What lies buried shall be unearthed, and who has been rendered oblivious shall be invited to remember. Working towards this is the main task imposed on us.
Tag: Identitarianism
What Turner documents is not just a ‘displacement’ of Britain’s indigenous population by foreigners, but, more important, its debasement of those, who have inherited the land and cultural institutions of their ancestors. Martin walks like a man on a tightrope between the void of today’s West and the transcendence of participating in true art.
It’s an oft-repeated cliché among the so-called alternative Right to say that while Britain once ruled a third of the globe, today it barely controls the streets of London. Those hit the hardest by Britain’s transformation (or, more accurately, deformation) is the working class—once the backbone of British industry and patriotism. Today, fed on the twin somas of sports and what little popular culture has to offer, the working class languishes in a post-industrial dystopia.
Derek Turner’s novella Displacement is a portrait of this Britain—a Britain of displaced workers, alienated elites, and a growing non-native population. It takes place alongside other social novels in the history of the British isles from Disraeli and Dickens to Orwell. But what separates Displacement from many works in this tradition is its non-didactic and honest portrayal of those whom it depicts.
Displacement’s protagonist, Martin Hacklitt, is the forgotten man of today’s Britain—an intelligent youth of poetic disposition, who finds his release from the drudgery and baseness of everyday life through practicing parkour in the streets of London. Parkour, or free running, is a sport that attempts to replicate natural obstacles. Using tall buildings, walls, and other bits of today’s urban jungle, its participants seek to bend their bodies to the world around them and find a sense of liberation from their banal lives below. At least this is how those ‘French books’ Martin reads on the subject describe it.
Martin, a quintessential Englishman, balks at the heady prose and philosophizing of the French parkour books he reads, and sees in it a way to keep fit. Outside parkour along with his poetry, Martin’s other main concern is his love for his on-and-off-again girlfriend Kate. They began dating in high school, where Martin stood up for himself to a gang of bullies. However, by the time of the events described in the novella, the two had grown apart.
Martin is eventually given celebrity status by a chance photograph depicting him performing parkour acts, with the tabloids referring to him as the ‘London leaper’. Who he is quickly takes on an ideological dimension, with left-wing presses seeing in him some exotic, rogue outsider, whereas the conservative media describe him as an enemy to public order.
Kate, recognizing Martin from pictures in the tabloids, contacts him and hopes to set up an interview with a posh, that is, upper class, journalist. Kate’s swift return to Martin—learning of his his celebrity status—will have most Radix readers instantly reminded of hypergamy and the work of F. Roger Devlin, as it should. One of the strengths of Displacement is its chilly realism. Indeed, nowhere is that more apparent than here. For instance, Martin’s inner monologue upon meeting Kate again after a long lull is reminiscent of many one would find in the sort of true-life ‘beta’ stories in the so-called ‘manosphere’:
“Martin tries to take her hand and she withdraws it, but not abruptly. He will try again soon. It feels weird not touching her when she is so close. They always touched, held. But if she feels the same she is disguising it well. She looks so poised, he marvels, yet the speed with which she has rattled out her news shows she’s nervous. As so often over the intervening three-and-a-quarter years, he wonders how many boyfriends she’s had, and hates them all. But he cannot ask her that yet.”
Many readers, especially young men, will recognize some of the same thoughts that have gone through their minds in the context of today’s feminized and deracinated society. But Kate is no villain—merely misguided and far too drawn by the pull of our age. Turner holds his vitriol for the real antagonist of the story—the liberal journalist Seb.
Seb seeks to write a story on the London leaper. For him, journeying to working-class Deptford is akin to traveling to an exotic Caribbean island. He is constantly taken aback by the boorish behavior of Martin’s football-hooligan brother and his staunch old-Labour, old-Britain father, who is constantly trying to hijack Seb’s interview. In addition, he is attracted to Kate and hopes to use this project to get closer to her.
However, when the story is published, it is more or less a hatchet job. Martin’s working-class background is viewed through the gaze of contempt by Britain’s ‘Guardianista’ cultural class. To Seb, the final version of the article was not meant to be this stereotyped, and, exasperated, he tries to excuse his less-than-positive story on Martin’s roots to Kate:
“I knew it! I knew it didn’t do you justice – I mean that it didn’t do Martin justice. But I only had very limited space. You know how it works!”
Indeed, this language should sound quite familiar. One only has to look at Jared Taylor’s recent run-in with the New Yorker to find another journalist, who hoped that he captured his ‘complex subject’.
Seb eventually attempts to buy off Martin’s loyalty by inviting him to edit a volume of Postmodernist poetry, the theme of which is outsider work edited by outsiders. In doing this, Martin is unwittingly making a deal with the devil, compromising who he is to be taken in by the cultural establishment that rules Britain and, indeed, the entire West. His football-hooligan brother says it best:
“Funny, ain’t it really – by having these published all you poetry plonkers become insiders, don’t you?”
Martin’s brother hits the nail on the head for many bright, poor whites, who go on to be educated at Oxford and Cambridge in the U.K., or the Ivy League schools in the U.S., or who achieve some status of cultural distinction by the current ‘Apes of God’, as Wyndham Lewis called the modern cultural classes.
What Turner documents is not just a ‘displacement’ of Britain’s indigenous population by foreigners, but, more important, its debasement of those, who have inherited the land and cultural institutions of their ancestors. Martin walks like a man on a tightrope between the void of today’s West and the transcendence of participating in true art.
In the end, we see him compromised, but through his portrait, we also note an all-too-familiar tale of what happens to bright young boys from traditional working class today. Displacement gives those of us, who self-describe as Identitarian and thus find ourselves in the political fringes, a moving literary look into the heart of our forgotten people.
“We’ve forgotten who we are: explorers, pioneers… not caretakers.” (Joseph Cooper)
We’ve forgotten who we are: explorers, pioneers… not caretakers. (Joseph Cooper)
There’s an unwritten rule with movies: the more you expect from one, the less you get from it. Another unwritten rule is that a remake is, in most cases, not as good as the original.
Christopher Nolan seems to be the great rule-breaker of today’s film industry. When he took on the project of salvaging the Batman franchise after Joel Schumacher had almost destroyed it (Batman Forever and Batman & Robin), who could have predicted he would release a trilogy that would almost completely eclipse Tim Burton’s two first opuses (Batman and Batman Returns), which were actually really good?
