The absolute demonisation of America, as practiced by Le Monde Diplomatique through Ignacio Ramonet’s repetitive editorials, has an aspect to it that is so utterly simplistic, fluid, obvious, mechanical, pre-arranged, acknowledged, automatic and mandatory that it all becomes tedious and lacks credibility. It is nothing short of pseudo-anti-Americanism, since all these self-declared anti-Americanists actually share in the official cosmopolitanism embraced by the puritanical and mercantile American republic.
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Declaring oneself to be America’s adversary, just as I have, frustrates American leaders far more that stomping about and anathemising the US by labelling it one’s absolute enemy, which is normal. Every major power (or any power at all, psychologically speaking) is far warier of serious and determined competitors who display moderation in their statements than of boisterous histrions whose hatred is merely a reflection of their own impotence. Likewise, what such powers dread most are all those who advocate a European power without succumbing to visceral anti-Americanism, in a display of utter indifference…
Chapter VIII: Non-Americanism
A. The Hazardous Demonisation of the US
The notion of non-Americanism is far more credible than that of anti-Americanism, because being opposed to something is actually synonymous with being in favour of it. It also implies one’s refusal to define themselves in accordance with their own identity, displaying a preference for a foe’s photo-negative version. Anti-Americanism is an utterly negative attitude that assumes that America has no moral right to behave the way it does and thus represents Evil, which, between you and me, constitutes a typically American argumentation. Instead of resting upon the principle of counterattack, it is founded on a denunciation reflex, one that is always fraught with impotence and miserableness.
On the other hand, non-Americanism means saying to America: ‘We are not judging you; from your point of view, you are absolutely right; only the balance of power and competition matters’. It is thus a matter of establishing a European power in a show of Machiavellianism; calmly, by acquiring the necessary means to do so and abstaining from any criticism towards the American policy and avoiding any sort of moralising and offensive verbalism. The ‘multilateralism’ that is ever so dear to Chirac should not be the focus of mere theory, but be implemented in practice. Having a temper tantrum against American unilateralism is just whistling in the wind; likewise, as long as Europe allows its demographics to collapse, opens its borders to the Third World, spends more on ‘social’ benefits than on worthwhile investments, discourages its own entrepreneurs, makes no research or armament efforts, does not react to American diktats, etc., any desire to construct a Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis is just an attempt to build castles in the air. All major geopolitical intentions presuppose independence and power; and the latter cannot be claimed by targeting the Americans with invectives, but through political will and courage, those very qualities that European elites have never lacked as much as they do today.
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Intellectual anti-Americanism does not act as a well thought-out strategic position, but as a frustration-based pruritus. It bears no relevance to a will to defend the European identity or turn Europe into a counterpower to US hegemony, but represents a jealous denunciation of this ‘evil’ America, a country which, from a moralising point of view, is guilty of being powerful, without there being any desire for Europe itself to attain such might. It is a purely resentful position permeated by unfathomable naivety, one that confuses morals with politics. This approach is all the more ridiculous considering how, in matters of adopting a social model, our French intelligentsia has proceeded to align itself with the theories preached by its American counterpart: ethnopluralism, communitarianism, multiracialism, ethnic discrimination and the current affirmative action, and so on. It has created a faithful copy of America’s anti-Identitarian model for Europe to follow.
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At the start of the Anglo-American attacks against Iraq, Alain de Benoist, the head of GRECE and the ‘New’ Right, sent everyone a communiqué in which he incited people to commit anti-American attacks all around the world, thus reiterating jihadist Islamic discourse word for word, as uttered by Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden themselves. Readers can find this delirious piece of heroism, or rather cowardliness, at the end of this chapter (Note 1).
