne où coexisteraient pacifiquement plusieurs religions, Mohammed Ali Jinnah revendiquait l’instauration d’un Etat exclusivement islamique. La résolution du problème fut confiée à Lord Mountbatten qui a accepté la requête des Musulmans et a, par voie de conséquence, partagé le territoire du “Raj” britannique entre les dominions du Pakistan et de l’Inde.

 

Le plan Mountbatten contenait toutefois beaucoup d’approximations et de concessions arbitraires (et parfois inutiles), si bien qu’on ne pouvait guère le faire appliquer tout en voulant maintenir la paix: la zone d’influence du Pakistan était divisée fort maladroitement en un Pakistan occidental et un Pakistan oriental, séparé l’un de l’autre par un immense territoire sous juridiction indienne; de nombreux territoires, comme le Cachemire, n’avaient été attribués officiellement à aucun des deux nouveaux Etats souverains; malgré la volonté affichée d’attribuer aux uns et aux autres des territoires sur base de critères religieux et culturels, la partition laissait des zones à majorité hindoue au Pakistan et des zones à majorité musulmane au nouveau “dominion” de l’Inde.

 

 

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A cette situation délicate s’ajoutaient les prétentions chinoises sur quelques territoires de l’ancien “Raj” britannique. Le tout a enflammé la région pendant la seconde partie du 20ème siècle, aux dépens des populations. Pas moins de quatre guerres ont sévi et, suite à l’une d’elles, la zone baptisée par Lord Mountbatten “Pakistan oriental” est devenue indépendante, avec l’aide des Indiens, pour devenir l’actuel Bengladesh; la région du Cachemire a été divisée selon les lignes des fronts où s’étaient successivement affrontés Pakistanais, Indiens et Chinois. Il ne faut pas oublier non plus les nombreuses migrations qui ont suivi la partition, où les Hindous quittaient en masse les territoires sous juridiction pakistanaise-musulmane et où les Musulmans quittaient les zone attribuées à la nouvelle Inde indépendante, majoritairement hindoue. Ces transferts de population ont eu des effets fortement déstabilisants pour les équilibres internes des deux nouveaux Etats. Entretemps, alors que l’Inde optait pour la voie de la modernisation sous l’impulsion du gouvernement de Nehru, le Pakistan fut secoué par une série de coups d’Etat militaires, renversant à intervalles réguliers les régimes démocratiques.

 

Terrorisme et guerre au terrorisme

 

Après avoir déployé une politique fièrement hostile aux Etats-Unis sous la houlette de Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, qui a ouvert le Pakistan aux technologies nucléaires, le pays tombe ensuite sous une nouvelle dictature militaire, dirigée par le Général Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq et fortement inspirée par le fondamentalisme musulman. La période de la dictature de Zia-ul-Haq fut celle d’une collaboration étroite avec les bandes anti-soviétiques actives dans le conflit afghan; ensuite, l’amitié entre Zia-ul-Haq et le chef d’une faction insurrectionnelle afghane, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar —appuyée par un financement d’au moins 600 millions de dollars en provenance des circuits de la CIA et transitant par le Pakistan— favorisait un soutien direct à la puissante guérilla intégriste qui luttait contre les Soviétiques (1).

 

L’existence même d’Al-Qaeda est issue de ce contexte conflictuel entre, d’une part, le gouvernement légal afghan, soutenu par l’Union Soviétique, et, d’autre part, l’insurrection des “moudjahiddins”. D’après l’ancien ministre britannique des affaires étrangères, Robert Cook, Al-Qaeda serait la traduction en arabe de “data-base”. Et ce même Cook affirmait dans un entretien accordé à “The Guardian”: “Pour autant que je le sache, Al-Qaeda était, à l’origine, le nom d’une ‘data-base’ (base de données) du gouvernement américain, contenant les noms des milliers de moudjahiddins enrôlés par la CIA pour combattre les Soviétiques en Afghanistan” (2). Ce que confirme par ailleurs Saad al-Fagih, chef du “Movement for Islamic Reform” en Arabie Saoudite: Ben Laden s’est bel et bien engagé, au départ, pour s’opposer à la présence soviétique en Afghanistan (3). Si cet appui initial des Américains à de telles organisations (qui seraient ensuite partiellement passées dans les rangs du terrorisme anti-occidental) explique les raisons stratégiques qui ont forcé les Etats-Unis à se rapprocher des organisations fondamentalistes islamiques, celles-ci, dès qu’elles ne fournissent plus aucun avantage stratégique et ne servent plus les intérêts géopolitiques immédiats de Washington, deviennent automatiquement “ennemies” et sont donc combattues en tant que telles.

 

Dans cette logique, on peut s’expliquer la ruine actuelle du Pakistan, sombrant dans le chaos sous le regard des Américains. Après la chute du régime de Zia-ul-Haq et pendant toute la durée du régime de Pervez Mucharraf, le gouvernement du Pakistan a été continuellement accusé de soutenir les talibans (4), surtout depuis l’opération, parachevée avec succès, visant l’arrestation du troisième personnage dans la hiérarchie d’Al-Qaeda, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad. Dans un tel contexte (et un tel imbroglio!), le ministre indien des affaires étrangères n’a pas hésité à déclarer “que le Pakistan a échoué dans ses projets d’éradiquer le terrorisme qui puise ses racines sur son prorpe territoire”: c’était immédiatmeent après les attentats de Mumbai (Bombay) (5). Ce bref rapprochement entre l’Inde et les Etats-Unis, prévisible et dirigé contre le Pakistan, ne devrait pourtant pas mener à une éventuelle intervention occidentale dans la zone du Cachemire, vu que tous les Etats impliqués dans cette zone se sont toujours montrés très rétifs à des interventions extérieures, même si de telles interventions pouvaient faire pencher la balance dans le sens de leurs propres intérêts géopolitiques. Il me paraît inutile, ici, d’évoquer la prétendue exécution du terroriste Osama Ben Laden, justement sur le territoire du Pakistan lui-même.

 

Mais pourquoi les relations américano-pakistanaises se sont-elles détériorées à ce point, et de manière assez inattendue?

 

Le tracé des gazoducs

 

La Pakistan est devenu membre observateur de l’OCS (Organisation de Coopération de Shanghai) en 2005, ce qui constitue déjà un motif d’inquiétude pour les pays inféodés à l’OTAN. Cependant, ce qui constitue probablement la cause principale de la mobilisation des énergies et des médias pour discréditer la République Islamique du Pakistan est la proposition des Iraniens, séduisante pour les Pakistanais, de construire un gazoduc qui reliera les deux pays et dont Islamabad a prévu la parachèvement pour 2014. Le projet initial aurait dû également impliquer l’Inde, dans la mesure où un terminal du gazoduc y aurait abouti, mais les pressions américaines ont empêché l’adhésion de l’Inde au projet suggéré par l’Iran.

 

 

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Le projet déplait à l’évidence aux Etats-Unis non seulement parce qu’il renforce les relations entre deux pays islamiques mais aussi et surtout parce que le nouveau choix du Pakistan est diamètralement contraire aux plans prévus pour un autre gazoduc, le gazoduc dit “TAPI”, qui devrait partir du Turkménistan et passer par l’Afghanistan et le Pakistan pour aboutir en Inde, tout en étant étroitement contrôlé par des investisseurs américains.

 

Dans ce jeu, la région du Beloutchistan joue un rôle de premier plan, région habitée majoritairement par une ethnie très apparentée aux Pachtouns. Les Pachtouns sont un peuple originaire de régions aujourd’hui afghanes et se sont rendus tristement célèbres pour leurs violences et pour leurs velléités indépendantistes (tant en Iran qu’au Pakistan), sans oublier leurs trafics d’opium et d’héroïne qui posent quantité de problèmes au gouvernement pakistanais.

 

Les jeux stratégiques demeurent toutefois peu clairs et peu définis jusqu’à présent, si bien qu’il me paraît difficile de se prononcer d’une manière définitive sur les problèmes de la région. Le Pakistan reçoit encore et toujours un soutien financier de la part des Etats-Unis, en provenance directe du Pentagone; officiellement, cet argent sert à lutter contre le terrorisme mais, forcément, on peut très bien imaginer qu’il s’agit surtout de convaincre Islamabad de refuser l’offre iranienne.

 

Andrea Jacopo SALA,

Article paru sur le site italien http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/ en date du 6 août 2012.

 

Notes:

 

(1)   http://it.wikipedia.org/ Entrée sur Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

(2)   http://www.guardian.co.uk/ , 8 juillet 2005

(3)   http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/al-fagih.html/

(4)   http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/3231/

(5)   http://www.repubblica.it/2008/11/sezioni/esteri/india-attentato-3/dimissioni-capo-provincia/dimissioni-capo-provincia.html/

 

Pussy Riot – Secret History

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Pussy Riot – Secret History

by Israel Shamir


Universally admired, Pussy Riot (or PR for short) have been promoted as superstars. But what are they? A rock or punk group they are not. A British journalist marvelled: they produce no music, no song, no painting, nada, rien, nothing. How can they be described as “artists”? This was a severe test for their supporters, but they passed it with flying honours: that famous lover-of-art, the US State Department, paid for their first ever single being produced by The Guardian out of some images and sounds.We are able to stomach obscenity and blasphemy; I am a great admirer of Notre Dame de Fleurs by Jean Genet, who combined both. However, the PR never wrote, composed or painted anything of value at all. Chris Randolph defended them in Counterpunch by comparing them with “the controversial Yegor Letov”. What a misleading comparison! Letov wrote poetry, full of obscenity but it still was poetry, while the PR have nothing but Public Relations.

Hell-bent on publicity, but artistically challenged, three young women from Russia decided – well, it sounds like a limerick. They stole a frozen chicken from a supermarket and used it as dildo; they filmed the act, called it “art” and placed it on the web. (It is still there) Their other artistic achievements were an orgy in a museum and a crude presentation of an erect prick.

Even in these dubious pieces of art their role was that of technical staff: the glory went to a Russian-Israeli artist Plucer-Sarno of Mevasseret Zion, who claimed the idea, design and copyright for himself and collected a major Russian prize. The future PR members got nothing and were described by Plucer as “ambitious provincials on the make”, or worse.

Lately they have tried to ride on a bandwagon of political struggle. That was another flop. They poured a flood of obscene words on Putin – in Red Square, in subway (underground) stations – with zero effect. They weren’t arrested, they weren’t fined, just chased away as a nuisance. And they did not attract the attention of people. It is important to remember that Putin is an avowed enemy of Russian oligarchs, owners of the major bulk of Russian media and providers of the Moscow literati, so they print on a daily basis so much anti-Putin invective, that it’s lost its shock value. You can’t invent a new diatribe against Putin – it has been already said and published. And Putin practically never interferes with the freedom of the press.

My foreign journalist friends are usually amazed by the unanimity and ferocity of the anti-Putin campaign in Russian media. It can be compared with the attacks on G W Bush in the liberal papers in the US, but in the US, there are many conservative papers that supported Bush. Putin has practically no support in the mainstream media, all of it owned by media barons. A valuable exception is TV, but it is expressly apolitical and provides mainly low-brow entertainment, also presented by anti-Putin activists like Mlle Xenia Sobtchak. So PR failed profoundly to wake up the beast.

Eventually the young viragos were mobilised for an attack on the Church. By that time they were willing to do anything for their bit of publicity. And the anti-Church campaign started a few months ago, quite suddenly as if by command. The Russian Church had 20 years of peace, recovering after the Communist period, and it was surprised by ferocity of the attack.

Though this subject calls for longer exposition, let us be brief. After the collapse of the USSR, the Church remained the only important spiritual pro-solidarity force in Russian life. The Yeltsin and Putin administrations were as materialist as the communists; they preached and practiced social Darwinism of neo-Liberal kind. The Church offered something beside the elusive riches on earth. Russians who lost the glue of solidarity previously provided by Communists eagerly flocked to the alternative provided by the Church.

The government and the oligarchs treated the Church well, as the Church had a strong anti-Communist tendency, and the haves were still afraid of the Reds leading the have-nots. The Church flourished, many beautiful cathedrals were rebuilt, many monasteries came back after decades of decay. The newly empowered church became a cohesive force in Russia.

As it became strong, the Church began to speak for the poor and dispossessed; the reformed Communists led by the Church-going Gennadi Zuganov, discovered a way to speak to the believers. A well-known economist and thinker, Michael Khazin, predicted that the future belongs to a new paradigm of Red Christianity, something along the lines of Roger Garaudy’s early thought. The Red Christian project is a threat to the elites and a hope for the world, he wrote. Besides, the Russian church took a very Russian and anti-globalist position.

This probably hastened the attack, but it was just a question of time when the global anti-Christian forces would step forward and attack the Russian Church like they attacked the Western Church. As Russia entered the WTO and adopted Western mores, it had to adopt secularization. And indeed the Russian Church was attacked by forces that do not want Russia to be cohesive: the oligarchs, big business, the media lords, the pro-Western intelligentsia of Moscow, and Western interests which naturally prefer Russia divided against itself.

This offensive against the Church began with some minor issues: the media was all agog about Patriarch’s expensive watch, a present from the then President Medvedev. Anti-religious fervour was high among liberal opposition that demonstrated against Putin before the elections and needed a new horse to flog. A leading anti-Putin activist Viktor Shenderovich said he would understand if the Russian Orthodox priests were slain like they were in 1920s. Yet another visible figure among the liberal protesters, Igor Eidman, exclaimed,“exterminate the vermin”- the Russian Church – in the rudest biological terms.

The alleged organiser of the PR, Marat Gelman, a Russian Jewish art collector, has been connected with previous anti-Christian art actions which involved icon-smashing, imitation churches of enemas. His – and PR’s problem was that it was difficult to provoke reaction of the Church. PR made two attempts to provoke public indignation in the second cathedral of Moscow, the older Elochovsky Cathedral; both times they were expelled but not arrested. The third time, they tried harder; they went to St Savior Cathedral that was demolished by Lazar Kaganovich in 1930s and rebuilt in 1990s; they added more blasphemy of the most obscene kind, and still they were allowed to leave in peace. Police tried their best to avoid arresting the viragos, but they had no choice after PR uploaded a video of their appearance in the cathedrals with an obscene soundtrack.

During the trial, the defence and the accused did their worst to antagonize the judge by threatening her with the wrath of the United States (sic!) and by defiantly voicing anti-Christian hate speeches. The judge had no choice but to find the accused guilty of hate crime (hooliganism with religious hate as the motive). The prosecution did not charge the accused with a more serious hate crime “with intent to cause religious strife”, though it could probably be made to stick. (It would call for a stiffer sentence; swastika-drawers charged with intent to cause strife receive five years of jail).

Two years’ sentence is quite in line with prevailing European practice. For much milder anti-Jewish hate talk, European countries customarily sentence offenders to two-to-five years of prison for the first offence. The Russians applied hate crime laws to offenders against Christian faith, and this is probably a Russian novelty. The Russians proved that they care for Christ as much as the French care for Auschwitz, and this shocked the Europeans who apparently thought ‘hate laws’ may be applied only to protect Jews and gays. The Western governments call for more freedom for the anti-Christian Russians, while denying it for holocaust revisionists in their midst.

The anti-Putin opposition flocked to support PR. A radical charismatic opposition leader,  poet  wrote that the opposition made a mistake supporting PR, as they antagonize the masses; the chasm between the masses and the opposition grows. But his voice was crying in the wilderness, and the rest of the opposition happily embraced the PR cause, trying to turn it into a weapon against Putin. The Western media and governments also used it to attack Putin. A Guardian editorial called on Putin to resign. Putin called for clemency for PR, and the government was embarrassed by the affair. But they were left with no choice: the invisible organizers behind PR wanted to have the viragos in jail, and so they did.

Commercially, they hit jackpot. With support of Madonna and the State Department, they are likely to leave jail ready for a world tour and photo ops at the White House. They registered their name as a trade mark and began to issue franchises. And their competitors, the Femen group (whose art is showing off their boobs in unusual places) tried to beat PR by chopping down a large wooden cross installed in memory of Stalin’s victims. Now the sky is the limit.

In August, vacation season, when there is not much hard news and newspaper readers are at the seashore or countryside, the PR trial provided much needed entertainment for man and beast. Hopefully it will drop from the agenda with the end of the silly season, but do not bet on it.

Israel Shamir reports from Moscow, his email is adam@israelshamir.net

An interview with Daniele Scalea

An interview with Daniele Scalea
 
 

An interview with Daniele Scalea, scientific secretary of the Italian Institute of Geopolitics (IsAG), co-editor-in-chief of the Italian journal Geopolitica.

GRA : Western media confidently say that the fall of the current Syrian regime is inevitable. In your opinion, how well founded this prediction is, and is there some political power that can bring order to this situation?

D.S.: I think that the Syrian regime has so far shown a stunning solidity. There was a period in which Syrian army lost a substantial part of national territory, but it has managed to reconquer it; there was then a surprise attack to Damascus (similar to the surprise attack against Tripoli which toppled Gaddafi), but the government has regained control of the city; there were some important defections among the power establishment, but the latter remain so far close and gathered around Bashar al-Assad. So, I don't think that a violent overthrow of Syrian government is imminent nor probable, except for the case of a foreign invasion.

