This unusual 2001 book is Guillaume Faye’s attempt at a manifesto for the European resistance, now finally available in English thanks to Arktos Media. It is also a manifesto for European rebirth, as otherwise it would not be called a manifesto.

As I stated in my review of Guillaume Faye’s other, recently translated book, Archeofuturism, and echoing Why We Fight translator Michael O’Meara’s own assessment, Guillaume Faye is one of the most creative proponents of the European New Right. He is also visibly more radical than Alain de Benoist, nevertheless a uniquely erudite and incisive mind (see here). And this is immediately apparent in the way in which this book has been organised: it begins with an assessment of the current situation in the West, with short and penetrating chapters rapidly discussing various features of European society (bureaucratism, Islamisation, museological conservatism, etc.); but then the narrative breaks and is followed by a dictionary of 177 essential terms (plus two additions by German translator Pierre Krebs), each meant as a tool or a weapon for the metapolitical warrior and political soldier. This in is turn followed by a concluding chapter, where Faye answers the question implicit in the title, and outlines—in general terms—his tactical and strategic recommendations.

Faye communicates his thinking in a direct, high-velocity prose, which, in spite of its evident erudition, and much to O'Meara's credit in the English edition, is energetic, angry, and intense. The latter, however, owes in no small measure to the fact that, while Faye may be intellectual heir to a tradition of cultural pessimism, best exemplified by the Weimar-era Conservative Revolutionary writers, he is far from yet another purveyor of doom and gloom. On the contrary: for Faye, nothing is set in stone; history for him is an open, dynamic field where anything is possible, where the unthinkable may well become thinkable and the impossible possible, if the will is there to make it so. Similarly, we must credit Faye’s rejection of antiquarianism, folklorism, and museological traditionalism: blood memory, Tradition, and race are essential for the vitality of European culture, but for him a culture condemns itself to rigor mortis when it allows tradition to degenerate into traditionalism, into a cult of the past, into conservatism; a vibrant European culture is faustian, constantly renewing, futuristic, even if necessarily rooted in archaic values and ancestral heritage. Moreover, Faye is openly contemptuous of academicism and pretentious intellectual masturbation and stresses that any metapolitical discourse that is produced must serve a concrete purpose in the real world, must find translation into action, and must aim to produce meaningful political gains.

Readers of Archeofuturism will recognise here many of the themes occurring in the aforementioned book: the fact that the modern world created by the egalitarian modernists is doomed to perish, having generated through its design a convergence of catastrophes; the fact that the Left’s conception of history as a process of continuous development and endless economic progress is a myth, not to mention environmentally unsustainable; the fact that many of the regionalist movements are nevertheless part of the problem, being Leftist, egalitarian, antiquarian, and aracial; the fact that Europe is being aggressively colonised by the poor peoples of the South (the Third World), and particularly by Islam; the fact that Islam is—as far as he is concerned—Europe’s principal enemy, with ambitions to conquer the continent; the fact that (in his mind) the United States is Europe’s main adversary; the fact that our present establishment leaders are active if not complicit in the destruction of Europe, and have made a virtue of just about everything—political correctness, xenophilia, devirilisation, homosexuality, materialism—that spells the death of European culture; his vision of a Eurosiberian imperium, purged of Third World colonisers, and comprising a hundred or more autonomous regions; his vision of a multi-tier world economy; his vision of a hierarchical, aristocratic society that is nevertheless fluid, with each man being master of his own destiny; his vision of an economically and technologically advanced imperium, where both the politics and technology serve the Volk, rather than being determined purely by economic factors; and so on.

Mention here of an European ‘imperium’ may remind American readers of Francis Parker Yockey, who used the same term. There is, however, a fundamental difference between the two thinkers with regard to the age of absolute politics: for Yockey, the United States was a European outpost, and the Jews the arch-enemy of European civilisation; for Faye, the arch-enemy is Islam and the United States Europe’s prodigal son, but an adversary because of its will to impose on Europe its system of materialist economism and its tactical alliance with Islam to weaken Europe as a rival superpower. It may seem perplexing for some to see Faye speak of the United States as pursuing an alliance with Islam, given the former’s pro-Zionist Middle-East policy, but Faye is thinking about initiatives such as the United States’ backing of Turkey’s entry into the European Union—in other words, the alliance is tactical, not sincere, and purely about perpetuating power.