When Interstellar‘s trailers started to catch my attention, and it was evident that Nolan was attempting a remake of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, I thought that the stakes were too high this time. How dare Nolan challenge The Master?
Interestingly, Christopher Nolan has often been described as Kubrick’s heir, partly because of the two directors’ common propensity to cut the Gordian Knots of established filmmaking. Kubrick was one of the very first moviemakers to use a nonlinear narrative, in The Killing (1956), and Nolan went even further in Memento (2000), which recounts the fragmented story of an amnesiac whose memory is rebooted every five minutes.
The comparison between Kubrick and Nolan is even apter in the case of Interstellar. Indeed, Interstellar is more than a remake of 2001. It is 2001, only way, way better. If Kubrick was film’s Copernicus, then Nolan is its Galileo.
Before raising Radix readers’ eyebrows, I should mention that Nolan’s improvement upon Kubrick’s 1968 movie is not due to technology. Unlike many futuristic movies these days, Interstellar is two-dimensional, and though there is, of course, an important use of CGI, it is not what defines the movie (and it is worth noting that in technical terms, 2001 has aged quite well). I could go as far as saying that Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (2013) was graphically much more audacious than Interstellar. But it would be missing the point: though Interstellar takes place in outer space, it is not about space conquest. Much like 2001, Interstellar is about biological evolution, the meaning of human existence, Mankind’s destiny, and God.
And though there is an important reflection on artificial intelligence in Interstellar, supercomputers are here reduced to the status of farm animals. There is no equivalent of “HAL,” arguably 2001‘s central character.
The prominence of humans in the scenario made the casting a matter of ultimate importance. Whereas the actors of 2001 could easily have been replaced with others, Matthew McConaughey’s performance in Interstellar already is, and will remain indispensable.
Though not as famous as Leonardo DiCaprio (Inception), and still mostly known for starring in a string of interchangeable “rom-coms,” McConaughey has recently proven as a man of both wit and emotional depth. With only a few minutes of screen time in Martin Scorcese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, released last Winter, McConaughey managed to play the movie’s most famous scene with a simple “money mantra” (or whatever it’s supposed to be).
McConaughey also appeared on TV this year. In HBO’s True Detective, he plays officer Rust Cohle. Down in Louisiana’s post-industrial rubble, he and detective Martin Hart (Woody Harrelson) are investigating a series of murders committed by the local elite in a ritual, Satanic fashion, leading some website editors to analyze True Detective as a “conspiracy theory” series. Commenting on the “tomb of the American Dream” he and Hart have to muddle through, Rust Cohle has some lines that echo those of Nolan’s comic-book heroes and villains: “The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.”
In Interstellar, McConaughey, starring as Joseph Cooper, doesn’t fail to provide the spectator with catchy lines. But before I start quoting, perhaps some contextual elements are in order.
The story takes place in the United States, or rather what used to be the United States. Joseph Cooper, a former engineer and pilot who had to retire after a crash, is now growing corn to provide for his two kids and his father-in-law. Cooper’s wife died a few years before the story begins. She had a tumor that, had it been diagnosed in time, would have been curable. But the lack of proper medical devices and qualified physicians sealed her fate.
Cooper was wise enough to plant corn instead of wheat, corn being (for now) the only crop which resists a blight that is ravaging plantations.
The earth, both with a small and a capital “e,” is dying. The rotting plants turn into dust, which, due to frequent windstorms, makes it harder and harder for people to breathe. Field fires are commonplace. Harvests hardly reach survival levels. Apocalypse has come, not with a bang but with a whimper.
Though early 21st-century technological devices keep being used as long as they work, civilization has globally reverted to a pre-Industrial Revolution level: most human activity is oriented towards food production. Cooper’s elder son, Tom, whose intelligence is only slightly above-average, will have to study how to grow corn in high school. More and more, boys learn their fathers’ trade, as it used to be before the 19th and 20th centuries’ division of labor.
Cooper’s daughter, Murph, is much more like her father. She seems to be endowed with a kind of “shine” that allows her to feel a part of reality that the five senses cannot detect. Unlike her brother, she knows that “something is wrong” in the present state of affairs. She doesn’t live by the rules, because she feels that rules are dooming her family. Though—or rather because—her intelligence is vastly above-average, she has troubles with her teachers at school. On her spare time, she tries to figure out what “ghosts” want to communicate to her. Although Cooper doesn’t believe his daughter’s “ghosts” stories, he supports her in her personal experiments. One day, she detects a signal that resembles geographical coordinates.
Cooper, who has noticed anomalies in his automatic ploughing machines’ functioning, believes it is due to a magnetic field, whose center has been located by Murph. He decides to go there, and his disobedient daughter manages to hide in his pickup truck and go with her father. (Promethean Nolan likely means that all evolutionary leaps are made by rebels, like Columbus in his time.)
It turns out that the mysterious site is nothing less than a covert NASA base. Once the pride of the world, NASA has gone underground since government credits have been cut in favor of agriculture. (But as “Paul Kersey” wrote, in today’s “real world,” space conquest has been abandoned to the benefit of “Diversity.” At least humans in Interstellar have the excuse of starvation.)
In a very short-sighted manner, what remains of the government thinks that Mankind’s dire situation justifies that “frivolities” like space exploration make way to more essential endeavors like farming. (History school books are orwellianly rewritten to describe Apollo 11 as a hoax.)
Slipping the “Surly Bonds of Earth”
Here I am reminded of an episode from TV animated series Archer. In the twelfth episode of the third season, Commander Tony Drake (with Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston’s exalted voice) explains to curvy quadrooness Lana why space colonization is the right answer to “here and now” problems:
Drake: You think space exploration is a boondoggle?!
Lana: Well, come on, in this economy?!
Drake: Exactly! Now, more than ever, is when we need to look to space for the solutions to Mankind’s problems. In just two hundred years, Earth’s population will exceed her capacity to produce enough food. And even as the famines begin, global war will erupt as fresh water becomes scarcer than gold. But if we begin now, using the lessons learned aboard Space Station Horizon, a small group of brave colonists can terraform Mars. And Mankind can finally slip the surly bonds of Earth, to live forever… AMONG THE STARS!!!
