Archeofuturism

by Guillaume Faye

  Yielding to the naive myth of ‘interracial integration’ or ethno-pluralist ‘communitarianism’ is an aberration.

  The mindset of Muslims and immigrants from the South, as well as that of the sons of the immigrants who, in expanding and increasingly aggressive masses, are inhabiting European cities, as well as that of the leaders of the emerging Muslim and Far Eastern powers, while masked by a hypocritical Western and modern gloss, has remained archaic: it is based on the primacy of force, the legitimacy of conquest, exacerbated ethnic exclusivity, aggressive religiosity, tribalism, machismo, and a worship of leaders and hierarchic order – although it is disguised as democratic Republicanism.

  We are witnessing the return of wide-scale invasions under a new guise. The phenomenon is far more serious today, as the ‘invaders’ have preserved a formidable ‘home base’: the countries they have left, the motherlands which are always solidly behind them and ready to defend them – and which secretly aspire to do so through force in the future. This is why I am speaking in terms of colonisation rather than invasion.

  The modern egalitarian mindset is utterly powerless. Would it not be better, then, to readopt those archaic values that inspire our very real enemies and which – significant differences notwithstanding – have remained the same for all peoples, before and after the interlude of modernity?

  B. The answer to the decline of nation-states and the challenge of European unification. In this respect, it is essential to prepare for a likely confrontation by doing away with the modern altruism of universal harmony.

  It is a matter of rethinking war, not in its modern form as war between nations, but as it existed in Antiquity and the Middle Ages: as the clash between vast ethnic or ethno-religious blocs. It would be interesting to reconsider – in the new forms in the making – the kind of macro-solidarity once embodied by the Roman Empire and European Christendom, and to pragmatically define the idea of Eurosiberia as a block extending from Brest to the Bering Strait, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, across fourteen time zones: a land where the sun never sets and thus the largest geopolitical unit on Earth. Russian leaders are already thinking about this[44] – in uncertain terms and through the fumes of vodka, but still: they are thinking about it. It would be worth asking ourselves whether French nationalism may not be completely outdated, whether the nation-state in Europe may not be as anachronistic as Maurras’[45] monarchist movement was in the 1920s, and whether the groping and tentative construction of a federal European state – for all its short-term inconveniences – in the long run may not prove the only means, as a revised adaptation of the Roman and Germanic imperial model, of preserving the brother-peoples of our Great Continent from oblivion.

  It is also worth asking ourselves whether in this context the United States still represents an enemy (as I myself once argued) – which is to say, a power posing a mortal threat – rather than a foe or economic, political and cultural rival. To raise this question is to identify the neo-archaic problem of the global solidarity of the North – which is essentially ethnic in nature – against the threat of the South. In any case, the notion of the West is disappearing and being replaced by the idea of the Northern World or the North.

  As in the Middle Ages or Antiquity, the future requires us to envisage the Earth as structured in vast, quasi-imperial units in mutual conflict or cooperation.

  Is it not the case that the future belongs to a neo-federal Europe founded on autonomous regions, a contemporary version of the ancient and Medieval organisation of the continent? And this for the simple reason that an enlarged techno-bureaucratic Europe comprised of twenty-odd uncertain and divided nations of substantially different sizes would merely be an apolitical jumble under the control of the United States and NATO, one open to immigrant colonisation and uncontrolled competition from the new industrial countries. After the Euro – the first return to a continental currency since the end of the ancient world – can we now envisage the United States of Europe, a vast federal power open to an alliance with Russia?

  C. The answer to the crisis of democracy. Peter Mandelson,[46] the person behind Tony Blair’s New Labour in Britain, and Wolfgang Schäuble,[47] Kohl’s[48] Christian Democrat rival, held a series of meetings in March 1998 to discuss the ‘future of democracy’ which were reported in the London newspaper The Guardian. Schäuble was bewildered and did not always agree with the brilliant and ‘Leftist’ British political theorist.

  Here is a quote from Mandelson: ‘It may be that the era of pure representative democracy is coming slowly to an end. … Democracy and legitimacy need constant renewal. They need to be redefined with each generation. … Representative government is being complemented by more direct forms of involvement from the Internet to referendums. This requires a different style of politics and we are trying to respond… People have no time for a style of government that talks down to them or takes them for granted.’[49]

  Schäuble, struck by such populist and ‘antidemocratic’ daring, makes the following comment: ‘I think that we politicians have to take the decisions. In short, Mr. Mandelson’s verdict is: “Representative democracy is over”. Translated, that means, “Things must be brought closer to the people”. That means politicians are too cowardly to take decisions. Mandelson also argued that if Europe is to function at all, then it can only be through inter-governmental co-operation. That’s the end of European integration if you don’t want to lead politically and take decisions.’

  It would be hard to imagine a more pointed attack on the ‘modern’ model of Western parliamentary democracy, which was theorised by Rousseau in his Social Contract and has now grown obsolete. Anglo-Saxon pragmatism often makes ideological openings – however ill-defined – possible which are completely ruled out by French doctrinalism, German Idealism and Italian Byzantinism.

