It was my discovery of the European New Right that finally convinced me that one could be both a serious intellectual and a political rightist. My initiation came when I discovered Alain De Benoist’s and Charles Champetier’s manifesto for the French New Right eleven years ago. I had never seen rightist ideas presented in such a way before and I knew I had come upon something powerful. Previously, I had been more or less a left-wing Chomskyite. I had long found the left dissatisfying, particularly its victimological ressentiment and its PC bluenoses. Yet, when I looked at the bulk of the American right and saw the jingoist flag-wavers, Bible-bangers, Israel-firsters, plutocratic apologists, conspiracists, and knee-jerk militarists, I would wonder why would anyone could possibly want to be associated with that, for God’s sake? Murray Rothbard’s championing of the legacy of the “Old Right” notwithstanding, I considered the right to be an intellectual wasteland. Fortunately, the European New Right rescued me from such a narrow perception. It was from the European New Right that I learned one could be a progressive without being an egalitarian, a conservative without succumbing to vulgar economism, and a traditionalist without being a yahoo.

A major problem with bringing ENR ideas to North American audiences has been the fact that much of the scholarship produced by ENR writers has yet to be translated into English. For instance, De Benoist is the leading intellectual of the ENR and one of its founding fathers, yet only only two of De Benoist’s dozens of books, On Being a Pagan and The Problem of Democracy, have undergone an English translation and the latter appeared in English only this year thanks to Arktos Publishing. Two original English works surveying ENR thought have also appeared. One of these is by Tomislav Sunic and the other is by Michael O’Meara. If you are a college student and you want to shock and offend your politically correct professors and peers, then the distribution of copies of these works on campuses would certainly be an easy way to do so.

Because of the efforts of Arktos, more and more works of the ENR are gradually being made available in English as well as older works originally written by long-forgotten conservative revolutionary figures of the interwar era. Arktos also makes available works by leftist thinkers offering genuine insight and other writers whose ideas fall way outside the paradigm of what passes for “the right” within the context of U.S. style “conservatism.” Suffice to say we will not be seeing any of the plutocrat-funded and neocon-managed publishing houses of America’s “conservative movement” issuing the works of Lothrop Stoddard, Antonio Gramsci, Georges Sorel, Carl Schmitt, Michael Cremo, Andrew Fraser, or Pentti Linkola. Arktos has also issued an English version of Ernst von Salomon’s It Cannot Be Stormed. Salomon was a conservative revolutionary author whose success continued well into the post-WW2 period and earned the denunciation of TIME magazine in the process. I’m still waiting for English translations of Ernst Junger’s Der Arbeiter and of the works of Ernst Niekisch (hint, hint).

Several contemporary works by leading ENR writers, such as De Benoist, Sunic, and Guillame Faye have been given extensive review on Brett Stevens’ website. (See here, here, and here.) Sunic’s Against Democracy and Equality is particularly helpful not only as an introduction to ENR ideas on a more abstract level, but as a source of critical insights that shed extensive light on the realities behind some of the more important political and cultural phenomena of our time. As Stevens observes in his review of Sunic:

Liberalism dehumanizes its adversaries. According to Carl Schmitt as channeled through Sunic, the left abhors war — so it phrases every political action as a police action. The bad guys become inhuman because they are immoral, not nice, not egalitarian, etc. and thus can be exterminated not in a war but in the right-thinking people detaining or removing the bad ones.

De Benoist’s The Problem of Democracy subjects the most sacred of all modern pieties, the ideal of liberal mass democracy, to rigorous and unrelenting criticism. The only other contemporary work that I am aware of that offers such a thoroughgoing assault on modern democracy is Hans Hermann Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed. I gave Hoppe’s work an extensive review when it first came out ten years ago. The twentieth century’s two leading critics of modern liberal democracy, with its tendencies toward mob rule, were arguably Carl Schmitt and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. Schmitt attacked liberal democracy from the perspective of a traditional conservative in the mode of Hobbes or Burke, while Kuehnelt-Leddihn offered a critique rooted in a synthesis of Catholic traditionalism and a monarchist variation of classical liberalism reminiscent of Lord Acton.

Hoppe’s work is clearly influenced by and somewhat derivative of Kuehnelt-Leddihn, and employs arguments one might expect a conservative Catholic and liberal monarchist to make. De Benoist’s observations on democracy more closely resemble and are influenced by those of Schmitt. While Hoppe and Kuehnelt-Leddihn defended classical eighteenth and nineteenth century liberalism against modern egalitarian democracy and its social democratic manifestation, De Benoist like Schmitt before him sees liberalism as the root of the problem. De Benoist offers not classical liberalism but classical democracy as conceived of by the Greeks as the answer to the “problem of democray” in its modern form. Whereas Hoppe postulates the concept of a society ordered completely on the basis of private property as the alternative to modern democratic institutions, De Benoist offers suggestions that at times resemble the notions of “participatory democracy” or “direct democracy” advanced by certain strands of the Left. These contrasts should make for interesting dialogue and debate on the alternative right.

