Room 34 of the British National Gallery exhibits a painting that provides an unsurpassed symbolic expression of the soul of the British people. William Turner, most known for his marine paintings, gave this modest oil canvas, painted in the years 1838–39 and bequeathed to the British nation upon his death in 1851, the name The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838. It shows a steam tugboat on the Thames dragging along an old warship to the place where it is to be demolished so that her materials can be sold off. The old warship of wood and sail, a ship of the line second class built in 1798, is His Majesty’s Ship Temeraire, famous for its heroic role in the Battle of Trafalgar. It was this sea battle, fought near the Spanish naval base at Cádiz on 19 October 1805 and resulting in the utter destruction of the allied French and Spanish fleets, which effectively scuttled Napoleon’s hopes of challenging Britain’s global naval hegemony. In fact, the beginning of the Anglo-Saxon thalassocracy — the combined Anglo-American ‘Atlanticist’ world power, which up to today remains the greatest geopolitical pillar of Modernity — can be dated to this battle. The mythological meaning of this battle for the British people, which rose to become the world’s most powerful people at the imperialist height of Western civilization during the following century, is reflected in the name of the most important public square of the British capital: Trafalgar Square. In the middle of the square stands Nelson’s Column, crowned with a statue of the great victor of the Battle of Trafalgar, Vice-Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson. The square pedestal is decorated with four bronze panels, cast from captured French guns, depicting Nelson’s four greatest feats: the Battle of Cape St Vincent (1797), the Battle of the Nile (1798), the Battle of Copenhagen (1801) and the Battle of Trafalgar (1805). His heroic death during his last and greatest victory ensured in his immortal glory and his status as the greatest naval hero of the British people — an ultimate example of mors triumphalis. Opposite Nelson’s Column stands the National Gallery, containing the other iconic reference to the Battle of Trafalgar: Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire. The Temeraire played a crucial role in the Battle of Trafalgar: it came to the aid of Nelson’s flagship Victory at a crucial moment and subsequently fought off superior Franco-Spanish forces for many hours, with great loss of human life and substantial damage. Her brave action and exemplary conduct brought the Temeraire the admiration of British public: after she reached Portsmouth on 1 December the Temeraire, together with the Victory, became a great attraction for masses of curious visitors. Among these many visitors was the thirty-year-old William Turner.
After four decades of service as a prison, guard and training ship, the Temeraire was finally taken out of service in the summer of 1838: she fired her last salute on 28 June, for the occasion of the coronation of Queen Victoria. In the new Victorian Age, an age of steam and steel under the aegis of the Second Industrial Revolution and world-encompassing Modern Imperialism, there was no longer any place for old wood-and-sail warhorses like the Temeraire: she was auctioned off to be broken up and on 5 August she commenced her last journey to the mudflats of the Thames off the London suburb of Rotherhithe. It was witnessing this last journey that inspired Turner to paint his masterwork and the special manner in which it has continued to touch a chord in the British soul is illustrated by the fact that in 2005 it was voted as the favourite painting of the British people. The theme of the painting is appropriately dramatic: the grey-and-white ghost of the mythical ‘White Ship’ passes under an eerie moon, the still water of the windless river that renders sails helpless but is resolutely ploughed by the blackened steam tug, the white flag that signifies not only a commercial voyage but also capitulation. In the background, vaguely visible in a ghostly haze, appear the monstrous factory chimneys and city skylines of Modernity — all under a red sunset. The setting sun indicates the end of the epoch, symbolized by The Fighting Temeraire, the ‘saucy dare-devil’. It is the end of the heroic age of ‘steel men in wooden ships’, followed by the cowardly age of ‘wooden men in steel ships’. On the mudflats of Rotherhithe the Temeraire was finally broken up: pieces of her woodwork found their way all throughout the British cultural landscape, embedded in artefacts such as a royal chair, a church altar and a painting frame.