Thus who can bring order to this situation is a NATO-led invasion (which would obviously create an order favorable to US hegemony, which could also be a "disorder", i.e. a sectarian division of Syria) or a peaceful negotiated agreement between involved great powers, which would put an end to foreign interference that is feeding the civil war in Syria.

GRA: How likely is a forceful U.S. intervention in the Syrian conflict and attempt to violently overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad (or the U.S. will keep a distance and will not dare to risk)? Under circumstances of such a possibility, what consequences it will bring to America itself?

D.S.: I hold really unlikely a direct armed intervention of US in the Syrian conflict, i.e. an intervention further that the arming of rebels (which is probably already underway). New US strategy provide for the use of proxy countries in war - especially in the Near East, since US focus is shifting towards Far East - with at most a limited direct contribution. Lybian war is the model: France, UK, Italy and Qatar were in the frontline, while US remained on the second row. In the Syrian case proxy roles is assumed by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It is so more probable an intervention by those countries. But I believe it is unlikely too. In fact, such an action would risk to bring in the conflict also Iran, and then US would be obliged to intervene in first person. That is a dream scenario for Israel, and also for a part of US establishment, but I guess that the main part of Washington rulers - and especially Obama and his entourage - want to avoid it.

GRA: How do you assess Russia's position in this issue? Is Russia able to compromise, yielding to the wiles of the West (for example, the proposal of Hillary Clinton to establish demilitarized zone), despite the fact, that Russia has already received a very difficult experience in the situation in Libya?

D.S.: Russian position has been very balanced and sane: Moscow condemns violence on both sides, works for a negotiated and peaceful solution of the crisis, and doesn't appear willing to surrender to NATO one more time, as was in Lybian case last year. A big problem would emerge in the event - for me very unlikely but not impossible - of a NATO-led or NATO-inspired foreign armed intervention in Syria. What would be Russian response? She would be ready to react? And also if morally ready, she would have the capacity for a strong power projection in the Near East? Or, as in 2003 with the US invasion of Iraq despite Russian opposition, would might make right?

GRA : How, in your opinion, will deploy the situation after the overthrow of Bashar Assad? According to the information, disseminated through the media, there are already dozens of catastrophic scenarios.

D.S.: A forced overthrow of Bashar al-Assad would very probably entail a period of futher domestic turmoil or a foreign occupation of Syria. Subject should change if al-Assad resign in the frame of a negotiated peaceful solution of the crisis.

GRA : One possible scenario is the territorial division of Syria into three parts. Chagry Erhan, Director of the Center of Strategic Research of the European peoples, believes that the Baath regime, that is being removed from power, will try to create a new state on the basis of belonging to a madhhab through Latakia-Tartus, what can lead to a decision of destruction or assimilation of the Sunni population. In addition, such a step (creation of a new state) can undertake also Kurds. And here raises a difficult question - how to prevent the partition of the country? Erhan believes that once the government will intervene in the process by violent means, this will lead to more bloodshed. How likely do you think, this scenario is?

D.S.: I don't hold likely the very creation of a new Alawi state in Syria, whereas is probable that a violent overthrow of the current regime could create a situation of civilian and sectarian war in the country. Resistance by Syrian government and armed forces have created an ideal scenario for a negotiated solution of the crisis. Negotiation should be bring domestically, between Baathist rulers and mainly Islamist opponents, and internationally between US and Russia, Turkey-Egypt-GCC and Iran.

 

 

 

Parada militar 2011 Chile [5 de 10]

Parada militar 2011 Chile [5 de 10]

 

Russia e Ucraina verso l’Unione doganale

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Russia e Ucraina verso l’Unione doganale

L’idea del capo del Cremlino di creare un’unione eurasiatica con gli ex Stati dell’Urss coinvolge anche Kiev. Gli eurocrati criticano Yanukovych

Andrea Perrone

Ex: http://rinascita.eu/


La Russia spera che la pressioni sull’Ucraina messe in atto dall’Unione europea spingano Kiev tra le sue braccia. Per questo il Cremlino sta facendo pressione sul governo di Kiev, affinché sottoscriva con la Russia un’Unione doganale, tale da rappresentare un’alternativa all’integrazione nell’Ue. I leader europei hanno avvertito l’Ucraina e in particolare il suo presidente, il filorusso Viktor Yanukovych (nella foto), proprio nel fine settimana, che Kiev rischia di non conseguire l’obiettivo di una maggiore partnership con l’Unione europea, fin quando l’ex primo ministro Yulia Tymoshenko resta in carcere. Per tutta risposta Yanukovych, parlando ad un forum a Yalta (Crimea), ha ribadito che l’Ucraina è determinata a proseguire in una maggiore integrazione con l’Europa, ma gli è stato risposto molto chiaramente e senza mezzi termini che la porta dell’Ue è chiusa fino a quando non saranno attuate le riforme nel Paese. Le causa principale di questa opposizione da parte dei leader europei è costituita dalla detenzione della Tymoshenko, che è stato condannata a sette anni per abuso di potere nei negoziati sul gas con la Russia. Tutto questo a causa di uno status giuridico che gli Stati europei affermano debba venire meno. Ma in molti sottolineano che Yanukovych ha preso la decisione di mettere in carcere la sua rivale politica per le numerose e gravi accuse che le vengono addebitate. In più, le autorità ucraine hanno affermato di essere pronte a muovere nuove accuse ai danni della Tymoshenko e per questo propongono un secondo processo contro la rappresentante dell’Occidente euro-atlantico ed ex “golpista arancione” per i suoi numerosi reati. La questione ha naturalmente allarmato i Soloni europei. “Non ha idea di quanto questo caso abbia danneggiato l’immagine dell’Ucraina in Europa”, ha sottolineato il deputato portoghese Mario David, ai ministri ucraini. “Se non avremo valori comuni, allora si può dimenticare l’Accordo di associazione”, ha proseguito il politico lusitano. È necessario ricordare che nei mesi scorsi l’Ucraina e l’Ue hanno sottoscritto un documento che apre la strada a Kiev a stringere una partnership via via sempre più stretta con l’Unione europea, ma l’Ue ha messo in chiaro che l’intesa non sarà ratificata fin quando rimarrà in vigore a Kiev il clima politico attuale. Nonostante le posizioni espresse dagli eurocrati, Yanukovych non si è fatto intimorire affatto e ha annunciato che il suo Paese è deciso a favorire una maggiore integrazione, ma ora che l’Unione europea sta facendo pressioni su Kiev affinché cambi la politica interna, espresse dai tecnocrati di Bruxelles e Strasburgo, stanno spingendo l’Ucraina tra le braccia della Russia, grazie alle proposte di quest’ultima per portare sempre più Kiev nella sua orbita. I funzionari russi, a Yalta nel fine settimana per partecipare al Forum, hanno sollecitato i leader di Kiev a prendere parte alla formazione dell’Unione doganale tra Russia, Bielorussia e Kazakistan. Alexei Kostin, responsabile russo della VTB Bank e vicino al presidente Vladimir Putin, ha detto che la Russia non imporrebbe alcuna precondizione all’Ucraina. Per quanto riguarda l’Unione europea ciò che rovina le relazioni tra Kiev e Bruxelles è la detenzione della Tymoshenko, ma indubbiamente anche le posizioni filo-russe espresse da Yanukovych che certamente all’Occidente euro-atlantico non sono affatto gradite. Dal canto suo Carl Bildt, ministro degli Esteri svedese, ha dichiarato al quotidiano britannico The Independent che, nel corso di un incontro con Yanukovych, ha spiegato al presidente ucraino che l’Unione europea vuole vedere elezioni libere e corrette prima che l’accordo di adesione all’Ue venga ratificato. “La questione riguardante Yulia è in realtà soltanto la punta dell’iceberg e vi è grande preoccupazione riguardo allo Stato di diritto e alla politicizzazione dei tribunali”, ha commentato il capo della diplomazia di Stoccolma, sottolineando le critiche degli eurocrati all’indirizzo dell’Ucraina, che preferiscono sia sotto il controllo di Washington e Bruxelles, piuttosto che di Mosca. Adesso tutto è rimandato alle elezioni parlamentari previste per il mese prossimo, quando capo dello Stato e leader del Partito delle Regioni Yanukovych, si scontrerà con il partito BYuT della Tymoshenko e con diversi partiti di opposizione minori. Yanukovych dal canto suo ha ricordato che gli osservatori europei sono stati invitati a controllare lo svolgimento del voto, insistendo sul fatto che le elezioni saranno libere ed eque. Ma gli analisti, i media embedded e il mondo euro-atlantico hanno espresso il loro disaccordo, anche per la situazione che vive la fedelissima degli Stati Uniti e del mondo atlantico, Yulia Tymoshenko ancora in carcere per le accuse mosse contro di lei, tra cui un presunto omicidio di un avversario politico, che evidenziano i numerosi reati e il ruolo negativo da lei giocato nella politica ucraina dalla “rivoluzione arancione” (2004) in poi.


18 Settembre 2012 - http://rinascita.eu/index.php?action=news&id=16779

jeudi, 20 septembre 2012

Allemagne/Russie: alliance eurasiatique!

 

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Giacomo GABELLINI:

Allemagne/Russie: alliance eurasiatique!

 

La rigidité, qui caractérise les rapports que Berlin vient d’instaurer avec l’Europe (suite à la crise grecque), ne correspond nullement au dynamisme dont l’Allemagne fait preuve en se rapprochant de la Chine, de la Russie et de l’Inde, trois Etats qui forment les principaux piliers de soutien de l’ensemble désormais dénommé BRICS. La visite d’Angela Merkel à la Nouvelle Delhi en mai 2011 est venue sceller la collaboration avec l’Inde, surtout dans le domaine de la haute technologie. Les échanges entre l’Allemagne et la Chine en 2011 s’élevaient, en chiffres, à 144 milliards de dollars et seront sans nul doute doublés d’ici 2015, année où on les estime d’ores et déjà à quelque 280 milliards. Ces chiffres permettront à l’Allemagne de se hisser sur le podium des principaux pays exportateurs de biens et de services vers la Chine et de dépasser les Etats-Unis. Berlin resserrera ispso facto ses rapports stratégiques avec la Chine. En avril 2012, le premier ministre chinois Wen Jibao s’est rendu à Wolfsburg, la ville-mère de l’entreprise automobile Volkswagen, dans le but de sceller un accord visant à installer une nouvelle usine Volkswagen dans la région du Xinjiang (le “Turkestan” chinois). Les autorités chinoises prévoient, par cet accord, de diminuer le taux élevé de chômage dans cette province, qui a contribué, dans un premier temps, à alimenter les sentiments centriguges de la population indigène.

 

Cette intensification des rapports avec la Chine constitue la part intégrante et principale d’un processus qui vise le repositionnement de l’économie allemande en direction des marchés émergeants. Selon un rapport établi par l’“European Council on Foreign Relations”, “l’Allemagne tend désormais à se considérer comme une force crédible dans un monde multipolaire, ce qui alimente son ambition de devenir ‘globale’ en tablant sur ses propres forces” (1).

 

Cet accroissement important des échanges germano-chinois est toutefois dû au rôle joué par la Russie, à laquelle l’Allemagne est liée par le biais d’une alliance stratégique et énergétique de tout premier ordre. Outre la mise en oeuvre du gazoduc “Nord Stream” —qui permet au méthane russe de s’acheminer vers le terminal allemand de Greifswald et d’alimenter ainsi la croissance économique allemande— et la présence de 6000 entreprises allemandes sur le territoire russe, il faut compter le projet d’aménager une ligne ferroviaire moderne capable de transporter 400.000 tonnes de marchandises de la Chine à l’Allemagne, grâce à un accord conclu entre les chemins de fer allemands (Deutsche Bundesbahn) et leurs homologues russes (Rossiyskie Zheleznye Dorogi). Il s’agit là d’une réalisation économique d’importance fondamentale qui garantira des perspectives stratégiques de premier plan. Le but ultime de cet accord se perçoit dans l’émergence d’une nouvelle société mixte, l’“Eurasia Rail Logistics”, par laquelle les chemins de fer allemands sont appelés à s’occuper de la modernisation des lignes russes en fournissant les services d’ingénierie technique —subsidiés par des entreprises comme “Simens”— afin de remplacer des milliers de kilomètres de vielles voies binaires par des parcours de haute vitesse. Cette modernisation concerne surtout le “Transsibérien” —le “pont eurasiatique” par antonomase— dont on doit la construction, commencée en 1890 et terminée en 1916, à la volonté de ce grand premier ministre russe que fut Sergueï Witte, qui voulait relier par fer tous les points de l’immense espace couvert par l’Empire russe. Le “Transsibérien”, dont le trajet dépasse les 9000 km, demeure la plus longue voie ferrée du monde. Il relie le port russe de Vladivostok à Moscou. Le tracé qui reliera Moscou au port hollandais de Rotterdam allongera le trajet Pacifique/Atlantique de quelque 3000 km. Il sera construit ultérieurement. Les problèmes de manutention et la vitesse maximale réduite constituent les deux facteurs qui avaient, jusqu’ici, limité considérablement les potentialités de ce formidable corridor eurasiatique. L’intervention de la Deutsche Bundesbahn renverse la situation. La modernisation des structures du Transsibérien par les chemins de fer allemands a permis, en janvier 2008, de transporter par voie ferrée des marchandises par le “Beijing-Hamburg Container Express”, connecté au Transsibérien au point de jonction russe d’Oulan Oudé. Ces marchandises sont arrivées à destination en l’espace de quinze jours alors que le transport par mer demande le double de temps au minimum. Cet “exprès” a parcouru plus de 10.000 km, en passant par la Mongolie, la Russie, la Biélorussie et la Pologne.

 

 

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De cette façon, la Russie aura la possibilité de moderniser ses propres voies de communication stratégiques, en apprenant des Allemands comment construire des chemins de fer à haute vitesse et à géer le trafic par ordinateurs. Ils revendront ensuite cette technologie allemande à des pays asiatiques comme l’Iran et l’Inde. L’Allemagne a ainsi obtenu l’accès direct à la Chine, à travers l’immense territoire russe. La Deutsche Bundesbahn, grâce à cette formidable projection vers l’Est, pourra diffuser dans toute l’Eurasie les critères stabilisés par l’UE et consignés dans le “Trans-European Transport Network” (TEN), un projet visant à favoriser les trafics en provenance d’Europe et en direction de l’Extrême-Orient et, à l’inverse, à transporter des matières premières vers les industries européennes. Le projet TEN, pour lequel on prévoit des crédits de 400 milliards d’euro, n’envisage pas seulement de construire des voies de chemin de fer mais aussi de faciliter la construction de routes et d’autres “corridors transcontinentaux”. L’Allemagne cherche donc à se redonner du “Lebensraum”, de l’“espace vital”, en reprenant sa politique traditionnelle de “Drang nach Osten” (de “poussée vers l’Est”) et, par la même occasion, en créant une série de corridors stratégiques qui partent de l’Ouest vers l’Est. Le concept d’“espace vital” avait été élaboré par le géopolitologue allemand Karl Ernst Haushofer, bien avant qu’il ne fut exploité et détourné de son sens par les Nazis). Il suffit de jeter un coup d’oeil sur une carte géographique pour constater que la “poussée vers l’Est” est la voie traditionnelle de l’expansion allemande. Seul l’Est est capable de rapporter des bénéfices énormes, que ce soit sur le plan politique ou sur le plan économique, non seulement à la métropole allemande mais aussi à tous les pays impliqués, tout simplement parce qu’elle permet d’accélérer l’inéluctable intégration économique de la Russie, riche en matières premières, et de l’Allemagne, qui dispose d’une industrie très importante et d’un savoir-faire technologique enviable. C’est justement pour empêcher l’émergence d’un aussi formidable bloc économique intégré, qui assurerait l’hégémonie germano-russe sur l’ensemble de l’Eurasie, que les Etats-Unis ont déclenché l’attaque contre la Serbie de Slobodan Milosevic. En 1999, les premières cibles détruites par les bombardiers de l’OTAN ont été les ponts sur le Danube et sur la Save parce que l’objectif principal était de barrer la route au trafic fluvial allemand (comme nous avons déjà eu l’occasion de le démontrer) en direction du Sud-Est de l’Europe (et donc de la Méditerranée orientale).

