3 – Third mistake: an overemphasised folklorism and excessive cult of rootedness. The soul of European artistic culture lies not in small pyramidal objects of baked clay, painted furniture from Schleswig-Holstein, Breton bonnets or the naïve wooden sculptures of Scandinavian farmers; rather, it is found in the Reims cathedral, the double-helix Italian stairway in the Château de Chambord, the drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, the comics by Liberatore and the Brussels school, the design of Ferraris and the German-French-Scandinavian Ariane 5 rockets. By reducing European culture to mere folklore, this is depreciated and dragged down to the level of the ‘primitive art’ so dear to Jacques Chirac. What ought to have been done, with Nietzschean anti-egalitarian logic and Cartesian ‘common sense’, was affirm the superiority – that’s right: the superiority – of European artistic and cultural forms above all others. But the ethno-pluralist dogma – which stands in contradiction to anti-egalitarianism – prevented this. Having put too much faith in ethno-cultural relativism, and imbued with the guilt-stirring masochism that is so widespread, we didn’t dare affirm the superiority of our own civilisation. Had we carefully done so, we would have appealed to a wide public of people who would have been struck by our daring.
Too many writings on European ‘traditions’, often connected to defunct or mythical folk customs, made us forget the crux of the debate: the self-affirmation of contemporary European culture, the geo-demographical threats looming over it and the need for a reconquista.[23] Folklorism, acting as a levelling mechanism, has situated European culture on the same level as others, when it was instead necessary to implicitly and adroitly affirm its creative primacy. On the other hand, this often folkish traditionalism serves the conquering spirit of American ‘cultural products’: it neutralises European culture and renders it into museum exhibits. Folklorism has failed as an identitarian bond for the contemporary cultural battle, and is having a disarming effect instead.
Contemporary European culture is creatively resisting in many fields: music, architecture, design, leading technologies, sculpture... The Nouvelle Droite has not paid adequate attention to this.
4 – The fourth mistake lies in the insufficient attention paid to concrete problems. The Nouvelle Droite, today even more than in the past, is too concerned with what may be termed culturalism and historicism. In the late 1970s it had achieved a degree of mediatisation and influence thanks to its ideological inroads and new debates on eugenics, the biological revolution, I.Q. differences among various populations, ethnology, new economic perspectives, the place of sexuality in the society of spectacle, etc. I believe that the Nouvelle Droite and its publications verge too much on the side of commemoration, literary culture, and antiquated, nostalgic forms of intellectualism. This is a real shame, for the few treatments it gives of crucial contemporary issues are of high quality, as can easily be discerned from the pages of Krisis.
I wouldn’t like to give the wrong impression: I am criticising the Nouvelle Droite not so much for what it does, as for that which it does not do or no longer does – or, to be objective, for what it does not do enough.
It is necessary to discuss things such as the Asian financial crisis and the biotechnology revolution, and launch discussions and debates on issues such as European federalism (for or against the United States of Europe?), the effects of the Internet, European space policy, the solar system, the deterioration of the environment, the consequences of an ageing population on pension funds, the boom in Latin American music, the outburst in female homosexuality, the world of pornography, sport, the demographic colonisation of Europe, energy policies and nuclear energy, transport and crime.
The Nouvelle Droite will only prove creative and credible once more if it manages to formulate disorienting doctrines regarding all major contemporary issues and if it is able to establish a new ideological corpus – presented in the form of a ‘debate’ rather than dogma – on economic, scientific, geopolitical and sociological matters.
5 – Fifth ideological mistake: Third-Worldism. I have fully contributed to this and am willing to exercise self-criticism. Alain de Benoist’s essay Europe-Tiers-monde, même combat[24], a crucial work on the matter, and the articles I myself wrote on the issue in the early 1980s, driven by misdirected anti-Americanism, have been ideological and strategic impasses which have worried me since. No folk in history fights ‘the same battle’ as other peoples: every alliance is temporary. Besides, the very notion of ‘Third World’ has crumbled. What we have are China, India, the future Muslim Empire... The ‘Third World’ does not exist. Third-Worldism (which in our political milieu served as an awkward certificate of anti-racism) ignores actual history: the immigration and geopolitical pressure of the South against the North. What is worse, this misplaced Third-Worldism has been accompanied by a disconcerting and naïve pro-Islamic stance to which we all succumbed when an objective, aggressive, revanchist and comprehensible threat was actually being posed by the Arab-Muslim world against Europe, seen as a ‘land to be conquered’. It is quite true that dogmas make you blind. They are also dangerous: it is clear that for the most part the public of the Nouvelle Droite – and others too – did not share these surrealist views of ours.