Obviously, Turner’s masterpiece first and foremost represents British heritage: it encapsulates the schizophrenic but consistent relation that Great Britain has with Modernity: as dramatically illustrated in her status as the world’s First Industrial Nation, Great Britain is the scouting nation of Western Modernity. This relation is typified by a Faustian application of Modern Techne that goes hand in hand with a deep awareness of the loss of archetypal Traditional ideal forms. In the British psyche, crude capitalist calculation and the ruthless sacrifice of nature and culture to the laws of Modernity are always juxtaposed with subtle nostalgia and sublime melancholy. Archetypal expressions of the double-faced life of the First Industrial Nation, featuring (public, exterior) institutionalized harshness alongside (private, interior) idyllic tenderness, are characteristic of all great British art, including Dickens’ David Copperfield, Holst’s The Planets — and Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire.
In a certain sense, the British relation with Modernity, exquisitely expressed in Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire, can be regarded as a quintessential summary of Modernity in Western civilization as a whole: Great Britain is in the vanguard of that Modernity, it explores it and advances it. Even in the contemporary Postmodern West, long after the British leadership in Anglosaxon thalassocratic world power passed to America, Great Britain still retains its quintessential role as pioneer and test case. Significant developments in this regard are: its early economic de-industrialization (neo-Victorian neo-liberalism: ‘Thatcherism’, ‘de-regulation’, ‘privatisation’) and its early social de-construction (Cultural Nihilism multiculturalism: ‘open borders’, ‘inverse colonization’, ‘islamization’). Its cultural-historical anticipatory role means that Great Britain is an interesting subject in any Traditionalist analysis of the Postmodern West.
An example of contemporary relevance is the Cultural Nihilist programme of ethnic replacement: in Great Britain, this programme has advanced much further than in the rest of Western Europe. The resulting symptoms indicated the future direction of development in the rest of Western Europe: endemic and massive Islamist terror (‘7/7’, ‘Manchester Arena’), industrial-scale ethnic ‘grooming gangs’ (‘Rochdale’, ‘Rotherham’), uncontrollable street criminality and systematic inter-ethnic wealth redistribution. The reaction of the nominally ‘British’ authorities and the British indigenous people are equally interesting as indicators of the future development in the rest of Western Europe. On the one hand, there is the total abdication of political authority, the official policy of cover-up, the self-censorship in the media and the ‘white flight’ from the great cities. On the other hand, there is the unexpectedly radical re-emergence of anti-globalist nationalism: with ‘Brexit’ Great Britain is the first European nation to formally denounce globalist transnational tyranny. Combined, these symptoms and reactions indicate an imminent saturation point in the historical trajectory of Western Cultural Nihilism; in Great Britain, this is due earlier than in the rest of the West. When the Cultural Nihilist programme of ethnic replacement finally reaches a certain (demographic, economic, social) ‘critical mass’, the global hostile elite will face a potentially lethal ‘democratic deficit’. ‘Brexit’ indicates the potential weakness of the global hostile elite in the present form of ‘democratic’ governance: for the sake of political survival the British ruling class has decided to bow to the overt manifestation of the will of the indigenous people. This reaction is theoretically possible in other Western countries as well.
The only reliable ways by which the hostile elite can avoid defeats such as ‘Brexit’ — and ‘Trump’ — is to either structurally misrepresent the will of the indigenous people, or to simply ignore it. The former strategy forms the basis of parliamentarianism,
the second forms the basis of Eurocracy. In the case of Great Britain, both strategies failed: ‘Brexit’ offers a ray of hope for Western civilization — or at least a delay in its downfall. As long as the ethnic-demographic balance still permits it, authentic (direct, non-parliamentarian) democracy — referenda, direct representation — remains a grave danger to the hostile elite. This explains the hastiness of the hostile elite with regards to the implementation of ethnic replacement: it needs to permanently disable the power of the indigenous population by ‘democratically’ marginalizing them in terms of ethnic demography. This hastiness, however, implies a rising risk of social unrest, societal chaos, ethnic conflict and even civil war. Until now, the hostile elite has managed to control the process of ethnic replacement by careful socio-economic calibration, but it could be easily derailed by an unexpected incident, followed by an uncontrollable chain-reaction and complete societal breakdown. Thus, the Cultural Nihilist hostile elite is playing with fire: the publicly suppressed but tangible rise in inter-ethnic tensions increases the potential for a fatal catastrophe from year to year.
