Why We Fight

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Why We Fight Page 18

by Guillaume Faye


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  The idea of identity is a thorn in the side of the dominant universal and egalitarian ideology. On the one hand, it finds it terribly shocking, suspecting (rightly) that identity always has an ethnic scent. On the other hand, one can’t — or rather can no longer for political reasons — openly counter a ‘Corsican identity’ or a ‘Breton identity’. Not to mention a ‘Jewish identity’, which no one would think of contesting, though in the Nineteenth century secular and universalist Jews, beginning with Marx, advocated eradicating Jewish identity — eradicating Jewish customs, religion, and endogamous prescriptions. How are such flagrant contradictions overcome? Only through ideological contortions:

  1. The identity of the peoples constituent of Europe is not openly denied, but neutralised, emptied of substance, and relegated to academic study or folklore (in the worse sense of the term), stripped in this way of every ethnic reference. Only linguistic identity is paid lip service and then only with a good deal of reticence. As the Left-wing leaders of the Breton independence movement insist, a non-European settled in Brittany is automatically a Breton. (Here the term ‘Breton’ assumes the universalist sense that ‘American’ has.)

  2. It’s understood, of course, that identity is acceptable for alien populations, but abhorrent whenever demanded by Europeans — because it’s ‘racist’. African, West Indian, and Arab-Muslim identities are encouraged, while any profession of ethnic identity by native Europeans is automatically subjected to a hermeneutic of suspicion. In this spirit Europeans are urged to shed all trace of identity (or else relegate it to the museum). It’s simply too dangerous.

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  The notion of identity is not at all endangered by the world that is coming, for despite — or because of — globalisation and Westernisation, we’re going to see identity massively enhanced by the formation of great ethnic blocs in the Global South. The only threatened identity is that of the dangerous peoples (analogous to the ‘dangerous classes’ of Nineteenth-century Paris):[168] the ‘dangerous peoples’ being native Europeans, who are now prohibited from having an identity, at least an identity that is anything other than a museum piece.

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  Finally, the idea of identity has to be linked to the notion of continuity (in Robert Steuckers’ formulation). Identity is never fixed or frozen. It remains itself in changing, reconciling being and becoming. Identity is dynamic, never static or purely conservative. Identity should be seen as the foundation of a movement that endures through history — the generational continuity of a people. Dialectical notions associating identity and continuity permits a people to be the producer of its own history.

  (see enrootment; ethnocentrism; ethnosphere; fatherland, native land)

  * * *

  Ideology, hegemonic ideology, Western ideology, European ideology

  An ideology is an explicitly or implicitly organised system of ideas that is both a conception-of-the-world and the bearer of a specific political, social, economic, and cultural project.

  Europe today is the victim of an ideology that she herself created — one that began with the Eighteenth century philosophy of the Enlightenment and culminates in what one calls ‘Western ideology’ or ‘globalist ideology’. Western ideology has boomeranged against Europeans. This ideology (which Communism shared in large part until its collapse) is based on the following presuppositions:

  1. An absolute individualism and the pursuit of pleasure through economic materialism.

  2. An interpretation of technology as a kind of divinity capable of bestowing happiness and serving as a substitute for spirituality — technology seen here not as an instrument of power and sovereignty, but simply as a means of comfort — a domination by gadgets.

  3. The hypocritical affirmation of the equality of all human beings and, on this basis, the implicit negation of the idea of a people (in the ethnic sense).

  4. A rejection of the divine and the ancestral heritage and their substitution with a presentism, contemptuous of both past and future.

  5. The belief in the infinite economic ‘development’ of humanity, as the supreme form of collective and individual happiness — a development without any regard to physical or ecological limits.

