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Endzeiten: Die Balkanisierung Europas und Jüngers Anarch Hier & Jetzt (Ausgabe 18; Frühjahr 2012) http://www.hier-und-jetzt-magazin.de/

Hier & Jetzt (Ausgabe 18; Frühjahr 2012)

www.hier-und-jetzt-magazin.de

Dr. Tomislav Sunic

Das Wort „Endzeiten“ erinnert an die biblischen Voraussagen über einen linearen Zeitverlauf, der in ein apokalyptisches Ende der Welt einmünden soll. Diese Idee ist typisch für den Offenbarungsmenschen, dessen Denken aus semitischen Quellen gespeist wird: „Dann sah ich einen neuen Himmel und eine neue Erde. Der erste Him­mel und die erste Erde waren verschwunden, und das Meer war nicht mehr da. Ich sah, wie die Heilige Stadt, das neue Jerusalem, von Gott aus dem Himmel herabkam“ (Offb. 21,1-4).

Schicksalszeit und lineare Zeit

Heute offenbart sich dieser „semitische Geist“ im Glauben an ständigen wirtschaftlichen Fortschritt und dessen ideologischen Ablegern: Kommunismus und Liberalismus. Doch man begegnet auch im europäischen Erbe dem Begriff der Endzeiten, obgleich die europäischen Endzeiten seit immer zyklischer Natur gewesen sind. In seinem Werk beschreibt Ernst Jünger die Schicksalszeiten im Gegensatz zu heutigen technokratischen, geradlinigen und meßbaren Zeiten. Kann es für Europäer noch schlimmer werden, als es schon ist? „Das Schicksal darf geahnt, gefühlt, gefürchtet, aber es darf nicht gewußt werden. Verhielte es sich anders, so würde der Mensch das Leben eines Gefangenen führen, der die Stunde seiner Hinrichtung kennt“.1

Für viele Menschen in Osteuropa – und besonders für die Systemkritiker – war einst das kommunistische System das Sinnbild der Endzeiten, das nachfolgende Spätzeiten unbedingt ausschließen sollte. Der Zeitverlauf schien im Kommunismus für immer verriegelt. Nach der Katastrophe von 1945 waren viele intelligente Europäer der Ansicht, daß nicht nur das Ende einer* Welt hereingebrochen war, sondern das Ende der Welt schlechthin. Für postmoderne Europäer stellt sich nun die Frage: Wo liegen die lokalen europäischen Endzeiten und wo liegt die globale Endzeit? Vielleicht sind die europäischen Endzeiten schon lange vorbei – und vielleicht sind alle Europäer schon seit Jahrzehnten tief im genetischen Verfall begriffen. Vielleicht sind Europäer am Ende schon etwas, das diesen Namen gar nicht mehr verdient? Das Problem für Europäer liegt in der richtigen Benennung der heutigen Systemzeiten, die zwar, wenn in großem historischem Zeitraum gesehen, keine Rolle spielen, aber deren peinliche Dauer für ein Menschenalter eine Ewigkeit bedeutet. Wie sollen wir diese Zeit bewerten?

Die Zeitwahrnehmung, besonders im Ernstfall, wird am besten auf dem Balkan bemessen, einem Teil Europas, der ständig den großen tektonischen Einflüssen ausgesetzt ist. Balkanisierung ist nicht nur eine Frage geopolitischer Entortung. Balkanisierung heißt auch: eine geistesgeschichtliche Entartung, wobei sich verschiedene politische Identitäten vermischen und ständig von anderen Identitäten ersetzt werden. Jedoch, angesichts der heranrückenden Katastrophen, kann jede Balkanisierung auch ein scharfes Überlebenstalent hervorrufen. Dieses Talent kann man nur als gelassener Einzelgänger ohne irgendwelche politischen Verbindungen mit der heutigen Welt üben. Wenn nötig, sollte man, wie es seit Jahrhunderten auf dem Balkan ist üblich ist, als Bauer leben, aber im Notfall auch schnell zur Waffe greifen können.

Die zwei Seiten der Balkanisierung

Heute jedoch gibt es zwei verschiedene Seiten der Balkanisierung. Auf der einen Seite gibt es in Europa noch immer den abgenutzten Haß zwischen artverwandten Europäern. Auf der anderen Seite kann man in ganzem Europa die herankommenden Kleinkriege mit Nichteuropäern als eine Art Neubalkanisierung betrachten. Im Lichte der ständigen Völkerwanderungen aus der Dritten Welt in der Richtung Europas sind alle Europäer Balkanesen geworden oder sollten sogar Balkanesen sein: Nicht unbedingt im negativen Sinne, sondern auch im positiven Überlebenssinne. Wer inmitten der wilden Tiere lebt, muß auch selbst ein Tier werden. Wie der italienische Soziologe, Vilfredo Pareto, treffend vor einhundert Jahren prophezeit hat: „Wer zum Lamm wird, findet bald einen Wolf, der einen auffrißt.“.2

Balkanisierung und interethnische Kleinkriege in Europa scheinen unvermeidlich zu sein, obgleich wir noch nicht wissen, welche Gestalt diese Balkanisierung und Kleinkriege annehmen werden. Man sollte sich wieder an den merkwürdigen Charakter des Anarchs von Ernst Jünger aus seinem Roman Eumeswil* erinnern. Der Protagonist Martin Venator alias Anarch, lebt in der multikulturellen Kasbah sein Doppelleben; er ist kein Rebell, kein Dissident und hat sich auch sehr gut ins System eingefügt. Jedoch in seinem Versteck hat er neben seinen Büchern auch Waffen. Er haßt das System. Jüngers Roman kann auch als Bildungsroman für die heutigen Generationen der jungen Europäer gelten, ähnlich dem jüngsten Balkankrieg, der auch eine didaktische Rolle für viele kroatischen Kämpfer spielte.

Totalüberfremdung – Gefahr und Chance

Kulturfremde Einwanderung nach Europa verlangt deswegen von uns eine neue Definition von uns selbst. Und hier sind wir Zeuge einer großen Geschichtsironie: Unser heutiges ethnisches Bewußtsein und Kulturbewußtsein wächst im Verhältnis zu den Wellen der Ankunft nichteuropäischer Zuwanderer nach Europa. Je mehr hereinkommen, desto mehr sind wir uns unserer eigenen Herkunft bewußt. Können die heutigen europäischen Nationalisten kulturell und ethnisch eine Vorstellung von sich selbst haben, ohne sich vom Anderen abzugrenzen? Die Endzeiten setzen immer die Ausgrenzung des Andersartigen voraus. Das erinnert an die kroatische Alt-Rechte, die ihr Kroatentum fast ausschließlich auf dem Anti-Serbentum aufbaut. Gäbe es irgendeine nationale oder rassische Identität ohne die wahrgenommene oder die vorgestellte Gefahr von anderen nationalen oder rassischen Identitäten? Übrigens sind solche negativen kleinstaatlichen Identitäten, die alle Europäer schmerzvoll erleben mußten, heute überholt und nutzen den Europäern nicht mehr. Heute sollte man die Zeiten mit anderen Mitteln messen, um den neuen Feinden besser zu begegnen.

Historisch gesehen haben die entgegengesetzten Euronationalismen und Balkanismen in Mittel- und Osteuropa nie eine konvergierende Wirkung für die europäischen Völker gehabt. Sie sind schädlich gewesen und müssen deshalb abgelehnt werden. Alle bisherigen Methoden der nationalen Selbstbestimmung – wie die Zugehörigkeit zu seinem Stamm oder einem eigenen Staat auf Kosten der benachbarten europäischen Staaten und Stämme, z. B. Polen gegen Deutsche, Serben gegen Kroaten oder Iren gegen Engländer – haben sich als katastrophal erwiesen. Solche exklusiven Nationalismen legitimieren nur das neomarxistische und -liberale Experiment des Multikulturalismus. Cui bono?

Einiges darf man hier nicht übersehen: Die alten europäischen Nationalismen und Balkanismen haben alle sehr viel an europäischen Menschenleben gekostet. Was jetzt den Europäern übrigbleibt, ist nur ihre gemeinsame ethnokulturelle Identität, unabhängig davon, ob sie in Australien, Kroatien, Chile oder Bayern leben. Ironischerweise bietet heutzutage ein neubalkanisiertes Europa und Amerika gutes Terrain für ein gemeinsames biopolitisches Erwachen. Angesichts der massiven Flut nichteuropäischer Einwanderer werden sich mehr und mehr Europäer ihrer eigenen ethnokulturellen und rassischen Herkunft bewußt. Die unmittelbare Gefahr der Totalüberfremdung bietet jetzt eine Chance, das große Ganze zu sehen und die frühere Kleinstaaterei abzuschütteln. Jetzt erleben alle Europäer täglich gefährliche Berührungen mit „neueuropäischen“ Völkerschaften, die ihnen total art- und kulturfremd sind. Was heißt heute ein Deutscher, ein Franzose, ein Amerikaner zu sein, da mehr als 10 Prozent der Bundesbürger und mehr als 30 Prozent der Amerikaner nichtweißer Herkunft sind?

Kommunistischer Völkermord oder Multikultimord?

Die meisten autochthonen Europäer und weißen Amerikaner sind informiert über die gefährlichen Folgen der Neubalkanisierung, aber selten geben sie sich die Mühe, über deren Ursachen nachzudenken. Ziehen wir zuerst ein paar Parallelen zwischen kommunistischem Terror und heutigem Überfremdungsterror. In diesem Zusammenhang können die Schilderungen des mörderischen Wirkens der Kommunisten in Osteuropa und besonders auf dem Balkan nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg als Beispiel dienen, um die heutige Lage der Totalbalkanisierung und -überfremdung in ganz Europa besser zu begreifen. Freilich, die Thematisierung der Zeitgeschichte in Europa bzw. im heutigen Kroatien ist, ähnlich wie in Deutschland, nicht erwünscht und bleibt deshalb oftmals sogenannten „Rechtsradikalen“, „Revanchisten“ und „Revisionisten“ vorbehalten. Deswegen besteht auch für einen gelassenen kroatischen oder deutschen Anarch die Gefahr, daß er jedesmal, wenn er einen kausalen Nexus zwischen den kommunistischen Völkermorden vor und nach 1945 in Osteuropa und dem heutigen Überfremdungsmord herstellt, als „Rechtsextremist“ gebrandmarkt wird. Der Einzelne und sein Doppelgänger Anarch müssen daher ein gutes Einfühlungsvermögen in die Seele des Andersartigen haben und immer vorausdenken.

Im Zuge des Terrors, den die Kommunisten nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg von Kärnten bis Mazedonien durchführten, spielten ideologische Gründe, also der berühmte „Klassenkampf“, eine mindere Rolle. Viel bestimmender war ein pathologischer Neid der Kommunisten und ihre Erkenntnis, daß ihre antikommunistischen und nationalistischen Feinde, insbesondere kroatische, slowenische und volksdeutsche Intellektuelle, intelligenter waren und eine höhere moralische Integrität besaßen. Solch eine Partisanengesinnung bzw. solche philo- und paläokommunistischen Gedankengänge sind typisch für die heutigen außereuropäischen Zuwanderer, wenngleich sie noch nicht im Stande, sind ihren Neid und ihren Haß gegen die Autochthonen in einen direkten Konflikt umzuwandeln. Die kommunistischen Völkermorde nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg hatten Einfluß auf den Rückgang der kulturellen und genetischen Fortentwicklung in Kroatien und anderswo in Osteuropa. Die kroatische Mittelschicht und eine große Anzahl intelligenter Menschen wurden einfach ausgelöscht und konnten nicht ihr Erbe, ihre Intelligenz und ihre Schaffenskraft an ihre Nachkommen weitergeben.

Balkanisierung und Multi-Kulti als kommunistische Ersatzideologie

Wo also liegen die Parallelen zum neuen Überfremdungsterror in Westeuropa? Man muß feststellen: Das, was die früheren Kommunisten mit ihrem Terror in Mittel- und Osteuropa nicht vollenden konnten, erreicht die heutige liberale „Superklasse“ mit ihrer sanften Ersatzideologie des Multikulturalismus. Der ständige Zuzug von Nichteuropäern führt zum Niedergang des europäischen Genpools. So sieht man deutlich die krassen Auswirkungen der Gleichheitsideologie und ihres größten Vollstreckers, des Kommunismus, der einst lehrte, daß alle Menschen gleich seien. Im Liberalismus wird das Mordinstrument zwar anders benutzt, die Folgen sind aber denen im Kommunismus gleich. Das liberale System glaubt, daß alle europäischen Völker in einem neokommunistischen bzw. liberal-multikulturellen Suprastaat von nichteuropäischen Stämmen stets ersetzt werden können und wie Verbrauchsmaterial ständig reproduziert werden sollten. Balkanisierung und Multikulturalismus funktionieren heute als Ersatzideologie für den verbrauchten und diskreditierten Kommunismus. Beide Systeme sind bei den Zuwanderern aus der Dritten Welt beliebt, aber auch bei den weißen Linksintellektuellen des Westens, die immer auf der Suche nach neuer Politromantik sind. Der Kommunismus ging in Osteuropa zugrunde, weil er sich als Neomarxismus in der Praxis viel besser in Westeuropa verwirklicht hat.

Die Schuld an der Balkanisierung Europas und Amerikas tragen die Kapitalisten. Es liegt in ihrem Interesse, eine billige millionenstarke Reservearmee zur Arbeit nach Deutschland und Westeuropa zu holen, so daß sie immer wieder die Löhne der einheimischen Arbeitnehmer herabsenken können.3 Diese importierten und zugewanderten Arbeitskräfte in Europa haben niedrige Intelligenz, wenig Sozialbewußtsein und gar kein Gespür für die europäische Kultur. Deswegen sind sie besser manipulierbar. Und deswegen sollte man die weiße kapitalistische „Superklasse“ als Hauptfeind betrachten. Der Händler hat keine Identität. Einem deutschen Börsenmakler oder einem kroatischen Ex-Kommunisten und heutigen Spekulanten ist es völlig egal, wo seine Heimat liegt – so lange er Geld verdient. Schon der Urvater des Kapitalismus, der berüchtigte, jedoch hochgepriesene Adam Smith, schrieb: „Der Kaufmann ist nicht unbedingt der Bürger irgendwelchen Landes.“4

Der Fehler der Nationalgesinnten in Europa und den USA ist die Verwechselung von Ursachen und Wirkung des Multikultisystems: Nicht die vorderasiatischen oder afrikanischen Einwanderer tragen Schuld an der drohenden Balkanisierung Europas, sondern die Systempolitiker und ihre sogenannte kapitalistische „Superklasse“. Hinzu kommt auch die weit verbreite Meinung, daß der Islam mit seiner angeblich gefährlichen und gewalttätigen Religion der Hauptfeind ist. Man sollte hier aber zwischen Religion und ethnischer Herkunft differenzieren. Zudem sollte man sich auch daran erinnern, daß das jüdische Alte Testament nicht gerade friedensstiftende Prosa ist. Und auch wenn man das Evangelium liest, sollte man sich an den Terror des Dreißigjährigen Krieges erinnern, der unter dem Zeichen der christlichen Konfessionen geführt wurde. Aber auch sonst ist Religionskritik nicht geeignet, um Masseneinwanderung zu kritisieren. Die meisten der 30 Millionen illegalen Einwanderer in Amerika sind fromme Katholiken aus Lateinamerika, die päpstlicher sind als der Papst, obgleich sie den Europäern nicht artverwandt sind und einer anderen Rasse und einem anderen Kulturkreis angehören.

Das Kapital will Balkanisierung, da das Kapital keine Heimat kennt. Es kennt nur die Mobilität der Arbeitskräfte über nationale Grenzen hinweg. Deshalb soll der neue Anarch nicht schockiert sein über die stillschweigende und heilige Allianz zwischen dem Kommissar und dem Händler, zwischen dem Big* Business* und der Linkschickeria. Die Linke spricht sich für die Masseneinwanderung aus, da die Einwanderer für sie heute das Ersatzproletariat bedeuten. Für den Kapitalisten ist es vorteilhaft, Menschen aus der Dritten Welt nach Europa zu holen, weil diese den Interessen des Kapitalismus dienen. Das Kapital mit seinen Schmugglern von Menschen und Gütern auf der einen und die Antifas, Päderasten, Menschenrechtsaktivisten und christlichen Aktivisten auf der anderen Seite: das sind heute die echten Wortführer für die Abschaffung der Grenzen und die Lautsprecher für ein multirassisches, multikulturelles und wurzelloses Europa. Der Kapitalist zielt auf den Abbau des Wohlfahrtsstaates, da ihm jeder Staat zu teuer ist. Ein linker Antifa will den Nationalstaat ebenso abschaffen, da für ihn jeder Staat nach Faschismus riecht. Trotz des offiziellen Zusammenbruchs des Kommunismus sind die kommunistischen Ideen der Gleichmacherei und der Glaube an den Fortschritt mehr als je lebendig im heutigen liberal-multikulturellen Europa, wenn auch in anderer Form und unter anderen Namen – und dies sogar unter vielen Menschen, die sich selbst als Antikommunisten deklarieren.

Identität in den Spätzeiten

Wie soll unsere neue Identität heißen? Der neueuropäische Anarch muß sich bemühen seine Kultur und sein Rassebewußtsein zu erhalten. Der Rassebegriff kann nicht geleugnet werden, auch wenn dieser Begriff heute kriminalisiert wird. Man kann seine Religion, seine Gewohnheiten, seine politischen Ansichten, sein Territorium, seine Nationalität, und auch seinen Paß wechseln, aber man kann seinen Erbanlagen nunmal nicht entfliehen. Die Soziobiologie wird in den politischen Analysen der liberalen Medien mit Spott und Ekel bedacht, wenngleich der Anarch wissen sollte, insbesondere wenn der Ausnahmezustand ausgerufen wird, daß er zuerst zu seinem eigenen Stamm und zu seiner Sippe zu halten hat. Sollte er es vergessen, wird der „Andersartige“ nicht zögern, ihn schnell an seine Sippe oder an seine Rasse zu erinnern. Der jüngste Krieg in Jugoslawien war ein klares Vorzeichen dessen, wie man seine „neue Identität“ erwirbt bzw. wie man ein Zufalls- oder „Berufs“-Kroate wird.5

Jedoch Rassebewußtsein allein genügt in den Endzeiten nicht als Hilfsmittel für vollkommene Identität. Rasse muß immer in größerer, in geistiger Weise verinnerlicht werden. Rasse ist nicht nur ein biologisches Gegebenes – Rasse heißt auch geistige Verantwortung. Es gibt viele, viele Weiße in Europa und Amerika, die geistig total degeneriert sind – trotz eines gutaussehenden „nordischen“ Körpers. Ein solcher Körper ist jedoch keinesfalls Garant für einen ebensolchen Charakter. Schon Ludwig Clauß schrieb: „Seelenkundlich eine Rasse erforschen, bedeutet zunächst: den Sinn ihrer leiblichen Gestalt erkennen. Dieser Sinn aber ist nur aus der seelischen Gestalt verstehbar.“6

Um europäische Identität wiederherzustellen, muß der heutige Anarch zunächst den Kapitalismus demontieren. Zweitens muß er auch die Gleichheitslehre des Christentums kritisch überprüfen. Nichteuropäische Einwanderer wissen genau, daß sie nur im christlich geprägten Europa mit seiner Spätreligion der Menschrechte und seinem Nationalmasochismus gut und sorglos leben können. Gefühle des Selbsthasses gibt es weder bei ihnen noch den Politikern in ihren Heimatländern. Jene Weiße, jene Waldgänger, die in den Ländern der Dritten Welt gelebt haben, wissen sehr gut, was rassische Ausgrenzung und Diskriminierungen gegen die eigene Bevölkerung in den Ländern der Dritten Welt bedeutet. Ein Mestize aus Mexiko oder ein Osttürke aus Ankara weiß genau, welchem rassischen und kulturellen Kreis er in seiner Heimat gehört. Er hat nichts zu suchen bei den „Türken“ aus der Oberschicht, die ihn ständig ausgrenzen und die auf ihre eigene albanische oder ihre bosnische Herkunft sehr stolz sind und sich dazu in der Öffentlichkeit bekennen. Im Gegensatz dazu bieten Deutschland bzw. Amerika diesen Mischlingen aus der Dritten Welt die Möglichkeiten an, die ihnen aufgrund ihrer Herkunft in ihrer Heimat für immer versperrt bleiben.

Das Großkapital der weißen Oligarchie in Europa, gepaart mit Schuldgefühlen der Spätchristen auf der einen Seite und linken Befürwortern der Rassenpromiskuität auf der anderen Seite, sorgen für die volle Legitimität der Abermillionen nichteuropäischer Zuwanderer. Wenn die Europäer wieder eine eigene Identität aufbauen wollen, sollten sie zuerst den Kapitalismus und die Freimarkttheologie demythologisieren. Auslandsimmigration kommt dann sofort zum Stillstand! Denn Einwanderer haben dann kein Motiv mehr, in den Ländern der Andersartigen zu leben und daran große Erwartungen zu knüpfen.

Optimistisch betrachtet, ist der Liberalismus am Ende. Sein Experiment mit den abstrakten Dogmen des Multikulturalismus, seinem wirtschaftlichem Fortschritt und seiner ethnisch undefinierten Bevölkerung ist gescheitert. Sowohl in Europa als auch in den USA zeigt sich täglich, daß das liberale Experiment tot ist. Es gibt dafür genügend empirische Beweise. Nun ist es ein typisches Merkmal von dahinsiechenden politischen Klassen, in weihevollen Worten über ihre Unfehlbarkeit, über ihre Ewigkeit, über die Wahrhaftigkeit ihres Systems zu dozieren – gerade in dem Moment, wenn ihr System auseinanderfällt. Solch selbstgefälliges Wunschdenken hat man unzählige Male in der Geschichte erlebt. Die fingierten Selbstvorstellungen der heutigen herrschenden Klassen über die Endzeiten und das „Ende der Geschichte“ ähneln der Denkweise der politischen Klasse in der ehemaligen DDR und der Sowjetunion kurz vor ihrem Zusammenbruch. In Sommer 1989 noch gab es große Paraden in der DDR, wobei die dortigen Politiker von der Unzerstörbarkeit des Kommunismus schwärmten. Wenige Monat später fiel die Mauer – und das System war tot. Und somit kam auch das Ende einer Welt und das Ende einer Runde europäischer Schicksaalzeiten. Die heute herrschende Klasse in Deutschland und der EU weiß gar nicht, wohin sie will und was sie mit sich selbst tun soll. Sie ist viel schwächer, als sie es zeigen will. Der Anarch lebt wieder in einer höchst spannenden historischen Zeitleere, und es hängt von seiner Willenskraft ab, welchen Sinn er dieser Zeitleere geben wird.

Netzseite: www.tomsunic.com

Fußnoten

  1. Ernst Jünger, An der Zeitmauer, (Cotta- Klett Verlag, 1959), Seite 25. ↩↩↩

  2. Vilfredo Pareto, "Dangers of Socialism", The Other Pareto (St. Martin's, 1980), Seite 125. ↩↩↩

  3. Alain de Benoist, « L'immigration, armée de réserve du capital », Eléments, Nr. 138 (April- Juni 2011). ↩↩↩

  4. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 Vol. (Edinburgh, Printed, at the Univ. Press, for T. Nelson, 1827) p. 172. www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN11.html ↩↩↩

  5. Tomislav Sunic, La Croatie, un pays par défaut? (Avatar, 2010). ↩↩↩

  6. Ludwig Clauß, _Rasse und Charakter, (_Verlag Moritz Diesterweg, Frankfurt a. M. 1942), Seite 43. ↩↩↩

Intervention de Tomislav Sunic au colloque du Château Coloma, 3 mars 2012 LES PEUPLES DE L’EUROPE DE L’EST FACE AU GLOBALISME

par Prof. Tomislav SUNIC (écrivain) www.tomsunic.com Membre du Conseil d’administration du American Third Position Party:

Nous allons commencer par un bref historique des pays de l’Europe de l’Est avant leur transition vers le système capitaliste, au début des années 1990. Je vais brièvement passer en revue la période précédant leur usage de l’Amérique comme référent à leur nouvelle identité. Ensuite, nous allons observer comment les pays de l’Est se posent face à eux- mêmes et comment ils se posent par rapport aux nouveaux défis du globalisme. L’Amérique et l’idéologie libérale sont le phare du mondialisme et j’utilise donc les vocables « américanisme », « libéralisme » et « occidentalisme » comme synonymes. Ma méthode d’analyse s’appuie sur quelques formules de la sociobiologie et de la psychologie des peuples ainsi que sur les théories relatives à la circulation des élites, tout en gardant comme arrière fond les réalités géopolitiques.

