Why We Fight

by Guillaume Faye

  Defined strictly in terms of economic and materialistic well-being, these small pleasures falsely presume that all human beings aspire to the same ideal of quantitative consumption. This purely passive objective, entailing a people’s domestication, despises the spiritual, historical, and cultural requirements of an individual’s inner sense of well-being. It destroys communal solidarity. It excludes everything that cannot be attained through a certain ‘material level of life’. Its massified individual knows, as such, only anguish and insecurity in a society promising heaven on Earth. The frenzied search for material well-being, socially sanctioned but never attained, is leading to what Konrad Lorenz[151] called the ‘warm death’, which softens and undermines a civilisation.

  This narcissistic materialism of small pleasures is accompanied by the simulated pseudo-spirituality of consummate hypocrisy: human-rights humanitarianism and other so-called ‘cultural policies’ designed to elevate the contemporary soul.

  (see consumerism; domestication; individualism)

  * * *

  Heredity

  Physical and psychological characteristics innate to biological nature — and hence transmittable.

  Heredity not only constitutes an individual or familial disposition, but a collective one. A people’s hereditary disposition, though not perfectly clear and having thus a fluid character, nevertheless exists.

  The dominant ideology now rejects all idea of a people’s heredity. Based on the dogmas of assimilation and integration, it holds that identity is not transmitted, but acquired. Any human group can therefore adapt itself to any culture. The taboo science of ethnopsychology has demonstrated, though, that the behaviour of peoples and nations depends to a significant degree on their collective genetic disposition. Put in identical circumstances, different peoples produce different results. Those not favoured by their natural environment can often thus produce more than those who are. The Dutch, for example, whose natural environment is atrocious, far out-produce African populations situated in lands that are naturally rich.

  We need to finish with the behaviourist dogma, whose origin is Marxist, according to which differences in performance levels and living standards between countries and civilisations are uniquely due to the hazards of history, to the relations of production, and to the exploitation of one people by another. These differences are atavistic, the fruit of different collective heredities, most of which, of course, are innate.

  Heredity is nevertheless not everything. Or rather it has surprises to reveal. Within every people, degenerate tendencies can always surface. Hence the decline of certain civilisations. The Great War of 1914-1918, for example, profoundly damaged the genetic basis of European elites, of her natural aristocrats. Thus, perhaps for this reason, the decline in character and virtus[152] so evident today. In addition to genetic factors, harmful ideologies also have the power to deprive human groups of the capacity for resistance and creativity. No people, except for limited periods, should claim to be hereditarily superior to another.

  History is nothing but the relations of forces — the struggle for life. If Europeans are being colonised by formerly dominated peoples from the South, if they accept every kind of humiliation, it’s due, first off, to a weakness within them. Heredity is not eternal. We need to be constantly on guard against superiority complexes. Heredity is acquired, but it’s also conquered and defended. Every people, by its own hand, can lose the hereditary disposition that is its force, for it is actualised only within its own culture; or, in cases of counter-selection, it stupidly squanders its genetic patrimony.

  More precisely said — and this remark is totally taboo in Europe today, though not in the rest of the world, which freely acknowledges it — race-mixing is fatal to a people’s heredity and the pursuit of its civilisation. It’s the dialectic of the innate and the acquired, it’s also the history of the living. For the cultural transmission of a tradition and the continuation of a civilisation are impossible without maintaining its biological core, its original stock. André Lama, for example, has shown that the fall of the Roman Empire was due, in part, to Roman mixing with alien populations.[153]

  (see germen; heritage; miscegenation; race, racism and anti-racism)

  * * *

  Heritage

  The ensemble of capacities and cultural traits transmitted from one generation to another that structures a people’s identity.

  Heritage has both a cultural and a bio-anthropological nature. A dual imperative: blood and spirit. Any rupture in the heritage’s transmission, whether popular, artistic, cultural, artisanal, or technoscientific, eradicates a part of a people’s memory, preparing the ethnocide that will cause it to disappear.