6 – Sixth ideological mistake: anti-Americanism and the feeling of being colonised. In the early 1970s, in line with the anticommunism that was still prevalent on the Right, GRECE was pro-American and supported the ‘West’. Thus in an old issue of Nouvelle École, under a photo of the Rockefeller Centre in New York, we find the following caption: ‘The energy at the heart of power.’ In 1975, however, Giorgio Locchi made us do an about-face: a special issue of Nouvelle École was published by Alain de Benoist and Locchi, which divided the civilisation of the United States from that of Europe, its roots. Later on, following the same drive, I suggested an alternative ideological axis, based on the separation of Europe from the West – a revolutionary idea in a milieu which made the ‘West’ its banner. We sought to affirm the idea that the notion of ‘Western civilisation’ or ‘Western ideology’ was not necessarily compatible with the destiny of Europe as a land of brother peoples. Western – the ‘West’ – is an abstract geographical notion, while the true fracture is between North and South: for the vital geopolitical space of Europe extends out to the Russian Far East. This was the ideological axis.
It was distorted, however, by the mistaken assumption that a structural solidarity exists between the peoples of Europe and those of Africa, Asia and Latin America against the Yankees. Actually, as we shall see, the United States is better regarded as a rival and opponent (inimici) than as an enemy (hostes).
7 – Seventh mistake, no doubt the most serious of all: the ambiguity of the catchword ethno-pluralism, which is worsened today by the addition of the predicate multiculturalism and by inter-ethnic communitarianism. These have been adopted by the Nouvelle Droite and I regard them as complete ideological impasses.
Ethno-pluralism initially possessed an implicitly ‘external’ meaning: all peoples are different and should be respected, yet each should live in its own land, in a well-defined ethno-cultural sphere, while cooperating with others. This implied a rejection of migration flows towards Europe and of the idea of a global ethno-cultural melting pot (actually, only Europe is the destination of these migrations). So far, so good: this is a consistent view. But the Nouvelle Droite – see, for instance, issue 91 of Éléments, published in March 1998, and which refers to the ‘challenge of multiculturalism’ on its front page – sought to give the notions of ethno-pluralism and multiculturalism an ‘inner’ meaning that stands in contrast to the first, for instance by vehemently defending the use of the Islamic veil in schools. By acknowledging the presence of separate ethnic communities on European soil, it turns ethno-pluralism into the vehicle for a tribal, ghettoised (and perfectly American) view of our society, which stands in contrast to the very meaning of the expression ‘each folk in its own land’. Ethno-pluralism has thus been distorted in such a way as to deny the notion of Eu
ropean folk and even of ‘folk’ in general. Here too, the public is lost: similar stances puzzle our natural readership, while failing to convince our enemy that we are politically correct.
My criticism towards the ethno-pluralism and multiculturalism of the Nouvelle Droite can be summed up as follows:
Firstly, the Nouvelle Droite minimises – either for altruism or ignorance of ethnic and socio-economic events – the catastrophe represented by demographic-shifting immigration into Europe, a land which, unlike the United States, is generally only adapted to intra-European movements. There are three aspects to this catastrophe: rapid ethno-anthropological alteration; the erosion of European cultural roots (for which Americanism is less to blame); and strong economic and social setback, leading to poverty and endemic crime. The contemporary communitarian and multiculturalist discourse of the Nouvelle Droite can be interpreted as a sort of fatalism: for it sees the ethnic kaleidoscope of Europe, multiracial society and immigration as ineluctable events we should accept and submit to, managing and putting up with them as best we can. This is a demobilising stance, which is incompatible with an ideology that regards itself as revolutionary – although ultimately it proves to be ‘politically correct’.
