Alba Rosa

by Alexander Wolfheze

  Pre-modern life represents a single, continuous Ernstfall: the wolf eats the sheep, the boar eats the harvest, winter kills the elderly, childbed kills the baby, neighbouring tribes kidnap the girl, plundering bandits burn down the house and evil spirits possess the mind. The Ernstfall provisions of the pre-modern world are meant to deal with a permanent theriomachy, a never-ending ‘animal struggle’. This existential war with a host of natural, human and spiritual enemies requires a permanent ‘state of siege’, a constant alertness and battle-readiness. This is the experiential reality that underpins all authentic forms of Traditional life. The world of Tradition is a black-and-white world of good and evil, light and darkness — it is a world that is lived by means of an uncompromising Wehr- und Waffen-Instinkt and which is guarded by guardians on both physical and spiritual walls. These guardians cannot make the least mistake: every lapse of attention, every doubt and every weakness of the guardians is fatal for the community. The guardian cannot confound a wolf for a sheep, a stranger for a friend, he cannot lose sight of the gate, he cannot be distracted by idle chatter, he cannot drink when others celebrate, he cannot let strangers talk to children and he cannot let strangers seduce girls. Self-discipline and self-sacrifice determine his thoughts and his behaviour. His vision must stay unclouded and his attention must be single-minded: his own people remain his own people, strangers remain strangers, women remain women, children remain children. Thus, strong, brave and wise people man the walls around vulnerable, sick and weak people. They protect the child, the woman, the old man — their function is institutionally and culturally anchored in their society. At the most primitive level, these people are the guardsmen who kill predators, the warriors who chase off enemies, the medicine men who heal the sick, the shamans who control the spirit world, the tribal elders who mete out justice and the chiefs who lead their people through the wilds of the world. At the most civilized level, these people are the dike-wardens who check the levees,15 the knights who guard the border marches, the surgeons who cure bodies, the priests who cure minds, the magistrates who maintain the laws and the monarchs who maintain the peace. The archetypes of the world of Tradition are the anointed monarch, the born nobleman, the ordained priest, the oath-bound doctor and certified master craftsman.

  The universally recurrent characteristics of the world of Tradition are: holistic integration, hierarchical organization and transcendental direction. All members of the community — tribe, nation — have their own particular place and each member has his or her own specific duties and rights. Place, duty and right reflect archetypal function: there are male roles and female roles, noble rights and civil rights, hereditary privileges and sacred offices. The direction of the world of Tradition is always anagogic: it looks upwards, it strives upwards, it is driven upwards. In the world of Tradition people are always more than themselves, even in their most mundane experiences. The expectant mother mirrors herself in the Mother of God, the beggar mirrors himself in the Poor Job, the dying man mirrors himself in the Martyred Saviour. The higher vocations are explicitly superhuman: the word of the Priest offers forgiveness, the sword of the Knight conquers the invader, the hand of the King grants healing. At their height, these archetypes reach heroic and holy transcendence. Even the stubborn clay and the down-to-earth people of the small Netherlands have brought forth such greatness: Thomas à Kempis in lived mysticism, Desiderius Erasmus in philosophical scholarship, Willem Barentsz in daring discovery, Michiel de Ruyter in heroic sea wars, Rembrandt van Rijn in genius artistic vision. Throughout all the hierarchic layers of the world of Tradition rights and duties are always functional, imposing the heaviest burdens on the strongest shoulders. The ideals and ideas of the world of Tradition are superhuman for everybody — but they also grant superhuman strength.

  Generation & De-Generation of a People

  If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people

  what they do no want to hear.

  — George Orwell

  From a Traditionalist perspective, peoples too have rights and duties, peoples too have superhuman ideals and peoples too have superhuman strength. A people conquers and defends a territory, a right to exist, a name and a reputation by collectively doing battle with natural challenges and human enemies. The resulting landnám may be limited to a few hectares of hunting grounds in a jungle or it may extend across thousands of miles to form a multi-continental Imperium.

