Archeofuturism

by Guillaume Faye

  This is the big bad wolf tactic: ‘Daddy is bad but if you do not obey him, the big bad wolf will come and get you. And that will be even worse!’ The system, which is failing to gain consensus and achieve any results, is inventing virtual enemies which it claims to be protecting the people against: ‘The Front National is the NSDAP[122] under a new guise; if we expel too many immigrants, there will be an economic collapse and a dictatorship will be installed.’ This old strategy has its limits and these will soon be evident.

  The ‘Republican Front’:

  The Antechamber to the Single Party

  ‘Front Républicain’[123] vs. ‘Front National’: this is the current call-and-response in the world of politics. The Republican Front, which fancies itself to be the guardian of pure democracy against the ‘fascist threat’, is actually the product of a far-Leftist and para-Trotskyist minority whose tradition for the past seventy years has been totalitarianism. The fight against the Front National reveals the unbearable contradictions behind this Republican Front so intent on saving democracy: for it is neither Republican nor democratic. How can this be doubted? When a society excessively appeals to a given political notion (for instance, democracy or citizenship), it means this very notion is in peril. Pseudo-democratic emphasis serves to cover up a regime that is growing less and less democratic. The discourse of the Republican Front takes up the rhetoric – which is actually totalitarian – of the Convention of 1793 – of the fathers of the Reign of Terror.

  At a ‘spontaneous’ demonstration in Lyon against the supposed alliance between Charles Millon[124] and the Front National, Louis Mermaz[125] explained that it was a matter of ‘fighting against the unacceptable: the Front National co-administrating a region’. So according to this ‘democrat’ it’s ‘unacceptable’ for regional councillors that have been democratically elected by the people to fulfil their office. This slip on Mermaz’s part means: democracy is not open to all; or rather, it is unacceptable that democracy may play by all of its rules; or again: it is unacceptable according to our limited vision of democracy that voters may vote for someone other than us, the Republican Front.

  This Republican Front includes: 1. the Communist Party (PC) and the far Left; 2. the Greens and the Socialist Party (PS); 3. a ‘Republican Right’ that is emasculated, guilt-ridden and driven to align itself – particularly in regard to immigration – with the position of the Left in the attempt to become acceptable. The political illegitimacy of all forces except for the Republican Front resembles an implicit call for the return to a single party system, the mark of totalitarian regimes since 1793. In this de facto single party, the Republican Front, only tendencies are acceptable (as they were in the ruling Communist parties of central Europe). While these tendencies may ‘democratically’ alternate, the alternation of Left and Right is only apparent and cannot challenge the overall political line of the single party, which is Left wing.

  The RepublicanFront, like the single party in the totalitarian former USSR, clearly no longer pursues any revolutionary aims; rather, it serves to consolidate existing tendencies in society. This temptation of the ‘de facto single party’, concealed under the guise of a multiple party system, strongly emerged with the suggested ban of the Front National and the lawsuits brought to make Le Pen ineligible. It is one thing to wish to ban a small group, quite another to do the same with a party that gets 15% of the votes...

  The system, which is running out of steam, is actually trying to operate a democtomy: a ‘restrictive amputation of democracy’. This is where it’s gotten. The same logic underlies ‘representative trade unions’, even if these are only a minority phenomenon. From Robespierre and the Soviet Union to the Republican Front, it is always the same process, albeit in a soft version today: people do get to vote – it’s a democracy, after all – but can only vote for acceptable candidates –those of the party.

  Embarrassed, in order to justify its anti-democratic policy the system always turns to its favourite obsession: Hitler, the big bad wolf. The argument goes like this: ‘Watch out! Hitler came into power democratically’ – the subtext being: we should limit, isolate and keep watch over this dangerous democracy and exclude all unacceptable parties. Now, this rumour stubbornly upheld by the Left does not withstand historical scrutiny: for just like Mussolini, Hitler actually came to power through a coup d’état – clearly, one not presented as such at the time.

  Another view that was voiced at the aforementioned demonstration in Lyon was, ‘The Front National is unconstitutional!’ – another example of Stalinist logic.

  A slogan shouted everywhere against the Front National was ‘Against intolerance and hate!’ Now, the very system that funded Mathieu Kassovitz’s (worthless) film La Haine (Hate), an apology for the hate of ethnic gangs against the French, was here accusing a political party wishing to limit the violence wrought by these gangs of being ‘hateful’.

  The system accuses the Front National of being intolerant because it wishes to ban it. Does the Front National call for the ban of any enemy parties in its platform? The system is charging the Front with the sin of ‘advocating exclusion’ while seeking to exclude millions of voters from the political arena. This may seem like a bad dream but it’s not – it’s something that is quite naturally taking place.

  Totalitarian or pre-totalitarian regimes are not content with reversing the meaning of words, as Orwell described in Nineteen Eighty-Four or is shown in the film L’Aveu:[126] they accuse and condemn their enemies by charging them with their own shortcomings. This is a form of exorcism.