“Slipping the surly bonds of Earth” is exactly what Professor Brand (Michael Caine), a NASA researcher, has to offer Cooper. Brand wants Cooper to lead an expedition with Brand’s daughter (Ann Hathaway) to a black hole located near Saturn’s rings (which is reminiscent of 2001‘s black monolith revolving around Jupiter). Beyond this black hole is another stellar system, in a faraway galaxy, with three planets apparently similar to Earth both in gravity and atmosphere composition. The expedition’s mission is to find out whether one of these exoplanets can be terraformed.
Cooper faces Ulysses’ dilemma. Should he stay in Ithaca or should he go conquer Troy? And Penelope’s dead anyway. As painful as it is for him to leave his children and his home, Cooper decides to go. He begs his daughter to forgive him and explains to her that he has to live at last. To live, that is, to exist beyond food, shelter, and reproduction. To put the Greater Good above one’s family’s interests (or rather to understand that the latter depends on the former). To follow one’s Destiny, even if said Destiny is tragic. And, for those who have that rare power, to bring Mankind to a higher level of consciousness, mastery, and being.
Cooper knows when he leaves that his chances of seeing his family again are very thin. Not only is the journey long and dangerous, but spacetime is different on the three exoplanets: one hour there amounts to seven years on Earth.
Which means that the expedition, named Lazarus after the Christian saint who came back from the dead, is a race against time. Even if Cooper manages to make it, he might be back when there’s nothing left to save on Earth (a little like in the first Planet of Apes). And, of course, when his kids are dead.
But he accepts the challenge, which appears to be Mankind’s last chance. Pr. Brand informs Cooper that corn will also die out eventually. Even worse, the Noah’s Ark-like vessel ready to follow Cooper’s pioneer expedition is, for now, too heavy to overcome Earth’s gravity.
NASA’s calculation is that Cooper will get back when the scientists on Earth have managed to make the vessel fly, due to the spacetime difference between the two stellar systems.
If this “Plan A” doesn’t work, they’ll turn to “Plan B”: a light shuttle with fertilized eggs aboard will leave with a few colonists to the New Earth; the rest of Mankind will be left to die. (I wonder what will annoy conservatives most this time: surrogate motherhood or the idea that not all human lives have the same value?) Thanks to these eggs, a new Mankind will be recreated. As Brand puts it, “We must think not as individuals but as a species.”
Later in the movie, Cooper will throw the line that prompted me to write this review: “Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.”
A Philosophical Challenge to Identitarians
Interstellar is problematic for Identitarians, who follow two simple principles: Blood and Soil. If the former is only shaken by Nolan (more on that below), the latter is completely crushed by the British Faust.
Indeed, space conquest means that Man will not dance around the same wooden totem pole for Eternity like Hobbits, which Identitarianism often boils down to.
But I think Instellar is a challenge rather than a stop sign to Identitarians, at least for (Pan-)European ones. As I mentioned in my debut article at Alternative Right (my very first article in the English language, by the way), this “Let’s do as our ancestors have always done” motto may suit Indian tribes, but it is unworthy of Sons of Europa, whether the “European New Right,” which is neither European in spirit nor New nor even right-wing, likes it or not. “We are the heirs of conquerors,” fellas. Our distant ancestors had to “slip the surly bonds” of the Pontic steppe so they could reach a higher stage of evolution in their millenial upward journey.
Of all people, Americans should understand that reality better than any of their European brothers, which is actually the reason why I decided to “slip the surly bonds” of my beloved Hexagone two years ago (which answers the usual question I’m asked: “Why are you doing all this?”; that’s why).
The real founding of America—when the Mayflower left Plymouth, not when the “Holy Scrap” was written down—is not even four centuries old, a period of time, in strictly evolutionary terms, that’s merely a blink-of-an-eye.
If evolution keeps its course (I think it will), there will be a Mayflower spaceship someday. Let’s just hope that it won’t be crammed with Puritans.
As for the “Blood” part of the Identitarian motto, it is also challenged by Nolan, but in a more subtle way. Viewers will have noticed that the Lazarus expedition comprises one Black man, and a woman whose name could be Jewish. Well, call me a “race traitor” (but again, traitors are firstly those who betray Europa’s spirit) if you will, but I didn’t hide under my seat in terror. Let’s not forget that Art shouldn’t be confused with Politics, something the Right has never understood, and the Left less and less understands, which is why its works of art are getting embarrassing.
The second reason why I don’t mind seeing non-Whites in a European expedition is because as Oswald Spengler put it, “those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them.” What is more traitorous: non-Whites appearing in a clearly European movie, or great-grandsons of Acheans, Romans, Franks, and Vikings placing their hopes in this or that model of car?
(“Both are equally abhorrent” is an easy, common, but… wrong answer.)
There are, in my opinion, two competing strains of Identitarianism, whose opposition can be summed up thusly:
“What is Mine is Fine” VS. “What is Fine is Mine”
(Due to Prince Harold’s history-shifting shipwreck on Picardy’s shores and the Battle of Hastings that ensued, the rhyme also works in French: “Ce qui est mien est bien” VS. “Ce qui est bien est mien.”)
I explained that in an interview at AltRight with Alexander Forrest:
We can recognize the various strengths of [other] civilizations and take inspiration from the noble and inventive things they engendered. That is exactly what the West used to do best. To use a very basic example… the Arabs produced coffee long before the West adopted it and transplanted it to the Americas. Today, the most refined coffee is brewed in Italy. It is the essence of our civilization to take what is best in other civilizations and improve upon it.
The worst aspect of “Blood and Soil” rigidity is that it deprives those who stick to it of a telos, of a final cause that would transcend their individual lives and therefore enable them to pass their dreams down to their descendants, until the time when these dreams can be put to practice.
I believe such a dream should be space conquest. I obviously won’t live it, nor will my children, and I don’t think my grandchildren or even my great-grandchildren will. And therefore, in the meantime, a European Home should be established so as to make the carrying out of this dream possible and even thinkable (the rewriting of history books about Neil Armstrong’s giant leap is one of Interstellar‘s most important scenes).