 

Les prémices de la formation d’un bloc hégémonique continental similaire se sont manifestés dès 1989, suite à l’écroulement du Mur de Berlin. L’Allemagne s’est alors réunifiée sous la houlette du Chancelier Helmut Kohl et, surtout, d’un homme très habile, le Président de la “Deutsche Bank”, Alfred Herrhausen. “D’ici dix ans, affirmait Herrhausen, l’Allemagne de l’Est deviendra le complexe technologiquement le plus avancé de l’Europe et, en même temps, le tremplin qui permettra de lancer notre économie vers l’Est, de manière telle que la Pologne, la Hongrie, la Tchécoslovaquie et aussi la Bulgarie joueront, à leur tour, un rôle essentiel dans le développement européen” (2). En conformité avec cet objectif, Herrhausen entendait supprimer la dette “inter-entreprises”, fait comptable qui pesait sur l’industrie ex-communiste (en 1994, cette dette s’élevait à 200 milliards de marks), en considérant que cette dette, précisément, était un atout entre les mains de la Banque Mondiale et du FMI qui, tous deux, s’opposaient, de manière irréductible, à tout assainissement du secteur industriel hérité par l’Allemagne suite à la réunification. Le Président de la Deutsche Bank soutenait, entre autres choses, le projet, jugé nécessaire, de construire des voies ferrées rapides menant à Moscou. C’est là exactement le type de projet que les puissances maritimes —l’Angleterre d’abord, les Etats-Unis ensuite— ont toujours rejeté. Herrhausen se distinguait en proposant une vision nouvelle et innovante des rapports internationaux et proposait de redimensionner le rôle de l’Allemagne qui, selon sa conception, devrait fonctionner comme un “pont” entre l’Est et l’Ouest et comme le moteur d’une reconversion industrielle et d’un développement nouveau dans une Europe soustraite au contrôle de la Banque Mondiale et du FMI.

 

 

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Tandis qu’il se décarcassait pour mettre ses plans en oeuvre, Herrhausen dénonçait ceux qui le critiquaient outrageusement (3), quand il exposait ses vues et demandait à la Banque Mondiale et au FMI d’épargner aux pays ex-communistes la “thérapie de choc” préconisée par un Jeffrey Sachs; il demandait, en insistant beaucoup, que soit accordé à ces pays un moratoire sur leurs dettes pendant quelques années, de manière à ce qu’ils puissent exploiter leurs propres ressources pour la reconstruction plutôt que payer immédiatement aux banquiers, dès l’exercice suivant, une part de leurs dettes, ou les intérêts dus. Malgré l’hostilité de la BM et du FMI, Herrhausen réussit à trouver bon accueil partout en Europe pour ses idées et projets; en l’espace de quelques petites années, la traduction de ses plans dans les réalités européennes et euro-russes aurait pu s’avérer suffisante pour faire décoller ses grands projets. Le plus important de ceux-ci fut la création, à Varsovie, d’une banque pour le développement, destinée à financer la reconstruction et l’intégration de l’Europe centrale et orientale à l’Europe occidentale. Le 1 décembre 1989, avec une ponctualité effrayante, un engin explosif —équipé d’un système d’amorçage sophistiqué fonctionnant au laser— fait sauter l’automobile blindée dans laquelle Herrhausen se déplaçait. La responsabilité de l’attentat a été attribuée au groupe terroriste communiste de la “Rote Armee Fraktion” (RAF), après une enquête des plus superficielles.

 

Immédiatement après la disparition tragique de Herrhausen, un économiste mieux noté, comme Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, a cherché à poursuivre le sillon ouvert par son malheureux prédécesseur. Rohwedder était le chef de la “Treuhandanstalt”, un holding public qui regroupe toutes les industries d’Etat de l’ex-République Démocratique Allemande (DDR/RDA), après une belle carrière déjà, où il avait préparé et géré en personne le plan d’assainissement et la réorganisation du colosse chimique et pharmaceutique Hoechst AG. Rohwedder affirmait: “A partir du moment où un libéralisme de marché de type doctrinaire ne fonctionne plus, il faut néanmoins privilégier une politique publique d’assainissement dans le cadre plus général des privatisations” (4). C’était là la politique contraire de celle réclamée par le FMI et la Banque Mondiale. Rohwedder avait l’intention de favoriser les investissements publics pour remettre en état de marche et pour moderniser le vieil appareil industriel hérité de la RDA, afin que “la population d’Allemagne de l’Est puisse dépasser au plus vite sa condition d’infériorité matérielle” (5). Cet économiste, relativement inconnu, projettait de transférer le contrôle de la “Treuhandanstalt” du ministère des finances à celui de l’économie, de façon à ce que le holding devienne l’organe central d’un dirigisme allemand rénové. Le 12 avril 1991, un ou plusieurs assassins stipendiés prennent Rohwedder pour cible, tirent trois coups de fusil à visée infra-rouge qui fracasent une fenêtre de sa maison à Düsseldorf, la fenêtre de la pièce où il se trouvait, et le tuent. La RAF revendique la responsabilité de l’attentat, ce qui démontre, une fois de plus, quelle est la véritable fonction de tout “terrorisme extrémiste”. La menace que représentait des personnalités comme Herrhausen et Rohwedder est dénoncée, de manière très précise, par un Henry Kissinger, d’après qui: “Si les deux puissances que sont l’Allemagne et la Russie s’intègrent économiquement, en tissant des liens plus étroits entre elles, alors surviendra le péril que peut représenter leur hégémonie” (6). Le rapprochement actuel entre l’Allemagne et la Russie est dû essentiellement, aujourd’hui, aux efforts de Vladimir Poutine: c’est lui qui met tout en oeuvre pour que les plans d’intégration, pensés par Herrhausen et Rohwedder, reçoivent une nouvelle chance. La situation actuelle montre que l’Allemagne a reconsidéré de manière radicale son positionnement stratégique, en se repprochant des nouveaux centres de gravité de la planète, soit les centres que représente le BRICS, qui sont en train de faire basculer l’axe de la croissance mondiale de l’Atlantique en direction des Océans Indien et Pacifique, tout en ouvrant des perspectives nouvelles et profondément révolutionnaires pour le continent européen tout entier.

 

Si l’Allemagne parvient à bétonner solidement sa tentative d’entraîner l’Europe dans le sillage de Berlin, le péril, que pointait Zbigniew Brzezinski dans ses admonestations aux Etats-Unis, risquerait bien de prendre forme. Brzezinski: “Pour tout dire en des termes qui rappellent l’ère la plus brutale des empires antiques, les trois grands impératifs de la géostratégie impériale des Etats-Unis sont d’empêcher la collusion entre les vassaux et de les maintenir dans la dépendance (en ce qui concerne leur défense), de garder des tributaires faibles qu’il faut protéger et d’empêcher les barbares de s’unir” (7). Une “union des barbares” est justement en train de se forger et elle pourrait apporter une certaine discontinuité dans les scénarios du futur...

 

Giacomo GABELLINI,

Article paru sur le site: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/

URL: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org/germania-russia-l’alleanza-eurasiatica/16549/print/ - Mis en ligne le 26 juillet 2012.

 

Notes:

(1)   Corriere della Sera, 24 avril 2012.

(2)   Il Tempo, 30 novembre 2009.

(3)   Ibid.

(4)   Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung, 30 mars 1991.

(5)   Ibid.

(6)   Welt am Sonntag, 1 mars 1992.

(7)   Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le grand échiquier.

Marc. EEMANS: La Vision de Tondalus

Marc. EEMANS:

La Vision de Tondalus et la littérature visionnaire au moyen âge

 

simon-marmion-ca-1475-tondalus-ziet-de-gevreesde-koningen-conchober-en-donatus.gifLa vision est un des genres mystico-littéraires des plus goûtés au moyen âge. Innombrables sont, en effet, les textes visionnaires parvenus jusqu'à nous et, sans parler de ces sommets que sont les visions de Sainte Hildegarde et de Hadewych, l'on peut dire que la vision a fleuri dans tous les pays de l'Europe occidentale. La plupart des textes conservés semblent d'abord avoir été écrits en langue latine, pour être traduits par la suite en langue vulgaire et se répandre ainsi dans toutes les couches de la société.

A en juger d'après le grand nombre de visions d'origine irlandaise, l'on peut affirmer que c'est avant tout un genre propre au monde celtique (1) où il se confondrait avec la tradition païenne de l'imram (2) ou voyage maritime à la Terre des Ombres, île lointaine et inaccessible où tout n'est que félicité.

Par la suite, se rencontrant avec d'autres récits de tradition strictement chrétienne, ce voyage se serait confondu avec les « ravissements dans l'esprit », au cours desquels les visionnaires visitent l'au-delà.

L'une des premières visions chrétiennes dont le texte nous soit parvenu est la Vision de Salvius qui nous apporte, d'emblée deux éléments propres au style visionnaire: la mort apparente du visionnaire et l'apparition du guide qui Je conduit sain et sauf à travers les embûches de l'au-delà.

Dans tous les textes visionnaires du quatrième au sixième siècle, le paradis des élus se rapproche encore beaucoup de l’Élisée des Grecs ou du Hel des anciens Germains: c'est une espèce de pays de cocagne ou tout n'est que joie et allégresse, et qui se confond volontiers avec le paradis terrestre dont Adam en Eve furent chassés après la faute.

Dans un des Dialogues du Pape Grégoire le Grand, nous trouvons également la description classique d'une mort apparente accompagnée d'un voyage dans l'autre monde, tandis que des considérations eschatologiques viennent utilement nous renseigner sur notre vie future. Maïs l'originalité de cette vision réside dans le fait que nous y rencontrons pour la première fois le thème du pont étroit qui est une des épreuves les plus redoutables pour les âmes damnées.

Le texte de Grégoire le Grand semble avoir donné un essor définitif au genre et dès le huitième siècle les visions se multiplient, en étant toutes construites sur le même schéma.

L'Historia Ecclesiastica de Beda Venarabilis (3) nous rapporte à elle seule la relation de trois morts apparentes accompagnées de visions à tendances eschatologiques. La plus remarquable d'entre elles est la Vision de Drithelm qui s'apparente de très près à la Vision de Tondalus, aussi la considère ton comme une de ses sources.

Sous le règne de Charles Magne, nombreuses sont les visions qui s 'inspirent des thèmes de Grégoire le Grand, mais sous l'influence de certains facteurs extérieurs, elles perdent petit à petit leur sens religieux pour revêtir un aspect politique. La plus célèbre des visions de ce genre est certainement la Vision d'une Pauvresse. Elle nous conte l'histoire d'une pauvre femme, du district de Laon, tombée en extase en l'année 819, et dont les visions auraient inspiré directement la politique carolovingienne.

Faisant exception dans la série des visions politiques de l'époque, les Visions d'Anscarius (4) sont de la plus pure inspiration eschatologique. Dès sa prime jeunesse, Anscarius connut les visions et les ravissements, aussi vécut-il de la manière la plus sainte, loin des rumeurs du vaste monde. Puis, certain jour, une vision lui ayant montré les beautés de l'apostolat, il alla convertir les hommes du Nord à la foi chrétienne. Les Visions d'Anscarius s'apparentent de fort près à la Vision de Salvius, tout en s'inspirant des principaux thèmes eschatologiques de l'Apocalypse. Jusqu'ici, le style visionnaire était encore tout entaché de matérialité, voire même de vulgarité. Chez Anscarius, au contraire, le récit se spiritualise et l'âme qui s'échappe du corps endormi se pare d'une essence vraiment impondérable, tout comme Je Ciel se colore d'une indicible fluidité. Anscarius reconnaît cependant son incapacité à traduire l'ineffable et il avoue que ses descriptions ne sont que des approximations qui se trouvent bien en-dessous du réel.

Pendant les deux siècles qui suivent, la littérature visionnaire connaît une certaine régression. Hormis la Vision de Vauquelin, qui date de 1091, il n'y a aucun texte marquant à signaler.

Dès le début du 12° siècle, les textes visionnaires se suivent de très près, nous y relèverons surtout des visions d' origine irlandaise dont la Vision d'Adamman semble être la plus ancienne. Tout en relevant d'un certain conventionnel, le genre se traduit en récits d'une très grande beauté de style. Ces visions nous révèlent, en effet, le merveilleux chrétien dans toute sa diversité, depuis la description des plus misérables scènes du monde des damnés, jusqu'à l'épanouissement béatifique des âmes au sein de Dieu. Les thèmes traditionnels se développent et s'amplifient d'un récit à l'autre. Des réminiscences orientales, dues aux Croisades, s'y révèlent, tandis que des rappels des auteurs anciens viennent témoigner des premières influences du monde antique.

Cette littérature visionnaire à tendance eschatologique connaîtra bientôt son apogée dans la Divine Comédie (5) du Dante, tandis que les visions d'inspiration plus mystique aboutiront aux plus sublimes révélations de Sainte Hildegarde et de Hadewych (6). Tant par leur popularité ,que par la beauté de leur style, la Vision de Tondalus et le Purgatoire de St-Patrice occupent une place d'exception dans la littérature eschatologique du moyen âge.

La Vision du Chevalier Ovin relatée dans le Purgatoire de St-Patrice se rattache à l’antique tradition celtique des Imrama, aussi n ' est-ce point en état de léthargie que le Chevalier Ovin s'aventure dans le monde des ténèbres, mais en y pénétrant volontairement par une grotte qui communique avec les entrailles de la terre. Sur le plan chrétien il refera le voyage déjà entrepris avant lui par Orphée, Ulysse et Enée. Tout comme eux il pénètrera de son plein gré dans le monde de l'au-delà, mais son voyage est un véritable pélerinage: c'est, en effet, pour se purifier qu'il veut contempler les peines infligées aux âmes damnées. Il est ainsi porteur de cette foi essentiellement chrétienne et médiévale en la Rédemption de l'homme.

6758028-M.jpgLe Chevalier Ovin n'a point le bonheur d'avoir un guide dans son voyage, mais là ou les dangers seront par trop menaçants, il lui suffira de prononcer le nom de Jésus pour se sentir aussitôt à l'abri. Il ira ainsi de supplice en supplice, en se purifiant chaque fois davantage, pour arriver enfin aux partes du Paradis.

Par les nombreuses recommandations à l'adresse du lecteur qui entrecoupent le récit, cette vision se révèle avant tout comme une œuvre d'édification et une exhortation à la pénitence.

Ce récit, qui se rattache au fameux Pélerinage de St-Patrice, en Irlande, a rencontré un succès sans précédent dans les annales de la littérature médiévale. Ecrit en latin par un moine irlandais du nom d'Henry de Saltrey vers 1189, il fut bientôt traduit dans toutes les langues de l'Europe occidentale. De nombreux auteurs célèbres s'en inspirèrent, notamment Calderon qui en tira son El Purgataria de San Patricio. Jusqu'au milieu du 19° siècle il a servi de trame à un mystère fort populaire dans toute la Bretagne.

Quant à la Vision de Tondalus, due vers le milieu du 12° siècle à la plume du moine Marcus, son succès dura plus de trois siècles. Plus de 60 versions latines, toutes du 12° ou du 13° siècle en ont été conservées jusqu'à nos jours. Sa traduction en langue vulgaire se répandit dans tous les pays de l'Europe occidentale. Vincentius Bellavacensis recopia intégralement cette vision dans son Speculum Ristoriale (vers 1244) , tandis que Denys le Chartreux en donna un résumé fort circonstancié dans deux de ses ouvrages Quatuor Novissima et De Particulari Judicia Dei. C'est grâce à ces deux auteurs, particulièrement populaires à l'époque, que la Vision de Tondalus pénétra dans tous les milieux.

Cette vision nous conte les mésaventures du Chevalier Tondal qui, étant tombé certain jour en état de léthargie, eut le privilège de descendre en Enfer et d'en rapporter le récit que le frère Marcus (7) a trancrit pour l'édification des pécheurs.

Dès le seuil de l'autre monde, Tondal est accueilli par son ange gardien et ensemble ils traverseront l'Enfer pour visiter ensuite le Paradis et y contempler les âmes bienheureuses.

La délimitation de l'au-delà en trois zônes bien définies- Enfer, Purgatoire, Paradis - telle que nous la trouvons dans la Divine Comédie n' est pas encore bien fixée dans le récit du frère Marcus, aussi a-t-on pu soulever une controverse quant à la définition des lieux visités par Tondalus Selon certains, seul le supplice infligé par Lucifer, relèverait des peines de l'Enfer, toutes les autres étant encore celles du Purgatoire.

Quoi qu'il en soit, nous constatons que dans la Vision de Tondalus onze supplices s'étagent jusqu'aux partes du Paradis et que même à l'intérieur de celui-ci, certaines âmes doivent encore souffrir des supplices temporaires, tels les deux rois ennemis Concober et Donacus, qui avaient cependant déjà fait pénitence sur terre, maïs qui ne furent pas « entièrement bons » ... Quant au roi Cornacus, il y doit également expier certains crimes et y subit ainsi chaque jour, durant trois heures, la peine du feu jusqu'au nombril, tandis que la partie supérieure de son corps se recouvre entièrement de poils. Comme on le voit, dans le Paradis de Tondal, la première joie connaît encore ses heures de détresse, mais les cinq joies suivantes, elles, sont toute félicité. Elles sont réservées aux âmes nobles qui vécurent d'une vie exemplaire ici-bas.