Its geopolitical insulation and its cultural-historical anticipatory role determine the particular historical development of Great Britain, which greatly differs from that of Continental Europe. It has been spared many of the violent and cruel excesses of Modernity: the victories of 1588, 1805 and 1940 meant that Great Britain escaped the experience of land warfare, foreign occupation and totalitarian experimentation. Great Britain managed to absorb Modernity and to control its development without a total loss of state sovereignty, socio-economic balance and historical identity. ‘Brexit’ indicates that Great Britain will also live up to its role as scouting nation of Western Modernity with regard to the issues of Cultural Nihilist totalitarianism and ethnic replacement — and find relatively ‘restrained’, ‘reasonable’ and ‘moderate’ answers. In view of the equivalent historical patterns in Continental Europe, it is probable that the development there will lack such self-restraint, reasonability and moderation. At the same time, however, it should be noted that, from a psycho-historical perspective, an overdose of self-restraint, reasonability and moderation is fatal for the survival of any civilization: a civilization that is too patient, too reasonable and too moderate vis-à-vis its enemies is doomed to extinction. Thus, the question remains whether or not the British people can find the right balance in view of the imminent final Crisis of Western Modernity. If ‘Brexit’ turns out to be nothing else but an exterior denial of an inner self-annihilation, then the pioneering role of Great Britain as the scouting nation of Western Modernity implies a worst-case scenario for the future of Western civilization. If ‘Brexit’ turns out to be nothing else but a propagandistic façade of counterfeit sovereignty to hide the last phase of ethnic replacement and social implosion, then it can only be concluded that the British people have at long last forgotten its Fighting Temeraire.
‘The Camp of the Saints’
And when a thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints, and the beloved city…
— Revelation 20:7–9
Every serious inquiry into the survival chances of the Western peoples must start with the question of their present psycho-historical conditioning: to what extent are they still able to overcome this conditioning and re-cover, re-live and re-activate their authentic identities? In short: do they still want to survive and, if so, are they able to? From a psycho-historical perspective intentional self-annihilation may be a fully legitimate strategy: in the same way that an existentially saturated person, overwhelmed by sickness, old age or exterior pressures, may have a legitimate reason for intentional self-annihilation at the individual level, so a community may have a similar reason at the collective level. From a Traditionalist perspective, the degree of psycho-historical legitimacy of every form of self-annihilation coincides with the question of authentic destiny. In other words: from a Traditionalist perspective, suicide is fully justified when a specific destiny is experienced as truly ‘accomplished’. In this regard, the issue of the ‘natural life cycle’ is of secondary importance: individuals and peoples may be historically ‘young’, but meta-historically ‘old’ at the same time. The degree of ‘age’ and ‘accomplishment’ is primarily a ‘subjective’ experience: in the final analysis, authentic destiny — as well as authentic identity and authentic vocation — is determined by an inner experience of transcendental reality. Thus, awareness of destiny is a super-rational experience — rationally, it can only be retroactively ‘reconstructed’ as a meta-historical ‘thesis’.
