[22] Maurice Barrès (1862–1923) was a French novelist, journalist, anti-Semite, and nationalist politician and agitator.
[23] Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany, 58, 71, 97.
[24] Hermann Weyl, review of The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, edited by P. A. Schilpp, The American Mathematical Monthly 53, no. 4 (April 1946): 208–14.
[25] Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany, 122, 125, 134, 136, 140, 173.
[26] Ibid., 75–91.
[27] Ibid., 107.
[28] Ibid., 108.
[29] Ibid., 109–11.
[30] Ibid., 114–40.
[31] Ibid., 145.
[32] Ibid., 162.
[33] Ibid., 189.
[34] Ibid., 209.
[35] Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1993 [1977]), 148.
[36] Ibid., 188.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid., 227.
[39] Ibid., 241.
[40] Ibid., 279.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Ibid., 280.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Ibid
[45] Some clarification on this point is needed. While the term “Judeo-Christian” has become fashionable in modern times, Judaism and Christianity are two separate and distinct traditions. With regards to the question of universalism, Judaism is far less so than Christianity. Foundational Torah Judaism, the type still practiced by some sects like the Neturei Karta, is a profoundly particularistic religion—of the Jews, for the Jews, and by the Jews. Although Gentiles are allowed to convert, Judaism in this form is frequently regarded as being in many ways irrelevant to outsiders. Also, evidence exists that the early Hebrews were henotheistic rather than monotheistic, but simply recognized Yahweh as their ethnic god, in the same way that other eastern Mediterranean peoples recognized Baal. It was the apostate Jew Saul of Tarsus (later known as St. Paul the Apostle) who brought overtly universalistic conceptions into Judaism, apparently against the wishes of some of the earliest disciples of Jesus (Galatians 2:11–14). It could also be argued that the current showdown between Islam and the West, the “clash of civilizations” referred to by Samuel P. Huntington, is best understood as a religious war between two offshoots of Judaism and Christianity— Islam and Humanism. Says Tomislav Sunic: “Undoubtedly, many would admit that in the realm of ethics all men and women of the world are the children of Abraham. Indeed, even the bolder ones who somewhat self-righteously claim to have rejected the Christian or Jewish theologies, and who claim to have replaced them with ‘secular humanism,’ frequently ignore that their self-styled secular beliefs are firmly grounded in Judeo-Christian ethics. Abraham and Moses may be dethroned today, but their moral edicts and spiritual ordinances are very much alive. The global and disenchanted world, accompanied by the litany of human rights, ecumenical society, and the rule of law—are these not principles that can be directly traced to the Judeo-Christian messianic outlook that resurfaces today in its secular version under the elegant garb of modern ‘progressive’ ideologies?” (“Monotheism vs. Polytheism,” by Alain de Benoist, Introduction and translation by Tomislav Sunic, Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, April 1996.)
[46] Mosheim says of second-century Christians: “The simplicity of the worship which the Christians offered to the Deity gave occasion to certain calumnies maintained by both the Jews and the pagan priests. The Christians were pronounced atheists because they were destitute of temples, altars, victims, priests, and of all that pomp in which the vulgar suppose the essence of religion to consist.” (Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, bk. 1, chap. 4, par. 3.)
[47] For example, the renowned British historian Paul Johnson, a darling of neoconservatives, says of Jean-Paul Sartre: “Sartre never showed any real knowledge of or interest in—let alone enthusiasm for—parliamentary democracy. Having the vote in a multi-party society was not at all what he meant by freedom. What did he mean then?” (Paul Johnson, Intellectuals[New York: Harper and Row, 1988], 243.) It is interesting that a figure as eminent as Johnson apparently cannot conceive of any form of freedom greater than run of the mill parliamentarianism. Has he ever read Mill, Spencer, Stirner, Proudhon, Mencken, Rothbard, Rand, or even Milton Friedman? Sartre’s views could be muddled and inchoate at times, to say the least. But Johnson, a former Laborite journalist who went to neoconservatism in the 1970s, seems to have no more capacity for independent thinking than the typical Soviet commissar.
[48] Hans-Hermann Hoppe virtually destroys the intellectual house of cards that modern democratist ideology is built on in Democracy: The God That Failed (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2001). See my “Democracy as Tyranny,” http://attackthesystem.com/democracy-as-tyranny/.
[49] During the late twentieth century, Murray N. Rothbard (1926–95) developed a highly consistent and systematic version of “free-market” anarchism. The pillars of his outlook are Lockean natural rights theory, the Austrian school of economics developed by Ludwig von Mises and others, nineteenth-century individualist anarchism as espoused by Benjamin R. Tucker, and the isolationist foreign policy views championed by the America First Committee in the period leading up to the Second World War. Rothbard was a brilliant thinker and painstaking logician, though he tended towards dogmatism at times, and his insights into political economy carried with them implications even more radical than even he seemed to realize. The best introductions to Rothbard’s outlook would likely be his Man, Economy and State (1962), Power and Market (1970), For a New Liberty (1974) and The Ethics of Liberty (1982). See also Justin Raimondo’s biography of Rothbard, An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray Rothbard (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2000).