This is where I diverge from Faye, with whom I otherwise have found nearly complete concurrence: like Yockey, I see the United States as a far-flung European outpost. The country was founded, organised, and Europeans; its culture is European, even if distinct from that of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Poland, or Spain—even if it has superficially incorporated some West African elements, and even if somewhat forgetful of the Ancient and Mediaeval tradition and thus primarily a growth of Enlightenment-era English and French philosophy. The latter was instrumental in the creation of the (Afro-)American system that Faye scorns, but this is not to say that, where it matters (racially), the United States, like Canada, is to be considered part of Europe, part of a European imperium. By contrast, Yockey saw Russians as non-Europeans; and this is here where I diverge from the American.

What is most refreshing, and what makes this book especially important, despite Faye’s errors, is the fact that it rejects conservatism: for Faye, there is nothing left to conserve, firstly because what we have today is corrupt and not worth conserving, and secondly because conservatism equals exhaustion, stasis, and therefore death. Following an organic view of history, Faye believes in moving inexorably forward, loyal to our traditions and blood memory but also constantly renewing ourselves, rather than being paralysed by nostalgia. Faye is not yet another critic of modernity with an in-depth knowledge of what is wrong, yet without solutions; for Faye, a diagnosis is about finding a cure, not a cathartic reaction or a theoretical exercise. Faye also leaves the field open to possibilities (‘anything is possible’, and ‘where there is a will, there is a way’, he says); he is by no means a determinist: race is important, but not enough; there needs also to be a will to power, the will to fulfil the collective destiny. Those who get lazy, or get tired, disappear. Leaving out chance, survival is in the hands of the deserving. And not everybody deserves to survive. Therefore, it is up to us to determine whether our future is in a museum or in the stars, a discredited race of losers in the enemy’s textbooks or the masterful authors of universal history.

Overall this is a fairly successful attempt at crafting a manifesto for European rebirth in the XXIst century, if probably a bit too long and too crammed with ideas to be immediately digestible. However, Faye envisions a multi-pronged strategy, with many actors occupying many niches and waging the revolutionary war in many different ways, some overtly, some covertly, each according to his interests and abilities. Therefore, he would most likely see this book not as a total solution, but as a necessary yet not sufficient contribution to the struggle. Certainly, readers of all levels will profit from it.

You can obtain your copy from here (America) and here (Europe).

 

European researchers have proven that the instigators of the grand multicultural enterprise are fighting against Nature. The New York Times reported on a Dutch study that scientifically determined ethnocentrism, the preference for one's own “in-group,” is natural, chemical, and biological.

The hormone oxytocin has been called “the cuddle hormone,” because the hypothalamus releases it during sexual intercourse, breastfeeding, and childbirth, among other times. This neuropeptide is known to create a sense of bonding with children, romance between adults, and trust within society. But new research has found oxytocin assures mankind extends sympathy along clearly delimited ethnic lines.

The New York Times describes “The Dark Side of Oxytocin, the Hormone of Love”:

The love and trust it promotes are not toward the world in general, just toward a person’s in- group. Oxytocin turns out to be the hormone of the clan, not of universal brotherhood. Psychologists trying to specify its role have now concluded it is the agent of ethnocentrism.

The finding is the result of extensive testing conducted by a team of Dutch psychologists led by Dr. Carsten K. W. De Dreu of the University of Amsterdam. Their paper, “Oxytocin Promotes Human Ethnocentrism,”was published online just days ago. “Ethnocentrism is a very basic part of humans, and it’s not something we can change by education,” De Dreu concluded.

Reading James Kalb’s thoughts on Alternative Modernities and Paul Gottfried’s pessimistic assessment of proposed solutions put me in the uncomfortable position of disagreeing with men I respect immensely. Mr. Kalb dismissed racial preservation as an intellectually weak guiding principle of social order; Dr. Gottfried warned that creating a biologically homogenous community may be wishful thinking. I agree with Dr. Gottfried that there presently seems to be no hope to be found in working through the system in order to save society from late modernity’s decay—which is why I think we should physically separate ourselves from it.

A separatist movement today would be no less practical than the Massachusetts Bay Colony was in the seventeenth century. Indeed, given the advancements in transportation, communication, medicine and material resources, the main obstacle to sparking such a movement might be that its goal would be too easily attained. The call to create a separate society summons men who seek to live dangerously; imitating the Amish in that respect does not strike most as a particularly risky endeavor. Still, if it is the best chance we have at making our ideas matter I think it should be seriously considered.