It is a sign of weakness to justify multiculturalism by invoking globalisation and the decline of the nation-state (which are self-evident facts). Only Europe and the United States are being made the victims of demographic colonisation from the South. But while the United States can withstand it, Europe cannot. All across the world, what we are witnessing is the self-affirmation of vast, homogeneous ethnic blocs, not multiracial ‘communitarianism’. The prospect of a ‘multicultural’ planet is a Disneyland dream, a peace-lover’s error. The future belongs to peoples, not tribes. The Twenty-first century will witness global ethnic warfare and the legions of immigrants in Europe will serve as the ‘fifth column’ of an aggressive South. This is not paranoia: it is geopolitics. To walk or drag one’s feet in the footsteps of the blinding, immigrationist pacifism of European Leftist intellectuals is to make a serious mistake that threatens to soon lead the Nouvelle Droite to its ruin.
Accusations of ‘paranoid rhetoric’ against those who fear the immigrant ‘invasion’, ‘Islamisation’, fundamentalism and ‘ethnic war’, and believing that the repeated revolts in the banlieues[25] are the work only of alienated and Americanised youths with no roots (who could be perfectly integrated, if treated nicely) derives from a serious error of judgment, caused by an abstract ideology that ignores social events. The ethnic war in France has already started. The barbarisation of society and the rancorous and latent aggressiveness towards European culture shown by a large portion of young people brought here by immigration constitute an intermediate-term threat, as many impartial American sociologists have also observed. Why not acknowledge this?
On the other hand, the Nouvelle Droite envisages a model of social harmony within a pacified multicultural society, which is sheer utopia. Every multiracial – and multicultural – society is multiracist and ‘infra-xenophobic’: from Brazil and former Yugoslavia to Algeria, Black Africa, and the Caucasus. Multi-ethnicism in France will prove explosive and will have nothing to do with the placid tribalism my friends Alain de Benoist and Charles Champetier have outlined (see issue 50 of Eléments) via a discourse that may be taken as an example of ‘the sociology of dreams’. Tribalism is never peaceful. I am ready to bet that, within ten years, history – through painful experiences – will have made all multiculturalist plans unserviceable, even for those on the Left. Alain de Benoist’s wish is to ‘foster a fruitful exchange of dialogue between groups that are clearly situated in relation to one another’ (Eléments, issue 50, p. 3). This, in European soil, strikes me as a rather unfeasible prospect, which derives from the same ideological illusion that inspired the advocates of ‘ethnic harmony’ in 1950s America, who opposed the idea of the assimilating melting pot. Actually, I believe that both assimilators – Jacobins and people in favour of the melting pot – and communitarians are wrong. A society based on ethno-territorial co-existence was, is and will always be impossible. One land, one people: this is what human nature requires.
I completely agree with the anti-Jacobinism, organicism and polycentric social view promoted by my aforementioned friends. What I reproach them for is their failure to admit that the harmonious socio-cultural diversity they are talking about can be achieved only among different but related European peoples. Out-and-out Europeanists, why do they believe or pretend to believe that a harmonious society will be established in France through ‘multicultural’ cohabitation with communities of Asian, African and Arab-Muslim origin, which are far removed from the mental framework of Europeans? Were they really consistent, they would defend the hard and abstract Republican idea of forced integration dear to Madame Badinter.[26] In this respect, the ‘harmonicism’ of the Nouvelle Droite is self-contradictory. They insist on promoting a paradigm that is physically impossible to implement, submitting to the faith in miracles that characterises egalitarian ideologies.
My friends of the Nouvelle Droite have an imaginary view of Islam. They believe Islam can be integrated within a model of European harmony and general tolerance, without taking account of the fact that this ultra-monotheism is an intrinsically conquering, theocratic and antidemocratic religion that seeks – as General De Gaulle had foreseen – to replace each church with a mosque. By its very nature, Islam is intolerant, exclusivist, and anti-organic. The current thinkers of the Nouvelle Droite are captivated by the senseless talk about ‘French Islam’, and fail to realise that they are facing the strategy of the fox Machiavelli[27] so aptly described. While followers of Carl Schmitt, in practice they never apply either the concept of the ‘exceptional case’ (Ernstfall) or that of the objective enemy: he who identifies you as an enemy for the very reason you exist, whatever you may do.
