Archeofuturism

by Guillaume Faye

  Conservatism and Repetition:

  The Senile Ills of Modernity

  Charles Champetier, the editor-in-chief of Éléments, once shared the following thoughts with me (and they would deserve a book in themselves): ‘Mass-media society destroys the traditional structure of knowledge and intellectual and cultural innovation, replacing it with repetition.’

  As already observed by Walter Benjamin[131] – an exile from Hitler’s Germany who commented upon the totalitarian nature of television in the 1950s, when it had just been introduced in the United States – the audiovisual sphere, like the contemporary electrovisual one (Internet, CD-ROM, videogames, etc.), reproduces models and values without creating any new ones, according to a horizontal and strictly commercial logic. The same may be said of advertising: it repeats, follows, but never provides any innovation. Models of society are copied according to a conservative logic, particularly in the sphere of ideas and solutions. False innovations are ‘created’ – mock innovations. Ideas and artistic forms are simply moving in circles. Modernity consists of nothing but repetition, parroting, conservatism (of forms as well as values), and scholasticism, all under the guise of innovation and trendiness. A gap is growing between the ruling ideology, which repeats humanist dogmas, and the technological, scientific and demographic realities which follow in the mode of urgency. The situation is growing increasingly unstable and signals impending catastrophe.

  Once ‘metapolitics’ – which is to say the political application of new political ideas – was hierarchically organised. An avant-garde would progressively impose its new ideas. Today, in the reign of dying modernity, avant-gardes of this kind no longer exist. Even trends, be they intellectual or fashion trends, are no longer easy to interpret. Everything functions horizontally, as if by reaction – nothing but repetitions. This is very evident in the field of music: forms and techniques change, but contents stammer on the same way. Even in the field of technology, innovation no longer serves to ‘change life’. The Internet is changing people’s lives far less than the electric lamp or telephone have done. These are all signs of a world that is entering a deadlock – a prelude to its end?

  The PACS Gag: A Model for

  ‘Facsimile Progressivism’

  The conservative Right sees PACS as the product of a ‘homosexual lobby’ – the notorious ‘pink mafia’ – that wishes homosexual couples of both sexes to be granted the right to marry and adopt children. This is not at all what it’s about. It has been a long time since the homosexual world needed ruses of this kind to impose itself. Besides, gay couples do not last long and very few wish to live together for long and adopt children. So there is no need to panic.

  PACS are no ‘war machines against families’ or a ‘means to destroy marriage’. Those who wish to marry will never be dissuaded by the existence of PACS. Things are far simpler. PACS are a gag: they’re one of those devices and symbolic measures adopted by a system that’s reached its end. As it’s no longer capable of solving real problems, it seeks to shift people’s attention towards progressive pseudo-reforms that will make absolutely no difference. PACS are yet another example of the false freedoms and worthless ‘rights’ accorded in the name of an emphatic individualism – a way of concealing an utter lack of any political projects.

  On the other hand, PACS will increase the financial pressure on French society (with 6 billion Francs lost through tax exemptions at a time when fewer and fewer funds are being allotted for families). Any couple, whether male or female – be it even a fake couple – by submitting a simple declaration to the public administration can enjoy financial benefits, succession rights and housing rights that are all paid for by society. In such a way others are being charged with duties in exchange for nothing at all. In the Napoleonic code, so full of common sense, it is assumed – as something quite logic and natural – that married couples benefit from financial advantages because they will renew society by producing offspring. Napoleon himself stated that ‘concubines take no notice of the law, and the law takes no interest in them’.

  The Left came up with PACS not so much because it sought to win the favours of the homosexual lobby, but because it made the following reasoning: our ‘progressivism’ is moribund, and we’re no longer able to pursue social justice in any concrete way; the struggle against unemployment and poverty is beyond us. The only solution for the Left, then, is hypocritical progressivism. Hence the idea of PACS, which like other pseudo-humanitarian measures – such as the regularisation of illegal immigrants – brings not an ounce of good to the people, but only increases the burden on everyone’s shoulders. Through this legislative device the Left seeks to give the impression it is being loyal to its progressive vocation.

  Another point: PACS also help the Left and ‘Republican’ Right to create mutual artificial disagreement when they ultimately agree on almost everything.

  The whole PACS affair illustrates the spinelessness and impotence of governments in this declining democracy of ours. The process is always the same. Incapable of solving concrete problems, governments feed public opinion abstract reforms that are always justified as further acts of humanitarianism and tolerance. True ills are not treated: the patient is only given painkillers (in the form of stupefying audiovisual or electronic entertainment), while pretending to solve false problems. Increase birth rates? Halt the desertification of 60% of our land? Prevent the catastrophe expected to take place after 2010 because of the failure of social budgets? Reduce urban pollution? Restructure European institutions? Don’t worry about these things! It’s all too complicated. Empty symbols are preferable: close the Superphénix nuclear plant[132] or establish gender equality in political parties. A tentacular, socialistic and taxing state gets all the fatter the more it lacks power, authority, and efficacy. The political class is powerless (for it lacks human qualities and determination) and is only interested in electoral propaganda. It lives by the day, with no concern for what could happen even in the short term; it makes no forecasts, and risks doing nothing beyond mock reforms. Yet it would do well to worry about the future.