  Mr. Mandelson, a distinguished New Labour egghead, is an Archeofuturist without knowing it. For he is telling us that the ‘modern’ parliamentary democracy we inherited from Eighteenth and Nineteenth century paradigms will be unsuited to the world of the future. Slow and weak decision-making, compromises and the lack of an authority capable of asserting itself in ‘emergency cases’ are increasingly common features, as are the dictatorship of bureaucracies and speculators, the paralysis of parliaments, the corrupt career-making of party members, the growth of mafias, etc.

  Modern democracy defends not the interests of the people, but those of illegitimate minorities. It distrusts the people and discredits the idea of ‘populism’ by equating it with dictatorship, which is really absurd. Without any ideological or pseudo-moral prejudices, Mandelson also suggests the need to restore a daring and decisive form of political authority, yet one resting on the will of the people, particularly thanks to ‘more direct forms of involvement from the Internet to referendums.’

  These suggested paths are all very interesting, for they seek to reform democracy by combining two archaic elements with a futurist one.

  The first archaic element: the sovereign decision-making power set in motion by the direct will of the people. This brings to mind the model of auctoritas[50] of the first Roman Republic, as symbolised by the initials SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus, ‘The Senate and People of Rome’):[51] a close link between popular aspirations and established authority, which imposes its decrees without being censored by any judges or ‘law’ above the will of the people. It would also be possible to refer to the model of Fourth or Fifth century BC Athens or the structure of Germanic tribes.

  Second archaic element: the reconciliation of political institutions with the general population. The modern nation-state, as originally conceptualised by Hobbes, has distanced the people from its sovereignty through the illusion of a better representation of popular will. Labour MP Mandelson is implicitly suggesting a return to Athenian, Roman and Medieval principles, through a closer link between the people and its leaders. On the other hand, the term demos (‘democracy’: ‘power of the démoi’) literally means ‘neig
hbourhood’ or ‘rural district’. In this respect, it would be possible to imagine a decentralised Europe where ‘local peoples’ establish their own laws, according to the Imperial Roman or Medieval Germanic model.

  Third element, a futurist one: the possibility of directly voting at referendums by e-mail or using individual encrypted codes. Fearing the common masses, the political and media establishment rejects this solution, afraid that its manoeuvres may be exposed. Here too – as in the field of biology – the dominating ideology of modernity is fighting and censuring in order to limit the possibilities offered by technological science. Modernity is reactionary.

  But what is a people and what will it be in the future?

  Is a people laios, the ‘mass’ dear to Marxists and liberals, i.e., the ‘present population’, based on the law of territory, or is it ethnos, a folk community founded on the law of blood, culture and memory? Modernity tends to define a people as laios, a rootless mass of individuals coming from all different places. But the future which is inexorably looming near is reawakening ethnic loyalty and tribalism both on a local and global scale. Tomorrow a people will return to be what it has always been, prior to the short interlude of modernity: ethnos, a community both cultural and biological. I insist on the importance of biological kinship to define peoples, and particularly the family of European peoples (as well as all others), not only because humanity – contrary to what the melting-pot myth suggests – is increasingly defining itself through ‘ethno-biological blocs’, but also because the inherited characteristics of a people shape its culture and outlook.

  D. The answer to social disintegration. That collapse is looming close can be seen from the failure of educational systems, which are no longer able to curb illiteracy and crime in schools, for they are dominated by the illusion of ‘non-authoritarian’ methods of teaching; this can be seen in the spread of urban crime, which is caused not only by unrestrained immigration, but also by the unrealistic dogma of deterring crime through education and by the obliteration of the ancient principle of repression – something far from tyrannical when it is based on law. It can also be seen from the demographic collapse caused both by anti-natalist governmental policies and by the ethnic masochism of the ruling ideology, as well as by the exacerbated hedonistic individualism that is triggering a boom in anti-natural practices: divorces made automatic – and which will soon be mere administrative formalities – the ridiculing and obstinate rejection, both fiscal and social, of the housewife model, the spread of short-lived and sterile forms of common law marriages, the glorification of homosexuality and soon of legal gay marriages (that will enable those in such unions to be able to adopt children), etc. The demographic fall caused by anti-natalism will lead to economic disaster in Europe by 2010, because of the growing deficit in social budgets caused by the ageing of the population.

  Everywhere modernity, which appears to be triumphing, is actually already languishing and failing in its attempt at social regulation: for, as Arnold Gehlen[52] grasped, it is based on a dream-like view of human nature and fallacious anthropology.

  It is likely that the post-catastrophic world will have to reorganise social fabrics according to archaic principles – which is to say, human ones.

  What are these principles? The power of family units, which are invested with authority and have responsibilities towards their offspring; the legal primacy of the principle of punishment over prevention; the subordination of rights to duties; the framing – not recruitment – of individuals within communitarian structures; the power of social hierarchy, newly made visible through solemn social rites (aesthetic-magical function); the rehabilitation of the aristocratic principle, which is to say of the rewards given to the best and most worthy (for courage, service and skill), in the awareness that a surplus of rights corresponds to a surplus of duties and that aristocracies should never degenerate into plutocracies and be wary of becoming hereditary.