Tondal serait volontiers resté en ces lieux, mais son ange gardien lui fait comprendre qu'il n'en est pas encore digne. S'il persévère dans ses bonnes résolutions, il reviendra certainement en ces lieux pour y prendre part aux chœurs des bienheureux. Maïs avant d'en arriver là Tondal devra vivre, pendant le temps qui lui reste à demeurer sur terre, une vie de mortification et de charité. C'est à ce moment que l’âme de Tondal va rejoindre son corps pour s'adonner à l’œuvre de la gräce.

La Vision de Tondalus a laissé des traces profancles dans toute la littérature de moyen âge. Son iconographie est des plus abondantes, car des artistes de la qualité d'un Pol de Limbourg ou d'un Jéröme Bosch y ont trouvé de fécondes sources d'inspiration. Nombreux sont également les incunables qui ont reproduit cette vision. La première édition typographique de ce livre serait celle d'Anvers « gheprent bi mi Mathijs van der goes », portant le millésime 1472.

Les bibliographes sont toutefois unanimes pour affirmer que cette édition a été antidatée par van der goes qui voulait ainsi s'attribuer la gloire d'avoir imprimé le premier livre paru dans les Pays-Bas.

Presque toutes les éditions de la Vision de Tondalus datent du 16° siècle et dès le 17°, cet ouvrage qui avait connu tant de vogue ne reparut plus au catalogue des éditeurs. Au 19° siècle il sortit de l'ombre grâce à la curiosité des philologues romantiques et dès 1837 Octave Delepierre, archiviste de la Flandre Occidentale en présenta une nouvelle version française d'après le texte la tin de Vincentius Bellavacensis, à laquelle nous empruntons les fragments publiés dans le présent cahier.

Dans plusieurs pays d'Europe les philologues se sont depuis lors occupés fort longuement des innombrables manuscrits de l’œuvre. Certains d'entre eux nous ont dotés ainsi de la présentation critique de quelques-uns d’entre-eux, notamment MM. R. Verdeyen et J. Endepols qui publièrent une version moyen-néerlandaise de la Vision de Tondalus et du Purgatoire de St. Patrice. Nous devons la plupart des données historiques réunies dans cette étude aux patientes recherches de ces deux savants.

Une étude détaillée du sujet, que nous venons d'esquisser ici et qui relève autant de l'histoire de la littérature comparée que de l'histoire de la dévotion occidentale au moyen âge, reste encore à écrire.

Marc. EEMANS.

(1) Rappelons cependant que le monde antique tout comme le monde oriental connurent ce genre et bien souvent nos visions médiévales en sont des démarcations plus ou moins conscientes.
(2) Le plus célèbre Imram connu à ce jour est celui du Voyage de Bran ou de Saint Brandan.
(3) Moine et historien anglais, né à Wearmouth (675-735).
(4) Saint Anschaire, évèque de Hambourg (801-865) .
(5) Les constantes allusions du Dante à des personnages politiques contemporains rattachent également la Divine Comédie à la tradition carolovingienne des visions politiques.
(6) Parmi les grandes femmes visionnaires citons également: Elisabeth de Schönau, Marie d'Oignies, Christine de St-Trond, Lutgarde de Tongres, Beatrice de Nazareth, Mechtild de Magdebourg, etc.
(7) L'auteur de la Vision de Tondalus, probablement un moine Irlandais du XIIe siècle, n'est connu que sous ce prénom. C'est ainsi qu'il se présente lui-même au debut de son récit.

Hermès, n° 3, mars 1937.

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, R.I.P.

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, R.I.P.

By John Morgan

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

On Wednesday, August 29, 2012, the British scholar of esotericism, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, passed away from cancer at the age of 59. Professor Goodrick-Clarke must have dealt with his illness quite well, as he was at work until only a few hours before his death, according to the testimony of some of his students. This is yet another great blow to our community, following hard on the heels of the loss of two other Englishmen, Jonathan Bowden and Anthony Hancock, earlier this year.

I must admit that I don’t know a great deal about Professor Goodrick-Clarke’s life. My personal contact with him was limited to a few e-mails, although I can attest that he was always a well-wisher to my company, Arktos, and its predecessor, Integral Tradition Publishing. He was always cordial and offered words of support to my own endeavors in the realm of the esoteric. According to his obituaries, he left behind a wife, Clare, who is a Professor of History at the University of Exeter, where he himself taught.

In 2005, Goodrick-Clarke was one of the founding members of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE) (http://www.esswe.org/ [2]), an organization which promotes the academic study of Western esotericism and supervises the studies of a number of graduate-level students at several European universities. He was also Professor of Esotericism at the University of Exeter and the Director of the Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism, which is the British branch of the ESSWE. I have known a number of students, some of whom travel in our circles, who went through this program and who have spoken highly of it. As such, Professor Goodrick-Clarke was actively engaged in the preservation and promotion of the traditions which form the eternal core of our civilization.

In addition to the program he founded and the students he taught, however, Goodrick-Clarke’s greatest legacy will be the books that he wrote. Most prominent among these is his 1985 study, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology [3],[1] which remains the definitive work on the subject in any language (it has even been translated into German).

As anyone who has studied National Socialism or the Third Reich in detail will know, tales of secret occult conspiracies at the highest levels of the NSDAP have abounded since at least the 1930s. Prominent among these works are Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s Morning of the Magicians and Trevor Ravenscroft’s The Spear of Destiny, the former of which claimed that National Socialism was little more than “Guénonism plus tanks”[2] run by occultists of the Vril and Thule societies who convinced the NS leadership that they needed to establish contact with a lost theocratic  civilization in the interior of the Earth, while the latter claimed that the entire history of the Third Reich was nothing more than a prolonged effort by Hitler, inspired by a mushroom trip he had had in his youth in Austria, to obtain the Spear of Longinus that pierced the side of Christ at the crucifixion.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of literature on the relationship between National Socialism and mysticism, both before and since Goodrick-Clarke’s study, has relied upon these and similar sources for their inspiration (or upon even more fantastic claims, such as that Hitler was working with Aleister Crowley).

Occult Roots is unique in that it is one of the few books to be written on this topic in a serious way, and not for the purposes of sensationalism. It is also unique in that it relies largely on primary sources from the German – one is loath to find a single German work referenced in many of the popular books on Nazi occultism. Indeed, entire shelves of other works on the subject could be thrown into the garbage in favor of this book.

Goodrick-Clarke traces the origins and development of Ariosophy, a type of theosophical mysticism infused with myths about the history and destiny of Aryan humanity and a great deal of “Orientalist” and Nordicist philosophies, in late 19th-century Germany. He follows its path through the anti-Semitic Germanenorden and other groups, to the origins of the Thule Society in Munich, which in turn sponsored the founding of the German Workers’ Party in 1919, which was transformed the following year into the National Socialist German Workers’ Party by Hitler.

Goodrick-Clarke’s ultimate conclusion is that, while there was indeed an organizational connection between the NSDAP and Ariosophy in its earliest days, and that some members of the NS leadership evinced interest in Ariosophy at some point in their lives, that “Ariosophy is a symptom rather than an influence in the way that it anticipated Nazism.”[3] The fact is that there is no evidence to support the claim that there was a hidden, mystical agenda behind the politics and strategies of the Third Reich.

As such, Goodrick-Clarke’s book provided a much-needed corrective to the oceans of ink that have been spilled attempting to link the Third Reich to wacky ideas, further consigning what is useful in its legacy to the gutter in the popular imagination. Regrettably, however, works which continue to foster this notion will doubtless continue to be written and published for many years to come, and will sometimes be cited with approval even by those who claim to be on our side.

Goodrick-Clarke later expanded his studies into the realm of post-war Nazi occultism, the first of which, Hitler’s Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism [4][4] was published in 1998. This book holds a special place in my heart, as I came across the book by chance in a bookstore shortly after it was published, and it was the first time that I had come across such figures and movements as Savitri Devi, Julius Evola, and the Traditionalists; the connection between Indian politics and culture and Aryan thought; and the European New Right.

At the time, the book hit me like a bolt of lightning. I had no idea that over in Europe (little was happening in America at that time) an entire intellectual tradition had arisen to defend and propagate the ideas of the “true Right”! So the book allowed me to discover ideas which have come to play a central role in my life ever since, and for that, I must always be grateful to Goodrick-Clarke. I know from others that the book had a similar impact upon them at the time – one must remember that 1998 was in the days before one could learn very much about these subjects on the Internet, as is the case today.

In retrospect, I can see that the book has many flaws, as Goodrick-Clarke based his biography largely on Savitri Devi’s taped autobiographical interviews, and his depiction of the other movements and figures he discusses is shallow, to say the least. Still, until someone willing to delve deeper writes a more definitive biography of Savitri Devi, it is the only resource available, and it remains a good introduction to her life and work.

The next book Goodrick-Clarke wrote on this theme was Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity [5],[5] published in 2002. This is by far the least satisfactory of the three books. Goodrick-Clarke abandoned the scholarly rigor he had employed in Occult Roots, instead compiling a compendium of information derived almost entirely from secondary sources and the Internet. The chapter on Savitri Devi is little more than a summary of Hitler’s Priestess. And, inevitably I suppose given the time it was published, we are dutifully warned that such dangerous ideas could lead to another 9/11, and he continually attempts to link his subjects to terrorism, Islamic and otherwise.

And yet one cannot escape the feeling that Goodrick-Clarke vastly overestimates the power and influence that the groups he discusses actually had or have. As a review of the book at the Vanguard News Network put it at the time, “Want to be a threat to Western civilization? All you need is a post office box and a copy machine. Goodrick-Clarke will do the rest.”[6] I suppose Black Sun could be useful for someone who has never heard of such figures as Miguel  Serrano, James Mason, David Myatt, James Madole or Wilhelm Landig before to serve as an introduction, but as an attempt at a comprehensive study, even from a hostile perspective, it is a dismal failure. (A book which came closer to fulfilling that need, albeit with its own problems and deficiencies, is Kevin Coogan’s Dreamer of the Day[7] about Francis Parker Yockey and his milieu, and for which Goodrick-Clarke provided an Introduction).

Goodrick-Clarke also authored, edited, and translated a few other books unrelated to Nazi esotericism. The most important, in my view, is his 2008 book The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction [6],[8] which is a solid, if far from comprehensive, introduction to some of the most important figures in the tradition for newcomers. The others include a selection from the writings of the German alchemist Paracelsus [7]; another from H. P. Blavatsky [8], founder of the Theosophical Society, as well as a volume of selections from G. R. S. Mead [9], another Theosophist; and translations of books about the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg [10].

The question which often arises in our circles regarding Goodrick-Clarke is whether or not he was “one of us.” Certainly, to judge by his writings, he comes across as yet another of those career academics, such as Roger Griffin or Stanley Payne, who build their careers on writing book after book about “fascinating fascism” (to borrow Susan Sontag’s term) and yet claim to feel nothing but the obligatory liberal revulsion for it. Since I never had the good fortune of knowing Goodrick-Clarke in person, I cannot say with any certainty, but there do seem to be interesting hints in his Conclusion to Black Sun, that he was more than just an academic critic of the far Right.

The concluding chapter of Black Sun seems to be the author’s attempt to provide at least a minimum of balance against his exaggerated efforts to link the Right with absolute evil in the rest of the book.  Goodrick-Clarke attributes the rise of White racialism to the introduction of racial preferences in Western societies. He writes:

The discriminatory effects of these policies on whites, both potential and actual, has understandably caused some resentment among whites. . . . But liberal support for affirmative action has gone further in producing a climate of white guilt. The causes of black crime, drug involvement and welfare dependence are often sought in white racism. Black on white crime in terms of murder, rape and robbery with violence is many times greater than white on black crime. However, the national media typically highlight instances of white racial attacks, while many reports of black crime are ‘colorblind’ and mostly confined to the local press. The massive overrepresentation of blacks in the penal system, evident testimony of black crime, violence and underperformance are largely ignored by the liberal media, or otherwise invoked as further evidence of black disadvantage and white racism.[9]

Later in the same chapter, he also writes:

The question of whether the United States can actually assimilate such immigrants is begged by policies of bilingualism and multiculturalism in the education system. Assimilation is further undermined by the expansion of affirmative action, originally intended to benefit blacks as a result of civil rights legislation, into a government-mandated discrimination against white Americans (but also blacks in practice) in favor of Third World immigrants. The ascendancy of international human rights over notions of national sovereignty has also led to a progressive erosion of citizenship, whereby illegal aliens are granted welfare, education, government subsidies and even voting rights. These issues are a matter of deep concern to conservative groups in the United States, who see no particular reason to transform the demography of the United States, given its wholly unforeseeable consequences. The conversion of the United States into a ‘colony of the world’ or a ‘universal nation’ is without precedent in the modern world. Similar forces are at work in Europe, especially Britain, where multiculturalism is promoted by left-wing and liberal political agendas in the quest for the electoral support of the growing ethnic minorities. A recent report on the future of multi-ethnic Britain has even questioned whether the national epithet ‘British’ carries a racist taint.[10]

Such comments would certainly not be out-of-place at Counter-Currents or other “New Right” publications, but are surprising coming from the keyboard of an esteemed university professor. Even more shocking, in the passages quoted above, Goodrick-Clarke cites Jared Taylor (specifically, his book Paved with Good Intentions) and Peter Brimelow (Alien Nation) for support in his footnotes – sources which would surely mean professional death if quoted with approval in the work of less established academics.

He concludes the chapter as follows:

We cannot know what the future holds for Western multicultural societies, but the experiment did not fare well in Austria-Hungary, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The multiracial challenges in liberal Western states are much greater, and it is evident that affirmative action and multiculturalism are even leading to a more diffuse hostility toward liberalism. From the retrospective viewpoint of a potential authoritarian future in 2020 or 2030, these Aryan cults and esoteric Nazism may be documented as early symptoms of major divisive changes in our present-day Western democracies.[11]

Goodrick-Clarke is careful to couch his prophecy of a catastrophic failure of liberal democracy only as a possibility, and not necessarily a positive one, but nevertheless, the fact that he even discusses the possibility is greatly at variance with the usual platitudes from the academy about the absolute need for ever-more diversity and multiculturalism in the Western nations.

Whether or not Goodrick-Clarke actually held more sympathy for the milieu he studied than he let on has now become irrelevant, since the Conclusion to Black Sun represents the totality of what he had to say on the matter publicly.  I would hazard to guess that, while he may have seen value in efforts to protect the cultures of the West from foreign influence, he probably had little regard for its more ridiculous and extreme elements, particularly those who make the world of Right-wing politics a playground for their own private obsessions and fantasies.  And, in that, I find little with which to disagree. Efforts to wed the philosophy and politics of the true Right to tales of Nazi UFOs and sinister pseudo-occult orders do more harm than good to those seriously engaged in the dialogues and struggles of our time.

Clearly, Goodrick-Clarke recognized that genuine esotericism was valuable, since he spent his life studying it, but at the same time, he must have made a distinction between genuine esotericism and those who ape its forms in the pursuit of their goals in some dark role-playing game, acted out using real people and very real problems. But genuine esotericism does exist, and it can be a force for good. The Traditionalists have taught us that.

Goodrick-Clarke’s understanding of the real issues at stake was further reinforced for me in our correspondence. When he first contacted me regarding some of Integral Tradition Publishing’s books in 2009, I felt compelled to tell him about how his Occult Roots and Hitler’s Priestess had led me to eventually become involved with ITP. He responded by writing, “Thank you for your appreciative comments regarding the inspiration of my own books.  They were written to give a voice to the excluded discourse of liberal modernity and its neglect of order and truth.”[12] This confirms for me that he was certainly no uncritical citizen of the world that has been produced by liberalism. Although regrettably, I never attempted to get him to discuss his views on this any further, fearing that he might think I was attempting to trick him into saying or writing something that might later come back to haunt him. In retrospect, perhaps I should not have been so cautious.

That said, Professor Goodrick-Clarke is not destined to be remembered as a political figure. He will be remembered for his scholarship – for setting the record straight regarding the relationship between the occult and National Socialism, and also for his efforts to preserve the genuine esoteric strivings of our people which have been sidelined by science, technology, and modernity. For that we should remain forever grateful.

Notes

1. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology (New York: New York University Press, 1992).

2. Pauwels and Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians (New York: Stein & Day, 1964), p. 180.

3. The Occult Roots of Nazism, p. 202.

4. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitler’s Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism (New York: New York University Press, 1998).

5. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2002).

6. The Cat Lady, “Nutty Nazis,” at Vanguard News Network (http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/v1/books8.htm [11]).

7. Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1999).

8. Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

9. Black Sun, pp. 303-304.

10. Black Sun, p. 313.

11. Black Sun, p. 313.

12. Personal correspondence, September 16, 2009.

 


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Unthinking Liberalism: A. Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory

Unthinking Liberalism:
Alexander Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory

by Alex KURTAGIC

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

Alexander Dugin
The Fourth Political Theory, London: Arktos, 2012

Arktos recently published what we can only hope will be the first of many more English translations of Alexander Dugin’s work. Head of the sociology department in Moscow State University, and a leading Eurasianist with ties to the Russian military, this man is, today, influencing official Kremlin policy.