Par rapport au pays de l’Europe occidentale, l’Europe de l’Est a toujours été le laboratoire social des élites étrangères, que ce soit les élites françaises, allemandes, russes, ou plus au sud, les élites ottomanes. Aujourd’hui, depuis les pays baltes et jusqu’aux pays balkaniques, ce sont les élites ploutocratiques de l’Amérique et les élites technocratiques bruxelloises qui sont aux postes de commande au plan de leur imaginaire collectif, au plan du langage, au plan politique et économique. Le sens de l’identité étatique est faible dans les pays de l’Est. Les citoyens de ces pays ont certes une conscience nationale et surtout raciale très prononcée, même plus que les citoyens de l’Europe de l’Ouest. En revanche, leur identité étatique reste faible. On peut chercher la raison de ce manque d’identité étatique dans le fait que les frontières de ces pays sont en perpétuel flux et reflux historique.

I. Identité par défaut

Il nous faut souligner que du point de vue racial – ou ce qu’on appelle pudiquement du point de vue « ethnique » – tous ces pays, par rapport à l’Europe occidentale, sont racialement très homogènes, ayant peu de résidents de race non-blanche sur leur sol. Du point de vue de leur « Blanchéité » et de « l’Européanité », tous ces pays sont plus européens que les pays de l’Europe occidentale. Les sentiments de culpabilité historique ou la haine de soi qui sont assez prononcés chez les Européens de l’Ouest, sont pratiquement inconnus dans les pays de l’Est européen.

Les Européens de l’Est connaissent pourtant d’autres problèmes A l’heure actuelle, les millions d’hommes et de femmes de cette région de l’Europe sont déchirés d’une part entre de vieilles habitudes acquises sous le système communiste, lequel malgré ses tares leur assurait la stabilité psychologique et une prévisibilité économique, et d’autre part, les nouvelles règles du globalisme qu’ils n’arrivent pas à maîtriser. De plus, les différends interethniques et les ressentiments envers leurs premiers voisins européens y sont bien vivants. Il ne faut pas sous-estimer les haines interethniques en tant que sources potentielles de nouveaux conflits dans cette région. Les identitaires polonais nourrissent toujours de la méfiance envers les identitaires allemands malgré leur discours commun contre le globalisme. Un tiers des Hongrois, à savoir 2 millions d’individus, résident sous des juridictions étrangères non-hongroises, notamment en Slovaquie, en Serbie et en Roumanie, des régions qui faisaient autrefois partie intégrante du territoire austro-hongrois. Vis-à-vis de leurs voisins allemands, les Tchèques portent également un pénible héritage historique renvoyant à l’expulsion de force et en masse de 3 millions d’Allemands de souche à la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. Malgré une accalmie entre les Serbes et les Croates, dans les Balkans, rien n’a été résolu au sujet de leurs perceptions hostiles des uns envers les autres. Ces deux peuples voisins continuent à afficher dans leurs medias deux discours historiques différents, deux récits victimaires différents et hostiles les uns aux autres. Pour un nationaliste croate, malgré son anticommunisme et son antilibéralisme, il est impossible d’être « un bon croate » sans au préalable être un « bon antiserbe » . Ici, nous avons un cas classique d’ identité par défaut. On se pose en s’opposant. On n’a qu’à regarder le récent match de handball qui s’est déroulé à Belgrade entre l’équipe serbe et l’équipe croate où les supporters des deux pays, arborant les symboles nationalistes de leurs pays respectifs, semblaient être prêts à reprendre les armes les uns contre les autres à tout moment. Tous les beaux discours contre l’immigration non-européenne, tous les récits sur un certain axe Paris-Berlin-Moscou, tous les projets d’une Europe empire, qui sont de bon ton parmi les identitaires ouest - européens, ne veulent pas dire grand chose en Europe de l’Est.

Chez les identitaires d’Europe occidentale et d’Amérique, l’ennemi c’est l’immigré non- européen avec son prêt-à-porter, le capitaliste nomade qui appartient à la nouvelle superclasse globalitaire. On a du mal à s’imaginer, vu le changement du profil racial à Anvers ou à Bruxelles, un nationaliste flamand allant à la guerre contre son voisin wallon. Ces temps- là, les temps des nationalismes exclusifs, semblent être révolus en Europe occidentale. En revanche, en Europe orientale, les identitaires et les nationalistes perçoivent leur ennemi principal comme au XXe siècle ; c’est le voisin européen qui est désigné comme l’ennemi principal extérieur, accompagné par le vieil ex-communiste à l’intérieur du pays. Nous abordons donc ici deux sujets différents, deux perceptions de soi- même, ainsi que deux perceptions différentes de l’ennemi: le bourgeois apatride à l’Ouest et le dangereux voisin à l’Est.

II. L’héritage communiste

Passons maintenant à l’héritage communiste en Europe de l’Est. Le communisme fut autrefois conçu par ses idéologues et ses porte-parole en Europe de l’Est comme la meilleure courroie de transmission du globalisme prolétarien. Le paradoxe du communisme en Europe de l’Est fut que, grâce à son nivellement politique et en dépit de son discours mondialiste, il n’exerça jamais aucun attrait sur les immigrés du Tiers monde. Son message planétaire devait, dans les années 1980, se rétrécir rapidement dans un étatisme quasi autiste qui s’estompa par la suite devant le message mondialiste propagé avec plus de succès par le libéralisme et par l’Américanisme. Dans ces années 1980, la classe politique en Europe de l’Est dut constater que ses idées paleo- communistes, œcuméniques, apatrides, autrement dit les idées globalistes, se réalisaient beaucoup mieux à l’Ouest qu’à l’Est.

On peut en conclure que le communisme s’est effondré à l’Est parce que ses idées matrices et ses mythes fondateurs sur le progrès s’étaient mieux réalisés à l’Ouest quoique sous d’autres signifiants. En effet, ce fut la comparaison entre le Même communiste avec son Double capitaliste qui conduisit les communistes d’Europe de l’Est et d’Union soviétique à renoncer dans les années 1990 à leur régime – mais pas au Même- Système.

Contrairement à ce qu’on disait et écrivait à cette époque, la prétendue démocratisation de l’Est fut, en effet, initiée par les communistes au pouvoir et non par les nationalistes ou par les anticommunistes. Le recyclage des anciens communistes vers le libéralisme globalitaire était prévisible ; ce recyclage fut un cas d’école parétienne où les résidus idéologiques sont restés les mêmes alors que leurs dérivations ont pris une autre tournure en donnant par suite bonne conscience aux anciens communistes. Ce n’est que suite au rejet officiel du langage communiste par les communistes recyclés et à l’adoption des idées économiques libérales que les nationalistes et les anticommunistes d’Europe de l’Est commencèrent à jouer un rôle visible dans l’arène politique. Toute manifestation nationaliste en Europe de l’Est avait été physiquement détruite dans les années d’après-guerre.

En effet, au début des années 1990, l’ancienne classe communiste est- européenne fut prise au dépourvue – ayant voulu au départ se limiter strictement à la « libéralisation du socialisme réel » sans vouloir changer de structures politiques et sans vouloir toucher à l’épineuse question nationale, sachant bien que le domaine de la question nationale risquait de devenir une poudrière. Ce fut exactement le cas dans l’ex- Yougoslavie communiste et dans une moindre mesure dans les autres pays de l’Est. Bref, le Même communiste n’avait voulu, au début en toute bonne foi communiste, que devenir l’Autre Même, mais en aucun cas devenir l’Autre anticommuniste.

Vu avec le recul d’aujourd’hui, les Européens de l’Est n’auraient peut-être pas opté si vite pour le rejet de la variante communiste s’ils avaient su que le Double libéralo-américain, qu’on observe aujourd’hui dans toute sa splendeur mortelle, ne diffusait pas avec plus de succès l’image des lendemains qui chantent. Si l’Américanisme n’avait pas séduit les masses d’Europe de l’Est par l’étalage de son monde virtuel, la plupart des citoyens est- européens seraient encore heureux de vivre le Même communiste. Là où manquent les moyens de comparaison avec l’Autre, il n’y a guère besoin de mimer l’Autre. Et l’existence, bien entendu, devient tout à fait vivable. Imaginons un monde effrayant où l’on perd la notion de comparaison et la notion de Double. Or l’Amérique actuelle, et ses pendants, le libéralisme et le globalisme, représentent aujourd’hui cette réalité effrayante ou la Mêmeté exclut le Double. Toute comparaison doit disparaître ; toute alternative, sociale, économique, doit être interdite et sanctionnée par le code pénal !

Dans les années 1990, les anciens fonctionnaires communistes étaient convaincus qu’en imitant le libre échangisme importé de l’Ouest, ils resteraient les mêmes porte-parole du progrès global économique. On a beau dire qu’il s’agissait d’une hypocrisie gigantesque — les données furent et sont plus compliquées pour expliquer leur soudain virage vers le marché libre : « Voilà pourquoi les anciens apparatchiks communistes, écrit Claude Karnoouh, tant ceux des institutions politico-policières que de l’économie planifiée, se sont si facilement adaptés à l’économie de marché et se sont complus à brader sans vergogne le bien commun par des privatisations massives qui représentent, à coup sûr, le plus grand hold-up du siècle sur la propriété collective ».

Certes, on serait tenté de dire que les ex-communistes d’Europe orientale possèdent une plasticité qui les rend aptes à tous les recyclages. Soit. Il nous faut pourtant prendre en considération que les idées dominantes à l’Ouest avaient commencé à changer dans les années 1970 et au début des années 1980, de sorte que la fameuse perestroïka soviétique avait été initiée par le recyclage intellectuel de la gauche caviar des salons occidentaux avant de se propager par la suite à l’Est. En outre, les classes communistes d’Europe de l’Est furent obligées, en raison de leur complexe d’infériorité issu de leur passé criminel et criminogène, de se présenter comme plus « libéraux », plus « américains » et plus « européens » que les Européens de l’Ouest ou les Américains eux-mêmes.

Quant aux masses de citoyens est-européens, à la veille de l’effondrement du communisme, le mythe surréaliste de l’Amérique l’emportait chez elles sur la réalité vraie. Certes, la psychologie des masses communisées est- européennes était différente de celle de leurs dirigeants, tous pourtant, et chacun à sa façon particulière, se projetant sur le Double américain mal mimé. Même lorsque les apparatchiks locaux diffusaient des slogans, pas toujours faux, sur la pauvreté et la criminalité en Amérique, les citoyens est -européens ne voulaient pas y croire. C’était agréable de se projeter par procuration sur un monde hyperréel américain. L’américanisation, l’occidentalisation et le globalisme étaient porteurs d’une nouvelle promesse.

III. Le Même et le Mime

Il nous faut dissiper quelques concepts politiques et quelques idées reçues sur l’américanisme. Le système américain, en tant que vecteur principal du globalisme, fonctionne souvent par le biais de ses imitateurs aux 4 coins du monde qui s’évertuent à qui mieux mieux à se montrer les uns aux autres que l’Amérique est bel et bien le pays qui mérite d’être mimé. Le Double donc, à savoir le globalisme américano-sphérique est, d’après eux, censé devenir le destin de tous. L’imitation de l’Américanisme, dans de nombreux cercles politique et intellectuels européens, ne donne que davantage de crédibilité à l’expansionnisme américain.

On décrit souvent l’Amérique comme un pays volontariste, hégémonique, impérialiste et messianique. Globalement, c’est vrai. Mais les décisions américaines se font souvent en fonction du mimétisme de ceux qui veulent dépasser les Américains par leur hyper – américanisme. Un cas d’école est représenté par l’Allemagne d’aujourd’hui, un pays qui doit « jouer » au démocratisme et aux règles du jeu global plus que ses maîtres d’outre- mer dont elle devait apprendre, après la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, les règles du comportement globaliste. Voici le grotesque infra- politique. Ce comportement mimétique était évident dans l’Europe de l’Est, en 2003, quand les imitateurs est-européens furent parmi les premiers à offrir leur aide à l’intervention militaire américaine en Irak – sans même que l’Amérique le leur demande. Dès lors, leur servilité vis-à-vis de l’américanisme n’a plus eu de bornes. En emboîtant le pas aux Américains, ils croient, par détour, favoriser leur position dans le monde globalitaire.

L’hyper-servilité des élites postcommunistes s’inscrit dans les pas de leur ancienne servilité vers Moscou. Autrefois, c’était Moscou qui était le lieu du pèlerinage ; aujourd’hui, le nouveau Sacré s’appelle New York et Tel Aviv.

IV.La nouvelle ancienne classe – la sélection négative

Qui sont les gens au pouvoir à l’Est ? Des pays balkaniques aux pays baltes, la majorité des politiciens est-européens se compose de fils et de filles d’ anciens apparatchiks communistes. Dans l’optique sociobiologique, il nous faut garder à l’esprit que la terreur communiste et le nivellement social ont eu pour conséquences l’épuisement du patrimoine bioculturel, à savoir la chute du fonds racial et culturel et l’émergence d’individus aux instincts primaires. Les anciennes élites biologiques et spirituelles d’Europe de l’Est dont le système de valeur était ancré sur l’honneur, le dépassement de soi, le sacrifice pour le bien commun, ont été complètement détruites après 1945. Une sélection négative s’est opérée qui fut plus grave qu’en Occident vu que l’ Occident réussit quand même à préserver quelques bribes des anciennes élites.

Les mesures d’épuration anticommunistes ne furent jamais prises tout simplement parce qu’elles ne pouvaient pas l’être. A part quelques gestes contre quelques individus de l’ancienne police politique, les anciens dirigeants communistes sont restés en place et jouissent de l’impunité juridique. Force est de constater que faire de la décommunistion par la voie du Système libéral est un non sens. Cela ne peut donner aucun résultat étant donné que l’aboutissement logique du procès du communisme devrait être le rejet total de sa matrice, à savoir le libéralisme. L’élite postcommuniste au pouvoir en Europe de l’Est en est bien consciente : à deux reprises, elle a été largement bénéficiaire des changements intervenus ; la première fois à l’époque communiste, la deuxième fois à l’époque actuelle. Les membres de l’ex-nomenklatura ne sont pas seulement en position favorable pour acquérir des propriétés publiques et fonder des entreprises ; ils jouissent aussi de la pleine légitimité auprès des cercles mondialistes — sachant que dans la plupart des cas, leurs homologues occidentaux sont d’ex–membres de la gauche maoïste, titiste et trotskiste !

La présence de la nouvelle ancienne classe communiste aux commandes en Europe de l’Est semble aujourd’hui bien arranger les institutions mondialistes et supra-étatiques car « celles-ci ne semblent intéressées que par un seul but : permettre aux entreprises d’Europe occidentale de s’approprier les principales richesses industrielles et naturelles de ces pays ». Par conséquent, les élites mondialistes venues des quatre coins du monde, sont beaucoup plus à l’aise avec les nouvelles élites post-néo-communistes d’Europe de l’Est qui sont plus malléables que les élites ouest- européennes. Le même cadre d’analyse peut s’appliquer au syndicalisme, aux nouveaux partis politiques et aux nouveaux cercles littéraires d’Europe de l’Est qui sont tous à l’écoute des maîtres occidentaux. Il n’y a eu que quelques rares exemples de volonté d’indépendance, à commencer par celui de la petite Croatie en guerre au début des 1990 et plus tard celui de la Serbie confrontée à l’agression de l’OTAN — mais ces gestes de panache guerrier furent de courte durée. Aujourd’hui, c’est au tour des identitaires hongrois de mettre en cause les mythes fondateurs de l’EU – avec les conséquences que nous devrions bientôt voir.

Les anciens cadres communistes au pouvoir en Europe de l’Est sont mieux en mesure que d’autres de s’appuyer sur les configurations globalistes. Les organisations supra étatiques telles que l’OMC, le FMI et la Banque Mondiale sont devenues pour eux des référents essentiels pour prospérer. Cette nouvelle élite postcommuniste ne vient donc pas de l’économie privée qui fut d’ailleurs marginalisée et largement interdite au cours des décennies communistes, mais des rangs des anciens cadres socialistes. Un grand nombre d’ex-membres de la nomenklatura ont rapidement acquis des titres de propriété et se sont transformés en entrepreneurs.

V. Conclusion : La Mort du Système

Le Système globaliste se décompose. Nous sommes dans la phase terminale du système capitaliste. Le libéralisme avait pu cacher sa nature inhumaine à l’époque de la guerre froide et pendant les Trente Glorieuses, aussi longtemps qu’il se sentait menacé par son Double incarné dans le système soviétique. À cette époque, son seul but était de montrer à son Double communiste d’Europe de l’Est qui il savait poursuivre le même objectif tout en le rendant plus « humain » et économiquement plus efficace.

Avec la crise structurelle du libéralisme et le rôle grandissant des unités supra-étatiques telles que l’OMC, le FMI, l’Union Européenne, de grands bouleversements sont à l’ordre du jour. On ne va pas se réjouir trop tôt de la prochaine mort du libéralisme, car les mois et les années de chaos qui sont devant nous vont nous offrir un spectacle totalement différent de celui auquel nous nous attendons et que nous souhaitons. Je vous renvoie à mes livres où je traite plus en profondeur de ces sujets.

L’Amérique a cessé depuis longtemps de fonctionner comme un État, étant donné qu’elle na jamais été conçu comme un État. L’américanisme est devenu un concept liquide qui fonctionne de plus en plus comme un système supra étatique aux identités disparates. Tous les peuples du monde sont devenus victimes des organismes globalitaires et multinationales qui licencient ici pour s’implanter là où la main-d’œuvre est meilleur marché, puis déménagent le lendemain dans un autre pays au bas coût du travail. C’est le cas avec l’Europe de l’Est aujourd’hui où le coût du travail est moins élevé qu’en Europe occidentale, où les syndicats sont faibles et où les salaires sont bas. Les termes comme: « mondialisation », « gouvernance », « flexibilité », « exclusion », « nouvelle économie » « multiculturalisme » « minorité », « tolérance », « identité » sont de mise. La diffusion de cette nouvelle langue de bois mondialiste — dont sont remarquablement absents les anciens vocables communistes tels que « capitalisme », « classe » « exploitation », « inégalité », etc. — est le produit de la logique du capitalisme. Les effets néfastes étaient prévisibles il y a bien longtemps.

Reste l'éternelle question : que ce serait-il passé si l'autre parti, à savoir le communisme, l'avait emporté avant et lors de la guerre froide ? Peut être la même chose. En réalité, comme le siècle précédent en témoigne, les fantaisies constructivistes, tel que le libéralisme et le communisme, donnent des mêmes résultats sous des signes opposés.

Le libéralisme nous montre finalement son visage de prédateur. Il est devenu chaotique et incontrôlable. Il ne peut plus se cacher derrière de belles paroles comme droits de l’homme, tolérance et paix. Le système libéralo- communiste est essentiellement un système inhumain. De nombreux observateurs -- même ceux qui se veulent ses apôtres -- savent que nous nous trouvons devant une nouvelle avant- guerre.

L’un des traits suicidaires du globalisme est son capitalisme financier. Les véritables souverains d’aujourd’hui ne sont pas les princes et les politiques mais les banques et les sociétés cotées en Bourse. Désireux d’obtenir le rendement maximal de leurs investissements, leurs actionnaires poussent à la compression des salaires et à la délocalisation du travail. De fait, l'économie d'intérêt a tendance à favoriser l'investissement à l'argent lui-même. D’ailleurs, l'économie d'intérêt met l'accent sur les gains à court terme. Il n’y a là rien de neuf. Les crédits faciles et le prêt à intérêt sont des outils privilégiés de l’expansion du capitalisme financier. Les choses sont devenues violentes lorsque les crédits hypothécaires ont pris le dessus sur les autres formes de crédit.

Les banques créent en effet l'argent nécessaire aux emprunts -- mais elles ne créent pas l'argent nécessaire au remboursement des intérêts sur ces mêmes emprunts. A cause de l'absence de l'argent nécessaire aux remboursements des intérêts, les emprunts appellent de nouveaux emprunts, créant ainsi une chaine de dette pour tout le monde sauf pour les riches. Le montant de l’argent dû aux banques excède toujours le montant d’argent disponible.

La multiplication des défauts de paiement d’emprunteurs qui sont incapables de rembourser leurs dettes nous a amené au chaos actuel. On voit l’opération se répéter aujourd’hui aux dépens des Etats, avec la crise de la dette souveraine. Rien de neuf ; ce scénario nous rappelle le temps des années 1930 en Europe.

Je cite, dans ma traduction d’allemand en français, l’économiste Gottfried Feder : Le capital d’emprunt rongé par le prêt à intérêt est le fléau de l'humanité ; la croissance infini et sans effort dû au grand capital d’emprunt conduit à l'exploitation des peuples, ce qui n’est pas le cas avec le fonds de roulement productif qui est créateurs des biens.

Le caractère sacré de l'intérêt est le tabou ; l'intérêt est le saint des saints ; personne n’y ose toucher. Alors que les biens, la noblesse, la sécurité des personnes et de leurs biens, les droits de la Couronne, les réserves, les convictions religieuses, l'honneur d'officier, le patriotisme et la liberté sont plus ou moins hors la loi, l'intérêt reste sacré et inviolable. La confiscation des biens, la socialisation sont à l’ordre du jour, a savoir les flagrantes violations de la loi, et qui ne sont qu’ enjolivées, car prétendument commises contre l’individu au nom de la collectivité. Tout ceci est autorisé. En revanche le taux d'intérêt reste ; «Noli me tangere» ne me touche pas ! Rührmichnichtan”. ( Kampf gegen diei Hochfinanz, Munich, 1935)

Nous n’avons qu’à lire les ouvrages des années 1920 pour voir que ce sont les prêts hypothécaires et les prêts à intérêt dont on nous rebat les oreilles aujourd’hui, qui ont amené l’Allemagne à la guerre en 1939. Le système globaliste conduit à une paupérisation des classes populaires et des classes moyennes qui, dans l’espoir de maintenir leur niveau de vie, n’ont d’autre ressource que de s’endetter davantage.

Le capital globalitaire financier ne remplit aucune fonction productrice. Au contraire, il joue un rôle parasitaire. La suppression du capitalisme financier et la suppression du revenu des oisifs et des spéculateurs, ainsi que la suppression de l'esclavage de l'intérêt doit être le but principal de notre combat. Ne nous faisons pas d’illusions. La prochaine guerre des races, en Amérique et en Europe, sera fatalement accompagnée par l’ancienne guerre des classes parmi les Blancs. En effet, avant d’affronter la poudrière raciale dans nos contrées balkanisées, nous devons affronter notre ennemi principal : le capitaliste local et son alter ego, le spéculateur globalitaire.

Merci de votre attention.

EMILE CIORAN AND THE CULTURE OF DEATH, Tomislav Sunic

Historical pessimism and the sense of the tragic are recurrent motives in European literature. From Heraclitus to Heidegger, from Sophocles to Schopenhauer, the exponents of the tragic view of life point out that the shortness of human existence can only be overcome by the heroic intensity of living. The philosophy of the tragic is incompatible with the Christian dogma of salvation or the optimism of some modern ideologies. Many modern political theologies and ideologies set out from the assumption that "the radiant future" is always somewhere around the corner, and that existential fear can best be subdued by the acceptance of a linear and progressive concept of history. It is interesting to observe that individuals and masses in our post-modernity increasingly avoid allusions to death and dying. Processions and wakes, which not long ago honored the postmortem communion between the dead and the living, are rapidly falling into oblivion. In a cold and super-rational society of today, someone's death causes embarrassment, as if death should have never occurred, and as if death could be postponed by a deliberate "pursuit of happiness." The belief that death can be outwitted through the search for the elixir of eternal youth and the "ideology of good looks", is widespread in modern TV-oriented society. This belief has become a formula for social and political conduct.