In his analysis of modernity’s various forms of political organization I’m not sure that Mr. Kalb himself has stepped outside of modernity’s perspective. He says that the preservation of a race cannot serve as a guiding principle of social order because that is not what men find worthwhile in life. Well, it is a commonplace in these quarters to say that man is a tribal animal. There are certainly limits to our sympathies but the proposition that tribal loyalty is not a healthy or effective basis for binding an individual to a community is one of the more egregious lies of liberalism. Racial exclusion has been the rule, not the exception, throughout human history. Living with people who look and act like you is not a convention that needs to be imposed on society by tyrants; it is a preference rooted in our blood. Try telling the Japanese that racial exclusion is not a healthy or effective principle; they would probably pay even less mind to that argument than the Israelis.

What Mr. Kalb apparently misses is the extent to which culture is shaped by human biology. Culture is an “extended phenotype”: different races will produce different cultures even given the same environmental conditions. This is why a degree of racial purity is vital for cultural homogeneity and its preservation. As Sam Francis famously said,

The civilization that we as whites created in Europe and America could not have developed apart from the genetic endowments of the creating people.

That statement has powerful implications which should not be dismissed as intellectually weak. Most whites may not rank preserving their race as a personal priority but most will admit that they do not wish to see America look more like Mexico.

Furthermore, is holding that the guiding principles of social order need to be based on what men find worthwhile in life not the liberal perspective in essence? What men find worthwhile has shallower roots than I think Mr. Kalb supposes. Religion is a natural phenomenon but it is not a universal need. We should not underestimate how much of what we value in life is shaped by those we consider moral authorities. Indeed, a basic problem is that we lack the kind of noble and charismatic leader whose moral authority commands the attention of a significant number of men; we have not heard a convincing political leader tell us that the preservation of the tribe is a worthwhile duty in a long time. (Jared Taylor would be a worthy candidate.) Pericles did not ask men what they thought was worthwhile in life: He told them their duties and they found honor in fulfilling them.

Now, it may be worth making a distinction between tribalism as a guiding principle and tribalism as a founding principle. Tribalism makes no sense as a guiding principle for a society that seeks to be more than one dimensional and in a world where men depend on people whom they will never meet for nearly all of their material needs; but we should not discount it as a founding principle. From there it follows that to preserve what has been founded is to be assumed.

One of the most significant characteristics exhibited by those of us who are adherents or fellow travelers of the Alternative Right is our capability of thinking about or discussing matters of race and immigration in a rational and open-minded manner. This distinction, as much as any other, is what separates us from our rivals on the Left and among the ranks of the mainstream "Right." For instance, most of us would probably agree that the overwhelming majority of anti-discrimination legislation of the kind that has been enacted over the past fifty years should be repealed. This stance ensures a pariah status for our camp in polite society. Yet our general opposition to discrimination prohibition serves to establish us as the vanguard of those seeking to fully uphold the venerable principle of freedom of association, supposedly one of those cherished classically liberal liberties along with the freedoms of religion and speech, due process and trial by jury, and so forth.

Whenever I have defended "freedom to discriminate" to the usual suspects-liberals, necons, left-libertarians, supposed "conservatives"-the frequent reaction is not unlike what I might expect to receive if I were defending gang rape or pedophilia. But the taboo nature of this issue should not inhibit us from confronting it with neither fear nor favor. Liberal propaganda not withstanding, the actual historical record of multiracial societies is not a pleasant one. The near-universal norm in such societies is that the ruling classes maintain political control by playing off different ethnic populations against others. Consequently, some populations are relegated to the status of second class citizens (or worse), or civil peace becomes impossible to maintain and horror emerges (see India/Pakistan 1947, Rwanda 1994 or the former Yugoslavia 1992).

An article on the BBC website on 9 March proved me to have been right in some precocious predictions, but it is not false modesty to say that I would much rather have been proved wrong.

Seven militant Muslims, originally 'asylum-seekers' from Yemen and Morocco (the Irish Times says differently) but now living legally in Ireland have been arrested on suspicion of plotting to murder a Swedish cartoonist called Lars Vilks, who in 2007 depicted Mohammed (I'll skip the now almost-obligatory "Prophet" prefix) with the body of a dog. According to the Gardaí, several of the suspects were in contact with Colleen Renee LaRose, America's "Jihad Jane". Five of these excitable, unintelligent types were arrested in Waterford and two in Cork, two places I once knew well.