Thus, the Western peoples have — at least in theory — the psycho-historical ‘option’ to chose a Nirvana end scenario, i.e. the intentional annihilation of themselves and their civilization. An esoteric interpretation of such an end scenario falls outside the cultural-historical scope of Alba Rosa, but the archaic archetypes of Western civilization do provide some meaningful avenues of research: the otherworldly ideal of Christianity (the celibate Sacerdotus), the monastic life of the Church (the abstemious Monachus) and the spiritual tendency to asceticism (the purified Perfectus). These spiritual archetypes are institutionally reflected in Traditional Western rites such as the priestly ordination, the monastic vow and the lent fast. Even after the rise of Historical Materialism and the downfall of Christianity, these archetypes retain a residual effectiveness in Modern Western culture: they explain the strongly internalized ethics and strongly self-regulating discipline of the Western peoples. Till today, these highly stylized Western ethics — respect for other life forms, altruism towards socially disadvantaged groups, self-correcting severity regarding ego-impulses — have long been at work in Western civilization. At certain points, this ethical development is still continuing: a growing ecological consciousness contributes to a ‘new nature’, a growing sensitivity to animal welfare contributes to new bio-ethics and a growing interest in the cosmological plight of women contributes to new social freedoms. At these points, it is possible to speak of objective ‘progress’ in ethical terms: there is less physical and psychological suffering and there is more space for the pursuit of destiny and vocation at the individual level. A similar positive interpretation can be given to another specific point at which Western ethics are still developing according to their original Christian trajectory: the voluntary anti-natalistic aspect of the negative demographic development throughout the West. To the degree that this development is not enforced by the Cultural Nihilist hostile elite as ‘sui-genocide’ through socio-economic manipulation and ethnic replacement, it may be interpreted as actual progress in a spiritual and esoteric sense. But an ecological and social equivalent to this spiritual and esoteric improvement demands a population decline that is not merely relative, but absolute. In fact, a drastic decline in population is an absolute precondition for any substantial improvement of the natural biotope and the social structure of the West. Simply replacing the indigenous peoples of the West by a mixed population with a large alien ethnic component can only result in a decline in the natural biotope and the social structure, even when absolute numbers remain stable: the replacement population will inevitably regress in terms of economic productivity, technological innovation and ethic development. Thus, the voluntary anti-natalism of the indigenous peoples of the West is negated by the process of ethnic replacement.
On balance, the psycho-historical resonance of Christian archetypes in contemporary Western civilization is negative, rather than positive. Traditional Christian ethical values are effectively negated through the Modern post-Christian inversion of these values. The three great Historical-Materialist ideologies of Modernity (Liberalism, Socialism, Fascism: Aleksandr Dugin, 2009) operate on the basis of a systematic inv
ersion of Christian ethics: respect for other life forms is perverted into self-destructive culture relativism, social altruism is perverted into ‘oikophobic’ sado-masochism and impulse-control is perverted into politically correct self-humiliation. This equally absurd and tragic Umwertung aller Werte is the cultural-historical background for the proliferation of Cultural Nihilism in Western ethics and for the rise of the Gutmensch reflexes of politically correct pseudo-idealism and totalitarian pseudo-morality. In this sense, Cultural Nihilism can be understood as a ‘secularized’ and absurdly inverted version of Christianity: without their transcendental referent, the Christian virtues of self-denial and asceticism are transformed into morbid self-hatred and malicious self-abasement. This perverted development is clearly illustrated in the Postmodern phenomenon of the ‘Social Justice Warrior’: the egocentric, prejudiced, unreasonable and hypocritical personification of ‘political correctness’, engaged in the systematic suppression of everything that is still strong, healthy, intelligent, beautiful and good in the world. To the Social Justice Warrior, ethnic replacement is nothing less than a personal quest — a theme that is pursued to its logical extreme in the prophetic novel Le Camp des Saints (Raspail, 1973). In this phenomenological context, Cultural Nihilism achieves its aim of an anti-Christian Umwertung aller Werte: the old superhuman ethics of Christianity are negatively projected through the lens of a narcissist world-view and are transformed into the new subhuman ethics of Postmodernity. At the metaphysical level, in contrast, the self-annihilation aimed at by Cultural Nihilism and personified by the Social Justice Warrior represents a structural inversion of Christianity.
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