The French-Rumanian essayist, Emile Cioran, suggests that the awareness of existential futility represents the sole weapon against theological and ideological deliriums that have been rocking Europe for centuries. Born in Rumania in 1911, Cioran very early came to terms with the old European proverb that geography means destiny. From his native region which was once roamed by Scythian and Sarmatian hordes, and in which more recently, secular vampires and political Draculas are taking turns, he inherited a typically "balkanesque" talent for survival. Scores of ancient Greeks shunned this area of Europe, and when political circumstances forced them to flee, they preferred to search for a new homeland in Sicily or Italy--or today, like Cioran, in France. "Our epoch, writes Cioran, "will be marked by the romanticism of stateless persons. Already the picture of the universe is in the making in which nobody will have civic rights."1 Similar to his exiled compatriots Eugene Ionesco, Stephen Lupasco, Mircea Eliade, and many others, Cioran came to realize very early that the sense of existential futility can best by cured by the belief in a cyclical concept of history, which excludes any notion of the arrival of a new messiah or the continuation of techno-economic progress.

Cioran's political, esthetic and existential attitude towards being and time is an effort to restore the pre-Socratic thought, which Christianity, and then the heritage of rationalism and positivism, pushed into the periphery of philosophical speculation. In his essays and aphorisms, Cioran attempts to cast the foundation of a philosophy of life that, paradoxically, consists of total refutation of all living. In an age of accelerated history it appears to him senseless to speculate about human betterment or the "end of history." "Future," writes Cioran, "go and see it for yourselves if you really wish to. I prefer to cling to the unbelievable present and the unbelievable past. I leave to you the opportunity to face the very Unbelievable."2 Before man ventures into daydreams about his futuristic society, he should first immerse himself in the nothingness of his being, and finally restore life to what it is all about: a working hypothesis. On one of his lithographs, the 16th century French painter, J. Valverde, sketched a man who had skinned himself off his own anatomic skin. This awesome man, holding a knife in one hand and his freshly peeled off skin in the other, resembles Cioran, who now teaches his readers how best to shed their hide of political illusions. Man feels fear only on his skin, not on his skeleton. How would it be for a change, asks Cioran, if man could have thought of something unrelated to being? Has not everything that transpires caused stubborn headaches? "And I think about all those whom I have known," writes Cioran, "all those who are no longer alive, long since wallowing in their coffins, for ever exempt of their flesh--and fear."3

The interesting feature about Cioran is his attempt to fight existential nihilism by means of nihilism. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Cioran is averse to the voguish pessimism of modern intellectuals who bemoan lost paradises, and who continue pontificating about endless economic progress. Unquestionably, the literary discourse of modernity has contributed to this mood of false pessimism, although such pessimism seems to be more induced by frustrated economic appetites, and less by what Cioran calls, "metaphysical alienation." Contrary to J.P. Sartre's existentialism that focuses on the rupture between being and non-being, Cioran regrets the split between the language and reality, and therefore the difficulty to fully convey the vision of existential nothingness. In a kind of alienation popularized by modern writers, Cioran detects the fashionable offshoot of "Parisianism" that elegantly masks a warmed-up version of a thwarted belief in progress. Such a critical attitude towards his contemporaries is maybe the reason why Cioran has never had eulogies heaped upon him, and why his enemies like to dub him "reactionary." To label Cioran a philopsher of nihilism may be more appropriate in view of the fact that Cioran is a stubborn blasphemer who never tires from calling Christ, St. Paul, and all Christian clergymen, as well as their secular Freudo-Marxian successors outright liars and masters of illusion. To reduce Cioran to some preconceived intellectual and ideological category cannot do justice to his complex temperament, nor can it objectively reflect his complicated political philosophy. Each society, be it democratic or despotic, as a rule, tries to silence those who incarnate the denial of its sacrosanct political theology. For Cioran all systems must be rejected for the simple reason that they all glorify man as an ultimate creature. Only in the praise of non-being, and in the thorough denial of life, argues Ciroan, man's existence becomes bearable. The great advantage of Cioran is, as he says, is that "I live only because it is in my power to die whenever I want; without the idea of suicide I would have killed myself long time ago."4 These words testify to Cioran's alienation from the philosophy of Sisyphus, as well as his disapproval of the moral pathos of the dung-infested Job. Hardly any biblical or modern democratic character would be willing to contemplate in a similar manner the possibility of breaking away from the cycle of time. As Cioran says, the paramount sense of beatitude is achievable only when man realizes that he can at any time terminate his life; only at that moment will this mean a new "temptation to exist." In other words, it could be said that Cioran draws his life force from the constant flow of the images of salutary death, thereby rendering irrelevant all attempts of any ethical or political commitment. Man should, for a change, argues Cioran, attempt to function as some form of saprophytic bacteria; or better yet as some amoebae from Paleozoic era. Such primeval forms of existence can endure the terror of being and time more easily. In a protoplasm, or lower species, there is more beauty then in all philosophies of life. And to reiterate this point, Cioran adds: "Oh, how I would like to be a plant, even if I would have to attend to someone's excrement!"5

Perhaps Cioran could be depicted as a trouble maker, or as the French call it a "trouble fete", whose suicidal aphorisms offend bourgeois society, but whose words also shock modern socialist day-dreamers. In view of his acceptance of the idea of death, as well as his rejection of all political doctrines, it is no wonder that Cioran no longer feels bound to egoistical love of life. Hence, there is no reason for him to ponder over the strategy of living; one should rather start thinking about the methodology of dying, or better yet how never to be born. "Mankind has regressed so much," writes Cioran, and "nothing proves it better than the impossibility to encounter a single nation or a tribe in which a birth of a child causes mourning and lamentation."6 Where are those sacred times, inquires Cioran, when Balkan Bogumils and France's Cathares saw in child's birth a divine punishment? Today's generations, instead of rejoicing when their loved ones are about to die, are stunned with horror and disbelief at the vision of death. Instead of wailing and grieving when their offsprings are about to be born, they organize mass festivities:

If attachment is an evil, the cause of this evil must be sought in the scandal of birth--because to be born means to be attached. The purpose of someone's detachment should be the effacement of all traces of this scandal--the ominous and the least tolerable of all scandals.7

Cioran's philosophy bears a strong imprint of Friedrich Nietzsche and Indian Upanishads. Although his inveterate pessimism often recalls Nietzsche's "Weltschmerz," his classical language and rigid syntax rarely tolerates romantic or lyrical narrative, nor the sentimental outbursts that one often finds in Nietzsche's prose. Instead of resorting to thundering gloom, Cioran's paradoxical humor expresses something which in the first place should have never been verbally construed. The weakness of Cioran prose lies probably in his lack of thematic organization. At time his aphorisms read as broken-off scores of a well-designed musical master piece, and sometimes his language is so hermetic that the reader is left to grope for meaning.

When one reads Cioran's prose the reader is confronted by an author who imposes a climate of cold apocalypse that thoroughly contradicts the heritage of progress. Real joy lies in non-being, says Cioran, that is, in the conviction that each willful act of creation perpetuates cosmic chaos. There is no purpose in endless deliberations about higher meaning of life. The entire history, be it the recorded history or mythical history, is replete with the cacophony of theological and ideological tautologies. Everything is "éternel retour," a historical carousel, with those who are today on top, ending tomorrow at the bottom.

I cannot excuse myself for being born. It is as if, when insinuating myself in this world, I profaned some mystery, betrayed some very important engagement, made a mistake of indescribable gravity.8

This does not mean that Cioran is completely insulated from physical and mental torments. Aware of the possible cosmic disaster, and neurotically persuaded that some other predator may at any time deprive him of his well-planned privilege to die, he relentlessly evokes the set of death bed pictures. Is this not a truly aristocratic method to alleviate the impossibility of being?:

In order to vanquish dread or tenacious anxiety, there is nothing better than to imagine one's own funeral: efficient method, accessible to all. In order to avoid resorting to it during the day, the best is to indulge in its virtues right after getting up. Or perhaps make use of it on special occasions, similar to Pope Innocent IX who ordered the picture of himself painted on his death-bed. He would cast a glance at his picture every time he had to reach an important decision...9

At first, one may be tempted to say that Cioran is fond of wallowing in his neuroses and morbid ideas, as if they could be used to inspire his literary creativity. So exhilarating does he find his distaste for life that he suggests that, "he who succeeds in acquiring them has a future which makes everything prosper; success as well as defeat."10 Such frank description of his emotional spasms makes him confess that success for him is as difficult to bear as much as a failure. One and the other cause him headache.

The feeling of sublime futility with regard to everything that life entails goes hand in hand with Cioran's pessimistic attitude towards the rise and fall of states and empires. His vision of the circulation of historical time recalls Vico's corsi e ricorsi, and his cynicism about human nature draws on Spengler's "biology" of history. Everything is a merry-go-round, and each system is doomed to perish the moment it makes its entrance onto the historical scene. One can detect in Cioran's gloomy prophecies the forebodings of the Roman stoic and emperor Marcus Aurelius, who heard in the distance of the Noricum the gallop of the barbarian horses, and who discerned through the haze of Panonia the pending ruin of the Roman empire. Although today the actors are different, the setting remains similar; millions of new barbarians have begun to pound at the gates of Europe, and will soon take possession of what lies inside:

Regardless of what the world will look like in the future, Westerners will assume the role of the Graeculi of the Roman empire. Needed and despised by new conquerors, they will not have anything to offer except the jugglery of their intelligence, or the glitter of their past.11

Now is the time for the opulent Europe to pack up and leave, and cede the historical scene to other more virile peoples. Civilization becomes decadent when it takes freedom for granted; its disaster is imminent when it becomes too tolerant of every uncouth outsider. Yet, despite the fact that political tornados are lurking on the horizon, Cioran, like Marcus Aurelius, is determined to die with style. His sense of the tragic has taught him the strategy of ars moriendi, making him well prepared for all surprises, irrespective of their magnitude. Victors and victims, heroes and henchmen, do they not all take turns in this carnival of history, bemoaning and bewailing their fate while at the bottom, while taking revenge when on top? Two thousand years of Greco-Christian history is a mere trifle in comparison to eternity. One caricatural civilization is now taking shape, writes Cioran, in which those who are creating it are helping those wishing to destroy it. History has no meaning, and therefore, attempting to render it meaningful, or expecting from it a final burst of theophany, is a self-defeating chimera. For Cioran, there is more truth in occult sciences than in all philosophies that attempt to give meaning to life. Man will finally become free when he takes off the straitjacket of finalism and determinism, and when he realizes that life is an accidental mistake that sprang up from one bewildering astral circumstance. Proof? A little twist of the head clearly shows that "history, in fact, boils down to the classification of the police: "After all, does not the historian deal with the image which people have about the policeman throughout epochs?"12 To succeed in mobilizing masses in the name of some obscure ideas, to enable them to sniff blood, is a certain avenue to political success. Had not the same masses which carried on their shouldered the French revolution in the name of equality and fraternity, several years later also brought on their shoulders an emperor with new clothes--an emperor on whose behalf they ran barefoot from Paris to Moscow, from Jena to Dubrovnik? For Cioran, when a society runs out of political utopia there is no more hope, and consequently there cannot be any more life. Without utopia, writes Cioran, people would be forced to commit suicide; thanks to utopia they commit homicides.

Today there are no more utopias in stock. Mass democracy has taken their place. Without democracy life makes little sense; yet democracy has no life of its own. After all, argues Cioran, had it not been for a young lunatic from the Galilee, the world would be today a very boring place. Alas, how many such lunatics are hatching today their self-styled theological and ideological derivatives! "Society is badly organized, writes Cioran, "it does nothing against lunatics who die so young."13 Probably all prophets and political soothsayers should immediately be put to death, "because when the mob accepts a myth--get ready for massacres or better yet for a new religion."14

Unmistakable as Cioran's resentments against utopia may appear, he is far from deriding its creative importance. Nothing could be more loathsome to him than the vague cliche of modernity that associates the quest for happiness with a peaceful pleasure-seeking society. Demystified, disenchanted, castrated, and unable to weather the upcoming storm, modern society is doomed to spiritual exhaustion and slow death. It is incapable of believing in anything except in the purported humanity of its future blood-suckers. If a society truly wishes to preserve its biological well-being, argues Cioran, its paramount task is to harness and nurture its "substantial calamity;" it must keep a tally of its own capacity for destruction. After all, have not his native Balkans, in which secular vampires are today again dancing to the tune of butchery, also generated a pool of sturdy specimen ready for tomorrow's cataclysms? In this area of Europe, which is endlessly marred by political tremors and real earthquakes, a new history is today in the making--a history which will probably reward its populace for the past suffering.

Whatever their past was, and irrespective of their civilization, these countries possess a biological stock which one cannot find in the West. Maltreated, disinherited, precipitated in the anonymous martyrdom, torn apart between wretchedness and sedition, they will perhaps know in the future a reward for so many ordeals, so much humiliation and for so much cowardice.15

Is this not the best portrayal of that anonymous "eastern" Europe which according to Cioran is ready today to speed up the world history? The death of communism in Eastern Europe might probably inaugurate the return of history for all of Europe. Conversely, the "better half" of Europe, the one that wallows in air-conditioned and aseptic salons, that Europe is depleted of robust ideas. It is incapable of hating and suffering, and therefore of leading. For Cioran, society becomes consolidated in danger and it atrophies in peace: "In those places where peace, hygiene and leisure ravage, psychoses also multiply... I come from a country which, while never learning to know the meaning of happiness, has also never produced a single psychoanalyst."16 The raw manners of new east European cannibals, not "peace and love" will determine the course of tomorrow's history. Those who have passed through hell are more likely to outlive those who have only known the cozy climate of a secular paradise.

These words of Cioran are aimed at the decadent France la Doulce in which afternoon chats about someone's obesity or sexual impotence have become major preoccupations on the hit-parade of daily concerns. Unable to put up resistance against tomorrow's conquerors, this western Europe, according to Cioran, deserves to be punished in the same manner as the noblesse of the ancien régime which, on the eve of the French Revolution, laughed at its own image, while praising the image of the bon sauvage. How many among those good-natured French aristocrats were aware that the same bon sauvage was about to roll their heads down the streets of Paris? "In the future, writes Cioran, "if mankind is to start all over again, it will be with the outcasts, with the mongols from all parts, with the dregs of the continents.."17 Europe is hiding in its own imbecility in front of an approaching catastrophe. Europe? "The rots that smell nice, a perfumed corpse."18

Despite gathering storms Cioran is comforted by the notion that he at least is the last heir to the vanishing "end of history." Tomorrow, when the real apocalypse begins, and as the dangers of titanic proportions take final shape on the horizon, then, even the word "regret" will disappear from our vocabulary. "My vision of the future," continues Cioran is so clear, "that if I had children I would strangle them immediately."19

After a good reading of Cioran's opus one must conclude that Cioran is essentially a satirist who ridicules the stupid existential shiver of modern masses. One may be tempted to argue that Cioran offers aan elegant vade-mecum for suicide designed for those, who like him, have thoroughly delegitimized the value of life. But as Cioran says, suicide is committed by those who are no longer capable of acting out optimism, e.g. those whose thread of joy and happiness breaks into pieces. Those like him, the cautious pessimists, "given that they have no reason to live, why would they have a reason to die?"20 The striking ambivalence of Cioran's literary work consists of the apocalyptic forebodings on the one hand, and enthusiastic evocations of horrors on the other. He believes that violence and destruction are the main ingredients of history, because the world without violence is bound to collapse. Yet, one wonders why is Cioran so opposed to the world of peace if, according to his logic, this peaceful world could help accelerate his own much craved demise, and thus facilitate his immersion into nothingness? Of course, Cioran never moralizes about the necessity of violence; rather, in accordance with the canons of his beloved reactionary predecessors Josephe de Maistre and Nicolo Machiavelli, he asserts that "authority, not verity, makes the law," and that consequently, the credibility of a political lie will also determine the magnitude of political justice. Granted that this is correct, how does he explain the fact that authority, at least the way he sees it, only perpetuates this odious being from which he so dearly wishes to absolve himself? This mystery will never be known other than to him. Cioran admits however, that despite his abhorrence of violence, every man, including himself is an integral part of it, and that every man has at least once in his life contemplated how to roast somebody alive, or how to chop off someone's head:

Convinced that troubles in our society come from old people, I conceived the plan of liquidating all citizens past their forties--the beginning of sclerosis and mummification. I came to believe that this was the turning point when each human becomes an insult to his nation and a burden to his community... Those who listened to this did not appreciate this discourse and they considered me a cannibal... Must this intent of mine be condemned? It only expresses something which each man, who is attached to his country desires in the bottom of his heart: liquidation of one half of his compatriots.21

Cioran's literary elitism is unparalleled in modern literature, and for that reason he often appears as a nuisance for modern and sentimental ears poised for the lullaby words of eternal earthly or spiritual bliss. Cioran's hatred of the present and the future, his disrespect for life, will certainly continue to antagonize the apostles of modernity who never tire of chanting vague promises about the "better here-and-now." His paradoxical humor is so devastating that one cannot take it at face value, especially when Cioran describes his own self.

His formalism in language, his impeccable choice of words, despite some similarities with modern authors of the same elitist caliber, make him sometimes difficult to follow. One wonders whether Cioran's arsenal of words such as "abulia," "schizophrenia," "apathy," etc., truly depict a nevrosé which he claims to be.

If one could reduce the portrayal of Cioran to one short paragraph, then one must depict him as an author who sees in the modern veneration of the intellect a blueprint for spiritual gulags and the uglification of the world. Indeed, for Cioran, man's task is to wash himself in the school of existential futility, for futility is not hopelessness; futility is a reward for those wishing to rid themselves of the epidemic of life and the virus of hope. Probably, this picture best befits the man who describes himself as a fanatic without any convictions--a stranded accident in the cosmos who casts nostalgic looks towards his quick disappearance.

To be free is to rid oneself forever from the notion of reward; to expect nothing from people or gods; to renounce not only this world and all worlds, but salvation itself; to break up even the idea of this chain among chains. (Le mauvais demiurge, p. 88.)

Notes

  1. Emile Cioran, Syllogismes de l'amertume (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), p. 72 (my translation) ↩↩↩↩

  2. De l'inconvénient d'etre né (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), p. 161-162. (my translation) (The Trouble with Being Born, translated by Richard Howard: Seaver Bks., 1981) ↩↩↩↩

  3. Cioran, Le mauvais démiurge (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), p. 63. (my translation) ↩↩↩↩

  4. Syllogismes de l'amertume, p. 87. (my trans.) ↩↩↩↩

  5. Ibid., p. 176. ↩↩↩↩

  6. De l'inconvénient d'etre né, p. 11. (my trans.) ↩↩↩↩

  7. Ibid., p. 29. ↩↩↩↩

  8. Ibid., p. 23. ↩↩↩↩

  9. Ibid., p. 141. ↩↩↩↩

  10. Syllogismes de l'amertume, p. 61. (my trans.) ↩↩↩↩

  11. La tentation d'exister, (Paris: Gallimard, 1956), p. 37-38. (my trans.) (The temptation to exist, translated by Richard Howard; Seaver Bks., 1986) ↩↩↩↩

  12. Syllogismes de l'amertume, p. 151. (my trans.) ↩↩↩↩

  13. Ibid., p. 156. ↩↩↩↩

  14. Ibid., p. 158. ↩↩↩↩

  15. Histoire et utopie (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p. 59. (my trans.) (History and Utopia, trans. by Richard Howard, Seaver Bks., 1987). ↩↩↩↩

  16. Syllogismes de l'amertume, p. 154. (my trans.) ↩↩↩↩

  17. Ibid., p. 86. ↩↩↩↩

  18. De l'inconvénient d'etre né, p. 154. (my trans.) ↩↩↩↩

  19. Ibid. p. 155. ↩↩↩↩

  20. Syllogismes de l'amertume, p. 109. ↩↩↩↩

  21. Histoire et utopie (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p. 14. (my trans.) ↩↩↩↩

Language is a potent weapon for legitimizing any political system. In many instances the language in the liberal West is reminiscent of the communist language of the old Soviet Union, although liberal media and politicians use words and phrases that are less abrasive and less value loaded than words used by the old communist officials and their state-run media. In Western academe, media, and public places, a level of communication has been reached which avoids confrontational discourse and which resorts to words devoid of substantive meaning. Generally speaking, the liberal system shuns negative hyperbolas and skirts around heavy-headed qualifiers that the state-run media of the Soviet Union once used in fostering its brand of conformity and its version of political correctness. By contrast, the media in the liberal system, very much in line with its ideology of historical optimism and progress, are enamored with the overkill of morally uplifting adjectives and adverbs, often displaying words and expressions such as "free speech," "human rights," "tolerance," and "diversity." There is a wide spread assumption among modern citizens of the West that the concepts behind these flowery words must be taken as something self-evident.

There appears to be a contradiction. If free speech is something "self-evident" in liberal democracies, then the word "self-evidence" does not need to be repeated all the time; it can be uttered only once, or twice at the most. The very adjective "self-evident," so frequent in the parlance of liberal politicians may in fact hide some uncertainties and even some self-doubt on the part of those who employ it. With constant hammering of these words and expressions, particularly words such as "human rights," and "tolerance", the liberal system may be hiding something; hiding, probably, the absence of genuine free speech. To illustrate this point more clearly it may be advisable for an average citizen living in the liberal system to look at the examples of the communist rhetoric which was once saturated with similar freedom-loving terms while, in reality, there was little of freedom and even less free-speech.

Verbal Mendacity

The postmodern liberal discourse has its own arsenal of words that one can dub with the adjective "Orwellian", or better yet "double-talk", or simply call it verbal mendacity. The French use the word "wooden language" (la langue de bois) and the German "cement" or "concrete" language (Betonsprache) for depicting an arcane bureaucratic and academic lingo that never reflects political reality and whose main purpose is to lead masses to flawed conceptualization of political reality. Modern authors, however, tend to avoid the pejorative term "liberal double-talk," preferring instead the arcane label of "the non-cognitive language which is used for manipulative or predictive analyses."1 Despite its softer and non abrasive version, liberal double-talk, very similar to the communist "wooden language," has a very poor conceptual universe. Similar to the communist vernacular, it is marked by pathos and attempts to avoid the concrete. On the one hand, it tends to be aggressive and judgmental towards its critics yet, on the other, it is full of eulogies, especially regarding its multiracial experiments. It resorts to metaphors which are seldom based on real historical analogies and are often taken out of historical context, notably when depicting its opponents with generic "shut-up" words such as "racists", "anti-Semites", or "fascists".

The choice of grammatical embellishers is consistent with the all-prevailing, liberal free market which, as a rule, must employ superlative adjectives for the free commerce of its goods and services. Ironically, there was some advantage of living under the communist linguistic umbrella. Behind the communist semiotics in Eastern Europe, there always loomed popular doubt which greatly helped ordinary citizens to decipher the political lie, and distinguish between friend and foe. The communist meta-language could best be described as a reflection of a make-belief system in which citizens never really believed and of which everybody, including communist party dignitaries, made fun of in private. Eventually, verbal mendacity spelled the death of communism both in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

By contrast, in the liberal system, politicians and scholars, let alone the masses, still believe in every written word of the democratic discourse.2 There seem to be far less heretics, or for that matter dissidents who dare critically examine the syntax and semantics of the liberal double-talk. Official communication in the West perfectly matches the rule of law and can, therefore, rarely trigger a violent or a negative response among citizens. Surely, the liberal system allows mass protests and public demonstrations; it allows its critics to openly voice their disapproval of some flawed foreign policy decision. Different political and infra-political groups, hostile to the liberal system, often attempt to publicly drum-up public support on behalf or against some issue - be it against American military involvement in the Middle East, or against the fraudulent behavior of a local political representative. But, as an unwritten rule, seldom can one see rallies or mass demonstrations in Australia, America, or in Europe that would challenge the substance of parliamentary democracy and liberalism, let alone discard the ceremonial language of the liberal ruling class. Staging open protests with banners "Down with liberal democracy!, or "Parliamentary democracy sucks"!, would hardly be tolerated by the system. These verbal icons represent a "no entry zone" in liberalism.

