Archeofuturism

by Guillaume Faye

  [4]Luc Ferry (1951- ), a French philosopher who advocates secular humanism. From 2002-04 he was the Minister of Education.

  [5]Michel Serres (1930- ) is a very prominent French philosopher who frequently writes about the philosophy of science.

  [6]André Comte-Sponville (1952- ) is a French philosopher who advocates a spiritual form of atheism.

  [7]Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) was a prominent French anthropologist, philosopher and sociologist who studied social dynamics, and he opposed neo-liberalism and globalisation.

  [8] Bernard-Henri Lévy (1948- ) is a French philosopher of Jewish ethnicity who was initially known for his rejection of Marxist beliefs which had become commonplace in France by the 1970s. In more recent years he has become best known for his opposition to Muslim influence on European culture and his support for the Iraq War, and for his book Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, in which he claims that Pearl was killed because he had learned too much about the connections between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani government. Although popular, Lévy has frequently been criticized by other French intellectuals for his methods and egotistical style of presentation. In 2010, he was publicly humiliated when it was revealed that an essay he had written in an effort to refute Kant had based its arguments upon the ideas of a philosopher who was a fictional character created as a parody by a French journalist.

  [9] Summer University. This is a course that the Nouvelle Droite used to run.

  [10] This group still exists. They maintain a Web site at http://euro-synergies.hautetfort.com/.

  [11]The Front National is a far-Right nationalist party which was founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972. Over the last decade, the FN has had a number of significant electoral successes. Le Pen remains its leader.

  [12] The Action Française was a Right-wing monarchist group founded in 1898 which enjoyed a great deal of support. During the 1920s and ‘30s, it became increasingly favourable towards Fascist regimes, and the French government, feeling threatened, banned it along with other Far Right groups in 1936. The AF experienced a revival under the Vichy regime during the German occupation, when it supported the Vichy government, causing its dissolution yet again after the liberation of Paris in 1944.

  [13]Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian Communist who was imprisoned by the Fascists. He developed the theory of cultural hegemony, which (in brief) holds that a political group cannot maintain power without first persuading the members of a society that the ideas it propagates are the normal state of affairs, thus giving itself legitimacy. Therefore, control over the cultural apparatus of a society is a prerequisite for holding power, rather than being something which follows a revolution. This idea has been highly influential on the European New Right.

  [14]This refers to French General Ernest Boulanger (1837-1891), who served as War Minister and gained a popular following due to his advocacy of revenge against Germany for France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, conservative constitutional reforms and a restoration of the monarchy. After nearly provoking a war with Germany in 1887, Boulanger was dismissed. He and his followers threatened a coup in 1889, but Boulanger missed the opportunity due to his wish to take power legally, giving his opponents the time they needed to build a case against him and issue a warrant for his arrest. Boulanger fled the country and eventually committed suicide.

  [15]Jean-Pierre Chevènement (1939- ) was the founder of the Centre d’études, de recherche et d’éducation socialistes, or CERES (Center of Socialist Studies, Research and Education). CERES was associated with the PS, or Parti socialiste (Socialist Party), as is SOS-Racisme, which is an anti-racist Non-Governmental Organisation.

  [16]Augustin Cochin (1876-1916) was a French historian of the French Revolution who was killed in the First World War. Several of his works have been translated.

  [17]Libération is a daily newspaper with a Leftist viewpoint.

  [18]Alain Madelin (1946- ), at the time that Faye was writing, was a member of the National Assembly of France and the President of the Démocratie Libérale (Liberal Democracy) party. He was known for his pro-American and laissez-faire economic positions. He retired from politics in 2007.

  [19]Alain Juppé (1945- ), at the time that Faye was writing, was a Right-wing member of the National Assembly of France. He was Prime Minister of France under Jacques Chirac from 1995 to 1997. Following a conviction for the mishandling of public funds in 2004, Juppé is presently only the Mayor of Bourdeaux.

  [20]Kahn (1938- ) is a French journalist known for his liberal viewpoints.

  [21]The Antichrist was one of Nietzsche’s last books, written in 1888. In it, he attacks the problems of modernity, which he saw as being rooted in the deficiencies of Christian theology, which he challenges in this book. Famously, he calls for a ‘transvaluation of all values’. Many English translations exist.

  [22] Walter Friedrich Otto (1874-1958) was a German classical philologist who was the administrator of the Nietzsche Archive during the Third Reich. Some Christian theologians have attacked Otto for attempting to revive ancient Greek religion, although he himself dismissed such notions as absurd. The book Faye mentions has been translated as The Homeric Gods (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979).

  [23]Reconquista is a Spanish word meaning reconquering or recapturing. Historically, it refers to the struggle of the Christian Spaniards against the occupation of Spain by the Muslims during the Middle Ages. The present-day Right uses it to refer to the reclaiming of European lands from non-European immigrants.

  [24] Or Europe-Third World: The Same Struggle (Paris: Laffont, 1986).

  [25]Banlieues means suburbs. Unlike in other countries, however, Parisian suburbs are associated with low-income housing for immigrants, making them more similar to British ‘Housing Estates’ or American ‘projects’.