  Europeans, especially the French, are now prone to a triple sabotage of their heritage: first, the sabotage of their cultural and historical memory, in which the public schools actively take part; second, the submerging of Europe’s cultural patrimony and creative forces under American/Western mass culture and by the neo-primitivism that comes with Africanisation (the ‘tom-tom cult’ Céline predicted); and third, assaults on their biological germen, through race-mixing, a declining birth rate, and the growing weight of alien populations. The transmission of the biological and cultural heritage is the sine qua non for maintaining European peoples in history. Once there’s no longer anything of one’s own to transmit, one ceases to exist. A people without a heritage is an alienated people and, if things continue in this way, Europeans will find themselves far more deculturated than the Third World populations they formerly dominated.

  But there’s a paradox here. Though the biological heritage hasn’t suffered any major changes, the cultural heritage in European history is always in constant metamorphosis, far from being something fixed. The cultural and civilisational heritage is a movement. Like a flame that always remains the same, the substance it burns is ceaselessly being renewed. The essential is that there exists within the heritage a hard core, a nucleus, of ‘fundamental values’ — mindful of the historical memory.

  (see enrootment; heredity; history)

  * * *

  Heroes

  Emblematic figures of mythic or real personage representing the superior values of a people or a nation — who are willing to sacrifice themselves for their people’s sake.

  European civilisation was founded on the basis of heroic gestures, its ‘holy book’ being the Iliad, then the Odyssey. A society is evidently judged by its heroes and anti-heroes. Today, the dominant ideology tends to reject all notion of heroism. Strong, virile, conquering societies, like Islam, have always had their cult of hero-martyrs. In the French school system, heroes have been banished and are no longer referenced (Joan of Arc, Bayard,[154] du Guesclin,[155] etc., and by all means let’s not speak of Charles Martel, who would probably be accused of ‘racism’); even the republican heroes of the Revolution are no longer evoked! There were, though, some residual heroes for the generation of May ‘68 (Che Guevara, Mao, Castro, Frantz Fanon,[156] etc.), whose dubious stature actually has since diminished.

  The post-conciliar[157] Catholic Church, in its rigorous campaign of sabotage, no longer insists on the cult of saints, suspected of latent paganism. Egalitarians reject heroes because they are superior personalities, who rise above the mass, providing it with exemplary models and, at the same time, lending themselves to a dynamic notion of the people — as a historical community of destiny, born from the exemplary standards of its great creative personalities — a notion, of course, now totally diabolised. Heroes are models, who sacrifice for their people’s sake: something completely incomprehensible for today’s ‘clerks’.

  Our decadent, ethnomasochistic society cannot, however, avoid forging pseudo-heroes or sub-heroes: football players, soap opera stars, humanitarian doctors, and tutti quanti.[158]

  The United States, this society allegedly more decadent than Europe (a view which demands demonstration), is, paradoxically, constantly celebrating in literature and cinema its cult of patriotic hero
es. This is especially curious in that the United States has created the pseudo-heroes of media and show business, the buffoons fabricated by the ‘society of the spectacle’.[159] An analysis of the U.S. situation is thus not so simple. Its popular cult of heroes is unthinkable in Europe, where patriotic heroism is ridiculed for its ‘primitivism’ and cultural elites devote themselves to a blasé negativity. The heroes in French cinema over the last twenty years or so have been for the most part deranged, arm-breaking, psychopathic types. For better or worse, it’s been the American cinema that has valorised European heroes. For example, films like The 300 Spartans, Excalibur, Braveheart, etc.

  Europe’s regeneration will include rehabilitating her heroes in popular culture. It’s amazing, though, the way the media has stunned the public with their insane cult of millionaire athletes, of talentless but well-paid movie and music stars, and of phony personalities created by opinion polls — all of whose hypocritical ‘heroism’ is a matter of financial privilege and histrionic vanity.

