Just as with their thinking, many people in the West have internalised their preoccupations, turned in from society, dragged down by a defeatist sense they cannot do anything about it. For the more individualist amongst them, representative democracy is becoming a questionable concept. The average person in the West today wants to live his own life with enough income that he can be surrounded by the requisite material goods; but he lacks any higher purpose or any engagement with the enormous changes in society which are happening around him. In his daily hermetic life he ‘makes money’, sleeps and indulges in the idiocracy that has been forced on him through watching television, some of which plays to the lowest cultural denominator and over-clichés our existence. One might think of reality TV as the ultimate symbol of this cultural excrescence. Spend half an hour watching that nonsense, and one might conclude that this is being unleashed on people to lower their IQ (it is sometimes publicly recognised that this is the objective of artificial intelligence), so that some sinister globalist project can proceed unchallenged. And so, the effects of mass media and la toute-puissance of its popular culture which both seem to wish to celebrate mediocrity should really be reconsidered.
Other symbols of cultural excrescence emerge through any number of things, but perhaps most conspicuously through the mendacity of graffiti, urinals and soiled beds sold at Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Bonhams posing as ‘modern art’. When one sees such ‘exhibits’, it would seem to suggest the process of dissolution is well underway. Such exhibits are not objets d’art, but are simply there to shock, as is the case with much contemporary architecture. Forgive me the authoritarian subjectivism. There is a mass dumbing down in the arts and the media in the West. The void is not just spiritual, but cultural. A secular, liberal modernity impedes self-understanding, and liberal thought has a near monopoly on Western education.
It is perhaps not surprising that our societies have become so consumerist when political thinking in the West now is more or less concerned with one thing: economics. Political parties are dancing to the same tune as their masters — big business. Profits come before cultural heritage, national identity and environmental preservation. Political leaders in both Germany and Sweden have surrendered to mass Muslim immigration because they think it will create jobs, even if it takes on average eight years before a refugee gets a job in Sweden.127 But, if it really is just about jobs, one might ask why Sweden is letting in hundreds of thousands of uneducated workers from the developing world when it had a youth unemployment of 19 per cent just a year ago in July 2017.128 Swedes are so ideologised into thinking mass immigration from the Middle East is a good thing, they cannot see the tremendous harm they are doing to their own society, even in pure economic terms.
Mass immigration is apparently good for the building industry because the need for new housing stimulates economic activity and increases GDP. But, not everybody wants the UK to be covered with endless, grim suburbs of crowded tenements where strangers, in clogged streets, have no bond to the place. Not everybody wants to live in ugly utilitarian cities of square shapes. And all so we can say that our GDP, an indicator which tells us nothing about the actual condition of a society, is increasing. Community values and national cohesion are being flushed away in the non-stop race of frantic economic activity, the rush to add every new face to the supermarket culture. This might create a ‘booming economy’ in the short-term, but in the long-term such policies might lead to societal breakdown. Even if these initiatives led to tremendous economic growth, so what? By pathologically pursuing this pseudo-religion of economic growth and diversity at all costs, our countries, which were once breathing motherlands teaming with life, will be nothing more than cancerous, sterile ‘anywhere-in-the-world’ housing estates and identikit, soulless shopping centres full of outsiders trapped in their own cultural bubbles. Places are becoming homogeneous, and perhaps ultimately interchangeable — a horrendous thought. The visible has replaced the invisible of indigenous cultures, and the cultural explorer is left to eke out the diminishing locus of ‘otherness’.
We have to start confronting these unpopular truths, to realise that what matters is preservation and conservation (not growth). Conservatism (meant here in the British sense, and not in the sense of American religious conservatism) must concern itself again with ‘conserving’. As a political philosophy, it has lost its way, strayed too far from its roots and original meaning. Some Conservatives nowadays are so liberalised, they have discarded many of these responsibilities. They are not ‘conserving’ anything, and might even consider it anathema to attempt to do so. As I have argued previously, conservatism must rekindle the conservation ethos, and start conserving our social and ecological inheritance. We cannot continue to absolutise the liturgy of economic growth as so many Conservatives do. Growth can be cancerous, and this is indeed one of its dictionary meanings.