The shining examples of the double-talk in liberalism are expressions such as "political correctness", "hate speech," "diversity," "market democracy," "ethnic sensitivity training" among many, many others. It is often forgotten, though, that the coinage of these expressions is relatively recent and that their etymology remains of dubious origin. These expressions appeared in the modern liberal dictionary in the late 70s and early 80s and their architects are widely ignored. Seldom has a question been raised as to who had coined those words and given them their actual meaning. What strikes the eyes is the abstract nature of these expressions. The expression "political correctness" first appeared in the American language and had no explicit political meaning; it was, rather, a fun- related, derogatory expression designed for somebody who was not trendy, such as a person smoking cigarettes or having views considered not to be "in" or "cool." Gradually, and particularly after the fall of communism, the conceptualization of political correctness, acquired a very serious and disciplinary meaning.

Examples of political eulogy and political vilification in liberalism are often couched in sentimentalist vs. animalistic words and syllabi, respectively. When the much vaunted free press in liberalism attempts to glorify some event or some personality that fits into the canons of political rectitude, it will generally use a neutral language with sparse superlatives, with the prime intention not to subvert its readers, such as: "The democratic circles in Ukraine, who have been subject to governmental harassment, are propping up their rank and file to enable them electoral success." Such laudatory statements must be well-hidden behind neutral words. By contrast when attempting to silence critics of the system who challenge the foundation of liberal democracy, the ruling elites and their frequently bankrolled journalists will use more direct words - something in the line of old Soviet stylistics, e.g.: "With their ultranationalist agenda and hate-mongering these rowdy individuals on the street of Sydney or Quebec showed once again their parentage in the monstrosity of the Nazi legacy." Clearly, the goal is to disqualify the opponent by using an all pervasive and hyperreal word "Nazism." "A prominent American conservative author Paul Gottfried writes: "In fact, the European Left, like Canadian and Australian Left, pushes even further the trends adapted from American sources: It insists on criminalizing politically correct speech as an incitement to "fascists excess."3

The first conclusion one can draw is that liberalism can better fool the masses than communism. Due to torrents of meaningless idioms, such as "human rights" and "democracy" on the one hand, and "Nazism" and "fascism" on the other, the thought control and intellectual repression in liberalism functions far better. Therefore, in the liberal "soft" system, a motive for a would-be heretic to overthrow the system is virtually excluded. The liberal system is posited on historical finitude simply because there is no longer the communist competitor who could come up with its own real or surreal "freedom narrative." Thus, liberalism gives an impression of being the best system – simply because there are no other competing political narratives on the horizon.

What are the political implications of the liberal double-talk? It must be pointed out that liberal language is the reflection of the overall socio-demographic situation in the West. Over the last twenty years all Western states, including Australia, have undergone profound social and demographic changes; they have become "multicultural" systems. (multicultural being just a euphemism for a" multiracial" state). As a result of growing racial diversity the liberal elites are aware that in order to uphold social consensus and prevent the system from possible balkanization and civil war, new words and new syntax have to be invented. It was to be expected that these new words would soon find their way into modern legislations. More and more countries in the West are adopting laws that criminalize free speech and that make political communication difficult. In fact, liberalism, similar to its communist antecedents, it is an extremely fragile system. It excludes strong political beliefs by calling its critics "radicals," which, as a result, inevitably leads to political conformity and intellectual duplicity. Modern public discourse in the West is teeming with abstract and unclear Soviet-style expressions such as "ethnic sensitivity training", "affirmative action", "antifascism", "diversity", and "holocaust studies". In order to disqualify its critics the liberal system is resorting more and more to negative expression such as "anti-Semites", or "neo-Nazi", etc. This is best observed in Western higher education and the media which, over the last thirty years, have transformed themselves into places of high commissariats of political correctness, having on their board diverse "committees on preventing racial perjuries", "ethnic diversity training programs", and in which foreign racial awareness courses have become mandatory for the faculty staff and employees. No longer are professors required to demonstrate extra skills in their subject matters; instead, they must parade with sentimental and self-deprecatory statements which, as a rule, must denigrate the European cultural heritage.

By constantly resorting to the generic word "Nazism" and by using the prefix "anti", the system actually shows its negative legitimacy. One can conclude that even if all anti-Semites and all fascists were to disappear, most likely the system would invent them by creating and recreating these words. These words have become symbols of absolute evil.

The third point about the liberal discourse that needs to be stressed is its constant recourse to the imagery of hyperreality. By using the referent of "diversity", diverse liberal groups and infra-political tribes prove in fact their sameness, making dispassionate observers easily bored and tired. Nowhere is this sign of verbal hyperreality more visible than in the constant verbal and visual featuring of Jewish Holocaust symbolism which, ironically, is creating the same saturation process among the audience as was once the case with communist victimhood. The rhetoric and imagery of Holocaust no longer function "as a site of annihilation but a medium of dissuasion.".4

Other than as a simple part of daily jargon the expression "hate speech" does not exist in any European or American legislation. Once again the distinction needs to be made between the legal field and lexical field, as different penal codes of different Western countries are framed in a far more sophisticated language. For instance, criminal codes in continental Europe have all introduced laws that punish individuals uttering critical remarks against the founding myths of the liberal system. The best example is Germany, a country which often brags itself to be the most eloquent and most democratic Constitution on Earth. This is at least what the German ruling elites say about their judiciary, and which does not depart much from what Stalin himself said about the Soviet Constitution of 1936. The Constitution of Germany is truly superb, yet in order to get the whole idea of freedom of speech in Germany one needs to examine the country's Criminal Code and its numerous agencies that are in charge of its implementation. Thus, Article 5 of the German Constitution (The Basic Law) guarantees "freedom of speech." However, Germany's Criminal Code, Section 130, and Subsection 3, appear to be in stark contradiction to the German Basic Law. Under Section 130, of the German criminal code a German citizen, but also a non-German citizen, may be convicted, if found guilty, of breaching the law of "agitation of the people" (sedition laws). It is a similar case with Austria. It must be emphasized that there is no mention in the Criminal Code of the Federal Republic of Germany of the Holocaust or the Nazi extermination of the Jews. But based on the context of the Criminal Code this Section can arbitrarily be applied when sentencing somebody who belittles or denies National- Socialist crimes or voices critical views of the modern historiography. Moreover a critical examination of the role of the Allies during World War may also bring some ardent historian into legal troubles.

The German language is a highly inflected language as opposed to French and English which are contextual languages and do not allow deliberate tinkering with prefixes or suffixes, or the creation of arbitrary compound words. By contrast, one can always create new words in the German language, a language often awash with a mass of neologisms. Thus, the title of the Article 130 of the German Criminal Code Volksverhetzung is a bizarre neologism and very difficult compound word which is hard to translate into English, and which on top, can be conceptualized in many opposing ways. (Popular taunting, baiting, bullying of the people, public incitement etc..). Its Subsection 3, though is stern and quite explicit and reads in English as follows:

"Whoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or renders harmless an act committed under the rule of National Socialism… shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine."

If by contrast the plight of German civilians after World War II is openly discussed by a German academic or simply by some free spirit, he may run the risk of being accused of trivializing the official assumption of sole German guilt during World War II. Depending on a local legislation of some federal state in Germany an academic, although not belittling National Socialist crimes may, by inversion, fall under suspicion of "downplaying" or "trivializing" Nazi crimes - and may be fined or, worse, land in prison. Any speech or article, for instance, that may be related to events surrounding World War may have a negative anticipatory value in the eyes of the liberal inquisitors, that is to say in the eyes of the all prevailing Agency for the protection of the German Constitution (Verfassungschutz). Someone's words, as in the old Soviet system, can be easily misconstrued and interpreted as an indirect belittlement of crimes committed by National-Socialists.

Germany is a half-sovereign country still legally at war with the USA, and whose Constitution was written under the auspices of the Allies. Yet unlike other countries in the European Union, Germany has something unprecedented. Both on the state and federal levels it has that special government agency in charge of the surveillance of the Constitution. i.e., and whose sole purpose is to keep track of journalists, academics and right-wing politicians and observe the purity of their parlance and prose. The famed "Office for the Protection of the Constitution" ("Verfassungschutz"), as the German legal scholar Josef Schüsselburner writes, "is basically an internal secret service with seventeen branch agencies (one on the level of the federation and sixteen others for each constituent federal state). In the last analysis, this boils down to saying that only the internal secret service is competent to declare a person an internal enemy of the state."5

In terms of free speech, contemporary France is not much better. In 1990 a law was passed on the initiative of the socialist deputy Laurent Fabius and the communist deputy Jean-Claude Gayssot. That law made it a criminal offence, punishable by a fine of up to 40,000 euros, or one year in prison, or both, to contest the truth of any of the "crimes against humanity" with which the German National Socialist leaders were charged by the London Agreement of 1945, and which was drafted for the Nuremberg Trials.6 Similar to the German Criminal Code Section 130, there is no reference to the Holocaust or Jews in this portion of the French legislation. But at least the wording of the French so-called Fabius-Gayssot law is more explicit than the fluid German word "Volksverhetzung." It clearly states that any Neo-Nazi activity having as a result the belittling of Nazi crimes is a criminal offence. With France and German, being the main pillars of the European Union these laws have already given extraordinary power to local judges of EU member countries when pronouncing verdicts against anti-liberal heretics.

For fear of being called confrontational or racist, or an anti-Semite, a European politician or academic is more and more forced to exercise self-censorship. The role of intellectual elites in Europe has never been a shining one. However, with the passage of these "hate laws" into the European legislations, the cultural and academic ambiance in Europe has become sterile. Aside from a few individuals, European academics and journalists, let alone politicians, must be the masters of self-censorship and self-delusion, as well as great impresarios of their own postmodern mimicry. As seen in the case of the former communist apparatchiks in Eastern Europe, they are likely to discard their ideas as soon as these cease to be trendy, or when another political double-talk becomes fashionable.

The modern politically-correct language, or liberal double-talk, is often used for separating the ignorant grass-roots masses from the upper level classes; it is the superb path to cultural and social ascension. The censorial intellectual climate in the Western media, so similar to the old Soviet propaganda, bears witness that liberal elites, at the beginning of the third millennium, are increasingly worried about the future identity of the countries in which they rule. For sure, the liberal system doesn’t yet need truncheons or police force in order to enforce its truth. It can remove rebels, heretics, or simply academics, by using smear campaigns, or accusing them of "guilt by association," and by removing them from important places of decision - be it in academia, the political arena, or the media. Once the spirit of the age changes, the high priests of this new postmodern inquisition will likely be the first to dump their current truths and replace them with other voguish "self-evident" truths. This was the case with the communist ruling class, which after the break down of communism quickly recycled itself into fervent apostles of liberalism. This will again be the case with modern liberal elites, who will not hesitate to turn into rabid racists and anti-Semites, as soon as new "self evident" truths appear on the horizon.

(Empresas Politicas (Madrid) n°10/11, 1er/2°, semester 2008, pp. 229-234) ……………………….

This article is based on Dr. Sunic's speech at the Sydney Forum, Sydney, Australia, August 25, 2007. Dr.Tom Sunic is a former US professor in political science and author. His latest book is: Homo americanus: Child of the Postmodern Age (2007).

Notes

  1. A. James Gregor, Metascience and Politics (1971 London: Transaction, 2004), p.318. ↩↩↩↩

  2. Alan Charles Kors, "Thought Reform: The Orwellian Implications of Today's College Orientation," in Reasononline, (March 2000). ↩↩↩↩

  3. Paul Gottfried, The Strange Death of Marxism (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2005), p.13. ↩↩↩↩

  4. Jean Baudrillard, The Evil Demons of Images (University of Sydney: The Power Inst. of Fine Arts, 1988), p.24. ↩↩↩↩

  5. Josef Schüsslburner, Demokratie-Sonderweg Bundesrepublik (Lindenblatt Media Verlag. Künzell, 2004), p. p.233 ↩↩↩↩

  6. See Journal officiel de la République française, 14 juillet 1990 page 8333loi n° 90-615. ↩↩↩↩

La balkanisation du Système ; Ernst Jünger et la fin des temps

La locution "la fin des temps" n'est pas sans rappeler les prédictions bibliques d'un cours du temps linéaire qui devrait conduire à la fin du monde. Cette idée semble être typique chez les gens dont la pensée est alimentée par le mental monothéiste et sémitique, comme l’annonce la Révélation présentée à la fin de l’Apocalypse (XXI, 1-2). Et j’ai vu un nouveau ciel et une nouvelle terre ; car l’ancien ciel et l’ancienne terre avaient disparu, et la mer n’est plus. J’ai vu aussi la ville sainte, la Nouvelle Jérusalem, qui descendait du ciel, d’auprès de Dieu, et préparée comme une épouse parée pour son mari.

Aujourd'hui, on observe cet esprit monothéiste dans la croyance au progrès économique, avec ses retombées idéologiques: le multiracialisme et le libéralisme apatride. Mais on rencontre également dans l’héritage européen la notion de fin des temps, bien que ces temps aient une nature cyclique. Dans ses ouvrages, Ernst Jünger décrit les temps du destin par rapport aux temps technocratiques, linéaires et mesurables du Système. Est-ce que la situation en Europe d’aujourd’hui peut être encore pire que ce qu’elle est déjà ? "Le destin peut être deviné, senti, et craint, mais il ne peut jamais être connu. Si cela devait changer, l’homme mènerait la vie d'un prisonnier qui connaît l'heure de son exécution ».1 Par conséquent, afin de mettre en place un avenir prévisible, le Système doit exiger de ses citoyens de se comporter comme des détenus dociles dans le couloir de la mort.

Pour beaucoup d’Européens - et surtout pour les anciens critiques du Système communiste -, le communisme fut le symbole de la fin des temps qui devait fatalement exclure tous les temps ultérieurs. Le cours du temps dans le communisme semblait être bloqué pour toujours. Après le désastre de 1945, de nombreux Européens avaient commencé à croire non seulement à la fin d'un monde mais à la fin du monde tout court. Pour les Européens de la postmodernité, la même question se pose : vit-on les temps finaux européens, ou est-on témoin de la fin des temps mondiaux? Il se peut que les temps européens soient bien révolus depuis longtemps et il se peut que tous les Européens vivent depuis des décennies dans un profond déclin racial. Peut-être sont-ils arrivés à la fin d’une époque qui n’a pas encore reçu son nom? Le problème réside dans le fait que les temps du Système actuel, quoique d’une brièveté certaine dans le cadre de la grande histoire, possèdent une durée pénible pour un rebelle. Comment doit-on évaluer ces temps-là?

La notion du cours du temps, surtout en cas d'urgence, est très bien ressentie dans les Balkans, une partie de l'Europe qui est constamment sous influences tectoniques majeures. La balkanisation ne signifie pas seulement la dislocation géopolitique ; elle renvoie également à une forme de la dégénérescence d’identité, où se mélangent et se confondent diverses identités politiques, religieuses et raciales qui sont constamment remplacées par de nouvelles identités venues d’ailleurs. Toutefois, compte tenu des catastrophes qui s’approchent à grands pas de l’Europe, toute balkanisation peut servir de leçon pour aiguiser le talent de survie. Ce talent exige de pratiquer la vie en solitaire, et d’être complètement détaché de tous les liens politiques avec le monde d'aujourd'hui. En cas de nécessité, on devrait, comme ce fut habituel chez les chouans vendéens pendant la Révolution française, ou chez les guérilléros espagnols pendant l’occupation napoléonienne, ou bien encore chez les haïdouks balkaniques pendant l’occupation turque du XVIe au XIXe siècle, vivre comme des paysans mais, en cas d'urgence, être prêt à rapidement prendre les armes.

Aujourd'hui, cependant, il ya deux formes opposées de la balkanisation. D'un côté, l’Europe orientale continue toujours d’être en proie à la haine interethnique entre ses peuples. D'un autre côté, on observe en Europe occidentale une guerre larvée avec les non-Européens. Or à la lumière des vagues d’immigration en provenance du Tiers-Monde, tous les Européens sont censés devenir de bons Balkaniques : pas forcément dans le sens négatif, mais dans un sens positif qui sous-entend l’esprit de la déterritorialisation locale, et qui est seulement possible dans une Europe d’Empire. Celui qui vit au milieu d'animaux sauvages devrait devenir un animal, et peu importe qu’il habite Paris, Washington ou Francfort. Comme le sociologue italien Vilfredo Pareto a justement prophétisé il y a cent ans: «Celui qui devient l'agneau va se trouver bientôt un loup qui le mangera.".2 Or le talent de vie dans la fin des temps exigera donc des loups européens d’apprendre à revêtir les habits de brebis.

On devrait se rappeler la figure de l’Anarque d’Ernst Jünger dans son roman Eumeswil. Le protagoniste, Martin Venator, vit sa double vie dans une société postmoderne et multiculturelle à coté de la casbah d’Eumeswil. Or l’Anarque n'est ni rebelle, ni dissident, ni anarchiste quoiqu’au moment donné, il puisse revêtir toutes ces trois figures à la fois. D’ailleurs, l’Anarque semble s’être très bien inséré dans le système de la pensée unique et de l’autocensure du Système. Il attend patiemment son moment ; il va frapper seulement quand le moment sera mûr. Ce roman de Jünger peut être considéré comme le Bildungsroman pour la génération actuelle de jeunes Européens dont le rôle didactique peut leur faciliter le choix de la figure du rebelle.

L’arrivée en masse d’immigrés d’une culture et d’une race étrangère à l'Europe exige de tous les Européens de bien réfléchir à quelle figure de comportement choisir, c’est à dire à quelle nouvelle identité jouer. Historiquement, les figures du rebelle nationaliste en Europe centrale et orientale n'ont jamais eu d’effet convergent sur les peuples européens. Elles ont été nuisibles et doivent donc être rejetées. Toutes les formes et figures de la rébellion – que ce soit l’appartenance à sa tribu ou à son Etat aux dépens de son voisin blanc, comme en témoignent les guerres entre la Pologne et l'Allemagne, entre les Serbes et les Croates, entre les Irlandais et les Anglais – semblent devenues dérisoires aujourd’hui. L’Europe balkanisée, avec ses figures rebelles des nationalismes exclusifs, ne fait que donner davantage de légitimité au projet multiracial du Système. Toute figure de dissident au Système, comme fut autrefois la figure de l’anarchiste ou du partisan est désormais vouée à l’échec dans un Système possédant des moyens de surveillance totale. Ce qui reste maintenant aux nouveaux rebelles, c’est le devoir de se définir comme héritiers européens, nonobstant le pays où ils vivent, que ce soit en Australie, en Croatie, au Chili, ou en Bavière.

Compte tenu de l'afflux massif d’immigrés non-européens, les Européens ne peuvent plus s’offrir le luxe de l’esprit de clocher. Le danger imminent de leur mort peut les aider à se débarrasser de leur particularisme territorial. En effet, qu’est-ce que cela veut dire aujourd’hui être Allemand, Français, Américain, vu le fait que plus de 10 pour cent d’Allemands et de Français et plus de 30 pour cent des Américains sont d'origine non-blanche?

Le génocide communiste ou le multiculturalisme génocidaire

Afin de s’appréhender soi-même et de se projeter par-dessus Le Mur du Temps on devrait faire un parallèle entre l’ancienne terreur communiste et la mort lente actuelle, causée par la dilution du fonds génétique des Européens. Dans ce contexte, les tueries gigantesques menées par les communistes en Europe orientale contre leurs ennemis suite à la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale peuvent servir d’avertissement afin de mieux comprendre la situation actuelle menant à la mort de l’Europe. Dans le sillage de la terreur déclenchée par les communistes après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les raisons idéologiques, telle que la «lutte des classes», jouaient un rôle mineur. Dans la psychologie des communistes, beaucoup plus important fut leur ressentiment pathologique vis-à-vis de leurs adversaires anticommunistes et nationalistes qui étaient plus intelligents et avaient davantage d’intégrité morale. Un semblable ressentiment est typique des immigrés non-européens. Bien entendu, ils ne sont pas encore en mesure de convertir leur haine contre les Européens blancs en conflit militaire mais leur nombre croissant peut facilement changer la donne.

Suite à la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les génocides communistes ont eu une influence catastrophique sur l'évolution culturelle et génétique de toute l’Europe orientale. La classe moyenne ainsi qu’un grand nombre de gens intelligents furent simplement supprimés, ne pouvant transmette leur patrimoine génétique, leur intelligence et leur créativité à leur progéniture. Alors, où sont donc les parallèles avec le monde multiracial d’aujourd’hui en Europe ? Force est de constater que tout ce que les communistes ne pouvaient pas parachever par la terreur en Europe orientale est en train de se faire maintenant d’une manière soft par l'actuelle "super classe" libérale et cela par le truchement de son idéologie de rechange, le « multiculturalisme ». L'afflux constant de non-Européens est en train d’affaiblir le fonds génétique des Européens, menant à leur mort douce où les lignes entre l’ami et l’ennemi s’effacent complètement. On s’aperçoit clairement de l'impact brutal de l'idéologie de l'égalitarisme et de sa nouvelle retombée dans le Système, qui enseigne, aujourd’hui comme autrefois, que tous les hommes doivent être égaux et par conséquent interchangeables à volonté.

Le multiculturalisme est la nouvelle forme du balkanisme, à savoir une idéologie servant aujourd’hui d’ersatz au communisme discrédité. En effet, le multiculturalisme utilise des moyens plus subtils que le communisme quoique leurs effets soient identiques. L’esprit communiste et l’esprit multiculturel sont très populaires auprès des gens du Tiers-Monde, mais également auprès des intellectuels de gauche du Système, toujours à l'affût d’un nouveau romantisme politique. Le communisme a disparu en Europe orientale parce qu'en pratique, il a su beaucoup mieux réaliser ses principes égalitaires en Europe occidentale quoique sous un autre signifiant et sous un autre vocable. Le Système, soit sous son vocable communiste, soit sous son vocable multiculturel, croit que toutes les nations européennes sont remplaçables au sein du Système supra-étatique et supra-européen.

Les nouvelles figures du rebelle

Les responsables de la balkanisation de l'Europe et de l'Amérique sont les capitalistes. Il est dans leur intérêt d'obtenir une armée de travailleurs de réserve en provenance du Tiers-Monde. Ils savent pertinemment que les travailleurs non-européens importés en Europe n'appartiennent pas forcément à l'élite intellectuelle de leurs pays d'origine, que leur conscience sociale n'est souvent qu'embryonnaire et qu'ils n'ont généralement aucun sens du destin européen. C'est pourquoi ils sont plus aisément manipulables. Leur marchand n'a pas d'identité, non plus. Un banquier allemand ou un ex-communiste croate devenu spéculateur dans l’immobilier ne se soucie guère de sa résidence ni de la leur - tant qu'il gagne de l'argent. Même le père fondateur du capitalisme, l’infâme Adam Smith a écrit: «Le marchand n'est pas forcément citoyen d’aucun pays».3 Par conséquent, le nouvel Anarque, à savoir le nouveau rebelle, ne doit pas être choqué par la nouvelle sainte alliance entre le Commissaire et le Commerçant, entre les grandes entreprises et la Gauche caviar. La Gauche est en faveur de l'immigration de masse parce que la figure de l’immigré tient lieu aujourd'hui du prolétaire d’antan. Les capitalistes d’une part, et les « antifas », les pédérastes, les militants des droits de l’homme et les militants chrétiens de l'autre, sont désormais devenus les porte-parole de l'abolition des frontières et les haut-parleurs d’une Europe multiraciale et sans racines. Le capitaliste vise à réduire l'État-providence, car chaque État lui coûte cher. Un antifa veut abolir l'État, parce que tout État, lui rappelle « la bête immonde du fascisme ».