But this European Home would’t be sustainable—it wouldn’t even see the light of day, since its founding is, in itself, a project involving several generations from conception to realisation and therefore requires transcendence to survive the bite of time—if there wasn’t an idea bigger than us, an idea that will mean the same thing in one century as it now does. It is time we cultivate this idea instead of doing as if it was still “five to midnight” and we had to “act before it’s too late.”
It is not five to midnight. It is five past midnight. The night is still dark and cold. Predators of many kinds prowl around the camp. Ghastly screams echo in the void. Waiting for the Dawn, torch-bearing guards keep the fence, and poets recount glorious tales around the fire, while everybody looks to the stars.
Personally, I had once considered these critiques as being essentially valid, but upon a more thorough investigation of Dugin’s writings and thought, I concluded that these critiques were based on flawed premises and assumptions. My intention here is to point out what the most common reasons for denouncing Dugin have been and why they are based on misconceptions and propaganda rather than reality.
Alexander Dugin is by now well-known in “Right-wing” circles of all sorts across the world—whether we are speaking of nationalists, Fascists, traditionalists, cultural or national conservatives, or New Rightists (also known as Identitarians). Upon the translation of his book The Fourth Political Theory in 2012, Dugin has received a significant amount of international attention from anyone interested in Right-wing or Conservative theory. Since then, a number of other essays by Dugin on the topics of Eurasianism (also spelled “Eurasism”) and also the Theory of the Multipolar World (both of which are interconnected with each other and with what he calls the Fourth Political Theory) have been translated into English, among other languages, allowing us a better view into his thought.
There is no need to discuss Dugin’s theories in any depth here, since his own essays achieve that sufficiently. However, a problem has arisen among Right-wingers in the West in regards to Dugin: while many have appreciated his works, a large number have completely dismissed or attacked him and his theories largely on the basis of misunderstandings or propaganda from Dugin’s political enemies. The situation is certainly not helped by the fact that well-known Identitarian writers such as Greg Johnson, Michael O’Meara, Domitius Corbulo, and some others in Europe have denounced Dugin with reasoning based upon such misunderstandings. Personally, I had once considered these critiques as being essentially valid, but upon a more thorough investigation of Dugin’s writings and thought, I concluded that these critiques were based on flawed premises and assumptions. My intention here is to point out what the most common reasons for denouncing Dugin have been and why they are based on misconceptions and propaganda rather than reality.
Position on Race
First, one of the most difficult issues is the claim that Alexander Dugin believes that race has no substantial reality, that it is a “social construct” and must be completely abandoned as a harmful product of modern Western society. Certainly, he critiques racialist theory, but this is not the same as rejecting race entirely (since one can assert the importance of race without resorting to “racism.” See my essay “Ethnic and Racial Relations”). It must be admitted that Dugin has not taken a clear stance on the matter of race, and occasionally makes statements which imply a dismissal of race (although it is significant that, for the most part, he leaves it an open question). On the other hand, he has also made statements implying an appreciation for racial identity to some extent, such as when he wrote the following:
Being White and Indo-European myself, I recognize the differences of other ethnic groups as being a natural thing, and do not believe in any hierarchy among peoples, because there is not and cannot be any common, universal measure by which to measure and compare the various forms of ethnic societies or their value systems. I am proud to be Russian exactly as Americans, Africans, Arabs or Chinese are proud to be what they are. It is our right and our dignity to affirm our identity, not in opposition to each other but such as it is: without resentment against others or feelings of self-pity. (quoted from “Alexander Dugin on ‘White Nationalism’ & Other Potential Allies in the Global Revolution”)
However, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Dugin truly does believe that race is a “social construct”, as some have assumed. Would this be enough reason to declare Dugin a subversive intellectual in the Right? If this was the case, it would follow by the same reasoning that any past Right-wing intellectual who did not believe in the importance of race (or at least the biological form of race) must also be denounced. This would include such notable thinkers as Oswald Spengler, Francis Parker Yockey, Othmar Spann, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Oswald Mosley, and numerous other Fascist or nationalist intellectuals and leaders who did not place much importance upon physical race. Yet, paradoxically, many of those we see denouncing Dugin today would not do the same for such thinkers. This is not to imply that previous Fascist or nationalist intellectuals are entirely agreeable for us today (in fact, most New Rightists reject Fascism and old-fashioned nationalism), it is only to point out the self-contradiction which has gone unnoticed.
Furthermore, it is important to remember that Dugin clearly believes in the importance of ethnicity and culture and advocates ethnic separatism. Similarly to German Revolutionary Conservative and Völkisch thinkers, Dugin has unmistakably placed the Volk or ethnos as one of the highest values of his philosophy: “The subject of this theory [the Fourth Political Theory], in its simple version, is the concept ‘narod,’ roughly, ‘Volk’ or ‘people,’ in the sense of ‘peoplehood’ and ‘peoples,’ not ‘masses’” (quoted from “The Fourth Estate: The History and Meaning of the Middle Class”). Thus, it is clear that even if he does not value race, Dugin certainly does value ethno-cultural identity. Of course, this is not to say that rejecting the reality of race is not at all problematic, only that it is not enough to denounce a philosopher. However, those who like to claim that Dugin dismisses race as a “social construct” are reminiscent of those who say the same thing about Alain de Benoist, whereas it is clear that Benoist asserts the reality of race and advocates racial separatism–specifically from a non-racist standpoint–in many of his writings, one of the most notable in English being “What is Racism?”.
Empire vs. Imperialism
The second problematic notion about Dugin is that he is an advocate of a type of Russian imperialism, usually suggested being of a Stalinist and Soviet type. However, this claim has no basis in fact, since he has renounced Soviet imperialism and has also distinguished between true empire and imperialism (which also made by Julius Evola and many other Traditionalist and New Right authors). In his essay “Main Principles of Eurasist Policy,” Dugin has asserted that there are three basic types of policy in modern Russia: Soviet, pro-Western (liberal), and Eurasist. He criticizes the Soviet and Liberal types while advocating the Eurasist policy: “Eurasism, in this way, is an original ‘patriotic pragmatism’, free from any dogmatics – be it Soviet or liberal… The Soviet pattern operates with obsolete political, economic and social realities, it exploits nostalgia and inertness, it lacks a sober analysis of the new international situation and the real development of world economic trends.” It should be clear from Dugin’s analysis of different forms of political approaches that his own viewpoint is not based on the USSR model, which he explicitly rejects and critiques.
