Why We Fight

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by Guillaume Faye


  The outbreak of an ethnic civil war in Europe would constitute a distinct state of emergency, becoming a handmaiden of history, as it disrupts established mentalities and creates a situation in which the unthinkable and the impossible become thinkable and possible. Solely in states of emergency are real solutions found, true leaders brought to the fore, and peoples awakened. For man, this short-sighted animal, only reacts when his back is against the wall. Crisis is the motor of history.

  (see born leader)

  T

  Techno-science

  Technique derived from the scientific approach of the experimental method, which aims at enhancing the possibilities of action and domination.

  A creation of European civilisation, techno-science is Promethean in essence. It’s tragic and contradictory, the best of aspirations and the worst of dangers. For European peoples threatened by their demographic weakness, by devirilisation, by their submersion into the peoples of the South, bio-genetics can serve as a provisional recourse. Similarly, applied to armaments, techno-science is an indispensable shield, capable of compensating for Europe’s lack of numbers.

  But techno-science is neutral. It’s a grave error, to which Habermas[240] and Heidegger have succumbed, to think that it can be, sui generis,[241] the bearer of some ideology. It’s a weapon, a means, with which one can do what one wants. Techno-science is harmful if left solely at the mercy of the market’s logic, positive if submitted to a sovereign will. It represents no opposition to tradition, but is an essential element of the European heritage — having first appeared with Pythagoras’ school.[242] It’s this force of alchemy, of which the medieval masters spoke. Techno-science is neither ‘modern’ nor ‘materialist’ in essence, but both traditional and futurist.

  (see archeofuturism; Promethean; will to power)

  * * *

  Third Worldism

  Doctrine, on the Left and Right, which claims the Third World has been ‘exploited’ — and that it’s advisable to aid it, unceasingly, with financial and technological transfers, and to welcome its migrants.

  Third Worldism is a snake that swallows its own tail: in claiming to aid poor countries, it deserts and divests itself of all actual responsibility for them. It imposes on these lands a Western economic model, destructive of local economies. One pities the Third World in terms of a self-culpabilising charity.

  The proper attitude to the Third World is one of relative indifference, the opposite of the present ‘right to intervene’. Europe has no obligation to peoples whose destiny is not their own. The endemic poverty, wars, and epidemics that ravage certain parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America are not our concern. These populations are alone guilty of their incapacity to govern themselves. We are not ‘responsible’ for them. To let the Third World take responsibility for its own fate requires that we refuse to assist it. Besides, the Third World — this notion created in the 1960s by Alfred Sauvy[243] to designate those countries that belonged neither to the Western nor the Soviet spheres and that were mainly former European colonies — has lost its former pertinence. What does a Mali, an Argentine, and a South Korean have in common? The notion of the Third World, though fluid, nevertheless retains an association with ‘poor countries’. But why ‘poor’? Third Worldists argue that the countries of the North have exploited the Third World, while the reverse is true. Europeans need to invert the charges and work on shedding whatever guilt they might feel toward it.

  *

  Third World parasitism takes the following forms:

  Direct financial costs in the form of lost loans, European-financed exports, the annulment of debt, etc.

  The cost of technical aid and cooperation, as well as technological transfers. Despite massive aid, no African or Arab country has ever attained even a modicum of economic balance.

  The cost of exploiting raw materials in the Third World. For fifty years we’ve been told that we exploited the countries of the South. Their petroleum, raw materials, and their agriculture would, though, be of no use to Europe, if she thought geopolitically — in terms of a ‘Eurosiberian space’. No Muslim oil exporter, for example, would be able to exploit the subsoil reserves of his country on his own. These reserves have been discovered and exploited by foreign companies, who pay an enormous rent for them. Eurosiberia would have no need of Third World resources.

  The worst, the heaviest burden: dumping its excess population in Europe, which is equivalent to overwhelming her demographically and hamstringing her with an economic ball and chain.

  *

  A certain number of legends also need to be resisted. Specifically the legend that European colonialism, in the form of exploitation and slavery, was a sin for which we must forever repent. This thesis of assigning blame is especially promoted by Algeria. European colonialism, though, was harmful to Europe, though it benefited the Third World, whose demography it vastly developed. This has boomeranged against Europe — an immense historical error. For European colonialism was the starting point for the South’s colonisation of Europe.

  It also needs emphasising that in the period of European colonisation, Third World populations, notably in the Maghreb, the Middle East, and Africa, lived under conditions of peace, liberty, public order, and prosperity far superior to whatever ‘independence’ brought. All Africans and Maghrebians of good faith who were born before independence today realise this.

  *

  Third Worldism, like anti-racism, is a pseudo-philanthropic doctrine that blames and paralyses Europeans. Unfortunately, this doctrine of Trotskyist origin has been relayed by certain Right-wing theoreticians, who favour Europe’s cultural and geopolitical solidarity with the Third World (specifically the Arab-Muslim countries). Islamophilia and Third Worldism make in this way a cosy mélange for those Right publicists who know little of Islam and little of the Third World’s socioeconomic realities — but who want to be politically fashionable (bien pensant), having still not recovered from their unavowed fascination with Marxism. It’s exactly the opposite that needs to be defended: far from being a potential ally, the Third World constitutes the worst possible danger to Europe.