L'opinion s’est largement répandue que l'islam est l’ennemi principal de l’Europe car cette religion est prétendument violente et dangereuse. Soit. Mais on doit distinguer entre la religion et l'origine raciale. En outre, il est à souligner que ni l'Ancien Testament ni l’Évangile ne sont une prose paisible. La critique de la religion n'est donc pas appropriée quand on fustige l'immigration de masse. En l’occurrence, la plupart des 30 millions d'immigrés illégaux en Amérique sont de pieux catholiques venus d'Amérique latine, mais ils ne sont pas de souche européenne ! Ils appartiennent à une autre race et à une autre culture.

Comment façonner un nouveau type de rebelle blanc ? Le nouvel Anarque doit chercher dans sa culture et sa race ses points de départ. La notion et la réalité de la race ne peuvent être niées, même si le terme de race est aujourd’hui criminalisé à outrance par les medias. L’hérédité est considérée par les scribes académiques du Système avec horreur et dégoût, bien qu’ils sachent tous, surtout lorsque l'état d'urgence sera proclamé, qu’ils vont aller se réfugier du côté de leur propre tribu et de leur propre race. Force est de constater qu’on peut changer sa religion, ses habitudes, ses opinions politiques, son terroir, sa nationalité, voire même son passeport, mais on ne peut jamais échapper à son hérédité. La récente guerre dans les Balkans nous a montré de façon limpide que lors de l’instauration de l’état d’urgence, les anciens apatrides croates et pro-yougoslaves n’avaient pas hésité à devenir des ultras Croates - par défaut. Gare à celui qui oublie ses racines. C’est l’Autre qui va vite les lui rappeler.4

Toutefois, la conscience raciale dans la fin de nos temps ne peut être considérée comme un outil complet par le nouveau rebelle. La race, comme Julius Evola ou Ludwig Clauss nous l’enseignent, n'est pas seulement une donnée biologique - la race est aussi la responsabilité spirituelle. Il y a beaucoup, beaucoup de Blancs en Europe et en Amérique dont l’esprit est complètement corrompu - malgré une bonne mine "nordique". Déjà Clauss a écrit: "Examiner une race signifie d’abord de s’apercevoir du sens de sa figure corporelle. Mais ce sens ne peut être compris que du point de vue de la figure de l’âme ».5

Pour restaurer son identité dans les temps d’urgence qui adviennent, l’Anarque doit examiner la doctrine de l'égalitarisme issue du christianisme. Les immigrés non-européens savent fort bien que l’Europe est très imprégnée d’un christianisme qui se reflète aujourd’hui dans les sentiments de culpabilité de l’homme blanc et dans le prêchi-prêcha séculièr sur la religion des droits de l’homme. En revanche, le sentiment de haine de soi n’existe guère chez les immigrés et pas plus au sein de la classe politique de leurs pays d'origine. Les Européens qui ont vécu dans les pays du Tiers-Monde savent fort bien ce que veut dire la discrimination raciale contre sa propre population. Un métis du Mexique habitant au sud de Los Angeles ou un Turc aux traits mongoloïdes habitant à Berlin Kreuzberg savent exactement quel groupe racial et culturel ils peuvent fréquenter. Le second, par exemple, n'a rien à chercher auprès des «Turcs» européens de la classe supérieure qui n’ont aucun scrupule à arborer en permanence leurs origines albanaises ou bosniaques, et qui aiment bien s’en vanter en public. Un hidalgo mexicain servant comme haut-diplomate à Madrid déteste un Cholo habitant le barrio de Los Angeles. En revanche, l'Allemagne, l'Amérique, l’Espagne, la France accordent à ces peuplades du Tiers-Monde des moyens de s’épanouir dont ils ne peuvent que rêver dans leurs pays d’origine.

Même s'il semble impossible de parler d’expulsion massive ou de transfert des populations, c’est une idée qu’on ne doit jamais exclure. Plus de 12 millions d'Allemands furent expulsés de leurs foyers en Europe orientale à la fin de l'automne 1944 et au début de 1945 - dans une période de quelques mois seulement.6 Demain, le même scenario peut encore avoir lieu, suivi par de nouveaux génocides et par la migration massive de millions de personnes en Europe. Pour le rebelle européen reste à savoir qui sera l’architecte de ce nouveau «nettoyage ethnique» et qui en sera la victime.

Dans l’optique optimiste, même un aveugle peut s’apercevoir que le Système est mort. L’expérience avec ses dogmes abstraits de multiculturalisme et de progrès économique a échoué. Tant en Europe qu’aux États-Unis, on voit chaque jour que l'expérience libérale a touché à sa fin il y bien longtemps. Il y a suffisamment de preuves empiriques pour nous démontrer ce fait. On n’a qu’à choisir le plus visible et le plus audible. Il est caractéristique de la classe politique moribonde de vanter la « perfectibilité », « l’éternité », et la « véracité » de son Système – précisément au moment où son Système est en train de s'écrouler. Ces vœux pieux et d’auto-satisfaction, on a pu les observer tant et tant de fois dans l'histoire. Même les notions de la classe dirigeante actuelle portant sur la fin des temps et la «fin de l'Histoire» nous rappellent la mentalité de la classe politique des anciens pays communistes, en l’occurrence la Yougoslavie peu avant son effondrement. En 1990, il y avait encore de grands défilés pro-yougoslaves et procommunistes en Yougoslavie où les politiciens locaux se vantaient de l'indestructibilité du Système yougoslave. Quelques mois plus tard, la guerre commença - et le Système mourut.

Dans l’Union européenne, la classe dirigeante d'aujourd'hui ne sait plus où elle va et ce qu'elle veut faire avec elle-même. Elle est beaucoup plus faible qu'elle ne veut le laisser voir à ses citoyens. Le nouvel Anarque vit de nouveau dans un vide historique et il dépend de sa seule volonté de remplir ce vide avec le contenu de son choix. La charrue peut facilement se muer en épée.

(Terre & Peuple, hiver 2011, nr. 50)

www.terreetpeuple.com

Tomislav Sunic (www.tomsunic.com) est écrivain, ancien diplomate croate et ancien professeur américain en science politique. Il est actuellement conseiller culturel de l’American Third Position Party. Ses derniers livres publiés sont La Croatie ; un pays par défaut ? (Avatar, 2010) et Postmortem Report: Cultural Examinations from Postmodernity (Wermod et Wermod, 2010), avec une préface de Kevin MacDonald.

Notes

  1. Ernst Jünger, An der Zeitmauer, (Cotta- Klett Verlag, 1959), p. 25. ↩↩↩

  2. Vilfredo Pareto, "Dangers of Socialism", The Other Pareto (St. Martin's, 1980), p. 125. ↩↩↩

  3. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 Vol. (Edinburgh, Printed, at the Univ. Press, for T. Nelson, 1827) p. 172. www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN11.html ↩↩↩

  4. Tomislav Sunic, La Croatie, un pays par défaut? (Avatar, 2010). ↩↩↩

  5. Ludwig Clauß, Rasse und Charakter, (_Verlag Moritz Diesterweg, Frankfurt a. M. 1942),_ p. 43. ↩↩↩

  6. Tomislav Sunic, „ In Fluß der verlorenen Zeiten; Das Schicksaal des Deutschtum im Donauraum ", in Kein Dogma, Kein Verbot, Kein Tabu! (Hrsg. Alfred Schickel. Festschrift für Prof. F.W. Seidler, Pour le Merite, 2008), p. 213-219. ↩↩↩

Historical Dynamics of Liberalism: From Total Market to Total State

JOURNAL OF SOCIAL, POLITICAL & ECONOMIC STUDIES (winter 1988, vol. 13 No 4)

by Tomislav Sunic (University of California, Santa Barbara)

The purpose of this essay is to critically examine the historical dynamics of liberalism and its impact on contemporary Western polities. This essay will argue a) that liberalism today provides a comfortable ideological "retreat" for members of the intellectual élite and decision makers tired of the theological and ideological disputes that rocked Western politics for centuries; b) that liberalism can make compromises with various brands of socialism on practically all issues except the freedom of the market place; c) that liberalism thrives by expanding the economic arena into all aspects of life and all corners of the world, thereby gradually erasing the sense of national and historical community which had formerly provided the individual with a basic sense of identity and psychological security. This essay will also question whether liberalism, despite its remarkable success in the realm of the economy, provides an adequate bulwark against non-democratic ideologies, or whether under some conditions it may actually stimulate their growth.

In the aftermath of the second world war, liberalism and Marxism emerged as the two unquestionably dominant ideologies following their military success over their common rival, fascism. This brought them into direct conflict with each other, since each contended, from their own viewpoint, that the only valid political model was their own, denying the validity of their opponent's thesis. Beaud writes that when the liberal and socialist ideas began to emerge, the former quickly cloaked itself in science ("the law of supply and demand," "the iron law of wages"), while the latter had the tendency to degenerate into mysticism and sectarianism.1

Some critics of liberalism, such as the French economist François Perroux, pointed out that according to some extreme liberal assumptions, "everything (that) has been happening since the beginning of time (can be attributed to capitalism) as if the modern world was constructed by industrialists and merchants consulting their account books and wishing to reap profits."2 Similar subjective attitudes, albeit from a different ideological angle, can often be heard among Marxist theorists, who in the analysis of liberal capitalism resort to value judgements colored by Marxian dialectics and accompanied by the rejection of the liberal interpretation of the concept of equality and liberty. "The fact that the dialectical method can be used for each purpose," remarks the Austrian philosopher Alexander Topitsch, "explains its extraordinary attraction and its world-wide dissemination, that can only be compared to the success of the natural rights doctrine of the eighteenth century."3 Nevertheless, despite their real ideological discord, liberals, neo-liberals, socialists, and "socio-neoliberals," agree, at least in principle, in claiming a common heritage of rationalism, and on the rejection of all non-democratic ideologies, especially racialism. Earlier in this century, Georges Sorel, the French theorist of anarcho-syndicalism, remarked with irony that "to attempt to protest against the illusion of rationalism means to be immediately branded as the enemy of democracy."4

The practical conflict between the respective virtues of liberalism and socialism is today seemingly coming to a close, as some of the major Marxist regimes move in the direction of a liberalization of their economies, even though the ideological debate is by no means settled amongst intellectuals. Undoubtedly, the popularity of Marxist socialism is today in global decline amongst those who have to face the problem of making it work. In consequence, despite the fact that support for Marxism amongst Western intellectuals was at its height when repression in Marxist countries was at its peak, liberalism today seems have been accepted as a place of "refuge" by many intellectuals who, disillusioned with the failure of repression in the Marxist countries, nevertheless continue to hold to the socialist principles of universalism and egalitarianism.

As François B. Huyghe comments, welfare state policies accepted by liberals have implemented many of the socialist programs which patently failed in communist countries.5 Thus, economic liberalism is not only popular among many former left-wing intellectuals (including numbers of East European intellectuals) because it has scored tangible economic results in the Western countries, but also due to the fact that its socialist counterpart has failed in practice, leaving the liberal model as the only uncontested alternative. "The main reason for the victories of economic liberalism," writes Kolm, "are due to the fact that all defective functioning of the non-liberal model of social realization warrants the consideration of the alternative liberal social realization. The examples of such cases abound in the West as in the East; in the North as in the South."6 In the absence of other successful models, and in the epoch of a pronounced "de-ideologization" process all over Europe and America, modern liberalism has turned out to be a modus vivendi for the formerly embattled foes. But are we therefore to conclude that the eclipse of other models and ideologies must spell the end of politics and inaugurate the beginning of the Age of Liberalism?7

Long before the miracle of modern liberalism became obvious, a number of writers had observed that liberalism would continue to face a crisis of legitimacy even if its socialist and fascist foes were miraculously to disappear. More recently, Serge-Christophe Kolm has remarked that liberalism and socialism must not be viewed in dialectical opposition, but rather as a fulfilment of each other. Kolm writes that the ideals of liberalism and Marxism "are almost identical given that they are founded on the values of liberty, and coinciding in the applications of almost everything, except on a subject which is logically punctual, yet factually enormous in this world: wage-earning, location of individuals and self."8 Some have even advanced the hypothesis that liberalism and socialism are the face and the counter-face of the same phenomenon, since contemporary liberalism has managed to achieve, in the long run and in an unrepressive fashion, many of those same goals which Marxian socialism in the short run, employing repressive means, has failed to achieve. Yet differences exist.

Not only do socialist ideologues currently fear that the introduction of free market measures could spell the end of socialism, but socialism and liberalism disagree fundamentally on the definition of equality. Theoretically, both subscribe to constitutional, legal, political and social equality; yet their main difference lies in their opposing views regarding the distribution of economic benefits/rewards, and accordingly, as to their corresponding definition of economic equality. Unlike liberalism, socialism is not satisfied with demanding political and social equality, but insists on equal distribution of economic goods. Marx repeatedly criticized the liberal definition of equal rights, for which he once said that "this equal right is unequal right for unequal labor. This right does not acknowledge class difference because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual talents, and consequently it holds individual skills for natural privileges."9 Only in a higher stage of communism, after the present subordination of individuals to capital, that is, after the differences in the rewards of labor have disappeared, will bourgeois rights disappear, and society will write on its banner: "From each according to his capacity, to each according to his needs."10

Despite these differences, it may be said that, in general, socialist ideas have always surfaced as unavoidable satellites and pendants of liberalism. As soon as liberal ideas made their inroads into the European feudal scene, the stage for socialist appetites was set - appetites which subsequently proved too large to fulfil. As soon as the early bourgeoisie had secured its position, liquidating guilds and feudal corporations along with the landed aristocracy, it had to face up to critics who accused it of stifling political liberties and economic equality, and of turning the newly enfranchised peasant into a factory slave. In the seventeenth century, remarks Lakoff, the bourgeois ideas of equality and liberty immediately provided the fourth estate with ideological ammunition, which was quickly expressed by numerous proto-socialist revolutionary movements.11 Under such circumstances of flawed equality, it must not come as a surprise that the heaviest burden for peasants was the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie, which had hailed the rights of equality as long as it struggled to dislodge the aristocracy from power; yet the minute it acceded to power, prudently refrained from making any further claims about equality in affluence. David Thomson remarked with irony that "many of those who would defend with their dying breath the rights of liberty and equality (such as many English and American liberals) shrink back in horror from the notion of economic egalitarianism."12 Also, Sorel pointed out that in general, the abuse of power by an hereditary aristocracy is less harmful to the juridical sentiment of a people than the abuses committed by a plutocratic regime,[^13] adding that "nothing would ruin so much the respect for laws as the spectacle of injustices committed by adventurers who, with the complicity of tribunals, have become so rich that they can purchase politicians."13

The dynamics of liberal and socialist revolutions gathered steam in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, notably an epoch of great revolutionary ferment in Europe. The liberal 1789 revolution in France rapidly gave way to the socialist Jacobin revolution in 1792; "the liberal" Condorcet was supplanted by the "communist" Babeuf, and the relatively bloodless Girondin coup was followed by the avalanche of bloodshed under the Jacobin terror and the revolt of the "sans-culottes."14 Similarly, a hundred years later, the February Revolution in Russia was followed by the accelerated October revolution, replacing the social democrat, Kerensky, by the communist Lenin. Liberalism gobbled up the ancient aristocracy, liquidated the medieval trade corporations, alienated the workers, and then in its turn was frequently supplanted by socialism. It is therefore interesting to observe that after its century-long competition with socialism, liberalism is today showing better results in both the economic and ethical domains, whereas the Marxist credo seems to be on the decline. But has liberalism become the only acceptable model for all peoples on earth? How is it that liberalism, as an incarnation of the humanitarian ideal and the democratic spirit, has always created enemies on both the left and the right, albeit for different reasons?

Free Market: The "Religion" of Liberalism

Liberalism can make many ideological "deals" with other ideologies, but one sphere where its remains intransigent is the advocacy of the free market and free exchange of goods and commodities. Undoubtedly, liberalism is not an ideology like other ideologies, and in addition, it has no desire to impose an absolute and exclusive vision of the world rooted in a dualistic cleavage between good and evil, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the "chosen and the unchosen ones." Moreover, the liberal ideal lacks that distinctive telos so typical of socialist and fascist ideologies. Contrary to other ideologies, liberalism is in general rather sceptical of any concentration of political power, because in the "inflation" of politics, and in ideological fervor, it claims to see signs of authoritarianism and even, as some authors have argued, totalitarianism.15 Liberalism seems to be best fitted for a secularized polity, which Carl Schmitt alternatively called the "minimal state" (Minimalstaat), and stato neutrale.16 It follows that in a society where production has been rationalized and human interaction is subject to constant reification (Vergegenständlichung), liberalism cannot (or does not wish to) adopt the same "will to power" which so often characterizes other ideologies. In addition, it is somewhat difficult to envision how such a society can request its citizens to sacrifice their goods and their lives in the interests of some political or religious ideal.17 The free market is viewed as a "neutral filed" (Neutralgebiet), allowing only the minimum of ideological conflict, that aims at erasing all political conflicts, positing that all people are rational beings whose quest for happiness is best secured by the peaceful pursuit of economic goals. In a liberal, individualistic society, every political belief is sooner or later reduced to a "private thing" whose ultimate arbiter is the individual himself. The Marxist theoretician Habermas comes to a somewhat similar conclusion, when he argues that modern liberal systems have acquired a negative character: "Politics is oriented to the removal of dysfunctionalities and of risks dangerous to the system; in other words politics is not oriented to the implementation of practical goals, but to the solution of technological issues."18 The market may thus be viewed as an ideal social construct whose main purpose is to limit the political arena. Consequently, every imaginable flaw in the market is generally explained by assertions that "there is still too much politics" hampering the free exchange of goods and commodities.19

Probably one of the most cynical remarks about liberalism and the liberal "money fetichism," came not from Marx, but from the Fascist ideologue Julius Evola, who once wrote: "Before the classical dilemma, your money or your life, the bourgeois will paradoxically be the one to answer: ‘Take my life, but spare my money.’"20 But in spite of its purportedly agnostic and apolitical character, it would be wrong to assert that liberalism does not have "religious roots." In fact, many authors have remarked that the implementation of liberalism has been the most successful in precisely those countries which are known for strong adherence to biblical monotheism. Earlier in this century, the German sociologist Werner Sombart asserted that the liberal postulates of economics and ethics stem from Judeo-Christian legalism, and that liberals conceive of commerce, money and the "holy economicalness" ("heilige Wirtschaftlichkeit") as the ideal avenue to spiritual salvation.21 More recently, the French anthropologist Louis Dumont, wrote that liberal individualism and economism are the secular transposition of Judeo-Christian beliefs, noting that "just as religion gave birth to politics, politics in turn will be shown to give birth to economics."22

Henceforth, writes Dumont in his book From Mandeville to Marx, according to the liberal doctrine, man's pursuit of happiness has increasingly come to be associated with the unimpeded pursuit of economic activities. In modern polities, he opines, the substitution of man as an individual for the idea of man as a social being was made possible by Judeo-Christianity: "the transition was thus made possible, from a holistic social order to a political system raised by consent as a superstructure on an ontological given economic basis."23 In other words, the idea of individual accountability before God, gave birth, over a long period of time, to the individual and to the idea that economic accountability constitutes the linchpin of the liberal social contract - a notion totally absent from organic and traditional nationalistically-organized societies.24 Thus Emanuel Rackman argues that Judeo-Christianity played an important role in the development of ethical liberalism in the USA: "This was the only source on which Thomas Paine could rely in his "Rights of Man" to support the dogma of the American Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. And this dogma was basic in Judaism."25 Similar claims are made by Konvitz in Judaism and the American Idea, wherein he argues that modern America owes much to the Jewish holy scriptures.26 Feurbach, Sombart, Weber, Troeltsch, and others have similarly argued that Judeo-Christianity had a considerable influence on the historical development of liberal capitalism. On the other hand, when one considers the recent economic success of various Asian countries on the Pacific Rim, whose expansionary impetus often overshadows the economic achievements of the countries marked by the Judeo-Christian legacy, one must take care not to equate economic success solely with the Judeo-Christian forms of liberal society.

Equal Economic Opportunity or the Opportunity to Be Unequal?

The strength of liberalism and of free-market economics lies in the fact that the liberal ideal enables all people to develop their talents as they best see fit. The free market ignores all hierarchy and social differentiation, except those differences which result from the completion of economic transactions. Liberals argue that all people have the same economic opportunity, and that consequently, each individual, by making best use of his or her talents and entrepreneurship, will alone determine his or her social status. But critics of liberalism often contend that this formula is in itself dependent upon the terms and conditions under which the principles of "economic opportunity" can take place. John Schaar asserts that liberalism has substantially transformed the social arena into the economic field track, and that the formula should read: "equality of opportunity for all to develop those talents which are highly valued by a given people at a given time."27 According to Schaar's logic, when the whims of the market determine which specific items, commodities or human talents are most in demand, or are more marketable than some others, it will follow that individuals lacking these talents or commodities will experience an acute sense of injustice. "Every society, Schaar continues, "encourages some talents and discourages others. Under the equal opportunity doctrine, the only men who can fulfil themselves and develop their abilities to the fullest are those who are able and eager to do what society demands they do."28 This means that liberal societies will likely be most content when their members share a homogeneous background and a common culture. Yet modern liberalism seeks to break-down national barriers and promote the conversion of hitherto homogeneous nation-states into multi-ethnic and highly heterogeneous political states. Thus, the potential for disputation and dissatisfaction is enhanced by the successful implementation of its economic policies.

It is further arguable that the success of liberalism engenders its own problems. Thus, as Karl Marx was quick to note, in a society where everything becomes an expendable commodity, man gradually comes to see himself as an expendable commodity too. An average individual will be less and less prone to abide by his own internal criteria, values or interests, and instead, he will tenaciously focus on not being left out of the economic battle, always on his guard that his interests are in line with the market. According to Schaar, such an attitude, in the long run, can have catastrophic consequences for the winner as well as the loser: "The winners easily come to think of themselves as being superior to common humanity, while the losers are almost forced to think of themselves as something less than human."29 Under psychological pressure caused by incessant economic competition, and seized by fear that they may fall out of the game, a considerable number of people, whose interests and sensibilities are not compatible with current demands of the market, may develop feelings of bitterness, jealousness and inferiority. A great many among them will accept the economic game, but many will, little by little, come to the conclusion that the liberal formula "all people are equal," in reality only applies to those who are economically the most successful. Murray Milner, whose analyses parallel Schaar's, observes that under such circumstances, the doctrine of equal opportunity creates psychological insecurity, irrespective of the material affluence of society. "Stressing equality of opportunity necessarily makes the status structure fluid and the position of the individual within it ambiguous and insecure."30 The endless struggle for riches and security, which seemingly has no limits, can produce negative results, particularly when society is in the throes of sudden economic changes. Antony Flew, in a similar fashion, writes that "a 'competition' in which the success of all contestants is equally probable is a game of chance or lottery, not a genuine competition."31 For Milner such an economic game is tiring and unpredictable, and if "extended indefinitely, it could lead to exhaustion and collapse."32

Many other contemporary authors also argue that the greatest threat to liberalism comes from the constant improvement in general welfare generated by its own economic successes. Recently, two French scholars, Julien Freund and Claude Polin, wrote that the awesome expansion of liberalism, resulting in ever increasing general affluence, inevitably generates new economic and material needs, which constantly cry out for yet another material fulfilment. Consequently, after society has reached an enviable level of material growth, even the slightest economic crisis, resulting in a perceptible drop in living standards, will cause social discord and possibly political upheavals.

