The subject of European Colonialism is arguably one of the most important historical topics in the modern world, because it is heavily intertwined with contemporary issues of morality, globalism, indigenism, religion, economics, ethics, etc. Whatever your opinions may be about it, European Colonialism is clearly one of the most important epochs in human history and still very relevant.

European Civilization and its subsequent colonization of practically the entire world have laid the foundations of Modernity. So broadly speaking, Colonialism and Modernity are interrelated, and the latter may be considered as a continuation of the former. And though this assertion may be refutable on an intellectual level, it remains incontrovertible on an emotional level, particularly for those who harbor feelings of victimhood. People throughout the world are now plugged into the global economy, the global village, and the globalist project, whether they want to be or not. And this condition has its precursors in European Colonialism.

Because of this situation, it is therefore reasonable to assert that a rethinking of the era of European Colonialism will – to some extent – lead to a rethinking of Modernity. In this regard, I would like to point to an interesting observation made by Eric Hoffer with regards to the legacy of European Colonialism:

"The discontent generated in backward countries by their contact with Western civilization is not primarily resentment against exploitation by domineering foreigners. It is rather the result of a crumbling or weakening tribal solidarity and communal life.

The ideal of self-advancement which the civilizing West offers backwards populations brings with it the plague of individual frustration. All the advantages brought by the West are ineffectual substitutes for the sheltering and soothing anonymity of a communal existence. Even when the Westernized native attains personal success – becomes rich, or masters a respected profession – he is not happy. He feels naked and orphaned. The nationalist movements in colonial countries are partly a striving after group existence and an escape from Western individualism."

The True Believer, p.42

This alternative narrative to Western Colonialism is very original in that it does not portray this period in history exclusively as a period of evil and oppression, but more generally, as a period of social and cultural upheaval. It presents a narrative where Western Colonialism did not destroy traditional non-white cultures, but rather, it made the latter obsolete and unstable by simply existing.

From when Europeans, with superior technology and the means to circumnavigate the globe, explored and colonized most of the world, the worldview of many non-white cultures, with few exceptions, became obsolete. Their cosmologies, their technologies, their socio-economic systems had become, generally speaking, outdated. Something stronger and more sophisticated had come along to show them that there are bigger fish in the pond.

However, the obsolescence of traditional forms of non-White culture did not end with Colonialism. It was simply the beginning, and now, it continues with Modernity. Colonialism – as the primary vehicle of spreading Western culture throughout the world – has rendered many human social systems obsolete, setting into motion what we now know as the Clash of Civilizations.

However, it is Modernity which has dealt the killing blow. Where vestiges of local and ethnic identity existed and resisted the hard power of Colonialism, the soft power of Modernity now seeks to homogenize all national and ethnic identities by sublimating them in an egalitarian and Universalist system.

Therefore, if we are to move beyond the dangers of Modernity and "Post-modernity," it is crucial to reevaluate the era of European Colonialism, and to examine it beyond the narrow confines of contemporary discourse.

It needs to be said that the victim morality which underpins most discourses on European Colonialism creates a very one-sided perspective on the issue. It's true that European Colonialism has brought social upheavals, genocide, and exploitation to the rest of the world, but it also brought development, science, technology, medicine, etc.

Also, the narrative that Colonialism is responsible for the poverty of the Third World is also wearing increasingly thin, not only because of changing global power structures, but also because of the existence of prosperous ex-colonies. Despite the pervasive existence of exploitation in many European colonies, the truth is that the colonial system also brought trade and industry. Hong Kong, Singapore and Macao, for example, are very wealthy places despite their colonial heritage. Moreover, the Panama and Suez canals – both of which are important contributors to the Panamanian and Egyptian Economies respectively – can also be considered, broadly speaking, as products of Colonialism.

So, in any analysis of Colonialism, it is important to approach the issue beyond the confines of Liberal morality. To do so will allow us to view the period of European Colonialism from a practical and more balanced perspective. This is necessary in light of the complex changes that have been brought about as a result of European Colonialism, and subsequently, Modernity. Without an objective approach to the analysis of European Colonialism, the lessons of the past will be obscured by the moralistic posturing and skewed victimology of the present.

However, this brings up an important question. If we are not to look at Colonialism as a moral issue between oppressed peoples and oppressive nations, then how should we look at it?