The Fourth Political Theory is a thoroughly refreshing monograph, combining clarity of analysis, philosophical rigor, and intellectual creativity. It is Dugin’s attempt to sort through the confusion of modern political theory and establish the foundations for a political philosophy that will decisively challenge the dominant liberal paradigm. It is not, however, a new complete political theory, but rather the beginning of a project. The name is provisional, the theory under construction. Dugin sees this not as the work of one man, but, because difficult, a collective heroic effort.

The book first sets out the historical topology of modern political theories. In Dugin’s account, liberalism, the oldest and most stable ideology, was in modernity the first political theory. Marxism, a critique of liberalism via capitalism, was the second. Fascism/National Socialism, a critique of both liberalism and Marxism, was the third. Dugin says that Fascism/National Socialism was defeated by Marxism (1945), that Marxism was defeated by liberalism (1989), leaving liberalism triumphant and therefore free to expand around the globe.

According to Dugin, the triumph of liberalism has been so definitive, in fact, that in the West it has ceased to be political, or ideological, and become a taken-for-granted practice. Westerners think in liberal terms by default, assuming that no sane, rational, educated person could think differently, accusing dissenters of being ideological, without realizing that their own assumptions have ideological origins.

The definitive triumph of liberalism has also meant that it is now so fully identified with modernity that it is difficult to separate the two, whereas control of modernity was once contested by political theory number one against political theories two and three. The advent of postmodernity, however, has marked the complete exhaustion of liberalism. It has nothing new to say, so it is reduced endlessly to recycle and reiterate itself.

Looking to identify what may be useful to salvage, Dugin proceeds to break down each of the three ideologies into its component parts. In the process of doing so, he detoxifies the two discredited critiques of liberalism, which is necessary to be able to cannibalize them. His analysis of liberalism follows Alain de Benoist. Because it is crucial, I will avail myself of de Benoist’s insights and infuse some of my own in Dugin’s explication of liberalism.

Dugin says that liberalism’s historical subject is the individual. The idea behind liberalism was to “liberate” the individual from everything that was external to him (faith, tradition, authority). Out of this springs the rest: when you get rid of the transcendent, you end up with a world that is entirely rational and material. Happiness then becomes a question of material increase. This leads to productivism and economism, which, when the individual is paramount, demands capitalism. When you get rid of the transcendent, you also eliminate hierarchy: all men become equal. If all men are equal, then what applies to one must apply to all, which means universalism. Similarly, if all men are equal, then all deserve an equal slice of the pie, so full democracy, with universal suffrage, becomes the ideal form of government. Liberalism has since developed flavors, and the idea of liberation acquires two competing meanings: “freedom from,” which in America is embodied by libertarians and the Tea Party; and “freedom to,” embodied by Democrats.

Marxism’s historical subject is class. Marxism is concerned chiefly with critiquing the inequities arising from capitalism. Otherwise, it shares with liberalism an ethos of liberation, a materialist worldview, and an egalitarian morality.

Fascism’s historical subject is the state, and National Socialism’s race. Both critique Marxism’s and liberalism’s materialist worldview and egalitarian morality. Hence, the simultaneous application of hierarchy and socialism.

With all the parts laid out on the table, Dugin then selects what he finds useful and discards the rest. Unsurprisingly, Dugin finds nothing useful in liberalism. The idea is to unthink it, after all.

Spread out across several chapters, Dugin provides a typology of the different factions in the modern political landscape—e.g., fundamental conservatism (traditionalism), Left-wing conservatism (Strasserism, National Bolshevism, Niekisch), conservative revolution (Spengler, Jünger, Schmitt, Niekisch), New Left, National Communism, etc. It is essential that readers understand these so that they may easily recognize them, because doing so will clarify much and help them avoid the errors arising from opaque, confused, contradictory, or misleading labels.

Liberal conservatism is a key category in this typology. It may sound contradictory on the surface, because in colloquial discourse mainstream politics is about the opposition of liberals vs. conservatives. Yet, and as I have repeatedly stated, when one examines their fundamentals, so-called “conservatives” (a misleading label), even palaeoconservatives (another misleading label), are all ideologically liberals, only they wish to conserve liberalism, or go a little slower, or take a few steps back. Hence, the alternative designation for this type: “status-quo conservative.”

Another key category is National Communism. This is, according to Dugin, a unique phenomenon, and enjoys a healthy life in Latin America, suggesting it will be around for some time to come. Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez are contemporary practitioners of National Communism.

Setting out the suggested foundations of a fourth political ideology takes up the rest of Dugin’s book. Besides elements salvaged from earlier critiques of liberalism, Dugin also looks at the debris that in the philosophical contest for modernity was left in the periphery. These are the ideas for which none of the ideologies of modernity have had any use. For Dugin this is essential to an outsider, counter-propositional political theory. He does not state this in as many words, but it should be obvious that if we are to unthink liberalism, then liberalism should find its nemesis unthinkable.

But the process of construction begins, of course, with ontology. Dugin refers to Heidegger’s Dasein. Working from this concept he would like the fourth political theory to conceptualize the world as a pluriverse, with different peoples who have different moralities and even different conceptions of time. In other words, in the fourth political theory the idea of a universal history would be absurd, because time is conceived differently in different cultures—nothing is ahistorical or universal; everything is bound and specific. This would imply a morality of difference, something I have proposed as counter-propositional to the liberal morality of equality. In the last consequence, for Dugin there needs to be also a peculiar ontology of the future. The parts of The Fourth Political Theory dealing with these topics are the most challenging, requiring some grounding in philosophy, but, unsurprisingly, they are also where the pioneering work is being done.

Also pioneering, and presumably more difficult still, is Dugin’s call to “attack the individual.” By this he means, obviously, destabilizing the taken-for-granted construct that comprises the minimum social unit in liberalism—the discrete social atom that acts on the basis of rational self-interest, a construct that should be distinguished from “a man” or “a woman” or “a human.” Dugin makes some suggestions, but these seem nebulous and not very persuasive at this stage. Also, this seems quite a logical necessity within the framework of this project, but Dugin’s seeds will find barren soil in the West, where the individual is almost sacrosanct and where individualism results from what is possibly an evolved bias in Northern European societies, where this trait may have been more adaptive than elsewhere. A cataclysmic event may be required to open up the way for a redefinition of what it is to be a person. Evidently the idea is that the fourth political theory conceptualizes a man not as an “individual” but as something else, presumably as part of a collectivity. This is probably a very Russian way of looking at things.

The foregoing may all seem highly abstract, and I suspect practically minded readers will not take to it. It is hard to see how the abstract theorizing will satisfy the pragmatic Anglo-Saxon, who is suspicious of philosophy generally. (Jonathan Bowden was an oddity in this regard.) Yet there are real-world implications to the theory, and in Dugin’s work the geopolitical dimension must never be kept out of sight.

For Dugin, triumphant liberalism is embodied by Americanism; the United States, through its origins as an Enlightenment project, and through its superpower status in the twentieth and twenty-first century, is the global driver of liberal practice. As such, with the defeat of Marxism, it has created, and sought to perpetuate, a unipolar world defined by American, or Atlanticist, liberal hegemony. Russia has a long anti-Western, anti-liberal tradition, and for Dugin this planetary liberal hegemony is the enemy. Dugin would like the world to be multipolar, with Atlanticism counterbalanced by Eurasianism, and maybe other “isms.” In geopolitics, the need for a fourth political theory arises from a need to keep liberalism permanently challenged, confined to its native hemisphere, and, in a word, out of Russia.

While this dimension exists, and while there may be a certain anti-Americanism in Dugin’s work, Americans should not dismiss this book out of hand, because it is not anti-America. As Michael O’Meara has pointed out in relation to Yockey’s anti-Americanism, Americanism and America, or Americans, are different things and stand often in opposition. Engaging with this kind of oppositional thinking is, then, necessary for Americans. And the reason is this: liberalism served America well for two hundred years, but ideologies have a life-cycle like everything else, and liberalism has by now become hypertrophic and hypertelic; it is, in other words, killing America and, in particular, the European-descended presence in America.

If European-descended Americans are to save themselves, and to continue having a presence in the North American continent, rather than being subsumed by liberal egalitarianism and the consequent economic bankruptcy, Hispanization, and Africanization, the American identity, so tied up with liberalism because of the philosophical bases of its founding documents, would need to be re-imagined. Though admittedly difficult, the modern American identity must be understood as one that is possible out of many. Sources for a re-imagined identity may be found in the archaic substratum permeating the parts of American heritage that preceded systematic liberalism (the early colonial period) as well as in the parts that were, at least for a time, beyond it (the frontier and the Wild West). In other words, the most mystical and also the least “civilized” parts of American history. Yet even this may be problematic, since they were products of late “Faustian” civilization. A descent into barbarism may be in the cards. Only time will tell.

For Westerners in general, Dugin’s project may well prove too radical, even at this late stage in the game—contemplating it would seem first to necessitate a decisive rupture. Unless/until that happens, conservative prescriptions calling for a return to a previous state of affairs (in the West), or a closer reading of the founding documents (in America), will remain a feature of Western dissidence. In other words, even the dissidents will remain conservative restorationists of the classical ideas of the center, or the ideas that led to the center. Truly revolutionary thinking—the re-imagining and reinvention of ourselves—will, however, ultimately come from the periphery rather than the center.

 


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

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/09/unthinking-liberalism/

Derechos humanos como disvalor

 

Droits%20de%20lHommeII%20300305.jpg

Derechos humanos como disvalor

 

Alberto Buela (*)

 

Como hace muchos años que venimos escribiendo sobre el tema de los derechos humanos y lo hemos encarado desde distintos ángulos: a) derechos humanos de primera, segunda y tercera generación, b) derechos humanos e ideología, c) derechos humanos o derechos de los pueblos, d) derechos humanos: crisis o decadencia.

En esta ocasión vamos a meditar sobre los derechos humanos como un disvalor o, si se quiere para que sea más comprensible, como una falsa preferencia.

 

Es sabido que la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos proclamada por las  Naciones Unidas a finales de 1948, afirma en su artículo 3 que: Todo individuo tiene derecho a la vida, a la libertad y a la seguridad de su persona.

Con lo cual los legisladores correctamente nos vinieron a decir que los derechos humanos proclamados alcanzan al hombre en tanto que individuo, esto es, formando parte de un género y una especie: animal rationale o zoon lógon éjon, como gustaban decir griegos y romanos.

Pero, al mismo tiempo, nos dicen que estos derechos son inherentes al hombre como persona, esto es, en tanto ser único, singular e irrepetible. Y acá está implícita toda la concepción cristiana del hombre.[1]

Si bien, este magistral artículo 3, merecedor de una exégesis abundantísima, se apoya, tiene su basamento en una concepción sesgada o parcial del hombre: como sujeto de derechos. Y es acá donde comenzamos a barruntar lo que queremos decir.

El hombre durante toda la antigüedad clásica: greco, romano, cristiana nunca fue pensado como sujeto de derechos, y no porque no existieran dichos derechos, sino porque la justicia desde Platón para acá fue pensada como: dar a cada uno lo que corresponde. Con lo cual el derecho está concebido desde el que está “obligado” a cumplirlo y no desde los “acreedores” del derecho. Es por ello que la justicia fue concebida como una restitutio, como lo debido al otro.

Esto es de crucial importancia, pues sino se lo entiende acabadamente, no puede comprenderse la Revolución Copernicana, que produjeron los legisladores onunianos en 1948.

Al ser lo justo, dar a cada uno aquello que le corresponde y no el obtenerlo para uno, la obligación de realizarlo es del deudor. Y ello está determinado por el realismo filosófico, jurídico, político y teológico de la mencionada antigüedad clásica. Así el peso de realización de lo justo recae sobre aquel que puede y debe realizarlo, el acreedor de derechos solo puede demandarlo.

Al respecto relata Platón cómo respondió Sócrates cuando le proponen fugarse de la cárcel al ser condenado a muerte: Nunca es bueno y noble cometer injusticia (Critón, 49ª5) En cualquier caso es malo y vergonzoso cometer injusticia (Critón, 49b6). Nunca es correcto retribuir una injusticia por una injusticia padecida, ni mal por mal (Critón 49 d7), pues es peor hacer una injusticia que padecerla.

Así, Sócrates no ignora que tiene “derecho humano a conservar su vida”, pero prima en él, el “derecho humano de los atenienses”, de los otros. Pues si se fuga realiza un acto de injusticia, peor aún que la recibida.

 

Hoy la teoría de los derechos humanos invirtió la ecuación y así viene a sostener la primacía del acreedor de derechos por sobre la obligación de ser justos.

 

Viene entonces la pregunta fundamental: ¿A qué debe el hombre otorgar primacía en el ámbito del obrar: a ser justo o a ser acreedor de derechos?

 

Sin lugar a dudas todo hombre de bien intenta ser justo en su obrar, sin por ello renunciar a sus derechos pero, si el acto justo implica posponer algún derecho, es seguro que el justo lo pospone.

Ello nos está indicando la primacía y la preferencia axiológica de lo justo sobre el derecho.

Si invertimos esta relación los derechos humanos terminan siendo concebidos como un disvalor.

De modo tal que, obviamente, no estamos en contra del rescate que los derechos humanos han realizado en cantidad de campos y dominios. Estamos en contra que la vida del hombre se piense limitada y girando exclusivamente sobre los derechos humanos.

Y así como el bien tiene una primacía ontológica sobre el deber porque el hombre no es bueno cuando realiza actos buenos, sino que el hombre realiza actos buenos cuando es bueno. Analógicamente, lo justo=ius la tiene sobre el derecho y la lex.

 

 

 

(*) buela.alberto@gmail.com  arkegueta, aprendiz constante

www.disenso.com 

 

 

 

[1]Es cierto que se han producido éticas ateístas de la persona (Nicolai Hartmann) pero eso no dejó de ser un mero ejercicio filosófico que no jode a nadie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

mercredi, 19 septembre 2012

Millet + Breivik ou l’équation insoluble

Thomas FERRIER:

Millet + Breivik ou l’équation insoluble

Ex: http://thomasferrier.hautetfort.com/

millet.jpgDix-sept pages qui déchaînent une tempête médiatique. Dix-sept pages pour un étrange essai « littéraire » dédié au criminel Anders Breivik, célèbre pour avoir assassiné dans la fleur de l’âge une jeunesse européenne insouciante. C’est peu dire que l’ouvrage de Millet pose de manière abrupte la question des responsabilités, mais fallait-il pour autant se servir du cas Breivik pour dénoncer la décadence de la civilisation européenne ? C’est la question fondamentale qui se pose à propos de cet essai « littéraire ».

Pour l’éditeur Jean Robin, l’essai de Millet est « mauvais » et même fondamentalement banal. Bruno Larebière, journaliste, va beaucoup plus loin, dénonçant l’élitisme arrogant de l’auteur, sa gallophobie (« francophobie ») son absence de souci de l’intérêt du peuple. Sa conclusion est terrible car, affirme-t’il, « Camus comme Millet ne font que propager leurs pulsions suicidaires ». En revanche, Dominique Venner, directeur de la « Nouvelle Revue d’Histoire », estime que Millet a fait preuve de courage intellectuel en dénonçant le suicide de l’Europe par le biais de l’immigration.

Ces critiques dures ou ces soutiens mesurés restent dignes et élèvent le débat comme la réflexion. En revanche, la dénonciation par Annie Ernaux de Richard Millet dans Le Monde du 10 septembre est un modèle de ce qu’il ne faut pas faire. Le qualifier de « fasciste » qui déshonorerait la littérature est grotesque. Qu’elle ne soit pas dupe des intentions politiques qu’on peut trouver dans cet essai de Millet est son droit. Qu’elle considère que la dénonciation de l’immigration extra-européenne à laquelle procède l’auteur heurte ses convictions cosmopolites, c’est aussi son droit. En revanche, elle dépasse les bornes lorsqu’elle suggère implicitement une collusion idéologique entre Millet et Breivik, que le premier se serait même « mis au service du fusil d’assaut d’Anders Breivik ». La médiocrité de son analyse, qui se limite au fond à traquer le « raciste » et le « fasciste » caché selon elle en Millet, est le reflet même d’une société européenne incapable de penser par elle-même. Enfin, le comble de la naïveté est atteint lorsque Mme Ernaux nous assène son amour de la diversité, qu’elle cotoierait en grande banlieue, alors que les électeurs français qui y vivent, se tournent vers le vote en faveur du FN, manifestant par là un sentiment bien différent. Cela démontre qu’elle ne sait simplement pas de quoi elle parle, et qu’elle se gargarise de poncifs « bobos » déconnectés du réel. Citant une de ses amies, elle affirme que Millet attaque « le multiculturalisme et le métissage ». C’est indiscutablement ce qu’il fait, et ce que l’on ne veut pas lui pardonner. Or c’est, malheureusement pour Mme Ernaux, là où Millet est le moins contestable.