Taking a slightly different stance, Polin remarks that liberalism, in accordance with the much vaunted doctrine of "natural rights," tends, very often, to define man as a final and complete species who no longer needs to evolve, and whose needs can be rationally predicted and finalized. Led by an unquenchable desire that he must exclusively act on his physical environment in order to improve his earthly lot, he is accordingly led by the liberal ideology to think that the only possible way to realize happiness is to place material welfare and individualism above all other goals.33 In fact, given that the "ideology of needs" has become a tacit criterion of progress in liberalism, it is arguable that the material needs of modern anomic masses must always be "postponed," since they can never be fully satisfied.34 Moreover, each society which places excessive hopes in a salutary economy, will gradually come to view freedom as purely economic freedom and good as purely economic good. Thus, the "merchant civilization" (civilïzation marchande), as Polin calls it, must eventually become a hedonistic civilization in search of pleasure, and self-love. These points are similar to the views held by Julien Freund, who also sees in liberalism a society of impossible needs and insatiable desire. He remarks that "it appears that satiety and overabundance are not the same things as satisfaction, because they provoke new dissatisfaction."35 Instead of rationally solving all human needs, liberal society always triggers new ones, which in turn constantly create further needs. Everything happens, Freund continues, as if the well-fed needed more than those who live in indigence. In other words, abundance creates a different form of scarcity, as if man needs privation and indigence, "as if he needed some needs."36 One has almost the impression that liberal society purposely aims at provoking new needs, generally unpredictable, often bizarre. Freund concludes that "the more the rationalization of the means of production brings about an increase in the volume of accessible goods, the more the needs extend to the point of becoming irrational."37

Such an argument implies that the dynamics of liberalism, continually begetting new and unpredictable needs, continually threatens the philosophical premises of that same rationalism on which liberal society has built its legitimacy. In this respect socialist theorists often sound convincing when they in effect argue that if liberalism has not been able to provide equality in affluence, communism does at least offer equality in frugality!

Conclusion: From Atomistic Society to Totalitarian System

The British imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, once exclaimed: "if I could I would annex the planets!" A very Promethean idea, indeed, and quite worthy of Jack London's rugged individuals or Balzac's entrepreneurs - but can it really work in a world in which the old capitalist guard, as Schumpeter once pointed out, is becoming a vanishing species?38

It remains to be seen how liberalism will pursue its odyssey in a society in which those who are successful in the economic arena live side by side with those who lag behind in economic achievement, when its egalitarian principles prohibit the development of any moral system that would justify such hierarchical differences, such as sustained medieval European society. Aside from prophecies about the decline of the West, the truism remains that it is easier to create equality in economic frugality than equality in affluence. Socialist societies can point to a higher degree of equality in frugality. But liberal societies, especially in the last ten years, have constantly been bedevilled by an uneasy choice; on the one hand, their effort to expand the market, in order to create a more competitive economy, has almost invariably caused the marginalization of some social strata. On the other hand, their efforts to create more egalitarian conditions by means of the welfare state brings about, as a rule, sluggish economic performance and a menacing increase in governmental bureaucratic controls. As demonstrated earlier, liberal democracy sets out from the principles that the "neutral state" and free market are the best pillars against radical political ideologies, and that commerce, as Montesqieu once said, "softens up the mores." Further, as a result of the liberal drive to extend markets on a world-wide basis, and consequently, to reduce or eliminate all forms of national protectionism, whether to the flow of merchandise, or of capital, or even of labor, the individual worker finds himself in an incomprehensible, rapidly changing international environment, quite different from the secure local society familiar to him since childhood.

This paradox of liberalism was very well described by a keen German observer, the philosopher Max Scheler, who had an opportunity to observe the liberal erratic development, first in Wilhelmian and then in Weimar Germany. He noted that liberalism is bound to create enemies, both on the right and the left side of the political spectrum: On the left it makes enemies of those who see in liberalism a travesty of the natural rights dogma, and on the right, of those who discern in it the menace to organic and traditional society. "Consequently," writes Scheler, "a huge load of resentment appears in a society, such as ours, in which equal political and other rights, that is, the publicly acknowledged social equality, go hand in hand with large differences in real power, real property and real education. A society in which each has the "right" to compare himself to everybody, yet in which, in reality, he can compare himself to nobody."39 In traditional societies as Dumont has written, such types of reasoning could never develop to the same extent because the majority of people were solidly attached to their communal roots and the social status which their community bestowed upon them. India, for example, provides a case study of a country that has significantly preserved a measure of traditional civic community, at least in the smaller towns and villages, despite the adverse impact of its population explosion and the ongoing conflict there between socialism in government and liberalism in the growing industrial sector of the economy. By contrast, in the more highly industrialized West, one could almost argue that the survival of modern liberalism depends on its constant ability to "run ahead of itself" economically.

The need for constant and rapid economic expansion carries in itself the seeds of social and cultural dislocation, and it is this loss of "roots" that provides the seedbed for tempting radical ideologies. In fact how can unchecked growth ever appease the radical proponents of natural rights, whose standard response is that it is inadmissible for somebody to be a loser and somebody a winner? Faced with a constant expansion of the market, the alienated and uprooted individual in a society in which the chief standard of value has become material wealth, may be tempted to sacrifice freedom for economic security. It does not always appear convincing that liberal societies will always be able to sustain the "social contract" on which they depend for their survival by thrusting people into material interdependence. Economic gain may be a strong bond, but it does not have the affective emotional power for inducing willing self-sacrifice in times of adversity on which the old family-based nation-state could generally rely.

More likely, by placing individuals in purely economic interdependence on each other, and by destroying the more traditional bonds of kinship and national loyalty, modern liberalism may have succeeded in creating a stage where, in times of adversity, the economic individual will seek to outbid, outsmart, and outmaneuver all others, thereby preparing the way for the "terror of all against all," and preparing the ground, once again, for the rise of new totalitarianisms. In other words, the spirit of totalitarianism is born when economic activity obscures all other realms of social existence, and when the "individual has ceased to be a father, a sportsman, a religious man, a friend, a reader, a righteous man - only to become an economic actor."40 By shrinking the spiritual arena and elevating the status of economic activities, liberalism in fact challenges its own principles of liberty, thus enormously facilitating the rise of totalitarian temptations. One could conclude that as long as economic values remained subordinate to non-economic ideals, the individual had at least some sense of security irrespective of the fact his life was often, economically speaking, more miserable. With the subsequent emergence of the anonymous market, governed by the equally anonymous invisible hand, in the anonymous society, as Hannah Arendt once put it, man has acquired a feeling of uprootedness and existential futility.41 As pre-industrial and traditional societies demonstrate, poverty is not necessarily the motor behind revolutions. Revolution comes most readily to those in whom poverty is combined with a consciousness of lost identity and a feeling of existential insecurity. For this reason, the modern liberal economies of the West must constantly work to ensure that the economic miracle shall continue. As economic success has been made the ultimate moral value, and national loyalties have been spurned as out of date, economic problems automatically generate deep dissatisfaction amongst those confronted with poverty, who are then likely to fall prone to the sense of "alienation" on which all past Marxist socialist success has been based.

One must therefore not exclude the likelihood that modern liberal society may at some time in the future face serious difficulties should it fail to secure permanent economic growth, especially if, in addition, it relentlessly continues to atomize the family (discouraging marriage, for example, by means of tax systems which favors extreme individualism) and destroys all national units in favor of the emergence of a single world-wide international market, along with its inevitable concomitant, the "international man." While any faltering of the world economy, already under pressure from the Third World population explosion, might conceivably lead to a resurgence of right wing totalitarianisms in some areas, it is much more likely that in an internationalized society the new totalitarianism of the future will come from the left, in the form of a resurgence of the "socialist experiment," promising economic gain to a population that has been taught that economic values are the only values that matter. Precisely because the "workers of the world" will have come to see themselves as an alienated international proletariat, they will tend to lean toward international socialist totalitarianism, rather than other forms of extreme political ideology.

Notes

  1. Michael Beaud, A History of Capitalism 1500-1980(Paris: New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), p. 80. ↩↩↩↩

  2. François Perroux, Le capitalisme (Paris: PUF, 1960), p. 31. ↩↩↩↩

  3. Ernst Topitsch "Dialektik - politische Wunderwaffe?,"Die Grundlage des Spätmarxismus, edited by E. Topitsch, Rüdiger Proske, Hans Eysenck et al., (Stuttgart: Verlag Bonn Aktuell GMBH), p. 74. ↩↩↩↩

  4. Georges Sorel, Les illusions du progrès (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1947), p. 50. ↩↩↩↩

  5. François-Bernard Huyghe, La Soft-idéologie (Paris: Laffont, 1988). See also, Jean Baudrillard, La Gauche divine (Paris: Laffont, 1985). For an interesting polemics concerning the "treason of former socialists clerics who converted to liberalism," see Guy Hocquenghem, Lettre ouverte à ceux qui sont passés du col Mao au Rotary(Paris: Albin Michel, 1986). ↩↩↩↩

  6. Serge-Christophe Kolm. Le libéralisme moderne (Paris: PUF, 1984), p. 11. ↩↩↩↩

  7. Carl Schmitt, Die geistegeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlametatarismus (München and Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker and Humblot, 1926), p. 23. ↩↩↩↩

  8. Kolm, op. cit., p. 96. ↩↩↩↩

  9. Karl Marx, Kritik des Gothaer Programms (Zürich: Ring Verlag A.G., 1934), p. 10. ↩↩↩↩

  10. Ibid. , p. 11. ↩↩↩↩

  11. Sanford Lakoff, "Christianity and Equality," _Equality,_edited by J. Roland Pennock and J. W. Chapmann, (New York: Atherton Press, 1967), pp. 128-130. ↩↩↩↩

  12. David Thomson, Equality (Cambridge: University Press, 1949), p. 79. 13. Sorel, op. cit., p. 297. ↩↩↩↩

  13. Loc. cit. ↩↩↩↩

  14. Theodore von Sosnosky, Die rote Dreifältikeit(Einsiedeln: Verlaganstalt Benziger and Co., 1931). ↩↩↩↩

  15. cf. Raymond Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism(New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1969), p. 194 and passim. ↩↩↩↩

  16. Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen (München and Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker and Humblot, 1932), p. 76 and passim. ↩↩↩↩

  17. Ibid. , p. 36. ↩↩↩↩

  18. Jürgen Habermas Technik and Wissenschaft als Ideologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968), p. 77. ↩↩↩↩

  19. Alain de Benoist, Die entscheidenden Jahre, "In der kaufmännisch-merkantilen Gesellschaftsform geht das Politische ein,"(Tübingen: Grabert Verlag, 1982), p. 34. ↩↩↩↩

  20. Julius Evola, "Procès de la bourgeoisie," Essais politiques (Paris: edition Pardès, 1988), p. 212. First published in La vita italiana, "Processo alla borghesia," XXV1II, nr. 324 (March 1940): 259-268. ↩↩↩↩

  21. Werner Sombart, Der Bourgeois, cf. "Die heilige Wirtschaftlichkeit"; (München and Leipzig: Verlag von Duncker and Humblot, 1923), pp. 137-160. ↩↩↩↩

  22. Louis Dumont, From Mandeville to Marx, The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), p.16. ↩↩↩↩

  23. Ibid., p. 59. ↩↩↩↩

  24. cf. L. Dumont, Essays on Individualism (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, 1986). ↩↩↩↩

  25. Emanuel Rackman, "Judaism and Equality;' _Equality,_edited by J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (New York: Atherton Press, 1967), p. 155. ↩↩↩↩

  26. Milton Konvitz, Judaism and the American Idea(Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978). Also German jurist Georg Jellinek argues in Die Erklärung der Menschen-and Bürgerrechte (Leipzig: Duncker and Humbolt, 1904), p. 46, that "the idea to establish legally the unalienable, inherent, and sacred rights of individuals, is not of political but religious origin." ↩↩↩↩

  27. John Schaar, "Equality of Opportunity and Beyond," in Equality, op. cit. , 230. ↩↩↩↩

  28. Ibid., p. 236. ↩↩↩↩

  29. Ibid., p. 235. ↩↩↩↩

  30. Murray Milner, The Illusion of Equality (Washington and London: Jossey-Bass Inc. Publishers, 1972), p. 10. ↩↩↩↩

  31. Antony Flew, The Politics of Procrustes (New York: Promethean Books, 1981), p. 111. ↩↩↩↩

  32. Milner, op. cit., p. 11. ↩↩↩↩

  33. Claude Polin, Le libéralisme, espoir ou péril (Paris: Table ronde, 1984), p. 211. ↩↩↩↩

  34. Ibid. p. 213. ↩↩↩↩

  35. Julien Freund, Politique, Impolitique (Paris: ed. Sirey, 1987), p. 336. Also in its entirety, "Théorie des besoins," pp. 319-353. ↩↩↩↩

  36. Loc. cit. ↩↩↩↩

  37. Ibid., p. 336-337. ↩↩↩↩

  38. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 165 and passim. ↩↩↩↩

  39. Max Scheler, Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (Abhandlungen and Aufsäzte) (Leipzig: Verlag der weissen Bücher, 1915), p. 58. ↩↩↩↩

  40. Claude Polin, Le totalitarisme (Paris: PUF, 1982), p.123. See also Guillaume Faye, Contre l'économisme(Paris: ed. le Labyrinthe, 1982). ↩↩↩↩

  41. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Meridian Book, 1958), p. 478. ↩↩↩↩

History and Decadence: Spengler's Cultural Pessimism Today (part 1/2)

Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) exerted considerable influence on European conservatism before the Second World War. Although his popularity waned somewhat after the war, his analyses, in the light of the disturbing conditions in the modern polity, again seem to be gaining in popularity. Recent literature dealing with gloomy post¬modernist themes suggests that Spengler's prophecies of decadence may now be finding supporters on both sides of the political spectrum. The alienating nature of modern technology and the social and moral decay of large cities today lend new credence to Spengler's vision of the impending collapse of the West. In America and Europe an increasing number of authors perceive in the liberal permissive state a harbinger of "soft" totalitarianism that may lead decisively to social entropy and conclude in the advent of "hard" totalitarianism.1 Spengler wrote his major work The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes) against the background of the anticipated German victory in World War I. When the war ended disastrously for the Germans, his predictions that Germany, together with the rest of Europe, was bent for irreversible decline gained a renewed sense of urgency for scores of cultural pessimists. World War I must have deeply shaken the quasi-religious optimism of those who had earlier prophesied that technological inventions and international economic linkages would pave the way for peace and prosperity. Moreover, the war proved that technological inventions could turn out to be a perfect tool for man's alienation and, eventually, his physical an¬nihilation. Inadvertently, while attempting to interpret the cycles of world history, Spengler probably best succeeded in spreading the spirit of cultural despair to his own as well as future generations. Like Gianbattista Vico, who two centuries earlier developed his thesis about the rise and decline of cultures, Spengler tried to project a pattern of cultural growth and cultural decay in a certain scientific form: "the morphology of history"- as he himself and others dub his work - although the term "biology" seems more appropriate considering Spengler's inclination to view cultures as living organic entities, alternately afflicted with disease and plague or showing signs of vigorous life.2 Undoubtedly, the organic conception of history was, to a great extent, inspired by the popularity of scientific and pseudo¬scientific literature, which, in the early twentieth century, began to focus attention on racial and genetic paradigms in order to explain the patterns of social decay. Spengler, however, prudently avoids racial determinism in his description of decadence, although his exaltation of historical determinism often brings him close to Marx¬ - albeit in a reversed and hopelessly pessimistic direction. In contrast to many egalitarian thinkers, Spengler's elitism and organicism con¬ceived of human species as of different and opposing peoples, each experiencing its own growth and death, and each struggling for survival. "Mankind," writes Spengler, should be viewed as either a "zoological concept or an empty word." If ever this phantom of "mankind" vanishes from the circulation of historical forms, "we shall then notice an astounding affluence of genuine forms." Appar¬ently, by form ("Gestalt") Spengler means the resurrection of the classical notion of the nation-state, which, in the early twentieth century, came under fire from the advocates of the globalist and universalist polity. Spengler must be credited, however, with pointing out that the frequently-used concept "world history," in reality encompasses an impressive array of diverse and opposing cultures without common denominator; each culture displays its own forms, pursues its own passions, and grapples with its own life or death. "There are blossoming and aging cultures," writes Spengler, "peo¬ples, languages, truths, gods, and landscapes, just as there are young and old oak trees, pines, flowers, boughs and petals - but there is no aging `mankind.’"3 For Spengler, cultures seem to be growing in sublime futility, with some approaching terminal illness, and others still displaying vigorous signs of life. Before culture emerged, man was an ahistorical creature; but he becomes again ahistorical and, one might add, even hostile to history: "as soon as some civilization has developed its full and final form, thus putting a stop to the living development of culture" (2:58; 2:48). Similarly, each culture undergoes various cycles or different his¬torical "seasons": first appears the period of cultural blossoming or the spring-time of culture, followed by the period of maturation, which Spengler alternately calls summer or fall, and finally comes the period of decadence, which in Spengler's view is synonymous with "civilization." This "seasonal" flow of history is a predicament of all nations, although the historical timing of their decline varies with the virility of each nation, geographical area, or epoch. In the field of politics and statecraft, the process of decadence is very much the same. Thus, the closing years of the First World War witnessed the passing of the feudal rule of the landed aristocracy and the emergence of budding forms of parliamentary plutocracy - soon to be followed by the rise of rootless mobocracy and the "dictatorship of money" (2:633; 2:506). Undoubtedly Spengler was inspired by the works of Vilfredo Pareto and Gustave le Bon, who had earlier attempted to outline similar patterns of the rise and fall of political elites. In Pareto's and Le Bon's scheme, decadence sets in when the power elite no longer follows the established rule of social selection, and fails to identify internal and external enemies.4 Once it becomes emasculated by economic affluence and debilitated by the belief in the boundless goodness of its political opponents, the elite has already signed its own obituary. In similar words, Spengler contends that the rise of Caesarism must be viewed as a natural fulfillment of the money-dictatorship as well as its dialectical removal:

"The sword wins over money; the master-will conquers again the booty-will". (2:634; 2:506)

Then a new cycle of history will begin, according to Spengler, although he remains silent about the main historical actors, their origins, and their goals. Spengler was convinced, however, that the dynamics of decadence could be fairly well predicted, provided that exact historical data were available. Just as the biology of human beings generates a well¬-defined life span, resulting ultimately in biological death, so does each culture possess its own aging "data," normally lasting no longer than a thousand years - a period, separating its spring from its eventual historical antithesis, the winter, or civilization. The estimate of a thousand years before the decline of culture sets in, corresponds to Spengler's certitude that, after that period, each society has to face self-destruction. For example, after the fall of Rome, the rebirth of European culture started anew in the ninth century with the Carolingian dynasty. After the painful process of growth, self-asser¬tiveness, and maturation, one thousand years later, in the twentieth century, cultural life in Europe is coming to its definite historical close. As Spengler and his contemporary successors see it, Western culture now has transformed itself into a decadent civilization fraught with an advanced form of social, moral, and political decay. The first signs of this decay appeared shortly after the Industrial Revolution, when the machine began to replace man, when feelings gave way to ratio. Ever since that ominous event, new forms of social and political conduct have been surfacing in the West - marked by a wide-spread obsession with endless economic growth and irreversible human betterment - fueled by the belief that the burden of history can finally be removed. The new plutocratic elites, that have now replaced organic aristocracy, have imposed material gain as the only principle worth pursuing, reducing the entire human interaction to an immense economic transaction. And since the masses can never be fully satisfied, argues Spengler, it is understandable that they will seek change in their existing polities even if change may spell the loss of liberty. One might add that this craving for economic affluence will be translated into an incessant decline of the sense of public responsibility and an emerging sense of uprootedness and social anomie, which will ultimately and inevitably lead to the advent of totalitarianism. It would appear, therefore, that the process of de¬cadence can be forestalled, ironically, only by resorting to salutary hard-line regimes. Using Spengler's apocalyptic predictions, one is tempted to draw a parallel with the modern Western polity, which likewise seems to be undergoing the period of decay and decadence. John Lukacs, who bears the unmistakable imprint of Spenglerian pessimism, views the permissive nature of modern liberal society, as embodied in America, as the first step toward social disintegration. Like Spengler, Lukacs asserts that excessive individualism and rampant materialism increas¬ingly paralyze and render obsolete the sense of civic responsibility. One should probably agree with Lukacs that neither the lifting of censorship, nor the increasing unpopularity of traditional values, nor the curtailing of state authority in contemporary liberal states, seems to have led to a more peaceful environment; instead, a growing sense of despair seems to have triggered a form of neo-barbarism and social vulgarity. "Already richness and poverty, elegance and slea¬ziness, sophistication and savagery live together more and more," writes Lukacs.5 Indeed, who could have predicted that a society capable of launching rockets to the moon or curing diseases that once ravaged the world could also become a civilization plagued by social atomization, crime, and addiction to escapism? With his apoc¬alyptic predictions, Lukacs, similar to Spengler, writes: "This most crowded of streets of the greatest civilization: this is now the hell¬hole of the world." Interestingly, neither Spengler nor Lukacs nor other cultural pes¬simists seems to pay much attention to the obsessive appetite for equality, which seems to play, as several contemporary authors point out, an important role in decadence and the resulting sense of cultural despair. One is inclined to think that the process of decadence in the contemporary West is the result of egalitarian doctrines which promise much but deliver little, creating thus an endless feeling of emptiness and frustration among the masses of economic-minded and rootless citizens. Moreover, elevated to the status of modern secular religions, egalitarianism and economism inevitably follow their own dynamics of growth, which is likely to conclude, as Claude Polin notes, in the "terror of all against all" and the ugly resurgence of democratic totalitarianism. Polin writes: "Undifferentiated man is par excellence a quantitative man; a man who accidentally differs from his neighbors by the quantity of economic goods in his pos¬session; a man subject to statistics; a man who spontaneously reacts in accordance to statistics".6 Conceivably, liberal society, if it ever gets gripped by economic duress and hit by vanishing opportunities, will have no option but to tame and harness the restless masses in a Spenglerian "muscled regime." Spengler and other cultural pessimists seem to be right in pointing out that democratic forms of polity, in their final stage, will be marred by moral and social convulsions, political scandals, and cor¬ruption on all social levels. On top of it, as Spengler predicts, the cult of money will reign supreme, because "through money democracy destroys itself, after money has destroyed the spirit" (2:582; 2:464). Judging by the modern development of capitalism, Spengler cannot be accused of far fetched assumptions. This economic civilization founders on a major contradiction: on the one hand its religion of human rights extends its beneficiary legal tenets to everyone, reas-suring every individual of the legitimacy of his earthly appetites; on the other, this same egalitarian civilization fosters a model of economic Darwinism, ruthlessly trampling under its feet those whose interests do not lie in the economic arena. The next step, as Spengler suggests, will be the transition from democracy to salutary Caesarism; substitution of the tyranny of the few for the tyranny of many. The neo-Hobbesian, neo-barbaric state is in the making:

Instead of the pyres emerges big silence. The dictatorship of party bosses is backed up by the dictatorship of the press. With money, an attempt is made to lure swarms of readers and entire peoples away from the enemy's attention and bring them under one's own thought control. There, they learn only what they must learn, and a higher will shapes their picture of the world. It is no longer needed-as the baroque princes did-to oblige their subordinates into the armed service. Their minds are whipped up through articles, telegrams, pictures, until they demand weapons and force their leaders to a battle to which these wanted to be forced. (2:463)

The fundamental issue, however, which Spengler and many other cultural pessimists do not seem to address, is whether Caesarism or totalitarianism represents the antithetical remedy to decadence or, rather, the most extreme form of decadence? Current literature on totalitarianism seems to focus on the unpleasant side-effects of the bloated state, the absence of human rights, and the pervasive control of the police. By contrast, if liberal democracy is indeed a highly desirable and the least repressive system of all hitherto known in the West - and if, in addition, this liberal democracy claims to be the best custodian of human dignity - one wonders why it relentlessly causes social uprootedness and cultural despair among an increasing number of people? As Claude Polin notes, chances are that, in the short run, democratic totalitarianism will gain the upper hand since the security it provides is more appealing to the masses than is the vague notion of liberty.7 One might add that the tempo of democratic process in the West leads eventually to chaotic impasse, which ne¬cessitates the imposition of a hard-line regime. Although Spengler does not provide a satisfying answer to the question of Caesarism vs. decadence, he admits that the decadence of, the West need not signify the collapse of all cultures. Rather, it appears that the terminal illness of the West may be a new lease on life for other cultures; the death of Europe may result in a stronger Africa or Asia. Like many other cultural pessimists, Spengler ac¬knowledges that the West has grown old, unwilling to fight, with its political and cultural inventory depleted; consequently, it is obliged to cede the reigns of history to those nations that are less exposed to debilitating pacifism and the self-flagellating guilt-feelings which, so to speak, have become new trademarks of the modern Western citizen. One could imagine a situation where these new virile and victorious nations will barely heed the democratic niceties of their guilt-ridden former masters, and may likely, at some time in the future, impose their own brand of terror which could eclipse the legacy of the European Auschwitz and the Gulag. In view of the ruthless civil and tribal wars all over the decolonized African and Asian continent, it seems unlikely that power politics and bellicosity will disappear with the "decline of the West." So far, no proof has been offered that non-European nations can govern more peacefully and generously than their former European masters. "Pacifism will remain an ideal," Spengler reminds us, "war a fact. If the white races are resolved never to wage a war again, the colored will act differently and be rulers of the world".8 In this statement, Spengler clearly indicts the self-hating "homo europeanus" who, having become a victim of his bad conscience, naively thinks that his truths and verities must remain irrefutably valid forever, forgetting that his eternal verities may one day be turned against him. Spengler strongly attacks this Western false sympathy with the deprived ones - a sympathy that Nietzsche once depicted as a twisted form of egoism and slave moral. "This is the reason," writes Spengler, why this "compassion moral," in the day-¬to-day sense, "evoked among us with respect, and sometimes strived for by the thinkers, sometimes longed for, has never been realized" (1:449; 1:350). This form of political masochism could be well studied particularly among those contemporary Western egalitarians who, with the decline of socialist temptations, substituted for the archetype of the European exploited worker, the iconography of the starving African. Nowhere does this change in political symbolics seem more apparent than in the current Western drive to export Western forms of civilization to the antipodes of the world. These Westerners, in the last spasm of a guilt-ridden shame, are probably convinced that their historical repentance might also secure their cultural and political longevity. Spengler was aware of these paralyzing attitudes among Europeans, and he remarks that, if a modern European recognizes his historical vulnerability, he must start thinking beyond his narrow perspective and develop different attitudes toward different political convictions and verities. What do Parsifal or Prometheus have to do with the average Japanese citizen, asks Spengler? "This is exactly what is lacking to the Western thinker," continues Spengler, "and which precisely should have never lacked to him; insight into historical relativity of his achievements, which themselves are the manifestation of one and unique, and of only one existence" (1:31;1:23). On a somewhat different level, one wonders to what extent the much vaunted dis¬semination of universal human rights can become a valuable principle for non-Western peoples if Western universalism often signifies blatant disrespect for all cultural particularities.