Moreover, it is often overlooked that when Dugin advocates a Eurasian empire or union, there is a distinction between a true empire—in the traditionalist sense—and imperialism, and thus an empire is not necessarily an imperialistic state (for a good overview of this concept, see Alain de Benoist’s “The Idea of Empire”). Unlike domineering and imperialistic states, the Eurasian Union envisioned by Dugin grants a partial level of self-government to regions within a federalist system:
The undoubted strategic unity in Eurasist federalism is accompanied by ethnic plurality, by the emphasis on the juridical element of the “rights of the peoples”. The strategic control of the space of the Eurasian Union is ensured by the unity of management and federal strategic districts, in whose composition various formations can enter – from ethno-cultural to territorial. The immediate differentiation of territories into several levels will add flexibility, adaptability and plurality to the system of administrative management in combination with rigid centralism in the strategic sphere. (quoted from “Main Principles of Eurasist Policy”)
Of course, it must also be remembered that Dugin’s vision needs to be differentiated from the policies of the present Russian state, which, at this time, cannot be said to adequately represent the Eurasists’ goals (despite the influence of Eurasism on certain politicians). Furthermore, it should be mentioned that while Dugin currently supports president Putin, it is clear that he does not uncritically accept all of the policies of Putin’s government. Therefore, a sound analysis of Dugin’s proposed policies will not equate them with those of the Russian government, as some of his critics have erroneously done.
The “West” as the Enemy
Another common misconception is that Dugin is hostile to Western European civilization and even advocates its complete destruction. It is important to recognize that Dugin’s conception of the “West” is similar to that advocated by the European New Right (in the works of Pierre Krebs, Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Tomislav Sunic, etc.). The “West” is not a reference to all of Western-European civilization, but rather to the specific formulation of Western-European civilization founded upon liberalism, egalitarianism, and individualism: “The crisis of identity […] has scrapped all previous identities–civilizational, historical, national, political, ethnic, religious, cultural, in favor of a universal planetary Western-style identity–with its concept of individualism, secularism, representative democracy, economic and political liberalism, cosmopolitanism and the ideology of human rights.” (quoted from the interview with Dugin, “Civilization as Political Concept”).
Thus, Dugin, like the New Right, asserts that the “West” is actually foreign to true European culture—that it is in fact the enemy of Europe: “Atlanticism, liberalism, and individualism are all forms of absolute evil for the Indo-European identity, since they are incompatible with it” (quoted from “Alexander Dugin on ‘White Nationalism’ & Other Potential Allies in the Global Revolution”). Likewise, in his approving citation of Alain de Benoist’s cultural philosophy, he wrote the following:
A. de Benoist was building his political philosophy on radical rejection of liberal and bourgeois values, denying capitalism, individualism, modernism, geopolitical atlanticism and western eurocentrism. Furthermore, he opposed “Europe” and “West” as two antagonistic concepts: “Europe” for him is a field of deployment of a special cultural Logos, coming from the Greeks and actively interacting with the richness of Celtic, Germanic, Latin, Slavic, and other European traditions, and the “West” is the equivalent of the mechanistic, materialistic, rationalist civilization based on the predominance of the technology above everything. After O. Spengler Alain de Benoist understood “the West” as the “decline of the West” and together with Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger was convinced of the necessity of overcoming modernity as nihilism and “the abandonment of the world by Being (Sein)” (Seinsverlassenheit). West in this understanding was identical to liberalism, capitalism, and bourgeois society – all that “New Right” claimed to overcome. (quoted from “Counter-hegemony in Theory of Multi-polar World”)
While Dugin attacks the “West” as modern liberal civilization, he simultaneously advocates the resurrection of Europe in his vision of the multipolar world: “We imagine this Greater Europe as a sovereign geopolitical power, with its own strong cultural identity, with its own social and political options…” (quoted from “The Greater Europe Project”). Similarly to the previous statements which we have quoted, he asserts here that European culture has multiple ideological elements and possible pathways in its history which are different from the liberal model: “Liberal democracy and the free market theory account for only part of the European historical heritage and that there have been other options proposed and issues dealt with by great European thinkers, scientists, politicians, ideologists and artists.”
Domitius Corbulo has argued, based on statements Dugin made in The Fourth Political Theory that liberalism and universalism are elements which run throughout Western civilization, that Dugin condemns Western-European culture in its entirety. However, it is important to recognize that these arguments are largely borrowed from Western-European authors such as Spengler, Heidegger, and Evola. These authors also recognized that anti-universalist, anti-liberal, and anti-materialist elements also exist in Western-European culture, and thus that there have always been other paths for the destiny of this culture. It is evident that Dugin would assert the same fact from his essays which we have cited here (as well as books not yet available in English, such as ¿Qué es el eurasismo?, Pour une théorie du monde multipolaire, or in Russian in Четвертый Путь, among others). It is important to remember here that The Fourth Political Theory is not a complete and perfect statement of Dugin’s thought, and that what he says there must be balanced with what he says in his other works.
It is often assumed that, considering his hostility to the liberal “West,” Dugin also advocates a complete destruction of the United States of America, which is seen as the epitome of the “West.” However, the very essence of his theory of the multipolar world is the idea that each civilization and nation must be granted the right to live and to determine its own destiny, political form, and way of life. For this reason, Dugin advocates the global combating of American cultural and economic imperialism, which denatures non-Western cultures. However, in the multipolar scheme, the United States also has the right to exist and to choose its own path, which means allowing the American people the right to continue the liberal model in the future, should they desire to do so. Of course, the liberal model would naturally be discouraged from abroad and be limited in its influence. This position can be drawn from Dugin’s key essays explicating the Theory of the Multipolar World: “The Multipolar World and the Postmodern” and “Multipolarism as an Open Project”.