  The small Dutch nation represents a modest transitional form, ethnically based on the historical agglomerate of Germanic tribes that settled in the estuary swamps between Ems and Scheldt, slowly taking on its primordial shape over a number of centuries. The pressures of climate, geography and history moulded the specialist adaptations that determine Dutch identity — physically, psychologically and spiritually. This means physical survival of the dangerous tidal swamps, the storm floods and the atrocious weather. This means psychological tolerance of the endlessly flat horizon and the sunless winter. This means historical animosity against religious collectivism and political centralism. Swamp and geest16 are cultivated as polder and garden.17 Reed thickets and virgin forest are replaced by villages and cities. Domestic anarchy and foreign tyranny are replaced by law and autonomy. Superstition and witch hunts are replaced by science and humanism. The foreign Goliath — the Spanish world empire, the English naval challenge, the French Sun King — is defeated by the Dutch David.18 The small Dutch nation has gained its sovereign place among the nations of Europe and the small Dutch state survives the 18th and 19th century social-Darwinist jungle war of nationalism and imperialism. The Netherlands survive the French Revolution, the European Revolution of 1848 and the First World War:19 people and state absorb what is compatible, reject what is incompatible and survive what is pathogenic. Finally, however, the Second World War damages the roots of people and state. In the aftermath of the Second World War the first symptoms of fatal external and internal weakness appear: the Netherlands abandons its sovereign rights through the political-economic merger with Belgium and Luxembourg, the military pact with its wartime allies America and Britain and the retreat from the Dutch East Indies.20

  After a short interlude of infrastructural modernization, mass emigration and cultural Americanization, starting from the mid-1960s the Netherlands suffers an identity crisis of unprecedented depth and scope. Thus far located on the historical margins of the Western mainstream, the Netherlands now finds itself in the political and economic vanguard of Western ‘progress’ and at the eye of the storm of Western Modernity. The Crisis of the Modern World hits the Netherlands with full force and the deluge of fully fledged Cultural Nihilism wipes out all the landmarks of identity and tradition. A heritage of centuries is squandered within the lifetime of just one generation — the ‘baby boom’ generation. Driven by unrestrained consumerism, hedonist narcissism and secular nihilism, the baby boomers build a megalomaniac new Tower of Babel. Traditional family farms are replaced by a grotesque ‘bio industry’ that sacrifices human health and animal welfare ‘for a fistful of dollars’. Manufacture and industry are replaced by a ‘service economy’ and physical labour that cannot be ‘exported’ is delegated to foreign workers.21 Honest trade and respectable banking, the traditional staples of Dutch enterprise, are replaced with the facilitation of industrial dumping, narcotics traffic, ‘consumer credit’ usury and money laundry through ‘post-box firms’. The national currency is replaced by European ‘monopoly money’. National borders are replaced by global ‘free movement of goods and people’. ‘International treaty obligations’, ‘European law’, ‘market mechanisms’ and ‘free trade competition’ prevail over the most elementary notions of self-preservation, self-respect and moral responsibility.

  Forced into a ‘race to the bottom’, Dutch workers are supposed to compete with Eastern European ‘migrant labour’. Forced to implement the American commercial principles of ‘internationalization’ and ‘valorization’, Dutch universi
ties and museums are reduced to a cultural desert. Within a few years, mass immigration causes the total Frisian population, indigenous since the time of the Roman Empire, to be outnumbered by Turkish and Moroccan residents.22 Within a few decades, the legal fictions of ‘citizenship education’ and ‘naturalization’ allow for the mobilization of millions of ‘new Dutch citizens’ as consumers, ‘labour reserve’ and electoral reinforcement for the benefit of a tiny anti-national elite. Soon these allochtonen, fattened with ‘targeted subsidies’, pampered by ‘affirmative action’ and supported by ‘anti-discriminatory’ legislation, manage to massively infiltrate all levels of government, the security services, the institutes of higher learning and the public media. ‘Child benefit’ subsidies, ‘family reunification’ policies and ‘refugee resettlement’ programmes provide a continuous demographic reinforcement of legally enforced ‘diversity’. Within a few years, monstrous ghettos are formed in the major cities of the country — breeding grounds for criminality, prostitution, extremism and terrorism. Within the lifetime of just one generation, the ‘baby boom’ generation, the country is heavily damaged — irreversibly damaged, as is silently hoped by the anti-national elite. All critics of globalization and mass-immigration are systematically persecuted and silenced, usually by means of politically correct witch hunts and public character assassination. Only a few exceptional talents are granted the privilege of straightforward martyrdom: the gifted spirit of Professor Fortuyn was expelled by a bullet.23