[50] Franz Oppenheimer, The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically, trans. John M. Gitterman (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1999).
[51] Lysander Spooner, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority.
[52] Pierre Lemieux, “Give Me Libertarianism,” Financial Post, August 29, 2002.
[53] Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992); Joshua Micah Marshall, “Remaking the World: Bush and the Neoconservatives,” Foreign Affairs 82, no. 6 (November–December 2003); Lee McCracken, “The End of Conservatism,” http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/mccracken/mccracken6.html.
[54] I am consistently amazed at the large number of left-libertarians who somehow believe that “decentralized direct democracy” would be the realization their own sociocultural ideals. In many communities, such a system would likely result in the establishment of theocracy or a racialist or nationalist enclave, just as the establishment of conventional parliamentary democracy in contemporary Iraq would no doubt result in a Shiite fundamentalist regime. It is important that anarchists work to develop a critique of modern societies whose depth surpasses that of conventional leftist or left-liberal analysis and emphasis. “Democracy” is not a universal cure-all or absolute, nor is “peace,” “justice,” “freedom,” feminism, environmentalism, anti-racism, or any other left-wing shibboleth. These ideals and tendencies are defined in different ways by different people, many times arising in response to specific historical or cultural situations that are inapplicable to other situations.
[55] It should not take a genius of political science to understand that mobocracy and individualism are incompatible, but many libertarians make a tortured effort to reconcile these two.
[56] Bob Black, “Anarchism and Other Impediments to Anarchy,” http://www.primitivism.com/impediments.htm.
[57] Keith Preston, “Anarchism or Anarcho-Social Democracy?,” chapter 10 of this volume. For most contemporary anarchists, “anarchism” is a muddled utopian ideology implicitly influenced by Rousseauian or Fourierist ideas, often mixed with bits of Dadaist nihilism or a romantic attachment to the Old Left. Contemporary left-anarchism is also heavily influenced by Gramscian cultural Marxism, whereby racial minorities, feminists, and homosexuals take the place of the proletariat as the focus of the class strug
gle.
[58] One of the founding fathers of classical anarchism, Peter Kropotkin was a pioneer if often unrecognized sociologist. Although a formidable social scientist and philosopher, he had a strong inclination towards the delusional utopianism that characterizes much nineteenth-century political thought. His best works are Mutual Aid, The Conquest of Bread, and Ethics.
[59] Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first thinker to call himself an anarchist, in many ways had more in common with Jeffersonian liberals or Burkean traditional conservatives than the revolutionary socialist tradition that classical anarchism is typically identified with. His application of anarchism was entirely practical, favoring decentralist confederations of local communities, each retaining their own cultural identity, and an economy ordered on worker cooperatives and mutual banks. Bertrand Russell, an unceasing radical during his nearly a century-long life, sometimes expressed sympathy for the ideals of the classical anarchists, but regarded them as impractical. Instead, he clung to the Old Liberalism of his godfather, John Stuart Mill, and the Guild Socialism of G. D. H. Cole and R. H. Tawney. Paul Goodman called himself a “conservative-anarchist,” believing anarchism to require a gradual, evolutionary process.
[60] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1985).
[61] Errico Malatesta, “Crime and Punishment,” http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/crime_and_punishment.html.
[62] Errico Malatesta, Anarchy, trans. Vernon Richards (London: Freedom Press, 1974), 22–23.
[63] Ibid., 17–18.
[64] George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman.
[65] Malatesta, Anarchy, 53.
[66] Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own.
[67] A particularly grotesque example of left-wing anarcho-statism can be found in the Northeastern Anarchist: Magazine of the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists, a publication that favors a global communist government with a central planned economy, which will allegedly be anarchistic because the central planners will be delegates chosen by local communities. Even this last point is not exactly clear. Apparently delegates from factory floors from all over the world are to meet in one big workers’ parliament to plan production for the whole planet.
[68] Hans-Hermann Hoppe even goes so far as to claim that feudal society was stateless, a dubious proposition at best.
[69] For some in the national-anarchist milieu, the ideal community would be a Nazi-like racialist homeland, an arrangement that might be acceptable so long as membership was voluntary, but characterizing such an arrangement as anarchistic would certainly cause confusion on the part of outsiders. Such arrangements do indeed exist, such as the former Aryan Nations compound at Hayden Lake, Idaho. One of the interesting things about national-anarchism is its ability to accommodate everything from neo-Nazis to radical leftists to Jewish separatists. See my “National-Anarchism and the American Idea,” http://attackthesystem.com/national-anarchism-and-the-american-idea/. I believe national-anarchism to be, in many ways, the most advanced form of contemporary anarchist thought. Classical anarchism positioned itself as the most radical wing of the international labor movement, the dominant social struggle of the day, and incorporated a lot of quasi-Marxist ideas into its overall analysis. Neo-anarchism, emerging in the heyday of the New Left of the 1960s, similarly attached itself to the black power movement, feminism, environmentalism, and the gay movement. Yet, today, these currents have become safely mainstream and, to some degree, a reactionary force. Libertarian-anarchism makes the same mistake as the Marxists with its narrow economic determinism, its often rigid focus on bourgeois class values (much libertarian thought amounts to replacing the proletariat and the bourgeoisie with the bourgeoisie and the regulatory welfare state as the antagonists in the class struggle), and its universalist and moralistic tendencies rooted in Enlightenment rationalism. National-anarchism properly focuses on the most crucial issue of the era—the New World Order—and rejects the universalism common to both the liberal and socialist traditions in favor of particularism and traditionalism, sort of a mixture of Bakunin and Joseph de Maistre.