Notes

CLIO - A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History, Vol. 19, No 1, pp. 51-62, fall 1989

End of part one

  1. In the case of the European 'New Right', see Jean Cau, Discours de la décadence (Paris: Copernic, 1978), Julien Freund, La décadence: histoire sociologique et philosophique d’une expérience humaine (Paris: Sirey, 1984), and Pierre Chaunu Histoire et décadence (Paris: Perrin, 1981). In the case of authors of "leftist sensibility," see Jean Baud-rillard's virulent attack against simulacra and hyperreality in America: Amérique (Paris: Grasset, 1986)-in English, America, trans. Chris Turner (New York, London: Verso, 1988)-and Jean-François Huyghe, La soft-idéologie (Paris: Laffont, 1987). There is a certain Spenglerian whiff in Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York: Warner Books, 1979), and probably in Richard Lamm, Megatraumas: America at the Year 2000 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985). About European cultural conservatives see my Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right (forthcoming). ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. See Spengler's critic and admirer Heinrich Scholz, Zum 'Untergang des Abendlandes' (Berlin: von Reuther and Reichard, 1920). Scholz conceives of history as polycentric occurrences concentrated in creative archetypes, noting: "History is a curriculum vitae of many cultures having nothing in common except the name; because each of them has its own destiny, own life, and own death" (11)-my translation. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  3. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson, 2 vols. (1926; New York: Knopf, 1976), 1:21. My text, however, contains my own translations from Der Untergang des Abendlandes (München: Beck, 1923), 1:28-29. Citations hereafter are in the text, in parentheses, giving references to these two editions, respectively. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  4. Vilfredo Pareto, 'Dangers of Socialism', in The Other Pareto, ed. Placido Bucolo, trans. Gillian and Placido Bucolo, pre. Ronald Fletcher (New York: St. Martin's, 1980). Pareto writes: "There are some people who imagine that they can disarm the enemy by complacent flattery. They are wrong. The world has always belonged to the stronger and will belong to them for many years to come. Men only respect those who make themselves respected. Whoever becomes a lamb will find a wolf to eat him" (125). In a similar vein, Gustave le Bon, Psychologie politique (1911; Paris: Les Amis de G. L. Bon, 1984), writes: "Wars among nations have, by the way, always been the source of the most important progress. Which pacifist people has ever played any role in history?" (79)-my translation. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  5. John Lukacs, The Passing of the Modern Age (New York: Harper, 1970), 10, 9. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  6. Claude Polin, L'esprit totalitaire (Paris: Sirey, 1977), 111: my translation. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  7. Claude Polin, Le totalitarisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires Françaises, 1982) argues that egalitarianism, universalism and economism are the three pivots of totalitarianism: "Totalitarian power is first and foremost the power of all against all; the tyranny of all against all. Totalitarian society is not constructed from the top down to the bottom, but from the bottom up to the top" (117) – my translation. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  8. 'Is World Peace Possible?' in Selected Essay, trans. Donald O. White (1936: Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967), 207. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

History and Decadence: Spengler's Cultural Pessimism Today (part 2/2)

Even with their eulogy of universalism, as Serge Latouche has recently noted, Westerners have, nonetheless, secured the most com¬fortable positions for themselves. Although they have now retreated to the back stage of history, vicariously, through their humanism, they still play the role of the undisputable masters of the non-white¬-man show. "The death of the West for itself has not been the end of the West in itself," adds Latouche.1 One wonders whether such Western attitudes to universalism represent another form of racism, considering the havoc these attitudes have created in traditional Third World communities. Latouche appears correct in remarking that Eur¬opean decadence best manifests itself in its masochistic drive to deny and discard everything that it once stood for, while simultaneously sucking into its orbit of decadence other cultures as well. Yet, although suicidal in its character, the Western message contains mandatory admonishments for all non-European nations. He writes: The mission of the West is not to exploit the Third World, nor to christianize the pagans, nor to dominate by white presence; it is to liberate men (and even more so women) from oppression and misery. In order to counter this self-hatred of the anti-imperialist vision, which concludes in red totalitarianism, one is now compelled to dry the tears of white man, and thereby ensure the success of this westernization of the world. (41) The decadent West exhibits, as Spengler hints, a travestied culture living on its own past in a society of different nations that, having lost their historical consciousness, feel an urge to become blended into a promiscuous "global polity." One wonders what would he say today about the massive immigration of non-Europeans to Europe? This immigration has not improved understanding among races, but has caused more racial and ethnic strife that, very likely, signals a series of new conflicts in the future. But Spengler does not deplore the "devaluation of all values" nor the passing of cultures. In fact, to him decadence is a natural process of senility which concludes in civilization, because civilization is decadence. Spengler makes a typically German distinction between culture and civilization, two terms which are, unfortunately, used synonymously in English. For Spengler civilization is a product of intellect, of completely rationalized intellect; civilization means uproot¬edness and, as such, it develops its ultimate form in the modern megapolis which, at the end of its journey, "doomed, moves to its final self-destruction" (2:127; 2:107). The force of the people has been overshadowed by massification; creativity has given way to "kitsch" art; geniality has been subordinated to the terror of reason. He writes:

Culture and civilization. On the one hand the living corpse of a soul and, on the other, its mummy. This is how the West European existence differs from 1800 and after. The life in its richness and normalcy, whose form has grown up and matured from inside out in one mighty course stretching from the adolescent days of Gothics to Goethe and Napoleon - into that old artificial, deracinated life of our large cities, whose forms are created by intellect. Culture and civilization. The organism born in countryside, that ends up in petrified mechanism. (1:453; 1:353)

In yet another display of determinism, Spengler contends that one cannot escape historical destiny: "the first inescapable thing that confronts man as an unavoidable destiny, which no thought can grasp, and no will can change, is a place and time of one's birth: everybody is born into one people, one religion, one social status, one stretch of time and one culture."2 Man is so much constrained by his historical environment that all attempts at changing one's destiny are hopeless. And, therefore, all flowery postulates about the improvement of mankind, all liberal and socialist philosophizing about a glorious future regarding the duties of humanity and the essence of ethics, are of no avail. Spengler sees no other avenue of redemption except through declaring himself a fundamental and resolute pessimist:

Mankind appears to me as a zoological quantity. I see no progress, no goal, no avenue for humanity, except in the heads of the Western progress-Philistines. (...) I cannot see a single mind and even less a unity of endeavors, feelings, and understandings in these barren masses of people. (Selected Essays 73-74; 147)

The determinist nature of Spengler's pessimism has been criticized recently by Konrad Lorenz who, while sharing Spengler's culture of despair, refuses the predetermined linearity of decadence. In his capacity of ethologist and as one of the most articulate neo-Darwinists, Lorenz admits the possibility of an interruption of human phylo¬genesis - yet also contends that new vistas for cultural development always remain open. "Nothing is more foreign to the evolutionary epistemologist, as well, to the physician," writes Lorenz, "than the doctrine of fatalism."3 Still, Lorenz does not hesitate to criticize vehemently decadence in modern mass societies which, in his view, have already given birth to pacified and domesticated specimens unable to pursue cultural endeavors. Lorenz would certainly find positive resonance with Spengler himself in writing: "This explains why the pseudodemocratic doctrine that all men are equal, by which is believed that all humans are initially alike and pliable, could be made into a state religion by both the lobbyists for large industry and by the ideologues of communism" (179-80). Despite the criticism of historical determinism which has been leveled against him, Spengler often confuses his reader with Faustian exclamations reminiscent of someone prepared for battle rather than reconciled to a sublime demise. "No, I am not a pessimist," writes Spengler in "Pessimism," for "pessimism means seeing no more duties. I see so many unresolved duties that I fear that time and men will run out to solve them"(75). These words hardly cohere with the cultural despair which earlier he so passionately elaborated. Moreover, he often advocates force and the toughness of the warrior in order to stave off Europe's disaster. One is led to the conclusion that Spengler extols historical pessimism or "purposeful pessimism" ("Zweckpessimismus"), as long as it translates his conviction of the irreversible decadence of the European polity; however, once he perceives that cultural and political loopholes are available for moral and social regeneration, he quickly reverts to the eulogy of power politics. Similar characteristics are often to be found among many poets, novelists, and social thinkers whose legacy in spreading cultural pessimism played a significant part in shaping political behavior among European conservatives prior to World War II.4 One wonders why they all, like Spengler, bemoan the decadence of the West if this decadence has already been sealed, if the cosmic die has already been cast, and if all efforts of political and cultural rejuvenation appear hopeless? Moreover, in an effort to mend the unmendable, by advocating a Faustian mentality and will-to-power, these pessimists often seem to emulate the optimism of socialists rather than the ideas of those reconciled to impending social catastrophe. For Spengler and other cultural pessimists, the sense of decadence is inherently combined with a revulsion against modernity and an abhorrence of rampant economic greed. As recent history has shown, the political manifestation of such revulsion may lead to less savory results: the glorification of the will-to-power and the nostalgia of death. At that moment, literary finesse and artistic beauty may take on a very ominous turn. The recent history of Europe bears witness to how easily cultural pessimism can become a handy tool for modern political titans. Nonetheless, the upcoming disasters have something uplifting for the generations of cultural pessimists whose hypersensitive nature - and disdain for the materialist society - often lapses into political nihilism. This nihilistic streak was boldly stated by Spengler's contemporary Friedrich Sieburg, who reminds us that "the daily life of democracy with its sad problems is boring, but the impending catastrophes are highly interesting."5 One cannot help thinking that, for Spengler and his likes, in a wider historical context, war and power politics offer a regenerative hope against the pervasive feeling of cultural despair. Yet, regardless of the validity of Spengler's visions or nightmares, it does not take much imagination to observe in the decadence of the West the last twilight-dream of a democracy already grown weary of itself.

California State University, Fullerton, California

Notes

CLIO - A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History, Vol. 19, No 1, pp. 51-62, fall 1989

  1. Serge Latouche, L'occidentalisation du monde (Paris: La Découverte, 1989), 9; my translation. About Westerners' self-hate and self-denial, see Alain de Benoist, Europe, Tiers monde même combat (Paris: Laffont, 1986): "And whereas Christian universalism had once contributed to the justification of colonization, Christian pastoralism today inspires decolonization. This `mobilization of consciences' crystallizes itself around the notion of culpability." The colonized is no longer "a primitive" who ought to be "led to civilization." Rather, he is a living indictment, indeed, an example of an immaculate morality from whom the "civilized" has much to learn (62). See also Pascal Bruckner, Le sanglot de l'homme blanc. Tiers monde, culpabilité, haine de soi (Paris: Seuil, 1983), 13: for the bleeding-heart liberal Westerner "the birth of the Third world gave birth to this new category; expiatory militantism." My translations here. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. Spengler, 'Pessimismus', Reden and Aufsätze (München: Beck, 1937), 70; in English, 'Pessimism?' in Selected Essays, 143. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  3. Konrad Lorenz, The Waning of Humaneness (Boston: Little, Brown, 1987), 58-59. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  4. It would be impossible to enumerate all cultural pessimists who usually identify themselves as heroic pessimists, often as conservative revolutionaries, or aristocratic nihilists. Poets and novelists of great talent such as Gottfried Benn, Louis F. Céline, Ezra Pound, and others, were very much inspired by Oswald Spengler. See Gottfried Benn, "Pessimismus," in Essays und Aufsätze (Wiesbaden: Limes, 1959): "Man is not alone, thinking is alone. Thinking is self-bound and solitary" (357). See also the apocalyptic prose of Ernst Jünger, An der Zeitmauer (Werke) (Stuttgart: Klett, 1959): "It seems that cyclical system corresponds to our spirit. We make round-shaped watches, although there is no logical compulsion behind it. And even catastrophes are viewed as recurrent, as for example floods and drought, fire-age and ice-age" (460-61). My translations. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  5. Friedrich Sieburg, Die Lust am Untergang (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1954), 54. My translation. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

Vilfredo Pareto and Political Irrationality

Few political thinkers have stirred so much controversy as Franco-Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923). In the beginning of the twentieth century, Pareto exerted a considerable influence on European conservative thinkers, although his popularity rapidly declined after the Second World War. The Italian Fascists who used and abused Pareto's intellectual legacy were probably the main cause of his subsequent fall into oblivion. Pareto's political sociology is in any case irreconcilable with the modern egalitarian outlook. In fact, Pareto was one to its most severe critics. Yet his focus extends beyond a mere attack on modernity; his work is a meticulous scrutiny of the energy and driving forces that underlie political ideas and beliefs. From his study, he concludes that irrespective of their apparent utility or validity, ideas and beliefs often dissimulate morbid behavior. Some of Pareto's students went to so far as to draw a parallel between him and Freud, noting that while Freud attempted to uncover pathological behavior among seemingly normal individuals, Pareto tried to unmask irrational social conduct that lay camouflaged in respectable ideologies and political beliefs.

In general, Pareto argues that governments try to preserve their institutional framework and internal harmony by a posteriori justification of the behavior of their ruling elite--a procedure that stands in sharp contrast to the original objectives of government. This means that governments must "sanitize" violent and sometimes criminal behavior by adopting such self-rationalizing labels as "democracy," "democratic necessity," and "struggle for peace," to name but a few. It would be wrong, however, to assume that improper behavior is exclusively the result of governmental conspiracy or of corrupted politicians bent on fooling the people. Politicians and even ordinary people tend to perceive a social phenomenon as if it were reflected in a convex mirror. They assess its value only after having first deformed its objective reality. Thus, some social phenomena, such as riots, coups, or terrorist acts, are viewed through the prism of personal convictions, and result in opinions based on the relative strength or weakness of these convictions. Pareto argues that it is a serious error to assume that because his subjects or constituents feel cheated or oppressed, a leader of an oppressive regime is necessarily a liar or a crook. More than likely, such a leader is a victim of self-delusions, the attributes of which he considers "scientifically" and accurately based, and which he benevolently wishes to share with his subjects. To illustrate the power of self-delusion, Pareto points to the example of socialist intellectuals. He observes that "many people are not socialists because they have been persuaded by reasoning. Quite to the contrary, these people acquiesce to such reasoning because they are (already) socialists."

Modern Ideologies and Neuroses

In his essay on Pareto, Guillaume Faye, one of the founders of the European "New Right," notes that liberals and socialists are scandalized by Pareto's comparison of modern ideologies to neuroses: to latent manifestation of unreal effects, though these ideologies--socialism and liberalism--claim to present rational and "scientific" findings. In Freud's theory, psychic complexes manifest themselves in obsessional ideas: namely, neuroses, and paranoias. In Pareto's theory, by contrast, psychic impulses--which are called residues--manifest themselves in ideological derivatives. Rhetoric about historical necessity, self-evident truths, or economic and historical determinism are the mere derivatives that express residual psychic drives and forces such as the persistence of groups once formed and the instinct for combination.

For Pareto, no belief system or ideology is fully immune to the power of residues, although in due time each belief system or ideology must undergo the process of demythologization. The ultimate result is the decline of a belief or an ideology as well as the decline of the elite that has put it into practice.

Like many European conservatives before the war, Pareto repudiated the modern liberal, socialist myth that history showed an inevitable progression leading to social peace and prosperity. Along with his German contemporary Oswald Spengler, Pareto believed that no matter how sophisticated the appearance of some belief or ideology, it would almost certainly decay, given time. Not surprisingly, Pareto's attempts to denounce the illusion of progress and to disclose the nature of socialism and liberalism prompted many contemporary theorists to distance themselves from his thought.

Pareto argues that political ideologies seldom attract because of their empirical or scientific character--although, of course, every ideology claims those qualities--but because of their enormous sentimental power over the populace. For example, an obscure religion from Galilee mobilized masses of people who were willing to die, willing to be tortured. In the Age of Reason, the prevailing "religion" was rationalism and the belief in boundless human progress. Then came Marx with scientific socialism, followed by modern liberals and their "self-evident religion of human rights and equality." According to Pareto, underlying residues are likely to materialize in different ideological forms or derivatives, depending on each historical epoch. Since people need to transcend reality and make frequent excursions into the spheres of the unreal and the imaginary, it is natural that they embrace religious and ideological justifications, however intellectually indefensible these devices may appear to a later generation. In analyzing this phenomenon, Pareto takes the example of Marxist "true believers" and notes: "This is a current mental framework of some educated and intelligent Marxists with regard to the theory of value. From the logical point of view they are wrong; from the practical point of view and utility to their cause, they are probably right." Unfortunately, continues Pareto, these true believers who clamor for social change know only what to destroy and how to destroy it; they are full of illusions as to what they have to replace it with: "And if they could imagine it, a large number among them would be struck with horror and amazement."

Ideology and History

The residues of each ideology are so powerful that they can completely obscure reason and the sense of reality; in addition, they are not likely to disappear even when they assume a different "cover" in a seemingly more respectable myth or ideology. For Pareto this is a disturbing historical process to which there is no end in sight:

"Essentially, social physiology and social pathology are still in their infancy. If we wish to compare them to human physiology and pathology, it is not to Hippocrates that we have to reach but far beyond him. Governments behave like ignorant physicians who randomly pick drugs in a pharmacy and administer them to patients."

So what remains out of this much vaunted modern belief in progress, asks Pareto? Almost nothing, given that history continues to be a perpetual and cosmic eternal return, with victims and victors, heroes and henchmen alternating their roles, bewailing and bemoaning their fate when they are in positions of weakness, abusing the weaker when they are in positions of strength. For Pareto, the only language people understand is that of force. And with his usual sarcasm, he adds: "There are some people who imagine that they can disarm their enemy by complacent flattery. They are wrong. The world has always belonged to the stronger and will belong to them for many years to come. Men only respect those who make themselves respected. Whoever becomes a lamb will find a wolf to eat him."

Nations, empires, and states never die from foreign conquest, says Pareto, but from suicide. When a nation, class, party, or state becomes averse to bitter struggle--which seems to be the case with modern liberal societies--then a more powerful counterpart surfaces and attracts the following of the people, irrespective of the utility or validity of the new political ideology or theology:

"A sign which almost always accompanies the decadence of an aristocracy is the invasion of humanitarian sentiments and delicate "sob-stuff" which renders it incapable of defending its position. We must not confuse violence and force. Violence usually accompanies weakness. We can observe individuals and classes, who, having lost the force to maintain themselves in power, become more and more odious by resorting to indiscriminate violence. A strong man strikes only when it is absolutely necessary--and then nothing stops him. Trajan was strong but not violent; Caligula was violent but not strong."

Armed with the dreams of justice, equality, and freedom, what weapons do liberal democracies have today at their disposal against the downtrodden populations of the world? The sense of morbid culpability, which paralyzed a number of conservative politicians with regard to those deprived and downtrodden, remains a scant solace against tomorrow's conquerors. For, had Africans and Asians had the Gatling gun, had they been at the same technological level as Europeans, what kind of a destiny would they have reserved for their victims? Indeed, this is something that Pareto likes speculating about. True, neither the Moors nor Turks thought of conquering Europe with the Koran alone; they understood well the importance of the sword:

"Each people which is horrified by blood to the point of not knowing how to defend itself, sooner or later will become a prey of some bellicose people. There is probably not a single foot of land on earth that has not been conquered by the sword, or where people occupying this land have not maintained themselves by force. If Negroes were stronger than Europeans, it would be Negroes dividing Europe and not Europeans Africa. The alleged "right" which the people have arrogated themselves with the titles "civilized"--in order to conquer other peoples whom they got accustomed to calling "non-civilized"--is absolutely ridiculous, or rather this right is nothing but force. As long as Europeans remain stronger than Chinese, they will impose upon them their will, but if Chinese became stronger than Europeans, those roles would be reversed."

Power Politics

For Pareto, might comes first, right a distant second; therefore all those who assume that their passionate pleas for justice and brotherhood will be heeded by those who were previously enslaved are gravely mistaken. In general, new victors teach their former masters that signs of weakness result in proportionally increased punishment. The lack of resolve in the hour of decision becomes the willingness to surrender oneself to the anticipated generosity of new victors. It is desirable for society to save itself from such degenerate citizens before it is sacrificed to their cowardice. Should, however, the old elite be ousted and a new "humanitarian" elite come to power, the cherished ideals of justice and equality will again appear as distant and unattainable goals. Possibly, argues Pareto, such a new elite will be worse and more oppressive than the former one, all the more so as the new "world improvers" will not hesitate to make use of ingenious rhetoric to justify their oppression. Peace may thus become a word for war, democracy for totalitarianism, and humanity for bestiality. The distorted "wooden language" of communist elites indicates how correct Pareto was in predicting the baffling stability of contemporary communist systems.

Unfortunately, from Pareto's perspective, it is hard to deal with such hypocrisy. What underlies it, after all, is not a faulty intellectual or moral judgment, but an inflexible psychic need. Even so, Pareto strongly challenged the quasi-religious postulates of egalitarian humanism and democracy--in which he saw not only utopias but also errors and lies of vested interest. Applied to the ideology of "human rights," Pareto's analysis of political beliefs can shed more light on which ideology is a "derivative," or justification of a residual pseudo-humanitarian complex. In addition, his analysis may also provide more insight into how to define human rights and the main architects behind these definitions.