There must be principles of higher order by which we can organise our society. These are nowhere to be found amongst the données of liberalism. There must be inner change to overcome the prevailing state of doubt, and sense of indeterminacy. To converge every single issue and interest on the economic plane and to perceive work as the perennial ‘sacred cow’ is demonic. Evola (2002: 74) wrote about the hegemony of work and the need to regain inner freedom. He said: ‘action, not work is what is performed by the leader. […] In the present economic civilisation, even action is increasingly attributed to the action of “work”’. The Evolian critique of society and the need to restore a hierarchy or sovereignty of values applies more today than ever before. Inner freedom and strength is required to stand against the inexorable current, the wave of changes crashing on our shores. Cultural values must take priority over the economy. Reflecting this Evolian spirit, Putin is not afraid to defend the sovereignty of values when he speaks of Russians being the embodiment of the highest moral values. By this he inspires the Russian psyche to look beyond the personal yardsticks of success in the West which are defined so frequently by an inward-looking, individualistic materialism.
Putin likes to remind Russians of their deeper sense of patriotism, sense of sacrifice, honour and generosity of spirit. He criticises what he rightly perceives to be Western ‘quasi-values’. He wishes to protect Russians from the Western cultural hegemony which has become rather aggressive. As he has said publicly: ‘Without a sense of tradition and the values that come with it, society begins to decay’.129 His language is Evolian in this regard. He evokes Berdyaev’s conservatism, defined in his own words as the kind of ‘conservatism that does not get in the way of moving forward and upward, but does prevent from sliding backwards and downwards’.130
In times of cultural insecurity, we might learn from a much-needed rapprochement with this Russian spirit. We might begin by not prefacing every attempt at being strong by saying ‘I am sorry’. Young people would benefit from a splash of Spartan stoicism and an ingratiating smile, not pity and ontological malevolence. Linguistic norms are such that we are left apologising for any view that does not reflect the pervasive liberal ideology by saying: ‘I am not a racist, but…’; ‘I am not Islamophobic, but…’. We have been taught to police prejudice in our minds. Yet, as a nation or an ‘economic zone’, if the globalist liberals have their way, we will only go backwards with such feeble, policed thinking and spiritual defeat. We must transcend this impartiality of administered public opinion and break free from the rhetoric. To put an end to this policed thinking would require changes to hate-speech jurisdiction, a reformed and re-balanced ‘old media’, an abandonment of the ‘diversity religion’ in the public sector and totally new principles of education.
Fortunately, to some other leaders, this is obvious. If one is looking for common sense, one needs to go further east. Here, the former Communist countries were spared the decadent liberalism that has had such a negative impact on the West. Despite religion having been effectively closed down in Russia during the Soviet period, today these countries celebrate largely Chr
istian values, and are anxious to preserve their cultural identity in the face of what they perceive to be a threat. The Patriarch Kirill of Moscow (2011: 7-10) has written of how we must be free to critique liberalism, and not just from a theological standpoint. If one cannot even critique liberalism, then one is clearly living in an ideological ghetto.
Fico, the former Prime Minister of Slovakia, said in January 2015: ‘We [Slovakia] will not tolerate mass Muslim immigration and building of mosques’.131 But short of building a wall, it is difficult to see how they will stop this, as the Slovaks are members of the EU and the Schengen Area. Prime Minister Fico spoke out against multiculturalism, calling it a ‘failed project’. He stated that his country is first and foremost Catholic, then it is Lutheran; and thus he cannot accept 300,000 Muslims ‘who want to build mosques all over the place’.132 He was not prepared to subject his country to the kind of dramatic and irreversible cultural shift that Brussels bureaucrats are anxious to bring about. Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia have not been subjected to incessant political correctness. Ironically for ex-Soviet countries perhaps, they enjoy the privilege that we once had of being able to speak their minds without having to worry about cultural grammar. In the West, we have compromised this terribly important freedom.