The Fourth Political Theory vs. Reactionary Traditionalism
Some writers, such as Kenneth Anderson (“Speculating on future political and religious alliances”), have interpreted Alexander Dugin’s thought as a form of Radical Traditionalism (following Julius Evola and Rene Guenon) which is completely reactionary in nature, rejecting everything in the modern world–including all technological and scientific development–as something negative which needs to be eventually undone. This interpretation can be easily revealed to be incorrect when one examines Dugin’s statements on Traditionalism and modernity more closely. It is true that Dugin acknowledges Traditionalist thinkers such as Evola and Guenon among his influences, but it is also clear that he is not in full agreement with their views and advocates his own form of conservatism, which is much more similar to German Revolutionary Conservatism (see The Fourth Political Theory, pp. 86 ff.).
Unlike some Traditionalists, Dugin does not reject scientific and social progress, and thus it can also be said that he does not reject the Enlightenment in toto. When Dugin criticizes Enlightenment philosophy (the ideology of progress, individualism, etc.), it is not so much in the manner of the Radical Traditionalists as it is in the manner of the Conservative Revolution and the New Right, as was also done by Alain de Benoist, Armin Mohler, etc. In this regard, it can be mentioned that critiquing the ideology of progress is, of course, very different from rejecting progress itself. For the most part, he does not advocate the overcoming of the “modern world” in the Traditionalist sense, but in the New Rightist sense, which means eliminating what is bad in the present modern world to create a new cultural order (“postmodernity”) which reconciles what is good in modern society with traditional society. Thus Dugin asserts that one of the most essential ideas of the Eurasist philosophy is the creation of societies which restore traditional and spiritual values without surrendering scientific progress:
The philosophy of Eurasianism proceeds from priority of values of the traditional society, acknowledges the imperative of technical and social modernization (but without breaking off cultural roots), and strives to adapt its ideal program to the situation of a post-industrial, information society called “postmodern”. The formal opposition between tradition and modernity is removed in postmodern. However, postmodernism in the atlantist aspect levels them from the position of indifference and exhaustiveness of contents. The Eurasian postmodern, on the contrary, considers the possibility for an alliance of tradition with modernity to be a creative, optimistic energetic impulse that induces imagination and development. (quote from Eurasian Mission, cited in Dugin, “Multipolarism as an Open Project”)
It should be evident from these statements that Dugin is not a reactionary, despite his sympathy to Radical Traditionalism. In this regard, it is worth mentioning that Dugin also supports a “Third Positionist” form of socialism as well as a non-liberal form of democracy. In regards to socialism, he has written that the “confusion of mankind into the single global proletariat is not a way to a better future, but an incidental and absolutely negative aspect of the global capitalism, which does not open any new prospects and only leads to degradation of cultures, societies, and traditions. If peoples do have a chance to organize effective resistance to the global capitalism, it is only where Socialist ideas are combined with elements of a traditional society…” (from “Multipolarism as an Open Project”). Whereas some have accused Dugin of being anti-democratic, he has plainly advocated the idea of a “democratic empire”: “The political system of the Eurasian Union in the most logical way is founded on the ‘democracy of participation’ (the ‘demotia’ of the classical Eurasists), the accent being not on the quantitative, but on the qualitative aspect of representation” (quoted from “Main Principles of Eurasist Policy”; see also the comments on democracy in his “Milestones of Eurasism”).
References to Leftists and Cultural Marxists
Finally, one of the most recent attacks on Alexander Dugin is based on his reference to Cultural Marxist and “Leftist” philosophers, which is seen by some as an indicator that Dugin himself is sympathetic to Cultural Marxism (see Domitius Corbulo’s “Alexander Dugin’s 4th Political Theory is for the Russian Empire, not for European Ethno-Nationalists”). However, Dugin has clearly pointed out that while he uses ideas from Marxist and “Leftist” theorists, he rejects their ideologies as a whole: “The second and third political theories [Fascism and Marxism] must be reconsidered, selecting in them that which must be discarded and that which has value in itself. As complete ideologies… they are entirely useless, either theoretically or practically.” (quoted from The Fourth Political Theory, p. 24).
If one notes that Dugin occasionally makes use of Marxist thinkers, then it should not be overlooked that he places even more importance on Right-wing thinkers, who clearly form the greater influence on him; the intellectuals of the Conservative Revolution (Heidegger, Schmitt, Moeller van den Bruck, etc.), the Traditionalist School (Evola, Guenon, Schuon, etc.), the New Right (Benoist, Freund, Steuckers, etc.), and the conservative religious scholars (Eliade, Durand, etc.). Furthermore, Corbulo objects to Dugin’s use of Claude Levi-Strauss’s work, yet respected New Right thinkers like Alain de Benoist and Dominique Venner (see Robert Steuckers, “En souvenir de Dominique Venner”, citing Venner’s Le siècle de 1914) have also referenced the ideas of Levi-Strauss on matters of culture and ethnicity, among other authors that Dugin uses, such as Jean Baudrillard.
In a recent interview, Dugin has clearly agreed with the European Right’s position on immigration (which advocates the restriction of non-European immigration), mentioning the threat that liberal cosmopolitanism brings to European culture: “The immigration changes the structure of European society. The Islamic people have very strong cultural identity. The European people weaken their own identity more and more in conscious manner. It is human right and civil society individualistic ideological dogma. So Europe is socially endangered and is on the eve to lose it identity” (quoted from “The West should be rejected”). Thus, when we take a less biased view of Dugin’s writings and statements, it is clear that his overall position is very far from that of the Cultural Marxists and the New Left.
From our examination thus far, it should be obvious that there are too many misconceptions about Alexander Dugin’s thought being circulated among Right-wingers. These misconceptions are being used to dismiss the value of his work and deceive members of Right-wing groups into believing that Dugin is a subversive intellectual who must be rejected as an enemy. Many other important Right-wing intellectuals have been similarly dismissed among certain circles, due to practices of a kind of in-group gleichschaltung, closing off any thinker who is not seen as readily agreeable. It is important to overcome such tendencies and support an intellectual expansion of the Right, which is the only way to overcome the present liberal-egalitarian hegemony. People need to take a more careful and unbiased look at Dugin’s works and ideas, as with other controversial thinkers. Of course, Dugin is not without flaws and imperfections (
nor is any other thinker), but these flaws can be overcome when his thought is balanced with that of other intellectuals, especially the Revolutionary Conservatives and the New Rightists.