Pour autant, je vois dans l’essai de Millet une énorme erreur d’analyse de sa part. Son éloge « littéraire » n’a fondamentalement rien de littéraire. Ce n’est que l’analyse politique engagée d’un acte terroriste, Breivik n’étant qu’un prétexte à une attaque en règle contre l’idéologie dominante. Etait-ce habile d’associer l’opposition à l’immigration extra-européenne à l’action d’un déséquilibré assassinant de sang froid de jeunes compatriotes ? Cela ne l’était évidemment pas. Etait-ce habile de cacher derrière ce mot « littéraire » un discours strictement politique mais qui n’ose pas s’affirmer comme tel ? Je vous laisse juges.

Millet nous parle ainsi des « nations européennes », lesquelles seraient « inquiètes d’une immigration extra-européenne, le plus souvent musulmane, qui entretient une intimidation victimaire, voire une peur quotidienne, donc un ferment de guerre civile, en même temps que l’illusion oxymorique d’un islamisme modéré ». Il évoque avec des mots durs « la fracture idéologico-raciale que l’immigration extra-européenne a introduite en Europe depuis une vingtaine d’années ».

Par le biais de Breivik, il s’en prend aussi aux journalistes qui ont attaqué les fondements de la tradition scandinave, ceux qui ont affirmé que Breivik était l’héritier de Knut Hamsun ou de l’Edda. En réalité, l’idéologie néo-templière de ce tueur, alibi pour une crise existentielle qui l’a conduit au crime, n’a rien à voir avec la morale scandinave d’un viking du Xème siècle. Sur cette distinction, là encore, Millet est inattaquable.

S’étant montré idéologue, et non pas critique littéraire, Millet s’est essayé dans un domaine où il n’est pas maître, avec la lourdeur d’un éléphant dans un magasin de porcelaine. Il n’est donc pas étonnant qu’il soit férocement attaqué par tout ce que la profession d’écrivain a d’indignés professionnels, cachant leur médiocrité littéraire derrière un discours bien pensant, serviteurs zélés d’une classe politique médiocre dont ils se font les relais médiatiques et dogmatiques.

Il faut voir que Millet n’assume pas publiquement ses propres thèses, qui sont contestables dans la forme ou dans le fond. Car Millet est un hexagonaliste doublé d’un occidentaliste. S’il admet dans son vocabulaire le mot « extra-européen », en revanche le mot « européen » seul lui écorche la gorge. Occidentaliste quand il faudrait être européiste, libéral quand le modèle « libéral » a du plomb dans l’aile, et en plus chrétien, il est l’antagoniste classique du monde islamique dans sa caricature. Il chérit fondamentalement les causes de ce qu’il déplore. S’il dénonce le marxisme comme l’un des éléments d’une « ouverture à l’autre » qu’il conteste, il épargne en revanche la religion catholique, le christianisme en général, de cette critique, alors qu’elle serait aussi justifiée dans ce cas.

En outre, Millet ne propose aucune solution à ce qu’il dénonce d’une manière si dure et, au final, si maladroite. Dans le nihilisme absolu, l’auteur, tout comme le Céline des temps sombres, s’expose à nu. Le résultat n’est pas nécessairement heureux. Il est vrai que le contexte général rend très difficile toute finesse d’interpréation à propos des actes de Breivik. C’est parfaitement illustré par la démission/exclusion de Laurent Ozon du FN après avoir fait un lien implicite entre la hausse de l’immigration en Norvège et ce drame.

Avec le déchaînement médiatique contre lui, qu’il a en partie justifié par la faiblesse de sa réponse ultérieure, n’assumant pas les passages les plus provocateurs par exemple, déchainement qui fait aussi de son ouvrage un succès de librairie, on aurait pu penser que son éditeur, Antoine Gallimard, lui aurait apporté son soutien, comme ses premières réactions le laissaient supposer. En réalité, Le Monde du 15 septembre 2012 nous fournit une précieuse indication. Gallimard aurait ainsi écrit à Millet qu’il ne saurait « approuver aucune de [ses] thèses politiques » et qu’il exige « le respect d’une idéologie confraternelle », expression qu’on peut traduire par un « politiquement correct ». Il est vrai que la maison Gallimard, qui a offert à Drieu La Rochelle la direction de la NRF pendant l’occupation, puis édité après-guerre des auteurs célèbres mais controversés comme Céline, lequel dénonçait après-guerre lui aussi l’immigration extra-européenne, dans une même logique nihiliste qu’on retrouve chez Millet et Renaud Camus, ou comme Jouhandeau et Montherlant, cette maison ne peut se permettre de donner la leçon.

En un mot comme en cent, Millet a été lâché. Il a ainsi dû se résoudre à démissionner du comité de lecture de Gallimard, ce qui ne suffira pas à ses détracteurs, comme Ben Jelloun ou Le Clézio, lesquels vont vouloir sa tête, et qui l’auront.

Quoi qu’on puisse penser de l’essai de Millet, ou de l’idéologie qui est la sienne, cet autodafé symbolique est insupportable et s’inscrit dans une démarche totalitaire où un Zemmour est privé d’antenne, où un Ménard est rejeté comme un malpropre. En faisant de lui un martyr de plus de la liberté d’expression, de médiocres inquisiteurs donnent une audience immense à ses thèses. La peur paranoïaque, qui fait dire à Annie Ernaux que « si ces idées devaient prendre corps et réalité, nous serions bien seuls », prouve que Millet est paradoxalement gagnant pour avoir démontré, par la haine dont il a été l’objet, qu’il y a bien quelque chose de pourri en république de France.

Thomas FERRIER (PSUNE)

Rassegna Stampa - Settembre 2012 (1)

Giornali-edicola-400x300.jpg

Rassegna Stampa
Settembre 2012 (1)
 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

G. Faye: The Transitional Program

The Transitional Program

By Michael O'Meara

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

A propos of . . .

Guillaume Faye
Mon Programme: Un programme révolutionnaire ne vise pas à changer les règles du jeu mais à changer de jeu,
Chevaigné: Les Éditions du Lore, 2012

Following quickly on the heels of Sexe et dévoiement [3] (2011), which examined the social-sexual roots of the present European demographic crisis, Faye’s latest is a much different kind of work, addressing quite another, though not entirely unrelated problem.

Theory and Practice

When dealing with political ideas in the largest sense (i.e., as they bear on the life or death of the polis), there comes a time, he argues, when critical and analytical thought, with its commentaries and opinions, has to pass from the abstract to the concrete. The most brilliant medical diagnosis, to give an analogy, is worth little if it does not eventually lead to a curative therapy.

In this vein, his Programme represents an effort to pass from the theoretical to the practical, as it proposes certain concrete policies (political therapies) to treat the ills presently afflicting the French state – and by extension, other European states. The details of this program make little reference to the American situation, but its general principles speak to the malignancy infecting all states of the Americanosphere.

Reform and Revolution

Faye’s program is not, ostensibly, about reforming the existing state. That would only “improve” a political system, whose corruptions, vices, and totalitarian powers are increasing immune to correction. The state’s lack of authority and democratic legitimacy, combined with the entrenchment of the New Class interests controlling it, means that such a system cannot actually be changed in any significant way. Hence the claim of Faye’s subtitle: A revolutionary program (i.e., one that attacks the existing disorder at its roots) “does not aim at changing the rules of the game but at changing the game itself.” The “game” here is the existing political system, which has become an obvious catastrophe for European peoples. For every patriot, this system needs not to be changed, but to be razed and rebuilt – from the ground up and according to an entirely different paradigm.

There is, though, a certain terminological confusion in the way Faye describes his program. He realizes it is something of a pipe dream. No state or party is likely to embrace it — though, of course, this does not lessen the value of its exercise nor does it mean it will not fertilize future projects of a similar sort. We also do not know what is coming and perhaps there will be a moment of breakdown — Joseph Tainter’s “Collapse” — making possible a revolutionary transition. If “we” should ever, then, have the occasion to assume power and restructure the state: how would we go about it?

Faye’s Programme is an effort to start thinking about such an alternative in a situation where a regime-threatening crisis of one sort or another brings a “new majority” to power. He doesn’t specifically spell out what such a crisis might entail, but it is easily imaginable. In 2017, for example, if the present society-destroying problems of unemployment, deindustrialization, massive indebtedness, uncontrolled Third World immigration, etc., are not fixed, and nothing suggests that they will, an anti-system party, like the National Front, could conceivably be voted into power. (Think of what is happening in Greece today.) In such a situation a new majority might submit something like his Programme to a referendum, calling on the “people” to authorize a radical re-structurization of the political system.

I can think of at least two national revolutions that came to power in a similar institutional (legal) way: the Sinn Féin MPs of December 1918 who refused to sit at Westminster and the NSDAP coalition that got a chance to form a government in January 1933.

The Programme anticipates a less catastrophic situation than foreseen in his Convergence des castastrophes (2004) or implied in Avant-Guerre (2002). Perhaps he is suggesting that this scenario is more realistic or likely now; I’m not certain. But it is strange to see so little of his convergence theory — what Tainter calls the ever mounting costliness of complexity — in his program, especially while positing a crisis as the program’s premise.

In any case, his Programme assumes its political remediation is to be administered before the present system collapses, at a moment when a new majority gets a chance to form a government from the debris of the old. For this reason, I think it is better characterized as “transitional” (in the Trotskyist sense).

Unlike a revolutionary program that outlines a strategy for overturning the existing order and seizing state power, a transitional program addresses a crisis in terms of the existing institutional parameters, but does so in ways that reach beyond their limits and are unacceptable to the ruling powers — challenging the system’s logic and thus posing a threat to its “order.” (See Leon Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International [1938].)

The State

In The Politics, Aristotle conceives of the state almost organically: the head of a body (the polis) — the political system that rules the City and ensures order within its measured boundaries.

In his self-consciously Aristotelian approach — which favors individual liberty, responsibility, hierarchy, and ethno-cultural homogeneity — Faye’s program aims at lessening the state’s costly, inefficient administrative functions, enhancing its sovereign powers, and abandoning its appropriation of functions that properly belong to the family and society.

This entails freeing the French state from the present European Union (whose Orwellian stranglehold on continental life is objectively anti-European). He does not actually advocate withdrawing from it, but rather refusing to cooperate with it until its rules are redesigned and national sovereignty is restored. Given that France is the most politically significant of the European states and is pivotal the EU’s existence, it has the power to force a major revamping of its policies and restore the European Idea that inspired the Treaty of Rome (1958).

If achieved, this restoration of national sovereignty would give the French state the freedom to remodel its institutions — not for the sake of undermining the primacy of the state, as our libertarians would have it, but of excising its cancers and enhancing its “regalian” will to “re-establish, preserve, and develop the identity, the prosperity, the security, and the power of France and Europe.”

Faye is not a traditional French nationalist, but a Europeanist favoring continental unity (an imperial family of nations rather than a global marketplace). He believes both the French state and the EU have a liberal-socialist concept of the political, which makes them unable to distinguish between their friends and enemies — given that the individualist, universalistic, and pluralist postulates of their ideology views the world in market and moralist terms, holding that only individualistic matters of ethics and economics are primary. (In traditional, organic civilizations it is the Holy that is primary.)

A restoration of sovereignty would give the French state the freedom to restructure and rebuild itself.

Globally, he proposes measures that would control the nation’s borders, re-vitalize its national economy, improve its efficiency, reduce its costs, amputate its nomenclature, streamline its functions, and concentrate on the national interest, and not, like now, on the special interests. But there is nothing in the Programme that would mobilize the French themselves for the transition. It is strictly a top-down project that ignores what Patrick Pearse called “the sovereign people,” who are vital to the success of every revolutionary movement.

The state, in any case, is too large — which is true almost everywhere. At its top and bottom: its functions and personnel need to be greatly reduced — cabinet positions should fall to six (Defense, Justice, Foreign Affairs, Interior, Economy, and Instruction/Patrimony) and the number of state functionaries cut by at least 50 percent. Faye’s proposals would remove cumbersome, over-regulating, and counter-productive state agencies for the sake of freeing up funds for more worthwhile investments in the private economy.

Toward these ends, he proposes overturning the anti-democratic role of judges, who in the name of the Constitution thwart the popular will (constitutional questions would be left to the Senate); introducing referendums that give the electorate a greater say in major policy decisions; restoring popular liberties, like the right to free speech; introducing “positive” law that judges the crime and not the criminal; abolishing the privileges of higher state functionaries (now greater than those of the 18th-century aristocracy); and eliminating the present confusion of state powers.

The Economy

In the modern world, the power (in a material sense) of a nation-state is in its economy. (The health and longevity of the nation — in the spiritual sense — is another thing, dependent on its demography, the preservation of it genetic heritage, the quality of its culture, and the culture’s transmission.)

Though conscious of the dangers posed by economism, Faye believes “prosperity” is necessary (though not sufficient) for social harmony and national defense. State and economy for him are different realms, operating according to different logics. But he rejects both the Marxist contention that the state’s political economy can do anything it wishes in the market and the liberal-conservative position that it can do nothing. Straddling the two, he advocates a political economy whose guiding principles are non-ideological and pragmatic. “What counts is what works — not what conforms to a dogma.” Sound economic practice is based on experience, not theory.

The great financial crisis of 2008, whose ravages are still evident, was not, he claims, a crisis of capitalism, but a crisis of the welfare-state — and thus a crisis of “statism” (étatisme). The crippling state debt allegedly at the root of this crisis stems, he argues, from the state’s profligate spending, its ever-growing number of functionaries, its bureaucratic mismanagement and cronyism, and its unsupportable social charges, like the Afro-Arab hordes occupying its banlieues. Left-wing talk of ultra-liberalism is delusional in economic systems as regulated as those of Europe. In living beyond its means, the state has acquired debts it cannot afford and now blames it on others.

Faye dismisses those who claim the crisis was created by a conspiracy of banksters and vampire capitalists. Targeting solely the failures of the present political system, he does not see or think it is important that there is something of a revolving door (perhaps greater in the US than France) between the state and the corporations, that the crimes of the money powers are intricately linked to state policies, and thus that the economic interests have a corrupting and distorting effect on the state.

In his anti-Marxism, Faye is wont to stress the primacy of the “superstructure,” rather than the economic “base” (which, most of the time, is probably a reliable rule of thumb). Similarly, he does not relate the current crisis to globalization, which has everywhere undermined the existing models of governance, nor does he consider the often nefarious role played by the IMF, the WTO, and the new global oligarchs.

He blames the crisis solely on the state’s incompetent and spendthrift policies, leaving blameless the money-lenders and criminals, whose bail-out caused the national debt to escalate beyond any imaginable repayment. The state may be primary to a people’s existence, but in the neo-liberal regimes of the West, it is clearly attentive, if not subordinated to the dominant economic interests. The two (state and economy) seem hardly understandable today except in relation to one another — though he wants us to believe the cause of the crisis was purely political. (In my mind, it is civilizational.)

In any case, the French state is over-administrated, “socialist” in effect; it has too many workers (almost 25 percent of the workforce); it pursues social-engineering domestically and economy-destroying free-trade policies internationally, the most self-destroying policies conceivable. Given capitalism’s quantitative logic, its globalist free-trade policies are also destroying Europe’s ability to compete with low-wage Third World economies, like China, and are thus devastating the productive capacity of its economies.

France and Europe, Faye argues, need to protect themselves from the ravages of global free trade by creating a Eurasian autarkic economic zone, from Galway to Vladivostok (what he once called “Eurosiberia,” though there’s no mention of it), and at the same time by liberalizing the domestic economy, throwing off excessive regulations and social charges for the sake of unleashing European initiative and enterprise. He calls thus for changes in the EU that focus on stimulating the European market rather than allowing it to succumb to America’s global market, which is turning the continent’s advanced economies into financialized and tertiarized economies, unable to provide decent paying jobs. The emphasis of his program is thus on national economic growth.

The present policy of budget austerity, he argues, is compounding the crisis, causing state revenues to decline and forcing the economy into depression. Growth alone will generate the wealth needed to get out of debt. To this end, the state needs to radically cut costs, but do so without imposing austerity measures. This entails not just simplifying and rationalizing public functions, but changing the paradigm. The state should not, therefore, indiscriminately reduce public expenses, but rather suppress useless, unproductive charges, while augmenting wealth-creating ones.

Basically, he wants the state to withdraw from the economy, but without abandoning its role in protecting the public and national interests. For those key sectors vital to the nation’s economy and security — energy, armaments, aerospace, and high tech — the state should exercise a certain strategic control over them, but without interfering in their management.

He also calls for a tax revolution that will unburden the middle class, while expanding the tax base. Similarly, he wants the state to encourage enterprise by relieving business of costly social charges, especially on small and middle-size enterprises that create employment; he wants the French to work more — increasing the workweek from 35 hours to 40, and decreasing annual vacations from five weeks to four; he wants a liberalization of the labor market, with a system of national preferences favoring French workers over immigrants; he wants a different system of unemployment benefits that encourages work and rationalizes job placements; he wants a cap on executive salaries and an end to golden parachutes; and he wants state subventions of public worker unions discontinued, along with their right to strike.