Another example of somebody who is prepared to speak up for his country (and not discard a national identity established over the course of centuries in the name of globalism) is Prime Minister Orbán of Hungary. In his State of the Nation address in 2015, he rejected multiculturalism, saying: ‘Europe is facing questions which can no longer be answered within the framework of liberal multiculturalism’.133 He is one of the very few politicians (whose country is in the EU) to push the boundaries of political correctness from within the system. Orbán continues: ‘Europe has built a wall of taboos and dogmas around itself’. Bravely, he says: ‘We decided to face the barrage of unfair attacks and accusations, and also let go of the dogma of political correctness’. It would be unthinkable for a leader of a Western European nation to say this, but it could not be more accurate. The conservative Hungarian leader has chosen the route of common sense, and has thus stayed faithful to the wishes of his electorate. There are many reasons to criticise Orbán, but he has at least grasped the problem of liberalist modernity: its totalitarian temper. He continues: ‘Liberal politics only ever recognises two kinds of opinion: its own and the wrong one. […] As far as I see it, Hungarian people are by nature politically incorrect — in other words, they have not yet lost their common sense’.134
Putin and other leaders beyond Europe seem to see the world for what it is. He can see that militant Islam is trying to split our societies. Putin made it clear in his address to the Duma in February, 2013 that minorities who want to live in Russia should speak Russian and respect Russian laws, and if they want to practice shari’ah law, they should leave.135 He went onto say that Russia must learn from the ‘suicides’ of America, England, Holland and France. If we are to defeat militant Islam, the UK will need a Putin and not a Chamberlain. Suicide is the right word because the West has actively chosen this path of cultural repudiation.
The West could learn much from these leaders. Russia has found its King, the true voice of conservatism, and broken free from its ideological vacuum. We must now fight for our respective nations, take back the powers from the European bureaucrats and globalists, and preserve our cultural heritage. We must send unambiguous messages like this to people who want to dismantle our societies. To do this, we will need our King, somebody who can show how a cultural and political life can have a higher value, a meaning that transcends the pure satisfaction of private desires. Transcending is knowing, placing thought in a meta-, trans-, über- sphere, as Heidegger would have said.
Putin is the boss (the vozhd) and passionately defends the values of his nation, and for this he is loved in Russia. He will not subscribe to the self-imposed cultural stagnation of the West, but wishes instead to promote a patriotic consciousness reconciling ethnic and civic identity into a singular, pro-Russian allegiance. His opinions are welcome in a country where conservative thinking is inherently popular and linked to respect for established religions. He understands that political correctness and the instrumentalisation of ‘liberal’ identity politics is a reductionist discourse with execrable consequences.
The EU bureaucrats and leaders of the West look spineless and pathetic in comparison, wrapped up in their politically correct doublespeak. If they were to put aside the political correctness, as Trump, Farage and others have done, the Brussels politicians might find they become slightly more popular amongst the electorate that they claim to represent. The liberal media in the West responds to politicians that speak the truth and tell the electorate how things really are by labelling them ‘populist’. And, then they employ the familiar technique of reprimanding an opponent with the normal barrage of -isms etc. to disenfranchise him and close down the debate. And we are left in a pool of lies and ideologised doublespeak, distorting and obfuscating the beclouded reality.
In a speech in September 2013 at the Valdai Club, President Putin commented that ‘Euro-Atlantic states have taken the path of denying or rejecting their own roots, including their Christian roots which form the basis of Western civilisation’.136 The implication is that we all, that is every society, need a sobornost (‘a spiritual community that engenders social harmony’). Every Briton, Swede and American listening to President Putin must know, in those scarce, private, ideology-free moments, that he is absolutely correct. Here is a man, one of the very few statesmen, that understands what is happening in the West. He goes on to say:
In these countries, the moral basis and any traditional identity are being denied — national, religious, cultural and even gender identities are being denied or relativised. […] And these countries try to force this model onto other countries, globally. […] Without the moral values that are rooted in Christianity and other world religions, without rules and moral values which have formed and developed over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity.