My answer to that is to look at Colonialism as a perennial pattern of human behavior that will continue to exist in human affairs but constantly take on different forms. This view is inherently conservative in that it assumes that conflict, conquest and expulsion of populations will not be done away with at the Liberal "end of history" but will continue in ways that will defy the definitions set by the prevailing zeitgeist.

However, this pessimism is tangential. What really matters is that this new perspective will give all people a more realistic perspective on Colonialism, and to perceive it as something that is not uniquely European, but instead, a behavior pattern that is shared by all humanity, thus removing it from the persistent narrative of good (darkie) vs. evil (whitey), which I have already mentioned above. It will also allow us to examine Colonialism in its various forms, and not just the ones perpetrated by Europeans. Of course, such a new perspective can have a considerable effect on the zeitgeist, and will force a lot of people to recognize that despite the promises of our age, the dangers of our past are still here, lurking in new forms and preying upon those who have the hubris to think that they have overcome the burdens of the past.

It is necessary to point out also that the modern definition of Colonialism is ultimately related to Western identity. For the rest of the world, the White man is the colonizer even when he is not colonizing anything. The modern system of economics and politics, although not always imposed upon the Non-white masses of the world, is copied as a matter of economic, social and technological necessity.

In former colonized nations, Non-whites may have expelled the White man, but he also kept the White man’s stuff, along with the White man's system of economics, politics, morality, and in many cases, religion. The same thing is happening now with Modernity. Non-white societies that are "empowered" or "developed" are defined as such when they attain a certain level of success and prestige within the norms of Modernity. As such, among the problems of Modernity is the uniformity of values that it imposes upon a complex multiplicity. This imposition – like Colonialism prior to it – leads to an alienation that is not yet fully felt among many developing countries.

To put this into context, it is important to compare European Colonialism with other forms of Colonialism perpetrated by other racial groups. Historically speaking, the Turks, the Japanese, the Mongols, the Arabs and various Malay groups have at some point in history engaged in what can broadly be considered as Colonialism. Even today, we can argue that non-whites still engage in Colonialism. Two very obvious examples include the Chinese colonization of Tibet, and of course, mass non-white immigration into White/Western Nations.

And yet, all the various colonial expansions of Non-white groups and populations are conveniently ignored by the moral narrative. Even Genghiz Khan, whose Mongol hordes caused untold destruction and death, has been historicized into a footnote of history. He even has an airport named after him.

Of course, the reason why such colonial expansions by Non-white groups are ignored is that their legacies have largely been historicized. Despite Genghis Khan's vast empire, the Mongol people of today play a very minor role in the world stage. Not so with the 'White Devils.'

European Colonialism – on one level – was the expression of European culture on a global scale. And to attack European Colonialism in this context is to inevitably attack European culture as a whole. The changes wrought by European civilization upon the entire world are still very relevant today, even if most of the world takes such changes for granted and sees them as inevitable. In this context, Colonialism ceases to be an act perpetrated by certain European nations on Non-white groups or nations. Instead, on a subliminal level, it becomes a world-changing process that has culminated in what is now Modernity, one that dilutes meanings and boundaries between peoples and cultures.

Modernity is similar to Colonialism in that it imposes a set of Western and Liberal norms and morality upon Non-white societies. The complication however is that many Non-whites do not actually want to get rid of globalism and Modernity. Many Non-white groups – considering their desire to mimic Western technological and socio-economic systems – only want to get rid of those aspects of Modernity which don't serve their interests, which is another manifestation of the "Go Home Yankee But Take Me With You" Syndrome, which I spoke about in a past article. The result is a desire by Non-whites to recreate Modernity in their image, which needless to say, creates a set of very complex problems.

It is therefore important to understand mass immigration in this context. On a macro level, the breaking apart of traditional Non-white social systems has also broken down resistance to Modernity and systems based on the Western Liberal paradigm. Therefore, Non-whites are forced to either mimic Western style societies (e.g. Japan and China), immigrate to them or more commonly a little bit of both. What such responses amount to is the attempt to de-westernize Modernity, and the continued erosion of traditional forms of Non-white culture in favor of the creation of a modern world where Non-whites are in charge.