As a general principle, he claims the state should not grant rights it cannot afford, that those who can work should, that foreigners have no right to public services (including education), that quotas imposing artificial forms of sexual and racial equality are intolerable, and that only natives unable to work should be entitled to assistance. Social justice, he observes, is not a matter of socialist redistribution, but of a system whose pragmatic efficiencies and competitive industries are able to provide for the nation’s needs. There are, however, no proposals in his program for re-industrialization, state economic planning, or an alternative form of economy based on something other than capitalism’s incessant need to grow and consume.

Closely related to the country’s economic problems is that of the state’s failed politique familiale. The state needs to adopt measures to offset the social problems created by explosive divorce rates and non-reproducing birthrates. The aging of the population is also going to require increased medical services, which need to be expanded and improved.

As for the rising generation, he calls for a revamping of the national education system, which has become a “cretin-producing factory.” France’s Third Republic had one of the finest educational systems in the world, that of the Fifth Republic has been an utter disaster, due largely to Left-wing egalitarian policies catering to the lowest common denominator (the Barbarians at the Gates). The state, moreover, has no right to ‘educate’ youth — that is the role of the family (and, I would add, the Church). The state should instead provide schools that instruct — that convey knowledge and its methods — not inculcate the reigning Left ideologies. Discipline must also be restored; all violence and disorder in schools must be severely punished. Immigrants and non-natives ought to be excluded. Obligatory schooling should end at age 14, and a system of apprenticeship (like in Germany) should be made available to those who do not pursue academic degrees.

The universities also need to be revamped, with more rigorous forms of instruction, dress codes, tracking, and the elimination of such frivolous disciplines as psychology, sociology, communications, business, etc.

There are, though, no proposed measures in his program to strengthen the nation’s ethno-cultural identity, resist the audio-visual imperialism of America’s entertainment industry, or outlaw the NGOs funded by the CIA.

Immigration

The present soft-totalitarian ideology of the French state, like states throughout the Americanosphere, portrays immigration as an “enrichment,” though obviously it is everywhere and in all ways a disaster, threatening the nation’s ethnic fundament, its way of life, and its cultural integrity. Immigration is also code for Third World colonization and Islamization.

Against those claiming it is impossible to stem the immigrant tide, Faye contends that what is needed is a will to do so — a will to eliminate the “pull” factors (like welfare) that attract the immigrant invaders. He proposes zero immigration, the deportation of illegals, the expulsion of unemployed legal ones, the end to family regroupments, the strict policing of student and tourist visas, the abolition of exile rights, visa controls on international transportation links, the elimination of state-funded social assistance to foreigners, national preference in employment, and the replacement of jus soli by jus sanguinis.

Given that Muslims are a special threat, Faye proposes abolishing all state-supported Muslim associations, prohibiting mosque building and halal practices, imposing heavy fines on veiled women, eliminating Muslim chaplains from the military and the prison system, and implementing a general policy of restrictive legislation toward Islam. Surprisingly, he proposes no measures to break up the non-European ghettos presently sponging off French tax-payers and constituting a highly destabilizing factor within the body politic (perhaps because the above measures would prevent these ghettos from continuing to exist).

Even these relatively moderate measures, he realizes, are likely to stir up trouble, for every positive action inevitably comes with its negative effects. But unless measures aimed at stopping the “pull” factors promoting the immigrant invasion are taken, Faye warns, it may be too late for France, in which case more drastic measures will have to be taken later — and Plan B will have no pity.

The World

The state’s defense of the nation and its relationship with other states are two of its defining functions.

To those familiar with Faye’s earlier thoughts on these subjects, they will find the same general orientation — a rejection of Atlanticism, a realignment with Russia, neutrality to the US, withdrawal from the Third World, and an armed vigilance toward Islam. His stance on NATO, the US, and Russia, though, is more “moderate” than those taken in the past.

The Programme depicts the present EU as objectively anti-European, but does not call for an outright withdrawal from it. It similarly recognizes that NATO subordinates Europe to America’s destructive crusades and alliances (impinging on the basic principle of sovereignty: the right to declare war) and again does not call for a withdrawal, only a strategy to diminish its significance. And, finally, though he thinks Russia should be the axis of French policy (which is indeed her only viable geopolitical option), there is little in his program that would advance the prospects of such a realignment or re-align France against the surreptitious war of encirclement presently being waged by the US against Russia. There is also nothing on the present “unipolar-to-multipolar phase” of international politics, brought on by America’s imperial decline — as it goes about threatening war and international havoc, all the while supremely indifferent to the collapse of its own economic fundamentals. On these key policies related to France’s position in the world, he stands to the “right” of Marine Le Pen.

Faye’s program aims at restoring French sovereignty, but, as suggested, on issues relevant to its restoration, his position would greatly modify France’s submission to the anti-sovereign powers, not break with them. At the root of this apparent irresolution, I suspect, is his understanding of Islam. Faye has long designated it as Europe’s principal enemy. And there is no question that Islam, as a civilization, is objectively and threateningly anti-European, and that Muslim immigrants pose a dire threat to France’s future.

But his half-right position has taken him down a wayward path: to an alliance with Islam’s great enemy, Israel, and to an accommodation with Israel’s Guardian Angel, the United States, the world’s foremost anti-white power. For it is the American system (in arming and abetting jihadists to destabilize regimes it seeks to control) that has made Islam such a world threat and it is the American system (in the blight of its leveling commercialism and the poisonous vapors of its human rights ideology) that poses the greatest, most profound threat to European existence.

Faye’s questionable position on these issues seems, more generally, to come from ignoring the nature of the post-1945 nomos imposed by New York-Washington on defeated Europe and the rest of the non-Communist world after the Second World War. America has always had an ambivalent relationship to Europe — being both an offshoot of European Christian civilization and a Puritan (in effect, Bolshevik) opponent of it. Since the end of the last world war — when it formally threw off the Christian moral foundations of the last thousand years of European civilization by morally sanctioning “the destruction of residential areas and the mass killing of civilians as a routine method of warfare” — a new counter-civilization, an empire of liberty and chaos, has come to rule the world (even if during the 45 years of the Cold War the US encouraged the illusion that it was a bastion of Western values and Christianity). (See Desmond Fennell, The Postwestern Condition: Between Chaos and Civilization [1999]; Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth [1950/2003].)

Not just the devastated Germans and Italians, but all Europeans were subsequently integrated into the predatory empire of this counter-civilization — and subjected to its transvaluation of values (consumerism, permissiveness, abortion, the elimination of sex differences, the death of God, the end of art, anti-racism, and the “newspeak” whose inversions hold that “war is peace,” “dictatorship is democracy,” “ignorance is culture,” etc.). European elites have since become not just a comprador bourgeoisie, but home-grown exemplars of the moral and cultural void (the Thanatos principles) animating the American system. It is this system and its poisons that have made Europeans indifferent to their survival as a people and accounts for the increasing dysfunctionality of their established institutions — not the mass influx of Third World immigrants, who are a (prominent and very unpleasant) symptom, though not the source, of the reigning inversions.

Without acknowledging this, Faye can argue that America is only an adversary of Europe — a power that might exploit Europeans, but not one posing a life and death threat to their existence, like a true enemy. He forgets, accordingly, that America and America’s special friend, Britain, rather consciously destroyed historic Europe — that civilization born from the “medieval” alliance of Charlemagne and the Papacy. In the course of its anti-fascist crusade, the imperial leviathan headquartered in New York-Washington threw off the values and forms of Europe’s ancient and venerable Christian civilization for ones based on the sanctioning of mass murder.

Such premises have since inspired on-going campaigns “to abolish and demolish and derange” the world. It is this system that endangers white people today — for it wars on everything refusing to bend to its “liberal democratic” (i.e., money-driven) colonization, standardization, and demeaning of private and social life — as it breaks up traditional communities, isolates the individual within an increasingly indifferent “global world” dismissive of history, culture, and nature, rejects historically and religiously established sources of meaning, and leaves in their stead innumerable worthless consumer items and a whorl of fabricated electronic simulacra that situate all life within its hyperreal bubble. Even in an indirect or transitional way, Faye does not address this most eminent of the anti-European forces, offering no real alternative to the US/EU consumer paradise, whose present breakdown will be recuperated only by a resistance whose political vision transcends the underlying tenets of the existing one.

Conclusion

As an exercise, Faye’s Programme displays much of its author’s characteristic intelligence and creativity, and it stands as a respectable complement to the numerous interpretative and analytical works he has written on various aspects of European life over the last decade and a half — works written with verve and an imagination rich in imagery, lucidity, and urgency. As a brief programmatic redefinition of the French state system, his program is, admittedly, impressive. It is not, however, revolutionary. In some respects, it is not transitional. Above all, it does not get at the roots of the existing disorder: the satanic system that is presently destroying both Europe and the remnants of European civilization in America.

If Faye continues to speak for the rising forces of European identitarianism and populism, he will need to invent a better “game” than his program — for what seems most needed in this period of transition is a worldview premised on the overthrow of the existing nomos.

 


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

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/08/the-transitional-program/

Histoire du Maroc, des origines à nos jours

Géopolitique en livres

Histoire du Maroc, des origines à nos jours

Aux origines de la crise grecque

 

Grece_Austerite.jpg

Safet BABIC:

Aux origines de la crise grecque

 

Il ne suffit pas de dénoncer le laxisme économique des Grecs, il faut se rappeler les méfaits de l’impérialisme occidental en Grèce!

 

Tous les jours que Dieu fait, on entend parler dans les médias de la menace qui pèse sur la Grèce, celle d’une faillite totale de l’Etat. Ce serait une conséquence de la crise économique mondiale et de la dette pharamineuse qu’aurait accumulée la Grèce, devenue ainsi insolvable face à ses créanciers.

 

Le gouvernement grec a donc été obligé d’adopter des mesures d’austérité drastique, ce qui a provoqué de violentes manifestations de masse dans tout le pays et à des turbulences sur les marchés financiers internationaux, turbulences qui, à leur tour, menacent l’euro en tant que monnaie commune de l’UE. En Allemagne, les faiseurs d’opinion comme le journal “Bild” et l’ancien socialiste berlinois Thilo Sarrazin explique cette crise par les déficiences caractérielles qu’ils prêtent au peuple grec; celui-ci se sent plutôt victime d’une conspiration ourdie à l’étranger et d’un diktat imposé par les Allemands.

 

Cependant, une analyse politique de la situation, sérieuse et documentée, nous prouve que l’opinion dominante, qui est l’opinion des dominants, nie ou déforme la vérité et ne nous révèle pas les causes et les effets de cette crise grecque; cette opinion des dominants préfère envenimer les rapports entre les peuples pour tirer profit de la zizanie entre Européens.

 

La Grèce est un pays du Sud-Est de l’Europe, dont l’histoire, si riche, la culture et la philosophie constituent, depuis la plus lointaine antiquité, les fondements de l’identité et de la pensée européennes. Seuls les Juifs et les Perses peuvent prétendre disposer d’une continuité ethno-culturelle aussi ancienne et comparable.

 

Sur le plan culturel, la Grèce appartient à la sphère chrétienne-orthodoxe, ce qui implique des relations et des contacts étroits avec la Serbie, la Bulgarie et surtout la Russie. Certains milieux n’ont dès lors pas pardonné à la Grèce de ne pas avoir participé aux attaques aériennes subies par l’ex-Yougoslavie en 1999, alors qu’elle est pourtant membre de l’OTAN.

 

La Grèce se situe, géostratégiquement parlant, dans une zone importante qui forme le point de contact entre le Proche Orient, l’Europe et l’Afrique du Nord. En effet, Beyrouth, Jérusalem, Le Caire et Tripoli ne sont qu’à 1100 km à vol d’oiseau d’Athènes, tandis que Munich est à 1500 km. Cette situation géographique explique pourquoi la Grèce opte pour une “politique étrangère multidimensionnelle” qui lui permet d’entretenir des contacts étroits avec l’UE, les Etats balkaniques et les Etats-Unis mais aussi, à peu près à égalité, avec la Russie et les pays arabes. Pour l’approvisionnement de l’Europe en énergie, la Grèce joue également un rôle-clef.

 

La politique étrangère de la Grèce reflète bien la contradiction qui peut exister entre l’opinion du peuple réel et les intérêts des 20.000 membres de la superclasse. En 1981, l’adhésion de la Grèce à la “Communauté européenne”, c’est-à-dire au “Club des riches”, avait d’abord été refusée par Andreas Papandréou et son parti, le PASOK (ou “Mouvement socialiste pan-hellénique”). Jusqu’au début des années 90, le PASOK cherchait d’ailleurs son inspiration auprès des modèles socialistes des pays arabes.

 

Un conflit irrésolu avec la Turquie

 

Les bonnes relations qu’entretient traditionnellement la Grèce avec les pays arabes ont notamment été évoquées lorsqu’Athènes avait signé un accord de coopération bilatéral avec le leader libyen Mouamar al-Khadafi en juin 2010. Mais fait significatif de notre époque de confusion: la Grèce, tarabustée par la crise, prend part de facto, quelques mois plus tard, en mars 2011, à la guerre lancée contre la Libye, en mettant à la disposition des avions de l’OTAN les bases situées sur sol hellénique pour l’Opération “Odyssey Dawn”.

 

Pour un Etat qui souhaite adhérer à l’UE, comme Israël, la Grèce est perçue comme le “littoral d’en face”, ce qui lui confère une importance géostratégique de premier plan. Il me paraît intéressant de noter que ces deux Etats, l’hellénique et l’hébreu, n’entretiennent des relations diplomatiques que depuis 1991 car, auparavant, la population grecque se solidarisait majoritairement avec les Palestiniens à cause du conflit cypriote; avant la crise, d’importantes collectes d’argent s’effectuaient en Grèce au bénéfice des populations palestiniennes des territoires occupés.

 

Le souvenir de l’occupation ottomane, qui a duré du 14ème au 19ème siècle, et l’invasion en 1974 de la partie septentrionale de l’Ile de Chypre, entièrement grecque au départ, font que la Turquie est toujours perçue par la Grèce officielle comme une menace permanente contre l’hellénité. C’est ce qui explique pourquoi la Grèce consacre des sommes, qui semblent disproportionnées, à l’entretien de son armée. La tâche que la Grèce devait assumer dans le cadre de l’alliance atlantique était de contrôler le bassin oriental de la Méditerranée; les Etats-Unis, pour permettre à Athènes d’assurer cette mission, ont pris en charge une bonne partie des dépenses grecques en matière de défense. Ainsi, en 1990, les Américains ont versé à l’armée hellénique 351 millions de dollars, soit 24,3% du budget “défense” de la Grèce. La Grèce entretient toujours une armée de 157.000 soldats, ce qui la place au cinquième rang des Etats de l’UE pour ce qui concerne les effectifs, après la France, l’Allemagne, l’Italie et la Grande-Bretagne. Au cours de ces dix dernières années, la Grèce a dépensé 50 milliards d’euro pour l’équipement de son armée; elle est ainsi le cinquième acheteur d’armements conventionnels au monde.

 

Le conflit de Chypre demeure actuel: rappellons, à ce propos, que le premier ministre turc Erdogan a déclaré en juillet 2011 que la Turquie gèlerait tous ses contacts avec l’UE si Chypre, en vertu du principe de rotation établi au sein de l’UE, prenait en charge la présidence du Conseil pour six mois, soit pour la seconde moitié de l’année 2012. On ne doit pas oublier non plus que ce sont les colonisateurs britanniques qui ont empêché l’union entre Chypre et la Grèce, alors qu’en 1950, 96% des Chypriotes s’étaient exprimé, lors d’un référendum, pour l’ “Enosis”, le rattachement de Chypre à la mère-patrie grecque. Selon la constitution cypriote de 1960, la Grèce, la Turquie et la Grande-Bretagne sont les puissances protectrices et garantes de Chypre. Mais Londres, on le sait, est dominée par le cartel ploutocratique des banques de la “City”.

 

Après la chute de Constantinople en 1453, lorsque les Ottomans s’emparent de la métropole de l’ancien Empire byzantin, toute forme d’Etat grec cesse d’exister. Constantinople cesse de s’appeler ainsi et prend le nom turc d’Istanbul (ce qui est, en fin de compte, le même nom, mais prononcé à la façon turque). Les Grecs, comme les autres peuples balkaniques, se dresseront contre la gestion arbitraire des Turcs et de leurs collaborateurs autochtones, les “Phanariotes”. La révolte éclate en 1821 et donne le coup d’envoi à la révolution grecque.

 

De nos jours encore, l’événement est célébré dans la mesure où la Fête Nationale grecque est fixée au 25 mars, date qui marque le début de l’insurrection populaire et de la lutte de libération nationale contre le pouvoir ottoman. Le mouvement indépendantiste grec a bénéficié du soutien de la Russie, de la France et de la Grande-Bretagne, ainsi que de celui de nombreux volontaires “philhéllènes” comme le poète anglais Lord Byron. Les forces terrestres turques, présentes en Grèce à cette époque, ont pu être facilement vaincues. Mais les luttes intestines, entre fractions politiques rivales, ont, elles, été exploitées par les Ottomans.

