Why We Fight, page 25
In its own land, a healthy people demands an ethnocultural monopoly. According to the Greeks, a harmonious (‘organic’) City presupposes the cohabitation of slight differences within the federating order of a larger community; differences, in a word, are subsumed to the Unity of the City, the latter being not some gray uniformity, but the gathering of natural differences — within an organic totality, within a sole fasces.
The symbolic image of the pyramid, as the Ancient Egyptians understood it, is extremely eloquent. A civilisation, like a building, is a living organism which must be protected from excessive uniformity, as well as from excessive differentiations (social, ethnic, customary, etc.), for once philia (i.e., the ‘convergence of sentiments’ of which Aristotle spoke) ceases to exist, popular solidarity collapses. The right to difference, like every right, must be limited, normalised, and counter-balanced by the duties of membership, which accompany it.
(see ethnocentrism; philia)
S
Sacred
The quality of transcendent collective values that are capable, through ritual and symbol, of provoking a psychological mobilisation.
The sacred transcends the self, it appeals to a superior dimension, whatever the belief one holds. It may or may not be imbued with the ‘divine’ and it’s attached to no single, particular religion.
Our present civilisation is desacralised, disenchanted; it has distorted and recuperated the sacred in the form of simulacra — and through a mix of New Age superstitions, whose inspirations are American in origin.
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The drama of contemporary Europe — the cause of her present crisis and ethno-demographic decline — is in large part attributable to the absence of the sacred. In the face of a conquering Islam, one of whose motor forces is religious faith (however one might judge it), Europeans lack an inner collective motivation; their only recourses are immanent ones: the desire to maximise consumption, and to acquire signs of wealth. In themselves, these aspirations are perfectly natural (the quest for material opulence is an integral part of human psychology), but alone they cannot breathe life into a people or a culture.
Let’s take the case of contemporary ‘art’: it’s obvious degeneracy stems not just from the fact that artists lack ‘talent’ or aesthetic ‘know-how’, but from the fact that they no longer want these qualities, given that they no longer possess a sense of the sacred — that is, the inspiration, the interior flame that connects them to the invisible. This sacred deficit comes from the regnant bourgeois spirit, but it’s also due to the abandonment of Christianity’s sacred dimension (Protestant or post-conciliar), handed down by medieval Catholicism, itself the heir of paganism.
The essential elements of the sacred are the cult of the dead, of ancestors, and the various rites and rituals accompanying the different stages of human life (birth, death, etc.) — that is, everything that makes the perpetuation of a people’s lineage transcendent. In this sense, the sacred is not some ethereal notion, radically separated from the ‘profane’, but rather a vertical link between life, biological reality, and what, faute de mieux,[233] is called the soul.
The sacred is inconceivable without a permanent bond between ancestors, from whom one receives heritage, and descendents, who are just as important as the present generation — something the contemporary mind finds totally absurd and incomprehensible.
(see bourgeoisism; paganism)
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Selection
The collective process, based on competition, that eliminates the weakest and least competent, and that favours the most gifted and capable.
Selection concerns the natural evolution of the species, as well as the history of civilisations and the internal life of societies.
Natural selection privileges the survival of the fittest and thus the perpetuation of the species. This is the case in biology, as well as sociology. Every organisation, every system, that neglects selection is bound to disappear. Selection rarely assumes the form of a direct struggle. But it’s truly the central principle of all life and of every civilisation. The ‘superiority’ of a people, a species, or a civilisation rests, in the last instance, on its capacity for long-term survival, on its ability to overcome the snares thrown up by selection and to win the competition. In this sense, a ‘static racism’ that judges one phylogenetic group superior to another is absurd.
Selective pressures touch everything: cultural forms, the circulation of elites, as well as the traditions filtered through history’s sorting process. Selection is not an unjust form of discrimination, as egalitarian ideologues have it. Rather, it’s the motor of life. And though egalitarianism rejects the principle of selection, it cannot eliminate it. It instead replaces a socially organised selection with an unjust, primitive selection based on nepotism, money, violence, etc.
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In a healthy society, Nietzsche said, ‘it’s the strongest, most gifted who are aided’. This doesn’t imply injustice for the least able. For the pinnacle of injustice, as evident today, comes from an anti-selection that leads to chaos and to a selection based on asocial criteria, which is a disaster for the entire community. The hatred of selection was a major theme of May ‘68, responsible for the present dilapidation of the national school system.
Contemporary society raises numerous obstacles to a just selection and thereby establishes a selection based on injustice and the law of the jungle.
There’s nothing inequitable about selection, it’s the acceptance of life, of the natural hierarchy of things — following Plato, Aristotle, and Spencer’s ‘to each his own’.[234] In the European tradition, the democratic principle is inseparable from the aristocratic principle — i.e., the selective principle. A society without a real aristocracy, where the ‘best’ are not in charge, quickly turns to injustice and to the oppression of the weakest. Selection, in this sense, is no injustice to the weak, nor does it eliminate or exclude them, but instead guarantees their proper position within the social organism.