  Now part of the dominant ideology, Third Worldism rests on the principle that industrialised countries once pillaged the Third World (as Leninist, Trotskyist, and Maoist schema explain), even though the Third World now lives at the expense of European countries — which it financially exploits and colonises.

  (see autarky of great spaces; colonisation; economy, two-tier)

  * * *

  Tradition, traditionalism

  Tradition is the ensemble of a people’s values and cultural structures, which are transmitted (tradere in Latin) from generation to generation — to form the scaffolding of its collective memory.

  To destroy European traditions: this is the great enterprise of the regnant cosmopolitanism. It’s as if European man were intrinsically guilty, tainted by original sin. Cultural Americanisation, Africanisation, or Arabisation, the effacement of the European’s historical memory, Islamisation: Europe’s deculturation is perpetuated by media onslaughts and by the public schools. This is why the struggle to maintain our traditions is integral to conserving our spiritual and genetic identity. The essence of tradition is the ancestral heritage and its creative continuation. Every heritage has to bear fruit.

  At the same time it shouldn’t be forgotten that tradition is a translation. To remain vital, tradition has to metamorphosise — changing its forms, while remaining true to its spirit. European culture — Faustian and Promethean — must balance its ancestral forms with the creation of new ones.

  We need to defend tradition, as well as the notion of ‘traditional society’, but we refuse traditionalism. The latter appears whenever traditions die off, just as racism appears once a race declines. Traditionalism is the intellectualisation of tradition, as tradition ceases to be lived naturally or serve as an integral part of the living soul. It becomes folkloric, museological, a subject of scholarly study — in any case, s
omething dead. Traditionalism is, paradoxically, foreign to the European tradition. The latter is metamorphic, always in the grip of innovation, always becoming, always in movement, appealing to what is greater.

  (see disinstallation; heritage; memory; people)

  * * *

  Tragedy

  The human condition is tragic because man alone, even when no danger threatens, remains conscious that he will eventually die.

  ‘Nothing is ever acquired by man’. The tragic sensibility understands life as a hazardous, risk-filled journey, endlessly menaced by death, but at times illuminated by joy. The tragic shouldn’t be confused with despair or pessimism. The man who kills himself is the victim of disappointed hope, that is, of a lie. The man of tragedy never kills himself from despair, his is a wilful death for the sake of something transcendent.

  Salvation religions endeavour to conjure away death by a faith in the beyond and, against realism, cultivate the spirit of consolation. European civilisation has always been animated by the tragic spirit, because it never ceases taking risks, putting its life at peril in order to continue its historical unfolding. This attitude has been pushed too far, evident in the two World Wars — the two European civil wars — which initiated the Continent’s effacement. The tragic spirit has been replaced with the presently dominant and senile ‘spirit of indifference’.

  (see Promethean; sacred)

  U

  Universalism

  The belief that humanity forms a homogeneous ensemble, a single family, in which notions of people and identity are secondary.

  An avatar of egalitarian ideology, universalism is a political monotheism, the parent of all totalitarianisms. The individual for it is but ‘a citizen of the world’. All cultures are destined to fuse and no inequalities of nature or quality exist between them.

  Universalism is the hypocritical weapon of the most diverse imperialisms, particularly those of Islam and Americanism, since it aims at imposing a single model — its model, supposedly, to federate all peoples — but actually in the interest of a single centre of power and interest. Humanity cannot conceive of itself — this will always be the case — except in terms of the organic juxtaposition of its particularisms — and not as a universalism encompassing and overarching (allegedly secondary) particularities.

  (see cosmopolitanism; globalisation, globalism)

  V

  Values

  Idea-forces and life rules that are translated into behaviours and transcend individual egoism, since they have no immediate utility, but constitute a long-term necessity for a community’s survival.

  Ideas have no legitimacy unless they correspond to values lived as practical engagements. Values depend not on fashions or technological progress or social avatars; they represent an unbreakable bond between generations — the basis for maintaining a people in history. Many values translate the imperatives of biological survival into cultural terms.

  Some of the fundamental values, for example, are:

  A refusal of massification, as well as a narcissistic individualism,

  An affirmation of the creative inequality of the human race,

  Concern for a people and its historical destiny,

  Loyalty to a lineage (ethnic consciousness),

  Individual freedom as self-discipline,

  The precedence of communal solidarity over egoism,

  Cult of the aesthetic,

  Respect for life’s selectivity — and not ‘all’ life,

  The spirit of enterprise and creation . . .

  There are values that concern the entirety of the human race, like global ecological responsibility in economic affairs. But we should be suspicious of ‘values’ expressed in abstract terms (altruism, love, respect for life, openness, etc.), for most of the time they hypocritically legitimise the very opposite.