This fatwa, one that is worthy of Parisian intellectuals and that Benoist himself could never implement, only represents 0.1 % of his passionate exhortation. It is highly revealing when it comes to the mental state that pervades OHAA, a mentality that is as Manichean as it is demonising and identical to the one espoused by Islam and American Protestant sects. Indeed, the author of this staggering communiqué specifies that the USA ‘has been ostracised’. This is the very same demonising and dehumanising attitude towards one’s enemies which Carl Schmitt condemned in The Concept of the Political, an attitude that characterises all monotheistic delusions and is shared by Islamism, Communism and all sects, including the most overzealous neoconservative American Protestants. In the absence of any distinction between the American population and the US government, America, a maleficent entity and a nest of ‘lecherous vipers’, to use the Marxist political cant of the 1960s, has been labelled by this fringe of our intellectual proletariat as a ‘satanic bloc’ against which anything is fair game (meaning that these intellectuals have taken excommunication to greater extremes than Iranian Ayatollahs do). This constitutes a reductio ad Hitlerum, one that always comes from people that need to be forgiven for something and direct people’s attention away from the skeletons which they themselves have in their cupboards.
What we have here is not merely a Manichaean worldview, but a totalitarian, inquisitorial, invective-ridden and short-winded viewpoint, one that is impervious to reasoning, doubt and analysis and steeled with sectarian certainties. Imprecation has thus replaced critique and insults superseded discussions, with idiocy holding this entire approach together.
Its perverse effect, however, is that of reinforcing American positions, legitimising US imperialism, ridiculing any and all efforts made by Europeans to define themselves as non-Americanistic, and preventing the latter from serenely and earnestly imposing themselves as a counterweight to Washington’s unilateralism.
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These hateful anti-American declarations are naturally only met with contempt by the Arabs and the general Muslim population, who detest brownnosing zealous publicists, especially when the latter declare themselves to be ‘pagans’! Just like the Germans in France back in 1941, they look upon collaborative ardour with great suspicion. Coming from ever-sated Westerners, such hysterical anti-Americanism (which goes hand in hand with a boisterous sort of anti-Zionism, as well with blissful Third-Worldism) seems both dubious and implausible to the Muslim-Arabs.
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The aggression against Iraq and the delirious neocon policy have reinforced hysterical anti-Americanism further by means of a pro-Arab and pro-Islamic approach. ‘Reactionary thinking’ is as concise as it is appealing to simpleminded people: As a result of one’s anti-Americanism, one becomes profoundly pro-Arab and pro-Islamic whenever the USA attacks a Muslim-Arab country. Such is the logic of imbeciles.
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It is a sign of utter stupidity when one blames the USA for absolutely everything and anything. In the arena of History, no one has ever been 100 % ‘wrong’! And what does it mean to ‘be wrong’, anyhow? Only the vanquished are wrong, as a result of their defective will.
Some claim that if it wasn’t for America’s unilateralism and warmongering, its support of Israel and its complicity with corrupt Muslim regimes, terrorism would not exist and Islam would be a religion of peace. The truth, however, is that, with or without this famous American imperialism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Islamist instinct towards world domination would still be manifested in the very same fashion, especially with regard to Europe. Terrorists would still come up with an ideal pretext, as repeatedly demonstrate
d through history. Even in the absence of American financial support, the various despotisms that reign over Muslim countries would remain intact, because this is the only form of governance that those peoples have known since the 7th century, as audaciously stated by Jean-François Revel in an interview with Le Figaro (08/09/2003).
What is on the other hand true is that the manner in which the American neoconservative administration has dealt with such threats since the 9/11 attacks has been absolutely disastrous and has objectively strengthened the very forces that the Americans claim to be fighting. The war in Iraq, regardless of whether it is legal or not, is bound to lead to global mobilisation and a more uncompromising attitude on the part of the Muslim-Arab masses and their mujahideen. Despite Chirac’s pacifism, not even France will be spared. Meanwhile, the mujahideen can only rejoice at the warmongering displayed by Texan petro-politicians and thank Bush for his abysmal naivety (to say the least).