  Rap and Techno

  From a musical point of view, rap – like techno – is a very poor genre. It is not open to any renewal. Its range of harmonies is too small and its rhythms too repetitive. Its lyrics, written by talentless people with public funding, are worthless, plaintive and falsely violent. NTM is nothing but subsidised propaganda and gratuitous provocation:[133] an aping of the tough Black bands active in the Bronx in the 1970s, minus the musical talent, power and sincerity. Utter impostors. The same goes for all contemporary rappers. It is working for the moment, but won’t last long. MC Solaar is a good writer of lyrics trapped in a musical deadlock.

  As for techno, it is not music but percussion. This ‘music’ also won’t last long. It is devoid of any content. Techno and rap, like hip-hop, will go the same way as twist and disco, because they do not belong to any aesthetic or musical current, but merely provide a social look – and looks are transient things.

  Rock’n’roll, on the other hand, is eternal, for it can take various forms and rests on a range of harmonies. It has managed to survive and remain in fashion. What is now spreading across the world, though, are ethnic forms of music: Latin, Asian, Celtic, Greek, Arab, African, etc. – renewed forms of popular music.

  The Screen of False Freedom

  One of the paradoxes of our society is that it allows the spread, in a humanist, tolerant and soft guise, of tolerance towards social violence and the erosion of public liberties. Faced with growing crime, insecurity and economic uncertainty, with an increasingly interfering fiscal policy, the restriction of the right to express one’s political views, a disturbing increase in juridical errors, and the electronic monitoring of the entire population, the system no longer contents itself with falsifying statistics or turning people’s attention towards public debates of no interest.

  The system has now adopted the strategy of false freedoms. This consists in granti
ng civil society what are presented as ‘new freedoms’, which are actually of no concrete interest, but have the advantage of being featured on the media. Things such as PACS, the requirement for quotas of women in electoral office, the banning of hazing, the de facto impossibility of expelling illegal immigrants, appeals to the independence of the magistracy, and the representation of students on school boards are all pseudo-freedoms that only constitute an additional burden for people. In such a way, mock emancipation is used to conceal the encroaching limits placed on our freedoms.

  Concrete freedoms are being replaced by abstract and virtual ones. The same mechanism has been running since the French Revolution.

  ‘Positive Discrimination’ is racist and sexist

  Many American states have adopted programmes and laws based on ‘affirmative action’, i.e., ‘positive discrimination’. The word itself carries ridiculous contradictions. And the same thing is currently happening in South Africa as well...

  Affirmative action implies an unconsciously anti-egalitarian attitude. It calls for a definition of the ‘races to be helped’ – hence it’s racism. Should we help Arabs and Koreans? A ‘racial scale’ is thus implicitly established, based on notions of superiority and inferiority, which actually derives from anti-racist ideology itself. In the United States many minority spokesmen have felt humiliated at being listed among those benefiting from ‘positive discrimination’. A woman writer of African origins in France has recently petitioned for a fixed quota of Blacks to be introduced into television programming.[134]

  To put it briefly, women, Blacks, etc., are all being likened to the congenitally handicapped and underdeveloped, as people we should pity and help with a (considerable) push. What humiliation! ‘White males’ must be penalised so that others may find a place in the sun: but doesn’t this very idea entail that ‘White males’ are intrinsically superior? Hence, this alleged superman must by discriminated against by authority in order to make way for ‘others’. The subtext here is that women and Blacks are eternal victims who by their very nature require help: weak creatures to be constantly protected from oppression.

  Anti-racist, egalitarian and feminist ideology is biting its own tail. It reasserts racist or sexist ideas of inferiority while claiming to fight against them. If I were Black I would be furious at being treated like a virtual incompetent who always needs help!

  On the other hand, in forcefully imposing a 50% quota of women among political candidates, egalitarian ideology is going against its principles of equality and harming the sacred ‘cause of women’. If most candidates are men this is not because of any conscious decision to leave women out, but because there aren’t enough women standing for elections. By imposing an equal quota for women, they are actually imposing a number of candidates who are bound to be mediocre. Suffice to recall the case of Juppé, who, wishing to prove that she was ‘trendy’, had six female ministers appointed in her government who were soon dismissed for their incompetence. Why not impose a 50% quota for men in jobs of great social importance – such as the magistracy or high school teaching – where woman are in the majority? Why not establish a 50% quota of women among doctors and surgeons, most of whom are men, by setting up separate entrance exams? But there’s a snag here: perhaps the egalitarian partisans of positive discrimination would not be too happy at being operated upon by female surgeons of dubious talent.

  Let’s go one step further: besides gender quotas, why not also adopt ethnic quotas to reflect the presence of each ethnic group in our multiracial society? In such a way, Air France would have to recruit its personnel through ‘ethnic colleges’ and employ X per cent of Black pilots, Y per cent of pilots of North African origin, and so on. But this of course will never happen, because there’s a limit even to madness.