Guillame Faye’s Why We Fight differs from much of the literature of the ENR in that while Faye incorporates the essence of the broader New Right philosophy into his analysis, he also demonstrates a greater concern for on-the-ground practical politics, strategic formulations, and particular policy prescriptions in a way that is atypical of ENR thinkers with their general focus on arcane theoretical abstractions, historical interpretations, or “metapolitics.” Faye’s geopolitical outlook in some ways resembles a melding of the “Eurasianist” idea advanced by Alexander Dugin and the anti-Islamism of Western European euronationalism. This puts Faye at odds with other strands of the ENR which leans towards at least a tactical solidarity with the Third World and regards Islam as a potential traditionalist ally against globalization and Americanization.

I am inclined to regard Faye’s view as appropriate for Europeans and the latter view as more relevant to North Americans. Islam is geographically far removed from North America, and poses no immediate demographic threat. Islamic terrorism directed towards the United States and its allies is for the most part the inevitable “blowback” generated by U.S. foreign policy or, more specifically, the exercise of Zionist influence (whether Jewish or Christian) over American foreign policy in the Middle East. An alliance with Russia against both Americanization and Islamication may serve the interests of Europeans, but America would be best served by a simple renunciation of globalism and a return to old-fashioned isolationism. Indeed, domestic U.S. Muslims may well be valuable allies against domestic Zionism.

The European New Right clearly has much to offer to ordinary conservatives looking for ideas of infinitely greater substance than what is typically found on talk radio, FOX News, or the subcultures of American right-wing populsim. But the philosophy of the ENR might well prove to be the bridge that also helps many disaffected leftists to eventually find their way to the alternative right. The thinkers of the ENR have developed a critique of globalization, imperialism, and Americanization every bit as thorough and radical as that offered by neo-Marxists like Immanuel Wallerstein, indeed even more so. Likewise, the ENR possesses a critique of consumerism, recognition of ecological issues, anticlericalism and critique Christianity that avoids the shrill bigotry of the “new atheists” that at times resembles but is more substantive than that offered by the Left. The ENR emphasis on the sovereignty and self-preservation of all peoples might even appeal to non-white nationalist, separatist, or autonomist movements.

Writers of the ENR have also advanced an intelligent and sincere but measured social and cultural conservatism that lacks the “homosexual-atheist-abortionist-under-every-bed” hysteria of the American right-wing. ENR thought upholds masculine and feminine identities without sinking into crass misogyny, and De Benoist has even controversially called for solidarity with Third World nationalism against US imperialism in a way that resembles a rightist version of Chomsky, and advocated a federated European “empire” of autonomous ethnic, cultural, and national identities that is reminiscient of the Holy Roman Empire (which, as Voltaire said, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire). Meanwhile, the ENR-sympathetic Telos journal has postulated a critique of the modern liberal-managerial “new class” that greatly resembles Bakunin’s early critique of Marxism.

If we are going to build a rightist opposition in North America that is worthy of the legacy of Nietzsche, Pareto, Schmitt, Mencken, Ortega, and Junger, and is not merely a movement of useful idiots for the neoconservatives, military-industrial complex, and right-wing of the U.S. ruling class as so-called “movement conservatism” often is, then it would appear that the ideas of the European New Right are thus far the best thing going.

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).

The January 24^th terrorist bombing at Domodedovo Airport in Moscow serves as a reminder of why Russia throughout its history has dwelt in a state of mobilization. The vast spaces of the Eurasian heartland have concealed a wide array of adversaries, from Poland’s Winged Hussars and the Grande Armée to Turkic nomads and rebellious Caucasian mountaineers. War is a reality that manifests itself here with depressing regularity, and it has been firmly impressed in the Russian historical memory. From fields of battle to the dark recesses of the soul, Russia more than other cultures is defined by struggle.

And so the carnage persists into our brave new twenty-first century; this time a suicide bomber killed 35 innocents during the hours of Monday-morning travel. The attack was most likely carried out by a cell of the Caucasus Emirate, a jihadist umbrella organization. It was calculated to further destabilize the republics of the North Caucasus and possibly drive inter-ethnic tensions in Russia’s major cities to a breaking point. Retribution, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remarked, will be inevitable. But in calibrating a response, the Kremlin is placed in an extraordinarily difficult position, as it must attend to a situation that could quickly spin out of control.