  6. The cult of endless progress.

  7. The struggle against Europe’s ethnic identities.

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  Founded on Reason (a self-sufficient rationality), Western ideology is but a degenerated form of metaphysics, for it claims to represent all human aspirations, serving as it does as a universal ethical norm, in lieu of religion. Its postulates, though, are unrealistic and anti-vitalistic, disdaining the real — that is, the observable reality of human societies. While criticising the absolute materialism of Western ideology and society, certain unseeing philosophers (on the intellectual Right) imagine that a ‘spiritual’ alliance with Islam is desirable. That would be like falling between Charybde and Scylla.[169] In themselves alone — in their own traditions — will Europeans succeed in finding and reviving their people.

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  The philosophy of ‘human rights’ and the idolatry of technology as sources of well-being make up the résumé of Western ideology. Today it is hegemonic, totalitarian. It tolerates no challenges. Rather than being rivals, the different Right and Left versions of Western ideology pursue the same general civilisational project. However triumphant this ideology may be at the moment, it is inherently destructuring. For the world doesn’t conform to its postulates, none of which have ever been realised. Its present triumph will be ephemeral.

  Western ideology beckons a revival: a real European ideology.

  (see belief in miracles; egalitarianism; human rights; modernity; progress, progressivism)

  * * *

  Immigration

  The influx of alien populations into a territory whose native people risks being submerged.

  The immigration of non-Europeans into Europe has led to a veritable colonisation. The term ‘immigration’ ought to be criticised as insufficient and replaced with the term ‘colonisation’ — this colonisation which is the gravest historical phenomenon to beset Europeans since the fall of the Roman Empire. In political and ideological struggle, we ought not to rely on the words of our adversary, but instead impose our own concepts. We don’t welcome alien immigrants, we are being colonised by them.

  (see colonisation and also my La Colonisation de l’Europe [Paris: L’Æncre, 2001])

  * * *

  Individualism

  The ideology and cultural tendency to affirm the primacy of the individual and his interests over the group to which he belongs.

  This is an ambiguous notion. For there exists a positive individualism, that of the Hellenic, Celtic, and Germanic traditions, and a negative individualism, which is a tragic distortion of the first, and stems from a bourgeois mentality hostile to one’s own community or people. It also stems from religions of individual salvation (soteriological ones), in which man speaks directly to God, without an intermediary.

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  Positively, European individualism is typically linked to notions of liberty and responsibility, and accepts the cause of patriotism, as well as the spirit of sacrifice. This is the individualism of the creative personality, artist, or aristocrat. The negative individualism of consumer society, in contrast, comes from the massification and domestication of the isolated individual. This is the individualism of conditioned masses, of men who are nothing but consuming atoms, detached from their community and people. It’s thus necessary to distinguish between aristocratic individualism and bourgeois individualism. The latter is narcissistic and nihilistic, susceptible to forms of slavery or robotisation that are usually introduced in the name of emancipation. Despite its appearances and simulacra, Left-wing socialism, like market society, upholds a flattened individualism — irresponsible and in need of assistance — that rejects solidarity and culminates in corporate or egoistic reflexes.

  *

  Contemporary individualism pursues the following
paradox: it exalts the narcissistic individual but in the long run oppresses the individual by isolating him from natural solidarities. Individualism is positive if it values the creative personality, within the community-of-the-people.

  (see community; personality, creative)

  * * *

  Inegalitarianism

  Recognition of the diversity and inequality of all life forms, biological or social.

  According to the philosopher Giorgio Locchi, the difference between ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘inegalitarianism’ amounts to a veritable war between conceptions of the world, as Nietzsche first noted.

  Inegalitarianism ought not to be confused with injustice, social oppression, or the establishment of caste privileges. Its vision of the world stems from the principle that humans are neither equivalent nor comparable (collectively or individually), that they are unequal by nature, whether by temperament or virtue. Solutions and morals cannot, therefore, be the same everywhere. Similarly, this implies that human beings and civilisations are not and cannot be equally capable or estimable.