  Positive discrimination, whose aims are anti-racism and anti-sexism, makes society increasingly sexist and racist. When egalitarianism seeks to stretch its principles to their very limits, according to an abstract logic, it ends up perverting them and making them absurd and contradictory. Are equal opportunities not yielding equal results? Then we must forcefully impose this equality into the results by destroying the very notion of equal opportunity that lies at the basis of egalitarian ideology... All this is happening because the latter dogmatically refuses to acknowledge the inequality in skills among different individuals and ethnic groups. ‘Nature’ does not share our views? Then let us change nature by decree, as is done with history! An ambitious plan that leads straight to catastrophe... Well, so much the better: to quote an Indian proverb, ‘When you see your enemy dancing on a rooftop, let him do so and applaud his feat.’

  The Return of Class Struggle:

  the Left on the Exploiters’ Side

  According to the classic mythology of the Marxist Left, class struggle opposes wage-earning workers against the managerial or parasitic bourgeoisie. Today, the real class struggle is between the wage-earners in the protected sector – who can almost certainly count on a lifelong career and benefit from great privileges and acquired advantages – and the unemployed and those with precarious or risky jobs, categories which are becoming increasingly common. The former live off the latter and can use strikes as a weapon. One kind of worker derives its security from the uncertainty of the other. The paradox here lies in the fact that the contemporary Left and its trade unions – particularly those connected to the public sector – are defending the exploitive and secure economic class: that of the protected wage-earners. Increasing privileges, an unwavering preservation of existing benefits (funded with taxes from the chaotic private sector), a reduction in working hours for employees in the public and semi-public sectors and in large business groups (the 35 hours scam), etc.

  The strikes organised in the winter of 1995-1996[135] were not the expression of any form of social defence, but of a corporative class struggle. The wage-earners from the protected sector were asking for further funding and more sacrifices from the unprotected classes who are the ones really creating wealth.

  So while the Front National was gaining consensus among the proletariat of the risk-taking sector, the new unprotected classes and those who personally face risks to produce wealth, the new electoral battles of the Left were being launched by the bourgeoisie of the protected sector, the one safe from unemployment, poverty and crime...

  As for the Trotskyist Left, it is stuck defending ‘sans-papiers’. Through its theory that illegal immigrants cannot be expelled it is objectively accomplice to these immigrants’ exploitation of national workers, caused by the fact that the latter are financially burdened by the arrival of aliens constantly in need of ‘help’ who are free to create businesses on the black market, thus harming the rest of the economy.

  The far Left and class struggle: some honest and intelligent people on the far Left are aware of what is not working and why, but are incapable of suggesting any alternative models. They acknowledge that the system is failing to offer any credible social and economic solutions, and that raw liberalism leads to economic horror. Yet, they do not dare suggest possible answers or plans for society; on the one hand, because Marxist strategies have failed; on the other, because they are starting to think – without ever admitting it – that the true remedies are to be found not on the Left, but in what Zeev Sternhell[136] terms the ‘revolutionary Right’ and Pierre Vial ‘national populism’.

  Actually, the Left has long abandoned the social sphere. Today, it seeks refuge in ‘ethics’ – a new fraud. It no longer cares about ‘defending the oppressed’, except in a pretend way; actually, it never did: the Marxist-Trotskyist tradition has always taken little notice of the ‘working class’ and ‘proletarians’ – and ‘immigrants’ today – whom it continues to treat as masses to be manipulated to stir up social chaos in the hope that its cynical and ambitious (as well as perfectly ‘anti-Republican’) circles may one day come into power for good. Unfortunately, it is not enough to merely seize power: power must also be preserved. With its pseudo-mora
l strategy, the Left and far Left have been playing with fire while forgetting the joker: Islam.

  The Contradiction between

  Integration and Communitarianism

  When considering the fate of immigrants and their offspring in France, both Left and Right fall flat on their faces. ‘Republican’ and ‘humanist’ principles lead to absurdly contradictory solutions in themselves: according to Republican logic, we are told again and again that integration is necessary, but at the same time that assimilation must be rejected, as this would be a form of racist coercion. Also drummed into us – usually by the same people – is the idea that we must preserve differences: this is the theory of differentialism or communitarianism, which believes in the harmonious coexistence of a ‘Republican Islam’ respectful of secular values alongside the virtues of communitarianism, i.e., of a viable and peaceful ethnic mosaic. At the same time, an apology is made for intermingling and race-mixing, which would seem to contradict the communitarian view whereby each ethnic group is to affirm its own identity... In other words, these people want to have their cake and eat it too; they want everything and its opposite: integration without assimilation, the preservation of ethno-communitarian differences and the melting pot, and so on. Once again, the ruling ideology can be seen to fall victim to its favourite vice: belief in miracles. Is banning chadors in schools Republican or racist? Or is it both? The intellectual acrobatics performed by the media and politicians in this matter show that they are caught in an utter deadlock. It should be acknowledged that in history, insurmountable contradictions exist, which is to say insoluble problems. Only a clear break can bring some solutions, but only through the painful establishment of a different system.

  Vengeance, the Motor of Politics