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To claim, as egalitarian doctrines do, that everyone is as gifted as everyone else, and that hierarchical selection is contrary to the principles of humanity, is, as Pascal[235] saw, a ‘monstrous lie’ — something that can only dissolve society. An absolute egalitarianism refusing an open selection thus destroys all fraternity, all social order — for it allows dissimulated forms of selection to occur — based on preferential treatment, bought privileges, acquired advantages, etc. There is no greater injustice than to deny the most gifted and deserving their place — for the sake of according privileges to the incapable. The égalité and fraternité� of the French Republic seem perfectly incompatible.
(see aristocracy; egalitarianism; hierarchy; meritocracy)
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Society, Market
One of the appellations of present Western society — in which the market (or economic) function takes the place of the sovereign function and becomes the ultima ratio[236] — the ultimate and unique horizon against which all political decisions are made.
This term is preferable to that of ‘capitalist society’. For it’s not a matter of condemning the market economy, but rather of deploring the market’s dictatorship over every other consideration (ecological, ethnic, aesthetic, social, etc.). The market can’t be everything and material exchanges can’t be the basis of social relations. In market society, everything has a price, but nothing is of value.
We need to be suspicious of the dogmatic criticisms Rightists (fascinated with the Marxist critique of capitalism) make of market society — as they proclaim their contempt for the market, the general economy, prosperity, and the imperatives of industrial power and techno-science. This is hypocritical, for the daily lives of these Rightists are, in practice, fully immersed in bourgeois consumerism. Imitating the extreme Left, they like to call themselves ‘anti-utilitarians’ — a purely scholastic, disembodied posture, typical of Parisian intellectualism.
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It’s not a matter of rejecting the market, the productive-economic sphere, and techno-scientific power in the name of some anti-utilitarian utopia, but of subordinating market functions to the sovereign function and thus putting them in service to the people, to its welfare, and to Grand Politics.
It’s no less necessary to denounce the imposture of bureaucratic socialism, which, in the name of combating market society and the ‘dictatorship of capital’, ends up creating social, economic, corporate, and parasitic feudalities not unlike those of market society.
Those who seek to abolish the market, like those who see it as the pinnacle of all things, are inclined to reductionism. The market is nevertheless indispensable: it’s a weapon in the hand of sovereignty — a means, not an end.
At the global level, market society abandons the market to its own hazards — for these markets lack governance. Hence the fragility of a speculative economy prone to brutal, unforeseeable crises, as well as the impossibility of controlling the frontiers and, for Europe, of assuring its economic autonomy. Hence also the subjugation of states to economic conjunctures (the boom/bust cycles based on the market’s temper), over which they now have no power. Like wine, the market is indispensable in controlled doses; once it becomes society’s unique reference, society is turned into a drunken boat.
(see autarky; economy, organic; liberalism; mercantilism)
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Sovereignty, the sovereign function, tri-functionality, bi-functionality
A people’s controlling power, animated by authority, justice, and evenhandedness, capable of representing both its immediate interest and historical destiny.
The sovereign function cannot be simply an offshoot of ‘democracy’. It has to have a sacral dimension if it is to assume and assure a people’s longevity. There are several historical instances of sovereignty: the hereditary monarch, the acclaimed emperor, an elected president, etc. In any case, there are no ready-made forms of sovereignty. With it, it’s necessary to reconcile the principle of popular authority and the sacred, sovereign function. The latter monopolises power for the sake of ‘Grand Politics’. It organises society and economics without overwhelming them and causing them to spurn their responsibilities — it wages war — it decides a people’s historical orientation, of which it takes charge. The essence of the sovereign function is imperial and organic, based on principles of subsidiarity: it’s no substitute for other functions, but rather pursues a people’s general interest, determining its fundamental orientation.
The drama of contemporary Europe resides in the disappearance of every form of sovereignty. The state no longer possesses sovereignty, since it no longer pursues historical goals nor does it have the power or will to act in the name of the collective destiny. The bureaucracies, the political class, and the economic forces manage a society without a head; the European Union is hardly sovereign.
In this respect, there’s no need to instrumentalise Georges Dumézil’s theory of ‘the three Indo-European functions’ (the first: sovereign, sacred function; the second: warrior function; the third: productive or economic function).[237] As I see it, only two principal functions can possibly coexist, especially in the world that is coming: a sovereign function and a socioeconomic function. Within an imperial context, the sovereign function ought to subsume the military or ‘warrior’ function. The autonomy of the latter usually ends in disaster. Bi-functionality seems more pertinent than the theory of the three functions. The sovereign function embraces everything related to destiny and will, to the longue durée — the socioeconomic function addresses the management of everyday needs. More profoundly, the ‘functions’ pertain less to their activity than to the level of their importance. In the economy, for example, there are fundamental decisions that belong to politics and the sovereign function. As to questions of the people’s ‘defence’, in all its applications and domains, it should never escape the sovereign function. The theory of tri-functionality — overly abstract and intellectual — could thus replace the theory of bi-functionality, which is more concrete and better adapted to the world that is coming.