With the largest vocabulary of any rap artist ever at over 150,000 words and generates unique word count scores in the region of 10,000 plus- easily surpassing the all hip hoppers and even the totals of many of the average rappers combined, I feel it has accomplished the mission.
Whilst many ideas are theoretically possible, they are also practical impossibilities. The well-known idea that enough monkeys, given enough time, could type out the entire works of Shakespeare, by pressing keys at random, is certainly an example of this, as even a billion diligent monkeys would be hard pressed to develop a passable copy of Macbeth, before the entire universe evaporated into cold, dead soot.
**
Now, on a completely unrelated topic, a New York based data scientist, Matt Daniels, has undertaken a purely quantitative analysis to determine and compare the vocabulary depth of various rap artists. Ordinarily, an event such as this would (and should) elicit absolutely zero interest amongst myself and Radix Journal readers, however Daniels happened to use both Shakespeare and Moby Dick as benchmarks for the analysis, where it seems both the Bard’s and Herman Meville’s works have been surpassed in vocabulary by the more loquacious rappers.
Daniel’s himself, went to some pains to point out that quantities does not necessarily equate to quality, however, predictably, certain exotic parts of the internet, then soon followed by the more the mainstream news sites, started to herald titles such as “Science Proves it: Today’s Rapper’s More Poetic than Shakespeare.”
Clearly, claims such as the above need to not go unanswered, lest the lack of response be taken for bludgeoned acceptance of Cultural Marxist inspired iconoclasm, particularly such as that outlined in Michael McGregor’s “Modern Art Comes Full Circle,” where it’s suggested a Wu Tang Clan album will soon be played in a high-end art gallery for “pretentious SWPLs” to enjoy. The fact that Wu Tang appears to possess are larger lexicon than Shakespeare will be used to give intellectual credence to this type of display.
Presumably, a peer review won’t be forthcoming from the gang-banging set either, so the ball remains reluctantly in the court of the alternative Right.
Initially, I performed a couple of spot checks and found similar numbers to the original research, however, this isn’t surprising – any significant errors are likely to be conceptual, rather than merely arithmetical.
To wit, methodology used involved determining the number of unique words used in the various rappers’ works to determine their breath of vocabulary. For reasons Daniels himself points out, there are a few issues here, as for instance “pimps, pimp, pimping and pimpin” will be counted “as four unique words,” along with the myriad of bizarre spelling permutations which seem to be de rigueur for the hip hop crowd, which will further inflate the apparent depth of vocabulary.
Now, when I initially started writing this article, I based it on the notion that the rigid sentence structure used in Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter and the narrative flow in Moby Dick, would hinder the “unique word count”, however, whilst most likely technically correct, even to my own ears, this argument came across shrill and whiny – unlikely to sway any opinions in either the mah dick and wigger brigades, nor the self-myopia suffering SWPLs, who would likely deliberately pretend not to understand the argument.
Puzzled as to how to continue, I mused that that cruel satire and sarcasm had always been the S.O.P. of the Left, (no matter how severe the mis-application either…) so, all that was required whip up a few rap songs, plug them in the analysis to demonstrate numerical superiority and then point out that the unique word count used in a rap song is not in any way congruent to other literary works, and even an amateur can surpass even the best rap artists with ease.
Unfortunately, given my minimal interest in the genre I couldn’t really consider how to start. Fortunately however, salvation was a hand, as I do have at least moderate Microsoft Excel skillz. So with creativity augmented with a half bottle of merlot, and a nod to the novel writing machines of Orwell’s 1984,1 without further ado, I present:
The RadixJournal RAPBOT™.
With the largest vocabulary of any rap artist ever at over 150,000 words and generates unique word count scores in the region of 10,000 plus- easily surpassing the all hip hoppers and even the totals of many of the average rappers combined, I feel it has accomplished the mission.2
Admittedly, as the bot actually plucks words at random on the screen, without cause nor consciousness, and would hence fail the Turing Test miserably, I was concerned that the output would be mere gibberish, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that probability was on our side and most of the output seems like a bona fide approximation to the structure and content of the seemingly all pervasive hip hop that saturates the MSM airwaves at present. Here’s a sample:
“….
Kings unlimited, here, Africa, the counterweight.
Rome, hook, hoes, penetrate,
Hail Luciano, y’all obligate.
…”
I can’t discern any difference.
However, not content with trolling the hip hop fraternity, I think we can go one step further here.
All that is now required is to market the bot’s output with an imaginary thug, who has a fabricated and appropriately lengthy criminal record, in order that deluded fans can interpolate their own narrative, where none exists at all (in short: so dem suckas know, ‘dis Bot’s from da streets,dawg!) and let the profits roll in, all of which, will of course be wholly donated to Identitarian causes.
The next stumbling block is to find a music label that isn’t controlled by members of the Tribe, which is sadly proving somewhat more difficult…
Footnotes:
1) If anyone is at all interested, the bot grabs words at random via VLOOKUP from a word list with the RAND function, around a weighted RAND function from a smaller pool of “Rap” words (pimp, bitch, hoes etc) to give the output a more rap flavour, and then ends the line with rhyme, selected from another data set. A bit of experimentation with a few different variables to fine tune sentence length and number of syllables etc. was also employed.
2) After this exercise, I actually wouldn’t be at all surprised if the lyrics of modern pop icons Miley Cyrus et al were algorithmically generated, as commentator “TS1709” suggested in this Paul Treitschke article. It seems the cultural vacuity described in Huxley’s “Brave New World” is almost upon us.
There is one element necessary to ensure Identitarianism can grow as a movement in America—we need committed people who can devote themselves full-time to the cause.
“What can we do?”
This is a common refrain heard from our corner of the Right. What can we do to start changing the world?
Should we get involved in electoral politics? Should we do street activism? Should we drop out and form independent communities?
All these suggestions are endlessly discussed. There’s no broad consensus on what direction our movement should take and we at RadixJournal have sparked intense debates with our own ideas on the matter.
But there is one thing that is beyond dispute. There is one element necessary to ensure Identitarianism can grow as a movement in America—we need committed people who can devote themselves full-time to the cause.
Without men and women able to devote all of their time to the cause of White identity, there is no chance that our movement will grow. Every successful political movement has depended on full-time workers to manage its operations, produce literature, and recruit new members.