[70] The classic “Unabomber Manifesto” is as good an introduction as any to the primitivist perspective.
[71] Unions have shown themselves to be just as oppressive when they come into state power as any other type of organization or institution. The British trade unions that include print workers have been known to censor newspaper articles critical of union activities.
[72] For an interesting discussion of the weaknesses of economic determinism, see M. Raphael Johnson, “Economics and Nationalist Theory,” The Idyllic, August 1, 2003, http://www.theidyllic.com/php/article.php?article=21.
[73] An experience I had some years ago serves as an illustration of the level of silliness this sometimes involves. I was at a continental anarchist conference in San Francisco in the summer of 1989 and sitting in on a workshop on labor organizing. The program broke down into a shouting match between members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) over the question of which group was most qualified to lead a workers revolution. The IWW is a historical relic composed mostly of students, bohemians, and post-1960s New Leftists. The WSA, which had less than forty members at the time, is the US section of the International Workers Association, which also includes the Spanish CNT described in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.
[74] It should be pointed out that there is a branch of libertarianism called “paleolibertarianism” (after “paleoconservatism”) that pays greater attention to the role of non-economic and non-state “intermediary” institutions in social development. While unfortunately holding to a rather narrow bourgeois, Euro-Christian outlook, this tendency admirably works to fills in the gaps in the reductionist materialism and utilitarianism to be found in much libertarian thought. For a critique of paleolibertarianism, see my “Why I Am Not a Cultural Conservative,” http:// attackthesystem.com/why-i-am-not-a-cultural-conservative/, and “I’m Still Not a Cultural Conservative,” http://www.attackthesystem.com/lancaster.html.
[75] National-Anarchists are often demonized, quite unjustly in my view, as crypto-Nazis. Actually, national-anarchism is a quite substantive outlook. For a discussion of the important differences between national-anarchism and the traditional right wing, see David Michael, “On a Decisive Break With ‘Far Right’ Ideology,” http://www.nationalanarchist.com/break1.html.
[76] For a comprehensive review of this event, see http://www.reclaimamerica.org/Pages/10Commandments/MooreTime.asp.
[77] See Stefan Zweig’s classic, The Right to Heresy.
[78] “National Anarchist FAQ,” http://www.nationalanarchist.com/faq.html.
[79] This is a point Hans-Hermann Hoppe effectively argues in Democracy: The God That Failed.
[80] Hoppe, Democracy.
[81] It goes without saying that someone, somewhere will use this passage as evidence that I endorse the particular views of all of these figures. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, I am simply trying to give reality its proper reverence. The elimination of a power structure, in this case the New World Order, automatically results in the filling of the power vacuum by the best organized opposition groups. I believe that a real-world society influenced by anarchistic ideas would amount to a collection of decentralized social systems spanning the entire cultural, ideological, ethnic, and religious spectrum, with widely divergent political and economic systems. Therefore, anarcho-communist, mutualist, syndicalist, Objectivist, Maoist, neo-Nazi, and Ba’ath Party communities might all exist within the broader decentralist framework.
[82] I once came across an interview with Foucault where he challenged the legitimacy of the cultural Marxist view of homosexuals as a social class within the bourgeois order. He went on to speculate about a type of society where homosexuals might be a social class, although without much elaboration, if I recall correctly. Unfortunately, I have not been able to locate a transcript of this interview for reference.
[83] Noam Chomsky interviewed by David Barsamian, Secrets, Lies and Democracy (Tucson, AZ: Odonian Press, 2004), 17–18.
[84] Murray N. Rothbard, “Left and Right: Prospects for Liberty,” http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard33.html.
[85] Kevin Carson, “Austrian and Marxist Theories of Monopoly Capital: A Mutualist Synthesis,” http://kevin_carson.tripod.com/mutualistnetresourcesandinformationonmutualistanarchism/id10.html.
[86] Kevin A. Carson, The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand: Corporate-Capitalism as a State-Guaranteed System of Privilege, rev. ed. (Montreal: Red Lion Press, 2002).
[87] Kevin A. Carson, “Liberalism and Social Control: The New Class’ Will to Power,” http://attackthesystem.com/liberalism-and-social-control-the-new-class-will-to-power/
[88] Keith Preston, “Reply to Brian Oliver Sheppard’s ‘Anarchism vs. Right-Wing Anti-Statism,’” http://attackthesystem.com/reply-to-brian-oliver-shepards-anarchism-vs-right-wing-anti-statism/.
[89] Keith Preston, “What Would an Anarcho-Socialist Economy Look Like?,” http://attackthesystem.com/what-would-an-anarcho-socialist-economy-look-like/.
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