  The present dominant values (xenophilia, cosmopolitanism, narcissistic individualism, humanitarianism, bourgeois economism, hedonism, homophilia, permissiveness, etc.) are actually anti-values — values of a devirilising weakness, since they deplete a civilisation’s vital energies and weaken its defensive or affirmative capacities.

  (see tradition)

  W

  West, Western civilisation

  The planetary civilisation — prodigal son and bastard of Europe, today dominated by the American model — that aims at universalising the absolute primacy of market society and egalitarian individualism — one of whose consequences is to cause Europeans to forget their own destiny.

  One ought not to confuse the West with Europe. Western civilisation no longer retains any ethnic value, having become a cosmopolitan civilisation based on the American model. Originating in Europe, Western civilisation has tragically turned against Europe, like a boomerang, imposing its universalism. It’s thus necessary to oppose European civilisation to Western civilisation.

  Western civilisation, which has become a world civilisation to the degree that it no longer occupies ‘Western’ territories, is characterised by the absolute primacy it attributes to the economy over every other consideration, as it speculatively pursues short-term profitability regardless of long-term ecological, ethnic, or social imperatives.

  Such a civilisation is characteristically ignorant of any notion of people or country. It poses as a planetary ‘society’ that undermines and restricts every sovereignty and political will. Except one: the government of the American superpower, especially since the fall of Communism, endeavours to pilot Western civilisation, while Europe (despite her industrial and commercial power) is treated as a protectorate.

  Western civilisation is the first civilisation in history not to be founded on some sort of spirituality — on transcendent, non-material values; even more than Communism, it has realised the dream of Marx and Trotsky in constructing a planetary cosmopolitan civilisation founded exclusively on materialistic and economic relations. In this sense, the capitalism of Western civilisation, not Soviet Communism, most embodies the essence of Marxism.

  Situated between a hypocritical religion of human rights and a simulacra of ‘democracy’, Western civilisation neither supports principles of justice nor respects the existence of different peoples — instead, it strives to destroy their roots and equilibrium, and above all to give full reign to the forces of social barbarism.

  *

  It would be wrong to confuse Western civilisation with science and technology, as many traditionalists do. This civilisation instrumentalises techno-science, but the latter — let us repeat — is perfectly neutral and can serve any civilisational project.

  Another error: to look sympathetically at Islam on the pretext that it opposes certain negative aspects of Western civilisation. To play this Islamic card against Western decadence — a frequent temptation inspired by the writings of René Guénon, Claudio Mutti,[244] and others — is to indulge the naïve illusions of scholars disconnected from all sense of the real, totally unable to see Islam’s intrinsically totalitarian and globalist nature. It’s only through their own values, though, that Europeans will regenerate themselves and get free from the maelstrom of Western civilisation — it won’t occur by embracing Islam, which since its birth has been Europe’s avowed enemy.

  Today, at its height, Western civilisation is ephemeral, it won’t make it to the Twenty-first century’s end. It’s like a Tower of Babel, internally corroded by its absolute materialism, its lack of critical spirit, and its ignorance of every long-term need.

  (see ideology: West; modernity; techno-science)

  * * *

  Will to Power

  The tendency of all healthy life to perpetuate itself — to assure its survival, its superiority, and its capacity for creation.

  This Nietzschean concept has at times been misunderstood and abusively interpreted as ‘a tyrannical desire for brutal domination’. Actually, it’s a self-affirming will. The will to power is the vital urge to become superior, it’s pride — the opposite of vanity or pretension — it’s the accepta
nce of life as struggle, as an eternal combat for supremacy, it’s the permanent incitement to self-perfection and self-improvement, it’s the absolute refusal of all nihilism, it’s the opposite of contemporary relativism.

  The will to power by no means implies crushing the weak, but rather protecting them. For it defies only the strong.

  The will to power implies self-mastery and self-discipline, conditions necessary for an exterior affirmation. The danger of the will to power is in its very energy: it has to learn not to succumb to the stupor of its own hubris.

  The will to power constitutes a spiritual horizon, because it accords with the essence of life itself. It is the force of life and of history. It’s not simply about the struggle for domination, but also about survival and continuity. It’s the core of the inegalitarian and imperial conception of the world. A people or civilisation that abandons its will to power inevitably perishes, for what doesn’t advance, retreats — what doesn’t accept life as struggle hasn’t long to live.

  X

  Xenophilia

  Etymologically: ‘love of the stranger’.

  A fascination with the ‘Other’ and a neglect of those who are ‘Near’ — xenophilia is one of the great collective psychopathologies of contemporary Europe. It comes from a perversion of the idea of charity, but it also comes from an absence of ethnic consciousness. It’s evident in the contradictory ideology of ‘anti-racism’, which in fact is an inverted racial obsession. What’s called ‘anti-racism’ is but a pathological expression of xenophilia.

 

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