This pattern was very similar to what has happened in colonial countries all over the world. When the colonial powers became weak, those who were colonized seized control of the system of the colonizers. This trend is folly however, because Modernity is antithetical to any meaningful form of identity, and ultimately it will destroy those who are trying to control it. The answer to the alienation of Modernity and universal egalitarianism is not to change or take control of it, but to ignore it, and to return to the traditions which are the root of all differentiation.

“This is sin”, said a bloodied Muammar Gaddafi to his tormenters in a last moment of humiliation. “Do you know right from wrong?” After NATO airstrikes destroyed his convoy and forced him to flee on foot through Sirte, Libya’s deposed leader was seized from a drainage ditch. Footage off of a captor’s cell phone shows a howling rebel mob parading him along the dusty city blocks of his birthplace. Beaten, pistol-whipped and sodomized with a knife, Gaddafi was then summarily executed with a gunshot to the temple. His body was displayed as a trophy of war, and his secrets were effectively buried, never to be revealed at another farcical international tribunal in The Hague.

U.S. policymakers weren’t likely planning on the mass release of a Gaddafi snuff film. In their jubilation and braggadocio, the Libyan “freedom-fighters” ruined the enjoyment of a private viewing session available only to a chosen few within the Beltway. And so an eccentric dictator with a terrorist past and delusions of pan-African grandeur evoked unforced human sympathy as he suffered and died before a world audience. Colonel Gaddafi knew grave sin well; this was the man who ordered the passengers of Pan Am 103 blown out of the skies over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. He had since come to terms with the West, paying restitution to the victims’ families and scrapping his nuclear weapons program in favor of restored diplomatic and commercial ties eighteen years later. Yet when Benghazi and the rest of Cyrenaica rose up against the regime in early 2011, Washington, London and Paris smelled blood in the water.

On Palm Sunday of this year Charles Martel, victor of Tours, could smile upon his descendants. A small band of Franks wielding hammers again rose in defense of the West. The action was local-scale and humble; there was no smashing of the Saracen horde. Four young men entered art mogul Yvon Lambert’s gallery in Avignon and destroyed the Piss Christ, a world-famous image of a crucifix submerged in a jar of urine (It had previously been attacked in Australia; the coup de grace fell to the French). Their raid does nothing to shift the odds against traditionalists- it is rather an emblem of resistance, akin to stealing a general’s banner from the enemy camp. In such symbols the struggle endures.

The story of 20^th-century art is one of subversion, the use of creative media for purely destructive ends. Painting, music, literature and sculpture were used as refined weapons in the avant-garde’s rebellion against Christendom. The enterprise was wildly successful- a witch’s brew of Freud and Marx prepared by the Frankfurt School would only accelerate the dominant liberal trajectory toward cultural dissolution. By 1987 an “artist” like Andres Serrano, with the patronage of collector-oligarch Charles Saatchi, could display his Piss Christ in America to the widespread approval of the elites. Its veneration in public as an object of beauty only highlights the Revolution’s progress.

Before the onset of post-modernity, art diverted from its original purpose, transcendence, still had the capacity to seduce. Escaping the boredom of late 19^th-century bourgeois Europe, stockbroker Paul Gauguin could cast idyllic scenes of Tahiti’s primitive splendor and indulge himself with its native women. And the bored bourgeoisie back home were captivated, at least for a time. Under Gauguin’s influence Pablo Picasso would then paint the lascivious and animalistic Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, portending the rise of a cruel and inhuman spirit that would characterize the coming decades. Fedor Dostoevsky had already spoken of beauty’s elemental danger in The Brothers Karamazov:

Beauty! I can’t endure the thought that a man of lofty heart and mind begins with the ideal of Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom…Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind, beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? What’s awful is that beauty is a thing mysterious and terrible. God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

The battles won and lost in these dark recesses produce visible consequences. In our time Sodom would triumph; rejecting the Madonna, civilization proudly set its faith in reason while pursuing desire. Gauguin would die of syphilis, and within the generation Europe experienced a new phase of revolutionary politics and the savagery of mechanized war so well depicted in Picasso’s Guernica. Traditional culture and polity in the West, what Fr. Seraphim Rose termed the Old Order, recognized beauty as an expression of divine hierarchy. Yet the forces of the new era worked to annihilate any such notion. Sic transit gloria mundi- the glory of the modern was truly fleeting, and the false beauty of Sodom would be unmasked in spiritual alienation and death.