  Is it then a matter of ‘abolishing freedom’? Paradoxically, it is ‘emancipating’ modernity that has destroyed concrete freedoms by proclaiming an abstract Freedom. While in Europe it is nearly impossible to expel illegal immigrants, the mafias are branching out, criminal gangs enjoy ever greater impunity, and citizens who respect the social pact are increasingly being recorded in police records, monitored and having their finances checked, sanctioned and bled by tax authorities.

  Faced with this failure, would it not be better to restore concrete Medieval or ancient institutions such as franchises, local communitarian pacts and forms of organic solidarity among neighbours?

  These, then, are the general principles. They will probably serve as the foundations for the future societies that will emerge from the rubble of modernity. It is up to the new ideologues of our current of thought to define these principles and concretely implement them. A few concrete questions should already be raised.

  In a random order: Why keep schooling compulsory until the age of sixteen rather than limit ourselves simply to primary school, where through discipline basic subjects could effectively be taught? Kids over thirteen would then be free to choose whether they wish to start working as apprentices or continue their studies. In such a way we would overcome the impasse of the current system, which leads to failure, uncivil behaviour, ignorance, semi-literacy and unemployment. A well-organised and rigorous primary-school system would undoubtedly produce young people of a higher level than the often quasi-illiterate individuals who are now making it through the collapsing high-school system. all discipline brings freedom. Why should a two-tier educational system, based on severe selection and the assignment of grants – which would prevent plutocracy and the dictatorship of money – be wrong, if it leads to the turnover of elites and to meritocracy?

  The new societies of the future will finally abolish the aberrant egalitarian mechanism we have now, whereby ‘everyone aspires to become an officer’, or a cadre or diplomat, even though all evidence suggests that most people do not have the skills to fulfil these roles. This model engenders widespread frustration, failure and resentment. The societies that will be vivified by increasingly sophisticated technologies, in contrast, will ask for a return to the archaic inegalitarian and hierarchical norms, whereby a competent and meritocratic minority is rigorously selected to take on leading assignments. Those who will perform ‘subordinate’ functions in these inegalitarian societies will not feel frustrated: their dignity will not be called into question, for they will accept their own condition as something useful within the organic community – finally freed from the individualistic hubris of modernity, which implicitly and deceptively states that each person can become a scientist or prince.

  Another example concerns the treatment of those who commit crimes. The future will force us to rethink the modern and ineffective means of crime prevention and the reintegration of criminals into society by implementing a juridical revolution to restore the archaic methods of repression and forced re-education. Here too we must change the way we think.

  To sum up, with the introduction of ‘hypertechnologies’ the social models of the future will lead us not towards greater egalitarianism (as the stupid apologists of universal communication believe will happen thanks to the Internet), but rather to a return to archaic and hierarchical social models. On the other hand, it is global technological competitiveness and the economic war for the control of markets and scarce resources that are pushing us in this direction: those who will win will be the peoples with the strongest and best selected ‘elite blocs’ and the most organically integrated masses.

  E. The answer to the (global) incapacity for making decisions, the inadequacy of the U.N. ‘machine’ and the risk of widespread confrontations. The nation-states of the U.N. – from the United States to the Fiji Islands – are incapable of managing the overcrowded spaceship the Earth has become. This was clearly seen at the Tokyo Summit, where these states failed to reach any common agreement to avoid the environmental catastrophes looming near.

 
; As a medium-term solution, it would thus be necessary to organise the planet according to a few, vast ‘neo-imperial’ units capable of reaching decisions and negotiating with one another. This would mean a return to the ancient world order, which was based on such blocs, albeit under a different form.

  The scenario would be as follows: a Sino-Confucian block, a Euro-Siberian unit, an Arab-Muslim one, a North American one, a Black African one, a South American one and finally one including the Pacific and peninsular Asia.

  F. The answer to economic and environmental chaos. As we have seen, the modern economic paradigm based on the belief in miracles will meet insurmountable physical obstacles. The utopia of ‘development’ open to ten billion people is environmentally unsustainable.

  The foreseeable collapse of the global economy allows us to envisage and formulate the hypothesis of a revolutionary model based on a self-centred and inegalitarian world economy, which may be imposed upon us by historical events, but which it would be wise to foresee and plan for in advance. This hypothesis is based on three great paradigms. Here is the Archeofuturist scenario:

  First off, most of humanity would revert to a pre-technological subsistence economy based on agriculture and the crafts, with a neo-medieval demographic structure. The African population, like that of all other poor countries, would be fully involved in this revolution. Communitarian and tribal life would reassert its rights. ‘Social happiness’ would most probably be greater than it is in jungle-countries like Nigeria or mega-slums like Kolkata and Mexico City today. Even in industrialised countries – India, Russia, Brazil, China, Indonesia, Argentina, etc. – a significant portion of the population could return to live according to this archaic socio-economic model.