What Putin is doing is dialectical. He refuses to allow Russia’s past to cloud its future. He will not allow Russians to adopt the nihilistic, defeatist tact that we have seen in Sweden. In this respect at least, Putin is the face of what conservatism should be today. Blair — surely the most hated and repugnant man in Britain — and his fellow Soros-funded EU cronies are the face of meta-political malaise.
In his infamous 2009 address to the UN General Assembly, Colonel Gaddafi makes some extraordinarily judicious comments. He tells the European nations that they should pay 7 trillion dollars for the colonisation of Africa, or they might face mass immigration.137 Ironically, this effectively happened when in 2016 the EU paid Turkey 6 billion euros as a bribe to stop President Erdoğan letting Syrian refugees into Europe. In return for turning the refugee tap, Turkey was promised EU accession talks and very large amounts of cash. This happened at a time when Turkey is clearly sliding into dictatorship, with the State assuming control of the media and the freedom of speech being suppressed. A few months later, there was a coup attempt. Turkey, a country that houses some of the US’ nuclear weapons, is now, like France, under a state of emergency rule. Erdoğan is currently using these powers to arrest anybody that opposes his dictatorial ambitions.
The mass immigration that Gaddafi spoke of is what Greenhill (2010) neatly called ‘weapons of mass immigration’, and Greenhill shows in her book how liberal democracies are very vulnerable to such unconventional forms of coercion because they have codified commitments to human rights through instruments such as the 1948 Human Rights Declaration, the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol. These conventions place certain legal obligations on states to meet the responsibilities they impose. There are many such case studies of political leaders attempting to bring about destabilisation through mass immigration: Cuba in the 1970s when Castro threatened to use immigration as a weapon; Milošević in Serbi
a in 1999 during the Kosovo conflict.
Significant cross-border movements create severe ethical difficulties for liberal democracies. In such situations, liberalism is a weakness and prevents countries from making a swift, appropriate response. Human Rights Conventions become a hindrance, a national burden. Aware of this conflict, the likes of Gaddafi, Milošević, Castro and Assad have exploited it to the full. With an unfeasible EU open-borders policy, this liberalism will be surely abused to such an extent that the open-borders policy will have to be reversed in the face of civil unrest and a breakdown of the nation-state. This is what is beginning to happen.
In subsequent speeches and interviews, Gaddafi threatened to ‘turn Europe black’, just as Raspail (1973: 50) predicted would happen in his prescient novel The Camp of the Saints:
There’s no Third World. No, not anymore. That’s only a phrase you coined to keep us in our place. There’s one world, only one, and it’s going to be flooded with life, submerged. This country of mine is a roaring river. A river of sperm. Now, all of a sudden, it’s shifting course, my friend, and heading west…
It is difficult to believe that this book was written in 1973, and not 2015. Both Gaddafi and Raspail knew very well what the future would hold.
As Viktor Orbán recognises, liberalism has resulted in an intellectual hegemony which is strangling the West, depriving it of meaningful dialogue and any fruitful exchange of ideas. He inveighs against liberalism for presuming to speak for the whole of humanity. Freedom of speech is one thing, but one would surely not want to dispense with freedom of opinion as well. This late liberalist modernity appeals to an unthinking person, internationally mobile with an iPhone but with little grip on political reality or emotional investment anywhere. It is no doubt politically incorrect to call parts of the population ‘unthinking’, even if one will find the same dichotomy in the Bible (Psalms, 92: 6-8; Jude 1:10; Peter 2:12). In reality, it is unquestionable that the world can be divided up into those people who are constantly preoccupied with the problems of the world, and think critically and philosophically about a whole swamp of issues, and those who simply seldom stop to consider the world they live in, who they are or where they come from. Perhaps because they are too busy just surviving, trying to get through in their lives.
The Ideology of Failure Page 23