It must be noted, however, that although Pareto discerns in every political belief an irrational source, he never disputes their importance as indispensable unifying and mobilizing factors in each society. For example, when he affirms the absurdity of a doctrine, he does not suggest that the doctrine or ideology is necessarily harmful to society; in fact, it may be beneficial. By contrast, when he speaks of a doctrine's utility he does not mean that it is necessarily a truthful reflection of human behavior. On the matters of value, however, Pareto remains silent; for him, reasoned arguments about good and evil are no longer tenable.

Pareto's methodology is often portrayed as belonging to the tradition of intellectual polytheism. With Hobbes, Machiavelli, Spengler, and Carl Schmitt, Pareto denies the reality of a unique and absolute truth. He sees the world containing many truths and a plurality of values, with each being truthful within the confines of a given historical epoch and a specific people. Furthermore, Pareto's relativism concerning the meaning of political truth is also relevant in reexamining those beliefs and political sentiments claiming to be nondoctrinal. It is worth nothing that Pareto denies the modern ideologies of socialism and liberalism any form of objectivity. Instead, he considers them both as having derived from psychic needs, which they both disguise.

The New Class

For his attempts to demystify modern political beliefs, it should not come as a surprise that Pareto's theory of nonlogical actions and pathological residues continues to embarrass many modern political theorists; consequently his books are not easily accessible. Certainly with regard to communist countries, this is more demonstrably the case, for Pareto was the first to predict the rise of the "new class"--a class much more oppressive than traditional ruling elites. But noncommunist intellectuals also have difficulties coming to grips with Pareto. Thus, in a recent edition of Pareto's essays, Ronald Fletcher writes that he was told by market researchers of British publishers that Pareto is "not on the reading list," and is "not taught" in current courses on sociological theory in the universities. Similar responses from publishers are quite predictable in view of the fact that Pareto's analyses smack of cynicism and amorality--an unforgivable blasphemy for many modern scholars.

Nevertheless, despite the probity of his analysis, Pareto's work demands caution. Historian Zev Sternhell, in his remarkable book La droite revolutionnaire, observes that political ideas, like political deeds, can never be innocent, and that sophisticated political ideas often justify a sophisticated political crime. In the late 1920s, during a period of great moral and economic stress that profoundly shook the European intelligentsia, Pareto's theories provided a rationale for fascist suppression of political opponents. It is understandable, then, why Pareto was welcomed by the disillusioned conservative intelligentsia, who were disgusted, on the one hand, by Bolshevik violence, and on the other, by liberal democratic materialism. During the subsequent war, profane application of Pareto's theories contributed to the intellectual chaos and violence whose results continue to be seen.

More broadly speaking, however, one must admit that on many counts Pareto was correct. From history, he knew that not a single nation had obtained legitimacy by solely preaching peace and love, that even the American Bill of Rights and the antipodean spread of modern democracy necessitated initial repression of the many--unknowns who were either not deemed ripe for democracy, or worse, who were not deemed people at all (those who, as Koestler once wrote, "perished with a shrug of eternity"). For Pareto the future remains in Pandora's box and violence will likely continue to be man's destiny.

The Vengeance of Democratic Sciences

Pareto's books still command respect sixty-five years after his death. If the Left had possessed such an intellectual giant, he never would have slipped so easily into oblivion. Yet Pareto's range of influence includes such names as Gustave Le Bon, Robert Michels, Joseph Schumpeter, and Rayond Aron. But unfortunately, as long as Pareto's name is shrouded in silence, his contribution to political science and sociology will not be properly acknowledged. Fletcher writes that the postwar scholarly resurgence of such schools of thought as "system analysis," "behavioralism," "reformulations," and "new paradigms," did not include Pareto's because it was considered undemocratic. The result, of course, is subtle intellectual annihilation of Pareto's staggering erudition--an erudition that spans from linguistics to economics, from the knowledge of Hellenic literature to modern sexology.

But Pareto's analyses of the power of residues are useful for examining the fickleness of such intellectual coteries. And his studies of intellectual mimicry illustrate the pathology of those who for a long time espoused "scientific" socialism only to awaken to the siren sound of "self-evident" neoconservativism--those who, as some French writer recently noted, descended with impunity from the "pinnacle of Mao into the Rotary Club." Given the dubious and often amoral history of the twentieth-century intelligentsia, Pareto's study of political pathology remains, as always, apt.

Tomislave Sunic, a Croatian political theorist, has contributed a long essay to Yugoslavia: The Failure of Democratic Communism (New York, 1988). [The World and I (New York), April, 1988]

Link to the original article.

"De l'esprit communautaire et communiste à l'étatisme fragile: le drame de l'ex-post-Yougoslavie" (Catholica ~ Hiver 1997-1998, Nr. 93)

Lorsque l'on analyse un pays éclectique comme l'ex-Yougoslavie, on est tenté d'utiliser une méthode éclectique. En 1991, un concours de circonstances diverses et convergentes a provoqué l'éclatement du pays, prélude à la guerre entre les principaux acteurs : Serbes, Croates et Musulmans bosniaques. Lors de l'agression grande-serbe menée par l'armée yougoslave contre la Croatie, et plus tard, lors de la guerre interethnique en Bosnie-Herzégovine, et après les Accords de Dayton, dont l'architecte fut le gouvernement américain en 1995, une multitude d'analyses sur l'origine du conflit ont vu le jour. Les crimes perpétrés par les ex-belligérants ont été décrits et décriés par les médias aux quatre coins du monde. On débat toujours dans les chancelleries occidentales sur le futur scénario militaire et juridique qui s'imposera dans les Balkans, notamment dans le nouveau petit Etat multiethnique de Bosnie-Herzégovine.

Alors que de nombreux comptes rendus médiatiques existent sur les instigateurs du conflit et leur rôle pendant le drame de l'ex-Yougoslavie, peu de choses ont été dues de la perception que chaque groupe ethnique a de lui même et de l'Autre, ainsi que de sa propre conception de l'Etat-nation.1 De plus, dans les milieux diplomatiques et médiatiques, on a relativement peu analysé l'héritage du titisme et l'impact de l'esprit totalitaire qui ont considérablement prolongé la durée de la guerre, et qui subsistent toujours dans les structures mentales de la population post-yougoslave. Dans les nouveaux Etats établis sur les ruines de l'ex-Yougoslavie, les classes politiques aiment utiliser des slogans occidentaux, comme le « marché libre », la « démocratie parlementaire », « l'Etat de droit », etc., bien que, sous ce vernis rhétorique, aucune mutation profonde de la culture politique n'ait eu lieu. Les vieilles habitudes philo-communistes, communautaires, voire clientélistes, ont toujours le dessus.

Dans la perspective internationale, l'éclatement de la Yougoslavie communiste soulève maintenant des questions délicates quant au fonctionnement du multiculturalisme en Europe occidentale et de son moteur principal, l'Union européenne. Dans quelle mesure la convivialité passée entre Serbes et Croates fut-elle réelle ou fictive ? L'Union européenne était-elle, pendant la guerre en ex-Yougoslavie, «balkanisée» à un tel point qu'elle ne pouvait pas trouver une réponse rapide et consensuelle parmi ses Etats membres, et empêcher la guerre de prendre la tournure désastreuse que l'ex-Yougoslavie a subie ? Force est de constater que la guerre en ex-Yougoslavie se prête à des analyses différentes, surtout au départ de disciplines différentes : anthropologie, sociologie, psychologie et droit international. Et chaque discipline, bien entendu, conduit à des conclusions différentes. Suite à un cortège de violence jamais vu en Europe depuis 1945, les pays de la post-Yougoslavie risquent de mettre en cause l'idéologie du mondialisme et du multiculturalisme de l'Union européenne. Celle-ci serait-elle capable d'endiguer l'implosion intra-ethnique, si cette implosion a jamais lieu quelque part ailleurs en Europe ? Sans nul doute, une guerre entre le Danemark et l’Allemagne fédérale au sujet de la région frontalière du Schleswig-Holstein, ou une guerre entre l'Allemagne fédérale et la France au sujet de l'Alsace, relève du fantasme politique. Par contre, une guerre larvée et intercommunautaire entre bandes turques vivant en Allemagne et bandes de jeunes Allemands de souche, avec des retombées juridiques dans toute l'Europe, ne relève plus d'un scénario de science fiction.2

A propos de la guerre en ex-Yougoslavie, on peut d'ores et déjà conclure : des conflits similaires, quoique sous une autre forme juridique, risquent de se produire ailleurs en Europe, soit au niveau interethnique soit au niveau intra-ethnique.

L'héritage du titisme a joué un rôle important dans le conflit ex-yougoslave. Donc, une deuxième hypothèse de travail s'impose, à savoir que la guerre en ex-Yougoslavie n'était pas seulement menée par les anciennes élites communistes de Croatie, Slovénie, Serbie et Bosnie-Herzégovine, mais également par les citoyens yougoslaves « communisés », avec leurs liens tribaux et communautaires distincts, tellement typiques pour les pays des Balkans. Il demeure que les peuples, dans la péninsule balkanique, ont été historiquement marqués par un sens faible de l'ethnocentricité par rapport à l'Europe occidentale où le sens de l'étatisme reste assez fort. En fait, au sein de chaque groupe ethnique dans les Balkans, on aperçoit des liens communautaires clos, souvent antagonistes à l'égard d'une autre communauté voisine du même groupe ethnique. Le sens de l'Etat-nation, accepté comme normal par les citoyens dans les pays occidentaux, l'attachement au terroir délimité, et l'affiliation religieuse précèdent toute notion d'Etat-nation.3 Au cours du conflit précédent, il n'était pas insolite d'observer en Bosnie-Herzégovine des combats entre Croates catholiques et Serbes chrétiens-orthodoxes, les deux protagonistes utilisant leur religion respective non dans des intentions théologiques, mais avant tout comme vecteur politico-culturel mettant davantage en relief leurs différences réciproques et donnant une plus-value à la haine de l'Autre - bien qu'aux yeux des observateurs étrangers Serbes et Croates présentent de frappantes similarités anthropologiques et linguistiques.

Certes, au début du conflit, pour beaucoup de citoyens croates, surtout ceux qui vivent dans une Croatie plus ou moins ethniquement homogène, la guerre fut vécue comme une agression serbo-communiste. Mais comment expliquer le conflit en Bosnie-Herzégovine, où les clivages communautaires au sein des trois groupes ethniques sont tellement prononcés, au point d'aboutir souvent à d'étranges alliance supra et intra-communautaires avec d'autres communautés au sein d'autres groupes ethniques ? L'esprit de l'enracinement local, à savoir le « patriotisme local », précède souvent toute identité nationale en quête d'Etat. Ainsi, la guerre en Bosnie donna souvent naissance à des alliances bizarres, notamment quand les Serbes de la région croate occupée, connue sous le nom de « Krajina », avaient pris la partie des Musulmans rebelles du nord-ouest de la Bosnie limitrophe, qui s’opposait ouvertement au gouvernement plus « urbain » bosno-musulman de Sarajevo. Pendant les accrochages violents entre Croates et Musulmans au sud de la Bosnie, notamment dans la région limitrophe de l'Herzégovine, et aux alentours de la ville de Mostar, les Serbes « louaient » leurs services militaires aux Musulmans bosniaques assiégés par les Croates, tout en pilonnant en même temps la ville de Sarajevo, site du gouvernement bosniaque-musulman.4

Pour essayer de comprendre à fond le drame post-yougoslave, on ne saurait oublier l'héritage du titisme. Rappelons que le communisme dans toute l'Europe orientale fut imposé en 1945 par les chars russes. Seule la Yougoslavie titiste a engendré un phénomène communiste sui generis, imposé et façonné par les titistes vainqueurs reste faible. A l'exception des peuples slovènes et croates, qui font partie de l'hémisphère occidental, le reste de la population ex-yougoslave continue à vivre dans des structures sociales, où le bon voisinage, (« komsiluk ») de la deuxième guerre mondiale. Après la rupture avec Staline en 1948, et avant son propre éclatement en 1991, la Yougoslavie de Tito se targuait d'être le pays communiste le plus libéral au monde. Le maréchal Tito avait bien réussi à tenir les peuples disparates sous une férule unitaire non seulement par la poigne totalitaire, mais également en dressant les nationalistes de chaque groupe ethnique contre les autres groupes ethniques avoisinants, et en punissant tour à tour les dissidents de chaque république fédérée. Il est peu probable que son laboratoire multiculturel ait pu survivre sans son habile tactique de « diviser pour régner ».5 Par ailleurs, Tito jouissait du soutien real-politique des chancelleries occidentales qui avaient leurs propres intérêts géopolitiques dans la région, et qui ne voulaient nullement voir la Yougoslavie disparaître de la face du monde. En se fiant à sa propre langue de bois du « socialisme à visage humain », en ouvrant les frontières yougoslaves pour se débarrasser de dissidents potentiels, Tito devint rapidement objet dune véritable admiration dans les milieux intellectuels européens. On ne fit que peu mention, même après sa mort, de la répression en Yougoslavie communiste et post-titiste qui n'a pourtant pas eu de cesse. Dans les dernières années da sa vie surréelle, la Yougoslavie disposait d'un vaste réseau de police secrète (l'UDBA) à l'étranger, qui opérait par ses filières de journalistes et de diplomates dans les milieux d'émigrés yougoslaves, surtout parmi les Croates exilés. Même pendant la « perestroïka » gorbatchévienne, la Yougoslavie battait les records en prisonniers politiques, dont le nombre s'élevait à huit cents personnes, en majorité des Albanais et des Croates de Bosnie. Or la gloire médiatique acquise par le titisme grâce à son idée d'autogestion en économie, couplée, en outre, aux crédits des financiers occidentaux, et suivie par sept millions de ressortissants yougoslaves munis de passeports, faisait croire que la Yougoslavie était bel et bien un modèle socialiste valable dont les lendemains chanteraient.6

Afin de démythifier l'aberration géopolitique et la fiction juridique que fut l'ex-Yougoslavie, qui devait tôt ou tard mener à la guerre que l'on a connue, il convient de se pencher sur le profil du mental yougo-titiste. Quarante-cinq ans d'expérimentations sociales, allant de l'autogestion au non-alignement tous azimuts en politique étrangère, ont créé un manque d'initiative, un mental d'assisté et un effacement d'identité nationale chez de nombreux citoyens yougoslaves. Tito avait failli créer un climat de tolérance et acheminer les intellectuels croates et serbes vers un dialogue franc. En manipulant par ses hagiographes la mémoire historique des Serbes et des Croates, il n'a fait que renforcer les ressentiments de tous contre tous. Force est de constater que l'historiographie officielle de l'ex-Yougoslavie était fondée sur des chiffres douteux exagérant davantage la victimologie partisane-communiste, tout en démonisant chaque aspect de l'identité nationale des peuples constitutifs de la Yougoslavie. Ainsi les deux peuples pivots de l'ex-Yougoslavie, les Serbes et les Croates, avaient des raisons supplémentaires de se soupçonner du favoritisme titiste. De plus, la victimologie titiste officielle s'accommodait mal avec les récits nationalistes des Serbes et des Croates où chaque peuple s'estimait victime de l'Autre et où chacun voyait dans l'Autre l'incarnation du mal. Les Croates avaient tendance à voir les Serbes comme des " barbares " et des " tsiganes " larvés : en revanche, les Serbes, qui étaient représentés dans l'appareil administratif yougoslave dune manière disproportionnée, voyaient dans chaque manifestation croate le spectre de « l'oustachisme » et du « fascisme croate » appuyé par les papistes du Vatican. La spirale de la violence physique qui avait vu le jour après l'éclatement du pays en 1991, ne fut donc qu'une logique du pire qui avait connu ses premières manifestations dans les années titistes.7

La guerre s'est terminée en ex-Yougoslavie, mais le mental yougoslave de l'homo balcanicus est bel et bien vivant, ce qui rend encore plus difficile tout pronostic pour l'avenir des nouveaux pays de la région. Certes, en tant qu'idéologie est mort. Pourtant, on n'observe aucun changement dans les mœurs politiques et sociales, ni dans la nouvelle classe politique, ni chez les citoyens désabusés. A l'instar des autres pays postcommunistes, les nouvelles élites programmatrice, le communisme titiste politiques et leurs concitoyens souffrent d'un manque d'identité et dune grande peur face à l'avenir libéral. L'homo sovieticus est toujours là avec son homologue, l'homo balcanicus, et tous deux se portent bien, quoiqu'ayant recours, cette fois-ci, à une nouvelle langue de bois, en l'occurrence celle empruntée à l'idéologie du globalisme et du mondialisme ambiant. Bref, en dépit de la débâcle du communisme, l'héritage psychologique de la pensée unique communiste, bien que recouvert d'une piètre imitation du démocratisme occidental, règne en force dans toute Europe postcommuniste. Dans les pays post-yougoslaves, après la guerre dont les retombées juridiques et psychologiques commencent à se faire sentir, on témoigne aujourd'hui d'un esprit paléo-totalitaire, à savoir d'une résurgence de la « yougo-nostalgie » pour le bon vieux temps. Et pourquoi pas ? L'économie communiste planifiée garantissait paradoxalement une paresse facile et une sécurité psychologique, ce qui n’est pas aujourd'hui le cas avec le darwinisme économique du système libéral.8 Si l'on ajoute au mental titiste le vide idéologique qui règne dans toute l'Europe occidentale et qui s'accompagne de la mondialisation capitaliste, on ne saurait exclure des troubles sociaux autrement plus graves que ceux auxquels on a assisté jusqu'ici. Certes, le nouveau discours « politically correct », adopté par l'ancienne intelligentsia pro-yougoslave en Occident, a cessé d'emprunter aux slogans titistes et soixante-huitards ; c'est le sabir antiraciste, I'apologie d'une tolérance mondialiste qu'on prêche maintenant aux citoyens post-yougoslaves. En l'occurrence chaque faux pas d'une petite nation « post-versaillaise », comme la Croatie, se solde vite par une condamnation médiatique renvoyant au référent éternel du « fascisme oustachiste ».9 Alors que le système yougo-communiste a, paradoxalement, réussi à renforcer les liens communautaires dans les différentes couches sociales en ex-Yougoslavie, le globalisme est en train de les détruire plus démocratiquement, et sans laisser de traces de sang.

Toute démocratie parlementaire, comme les citoyens occidentaux le savent fort bien, exige la tolérance de l'Autre. Mais comment réconcilier les gens des ex-pays communistes, notamment de l'ex-Yougoslavie dont un grand nombre a collaboré avec le communisme, et dont un autre grand nombre a été persécuté pour ses idées nationalistes ou antiyougoslaves par ceux qui réalisent aujourd'hui leur recyclage politique et par ceux-là mêmes qui exercent aujourd'hui un pouvoir politique non négligeable ? Dans le cas de I'ex-Yougoslavie, comment juger les prétendus criminels de guerre ? Parmi ceux qui ont récemment commis des exactions contre les civils bosniaques, ou bien parmi ceux qui ont participé du côté des titistes en 1945 et en 1946, à de vastes nettoyages ethniques contre les Croates, les Hongrois et les Allemands?10 L'ironie de l'histoire veut que même au Tribunal international de La Haye, on rencontre quelques Serbes et Croates soupçonnés d'avoir commis des crimes de guerre dont les avocats de défense sont d'anciens procureurs et sympathisants titistes.

La guerre récente en ex-Yougoslavie avait fort préoccupé les citoyens dont le souci majeur était de survivre et de conserver leur niveau de vie plus ou moins élevé. On se souciait peu d'apprendre les vertus démocratiques occidentales et de réexaminer la mémoire officielle de la Seconde Guerre mondiale qui avait profondément divisé la population ex-yougoslave. Cela semble vrai pour tous les citoyens de l'Europe postcommuniste, et surtout pour ceux de la post-Yougoslavie dont beaucoup étaient impliqués dans le système totalitaire. Aujourd'hui, on voit se profiler dans les nouveaux Etats post-yougoslaves un mimétisme quasi pathologique par lequel la nouvelle classe politique veut prouver aux Occidentaux qu'elle connaît davantage la démocratie parlementaire que les Occidentaux eux-mêmes, et que son passé obscur peut être supplanté par une surenchère dans le discours démocratique. Or, l'oblitération de la pensée libre due au passé communiste, ne saurait être dissimulée derrière de belles paroles prêchant l'Etat de droit et le marché libre. On ne peut pas installer la démocratie dans les nouveaux pays de la région par un oukase de Bruxelles ou par un décret venu des Etats-Unis.

Pour saisir le drame postcommuniste en ex-post-Yougoslavie, on ne saurait utiliser les paradigmes sociologiques venus d'Occident.11 En raison de la sélection sociobiologique négative que le communisme avait créée en ex-Yougoslavie, une dévastation psychologique totale où le surréel l'a emporté sur le réel a eu lieu bloquant toute circulation des élites capables de gouverner. L'esprit de clan, l'enracinement dans son voisinage proche avait paradoxalement trouvé sa pleine expression dans le système titiste qui fonctionnait à l'époque comme seul vestige contre l'atomisation globaliste et capitaliste. D'où cet appétit aujourd'hui perceptible chez les citoyens post-yougoslaves pour l'homme fort, capable de guider, capable de mimer l'Occident, tout en sauvegardant l'esprit de la communauté originale. I1 serait donc incorrect de blâmer tel ou tel leader post-yougoslave pour telle ou telle dérive autoritaire, comme le font certains journalistes occidentaux. Face au nivellement du marché libre, face au passé communiste, la grande masse des citoyens désabusés ne sait plus à qui se référer, et à quelles idées se fier. Les citoyens de la post-Yougoslavie aiment traditionnellement l'homme fort, quelqu'un qui soit capable de prendre des responsabilités à leur place, et surtout dans un monde vidé de tout sacré. Faute de modèle à l'horizon politique, suite au grand flux dans le cadre de la nouvelle administration politique, on a recours à la vieille duplicité de l’homo sovieticus, tout en recherchant refuge dans ses liens communautaires de bon voisinage (« komsiluk »). De plus, l'impitoyable géographie des Balkans, dont les frontières restent toujours mouvantes en permanence, empêche les gens de s'identifier à toute idée d'un Etat solide. Force est de constater que c'est souvent au hasard et par défaut, qu'on devient Croate, Serbe - et demain, peut-être, un bon Européen...

Notes

  1. Joseph Krulic, « Les Croates, les Musulmans bosniaques, les Serbes et la question de l'Etat-nation, Nations et nationalismes, La Découverte, 1995, pp. 108-113. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. "Zeitbomben in den Vorstädten" [Une bombe à retardement dans la banlieue], Der Spiegel, 14 avril 1997. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  3. Michael W. Weithmann, Balkan-Chronïk. 2000 Jahre zwischen Orient and Okzident [Chronique sur les Balkans. 2000 ans entre Orient et Occident], Verlag F. Pustet, 1995. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  4. Xavier Bougarel, Bosnïe ; Anatomie d'un conflit, La Découverte, 1996, p. 63. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  5. Tomislav Sunic, Titoism and Dissidence; Studies in the History and Dissolution of Communist Yugoslavia, Peter Lang, 1995. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  6. « Ein Spinnetz totaler Überwachung » [Un réseau de surveillance complet], Der Spiegel, 12 mars 1984. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  7. Franjo Tudjman, Nationalism in Contemporary Europe, Columbia University Press, 1981, pp. 162-163. Sur l' "historicisme" et les divers mythes antifascistes a yougoslaves, voir Franjo Tudjman, Velike ideje i mali narodi, Matica Hrvatska, 1996, pp. 313-328. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  8. Claude Polin, Le totalitarisme, PUF, 1982, p. 89. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  9. A.M. Rosenthal, « Why Wink at Croatian Fascism? » The International Herald Tribune, 16 avril 1997, et ma réponse dans The International Herald Tribune (Letters to the Editor), "Croatia, Then and Now," 18 avril 1997. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  10. Josef Beer, Weïssbuch der Deutschen aus Jugoslawien. Ortsberichte 1944-1948 [Livre blanc des Allemands de Yougoslavie], Universitas Verlag, 1992. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  11. Alexander Sinowjew (Zinoviev), Die Diktatur der Logik [La dictature de la logique] Piper Verlag, 1985, p. 148. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