  One final observation: at the end of the aforementioned demonstration against the Front National – on Sunday the 3rd of October 1998 – a ‘multiracial’ concert by Cheb Mami[127] was intended to take place. This was not staged ‘because of incidents caused by groups of youngsters’, as the press discreetly reported. Actually, these incidents consisted of riots caused by gangs of immigrants from the banlieues of Lyon, who attacked the demonstration that was intended to support them!

  Ethnic gangs are undoubtedly the best campaigners for the Front National. The system is increasingly playing the part of a snake biting its own tail.

  From the Discourse against Selection to that against Exclusion: An Absurdity of Egalitarianism, which Severs the Branch on which It Rests

  A parallel can be drawn between the Leftist discourse against selectivity launched in May ’68 and the present discourse of the Left, which is centred on an opposition to exclusion. Ultimately, the same process is at play: in wishing to push its egalitarian principles to their very limit (‘always more!’), the ruling ideology is ultimately clashing with common sense and plunging into social absurdity. It is paving the way for an inevitable clash: either it will turn back – at the cost of great lies and difficult manoeuvres – or it will be swept away by a form of socially functional inegalitarianism.

  The rejection of school and university selectivity, which aimed at replacing equality of results with equal opportunities, by a heterotelic effect, brought less social justice. The results, thirty years after the introduction of this perverse principle (‘orientation replacing selection’), are: a depreciation of diplomas, which contributes to unemployment; a flight of brains towards Anglo-Saxon universities; a general worsening of teaching and a growth in illiteracy; the end of school as a place of competition and education, and its partial transformation into an unbearable jungle; the creation of a two-tier school system: one private, qualified and selective for the rich, and one public and under-qualified for the poor. Paradoxically, the egalitarian opposition to selectivity launched in May ’68 is one of the causes of the present ‘exclusion’.

  Hypocritically, trade unions and governments have not dared to apply their anti-selectivity principle to scientific matters: for no one wishes to be treated by incompetent doctors – nor will a space agency hire engineers unless they have been chosen through a strict selection process...

  By contrast, worthless BAs and junk diplomas in ‘psycho
-sociologies’ or ‘aesthetics’ are handed out like sweets or leaflets to rows of good-for-nothings who will queue up at social security offices to get underpaid jobs as switchboard operators, pizza boys, or waiters at McDonald’s. This is the outcome of demagogy and egalitarian ideology, which rejects reality and ignores – and has been ignoring for a while – social mechanisms.

  This hate of selectivity rests on an anthropological prejudice: the notion that human beings are all ‘equally gifted’ – as Alain de Benoist put it, that ‘anything is as good as anything else’. Hence, nothing has any value anymore, and gifts – as well as excellence – do not exist. It is unacceptable now for human beings to differ in their intellectual capacities, creative skills, and even characters. This view corresponds to the rejection of life so aptly noted by Nietzsche. All ideas of hierarchy are banished; and rather than arranging natural hierarchies and inequalities according to justice, an attempt is made to forcefully impose inapplicable egalitarian principles. But as this is not possible, it becomes a destructive phenomenon: ultimately, wild hierarchies have been created that progressively erode social rights. It is capitalism, with its lack of scruples, that takes care of savagely operating the selection the state does not have the courage to implement.

  The anti-exclusion doctrine always rests on the same rules. At first it asks us to fight against poverty, according to a praiseworthy sense of social justice. Very well. But now the very notion of exclusion has been twisted: what we are asked for is to prevent any form of discrimination between nationals and foreigners, including illegal immigrants. The same absurd logic underlies the opposition to selection: egalitarian ideology clashes with facts which – like the Front National – are unacceptable, as Louis Mermaz claims.

  Does the refusal to legally expel illegal immigrants from Africa, China, Pakistan, etc. implicitly mean to acknowledge the fact that any Frenchman is free to illegally move to these places? For things should be so, according to the logic of reciprocity.

  The present egalitarian policy goes against international law, which is based on the principle of reciprocal discrimination. Foreigners are given privileges that are denied to our fellow countrymen in other countries. Why then should laws require public officials to be French citizens? This too is a form of exclusion and discrimination! The right to vote for foreigners? And why not for French citizens living abroad too?

  Why should the news that some illegal immigrants have lawfully been expelled and sent on a charter flight make the headlines – knowing full well that they will make their way back as soon as they are given the chance and that tens of thousands more enter the country each year – without ever mentioning the massive and hasty expulsions of immigrants that take place in African and Asian countries?

  This de facto inability to expel illegal immigrants constitutes an official violation of the law – for elected governments are yielding to the pressure of minorities which have usurped their moral authority – and also contravenes the nationality principle at the basis of international law. This is yet another sign of the decline of democratic values and of the twisting of the notion of ‘Republic’ at the hands of those who claim to have invented it.

  Egalitarian ideology actually developed an abstract definition of the ‘nationality principle’ (reciprocal discriminations and advantages among countries) when the problem of immigration did not yet exist. Today it is incapable of respecting this principle and is reverting to its old, catastrophic madness: universalism, the idea of a world without boundaries, without ‘airlocks’, nourished by the infantile romanticism of ‘citizens of the world’ who envisage a ‘global government’. It does not realize that the planet can only be administered jointly on the basis of diverse and impermeable blocs – not by a jumble that will turn the world into a jungle.