With today’s regime committed near-religiously to transgression, there is no further need for seduction in art. Refined weapons have become blunt instruments of demoralization. The repulsive and perverse are simply proclaimed beautiful, and all are expected to accede to the lie. Nobility is mocked, higher love altogether denied, and Eros grotesquely parodied in pornography. Art and its applications in mass entertainment are best identified as profit-driven psychological warfare. In concert with the machinery of political economy, contemporary culture robs the peoples of the West of their identity and denigrates their ancestral faith. In return it offers filth and fun. The alleged consummation of human development, the Open Society has descended to a condition of sub-humanity.

The Piss Christ was exhibited in the United States and Europe for years and served as a testament to the values of the new era. Calculated blasphemy became a holy relic of “our treasured freedoms” for leftists, and American conservatives did nothing besides run through well-rehearsed motions of hapless opposition to gain votes and raise campaign funds from gullible donors. Republicans would never violate the dogmata of secular pluralism in order to defend Christianity and the Western heritage. Their ultimate loyalty has always been to Mammon, the god of liberal democracy. One need only witness calls by U.S. senators to outlaw Koran-burning, as Washington’s trillion-dollar mission to transform Afghanistan into a Muslim Mayberry could be jeopardized by one such stunt! Meanwhile our finest art galleries maintain warehouses of sacrilege and obscenity, with similar content beamed daily to the proles via television.

It is not farcical elections and their attendant theatre that will save the West; it is the strength of will of a blessed few. The now-mangled Piss Christ confirms this. How heartening it is that the men of Avignon evinced not the least concern with sacrosanct rights of expression, the marketplace of ideas, or any other regime methods of division and control. They showed the courage to shatter a minor idol of the age and dent, however slightly, the liberal order’s myth of invincibility.

A genuine Counterrevolution in the Occident will be creative, and moved by the force of love- not just for beauty, Truth and the Good, but for their reflections in our brothers and friends, our kith and kin. In all its glamour and power, the regnant anti-culture will have wrought only its own negation; so it was attested on a Palm Sunday with the defiant swing of a hammer.

James Kalb's taxonomy of Alternate Modernities is something which hasn't been given enough attention. What are the actual alternatives out there? Are there any alternatives? I find myself abundantly in agreement with his and Professor Gottfried's pessimistic assessments, though perhaps I am looking at things in a slightly different way.

Addressing Mr. Kalb's idea that liberalism more or less had to end up the way it did, I must disagree. I strongly suspect many of the Alternative Right would be reasonably happy in the world of 1913 or even 1961. There was nothing historically inevitable about the liberal program turning into the preposterous abomination it is today: a demoralizing world in which perversion is mandatory, Europeans persecute themselves and erase their own history, and the idea of tipping your hat to a lady is absurd. Liberalism could have gone in completely different directions; for example, in 1961, one might have guessed that liberalism would have expended its energies improving the pace of scientific progress and human power over nature, rather than trying to convince everyone of absurdities such as the equality of the genders. Perhaps this would have taken us in some horrible new direction, worse than the present situation where we have dildo commercials at Christmas time, or perhaps it would have been better: but it would have been different. Dildo commercials were not an inevitable outcome of a John Stuart Mill essay, nor are they some kind of consequence of a lack of Catholic faith.

We got where we are today because of a quasi-religious movement. It was a deeply moralistic movement, made up largely of societal outcasts and marginal figures, and made possible by the connivance of mainstream American institutions, such as mainline Protestantism. Much of history is made up of such movements. Most present histories of the 1960s are written by the victors rather than objective observers. As such, the events of that era are looked upon as a historical inevitability, just as the Arab Chroniclers looked on their conquests of the Byzantine and Sassanid empires as inevitable outcomes of Allah's favor on the faithful. For us to look at any of the events of the last 50 years as having been inevitable outcomes of modernity is, well, silly. What happened was Western Civilization was overrun by a host of savage quasi religious zealots, before I was born.

The present prevailing orthodoxy has no holy book, though it has its gurus, taboos, demons and saints. The way it functions in our society resembles the Catholic Church in Italy or Austria; or, more properly, communism in Russia in the 1950s, minus the fun and the gulags. Certainly, the prevailing orthodoxy as it exists today could collapse, just as did the Soviet Union—but I don't see Americans as completely exhausted with multicultural liberalism as the Soviets were with communism. The vast majority of people in America actually believe in the nonsense; many people believe in it with considerable fervor, to the point where they would consider me some kind of horrible person worthy of censure or worse for not believing as they do. Beyond that, should the Empire fall, it's worth noting that the successor states to the Soviet system had no subsequent guiding principle. They fell apart into quasi nationalistic regions with various low-level civil and ethnic wars, which are still far from settled.