B. American Lessons
One of the most dangerous aspects of OHAA lies in the fact that it considers American qualities to be flaws, even when the latter are necessary for Europe’s regeneration. Once the US has been demonised through a kind of meta-religious attitude, all that is American becomes equally flawed in essence, which is also true of America’s entrepreneurial dynamism, the adequacy of its reflection and actions, etc. As far as such intellectualistic delirium is concerned, the specialist is A. de Benoist, a man who constantly denounces an Empire of Evil that he has never even set foot in, as confirmed by the following clichéd statement, expressed in pure intellectualist Newspeak in his private diary entitled Dernière Année (meaning Ultimate Year, L’âge d’Homme editions, 2001, p. 225) and reflecting a highly common opinion among the petty bourgeois intelligentsia:
In the USA, the process of shaping the “I” through thought-out existential practice — the so-called Bildung [sic] — is seen as absolutely pointless, and one only encounters disdain towards every intellectual itinerary that is not extended through practical action. On the other side of the Atlantic, thinking is synonymous with acting, and, from the American perspective, thoughts are only proven to be well-founded through the very efficacy of their implementation.
The underlying idea is this: Europeans must steer clear of any and all pragmatism and efficient thinking, as the latter are vulgar. Specific thoughts that generate action are contempt-worthy. Erroneous, yet ‘sublime’ thinking is preferable to that which leads to something specific and to actual results. What a disastrous lesson of powerlessness and mental bedazzlement for Europe to adhere to! In this regard, Benoist mirrors Sartre, albeit on a microscopic scale, of course. One can only stand confounded in the face of the persisting French inclination towards pipe-dreams and inactive divagation and before the pretentiousness of our stagnant thinkers, who tend to mistake both their vague speculations and their essentially simplistic and risk-free intellectual masturbations for ‘reality’.
Europeans will only be able to resist American imperialism and reclaim their own position in the flow of History the day when our theoreticians, thinkers and analysts re-adopt a pragmatic approach and a philosophy of efficacy, both of which are encountered on the other side of the Atlantic, in American universities, foundations and think tanks. In other words, we are to think in specific terms and in harmony with our own experiences, instead of our mere opinions, systems, prejudice, dogmatic constructions and ethereal moralism. When the mediocre intellectuals who have espoused OHAA incite us to scorn experimental truth and palpable efficiency (which are horridly satanic, materialistic and American) and embrace vague verbosity, assisted economy and idle-handedness instead, they play right into the hands of the American power (a power that strives to mentally disarm Europe) and imitate Islam’s retrogressive dogmatism, without however enjoying the latter’s demographic vigour, nor its wilful desire for conquest.
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What must Europe do to counter America, then? To begin with, it must imitate the USA on two levels: the first lies in the acquisition of power, the other in the embracement of geostrategic egoism. Thirdly, Europeans must consider America to be a global competitor, one with whom it is possible to enter into temporary arrangements. This is because the NAI’s aggressive impudence only stems from European weakness, a weakness that it scorns. A powerful and united Europe would demand respect and the NAI would then collapse on its own. The mere verbal advocacy of ‘a multipolar world’ (Chirac) is to no avail when one is unable to embody a genuine ‘alternative pole of power’. Historically speaking, ideas have no value whatsoever unless they are supported by actions, and ideologies can only survive thanks to the practical will that implements them; and this is no longer the case in Europe. There is no point in targeting America with verbosely expressed anathemas. Our hysterical anti-Americans are still expected to adopt a position in favour of establishing a specific European power and support the renewal of our continent’s economic and demographic dynamism. Those (pseudo) ecologists-pacifists are only spitting in the wind.
On the other hand, a great Europe must be extremely wary of avoiding (like the plague!) imperialistic temptation and the idiotic dream of global domination, both of which are likely to lead the American military-mercantile republic to its doom. Power does not lie in converting other peoples to one’s own values, but is founded on the creation of a vast space within which a civilisation can flourish. The messianic dream embraced by the American and French republics will only result in misfortune and act as a boomerang that backfires on them.
Respecting other peoples and keeping one’s distance from them is perfectly feasible. This is why, unlike those Leftist or neo-Leftist alter-globalists who firmly believe in globalism, I do not think that the future belongs to some kind of interconnected global village from which all states and powers will have disappeared, having been replaced by various ‘networks’ and a patchwork of ‘communities’ and ‘tribes’, in accordance with Michel Maffesoli’s intermittent belief. I, for one, am convinced that we shall, on the contrary, witness the emergence of major statal and civilisational blocs that will not only be in competition, but will necessarily clash with one another.
C. A Clash of Civilisations?
Our future world shall not consist of networks, but of blocs whose very essence shall be of an ethnic nature. We are heading towards a simplification of the domain of ideas that govern our world. Over-ornate intellectual analyses are always a source of disorder.
The dividing lines are easy to grasp. One can distinguish several of them during the 21st century, as if they were some kind of historical tectonic plates:
1) The septentrional civilisation of European origin, meaning Euro-Siberia, and the White portion of North America, along with its South American and Australian appendices. The fracture between the two sides will be blatant, yet not insurmountable.
2) The Asian zone that falls under the Chinese sphere of influence.
3) India, acting as an isolated vessel.
4) The Muslim world and its amazing primitive dynamism, whose core is Arabian, Indonesian and Pakistani.
5) The rest of the world, meaning those Third World masses dispersed across all continents and bound to offer their allegiance to the highest bidder.
Contrary to the analyses of ever-blind intellectuals (including Sartre, who, back in 1960, believed that Marxism could not be ‘outdone’), it is states that shall embody the dominant aspect of the 21st century. This development will ensure Hobbes’ posthumous triumph. Peoples will regroup around clashing giga-states, and no ‘global state’ shall ever see the light of day.
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Taking heed of the anti-American wave pervading public opinions, Olivier Chalmel writes:
One can wonder whether famous professor Samuel P. Huntington was not severely mistaken when announcing The Clash of Civilizations in 1996. Are we not, rather, witnessing a conflict between WASP America and the entire world’s long-lasting civilisations? (Terre et Peuple, summer 2003, p. 15.)
This theo
ry is an interesting, yet insufficient one. As explained in my book entitled Avant-Guerre, such a conflict may very well involve a clash with China, for instance. In the 21st century, the USA is as much of a warmonger as Islam is… One could, however, cast doubt on the bilateral conflict opposing ‘White America’ to the rest of the world. I personally rather believe that, in the long run, we shall be faced with a transcontinental clash between the ‘White world’ and the rest of our planet.
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Chalmel develops a (‘declinist’) theory that is highly similar to what Emmanuel Todd has stated in his book entitled After the Empire. The new, puritanical leaders in Washington respond most violently to America’s domestic and global decline, resorting to straightforward militarism. The author emphasises the following with regard to the American campaign in Iraq:
America has demonstrated its highly relative power — its very real callousness and brutality — both in order to frighten its future adversarial competitors and to convince itself of its own power. A major endeavour has thus been accomplished, one of communication and self-intoxication.
The author goes on to define the NAI as the exacerbated and pathological extension of traditional American imperialism. The neoconservatives cannot acknowledge our world’s newfound multipolar aspect because
… they are convinced of the fact that they have been chosen by God, entrusted with the accomplishment of an eternal mission whose inspiration is divine and universal, and thus embody a timeless and unrivalled norm. We are witnessing an insane and violent neoconservative attempt to reclaim — or acquire — absolute global power. […] This represents a headlong rush and the rejection of a future which, owing to its unquestionably different character, is a source of fear to them.
In other words, by proceeding to fabricate an imaginary future for American hyperpower, the neoconservatives long to return to a past when America was still powerful. And this is all taking place at a time when the USA’s decline is actually commencing. They reject the old American position of primus inter pares, meaning that of leadership and ‘free world governance’, so as to adopt a genuinely insane ambition, namely that of unshared hegemony, an ambition that is obviously destined to fail.
A Global Coup Page 18