  Opposition to selectivity and opposition to exclusion: the failure of these will bring about a cataclysm that will elicit a return to archaic solutions.

  The Imposed Revolution

  Only when on the brink of disaster – when economic hedonism has come to an end – will the European peoples find the strength to react against what awaits them. No effective solutions can be expected prior to the unleashing of the catastrophe that will most likely take place. People’s power to resist has been sapped by consumerism, comfort, and the countless ‘commodities’ of the society of the spectacle. People are weakened by the slack life they lead, by their boundless individualism, by the dreams promoted via television and advertising, and by their virtual experiences. This is what the anthropologist Arnold Gehlen has termed ‘second-hand experiences’ – socio-economic opium. Societies based on conspicuous consumption – as Thorstein Veblen[128] noted in the early Twentieth century – have undermined their own economic and social foundations. They have destroyed their own dreams of freedom, emancipation, equality, justice and prosperity by pushing them to their very limit, to the absurd, so that by a boomerang effect these societies are no longer capable of resisting financial crises, criminal organisations, and the social upheavals they have caused. This is an example of the dialectical reversal that Marx and Jules Monnerot have described.

  These societies have caused a global anthropological weakening, whereby all the immune defences of humanity are collapsing. The cure can only be a radical and painful one. We are heading towards a revolution that will make the Russian one seem like a brawl in comparison.

  Educational Principles (I)

  Everyone is talking of ‘the failure of the educational system’ and of ‘violence in schools’, but these are only the fruits of a system that opposes selectivity and discipline in the name of utopias it wishes to preserve like dogmas. The reason why hundreds of thousands of young people cannot find a job – hence unemployment and crime – is that the current educational system serves not to educate (education: from Latin e-ducere, ‘to lead out of a condition of ignorance and lack of culture’), but rather to perpetuate itself as a corporate and guarded administration, promoting as it does a form of schooling that is dogmatic and inefficient.

  Here are a few common-sense suggestions:

  School should no longer be compulsory above the age of 14.

  It should teach the ‘keys to knowledge’ and rules of social conduct through discipline.

  It should follow three principles: selection based on merit; reward; and punishment. It should also have a degree of solemnity to it.

  For students over the age of 14, schools and universities should no longer be free except for those who lack financial resources but are found worthy of receiving a scholarship once they have passed a rigorous selection.

  The last of the above suggestions is not unjust, in the Platonic sense, as a rich but incapable student will be less successful in a selective school than a poor but capable one. For this reason, a very rigid selection will have to be made based on merit and competence. As Pareto[129] has shown, the more rigorous a (rationally planned) selection in a social system, the greater the turnover in the elite, so that the rich will not be able to enjoy the income from their social standing for long. In the present regime inspired by the far Left, and which goes against selection, the poor have an increasingly under-qualified educational system at their disposal: the gifted poor cannot have any success, while the ungifted rich can.

  These simple principles, which have nothing tyrannical about them, will never be applied in the present system, for it is at the end of its tether. They are intended for after the revolution.

  Selection and discipline: these archaic but effective principles are the basis of true individual freedom – the social justice of the future.

  Today, instead of striving to rebuild things, it might be better to leave the educational system to collapse completely, given its inability to accomplish its task and the state’s utter lack of interest in the matter. The new state that will emerge in the post-catastrophic world may take things in hand again.

  Educational Principles (II)

  Anthropologist Arnold Gehlen explained t
hat freedom is born from discipline: for ‘breaking in’ (Zucht), as he put it, creates new skills. An effective education, he argued, one that brings freedom, must rest by the very constitution of man on effort, discipline, stimulation, sanction, and reward.

  George Steiner,[130] on the other hand, when discussing the ancestral principles behind the Jewish education he had received as a child and was in turn giving his own children, made the following un-PC comments in the pages of a mainstream weekly magazine, ‘When confronted with all that is done today to avoid causing anxiety and neurosis in children, I say that on the contrary, neurosis means creation, and that it is what helps us become human. Believe me, in making everything easy for children, we make them fragile, not only from an educational point of view but – what is worse – emotionally.’

  Today, children – the ‘young’ – are treated like small gods. When they get bad marks at school their parents don’t punish them but ‘correct’ their teachers by smashing their faces. All punishment is deemed illegitimate. This deification of childhood and youth paradoxically seems to go hand in hand with a statistical increase in brutality against children and paedophilia. Societies that are growing old treat children and adolescents in ambiguous and pathological ways: with adulation, excessive love and boundless permissiveness, but also with perverse cruelty and sexual sadism. Healthy societies, by contrast, in dealing with the young adopt a strategy consistent with the goal of transmitting collective vales and allowing talent to flourish: training and protection, strictness, and respect.

  No return can be made at present to these archaic principles, which have been forgotten thanks to the ignorant utopia of egalitarianism. The future, however, will take care of reasserting them.