 

C’est ce qui a permis au pacha égyptien Mehmet Ali de reprendre Athènes et d’autres villes importantes en 1825/1826. Ce n’est que par une “intervention humanitaire” avant la lettre, proposée et soutenue par la Russie et la Grande-Bretagne, et par un débarquement de 14.000 soldats français en 1828 que l’indépendance de la Grèce a pu devenir possible. Lors de la Conférence de Londres de 1830, ce sera chose faite. Sans l’aide massive de l’étranger, il n’y aurait jamais eu d’Etat grec.

 

Une dépendance permanente

 

la-grece-sur-les-ruines-de-missolonghi-1826.jpgLe premier roi du royaume de Grèce fut le prince bavarois Otto, sacré Otto I. Son accession au trône fut aussi un faux-fuyant. Tandis que des investisseurs capitalistes britanniques et français faisaient des affaires juteuses en Grèce, des fondations privées allemandes finançaient, sans aucun esprit de lucre, les infrastructures naissantes de l‘Etat grec et contribuaient à la renaissance de l’hellénité. Il semble que l’histoire se répète...

 

La politique budgétaire du nouvel Etat laissait à désirer, si bien qu’après un putsch militaire en 1862, le Roi Otto I a dû abdiquer. Ce fut la fin de la “bavarocratie”. Depuis son indépendance (informelle), acquise en 1826, la Grèce n’a cessé de souffrir d’un déficit permanent: sa balance commerciale était toujours déficitaire face à l’étranger, comme l’expliquent Carmen M. Reinhart et Kenneth S. Rogoff dans leur livre “Dieses Mal ist alles anders. Acht Jahrhunderte Finanzkrisen” (“Cette fois, c’est différent – Huit siècles de crises financières”).

 

Depuis 1826, il y a eu trois grandes crises bancaires en Grèce et l’Etat y a été cinq fois en cessation de paiement, réagissant à cette situation en rééchelonnant les dettes: ce fut le cas en 1826, en 1843, en 1860, en 1893 et en 1932. L’état de crise permanent, subi par la Grèce, dès sa  naissance en 1926, chaque fois qu’elle n’a plus plus pu payer ses dettes à l’étranger, l’a exclue pendant 53 ans des marchés financiers internationaux.

 

Dans la seconde moitié du 19ème siècle, une masse de capitaux étrangers a afflué en Grèce, attirée par des taux d’intérêt variant entre 40% et 50%, ce qui a permis de développer l’agriculture et l’industrie textile, tandis que des entreprises frnaçaises réactivaient les mines de Laurion.

 

En même temps que l’Egypte et la Turquie, la Grèce, à la fin du 19ème siècle, a, elle aussi, dû aliéner une part de sa souveraineté en confiant sa politique budgétaire à l’Empire britannique. Le pays était de facto gouverné depuis Londres, ce qui explique l’entrée en guerre de la Grèce aux côtés des Britanniques en 1917.

 

 

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A la suite de plusieurs guerres, jusqu’en 1923, la Grèce a pu agrandir son territoire et lui donner ses dimensions actuelles, après l’échec de la reconquête des régions peuplées de Grecs en Asie Mineure. Lors du Traité de Lausanne de 1923, la Grèce et la Turquie ont décidé un échange de populations. Après la première guerre mondiale, la Grèce appartenait de fait à la sphère d’influence britannique; après 1947, d’aucuns ont appelé l’ambassade des Etats-Unis à Athènes, le “gouvernement annexe”. Sans l’accord tacite des Etats-Unis, la dictature militaire, qui a gouverné le pays entre 1967 et 1974, n’aurait jamais pu se maintenir.

 

La Grèce dans l’Europe de Bruxelles

 

La Grèce est devenue membre de la “Communauté Européenne” en 1981. Cette adhésion lui a permis d’obtenir plus facilement des crédits au bénéfice de l’Etat grec. Depuis 1981, le déficit et l’endettement de la Grèce n’ont fait que croître à grande vitesse. Ainsi, la Grèce est tombé toujours davantage dans la dépendance par rapport au système international du crédit. Si, en 1981, la Grèce avait 7,8 milliards de dollars de dettes vis-à-vis de l’étranger, elle en avait déjà 17 milliards en 1986. La dette publique grecque s’élevait déjà à 40% du PIB en 1981. En 1986, c’était 62%. En 1989, près de 100%.

 

L’adhésion à la CE s’est donc avérée fatale sur le plan budgétaire. En 1985, la CE a accordé à son nouveau membre grec un crédit d’une valeur de 1,75 milliard d’ECU, ce qui a permis au gouvernement socialiste d’entamer des négociations en vue de rééchelonner la dette et de contourner, de cette façon, les conditions très strictes imposées notamment par le FMI. La Grèce a raté ainsi la chance historique de consolider son budget par le biais de réformes générales.

 

Pour des raisons politiques, le programme de stabilisation a échoué dès les années 1985-87 et en 1991. Cette année-là, une crise bancaire a provoqué en Grèce une crise financière, tant et si bien que l’aide de l’Etat a été nécessaire à grande échelle jusqu’en 1995. Tandis que l’argent des contribuables allemands, sous forme de subsides de l’UE, inondait la Grèce et se perdait dans des canaux douteux, le statut de membre de la CEE a modifié de manière négative la structure même de l’économie grecque. Depuis l’“ouverture à l’Europe”, tout a été fait au bénéfice du tourisme et au détriment de l’agriculture, de l’industrie et de l’exportation. Par conséquent, on peut dire que la crise grecque est un résultat, immanent au système, de l’intégration européenne, ennemie des peuples réels d’Europe.

 

Safet BABIC.

(article paru dans “Deutsche Stimme”, Juli 2012; http://www.deutsche-stimme.de/ ).

Bouckaert et al.: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family

Bouckaert et al.: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family

Onlangs lanceerde een team onder leiding van Remco BOUCKAERT (University of Auckland) een nieuwe hypothese inzake de oorsprong van de Indo-Europese talen.
Hieronder vindt u een paar recensies, alsook een link naar het oorspronkelijke artikel in Science zelf:

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/archaeology/recent/indo-european-anatolia-bouckaert-2012.html

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/08/there-are-more-things-in-prehistory-than-are-dreamt-of-in-our-urheimat/

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6097/957

Het betreft een soort intermediair standpunt tussen de Kurgan-hypothese van Gimbutas, Mallory en vele anderen en de Anatolië-hypothese van Renfrew, met de argumentatie dat de Indo-Europese talen wel degelijk hun oorsprong in Anatolië (ca. 8000 vot) zouden hebben, maar de huidige Indo-Europese "taalgroepen" in Europa waarschijnlijk in een later stadium (vanaf ca. 4000 vot) geleidelijk vanuit de Pontisch-Kaspische steppe naar Europa zouden zijn uitgewaaierd.

Op te volgen...


Marc. Eemans : Non possumus

 

Non possumus

by Marc. Eemans

 

Qu'on nous excuse ce recours au latin papal pour opposer un refus – net et catégorique – à cette déviation vers un ésotérisme teinté de science-fiction que nous croyons découvrir derrière le « thème d'Uranus » proposé par quelques « fantasmages »au IVe Salon International « Fantasmagie » de Bruxelles, dont le présent numéro [Fantasmagie no. 10, mai 1962] est en quelque sorte comme le support idéologique.

Libre à ces amis de se perdre dans les dédales d'un néo-rosicrucianisme revu et corrigé à la lueur de certaines théories à la mode du jour, qui tendent à nous faire croire que notre civilisation se trouve « en rupture et mutation ».

Nous le savons bien que nous sommes entrés – et depuis pas mal d'années déjà – dans une ère que nous appellerons volontiers celle du mépris, de la bassesse d'être et de 'avilissement. Oui, nous assistons à une irrésistible autant qu'irréversible montée d'aveugles forces telluriques qui menacent de submerger tout ce qui nous était cher et qui demeurait notre seule raison de vivre et d'espérer. Que nous sommes aussi entrés dans une ère de science nouvelles, de conquêtes interstellaires et de menaces nucléaires, qui le niera, mais en quoi cela peut-il changer l'essence-même de notre condition d'homme et de l'authenticité de notre vie réelle ?

Ne faut-il pas être un peu illuminé, comme Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, ou plutôt jobard, comme le savant américain Oppenheimer, pour affirmer que les récents progrès de la science sont en passe de faire de nous des « êtres nouveaux »? Sans doute, les technocrates d'aujourd'hui se trouvent à l'antipode de l'homme cultivé, de l' « honnête homme » de jadis, car la technocratie a succédé à la culture, en général, et à la science, en particulier. L'automation autant que la spécialisation vont 'l'encontre de la vie de l'esprit. Ainsi, nos modernes cosmonautes – pour ne parler que de ces vedettes de la technocratie – au lieu d'être les prototypes du surhomme de demain que nous annonçait Nietzsche, ne sont-ils que de simples citoyens soviétiques ou américains uniquement préoccupés de la bonne réussite du travail qui leur a été assigné. Une fois rentrés chez eux, après leur périple spatial qui relève davantage de la performance sportive, que de l’expérience scientifique, ils ne sont certainement plus que de tout petits hommes, aussi dupes que le premier monsieur Dupont ou Durand venu, de la pâture que peuvent leur offrir les modernes techniques d'abrutissement des foules que sont la grande presse, le cinéma, les sports, la radio et la télévision.

Il est évident que nous ne nous laisserons pas aveugler par ce stupide nouveau culte des idoles et que nous sommes prêts à apporter notre tribut d'admiration aux savants obscurs qui rendent possibles tant d'exploits spectaculaires. Mais, ne l'oublions pas, ce sont aussi ces savants qui sont les apprentis-sorciers üraniens » auxquels font allusion MM. Brahy et Mariën, ces apprentis-sorciers dont l'esprit d'investigation et de conquête est à la fois riche en découvertes vertigineuses et en menaces d'anéantissements apocalyptiques.

Certes, nous pourrons nous rencontrer ainsi avec certaines théories quant aux caractéristiques « uraniennes », telles que les définissent les astrologues, car, somme toute, leurs vues sur l' « ère uranienne » ne sont peut-être que de simples intuitions qui nous viennent de la nuit des temps, et dont les projections métaphoriques, ainsi que les synthèmes et symboles, peuvent parfaitement se prêter à l'analyse des mythes et archétypes de l'inconscient collectif chers à la psychologie des profondeurs.

Mais, que penser de ces tenants de la « Tradition »qui veulent insérer les progrès techniques du jour dans un schéma de superstitions selon lesquelles l'histoire du monde s’acheminerait vers un devenir religieux fait à l'image des divagations les plus sottes ?

Rêveries sans bien grande importance, sans doute, mais aussi étrange goût du paradoxe et de l'affirmation gratuite. Et, par ailleurs aussi, que de visions rétrogrades, que de professions de foi réactionnaires, et que de logomachie ! On se croirait parmi les primates de la pensée philosophique ou les analphabètes de la Christian Science devant des sornettes aussi flagrantes que l'énoncé que voici que certains n'ont pas hésité à proposer à notre méditation : « Uranus ensuite pourra porter l'Humanité vers une fraternité réelle et non plus théorique. Le véritable christianisme enseigné par une Eglise plus démocratique, telle que le conçut son fondateur, deviendra universel, et le culte du Saint-Esprit prendra une grande importance ».

Devons-nous y opposer une profession de foi agnostique, anti-chrétienne et anti-démocratique, pour nous présenter comme des néo-païens non-conformistes et passablement révolutionnaires ? Non, ce ne serait que ridicule, et puis ne nous répondrait-on pas que nous n'y avons rien compris et que nous ne sommes que de pauvre esprits cartésiens auxquels échappe la grâce de l'Illumination initiatique...

Mais, comment l'art fantastique et magique peut-il s'accommoder de tant d’ésotérisme primaire ? Pour les épigones du surréalisme figuratif, il suffira peut-être de démarquer certaines recettes qui remontent aux fantasmagories d'un Jérôme Bosch ou d'un Brueghel et que le Salvador Dali des bonnes années a su réactualiser dans le sillage du comte de Lautréamont. Ce ne seront que perspectives fuyantes en des paysages désertiques ou lunaires avec des personnages déboîtés ou larvaires aux ombres allongées, des matières molles ou viscérales, des spectres un peu grotesques ou hideux, le tout plongé dans une atmosphère d'apocalypse.

Quant aux admirateurs d'un surréalisme évolué selon les plus récentes formules de l'abstraction chaude ou lyrique, que d'aucuns considèrent comme le nec plus ultra de l'expression automatique, il leur suffira de s'adonner à l'art des nébuleuses ou des éruptions solaires et de peindre des cosmogonies agrémentées ou non de planètes et d’étoiles filantes...

Le fantastique uranien s'intègre ainsi facilement dans l'incongru, le cauchemaresque et la science-fiction, à moins qu'il ne prétende être le véritable art magique, celui des signes secrets et des anagogies qui relient mystérieusement le passé au futur.

Mais pourquoi le fantastique ne s'en tiendrait-il pas à la sancta simplicitas, à la simple poésie de l’œil, du sein, de la rose, du feuillage, de l'écorce, de l'écume de la mer, de la conque, du cristal, de la pierre, de l'écaille, de la plume, de l'algue, du nuage, de l'os, « autant d'éléments », comme le rappelait encore Thomas Owen dans une récente préface de catalogue fantasmagique, « qui participent à l'expression fantastique » ?

Et pour finir, que l'on nous permette de préférer au « thème d'Uranus », celui de l'Amour, de l'amour sublime, car dans le doux sourire d'une femme aimée nous découvrons infiniment plus d'infini fantastique que dans toutes les infinitudes de l'univers.

Marc. EEMANS

Fantasmagie no. 10. Numéro spécial sur le thème d'Uranus, mai 1962.

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mardi, 18 septembre 2012

Cinquième Journée d’étude de la réinformation

 

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POLÉMIA

 
Cinquième Journée d’étude de la réinformation
Face à la tyrannie médiatique :
vers un grand bond offensif ?
« Nouvelles donnes, nouvelles cibles, nouveaux outils»
 
Samedi 13 octobre 2012 de 9h à 18h
Fondation Dosnes-Thiers
(27 place Saint-Georges – 75009 Paris – Métro Saint-Georges)
 
Dans notre société, les grands médias ne jouent plus le rôle de contre-pouvoir. Propriétés de grands groupes ou de milliardaires, dirigés par des journalistes venus pour la plupart de la gauche ou de l'extrême-gauche, les médias de masse sont un instrument docile aux mains des pouvoirs financiers et idéologiques qui nous dominent.
Le rôle des médias n’est plus d’informer, encore moins de mettre les faits en perspective. Devenus les gardiens du dogme, leur vraie mission consiste à ignorer les vérités qui dérangent pour mettre en scène une société virtuelle. Mais le réel finit toujours par se venger et l'ère de l'impunité s'achève pour les médiacrates et leurs protecteurs fortunés.
Trois phénomènes changent la donne.
• Les Français font de plus en plus la différence entre leur vie quotidienne et les contes à dormir debout répandus par les médias conformes.
• Les intellectuels sont chaque jour plus nombreux à vouloir défendre leur liberté de penser l’impensable.
• Internet brise le monopole des médias du système et ouvre l'accès à l'information et à la discussion à tous.
L’heure de la contre-attaque est venue. À nouvelle donne, nouveaux outils, que Polémia entend présenter et promouvoir.
 
9 h 15 - 9 h 45
Accueil des participants – Café de bienvenue
 
9 h 45 - 11 h 30   La nouvelle donne
La révolte du peuple et des intellectuels contre l'oligarchie médiatique,
Jean-Yves Le Gallou, président de Polémia.
 
La décadence du journalisme : de Tintin redresseur de torts à la défense des puissants
Michel Geoffroy, Polémia
 
11 h 30- 12 h 15 Un nouvel outil
Les agences de presse régionales alternatives
Yves Le May, Novobreizh
 
12 h 30- 14 h 15      Déjeuner
Repas convivial avec les intervenants (sur réservation lors de l’inscription)
 
14 h 30- 15 h 30      Tribune libre : « Ils ont acheté la presse »
Les médias ? Non un contrepouvoir mais l’instrument du pouvoir!
Benjamin Dormann, MBA de finance, consultant, journaliste et essayiste, auteur de « Ils ont acheté la presse », aux éditions Picollec
 
15 h 45- 17 h 45      De nouveaux outils pour briser le monopole de l'oligarchie des médias
L’Observatoire des journalistes et des médias (OJIM) au service de la démocratie et de la transparence
Claude Chollet, président de l’Observatoire
 
Trente ans après les radios libres, enfin une télévision libre et dissidente !
Par Philippe Milliau, responsable du projet « Notre antenne »
 
17 h 45 - 18 h 30   Conclusions et pot de clôture
 
 
Prière de remplir le bulletin d’inscription ci-joint avant le 7 octobre.