The leaders of our culture committed suicide from lack of confidence. We will not see Western Civilization again without some sort of quasi-religious modern day Livonian crusade against the people who run our decadent culture. Do you see such a Livonian crusade on the horizon? I certainly don't; at least not in America. There aren't any large groups of people with the right opinions and cultural cohesion to pull it off. The fact of the matter is, you'd be lucky to live in a part of the country where anyone of the Alternative Right had the cultural cohesion to organize something on the level of a church bake sale. There are precious few who can even publicly state their views for fear of being destroyed professionally. The situation is different in Europe. There are forces building in Europe which could make WW-2 look like a pie throwing contest, but in the United States of America at least, the insanity could last for many decades longer. Certainly there are good people remaining in the heartland, and many people instinctually know what is happening, but, Tea Parties not withstanding, they show no real signs of cohering sufficiently to change anything.

While I agree with Mr. Kalb that understanding human nature and how we got to our present state is an agreeable way to pass the time, I don't know that it's going to get us anywhere. Millions of minds will have to be changed before any serious political changes can be contemplated, decades of societal conditioning undone, vast bureaucracies will have to be unmade and hundreds of thousands of minor power-brokers replaced. Who is going to do this? What large group of people with a coherent understanding of the world and human nature will be able to do it? Who will replace our present ruling class?

While Richard and others have rightly pointed out the many failings of military leadership; I see eventual military coup and Caesarism in our future. In the event of total economic collapse, the Army will still be there, and it will run the country. Whatever you think of the present use of the military, and however silly its genuflections to the false gods of liberal multiculturalism, it is the only large group of effective people left in America. Academia is a joke, the legal professions hopelessly corrupt, and the last vestiges of the manufacturing economy are mostly military. We can only hope such a coup would be led by good and decent men who look after the interests of the nation as a nation; an American version of Park Chung Hee or Lee Kuan Yew perhaps.

Mind you, I don't want this to happen: no sane person does, but I think it will happen, because Caesarism is how late societies fall apart. One doesn't need to be a Spenglerian metahistorian to recognize this is the direction in which we are headed, if we aren't already standing at the breach. One need only look at how the youngest generation is being raised: either future criminals surrounded by chaotic non-families; or coddled, drugged numskulls whose every waking moment is directed by their parents. The young today already live in a totalitarian state; I'm certain they wouldn't have it otherwise as adults. The rest of us are so cowed, we don't even notice that we already live in a police state.  Modern nations consist of many centers of power. Which one do you think is least incompetent?

We stand between the Scylla of multicultural bureaucratic plutocracy and the Charybdis of Caesarism. Which rock do you wish to avoid foundering on? What is to be done? We are doing what we can now: the political program of Paleoconservatism and the Alternative Right is the correct one: starving the beast is the only thing which will prevent disaster. In the meanwhile, we must build our communities and face the future with what equanimity and good cheer we can muster.

Jim Kalb’s critique of competing views of modernity is rather thorough, and like him, I find much to criticize in what is dissected. Most of the alternatives posed to the present liberal tyranny, Jim points out, are flawed or unworkable. Glorifying the wills of some superior individuals or an ideal community based on biological similarity or working class élan may be to retreat into wishful thinking or else to open the door to alternative forms of tyranny. And the liberal hedonism on which the current democratic managerial order is built enhances control by “social professionals” and “scientific administrators,” as soon as we recognize that hedonistic egalitarianism cannot provide equal gratification for everyone. What this eccentric but now prevalent ideology produces is having “experts” and “human rights” priests decide on whose claims to gratification are to be satisfied. The others will have to go to the back of the line.

Although Jim is accurate in his comments on these late modernist schemes, he is nonetheless short on solutions. It is all good and well to mention the soul and Christian transcendence, but it is hard to see how these ideas could be made to work in the present situation. Are we to command the political class and its allies in the media, the entertainment industry, and public education to change their worldview? And even if they all converted to the religious position Jim advocates, would the people follow?