The multiculturalism and pro-Islamic stance of the Nouvelle Droite are objectively close to the incautious positions adopted by the Catholic episcopate in France, which also believes – out of altruism – in the idea of a future harmonious and ethno-pluralist society on European soil.
Stranger still is the fact that the Nouvelle Droite does not seem to realise that in Muslim eyes ‘pagans’ are absolute enemies and spawns of the devil, while they are instead tolerated – even if looked down upon – by Jews and Christians. In a recent trip of mine to Saudi Arabia, I had to write ‘Catholic’ on the identity card given to me on board the plane: had I written I was a ‘pagan’ or follower of any other non-monotheistic religion, I would have faced some problems.
To expect an agreement between paganism and Islam is like hoping to reconcile the devil with holy water.
In its report on multicultural society, Éléments does not discuss the issue of the impossibility of expelling illegal immigrants (on account of reactions on the part of para-Trotskyist associations and Leftist Christians); nor does it discuss the social and economic cost of immigration, or the ongoing arrival in Europe of immigrants from the South: are we to seal this breach, and if so, in what way? Crucial questions such as this are never raised: yet people are waiting. There is also another problem: while each year tens of thousands French graduates leave for the United States, France is welcoming – and in exchange for what? – tens of thousands immigrants from the South with no qualification. Why not discuss this? Because it’s taboo? That’s right.
I reproach the Nouvelle Droite for its adherence to a worldview that is undermined by a devastating concept: ‘realism’ – which often takes the form of disheartened fatalism.
I am Nietzschean and do not like the term ‘realist’. History is not realist. Communism collapsed within three years: who would realistically have foreseen that? In issue 5 of Pierre Vial’s magazine Terre et Peuple, historian Philippe Conrad[28] illustrates the Spanish reconquista against the Afro-Muslim invaders, emphasising that in history there are no ‘accomplished facts’. The reconquista was an unrealistic yet concrete endeavour, and
it was accomplished. The essence of history is both real and unrealistic, for its motor is comprised of both fuel – will to power – and combustive – the power of will. Those who out of weakness choose to give in when faced by disagreeable and coercive historical events should heed the words of William of Orange: ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’
The mission of the Nouvelle Droite ought to have been to anticipate and pave the way for this path. It needs to correct its mistakes, by allying itself with other groups in Europe that agree with the above analyses.
The most effective ideological line would seem to lie in simultaneously rejecting multicultural and multiracial society on the one hand, and the Republican, Jacobin French nationalism that encourages it on the other. Yes to a great federal Europe; no to a multicultural (and in practice multiracial) France and Europe open to increasingly numerous Afro-Asiatic and Muslim communities.
8 – Eighth and final ideological gap: the lack of an economic doctrine. I had once started suggesting an economic doctrine for the Nouvelle Droite, one centred on the notions of ‘organic economy’ and ‘autarchy for wide areas’, as well as on a ‘political’ – as opposed to economic and fiscal – understanding of public authority. This doctrine called for the self-sufficiency of the great global power blocs, including Europe and later Euro-Siberia, with internal free exchange. This sort of thinking – which is compatible with the building of Europe – needed and still needs to be further developed.
Why? Because, as Henning Eichberg[29] had grasped – during a conversation between the two of us in Nice (in 1973!) – in order to change public opinion, and influence the course of history, it is necessary to ‘talk about things’ and not merely of ‘abstract ideas’: things that interest people. Spiritualism is necessary to give the movement a soul, but is not enough in itself. It is necessary to measure oneself with the eternal materialism of men. Like Marx (unfortunately), I believe that economy is part of the infrastructure of human concerns. In order to re-establish an effective ideological corpus, it is essential to possess an alternative economic doctrine. This means a return to concrete problems and social issues that affect people’s lives: urbanism, transport, fiscal policy, the environment, energy policy, health care, birth rates, immigration, crimes, technology, television, etc.
Archeofuturism Page 4