The question of knowing if sovereignty ought to be ‘republican’ or ‘monarchical’, ‘royal’ or ‘presidential’ is badly posed. The kings of France, like the Roman emperors, utilised the word ‘republic’ to signify that the idea of sovereignty is a public service — a political ‘thing’. In this sense, the position of Marx or Maurras,[238] of Rousseau or De Gaulle needs to be criticised, for in all their estimations institutions, in the formal sense, were the miraculous solution to the problem of good government. Everything, though, depends on the state of the soul, on the people’s biological and spiritual state: a healthy people always finds the sovereignty appropriate to it.
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In reality, there’s no sovereignty that doesn’t emanate from a people’s soul, from its inner force, and its will to live — no sovereignty if there isn’t a bond between a people’s spiritual and historical nature, its ultimate source of legitimacy, and its principle of popular support. No monarch, no president, no commissioner, no general secretary, no emperor can ‘institute’ sovereignty if it doesn’t already exist in a people’s identity and longevity.
Sovereignty is auctoritas — that is, authority — that is, action.
There’s no sovereignty if it doesn’t aspire to perpetuate itself, if it isn’t infused with a superior illumination, by a legitimacy that comes not just from below but from above, that is inspired and justified by a sacred spark. The entire question is a matter of redefining and regenerating the sacred.
(see born leader; personality, creative; politics; sacred)
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State, nation-state, statism
The governing authority of a people or an instituted society as a political and territorial unit.
Whatever its form, the state — what the Romans called Res publica, that is, ‘public and common institutions’ — has always existed, except in tribal societies. The mandarins of the Chinese Empire, Roman administration, and that of the Greek cities or the Inca kings were states. Beginning in the Seventeenth century, with the advent of the modern era, the state started becoming tentacular. In contemporary democracies, nominal and functionary authorities (the ‘public powers’) are associated with elected authorities (government, municipal assemblies, regional authorities, etc.) Whether the national parliament (‘the legislative power’) is part of the state or part of civil society is still a matter of debate.
The crisis of the modern state has taken several forms in Europe. First off, it’s been set up as a protected, privileged caste (an army made up of millions of functionaries), which lives at the expense of society’s vital forces. Hence the question: does the state serve the people or do the people serve the state? Next: the state’s pachydermatous weight has become another measure of political impotence. It overwhelms society without undertaking grand projects or movements. And then, it clashes with the competing powers of European technocracy and transnational business, doing so in ways that foster both a top-heavy state and, at the same time, deprives it of power. It’s corrupted by the feudalities of the parties, devoid of an ideological project, and designed as a career-making machine. Actually, the state no longer governs. It no longer obeys its popular representatives. It no longer embodies a general will: it has lost all influence over the course of things. It’s no longer even a political authority and is not to be confused with the sovereign function it allegedly represents. The paradox, in this era of free trade and collapsing social rights, is that we are witnessing an expansion of the state’s parasitism. Given that it no longer performs its titulary tasks, it’s rapidly losing its legitimacy.
Statism is the opposite of a strong state, it’s merely a ‘large’ state. With statism, the state no longer exercises the sovereign function, but serves as a bureaucratic regime indifferent to the general interest: in this capacity, it acts in service to a caste, its enormous apparatus of functionaries. Everything happens as if the state’s primary occupation is itself, that is, the privilege of its functionaries and its self-reproducing class of politicians. Paradoxically, we West Europeans are experiencing both the increased prominence and decline of the state. As its political force fades, its burdensome regulatory, sociological, and financial weight becomes increasingly insupportable.
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Europe today is beset by a global crisis of sovereignty, resolvable neither by the impotent nation-states nor the European Union, both of which lack a political will and the necessary instruments of power. The sole solution would seem to entail doing away with all compromise and constructing, in the course of the Twenty-first century, a grand-European state — federal, imperial, ethnocentric, and decentralised. This would resume the former unifying efforts of the Roman and Carolingian Empires.
(see Eurosiberia)
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State of Emergency[239]
An event whose unexpected convulsion disrupts the political situation and requires an immediate decision based on the rules of exception.
The state of emergency, as conceived by Carl Schmitt, is the stuff of history. It calls forth the great political figures and overturns established opinions. The ‘state of emergency’ is ‘incorrect’ and unthinkable within Western humanitarian and liberal political thought.
The liberal, bourgeois vision of politics and history approaches a state of emergency in terms of foreseeability, rationality, managerial normality, and peace, though it’s actually a matter of risk, struggle, crisis, and ongoing emergency. In this respect, Robert Steuckers writes that it’s necessary ‘to pay constant attention to the Ernstfall (the state of emergency and the exception), to sudden irruptions (das Plötzliche), to the unexpected (das Unerwartete), as they are experienced, for they require an immediate decision (eine Entscheidung)’.