  Approaches & Choices

  In 2002, Professor Fortuyn wrote his last book — De puinhopen van acht jaar paars, ‘The Ruins of Eight Years Purple’.24 In that book, he was still able to prescribe a mild cure of democratic reforms and gradual political course corrections for his country. But even these moderate propositions were too much for the Dutch political elite: the elite opted for a Flucht nach vorne. Now, fifteen years later, the socio-political ruin that is the Netherlands requires a much deeper and larger archaeological project than Professor Fortuyn envisioned. A much longer gauging rod is needed to fully fathom the depths of the present crisis. The new generation will have to dig much deeper and cover a much larger terrain. It will have to reassess the fundamental notions of Ernstfall and emergency, because forty years of betrayal of the nation cannot be cured by a mere cosmetic operation. Perhaps deep in his heart Professor Fortuyn already suspected the true scope of the task ahead, because three weeks before he was killed he wrote in the re-edition of De verweesde samenleving, ‘An Orphaned Society’, that he had been granted the vision of Moses: after forty years in the desert the old prophet ascends a mountain to see the Promised Land. Professor Fortuyn is now allowed to rest from his heavy task, but there is no rest for the living. Now it is up to the new generation to reclaim the Promised Land and to take it back for its people. But this work can only be accomplished with superhuman strength: the pledge can only be redeemed through an unwavering trust in Divine Providence and a radical willingness to sacrifice comfort and egoism. Only Traditionalist wisdom can still rediscover the sources of this strength, this trust and this commitment. Only Traditionalist wisdom offers a degree of understanding that is sufficiently profound to truly appreciate the Ernstfall facing the nation. Traditionalist philosophy cannot offer ideological precepts and it cannot offer metaphysical hope — it certainly cannot offer a political programme. The only thing it can offer is a tested and proven formula for a clear-eyed reassessment of history. It can provide the intellectual and moral tabula rasa that is a prerequisite for an authentically effective form of metapolitical rearmament.

  Various philosophico-scientific approaches are available to describe the generative and degenerative phenomena that create and destroy peoples and nations, i.e. their diachronic development and their synchronic identity. In the final analysis, all of these approaches are functional and they are complementary in relation to each other — even when a specific approach is preferred in certain settings of political correctness or when it is used to sustain certain power monopolies. The Modernist or ‘historical-materialist’ philosophico-scientific approach has become the preferred approach of institutionalized academic science. To the extent that this science is still sincerely practised, it focuses on material factors and utilitarian functionalities; these include genetic evolution, epigenetic tendencies, socio-geographical conditioning and socio-economic dynamics. The Traditionalist philosophico-scientific approach, on the other hand, focuses on immaterial factors and macro-cosmic functionalities — these include cultural-historical dynamics, psycho-history, meta-historical interpretation and transcendental references. From a Traditionalist philosophico-scientific perspective, the Ernstfall provisions of a given community are important reference points in describing the synchronic identity and diachronic development of that community; they allow for a diagnosis of the present sustainability and future trajectory of that community. The most important Ernstfall provisions that recur throughout Western and Dutch history are the Monarchy, the Nobility, the Church and the Academy. Thus, it is important to determine to what extent these old institutions — to the degree they still exist — can still be relevant as Ernstfall provisions in the context of the present Crisis of the Modern World. If they cannot, they will have to exit the stage of history in infamy. In that case, history may yet create entirely new institutions, suited to entirely new conditions: these new institutions will serve entirely new peoples and new nations — peoples and nations that will probably be radically redefined and historically unrecognizable. But if these old institutions recover their relevance to the present Ernstfall, they can provide the strongest shields and the best swords in a war of national rebirth. In that case, Western nations and peoples may yet survive in historically recognizable forms.