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  The inegalitarian vision of the world is the basis of all justice and social harmony, because it respects the organic character of life. For Nietzsche, egalitarianism represented a ‘hatred of life’ and led to tyrannical efforts to create an artificial social universe. The democratic despotisms of the Twentieth century are excellent examples of this.

  Inegalitarianism is a recognition of life’s diversity, it’s the basic logic of competition dominating the different life forms. Without this recognition, the results would lead to savagery — to the very opposite of order, equilibrium, and justice. There’s no need to limit inegalitarianism to diversity (as do our ‘ethnopluralist’ intellectuals, who are, actually, profoundly egalitarian), but to understand that unequal life forms imply notions of superiority and quality.

  *

  This raises the question as to how criteria of inequality or superiority (of men or civilisations) are to be judged. Is it a matter of wealth? Of force? Of power? No, it’s the capacity to endure and survive, which is the basis of domination.

  (see egalitarianism)

  * * *

  Interregnum

  A concept of Giorgio Locchi, in which historical time culminates both in a civilisation’s end and in the possible birth of a new civilisation.

  We are currently living through an interregnum, a tragic historical moment when everything is in flames and everything, like a phoenix, might rise reborn from the ashes. This is the dark night, the ‘midnight of the world’ evoked by Hölderlin, between dusk and dawn.[170] The interregnum is the period of regeneration between chaos and post-chaos, the moment of tragedy, when everything is again possible. European peoples are presently living through an interregnum. Metamorphic in essence, European civilisation has known three distinct ages: Antiquity, the Middle Ages which rose from the ruins of Antiquity, and, beginning in the Sixteenth century, a Third Age of expansion, that of ‘modernity’, which is now coming to an end, following the terrible decline inaugurated by the First World War. Colonised by alien peoples, our civilisation faces death in the first twenty years of the new millennium. The interregnum through which we are presently living is the most crucial and decisive period since the Persian and Punic wars.[171] Either Europeans will unite in self-defence, expel the colonisers, throw off the American yoke, and regenerate themselves biologically and morally — or else their civilisation will disappear — forever. Never have the stakes been so high. The interregnum will give birth to the Fourth Age of European Civilisation — or else Europe will die, purely and simply. Everything is to be decided in the decisive period now beginning. And birth, if it occurs, will be painful, full of blood and tears — the fuels of history. For our civilisation, the Twenty-first century is to be a trial of life or death, with no possibility of appeal.

  (see chaos, Eurosiberia, history)

  * * *

  Involution

  The regression of a civilisation or species to maladaptive forms that lead to the diminishment of its vital forces.

  We are presently endangered by a grave involution, particularly in culture. This is due not simply to the spread of pop culture, of which America is the principal distributor, but also to the Africanisation of European culture and to the Islamic invasion. Cultural involution has also been stimulated by the decline of National Education (40% of adolescents are now partially or completely illiterate), the regression of knowledge, the collapse of social norms, the immersion of youth in a world of audio/visual play, the progression of neo-primitivism, the loss of defensive reflexes, etc.

  Involution has biological roots, as well: devirilisation provoked by the ideologies and lifestyles of urban market societies and by culpatory ideologies of dropping birth rates, anti-selection, etc.

  Undoubtedly, our leaders will tell us that they see no signs of involution. No sign because the market continues to expand. Involution, though, is like a virus, whose appearance at first goes unnoticed. For those who see, however, it’s already busily at work. Involution starts with the spirit and then with individual behaviour, before its gangrene spreads to social and economic institutions.

  (see chaos, decadence, neo-primitivism)

  J

  Judaeo-Christianity

  The conception of the world distinct to Judaism and Christianity, to which the latter confers its major forms, first as religion, then, with the advent of modernity, as ideology.