  (see born leader; personality, creative)

  * * *

  Heterotelia

  The outcome and consequences of an action whose effects are radically contrary to its intended or proclaimed aim (from the Greek hetero and télos meaning ‘other’ and ‘ends’).

  In general, heterotelia is the lot of all utopian ideologies and dogmatic religions, particularly those advocating egalitarianism, humanitarianism, and anti-racism.

  A few examples: the massacres and wars perpetuated in the name of ‘the God of love and the poor’; ideologies of liberation and emancipation which inevitably culminate in totalitarianism; Left-wing socialist programs that create poverty, fiscalism, bureaucratism, and a new class of speculators; academic ideologies of anti-selection that bring about growing inequalities, a ‘two-tiered school’ system, a bargain-basement curriculum for those of modest income, and a savage or nepotistic admission procedure for professional life (the social jungle); the law of the 35-hour work week, which aggravates work routines, penalises enterprises, and, in the long run, harms wage earners;[160] anti-racism and the construction of a multi-racial society, which provokes xenophobia and ethnic tensions; permissiveness and the refusal of strong anti-delinquency measures justified in the name of a libertarianism favouring insecurity and violence; laws against layoffs which end up discouraging hiring; excessive protection of renters that dampens housing construction; growing taxes that narrow the tax base, etc.

  The most general and visible expression of heterotelia is the excessive defence of an individual liberty that ends up restraining it.

  This political heterotelia, distinct to egalitarian ideology, is based on a refusal of the real and a profound misunderstanding of human behaviour, economic realities, and social mechanisms.

  (see liberty)

  * * *

  Hierarchy

  The power of command and precedence — established in pyramid fashion at the heart of every society — involving men as well as functions.

  The notion of hierarchy highlights the most insupportable contradictions of the dominant egalitarian ideology. Theoretically, hierarchy is rejected, but in practice it’s accepted, since no society can do without it and since it’s inscribed in the genetic memory. All societies, human and animal, are hierarchical, especially the latter: human societies know extremely complex forms of hierarchy.

  Egalitarian ideology, like the Western society that produced it, lives a veritable form of schizophrenia: it ceaselessly attacks hierarchy but can’t prevent hierarchies from arising, for every society engenders them. Pathological expressions of anti-hierarchy, for example, are evident in: the attack on ‘selection’ in the public schools; the dogma that all individuals, cultures, and peoples are equal; the doctrine that conceives of information and communication in terms of ‘horizontal networks’; and other such illusions . . .

  Anti-hierarchy quite obviously corresponds to no actual reality, since hierarchies spontaneously emerge in every domain. It’s nevertheless at the centre of the egalitarian utopia. In Western societies, this rejection of hierarchy has led to the formation of savage, chaotic hierarchies without real legitimacy, and to forms of domination that are all the more overbearing and unjust in being hedged and camouflaged in false ‘horizontal’ relations. In this way, the practice of exclusion and ostracism replaces those of sanction. It’s the reign of hypocritical hierarchy. This gives rise to the blocked society in which there’s no longer a circulation of elites, where privileged castes are established, and where the reign of lawlessness rules. Its mechanisms are perverse; in business, the military, the school, and government one refuses clear and explicit forms of authority for the sake of ‘negotiation’ and ‘dialogue’. In reality, the process leads to networks of influence and corruption — or to secret hierarchies. Since no one is any longer obliged to obey, they need to be bought (corrupted).

  *

  From the European perspective, a hierarchical society is not an oppressive society in the Oriental or Islamic sense. Hierarchy is the disciplined organisation of free men for the sake of their common welfare — this is hierarchy in the sense that rights imply duties and that authority must constantly prove its competence.

  Hierarchy is insupportable if it doesn’t rest on a transcendental authority; it’s insupportable if it rests merely on the forces of money (one no longer orders or commands, but rather buys accomplices) — or else, it rests on nepotism. Hierarchy can only be legitimatised on the basis of a recognised superiority, founded on meritocracy and talent, on character and sound judgment.