  The fundamental issue at stake may be summarized in a single question: what is the contemporary raison d’être of these historical institutions? It is a question that the institutions of Academy, Church, Nobility and Monarchy must ask themselves — and it is also a question that only they themselves can answer. Can the Academy still be the Academy — and does it wish to be? Can it still return to the high task of substantive transmission of knowledge and fundamental research on behalf of nation and people? Or does it merely wish to generate comfortable tenures and hollow titles for resentful feminists, unscrupulous foreigners and corrupt management consultants? Can the Church still be the Church — and does it wish to be? Can it still return to the sacred task of spiritual defence and ministry on behalf of nation and people? Or does it merely wish to create a ‘neo-spiritual’ smoke-screen to cover self-appointed ‘New Age’ high priests, hypocritical sexual offenders and traitors who open the gates to criminal and illegal immigrants?25 Can the Nobility still be the Nobility — and does it wish to be? Can it still return to the knightly calling to serve king and country in the military, at court, in diplomacy and in governance? Or does it merely wish to cover a cowardly love of ease with a beautiful old name? Can these old institutions reinvent themselves, and redefine themselves — where necessary with new people, new names and new ideas? Or do they wish to take their place in history’s museum of curiosities? Can these old institutions find a new role, befitting new conditions and new problems? Or do they wish to acquiesce in the pseudo-intellectual discourse of ‘historical progress’ propagated by the cultural-nihilist elite? In the latter case, they will disappear into the rubbish bin of history. At most, they will be reinvented — in a radically different form — by the people that they have betrayed.

  There is one old institution that has not been questioned yet: the Monarchy. The reason for this omission is simple: in the Netherlands the Monarchy is beyond question; the Netherlands stands or falls with the House of Orange. A return to a ‘republican stewardship’ presided over by the House of Orange26 is impossible: nobility can rise in title — from prince to king — but it cannot fall. This means that the Netherlands is either a Kingdom under the Hous
e of Orange, or nothing. The Dutch state and the Dutch people are both creations of William of Orange27 : he is literally the ‘father of the Dutch nation’. Whether one likes it or not, the conjoined destiny of the Dutch nation and the House of Orange is a fact, and it is a fact about which the real Dutch people do not tolerate disputation — in spite of all freemasonic fantasies, all republican rhetoric and all patrician envy.28 The Orange Monarchy is the last line of defence and the strongest citadel of the Netherlands; it is the ultimate Ernstfall provision of the Dutch nation and people. Reverence and respect for the Orange Monarchy is not a matter of sentimental bigotry: it is first and foremost simple reverence and respect for the Dutch nation and the Dutch people. Second, it is the logical and inevitable consequence of any authentically Traditionalist approach to Dutch identity in terms of state and nation. Third, it is a simple recognition of historical reality. The Kingdom of the Netherlands, as founded by the Vienna compromise of 1814, represents Dutch national sovereignty in the jungle of international geopolitics. The narrow-minded merchants, the independent gentleman farmers and the quarrelsome citizens inhabiting the Low Countries would never have survived the era of social-Darwinist nationalist and imperialist Realpolitik as a sovereign nation in the shape of a decentralized merchants’ republic. The House of Orange, immensely rich Uradel with a redoubtable political and military reputation, not only continues to provide international prestige and diplomatic grandeur to a nation of canards, canaux et canailles,29 but also continues to constitute a lofty symbol of national identity and historical continuity. Whereas the terror of 20th century hyper-democracy has reduced most Western heads of state to anonymous interim managers, the King of the Netherlands can still stand next to the Emperor of Japan on a footing of sovereign equality. Despite the hair-splitting of professional historians, the gossip of tabloid journalists and the ideological prejudice of bored intelligentsia, House of Orange is the Dutch nation and the Dutch nation is House of Orange.