  The implantation of Judaeo-Christianity constituted an alien addition to pantheistic and polytheistic Europe. Hence, her cultural and mental schizophrenia: on the one hand, an egalitarian and universalistic Christian consciousness; on the other, a pagan, particularistic consciousness. The scientific mentality developed in opposition to Judaeo-Christianity, in accord with her pagan spirit, but her political ideologies (egalitarian, cosmopolitan, progressive, and individualistic) have taken a Judaeo-Christian turn. The Marxist postulates animating the Left (even after the fall of Communism) are, for example, a direct secularisation of Judaeo-Christian doctrines of salvation. Similarly, American hegemony and its ‘humanitarian’ interventionism, like its market model of society, express a Protestant version of Judaeo-Christianity. It’s important, though, to note that Judaism (which escaped Christianity’s Pauline schism) has never been universalistic and cosmopolitan in this sense, given the communitarian imperatives of the ‘chosen people’ to privilege other spiritual considerations.

  Traditional Catholicism, elaborated in the course of the Middle Ages, was marked by a certain ‘paganisation of Judaeo-Christianity’; in this sense it’s part of the integral European tradition, though it holds no monopoly over it.

  In the arts, culture, philosophy, mentality, and popular rites, paganism is present and still vital. Similarly, there’s no comparison between the Christianisation of Europe and Islam’s present installation. Christianity was developed and elaborated by Europeans themselves — if on the basis of certain alien sources — while Islam — which ought to be seen as a greater danger to Europe than Americanism — has simply been imposed, without any acclimation, as a conception of the world and society radically alien to the European mentality and tradition.

  *

  The Christianity of Vatican II, in returning to the Biblical sources of primitive Christianity, constituted a compromising rupture with the pagan-Christian sense of the sacred. It inaugurated a profanation of Christian religious doctrines, a politicisation of its spiritual principles, and, similarly, the collapse of Catholic religious practices. Having abandoned its sacred language, Latin (while Islam retains its classical Arabic), and having succumbed to modernity’s sirens, the neo-Christianity born at Vatican II (this palaeo-Christianity which returns to the ultra-egalitarian sources of primitive Christianity) has thrown off the sacred sense rooted in the ancestral tradition (however subterranean and unconscious), and fallen into a pure and simple atheism, as evident in the works of contemporary Catholic theologians.

  C
ontemporary churches resemble post offices, having retained nothing of the cathedral. The discourse of its official prelates is virtually identical to that of a trade union official. In dismissing pagan sacrality, the cult of the saints, and the Virgin Mary, the official neo-Christianity of Vatican II has destroyed the Church as a religious institution and become an ideology objectively opposed to the destiny of European peoples. It’s tempting to compare it to primitive Christianity, which contested Roman patriotism before the aggiornamento of the Fourth century.[172]

  Hence: the Church’s ‘ecumenical’ tolerance of the Islamic offensive, the systematic alignment of its prelates along neo-Trotskyist lines, its encouragement of ethnomasochism, its almost perfect accord with the politically correct intellectual-media classes — all centred on the hypocritical religion of human rights. In the East, fortunately, the Orthodox Church has better resisted these siren songs. The official Catholic Church is in the process of committing suicide; but in dying it hasn’t killed off the real soul of Europe’s peoples.

  Why? Because — and this can be seen in the massive defections it’s wrought — the post-conciliar Church has cut itself off from the sacrality distinct to Europeans. Its ‘marketing’ ploys (like World Youth Day) change nothing. The Church has condemned itself to being just another sect swept along by the cold wind that comes with Islam.

  *

  For the resistance: what is to be done?

  A historic compromise is evidently possible between authentic pagans and those Catholics and Orthodox Christians who continue to practice traditional European Christianity. But no resistance to the present offensive can be waged without appealing to the ‘pagan soul’, associated with the spirit of the two invincible pagan divinities, Apollo and Dionysus. Pierre Vial writes in Une Terre, un Peuple, ‘During two thousand years of Christianity, Europeans somehow or other never forgot these ancient divinities: they are part of our heritage and are to be assumed, like other of its parts, whether they please others or not’.

 

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