  A society that refuses a clear meritocratic hierarchy, established on the basis of just legal sanctions, inevitably falls into the hands of anarchic, tyrannical hierarchies: like mafias, ethnic gangs, pressure groups, financial powers, etc. It’s no less necessary to oppose the latest illusion, very fashionable among sociologists (our contemporary counterparts to Nineteenth-century socialist utopians): that a ‘new society’ is being organised as ‘networks’ and ‘tribes’, which will, supposedly, bring about an era of communication and non-hierarchical cooperation — networks and tribes, moreover, founded solely on the individual will of those comprising them. In separating roles, hierarchical society foregoes, in contrast, the very possibility that the sovereign function will fall into the hands of others — just as it evolves in ways that are as positive as they are inescapable.

  *

  From a spiritual perspective, the abolition of the sovereign function can only culminate in the brutal domination of the market, not in the installation of horizontal networks; network societies innervated by this miraculous extravaganza called ‘communications’ reproduce the most savage and unregulated hierarchies, against which the individual remains utterly defenceless. The one certain thing: the rejection of natural hierarchies gives rise to a chaotic society with the most brutal and rigid forms of hierarchy — i.e., authoritarianism.

  The question, thus, is not for or against hierarchy (for or against selection), since it’s an unavoidable sociobiological given; the question is to know what type of hierarchy to choose.

  *

  Hierarchy can only be envisaged in terms of a holistic ensemble (i.e., as a harmonious, organic totality), in which the rules of the game are clear, rights and duties are progressive and unequal, and the superior echelons possess competence, authority, and an indisputable honesty.

  (see aristocracy; egalitarianism; elite; meritocracy; selection)

  * * *

  History, conceptions of history

  The consciousness, evident in European and several other civilisations, of the emergence and continuity of a people’s collective destiny in time.

  History is profoundly tragic. This is why both bourgeois and egalitarian spirits reject it. Whether Marxist or, today, liberal-cosmopolitan, these spirits have always sought the end of history, synonymous with the valley of tears. Since the fall of Communism, the present Western/American ideology implicitly strives for the end of history, seeki
ng to establish a ‘New World Order’, a unified planet. History, though, is making a thunderous comeback, with the inevitable confrontations that come from an increasingly multipolar world.

  There are three great, opposed conceptions of history: the cyclical conception; the linear, finalist conception; and the spherical conception.

  1. The cyclical conception found in primitive or ancient societies holds that everything is eternally repeated, and nothing ever changes. History is a loop, a recommencement, a succession of ‘ages’ that returns again and again.

  2. The linear and finalist conception (teleonomic and soteriological) was introduced by Judaeo-Christianity: history’s dynamic inevitably culminates in the Last Judgment. This conception was adopted by Western ideologies, elaborated in the thought of Hegel and Marx (as well as cosmopolitan liberals), and secularised the Judaeo-Christian vision of heaven. Such a notion of Salvation, naïve and sullied by a belief in Progress distinct to an exhausted modernity, continues to dominate the prevailing ideology, like an exorcism, though everything suggests that the Twenty-first century will refute its infantile optimism.

  3. The ‘spherical’ conception of history, formulated by Nietzsche and developed by Giorgio Locchi,[161] is this tragic, surhuman, and Faustian philosophy whose dynamic is no longer based on an eternally recurring cycle or a predetermined linear movement (‘the meaning of history’), but by the ‘eternal return of the identical’ (not the ‘same’). The past can be reappropriated, even transformed, at any moment by a project of renewal. This position is spherical, like a ball that rolls across a flat surface, with its different points touching the same phases of ascension, decadence, war, peace, crisis, etc., that constantly return, but in different situations and modalities. The present in this way fuses the immemorial past with a desired future. Tradition and futurism become here the same willed energy. The future remains open, unlike archaic pagan cyclicalism or Judaeo-Christian linearity — both of which are deterministic.