And the only way we can have these full-time operatives is to ensure they have the funding to support themselves.
Not every person can write. Not every person can give stirring speeches. But every person can make money.
Every reader of Radix can make a difference with a donation. Giving what you are able to makes it possible for us to continue publishing and supporting our writers.
Some of you are atheists or are estranged from your church. For centuries, men and women have tithed a significant portion of their income to their churches–believing that it was for a higher purpose.
If you have taken up Identitarianism, will you support it with your deeds?
Communist organizations and activists were able to endure public opprobrium through their ability to convince their adherents to dedicate a major portion of their income.
They acted because they believed in the virtue of their cause. With action, their ideas changed the world.
With your action, you can help us change the world.
We believe in the virtue of our cause and we are asking you to invest in it. Will you join us?
On May 21st, 2013, Domininque Venner entered the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and took his life in a statement of defiance towards the malignant spirit of his age–turning the final act of his existence into a call for all people with the blood of Europe flowing through their veins to arise from their stupor and reclaim their heritage.
On May 21st, 2013, Dominique Venner entered the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and took his life in a statement of defiance towards the malignant spirit of his age–turning the final act of his existence into a call for all people with the blood of Europe to arise from their stupor and reclaim their heritage.
The anniversary of his voluntary death reminds us to keep his memory alive by continuing on with our duty to preserve the noble heritage of our people.
Here is some of Venner’s final words that summarize why he chose this action and the message he tried to impart to those who would witness it (courtesy of Counter-Currents):
While many men are slaves of their lives, my gesture embodies an ethic of will. I give myself over to death to awaken slumbering consciences. I rebel against fate. I protest against poisons of the soul and the desires of invasive individuals to destroy the anchors of our identity, including the family, the intimate basis of our multi-millennial civilization. While I defend the identity of all peoples in their homes, I also rebel against the crime of the replacement of our people.
The dominant discourse cannot leave behind its toxic ambiguities, and Europeans must bear the consequences. Lacking an identitarian religion to moor us, we share a common memory going back to Homer, a repository of all the values on which our future rebirth will be founded once we break with the metaphysics of the unlimited, the baleful source of all modern excesses.
This is the first entry in a similar series to “So this is how it ends” that aims to cover positive events in the world, rather than signs of the Kali-Yuga. The name comes from this Oswald Spengler quote.
This is the first entry in a similar series to “So this is how it ends” that aims to cover positive events in the world, rather than signs of the Kali-Yuga. The name comes from this Oswald Spengler quote:
“We are born into this time and must bravely follow the path to the destined end. There is no other way. Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue, like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who, during the eruption of Vesuvius, died at his post because they forgot to relieve him. That is greatness. That is what it means to be a thoroughbred. The honorable end is the one thing that can not be taken from a man.”
The Conchita Wurst episode is arguably the lowest point in Austrian history. It must be hard for the large right-wing, nationalist community in the country to have a freak show like Wurst represent a nation with a rich cultural history like Austria.
Fortunately for that community, the group Die Identiaere Bewegung(The Identity Movement) held a large youth march in Vienna this weekend that drew hundreds of participants — the vast majority of whom were tech-savvy youth intent on preserving their culture and identity.
The Identity Movement is the German-speaking off-shoot of Generation Identitaire, which has created a great media image through events like this Subway Scum Patrol featuring normal, healthy-looking young men volunteering their time to take a stand against the rampant crime on their subway system.
Not surprisingly, that event was horrifying to leftists like Vice Magazine. Here’s to more positive demonstrations of the European Identity movement that counteracst the image of nationalists as a bunch of cranky, old men decked out in SS outfits.
But inspiring might not be quite the word to use for the song “My Slowianie”(English translation: We Slavs). It’s a Polish rap song with all of the potential meaning that conjures up.
While this year’s Eurovision gave rise to the new face of European Decline, Conchita Wurst, the story of Poland’s entry that might be just as interesting—and far more inspiring.
But inspiring might not be quite the word to use for the song “My Slowianie” (English translation: We Slavs). It’s a Polish rap song with all of the potential meaning that conjures up. The song itself is an ode to the beauty and rapacity of Slavic women and the English version bears the title “Slavic Girls.”
The music video is quite the piece of media. It begins with the producer of the song, Donatan, awaking with four Polish girls dressed in urban garb in a traditional, rural house. They are then taken in by two elderly farmers who then get an unexplained and unnamed Polish farm goddess (not literally, she looks like one though) to dress them in a traditional Slavic outfits, them to churn butter, and adopt a typical rural lifestyle.
Ok, there’s also an incredible amount of cleavage in the video and at one point the female butter churners gobble down a thick, white substance. It could be called soft-core porn if it wasn’t so over-the-top and hilariously goofy.
There’s also the singer of the song, with the stage name of Cleo, who portrays herself as a feisty Slavic female with a blackish singing voice and dance moves you rarely see dressed in a Eastern Europe folk costume.
Which is what comes to the intriguing part of the song: is this the Kali-Yuga appropriating traditional European culture or traditional European culture appropriating the Kali-Yuga?
This is a (slightly) serious question. Sure, the song can be seen just as pure entertainment and a sign that Poland has a remarkable sense of humor for what chooses to represent itself.
But the fact that the creator of the song (the rap producer Donaten) is an advocate of pan-Slavism and has expressed interest in paganism gives this composition more weight than just a boob fest wrapped in Polka gear.
While it would be preferable if the artist did not resort to Negro cultural forms to express European identity, it still does not overcome the fact that this song makes traditional white femininity cool and sexy. Yes, the butter churning is cheesy and there might just be a little too much tit action for good taste, but those don’t hold back the overall gist of the work.
Even Cleo’s aggressive, black inspired dancing and singing does not offend and rather makes whiteness edgy and unapologetic. White identity is too often construed as the definition of uncool and unhip. Here the hot, Slavic girls turn that notion on its head and express their own sense of cultural identity in a context that made them the fan favorites during this year’s Eurovision.
We have to start expressing White identity in a fashion that is cool and appealing to a broad spectrum of people. I’m not saying that “My Slowianie” should be the example for future projects, but it does point towards a future where it may be possible.
And here’s the music video in all of its busty, butter churning, Polka-infused madness: