by Greg Johnson
Under the banner of “inclusion,” the liberal regime is now importing legions of immigrants who will function as the fifth column of an aggressive South. “The ethnic war in France has already started,” writes Faye in 1998, seven years before les émeutes des banlieues.
These are the lines of catastrophe which Faye expects to converge in about the second decade of this century. His prophecy is reminiscent of Andrei Amalrik’s 1969 essay Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?—which, of course, proved uncannily accurate. Still, the wise reader will not want to overstress Faye’s time frame; much is clear about the crisis we face, but not even the angels in heaven know the day or the hour.
The author emphasizes that the impending meltdown presents us with opportunities: “When people have their backs against the wall and are suffering piercing pains, they easily change their opinions.” The stormy century of iron and fire that awaits us will make people accept what is currently unacceptable. The Right today must position itself to be perceived as the natural alternative when the inevitable crisis hits. This means discrediting Leftist pseudo-dissent, which is merely a demand for the intensification of official ideology and praxis. It also means acquiring a monopoly over alternative thought: not by imposing a party line, but by uniting all healthy forces on a European level and abandoning provincial disputes and narrow doctrines.
Faye’s book is intended as “a sort of mental training for the post-catastrophic world.” The title Archeofuturism refers to the principles appropriate to reconstructing our civilization. “Archaic” must be understood according to the root sense of the Greek noun archè: both “foundation” and “beginning.” The archai are anthropological values which “create and are unchangeable” while referring to the central notion of “order.”
Such foundational values include:
the distinction of sex roles; the transmission of ethnic and folk traditions; spirituality and priestly organization; visible and structuring social hierarchies; the worship of ancestors; rites and tests of initiation; the re-establishment of organic communities (from the family to the folk); the de-individualization of marriage [and] an end to the confusion between eroticism and conjugality; the prestige of the warrior caste; inequality of social status—not the unjust and frustrating implicit inequality we find today in egalitarian utopias, but explicit and legitimated inequalities; duties that match rights, hence a rigorous justice that gives people a sense of responsibility; a definition of peoples—and of all established groups or social bodies—as diachronic communities of destiny rather than synchronic masses of individual atoms.
Faye calls these “the values of justice.” We need not doubt they will return once the hallucinations of equality and individual emancipation have dissipated, for they follow from human nature itself.
The real danger is that we may end up having them imposed on us by Islam rather than reasserting them ourselves from our own historical memory. For Islam is the symbolic banner of Southern revanchisme, and the mindset of the South remains archaic. It takes for granted the primacy of force, the legitimacy of conquest, ethnic exclusivity, aggressive religiosity, machismo, and a worship of leaders and hierarchic order. Muslim employment of liberal cant—complaints of “discrimination” and “intolerance”—are the merest fig leaf for a Machiavellian “strategy of the fox” against Europe. In order to oppose the invaders, we must revert to an archaic mindset ourselves, abandoning the demobilizing handicap of modern humanitarianism.
Faye is perhaps at his best explaining the behavior and motivations of the “petty, inglorious princes who pretend to be governing us.” For example, he notes the increasing importance of “consultation” in French political life; authorities “consult” representatives of various approved interest groups, such as labor unions and non-white ethnic blocs, and then formulate policy on the basis of the lowest common denominator of agreement between them. The point of this exercise is to avoid the risks and responsibilities of actual leadership. (Try to imagine De Gaulle behaving this way.) But it is presented to the public as a wonderful way of “modernizing democracy.”
A related symptom is the rise of negative legitimization, or what the author calls the “big bad wolf tactic”:
Politicians no longer say, “Vote for us, because we’ve got the right solutions and we’ll improve your living conditions.” That is positive legitimization. Instead they say (implicitly) “Vote for us, since even though we’re a bunch of good-for-nothings, bunglers and bullies, at least we will protect you from fascism.”
Four years after these words were written Le Pen made the presidential run-offs and, sure enough, all the bien-pensants showed up at the polls with clothespins on their noses to support the crook Chirac!
Egalitarian reform serves as a convenient pretext for the elites to enact measures whose practical effect is to entrench their own position. Thus, they have sabotaged the French educational system by eliminating selectivity and discipline. But it is only these which give the talented outsider an honest chance against the untalented insider. As Pareto put it: the more rigorous the (rationally planned) selection in a social system, the greater the turnover in the elite. Without objective standards, on what grounds can one argue against elite self-perpetuation?
But the regime’s most breathtaking hypocrisy is found in its demonization of the National Front. The Front has broken the tacit ground-rules of the managerial regime by “engaging in politics where it has been agreed that one should only engage in business”; it has sought popular trust with a view to implementing a program, where the established parties “communicate” and maneuver with a view to re-election. Timid careerists denounce the Front as a threat to the Republic because they fear it as a threat to themselves.
Faye considers the National Front a genuinely revolutionary party. Yet he apparently has never been a member, and is not really a French nationalist. In his view, Le Pen’s romantic and backward-looking devotion to the French state embodies a great deal of latent Jacobinism. It is this state, after all, which has naturalized millions of Afro-Asiatic “youths” who do not see themselves as French at all. Moreover, a nation state, even run on patriotic principles, would be an entity too small to defend the French ethnos effectively in the contemporary world. Would a federal European state be any more capable of doing so? “I believe it would,” says Faye, “provided it is exactly the opposite of the European state currently being built.”
Those who believe that an imperial and federal European state would “kill France” are confusing the political sphere with the ethno-cultural one. The disappearance of the Parisian regime would in no way threaten the vigor and identity of the people of France. Moreover, argues Faye, a European federal state would breathe new life into autonomous regions: Brittany, Normandy, Provence, etc.
The European Union is a ghastly bureaucratic mess, but it is also one of the forces in being. Why turn our backs on it or work to destroy it when we might instead hijack it and turn it to our own purposes? Faye calls for the transformation of the EU into “a genuinely democratic and no longer bureaucratic European government with a real parliament and a strong and decisive central power.” He describes this position as European Nationalism, and dreams of a Eurosiberian Federation extending from Brest to the Bering Strait.
While Faye disagrees with Benoist’s interpretation of America as an enemy (hostes), he continues to view her as a rival and opponent (inimicus). This American reviewer does not grasp why the case for including a chastened post-imperial United States in a Northern Federation would be any weaker than the case for including Russia.
The Eurosiberian Federation is to be characterized by a two-tier economy. The elite (20% of the population) will continue to live according to the techno-scientific economic model based on ongoing innovation. They would form part of a global exchange network of about one billion people, including the elites of other civilizational blocs. As Faye notes, “the essence of technological science is not connected to egalitarian modernity, b
ut has its roots in the ethno-cultural heritage of Europe, and particularly ancient Greece.”
Among the first exploits of this new elite shall be exploring the “explosive possibilities of genetic engineering.” These include inter-species hybrids, man-animal chimeras, semi-artificial “biolithic” creatures, and decerebrated human clones. Faye is utterly contemptuous of moral or religious scruples in this domain, which he oddly attributes to the ideology of liberal modernity more than to Christianity.
The remainder of humanity would live in archaic, neo-traditional communities. The techno-scientific portion of humanity would be under no obligation to help (i.e., “develop”) everybody else, but neither would they have any right to interfere in their affairs.
In sum, for the elite: Promethean achievement, linear time and futuristic technology; for the rest: neo-feudalism, cyclic time, and timeless, “archaic” values.
But it is not clear how the elite could avoid interfering in the affairs of people they are supposed to govern. Moreover, how would the elite perpetuate itself? It seems clear that Faye does not intend a hereditary aristocracy. Perhaps there is some sort of test or initiatory ordeal for prospective members. But then families would be divided between the classes, which would involve many difficulties. In the fictional portrayal of his ideal future society which closes the book, Faye refers in passing to something called “the Party.” This reviewer would need to hear a lot more about this shadowy organization before signing on to Faye’s proposals. The two-tiered economy is altogether the least satisfactorily worked out part of the book.
Yet the author is aware that men never get what they plan for: somewhat grandiloquently, he calls this heterotelia. And he distinguishes “worldview” (an idea of civilization as a goal and some values) from “ideology” and “doctrine” (applications to society and what tactics to use). So we can follow him for the first mile.
Archeofuturism should have a bracing effect on anyone more accustomed to reading the despondent Cassandras of paleoconservatism. “Realism,” he reminds us, “is often disheartened fatalism”:
Those who blame others, enemies and the political climate for their own failures do not deserve to win. For it is in the logic of things for enemies to oppress you and circumstances to prove hostile. The mistake lies in exorcising reality by adopting the morals of intention as opposed to those of consequences.
We must reject the pretext that radical thought would be “persecuted” by the system. The system is foolish. Its censorship is as far from stringent as it is clumsy, striking only at mythic acts of provocation and ideological tactlessness. Talent always prevails over censorship, when it is accompanied by daring and intelligence. A Right wing movement can only prove successful through the virtue of courage.
So there is no excuse for being taken by surprise when the liberal regime disregards its own principles in order to fight us (as the British establishment has done with the British National Party). Of course we should publicize and ridicule their inconsistencies, but it is silly to be indignant over them: repression simply means that the regime recognizes us as an Ernstfall, a mortal threat, and that is precisely what a serious Right ought to be. Attempts to shut us down are symptoms of growing success and should strengthen our resolve.
Counter-Currents/North American New Right,
December 14, 2010
METAPHYSICS OF WAR
DEREK HAWTHORNE
_____________________
Julius Evola
Metaphysics of War:
Battle, Victory and Death in the World of Tradition
Aarhus, Denmark: Integral Tradition Publishing, 2007
Metaphysics of War is a collection of sixteen essays by Italian Traditionalist Julius Evola (1898–1974), published in various periodicals in the years 1935–1950.
These essays constitute what is certainly the most radical attempt ever made to justify war. This justification takes place essentially on two levels: one profane, the other sacred. At the profane (meaning simply “non-sacred”) level, Evola argues that war is one of the primary means by which heroism expresses itself, and he regards heroism as the noblest expression of the human spirit. Evola reminds us that war is a time in which both combatants and non-combatants realize that they may lose their lives and everything and everyone they value at any moment. This creates a unique moral opportunity for individuals to learn to detach themselves from material possessions, relationships, and concern for their own safety. War puts everything into perspective, and Evola states that it is in such times that “a greater number of persons are led towards an awakening, towards liberation” (p. 135):
From one day to the next, even from one hour to the next, as a result of a bombing raid one can lose one’s home and everything one most loved, everything to which one had become most attached, the objects of one’s deepest affections. Human existence becomes relative—it is a tragic and cruel feeling, but it can also be the principle of a catharsis and the means of bringing to light the only thing which can never be undermined and which can never be destroyed. (p. 136)
So far, these ideals may seem quite similar to those espoused by Ernst Jünger—and indeed Evola alludes to him in one place in the text (p. 153), and is uncharacteristically positive. (Usually when Evola refers to a modern author it is almost always to stick the knife in.) However, Evola goes well beyond Jünger, for he adds to this ideal of heroism and detachment a “spiritual” and even supernatural dimension (this is the “sacred” level I alluded to earlier). In essential terms, Evola argues that the heroism forged in war is a means to transcendence of this world of suffering and to identification with the source of all being. He even argues that the hero may attain a kind of magical quality.
Unsurprisingly, Evola attempts to situate his treatment of heroism in terms of the doctrine of the “four ages,” a staple of Traditionalist writings. The version of the four ages most familiar to Western readers is the one found in Ovid, where the ages are gold, silver, bronze, and iron. However, Evola has squarely in mind the Indian version wherein the Iron Age (the most degraded of all) is referred to as the Kali Yuga. To these correspond the four castes of traditional society, with a spiritual, priestly element dominating in the first age, the warrior in the second, the merchant (or, bourgeois, the term most frequently used by Evola) in the third, and the slave or servant in the fourth.
When the bourgeoisie dominates in the third age, “the concept of the nation materializes and democratizes itself”; “an anti-aristocratic and naturalistic conception of the homeland is formed” (p. 24). Ironically, when I read this I could not help but think of Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany. To the liberal mind, fascism and Nazism both are “ultra-conservative” (to put it mildly). From the Traditionalist perspective, however, both are modern, populist movements. And National Socialism especially found itself caught up in reductionist, biological theories of “the nation.” Nevertheless, Evola writes that “fascism appears to us as a reconstructive revolution, in that it affirms an aristocratic and spiritual concept of the nation, as against both socialist and internationalist collectivism, and the democratic and demagogic notion of the nation” (p. 27). In other words, whatever its shortcomings may be, fascism is for Evola a means to restore Tradition. Evola also writes approvingly of fascism having elevated the nation to the status of “warrior nation.” And he states that the next step “would be the spiritualization of the warrior principle itself” (p. 27). Of course, it seems to have been Heinrich Himmler’s ambition to turn his SS into an elite corps of “spiritual warriors.” One wonders if this was the reason Evola began courting members of the SS in the late 1930s (a matter briefly discussed in John Morgan’s Introduction to this volume).
Evola tells us that the end of the reign of the bourgeoisie opens up two paths for Europe. One is a shift to the subhuman, and Evola makes it clear that this is what Bolshevism represents. The fourth age is the age of the slave and of the triumph of slave morality in the form of communism. The other poss
ibility, however, is a shift to the “superhuman.” As Evola has said elsewhere, the Kali Yuga may be an age of decline but it presents unique opportunities for self-transformation and the attainment of personal power. (“A radical destruction of the ‘bourgeois’ who exists in every man is possible in these disrupted times more than in any other,” p. 137.) Those who “ride the tiger” are able not just to withstand the onslaught of negative forces in the fourth age, but actually to use them to rise to higher levels of self-realization. War is one such negative force, and Evola maintains that the idea of war as a path to spiritual transformation is a Traditional view.
According to Evola, the ancient Aryans held that there are two paths to enlightenment: contemplation and action. In traditional Indian terms, the former is the path of the brahmin and the latter of the kshatriya (the warrior caste). Both are forms of yoga, which literally means any practice that has as its aim connecting the individual to his true self, and to the source of all being (which are, in fact, the same thing). The yoga of action is referred to as karma yoga (where karma simply means “action”), and the primary text which teaches it is the Bhagavad-Gita. Evola returns again and again to the Bhagavad-Gita throughout Metaphysics of War, and it really is the primary text to which Evola’s philosophy of “war as spiritual path” is indebted. The work forms part (a very small part, actually) of the epic poem Mahabharata, the story of which culminates in an apocalyptic war called Kurukshetra. On the eve of battle, the consummate warrior Arjuna (the Siegfried of the piece) surveys the two camps from afar and realizes that on his enemy’s side are many men who are his friends and relations. When Arjuna reflects on the fact that he will have to kill these men the following day, he falters. Fortunately, his charioteer—who is actually the god Krishna—is there to teach him the error of his ways. Krishna tells Arjuna that these men are already dead, for their deaths have been ordained by the gods. In killing them, Arjuna is simply doing his duty and playing his role as a warrior. He must set aside his personal feelings and concentrate on his duty; he must literally become a vehicle for the execution of the divine plan.