  [26]Élisabeth Badinter (1944- ) is a prominent French feminist philosopher who also advocates the abolishment of cultural differences between populations in France, feeling that they only generate conflict.

  [27]In Chapter 18 of The Prince, Machiavelli writes: ‘A prince, therefore, being compelled knowingly to adopt the beast, ought to choose the fox and the lion; because the lion cannot defend himself against snares and the fox cannot defend himself against wolves. Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves.’ From the translation by W. K. Marriott (London: Dent, 1911), pp. 137-138.

  [28]Philippe Conrad (1945- ) was a historian and a member of GRECE.

  [29] Henning Eichberg (1942- ) is a German sociologist and historian who has long been active in the German Right, and also founded the German branch of the New Right in 1970.

  [30] Brzeziński (1928- ) was the National Security Advisor to the Carter administration from 1977-1981. Since then he has gained a reputation as a highly respected political analyst. I cannot identify this precise quotation, although in Brezezinski’s 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard, he identifies the unique qualities and opportunities which have allowed the U.S. to become the lone superpower since the end of the Cold War, and predicts that given the new challenges the world faces and its increasingly multipolar nature, the U.S. will be unlikely to maintain this role for more than another generation.

  [31]Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (1926- ) was President of France from 1974 until 1981. He made a famous speech in September 1991 in which he referred to immigration as an invasion and called for tougher standards for aspiring citizens.

  [32] Family reunification is an immigration policy which allows for the entry of the family members of a foreigner who has become a citizen or a permanent resident of the country. This is upheld by the U.S., Canada and most Western European countries, and is one of the principal means for immigrants to legally enter those nations.

  2. A Subversive Idea: Archeofuturism as an Answer to the Catastrophe of Modernity and an Alternative to Traditionalism

  To Giorgio Locchi and Olivier Carré, in memoriam.

  1 – Method: ‘Radical Thought’

&n
bsp; Only radical thought is fruitful, for it is the only one capable of creating daring ideas to destroy the ruling ideological order and enable us to free ourselves from the vicious circle of a failing system of civilisation. To quote René Thom,[1] author of the catastrophe theory, only ‘radical ideas’ can make a system plunge into chaos – ‘catastrophe’ or a traumatic change of state – in such a way as to bring about a new order.

  Radical thought is neither ‘extremist’ nor utopian, for if it were it would have no hold on reality; rather, it must anticipate the future by making a clear break with the irreparably worm-eaten present.

  Is this thought revolutionary? It must be such today, for our civilisation is situated at the end of a cycle, not at the beginning of a new development, and because no school of thought has dared to be revolutionary since the final collapse of the Communist experiment. Only by outlining new perspectives on civilisation will it be possible to be harbingers of historicity and authenticity.

  Why ‘radical’ thought? Because this goes to the root of things, ‘to the bone’: it questions the very worldview on which the present civilisation rests, egalitarianism – a utopian and obstinate idea that with its inner contradictions is plunging humanity into barbarism and economic and environmental horror.

  In order to shape history it is necessary to unleash ideological storms by attacking – as Nietzsche correctly observed – the values that form the framework and skeleton of the system. No one is doing so today, hence for the first time it is the economic sphere (TV, media, videos, cinema, the show business and entertainment industry) that holds the monopoly over the (re)production of values. This clearly leads to a ruling ideology devoid of any ideas and creative, challenging projects: one founded instead on dogmas and anathemas.

  Only radical thought today could enable intellectual minorities to create a movement, shake the mammoth, and deliver an electroshock (or shocking ideas, ideoshock) to stir society and the current world order. Thought of this kind must necessarily be non-dogmatic and must constantly reposition itself (‘the revolution within the revolution’, the only correct insight of Maoism), thus protecting its radical character from the neurotic temptation of fixed ideas, dream-like phantoms, hypnotic utopias, extremist nostalgias and raving obsessions – risks that threaten every ideological perspective.

  In order to act upon the world, all radical thought must develop a consistent and pragmatic ideological corpus with detachment and adaptive flexibility. Radical thought is first of all a query, not a doctrine. What it suggests must be declined in the ‘what if?’ rather than the ‘must’ form. Compromise must be abolished, along with the false wisdom of ‘cautiousness’, the rule of ignorant ‘experts’ and the paradoxical conservatism (‘status quoism’) of those who adore ‘modernity’ and believe it will endure forever.

  One last characteristic of effective radical thought: the acceptance of heterotelia, which is to say the fact that ideas do not necessarily yield the expected results. Effective thought acknowledges its own approximate character.

  One sails by sight, changing course depending on the wind, yet always knowing where he is going and what port he is trying to reach. Radical thought integrates the risks and errors inherent in all human activities. Its modesty is inspired by Cartesian doubt and constitutes the driving force that sets spirits in motion. There are no dogmas here, only the power of the imagination and a touch of amorality: creative tension towards a new morality.

  Today, on the eve of the Twenty-first century, which announces itself as a century of iron and fire – a century of colossal stakes laden with mortal threats for Europe and humanity at large – as our contemporaries lie stupefied by soft ideology and the society of the spectacle in the midst of a deafening ideological void, radical thought may finally be formulated and even affirm itself through the envisioning of new and once unthinkable solutions.

  The insights offered by Nietzsche, Evola, Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Guy Debord and Alain Lefèbvre[2] regarding the reversal of values can finally be put into practice, as can Nietzsche’s philosophy with a hammer. Our ‘state of civilisation’ is now ready, which it wasn’t in the recent past: for in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries – the centuries of modernity – it was breeding the virus without yet suffering from the infection.

  On the other hand, we must reject the pretext that radical thought would be ‘persecuted’ by the system. The system is foolish. Its censorship is as far from stringent as it is clumsy, striking only at mythic acts of provocation and ideological tactlessness.

  Among the official and acknowledged members of the European intelligentsia, thought has been reduced to the level of media mundaneness and the rigmarole of egalitarian dogmas out of fear of breaking the laws of ‘political correctness’, lack of conceptual imagination and ignorance of what is really at stake in today’s world.

  European societies today are undergoing a crisis and are ready to be permeated by radical and resolute ways of thinking that promote revolutionary values and total dissent of a pragmatic rather than utopian kind toward the present global civilisation.

  In the tragic world that is emerging, radical and ideologically effective thought must combine the virtues of Cartesian classicism (the principles of reason, actual possibility, permanent examination and critical voluntarism) and romanticism (a dazzling thought appealing to emotion and aesthetics, along with daring perspectives), in such a way as to unite the virtues of the idealist philosophy of affirmation with the critical philosophy of negation through a coincidentia oppositorium (coincidence of opposites), as Marx and Nietzsche did with their methods based on the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ (i.e., the indictment of ruling ideas) and the ‘positive reversal of values’.

  Thought of this kind, which combines daring and pragmatism, intuitive forecasting and watchful realism, aesthetic creativity and the will to historical power, must be ‘a concrete and voluntaristic way of thinking capable of creating order’.

  2 – Conceptual Framework:

  The Notion of Vitalistic Constructivism

  My teacher, Giorgio Locchi, identified egalitarianism as the central axis and driving force – from both an ethical and practical perspective – of Western modernity, which is now failing completely. Stimulated by his writings, within GRECE we provided a wide critical and historical description of this phenomenon. For the future we promoted the idea of anti-egalitarianism, but this term was not enough in itself. A leading idea cannot merely be defined by opposition to something else: it must be affirmative and meaningful in itself. But what is the content, the active principle of this virtual anti-egalitarianism? Of what does anti-egalitarianism concretely consist? This question was never answered at the time, yet it is only through a clear answer that mobilisation may come about.

  Influenced by the works of Lefèbvre, Lyotard,[3] Debord, Derrida[4] and Foucault,[5] as well as by the writings of architects such as Portzamprac, Nouvel and Paul Virilio,[6] I sought to illustrate the need for post-modernity. Here too, however, the Latin prefix ‘post’, like the Greek ‘anti’, does not define any content. To affirm that egalitarianism and modernity (a theory and a practice) are irrational is not enough. Again, it is necessary to imagine, state and suggest what would be good. Any critique of a notion is only meaningful if it is accompanied by a new and affirmative notion.

  But if this is the case, what leading idea(s) should we envisage? Allow me to explain this through a short recollection.

  Together with the late painter of genius Olivier Carré, in the course of a subversive radio programme (Avant-Guerre!),[7] I had come up with a science-fiction tale of dark humour about an imaginary Eurosiberian Empire (the ‘Federation’), whose white-and-red checkered banner was reminiscent of the flag of Angoumois, the tiny province where I (like Mitterrand)[8] was born, as well as that of Croatia. In particular, we used the term vitalistic constructivism to describe the titanic doctrine at the basis of one of the giant companies of that bizarre empire (Typhoone), whose aim was to move the Ea
rth into another orbit... Later, with the benefit of hindsight, I realised that this radio gag, which also inspired a comic story,[9] possibly resulted from a failed ideological act on my part – a lapsus linguae ac scripti.[10] After all, Surrealism and Situationism had always taught that ‘subversive ideas can only come from the pleasure principle’[11] (Raoul Vaneigem),[12] and that it is mocking and ‘eccentric’ brainwaves that should lay the foundations. Alain de Benoist has taught us that a person’s style conditions his ideas. After all, André Breton[13] had already observed that ‘gravity lies in what does not appear serious.’

  So by further exploring this intuitive concept, I discovered four truths:

  1 – Words, as Foucault argues (in Les mots et le choses)[14] have a crucial importance. They constitute the foundation of concepts, which in turn represent the semantic impulse behind ideas and the driving force of actions. To state and describe is already to construct.

  2 – As Italian Communists have realised, there is no need to derive semantic denominations or aesthetic symbols from old and historically failed ideologies. Even the label ‘Conservative Revolution’[15] strikes me as being too neutral, dated and historicised, tied as it is to the 1920s. Blind faith of this sort does not mobilise and is inadequate for the new challenges. In conformity with the active tradition of European civilisation we must launch new catchwords on the chessboard of history. The essence of the style remains, but the form changes. Each leading idea must be furious and metamorphic.