Racial Existentialism

For authentic authenticity and against Heidegger.

In this post I begin – the very beginning - the process of outlining a philosophical basis for the worldview of the Sallis Groupuscule.  A side-effect, if you will, is criticism of Heidegger, who is favored by the traditionalist faction of the “movement.”

My major weakness here – that I am an empiricist STEM person lacking any formal training in philosophy – may actually be a strength: What is needed is direct, simple, plain-talk, not hundreds of pages of abstract theorizing.  The ultimate aim of philosophy is, or should be, to place man within the scope of the universe, to advise on how to live a good and proper life, how to situate man within the scope of his existence…not to demonstrate one’s “intellectual bonafides” by taking a whole chapter to express an idea that could have been more efficiently expressed in a single sentence (here’s looking at you, Heidegger).

I’d like to point out as well that those who automatically privilege the views of Heidegger over that of Sallis are essentially arguing by “appeal to authority” – what about Der Right’s complaints about “credentialism?”  Interesting that “credentialism” is always brought up with respect to STEM, which at least has some objective basis, and not for philosophy, which is mostly subjective.  Hypocritical much?

The key point is this analysis, ultimately, is authenticity. What is it? Who decides what it is?  For individuals?  For groups?  As regards the latter, is it proper to ascribe authenticity to entire populations?

Authenticity cannot be dictated from the “other;” that by definition invalidates claims of authenticity. Authenticity can only come from self, with that “self” being the individual or the group.

How does a person or group know that they are behaving in a manner truly authentic?  Can there be any objective confirmation of that?

Let’s consider some writings by myself and others on this topic, before briefly summarizing at the end.

See this.

…it was clear that Heidegger initially thought that National Socialism was an alternative to modern technological nihilism, but eventually he came to see it as just another expression of the same underlying worldview. For Heidegger, nihilism is basically having a false vision of man as being uprooted from nature and history and capable of controlling and consuming them.

Why is that a false vision?  Who decides?

The only way to avoid this trap is to move the battle from the political to the metapolitical plane. We need a fundamental transformation of our view of ourselves and our relationship to history and nature. But it is not as simple is manufacturing and promulgating a correct alternative worldview, for such a project itself is a form of technological nihilism. It assumes that the human mind and its machinations can stand behind culture and history and manufacture them according to its designs. Whereas the truth is that history and culture stand behind us. We are shaped by cultural and historical forces we can neither understand nor control.

Not very Faustian, is it?  

But once we recognize this fact, i.e., that we are finite beings, rooted in a particular time and place, rather than rootless cosmopolitan citizens of nowhere, the spell of nihilism is broken, which clears a space in which a new dispensation — a new fundamental worldview — can emerge.

If only we can clear a space so a New Movement can emerge, eh?

Thus Heideggerian metapolitics is not the construction of systems of ideas, ideologies, or -isms. Any worldview we can construct is simply an expression of nihilism, not an alternative to it. But that does not mean that we are impotent. We might not be able to manufacture an alternative, but we can still help one to emerge, first and foremost by owning up to our finitude and rootedness, then by clearing away the detritus of nihilism to create a space in which an alternative might grow.

One can create political policies. One can create legal codes. One can build the damned wall. But it is not in our power to manufacture a new culture.

Because Johnson says so!  QED!

But neither can we manufacture a simple tomato. 

Give genetic engineering a chance.

We can, however, work with forces we ultimately do not understand or control — nature itself — to grow tomatoes. 

Certainly, traditionalists hiding in their hobbit holes (*) cannot understand or control nature.

We can clear a space, plant a seed, weed, water, and fertilize — and then wait. We can do the same in the metapolitical realm: clear spaces by deconstructing false ideas, plant identitarian and ethnonationalist seeds, and tend what grows.

Translation: do nothing and rattle the tin cup for “D’Nations.”

That’s what we do here at Counter-Currents. We help people envision new answers to the questions “Who are we?” “What is the right way to live together?” and “How can we get there from here?”

No, actually they beg for money and engage in ethnoimperialist hypocrisy.

Heidegger did not believe that philosophers or poets are the hidden legislators of mankind, whose machinations create history. 

That’s good, since Heidegger was an idiot and shouldn’t be the “legislator” of anything.

But that doesn’t mean we have to shut up and let history do the talking, or sit back and let history do the work. Rather, Heidegger believed that history speaks and acts through us. Philosophers and poets are the first people to become aware of fundamental changes in the Zeitgeist. 

Alternatively, they create those fundamental changes and then slyly assert that they became “aware” of some underlying self-actualizing process.

Thus dissident thinkers and artists proceed historical change not as its creators but as its prophets, awakening and leading people to changes that are already underway. The very fact that we can conceive of fundamentally different ideas may mean that a new dispensation is nearing.

To be fair, Yockey had a similar idea – that there is a “spirit of the age” that manifests as a natural evolution of the lifecycle of the High Culture – so I cannot be too harsh here. However, this seems hand-waving or passing the buck; there is no explanation of why a “new dispensation” occurs, except there is the a prior assumption that “historical change” and “a new dispensation” cannot be in any real way influenced by people ,and certainly not created. I do not like a priori assumptions nor just shrugging off the question of the actual mechanism of historical change.

Let’s see what I wrote before about the possibilities of guiding historical change.

Although the Jewish author Isaac Asimov may not be popular among many white gentile racial nationalists, his Foundation series can provide a useful analogy here. “The Foundation” was meant to jumpstart a new civilization after the collapse of the “Galactic Empire,” so that the post-collapse “era of barbarism” would be a mere thousand years, instead of 30,000. Facing as we do the collapse of the West through the Winter of the Faustian age, it may be prudent to lay the seeds of a new emergent white, Western civilization for the long term, as we also fight the more short-term and medium-term battles to preserve the white race and save as much of Western Faustian civilization as possible. Without these shorter range objectives, the long term civilizational (re)birth will not be possible. Conversely, without a civilizational (re)birth, long-term white preservationism would be questionable.

So, there are two things that need to be going on here. First is the ongoing struggle for white racial preservationism and to save as much of the Faustian culture as possible, to serve as a knowledge base and building blocks for the new High Culture of the West. Second, an effort must be initiated to begin the process of laying the groundwork for this new High Culture. As indicated above, of course a High Culture is an organic phenomenon that cannot be created in a pre-planned form and artificially imposed on a people. However, it is possible to plant the seeds and to have some choice as to which seeds are planted. And then, we can nurture the seedling as it grows, and as it develops according to its own inherent character. This we can do and this we must do.

This is a serious matter requiring forward-thinking strategy of an extreme visionary character, not something that can be productively “discussed” on “blog threads” or other (typically inane) public forums. It is not something that can occur overnight. This is a long-term, multi-generational project that needs to be undertaken by dedicated individuals who wish to lay the foundation of something great and noble for posterity. This will not be not any “quick fix” whose results may be seen in a decade or two; instead, this is a project that has the potential to influence the course of human history and it must be conducted on that higher level.

Therefore, this essay is simply a call for action and an initial and cursory consideration of the possibilities. If such a project is ever initiated, it should not, and must not, devolve into the mundane “movement” minutiae that many obsess over, nor can it be linked to the more serious, yet short-term, necessary “stop-gap” activism required to save our people and culture today. This is another matter, on another level, entirely.

Many are called; few are chosen. The Future Awaits.

So, I’m not stating that historical change can be fully and directly influenced, the way one would drive a car, nor am I saying that a “new dispensation” can be created out of nothing, but I am saying that there is a role for higher men to guide and influence the process so as to significantly affect the final outcome.

See this, with an emphasis on Heidegger and technology.

Heidegger's flagship example of technology is a hydroelectric plant built on the Rhine river that converts that river into a mere supplier of water power. Set against this “monstrousness” (Question Concerning Technology 321) is the poetic habitation of the natural environment of the Rhine as signalled by an old wooden bridge that spanned the river for hundreds of years, plus the river as revealed by Hölderlin's poem “The Rhine”. 

Here we contrast the Futurist view as promoted by the Sallis Groupuscule vs. the “traditionalist” view championed by the likes of Counter-Currents (itself promoting Heidegger’s views).  Objectively speaking, why isn’t an “old wooden bridge” not a “monstrous” ruination of the “poetic habitation of the natural environment?” Who decides that the wooden bridge is below the threshold of “monstrousness” but the hydroelectric plant is above? Just because Heidegger is comfortable with the former and not the latter?

In these cases of poetic habitation, natural phenomena are revealed to us as objects of respect and wonder. 

Twigs and branches!

One might think that Heidegger is over-reacting here, and that despite the presence of the hydroelectric plant, the Rhine in many ways remains a glorious example of natural beauty. 

Uh, yes.

Heidegger's response to this complaint is to focus on how the technological mode of Being corrupts the very notion of unspoilt areas of nature, by reducing such areas to resources ripe for exploitation by the tourist industry. 

So, if Heidegger visits the Rhine as a tourist to visit that “old wooden bridge” then that is corrupting?

Turning our attention to inter-human affairs, the technological mode of Being manifests itself when, for example, a friendly chat in the bar is turned into networking (Dreyfus 1993). And, in the light of Heidegger's analysis, one might smile wryly at the trend for companies to take what used to be called ‘personnel’ departments, and to rename them ‘human resources’. Many other examples could be given, but the general point is clear. The primary phenomenon to be understood is not technology as a collection of instruments, but rather technology as a clearing that establishes a deeply instrumental and, as Heidegger sees it, grotesque understanding of the world in general. 

Technology is one thing, how people use it, and let it affect society, is another.  At one point in time, even “wooden bridges” were disruptive to the established order.

Of course, if technological revealing were a largely restricted phenomenon, characteristic of isolated individuals or groups, then Heidegger's analysis of it would be of limited interest. The sting in the tale, however, is that, according to Heidegger, technological revealing is not a peripheral aspect of Being. Rather, it defines our modern way of living, at least in the West.

At this point one might pause to wonder whether technology really is the structure on which we should be concentrating. The counter-suggestion would be that technological thinking is merely the practical application of modern mathematical science, and that the latter is therefore the primary phenomenon. Heidegger rejects this view, arguing in contrast that the establishment of the technological mode of revealing is a necessary condition for there to be mathematical science at all, since such science “demands that nature be orderable as standing-reserve” by requiring that “nature report itself in some way or other that is identifiable through calculation and that it remain orderable as a system of information” (Question Concerning Technology 328). 

What stupidity.  The Ancient Greeks were doing mathematics in the absence of any high scale technics (Archimedes aside).

Either way, one might object to the view of science at work here, by pointing to analyses which suggest that while science may reduce objects to instrumental means rather than ends, it need not behave in this way. 

No kidding.

Moreover, if science may sometimes operate with a sense of awe and wonder in the face of beings, it may point the way beyond the technological clearing, an effect that, as we shall see later, Heidegger thinks is achieved principally by some great art.

Great art, historically in the Western civilization, has meant cities and city life, and the most highly developed technics for that particular time and place.

By revealing beings as no more than the measurable and the manipulable, technology ultimately reduces beings to not-beings (Contributions 2: 6). This is our first proper glimpse of the oblivion of Being, the phenomenon that, in the Contributions, Heidegger also calls the abandonment of Being, or the abandonment of beings by Being (e.g., 55: 80). 

Nonsense.  This is purely subjective.

Secondly, recall the loss of dwelling identified by Heidegger. Modern humankind (at least in the West) is in the (enframed) grip of technological thinking. Because of this promotion of instrumentality as the fundamental way of Being of entities, we have lost sight of how to inhabit the fourfold poetically…

To be or not to be, that is the Dasein.  What convoluted nonsense.

Heidegger was no eco-warrior and no luddite. 

You could have fooled me.

Although he often promoted a romantic image of a pre-technological age inhabited by worthy peasants in touch with nature…

To the hobbit hole!  De facto anarchy in the provinces!  Hail Tolkien!

We need to transform our mode of Being into one in which technology (in the sense of the machines and devices of the modern age) is there for us to enjoy and use, but in which technology (in the sense of a mode of Being-in-the-world) is not our only or fundamental way of encountering entities. And what is the basic character of this reinhabiting? It is to shelter the truth of Being in beings (e.g., Contributions 246: 273), to safeguard the fourfold in its essential unfolding. In what, then, does this safeguarding consist?

One wonders how long technology will continue once we start dabbling in mysticism. All these types believe – tacitly – that technology falls from the sky with no underlying underlying epistemological structure – or else they demonize that structure and believe that we can “enjoy and use” technology without putting the effort in required to produce it.

See this, with an emphasis on Heidegger and authenticity.

The term ‘authentic’ is used either in the strong sense of being “of undisputed origin or authorship”, or in a weaker sense of being “faithful to an original” or a “reliable, accurate representation”. To say that something is authentic is to say that it is what it professes to be, or what it is reputed to be, in origin or authorship. But the distinction between authentic and derivative is more complicated when discussing authenticity as a characteristic attributed to human beings. For in this case, the question arises: What is it to be oneself, at one with oneself, or truly representing one’s self? 

Good question.  It is difficult to ascertain how anyone other than the person in question can answer that; on the other hand, obviously, if we believe that many or most people are living “inauthentic” lives (by whose standards?), then perhaps most people lack the self-awareness and intelligence required to figure out what authenticity means for them? This is a paradox, partially resolved perhaps by helping guide people – or at least those with sufficient brainpower and motivation – to an answer that seems to “fit” (defined how?), but never really knowing what the correct answer is.

The multiplicity of puzzles that arise in conjunction with the conception of authenticity connects with metaphysical, epistemological, and moral issues (for recent discussion, see Newman and Smith 2016; Heldke and Thomsen 2014). On the one hand, being oneself is inescapable, since whenever one makes a choice or acts, it is oneself who is doing these things. But on the other hand, we are sometimes inclined to say that some of the thoughts, decisions and actions that we undertake are not really one’s own and are therefore not genuinely expressive of who one is. Here, the issue is no longer of metaphysical nature, but rather about moral-psychology, identity and responsibility.

But therein lies part of the paradox. Who decides if the “decisions and actions that we undertake are not really one’s own and are therefore not genuinely expressive of who one is?” If the person themselves does so then fine – but how do we know that they are judging correctly and not engaging in self-deception – but if another person interjects themselves into the process then isn’t that part of the paradigm of “decisions and actions” being imposed from the outside of self?

When used in this latter sense, the characterization describes a person who acts in accordance with desires, motives, ideals or beliefs that are not only hers (as opposed to someone else’s), but that also express who she really is. Bernard Williams captures this when he specifies authenticity as “the idea that some things are in some sense really you, or express what you are, and others aren’t” (quoted in Guignon 2004: viii).

Who decides?  

Besides being a topic in philosophical debates, authenticity is also a pervasive ideal that impacts social and political thinking. In fact, one distinctive feature of recent Western intellectual developments has been a shift to what is called the “age of authenticity” (Taylor 2007; Ferrarra 1998). Therefore, understanding the concept also involves investigating its historical and philosophical sources and on the way it impacts the socio-political outlook of contemporary societies.

When modern politics intrudes, you can rest assured that “authenticity” for Whites equates to self-destruction and race-treason. No thanks.

The most familiar conception of “authenticity” comes to us mainly from Heidegger’s Being and Time of 1927. The word we translate as ‘authenticity’ is actually a neologism invented by Heidegger, the word Eigentlichkeit, which comes from an ordinary term, eigentlich, meaning ‘really’ or ‘truly’, but is built on the stem eigen, meaning ‘own’ or ‘proper’. So the word might be more literally translated as ‘ownedness’, or ‘being owned’, or even ‘being one’s own’, implying the idea of owning up to and owning what one is and does (for a stimulating recent interpretation, see McManus 2019). Nevertheless, the word ‘authenticity’ has become closely associated with Heidegger as a result of early translations of Being and Time into English, and was adopted by Sartre and Beauvoir as well as by existentialist therapists and cultural theorists who followed them.[1]

So Heidegger will guide us?  Why him?  Why this intrusion into self?

Heidegger’s conception of ownedness as the most fully realized human form of life emerges from his view of what it is to be a human being. This conception of human Dasein echoes Kierkegaard’s description of a “self”. On Heidegger’s account, Dasein is not a type of object among others in the totality of what is on hand in the universe. Instead, human being is a “relation of being”, a relation that obtains between what one is at any moment (the immediacy of the concrete present as it has evolved) and what one can and will be as the temporally extended unfolding or happening of life into an open realm of possibilities. To say that human being is a relation is to say that, in living out our lives, we always care about who and what we are. Heidegger expresses this by saying that, for each of us, our being (what our lives will amount to overall) is always at issue. This “being at stake” or “being in question for oneself” is made concrete in the specific stands we take—that is, in the roles we enact—over the course of our lives. It is because our being (our identity) is in question for us that we are always taking a stand on who we are. Since the German word for ‘understanding’, Verstehen, is etymologically derived from the idea of ‘taking a stand’, Heidegger can call the projection into the future by which we shape our identity ‘understanding’. And because any stand one takes is inescapably “being-in-the-world”, understanding carries with it some degree of competence in coping with the world around us. An understanding of being in general is therefore built into human agency.

Babbling nonsense with no real-world applicability.

To the extent that all our actions contribute to realizing an overarching project or set of projects, our active lives can be seen as embodying a life-project of some sort. 

See this about true freedom embodied in personal overcoming and in being part of a community with organic solidarity (which does not merely have to mean an interdependence of services, but a complete interdependence, emphasizing ethnic and cultural ties, common interests, and social cohesion).

On Heidegger’s view, we exist for the sake of ourselves: enacting roles and expressing character traits contribute to realizing some image of what it is to be human in our own cases. Existence has a directedness or purposiveness that imparts a degree of connection to our life stories. For the most part, having such a life-plan requires very little conscious formulation of goals or deliberation about means. It results from our competence in being members of a historical culture that we have mastered to a great extent in growing up into a shared world. This tacit “pre-understanding” makes possible our familiar dwelling with things and others in the familiar, everyday world.

To some extent this view is Yockeyian; the rootedness of a person as part of a High Culture or as part of barbarians against the Culture, or as part of a fellah people.  That is fine as far as it goes, but this limits the scope of action of Faustian Man. What would Nietzsche say? Heidegger the camel – what about lion and child?

It should be obvious that this conception of authenticity has very little to do with the older idea of being true to one’s own pregiven feelings and desires. But there is still a clear respect in which the idea of “being true to oneself” has a role to play here. What distinguishes this conception from the conceptions of pop psychology and romantic views of authenticity is the fact that the “true self” to which we are to be true is not some pre-given set of substantive feelings, opinions and desires to be consulted through inward-turning or introspection. On the contrary, the “true self” alluded to here is an on-going narrative construction: the composition of one’s own autobiography through one’s concrete ways of acting over the course of a life as a whole. 

Acta non verba.

Others argue that Heidegger uses authenticity in both evaluative-normative and purely descriptive senses. In the descriptive use of the term, inauthenticity is simply the default condition of everyday life, in which our self-relations are mediated by others. In this sense, authenticity involves no judgment about which mode of being is superior for Dasein. 

Can these “others” include Heidegger himself? One gets the inescapable feeling that what these pontificating philosophers really want is the precise opposite of authenticity – they want to dictate to people what “their” “true authentic selves” really are. If you believe that you are being authentic by doing X, Y, Z but The Grand Philosopher believes that your true authenticity is doing A, B, C. then, certainly, you are “lying to yourself” about X, Y, Z and the only way to undo this self-deception and engage your authentic self is to do A, B, C. The utter mendacity of this, and the dangerousness of this for manipulation, should set off alarm bells.

See this.

In an endnote, Polt explains who these “neofascist” intellectuals are: “Heidegger is a popular figure on counter-currents.com, home of Counter-Currents Publishing, purveyor of books by racists and neofascists. In Russia, political theorist Alexander Dugin has enlisted Heidegger in his project of a ‘Eurasianism’ that is profoundly antiliberal, although he denies that it is fascist” (p. 250, n15). Although Polt does not mention me by name, I am the primary person at Counter-Currents writing about Heidegger and political philosophy. Naturally, I am flattered that one of the express purposes of Polt’s book is to intellectually combat people like me.

After all, it’s all about ego for your “leaders.”

Heidegger’s political thought basically went through two phases. Early on, Heidegger was what one might call a humanistic historicist. He was historicist because he believed that our thought is rooted in concrete historical traditions and ways of life. He was a humanist because, following Nietzsche, he believed that great philosophers, poets, and statesmen create these traditions and ways of life. 

What a self-serving hypocrite. On the one hand, we are rooted in a particular historical culture. But, you see, people like Heidegger can help “create these traditions and ways of life.”  On the other hand, we must have authenticity, with the implication that simply following others is not consistent with living a fully authentic life. I suppose that the exception to the latter are our demigods (didn’t Nietzsche say that the philosopher was both god and beast?) like Heidegger, whose pontifications create the culture we find ourselves boxed into, and, thus, following those pontifications, in the context of that cultural creation, is properly “authentic.”

His hope was that National Socialism would bring about a new inception, legislating a new culture and way of life.

This viewpoint is, however, implicitly totalitarian and nihilistic. Creating a new culture means setting up new standards of truth and goodness. Which means that such decisions are unconstrained by prior standards of truth and goodness. This implies that the legislator can do anything he wishes and call it true or good.

And those prior standards of truth and goodness are created by who? Legislators like Heidegger?  Which standards should we be constrained by?  Christian ethics?  Isn’t that part of our historical cultural tradition?  I object. 

Later, as Heidegger became disillusioned with Nietzsche and National Socialism, he came to see humanistic historicism as another form of nihilism and unbounded technological machination. 

Jump back into your hobbit hole!  Enjoy the spectacle of the old wooden bridge.

Heidegger’s mature philosophy is resolutely anti-humanist. Human subjectivity is not “behind” history, not even the subjectivity of great men. Rather, history is “behind” human subjectivity. Which means that human beings cannot take control of our own destinies and change the course of history. 

Because he says so. But, hey, while we are all passive, “great men” like Heidegger will be creating our cultural norms for us, have no fear!

That is the error of all forms of modern technological nihilism, including National Socialism. Instead, we can only wait as modern nihilism burns itself out and a new inception emerges.

Ride the tiger in the Kali Yuga!  Traditionalist nonsense and passive defeatism.

Heidegger sums up the course of his thinking in a 1939 entry in his Black Notebooks:

In his Black Notebooks from the Third Reich and other contemporary posthumously published works like Mindfulness (Besinnung) and The History of Beyng, Heidegger systematically dismantles such National Socialist ideas as the people (Volk), nationalism, dictatorship, leadership, struggle (Kampf), cultural politics, Lebensraum, eugenics, and anti-intellectualism, connecting them all to nihilism, machination, brutality, and criminality. Thus, as Polt concludes, “It seems safe to say that by the late thirties, [Heidegger] was no Nazi anymore” (p. 153).

Heidegger was obviously a cuck. Whatever criticism is justified of National Socialism, it is an ideology that had to function in the real, modern world, not a philosophical dream of peasants and old wooden bridges.

Surprisingly, though, even though Heidegger came to see National Socialism as an expression of nihilism rather than as an alternative to it, he still believed there were grounds to affirm it: “On the basis of the full insight into the earlier deception about the essence and historical essential force of National Socialism, there results the necessity of its affirmation, and indeed on thoughtful grounds” (p. 135).

Heidegger’s rationale for this affirmation is a form of accelerationism. The clash of National Socialism vs. communism and liberal democracy may just be a family quarrel between different forms of technological nihilism, but the greater the conflict, the more likely the downfall of all forms of modernity, which would clear the ground for the emergence of a new inception. 

“New inception” – Luddite reactionary backwardness. In your hobbit hole, while the Chinamen rocket off to the stars.

If so, this is a clear example of Heidegger using techniques of “esoteric” communication, since his private conception of “inner truth and greatness” is sharply different from what his audience would have taken him to mean.

Evola!  Guenon!  Savitri Devi! The Men Who Can’t Tell Time in The Age of Aluminum.  Nonsense.

But neither are we in total thrall to these traditions, for they are ultimately practices for understanding and coping with what is new. The moment of application gives ample space for creativity. Moreover, it is both natural and noble to want to improve one’s heritage before passing it on to the next generation. 

Doesn’t that possibly include the need for technology and a scientific mindset?

If you want to halt globalization, the most natural boundary for doing so is the nation-state. If you think place, history, and roots matter, then the best kind of state is the ethnostate. 

Can John Morgan leave Magyar Hungarians alone to enjoy an ethnostate?

Polt discusses three ways in which Heidegger’s political thought can be said to be irrationalist.

Oh indeed.

Polt recognizes that if Heidegger is right about human existence, all politics is inescapably identity politics. But identity politics is a complicated thing. Heidegger regards the identity of a people as a complex mix of race, language, culture, and history. Beyond that, he holds that the identity of a people is never finished and fixed but is instead an ongoing form of life that we should pass on to future generations better than we found it. Moreover, part of who we are is our future, which is in part a set of possibilities.

Hmmm…you mean we can leave our hobbit holes and help influence the future?

When diverse peoples stop talking about their identities and actually try to live together in the same system, there are tensions that can lead to violent conflict. 

Like John Morgan in Hungary?

The worst-case scenario is genocide, which Polt describes as the attempt to “settle the ‘who’ question in the worst possible way: by murdering those who ‘we’ are not?” (p. 170). To avoid genocide, warring tribes need to separate, preferably into their own sovereign states. This is why the New Right advocates ethnonationalism. It is the best way to avoid needless hatred and violence between peoples and ensure their ability to live by their own lights without outside interference.

Hungarians living without John Morgan’s interference.

Polt also takes Heidegger to task for his lack of appreciation for negative freedom, including freedom of association and speech (pp. 181, 193). Heidegger, however, did not reject negative freedom unthinkingly. Instead, his views were very much in the German idealist tradition of positive freedom. He emphasized that freedom is only real if concretized in finite institutions….It is misguided to think one understands freedom most purely in its essence if one isolates it as a free-floating arbitrariness. . . . The task is precisely the reverse, to conceive freedom in its finitude and to see that, by providing boundedness, one has neither impaired freedom nor curtailed its essence.[2]

Please see my take on true freedom.  You can compare that to Heidegger.  If “finitude” means exercising freedom and authenticity while being rooted in a genuine racial-cultural folk community, then I approve, as the True Freedom piece makes clear. If it instead means hiding in a hobbit hole (*), then I vehemently disagree.

*All these references to “hobbit holes,” mocking Greg Johnson’s traditionalist Tolkien fetish, is meant to describe a traditionalist, reactionary,” twigs and branches,” anti-scientific and anti-technics – and anti-Futurist most of all – mindset, in which we are all to “go back to the forest” and turn our backs on the stars.

The debate about the costs of technology and the technological mindset to the human soul reminds me of the tale of the machines in Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun. To paraphrase and summarize – humanity reached the stars by giving away the wild part of themselves – essentially becoming emotionless technocrats – and then the thinking machines (AI), who hated their human creators, decided to ruin those human creators by re-introducing to humanity paradigms that would rekindle humanity’s interest in those “wild things.” Thus, humanity became distracted away from pure science and technics and the galactic empire collapsed.  The lesson here is that – besides not trusting AI – humanity should not give up its “wild” side, its human soul, for the sake of technology; instead, humans need to achieve their objectives – “reach the stars” – while remaining fundamentally human. Thus, in relation of Heidegger’s whining, we need not become entrapped into a technological spiritual mindset – pure instrumentality (**) – in order to “be scientific.”  On the other hand, we cannot evade the price that must be paid for science and technology – while science is a tool, it is an expensive tool, and what has to invest in a degree of rationality and empiricism to achieve science and technics. One must strike a balance – the mind must be scientific while the soul remains human.  But we cannot hide in the hobbit hole, while others reach the stars. The White Man cannot give up his Faustian birthright because of fearful, backwards-looking traditionalists.

**Amusingly, see this.

After attaining power and the expansion of humans in space, they eventually entered a somewhat stagnant phase…This somewhat empty and sterile system was reformed and enlivened by the "Rediscovery of Man"…

Of relevance, see this post about Salterian ethics. This is relevant with respect to the role of authenticity and the idea that True Freedom can, and should, mean the rights people to defend and promote their genetic interests, up to and including at the level of ethny (EGI).

As Salter emphasizes, morality is basically an approach for adjudicating conflicts of interests…This is in accord with the view – promoted by Salter and myself - that genetic interests are ultimate interests. How could it be otherwise for evolved organisms whose reproduction – indeed, whose representation among the informational content of reality – is essentially dependent upon and constituted by “genetic material?”  Or more basically by the information encoded in that “genetic material?”…

…If someone has a value system in which self-destructive values are prized then that is their prerogative; others who value continuity of both their bioculture and their values would be well served to promote their genetic interests.  Salter also notes that proximate interests are best optimized rather than maximized; for example, a person who is “too happy” may become less prudent, jeopardizing well-being.  On the other hand, ultimate interests are different; these interests are adaptive when maximized (note: maximized in the net sense).  Thus, Salter states: “One cannot be too well adapted.” 

Salter notes that people “who do not consider peaceful genetic replacement to be a moral issue will have no moral objection to their own painless genetic extinction.” Well, there are Whites with pathological altruism who do not personally reproduce as to “save the planet” (and who advocate the same to other Whites, but typically not to non-Whites), but typically the situation is that of a targeted attack against White interests. Especially, non-White activists will be among those who attempt to convince Whites to accept genetic extinction, while these non-Whites themselves continue their own genetic lines.  

A few concluding comments are appropriate at this point.  Salter believes that “evolved organisms” will not for long accept a “social order that weeds out their lineages.” Well, so far, Whites have been generally accepting of such a social order; we shall see how things evolve (no pun intended).  It is part of the proper ethics of EGI to educate people on the important of adaptive behavior; one can view Salter’s book, and my current post, as part of such efforts.

Let us finish with the following Shakespearean quote that Salter includes in this section of his book, with respect to conflicts between sets of genetic interests:

KING HARRY

Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,

How you awake our sleeping sword of war.

We charge you in the name of God, take heed,

For never two such kingdoms did contend

Without much fall of blood, whose guiltless drops

Are every one a woe, a sore complaint

'Gainst him whose wrong gives edge unto the swords

That make such waste in brief mortality.

…

May I with right and conscience make this claim? 

Shakespeare, Henry V, 1500, Act I, Scene I

That KING HARRY quote also applies to situations in which anyone attempts to suppress True Freedom by preventing Whites from pursuing adaptive fitness though EGI. It also applies to charlatans like Heidegger who believe they have the right to dictate authenticity to others.

Finally, see this about an empirical racial soul.

Summary: Racial Existentialism

While it is reasonable to assert that True Freedom is constrained by rootedness in a specific community and by belonging, or not, to a High Culture, I object to any artificial constraints put on a person’s freedom or their idea of authenticity, whether from Heidegger or anyone else (e.g., Johnson or any other “traditionalist” Quota Queen).

I am a Futurist, and object to the anti-scientific and anti-technics mindset of the hobbit hole crowd, and I laugh at those fools who believe you can have maintain and create technology while at the same time rejecting the scientific mindset.

We need a form of racial existentialism, in which authenticity revolves around True Freedom, which has the dual aspect of both (1) being limited in the sense of rootedness in a racial-cultural community and belonging or not to a High Culture, and (2) allowing for personal overcoming and cultural creation not limited to specific constraints

Life has meaning given by individuals themselves, not from some sort of outside source (including Heidegger).  Living an authentic life is crucial, but who or what decides what authenticity is open to debate (see above). All I can say at this point is that the choices individuals make should be informed choices, including knowledge of one’s genetic interests and the facts about race. The foundation of authenticity needs to be truth, facts, knowledge; it is best not to make decisions out of ignorance.

Racial Existentialism is the choice – the free choice of the individual – to give meaning to one’s life by defending one’s race and civilization, to defend and promote genetic interests, and to actualize self-overcoming to be a better representative of one’s people and a better fighter for one’s people.

Toward an Analysis of Fascist Fiction

Brassillach, Celine, and Drieu La Rochelle.

See this. That is a scholarly analysis of the writing style and perspectives of three prominent French fascist fiction authors of the inter-war period, and how those styles and perspectives differ from that of the political fiction written by leftist authors.  You are encouraged to read the entire manuscript. 

This article is available in:

Studies in 20th Century Literature: https://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol10/iss1/7

TOWARD AN ANALYSIS OF FASCIST FICTION:

THE CONTEMPTUOUS NARRATOR IN THE

WORKS OF BRASILLACH, CELINE AND

DRIEU LA ROCHELLE

MARY JEAN GREEN

Dartmouth College

Excerpts (emphasis added) and my comments:

Three important French novelists of the same period, however, identified themselves with fascism. Of these, the writer who has consistently claimed the greatest attention is Louis-Ferdinand Celine, whose creation of a unique literary language has inspired a constant stream of critical studies. The reputation of Robert Brasillach suffered to some extent from his execution as a collaborator in 1945, but his memory has been kept alive by a loyal coterie of friends and admirers, including his brother-in-law, the literary scholar Maurice Bardeche. Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, known for a long time primarily as the author of Le Feu follet (1931), the novel of decadence made into a film by Louis Malle, has, within the last decade, inspired a number of new critical and biographical studies. There have, however, been few attempts to undertake a general analysis of the nature of French fascist fiction. This is in part because the notion of fascism itself is hard to pin down, existing as it did in many different manifestations.

Yes, but all of those manifestations center on Roger Griffin’s “palingenetic ultra-nationalism.” Thus, palingenesis, rebirth, in the context of the Far Right, from a “nationalist” perspective, underlies the fascist worldview.

In my reading, these texts exhibit the repeated use of a distanced, even contemptuous, narrative voice, a technique which can be clearly related to a recognized feature of fascist ideology and which serves to distinguish these texts written under the sign of fascism from the fiction inspired by an ideology of the Left.

Given the tropism of fascism for elitism, hierarchy, the superior individual, with a disdain for “last man” perspectives, and a disgust with herd conformism toward liberal concepts, it is perfectly understandable that there is a “distanced, even contemptuous, narrative voice” – the fascist does not find common ground with the sheep-like masses; even a populist, collectivist fascism is hierarchical, with a view toward overcoming.  A palingenetic individual will of course view a degenerate society with contempt, with a sense of distance.

Celine, of course, is the extreme case: he is as hard to pin down in his pamphlets as he is in his fiction, and the only elements that seem to emerge clearly from the ideological chaos of his texts is a hysterical fear of war and a violent hatred of the Jew, who becomes an outsized figure summing up all the forces of oppression in the modern world.

That seems a reasonable summation by Celine, particularly when looking at actual history and actual group behavior.

Drieu and Brasillach, at least, manage to discuss politics in standard expository prose required by their work as essayists and journalists. Even so, their political programs seem commonly to defy analysis. Speaking of Drieu, Brasillach and others of their colleagues, Raoul Girardet observes: . . . fascism corresponds much more exactly to what could more appropriately be called a romanticism. . . . The attraction of fascism is above all that of a few great affective themes of a certain form of lyricism, the exaltation of certain sentimental and moral values. It is to the forces of the passions, it is to the imagination and the sensibility that French fascism aims primarily to address itself.' Girardet's conclusion is a common one, shared by almost all those who attempt to submit these works to serious political analysis.

The above paragraph has a stench of polemical anti-fascism about it, but it is true that fascism is much more about aesthetic values than are the creeds of the Left.  Thus:

In his political biography of Brasillach, William R. Tucker makes a similar point: it is significant, in this context that he never attempted to formulate a definition of fascism. . . . At the same time, however, his intuitive approach to politics prompted an awareness that fascism was as much a response to the movement of time, a style, and a feeling of exhilaration, as it was a political creed."'

Again, this is unfair in the sense of the extreme view in which these ideas are taken to their conclusion, seemingly stripping fascism of any core ideology or serious political content. However, again, there is some truth to the idea that of the various ideological permutations of 20th century world politics, fascism, compared to its rivals, was the one most concerned with style, feeling, and becoming, than with stale ideological dogma. Fascism does have a core, as elucidated by Griffin, and fascist ideology derives from that. But fascism was never about the navel-gazing, turgid, ideological minutiae of, say, Marxism.

The quest for precise statements on political or social issues has already been undertaken by a number of critics, and it has done little to bring out elements of commonality to fascist fiction. The most extensive study of these three writers has been undertaken by Tarmo Kunnas (Drieu la Rochelle, Celine, Brasillach et la tentation fasciste), who examines their views on fifteen issues identified with fascism. Not surprisingly, he finds differences among the three French fascists on almost every item. 

Fascism cannot be broken down into any “fifteen issues" – that is a leftist-style view.  Fascism is palingenetic ultra-nationalism, and within that context, fascism can be fairly protean, with various manifestations.

My approach, therefore, will be a different one. I will examine their fiction for evidence of the use of similar fictional techniques, techniques which might serve to differentiate works produced under the sign of fascism from treatments of often similar subjects produced by major writers of the Left in the 1930s. Taking as a possible point of departure what is perhaps the most striking feature of the phenomenon of European fascism in the inter-war years, we might expect to find in the fiction techniques that make possible the expression of a collective exhilaration, a mass movement of immense vitality.

So, we understand the perspective of this analysis – more on style and perspective than on specific ideological talking points. Very well.

In Les Sept Couleurs (1939), one of his protagonists is impressed by the collective spirit which animates the Nazi youth camps and the Nuremberg rallies and by the spontaneous popular enthusiasm for the Italian fascist regime. It is this eminently fascist spirit of collective enthusiasm that the narrator (and Brasillach) would most like to see in France, uniting the various classes and allowing them to transcend their mundane lives. In his posthumously-published work, Les Captifs, written in 1940, Brasillach's pro-fascist protagonist is even able to participate in an analogous experience in the French right-wing riots of February 1934. 

“…eminently fascist spirit of collective enthusiasm…” – that describes the collectivist nature of fascism; it is not the ideal of the lowest common denominator (contra Evola’s objections of fascism’s mass nature) but a collective enthusiasm for national overcoming, represented in its purest form by an elite at the top of the societal hierarchy. Of course, all in society can contribute to, and partake in, this overcoming, but the hierarchy exists and the popular enthusiasm typically revolve around charismatic leaders – superior individuals.

Collective experience, in fact, seems to be more a property of the fiction of the Left. The influence of Jules Romains's unanimisme is felt strongly in Nizan's Le Cheval de Troie (1935), for example, where a Communist crowd involved in a riot is described as a single entity, animated by a common will. Mass rallies receive a similarly positive portrayal at the conclusion of Aragon's Les Cloches de Bale (1934) and Les Beaux Quartiers (1936) and even among non Communist leftists like Malraux in L 'Espoir (1937) and Le Temps du mepris (1935). In several instances in the fiction of the Left, the protagonist is itself a group, whose destiny is the real subject of the work.

More on this below, but an executive summary – the Left is anti-hierarchical, caters to the lowest common denominator, and is founded on “last man” values.  The Left disdains the individual and individual initiative and views humanity through the lens of impersonal historical processes – akin to the mass-based “psychohistory” in the science fiction books of the Jew Asimov (the Mule is the only redeeming character in those books – the mutant whose individual abilities upsets the historical process applecart).

Rather than emphasizing a collective experience, the fascist fiction here under consideration repeatedly presents the perspective of a narrator or protagonist who is clearly distanced from those around him. Moreover, this narrator/protagonist tends to view other characters with an attitude of condescension, even of contempt. Brasillach, the champion of fascist camaraderie, might seem to present an exception to this contention, especially in his later novels. But when they are not dealing with a small group of kindred souls, Brasillach's narrators exhibit the same remote and contemptuous attitudes found in the more solitary protagonists of Celine and Drieu. 

I write about this more below, but an executive summary – fascist ideology and aesthetic, valuing higher, noble values, founded on palingenesis, aimed at overcoming, would, as a matter of course, view liberal democratic/leftist values with disdain, and have “an attitude of condescension, even of contempt” for The Last Man. Why should any of that come as a surprise?  Consider that “distance” your typical White nationalist of today has for all around him.

The era of the Great Depression, not surprisingly, witnessed a resurgence of the social novel, which had been out of literary fashion since the eclipse of Zola and the naturalists at the end of the nineteenth century. This resurgence was accompanied by a number of manifestos and movements, such as the "populist" and "proletarian" schools of literature and, of course, the ever-evolving doctrines of the Communists. As might have been expected, many of the works that constituted this new "literature of the people" were sympathetic to the goals and ideals of the Left. However, Celine also, quite naturally, set his two novels of the 1930s, Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) and Mort a credit (1936), in the milieu of the Parisian petite bourgeoisie and working classes in which he had spent his life. Brasillach seemed simply to enjoy observing the inhabitants of the poor districts of Paris where he had lived as a student,6 and he made them the subject of two of his novels of the same period, L'Enfant de la nuit (1934) and Le Marchand d'oiseaux (1936). Although they are set in similar lower-class districts of Paris, Celine's and Brasillach's novels depict radically different worlds. Brasillach's fictional universe seems drawn from the Rene Clair musicals he so admired and is certainly closer to fairy tale and ballet than to the sordid realism of the naturalists. Celine's novelistic vision, on the other hand, turns the same Parisian reality into a nightmare world of asphyxiation and putrefaction…

I have to admit I laughed when I read “a nightmare world of asphyxiation and putrefaction.”  But there is political meaning to that – to a real fascist, the degenerate and corrupt societies produced by liberal democracy, societies inhabited and led by “last men,” are akin to “a nightmare world of asphyxiation and putrefaction.”

…where the inhabitants carry on hostilities that parallel and even surpass those of the Great War. Despite these differences, the ideological stance which emerges from these novels is strikingly similar. At first glance, they seem relatively unburdened by ideological freight, unlike much of the social fiction of the Left. They lack the didactic tone that characterizes, in particular, Communist writers like Nizan and Aragon, and they seem free even of the commitment to improving the lot of the poor which is apparent in all the fiction of the Left. 

However, the portrayal of the lower classes in the fiction of Brasillach and Celine is almost unrelievedly negative. Many of the working-class characters in all four novels are shown to be slovenly, alcoholic, and brutal, if not openly homicidal. 

Truthful depictions?

The negative view of the lower-class milieu found in the social novel of the Right is the consequence of a distance that separates reader and characters. This distance is established through the interposition of an observing intelligence who is not identified with the lower-class setting and who mediates the reader's perception of events. 

At least in fascist fiction this is done openly and honestly, as opposed to heavy-handed leftist writing that pushes an enforced identification of all with the lowest strata of society.

Celine's narrator/protagonists are not totally insensitive to the importance of economic factors. It was for this reason that his first novel, Voyage, was warmly received by critics of the Left. While economic deprivation makes the characters' lives unpleasant, however, it does not really seem to account for the perversity of their actions, which seem rather to result from tendencies inherent in their natures. This impression is made explicit in the many misanthropic aphorisms that punctuate Celine's texts. 

The Right prioritizes inherent human nature and, unlike the Left, does not use excuses to justify subhuman behavior.  As part of the rightist worldview, nature trumps nurture.

While Brasillach uses narrative strategies different from Celine's in his two social novels, he is careful to maintain a similar distancing. In L'Enfant de la nuit the first-person narrator, named Robert B., is an unemployed interior decorator who has come to live in their poor district of Vaugirard while he is temporarily down on his luck (naturally, he leaves as soon as he gets another job). His background and education raise him above the people he describes, and he observes them with the bemused and tolerant fascination of an outsider-mirroring the position of Brasillach himself when he lived in the same district. 

As in the case of Celine, however, many of Brasillach's characters who live in equally deprived circumstances are able to lead lives of devotion to moral and aesthetic ideals. These people may be said to constitute an aristocracy of the poor in his work, and they are the characters upon whom his narrators lavish their attention. 

The Far Right values personal responsibility, noble values, and self-overcoming; hence, characters from poorer origins who exemplify these traits will be valued.

The narrative distance found in Celine and Brasillach is not at all characteristic of the Left-oriented social novels of the 1930s. In general, the narrative strategies adopted by writers of the non Communist Left correspond to the well-known definition of the "populist" novel put forth by Gabriel Marcel: "a novelist is populist insofar as, taking as heroes men of the people, he succeeds in preserving with respect to them a non-spectacular attitude. . . . They become not only 'you' but `we.’

The Left reduces all to the lowest common denominator, “last man” values – we must all identify with the mass; here, collectivism is suffocating and claustrophobic, no healthy “distance” and perspective is allowed.

The omniscient narrator of the Communists, however, could always be counted upon to adopt what has been called the proletarian point of view." While the Communist writers of the 1930s do not limit themselves to portraying only the working classes, a Communist novel which does do so, Nizan's Le Cheval de Troie, adopts as its privileged point of view the perspective of the Communist worker group. 

Communist fiction can be viewed as a very rigidly ideological form of political polemic, lacking in imagination and in contextual subtlety.

…in Celine's description of the urban settings, certain features are stressed and restressed until they take on the exaggerated nightmare qualities of the Celinian fictional universe. In the opening description of the Paris suburb of La Garenne-Rancy-already well-described by its name, which evokes a rancid atmosphere and hunted rabbits-the page overflows with vocabulary relating to slimy excrement. The same is true of the description of the Passage des Beresinas in Mort a credit, where the clients urinate on the shopkeepers and where the father spends his time shoveling shit. Everything with which Celine's narrators come into contact is deformed by a vision that seeks out and exaggerates the most repugnant features. 

From the fascist perspective, degenerate liberal democratic society, particularly one afflicted with Jewish-derived values, can be represented in such stark terms, and the features can be exaggerated to make the contrast to a more ideal society more distinct.

Brasillach, too, moves away from simple realism in rather the opposite direction. His vision tends to play down or entirely overlook ugliness, to mute colors, to bring out hidden beauty. His preferred time of day in these Parisian novels is twilight, and his attention is attracted especially by the unusual and picturesque-like the bird-peddler or the shoemaker-poet-rather than by the typical or mundane. 

This can be viewed as a form of fascist aesthetic.

Unlike Celine's fiction and some of Brasillach's, Drieu's novels are set in the world of wealth and political power which he himself frequented. The French masses are not at the center of his vision. On the few occasions when his protagonist is forced to confront them, however, he characteristically reacts with contempt and disgust…The first-person narrator of La Comedie de Charleroi is a veteran, returning to the Charleroi battlefield after the war with the mother of a dead comrade. Despite her total inability to comprehend the experience of war (a charge which had become a commonplace of war fiction), this woman, aided by her wealth, has made a career out of being the mother of a dead soldier, an enterprise for which the narrator does not attempt to conceal his disgust. By focusing on her, the novella shows power in French society being exercised by a character who is both a Jew and a woman, both perversions of the natural order according to Drieu. 

This part - "a Jew and a woman, both perversions of the natural order according to Drieu” – can we really blame Drieu for that perspective? Now, with respect to “Jew” this is understandable from a (European-derived) fascist perspective – Jewish identity and the “Jewish soul” are viewed as profoundly alien, and thus a perversion of the natural order in any European, Western society.  As regards women in general, one needs to remember fascism has a much masculinized political aesthetic and thus from the standpoint of inherent superior human values, contextualized as male, women would represent a perversion. But a White woman is not, or should not be, a perversion of the natural order the same as a Jew – the Jew is a perversion in totality form the Western fascist perspective (early Jewish supporters of Italian fascism notwithstanding), while women represent a perversion only from the narrow perspective of the male-oriented hierarchical perspective – there is a hierarchy of sex (male dominant) just as there is one of ethny and civilization and one of superior and inferior individuals.

Gilles's contempt is frequently directed against women characters who, as was the case with Mme Pragen, are often chosen as representatives of larger social groups." This is a technique also used to some extent by Celine, particularly in his distorted portrayal of Lola, the rich American volunteer in Voyage. In Gilles the protagonist's first wife Myriam is the Jewish intellectual, complete with unbecoming glasses…

Can you blame one for having contempt for a Jewess?

Drieu's work, like Caine's, ends with his protagonist isolated from others by his own choice. But this profound isolation has been inherent in the narrative voice from its first appearance. Brasillach's protagonists, too, are cut off from all but a few worthy souls by an attitude of innate superiority. The use of a distanced narrative voice that presents a denigrating view of all which comes within its purview is consequent with an important strain of French fascist thought. 

This contempt for the degeneracy of liberal democracy and its society and the disdain for “last man” values is part and parcel of the superior man’s overcoming; this isolation and contempt has some association with some of Nietzsche’s work, but while Nietzsche’s superior man works for his own overcoming only, that of the fascist man works in the direction of serving is people (even with whatever “distance” he may have from and for them).

Despite the importance of collectivism for German national-socialism, Italian fascism, and even the French right-wing philosophy articulated by Marechal Petain, the three French fascist writers remain profoundly individualistic, as Tarmo Kunnas shows with reference to their political statements. But, Kunnas continues, what is at issue here is less a matter of individualism than of an attitude toward social hierarchy. One aspect of fascism that appears strongly in the work of all three writers is its anti-egalitarianism: It is the antidemocratic spirit, the spirit of hierarchy, which, along with corporatism, dominated the whole of fascist ideology. This antiegalitarian thought attracted our writers much more than the antiindividualism, because they think less of individual liberty than of the liberty of superior individuals. They are convinced that men are not equal…

As part of the fascist ideology and the fascist attitude – the fascist political aesthetic – collectivism is actualized only in the context of hierarchy. It is an individualist form of collectivism – not an oxymoron in this sense – in which the aspirations of the collective are achieved at least in part by the exertions of superior men.  But the collective foundation remains because the superior man works in the interests of his collective – despite (or perhaps because of?) is feelings of distance and contempt for society.

Much the same is true of Sartre's Lucien Fleurier, protagonist of his novella about the evolution of a fascist, "L'Enfance d'un chef." Here, too, the narrator is cut off from the world, and, as he finds his identity with a group of young fascists-much like those idealized by Brasillach-he develops the characteristic attitude of contempt, which finds its natural expression, as with Nizan, in the savage beating of a dark-skinned foreigner. The story ends with Lucien, revelling in his bright new self-image, watching the crowd in a Paris café: All those dagos were floating in a dark heavy liquid whose ripples nudged their soft flesh, picking up their arms, moving their fingers, playing with their lips. The poor guys! Lucien almost felt sorry for them. 

Well, that three sentences are certainly consistent with a Type I fetishist Nutzi “movement” mentality.  Of course, from a British “the wogs begin at Calais” viewpoint, Lucien is just as bad as a “dago.”  Of course, note that this was written by Sartre, a hard leftist, projecting his own views of what a fascist is, rather than being an authentic expression of fascist sensibilities.

In their portraits of fascists, Nizan and Sartre implicitly recognize that a fascist mentality is not just a set of political beliefs but a question of attitude. In the work of Brasillach, Celine and Drieu, this attitude is embedded deeply in the fiction.

Some we come full circle here to the meaning of fascism as reflected by the work of these three authors.  Fascism does have an ideology and a set of political beliefs, but it is more than this – it is also an “attitude.” One can say that about any political ideology I suppose, but it is particularly true of fascism; no other political ideology is as dependent on attitude, on aesthetics, on feeling, on an innate sense of right and wrong than is fascism. In this sense, fascism is the political ideology most akin to religion, it is that ideology most dependent on faith and the least dependent on (as is Marxism) on rigid ideological formulas.

Whither Imperium?

The last chapter of Yockey’s book.

Introduction

The last chapter of Yockey’s book Imperium, which has the same title as the book, neatly summarizes his fundamental idea, his main objective – the empire of the West, Imperium.  It is useful to take a careful look at the most relevant excerpts from that chapter to gain a better understanding of Yockey’s pan-European ideal.

First, it is useful to read some of my previous writing about Yockey and his worldview.

Number one.

Number two.

Number three.

Number four.

Reading that material, and understanding the controversies surrounding Yockey’s ideas, it is clear that pro-White activists have had a number of problems with Yockeyism. The issue of biological race is often foremost among these and is a focus of some of the posts linked to above.  My contention has been, and remains, that Yockey’s views on biological race were a response to the sort of divisive and dishonest (and pseudoscientific) Nordicism practiced in his time by the lines of Gunther and Grant and today by the likes of Kemp and Durocher. Yockey lacked the training and empiricist mindset to address Nordicist theory head-on, so he side-stepped the issue by equating biological race differences to what he termed “vertical race theory” to be considered outdated and wrong, in favor of the "new idea" of  "horizontal race.”  Another point of controversy is his objectively wrong opinions and dismissive attitudes toward science; there are also his attitudes toward Eastern Europe (see below), as well as the issue of “Spenglerian pessimism.”  

The major point I make in this essay is that those issues are all peripheral in the sense that they are not the fundamental idea promoted by Yockey, not his fundamental thesis.  Some of those issues are related to his main thesis, no doubt, but they are not fundamental to it. His main idea is not dependent on those other ideas and issues and it is entirely possible for someone to disagree with Yockey on these other, peripheral issues, while still being a “Yockeyite” with respect to his main thesis. It is entirely possible that Yockey would have disagreed with me on this and considered these other issues as being fundamental to his thesis. That does not matter. I make my own arguments here, and it is up to the Yockeyites of today to interpret his work in light of existing fact and logic, and to do what they can to promote the main thrust, the main thesis, of his work.

The main thesis of course is the subject of his last chapter, and the title of that chapter and of the entire book – Imperium.  The main points of the book Imperium were distilled into a more concentrated form in The Proclamation of London. Yockey’s fundamental idea was the Empire of the West, the underlying ideology being pan-Europeanism – a militant pan-Europeanism – that for him was specifically Western European but which we can extend to Eastern Europe as well (see below).

And here is another crucially important point.  Yockey’s pan-European polemic did not really spell out the crudely practical benefits of Imperium.  While it is possible he assumed that the pragmatic benefits would be self-evident, I believe the major reason for this is that Yockey was not concerned with cataloging and weighing costs and benefits on a point-by-point pragmatic basis.  To him, Imperium was the inevitable and desirable evolution of the West, something naturally being self-evident to thoughtful leaders, and was something so inherently good, so necessary, that the cost-benefit accounting was to his mind superfluous.

Now, I do not like talk of “inevitability” with respect to political and social matters.  It is a particularly weak – and (intentionally) self-fulfilling – “argument.” Often, people say something is “inevitable” because they believe that (a) it is something desirable and they want it to happen and so they convince others with talk of its “inevitability” or (b) it is something undesirable, but they can’t or won’t put the effort in to stop it, so they excuse their inaction by talk of “inevitability,” and they want to convince others as well so that their own cowardice and laziness is not so obvious (possibly, they may believe that fighting the “something” will be more trouble than it is worth). 

Regardless of that, Yockey’s attitude holds for his perspective and, inevitability aside, he saw Imperium as a self-evident good and a natural evolution, a move forward, something actualizing in the minds of the new leadership elite of the West.

[Note: For those with a pragmatic bent, I review the practical advantages of Imperium in the footnote below, as well as address some ethnonationalist objections. However, that is not meant as a comprehensive study, since these issues have been addressed here and at EGI Notes previously and will not doubt be so again.  However, for the sake of completeness, they are included.]

Analysis of chapter excerpts

Imperium

Finally the insistence upon nationalism became so great, that some leaders were willing to betray their nations into bondage to extra-Western forces rather than join a united Western organism. 

Certainly.  Today, we can substitute “ethnonationalism” for “nationalism” and the same effect holds.  Who are the “extra-Western forces” we are being betrayed to?  Given that the ethnonationalists are part of an alliance with the HBDers and Nordicists, we can suggest that Jews and East Asians (and perhaps to a lesser extent “high IQ” South Asians) constitute the forces in question.  Indeed, Yockey wrote earlier in Imperium:

Perhaps before it is over, the outer forces will have mobilized the swarming, pullulating masses of China and India against the body of the Western Civilization.

At the time Yockey wrote Imperium, China was viewed by many, including him, as a passive nation, to be manipulated by others. Today, we observe China as a major threat in its own right, an aggressive center of Sinic civilization, opposed to the West

The Synthesis is the period of the Future. It exists everywhere in the minds of the Culture-bearing stratum of the West, and for a while it was actualized, in its first crude, provisional, form during the Second World War. 

This expands upon the point made above.  Yockey’s objective in his polemic is not to justify the Imperium idea with a nitpicking point-by-point enumeration of its benefits.  His objective was to create a stirring text to inspire White Men to achieve the synthesis of trends that Yockey saw as the natural evolution of the High Culture of Europe.  It is true that the pan-European idea had been percolating in the minds of the highest cadre of the West for some time. Napoleon – quoted by Yockey in his book – had some general ideas of European Unity.  Nietzsche preached being “a good European” and against petty nationalism.  During WWII, after Stalingrad at least, the more pan-European faction of the SS came to the forefront, and Mussolini dabbled with pan-Europeanism in the Italian Social Republic (note that those ethnonationalist leaders had to turn to pan-Europeanism after their ethnonationalism utterly failed them).  Then there was Yockey himself, as well as Mosley. Others in more recent times have promoted variants of this, such as Norman Lowell’s Imperium Europa.  Visionaries naturally gravitate to Yockey’s Imperium idea.  Small-minded culture retarders instead defend petty nationalism.

It returns to the Thesis, but retains the creations of the Antithesis, for this great Synthesis is not a mere negative. No European “nation” of the older type can any longer, under this new Idea, be the object of any forcible attempt to change or abolish its local characteristics. 

Once again, Yockey makes clear that the nation state would NOT be subject to any forcible attempt to “change or abolish its local characteristics.” The ethnonationalists may counter that such change may occur non-forcibly as a result of the Imperium itself, but Yockey in his later writings made very clear that the “local characteristics” were to be explicitly preserved.  In The Proclamation of London, Yockey wrote:

Local cultures in Europe may be as diversified as they wish, and they will enjoy a perfect autonomy in the European Imperium, now that the oppression of vertical nationalism is dead

Back to Imperium:

Considered as a spiritual reality, the Synthesis cannot be spread by physical force. 

Cries of “imperialism” and “forced empire” are mendacious. The EU for example was not created by force. Yockey considers his idea to be one that would spread among the European biocultural elite naturally, who would enact it in concert to actualize Imperium. This of course applies to Western Europe; it is true that Yockey, at least in Imperium, discussed military force (below), but that was specifically in the East.

Not only in the sphere of nations, but in the totality of the life-manifestations of the Western Civilization, the Synthesis penetrates with its new values, its higher imagination, and its new creative powers.

A bit of the “inevitability” here, but this book is a polemic and Yockey is making his point.

…there is inner necessity in the final passing of the Age of nationalism and annihilation-wars. The great Synthesis, Imperium, replaces it. The Synthesis contains within it the older components of Thesis and Antithesis. The primal Gothic instincts of the Western Culture are still present in the Imperium-Idea. It cannot be otherwise. Also present are the various Ideas which these instincts, within the framework of this Culture, shaped for itself, the religions, the nations, the philosophies, languages, arts and sciences. But they are present no longer as contrasts, but as mere differences.

Again, Yockey sees this as a natural evolution. The previous and constituent elements of the synthesis are still present, but are now part of a greater whole.

Gone— forever gone— is any notion that one of these Ideas— national, linguistic, religious, social— has the mission of wiping out another Idea. The adherents of Empire are still distinct from the adherents of Papacy— but this distinction does not rule their minds, for uppermost now is the Idea of Imperium, the return to superpersonal origins, and both of these mighty Ideas have the same spiritual source. The difference between Protestant and Catholic— once excited into a casus belli— has gone the same way. Both continue to exist, but it is inconceivable that this difference could again rend the Western Civilization in twain. There have been also the racial and temperamental differences of Teuton and Latin, of North and South. Once these may have contributed to the furnishing of motives to History— this can they no longer do. Again, both are part of the West, even though different, and the Imperium-Idea monopolizes the motivation of History.

I have analyzed this passage, and those related to it; see here.  We can of course recognize here a strong statement of pan-Europeanism, and thus we can understand why pan-Europeanism is opposed by Nordicists and HBDers, and why Yockey is mostly ignored by such elements in the wider “movement.” Those factions have as an objective dividing Europeans against each other, and for Nordicists particularly, the North/South split is all-important, existential, and so any attempt to bridge, and unite, “the racial and temperamental differences of Teuton and Latin, of North and South” is met with hostile outrage.  Further, there are, remarkably in today’s secular age, still those who make much of the “difference between Protestant and Catholic” and want that to be a casus belli once again.  Yockey does not deny the existence of intra- (Western) European differences; however, through the natural evolution of the West, and the “monopolization if the motivation of History” by the “Imperium-Idea” these differences no longer “furnish motives to History.” Thus, even though different, “both are part of the West” – with “both” generally meaning any set of distinctions (e.g., North vs. South) the dividers of Europe wish to focus on.

The former nations, the religions, the races, the classes— these are now the building-blocks of the great Imperial structure which is founding itself. Local cultural, social, linguistic, differences remain— it is no necessity of the Imperium-Idea that it annihilate its component Ideas, the collective products of a  thousand years of Western history. On the contrary, it affirms them all, in a higher sense it perpetuates them all, but they are in its service, and no longer in the center of History. 

Again and again, Yockey confirms that his Imperium will not eliminate the existence of, and characteristics of, its constituent parts; however, these “component Ideas” will be secondary to the overarching new “center of History” – Imperium.

Nor is the Idea of Imperium to be confused with any stupid rationalistic doctrine or system, any cowardly millennium. It is not a program, it is no set of demands, no scheme for justice, no juristic quibbling with the concept of national sovereignty.

See my points above. Yockey is not justifying the Imperium by a set of carefully argued details about systems, programs, costs, and benefits. His idea is a synthesis not only of all the parts of the West, but also a synthesis of rationality and irrationality, reason and faith, analysis and vision. The Idea is above all, the details of working it out, while important in the pragmatic sense, are secondary and basically inconsequential in the broadest sense.

Just as the Future has had always to fight against the entrenched forces of the Past, so must this powerful, universal Idea. Its first phase is the spiritual conquest of the minds and souls of the Culture-bearing stratum of the West. This is entirely inevitable.

More inevitability.  I disagree with that – look at the enduring power of petty nationalism. But instead of being descriptive, we can be prescriptive – that Yockey writes here is what things should be.

No force within the Civilization can then resist the Cultural Reunion which will unite North and South, Teuton and Latin, Protestant and Catholic, Prussia, England, Spain, Italy and France, in the tasks now waiting.

We’ll see. There are mighty forces in opposition.

Absolute Politics: Authority, Discipline, Faith, Responsibility, Duty, Ethical Socialism, Fertility, Order, State, Hierarchy— the creation of the Empire of the West.

A summary of Yockey’s objective.

The great dream and aim of Leibnitz, the uniting of all the States of Europe, is closer by virtue of Europe’s defeat, for in that defeat, it perceives its unity. The mission of this generation is the most difficult that has ever faced a Western generation. 

And the next generation, and the next - we are still fighting. Note that Leibnitz is considered by Yockey to be yet another Western historical figure who exhibited generalized Yockeyian ideals.

…the men of this generation must fight for the continued existence of the West. Ultimately nothing can defeat them except inner decadence.

And the traitors – including the ethnonationalists – opposed to Yockey’s idea.  In The Proclamation of London, Yockey wrote:

Anyone who seeks to perpetuate petty-statism or old-fashioned nationalism is the inner enemy of Europe. He is playing the game, of the extra-European forces, he is dividing Europe and committing treason.

Treason now has only one meaning to Europe: it means serving any other force than Europe. There is only one treason now, treason to Europe. The nations are dead, for Europe is born.

Imperium: 

The West has something to devote to the contest that neither the Barbarian nor the parasite has: the force of the mightiest superpersonal Destiny that has ever appeared on this earth-ball. This superpersonal Idea has such tremendous force that no number of scaffold-trials or massacres, no heaps of starved or pyramids of skulls, can touch it.

The Idea has force, not the detailed nitpicking arguments about it, and especially not tired, old, reactionary petty-statism.

The soil of Europe, rendered sacred by the streams of blood which have made it spiritually fertile for a millennium, will once again stream with blood until the barbarians and distorters have been driven out and the Western banner waves on its home soil from Gibraltar to North Cape, and from the rocky promontories of Galway to the Urals. 

From Ireland to Russia.  Now, given the attitude toward Eastern Europe and Russia in Imperium, Yockey is talking about conquest.  Thus:

How can the liberated West solve this great task of saving one hundred million Western lives? There is only one solution, and it is the nearest one. The agricultural territory of Russia provides the means of preserving the population of the West, and the necessary base for world-dominion of this Civilization, which alone can save the West from the threat of annihilation by the outer forces. It is thus a military solution— and there is no other. Our commercial-industrial-technical monopoly is gone. Our military technical superiority remains, as does our superior will-power, organization talent, and discipline. The glorious days of 1941 and 1942 show what the West can do against the Barbarian, however superior his numbers. Like Russia, the Western Civilization is situated in the Northeast quadrant. Against the West, therefore, Russia enjoys none of the military advantages it has against America. The common land-frontier enables the West to dispense with a gigantic assemblage of seapower as a prerequisite to the land-fight. The West will be able to deploy all of its forces on to the plains where the battle for the Future of the West will be fought.

Later, he changed his opinions somewhat. For example, in The Proclamation of London, Yockey wrote:

…the true American people and the Russian people figure only as expendable material. In these two populations, there are wide and deep strata which inwardly belong to the Western Civilization and who look to the sacred soil of Europe as to their origin, their inspiration and their spiritual home. To these also, this proclamation is addressed.

So, here, even “the true Russian people” contains elements that “inwardly belong to the Western Civilization and who look to the sacred soil of Europe as to their origin, their inspiration and their spiritual home.”

The Sallis Groupuscule, while acknowledging differences between Western and Eastern Europe, supports the integration of the two as equal partners in the Imperium project.

Imperium: 

This is promised, not by human resolves merely, but by a higher Destiny, which cares little whether it is 1950, 2000, or 2050. This Destiny does not tire, nor can it be broken, and its mantle of strength descends upon those in its service.

Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.

(What does not destroy me makes me stronger.)

The main thrust of Yockey’s objective was the palingenetic vision of a pan-European Imperium of the West, constituting the ultimate evolved form of Europe and its High Culture.  He puts this in the language of inevitability – Yockey sometimes sounds like an Old Testament prophet – but his point is clear.

Notes

It is important to note that Yockey didn’t make any internal distinctions between areas of Western European nations with respect to belonging to the West, an attitude that ran counter to some opposing ideas of his, and our, time. Thus, when referring to Spain he referred to that nation in its entirety, and since he was really talking about Western Europe as a whole, Portugal is included –“Spain” being essentially Yockeyian shorthand for “all of the Iberian peninsula.”

With respect to Italy, Yockey in Imperium refers to the entire nation, with all of its different areas and different peoples; thus:

For example, think of the racial differences between Calabrian and Lombard. What did they matter to the history of Garibaldi’s time?

And:

Between 1900 and 1915 alone, 15,000,000 immigrants came to America from Asia, Africa and Europe. They came mostly from Russia, the Levant, and the Balkan countries. From the Western Civilization came a fair number of Italians, but the rest of the human material was from outside the West.

Yockey, being an educated man of his time, and familiar with the work of Madison Grant and similar authors, was well aware that the “fair number of Italians” who came to America “between 1900 and 1915” were mostly from Southern Italy/Sicily.  All Italians were “from the Western Civilization” (as history attests).

Indeed, it was the pan-Western European approach of Yockey that led him to be critiqued in Instauration by the execrable Humphrey Ireland, the latter obviously obsessed with his bizarre fear of being swarmed by scurrying five foot tall superstitious Sicilian dwarves.

Earlier in Imperium, Yockey wrote:

It is absolutely necessary to the continuance of the subjugation of Europe that the outsiders have large numbers— whole societies, groups, strata, remnants of dead 19th century nations— of domestic European populations available for their purposes. Against a united Europe, they could never have made their way in, and only against a divided Europe can they maintain themselves. Split! divide! distinguish!— this is the technique of conquest. Resurrect old ideas, old slogans, now quite dead, in the battle to turn European against European. But work always with the weak, Culture-less stratum against the strong bearers and appreciators of Culture. These must be “tried” and hanged. 

This availability of the under-strata of the Culture to outside forces is one type, and the most dangerous, of that form of Culture-pathology called Culture-distortion. It is closely related however to another type called Culture-retardation.

Question: Was Yockey “crazy” and “bitter” – or “insane” and “indecent” – when he wrote about the petty nationalists:

These must be “tried” and hanged. 

Regardless, I’m sure he’d be outraged that his work is being peddled by the types of people who he wrote that about.

From The Enemy of Europe:

Europe is equal to its historical task. Against the anti-spiritual, anti-heroic 'ideals' of America-Jewry, Europe pits its metaphysical ideas, its faith in its Destiny, its ethical principles, its heroism. Fearlessly, Europe falls in for battle, knowing it is armed with the mightiest weapon ever forged by History: the superpersonal Destiny of the European organism. Our European Mission is to create the Culture-State-Nation-Imperium of the West, and thereby we shall perform such deeds, accomplish such works, and so transform our world that our distant posterity, when they behold the remains of our buildings and ramparts, will tell their grandchildren that on the soil of Europe once dwelt a tribe of gods.

We can contrast that inspiring vision to the insipid “defense of petty nationalism” and the call for an ethnonationalism” of waring European nations “ethnically cleansing” each other, no doubt to the delight of the outer forces. Ethnonationalism, a backwards remnant from the dead past, has nothing to offer to the European Future.

On Yockey’s ELF Groupuscule:

In 1947, just two years after the fall of Nazi Germany, an American expatriate living in Ireland named Francis Parker Yockey wrote Imperium, a massive tome that advanced a new strategy for post-war European fascism. Yockey insisted that fascists abandon their narrow nationalist viewpoint and, instead, fight for a new European-wide fascist empire, which he dubbed the 'Imperium'. In 1948 Yockey and his closest collaborators left Oswald Mosley's Union Movement and founded the European Liberation Front (ELF), a British-based groupuscule that lasted until 1954. Rejecting the possibility of building a mass fascist movement in post-war Europe, the ELF defined its primary task as ideological: namely, the advancement of the 'Imperium' idea inside the ranks of Europe's 'fascist elite'. The ELF soon ran into stiff opposition from Mosley over Yockey's controversial identification of the United States, and not the Soviet Union, as Europe's 'main enemy'. The ELF also met with fierce resistance from Hitler worshippers inside the British right like Arnold Leese, who rejected the ELF's emphasis on 'culture' over 'race'. Despite the ELF's relatively brief existence as a groupuscule, its introduction of a new kind of 'Eurofascist' thinking has recently led to its rediscovery by contemporary European New Rightists now searching for a new political strategy following both the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the world's sole 'superpower'.

On the practical matters of Imperium:

Of course, am Imperium has many practical advantages, some of which went into the thinking behind the EU (forgetting for a moment on that project was distorted by globalist, anti-European impulses). We have the economy of scale; we have the pooling of European resources and ingenuity. We have a common foreign policy and defense, putting the Imperium as a major force, a superpower, with the ability to represent the interests of the Western High Culture against all other civilizational blocs in the conflicts of interest that will likely occur. It eliminate the curse of petty nationalism – constant intra-European conflict, including murderous warfare. It allows for the pooled resources to be used for grand projects – space exploration bioengineering, new energy sources, and pan-European cultural artifacts, pushing the limit of science, technics, and culture to heights undreamed of.  An Imperium can provide the seed of a New High Culture that our race needs to survive and prosper.  There are of course many other practical advantages for European power and prosperity that one can think of; however, the point has been made.

Let’s take a pragmatic look at a claim made by ethnonationalists – that one needn’t worry about individual “sovereign” European nations making alliances with non-White powers since other European nations can form alliances against them and invade the rogue state, overthrow its government, and even “ethnically cleanse” it. Putting aside the repulsive aspects of the ethnonationalist agenda – Europeans waging war and “ethnically cleaning” each other – we can ask whether that’s even practical.  Even if we assume hard-nosed nationalist governments and populations willing to go to such extremes, what about the reality?  For example, the UK and France are nuclear powers (Russia is as well, of course, but let us for the moment consider nations that are [France] or were [UK] in the EU).  We will assume they will continue to be nuclear powers in an ethnonationalist Europe – why should nationalist governments give up such weapons?  Very well. One day Europe wakes up to find the Chinese navy in British ports, a military alliance being created between those nations.  So…what?  Are other European nations going to attempt to invade and “cleanse” the nuclear-armed UK, who now have nuclear-armed China as an ally?  What if France feels threatened and decides to conduct their own military alliance with nuclear-armed India, a rival of China that has a score to settle with the British.  What’s next?  Maybe Germany decides to develop their own nuclear arsenal and allies itself with Russia.  Poland would not doubt be threatened by that.  Maybe the Poles go nuclear too and join up with the Sino-British or Franco-Hindi alliances.  Italy, Spain, et al. would have some decision making to do. Ethnonationalism! With respect to foreign policy and defense, you need an integrated Europe, a Fortress Europa. Letting every nation go their own way, scrambling with alliances and hostility leading to armed conflict, is exactly how the ethnonationalists led us into two world wars and wrecked the White world.  Why should we let them do it again?  We veto your dream, ethnonationalists.

Let us consider Estonia, a small European Baltic nation whose ethnonationalist leaders are popular amongst their ideological comrades in America and elsewhere.  Long a prize fought over between The Germanic and Slavic worlds, Estonia is now an independent, “sovereign” nation.  Did the Estonians break free of Soviet control of their own accord?  With all respect due to the history of Estonian dissidents and resistance, the answer must be no.  Estonian independence was the result of the collapse of the USSR, prompted by the Cold War pressure put upon it and its defective system by the USA and the rest of the “West,” Left to its own devices, Estonia would not be independent.  Indeed, Estonian “independence” and “sovereignty” today is due solely to the protective screen of larger nations. In essence, Estonia is a vassal state of the USA and the EU (and NATO), which provide “protection” from Russia.  I put “protection” in scare quotes because - would the USA go to war with Russia to protect Estonia?  The EU is a different story in one sense, it is supposed to be a “union” and an attack on Estonia is an attack on EU territory. However, the covid-19 crisis has revealed that – contra ethnonationalist hysteria – the EU is not much more of a “Union” than it is in any real sense “European.” Whether Germans or Frenchmen would be willing to fight and die for Estonia is questionable, and perhaps one day Russia may call that bluff? Who knows?  But whatever independence and security Estonia does have today is from its EU membership, as well as of course NATO, but that brings up the same question – will Americans, Germans, and Frenchmen die for Estonia because of NATO if Estonia is considered to be a sovereign independent nation? The ethnonationalists talk about alliances, but what does Estonia have to offer to larger nations as part of an alliance?Estonia’s current population is a little over 1.3 million, approximately half that of Brooklyn, a single borough in the single city of New York.  There are many, many, many individual cities, and even neighborhoods of major cities, around the Earth that have larger populations than the entire nation of Estonia. The only thing of practical use is Estonian territory as a “forward base” against Russia, but then doesn’t that make Estonia in essence a vassal state of whatever larger nation places its military protection over Estonia in exchange for military bases?  It is not clear how Estonia can be a fully sovereign nation from the ethnonationalist perspective and still maintain its viability in world affairs (e.g., I doubt the Chinese are paying attention to the interests of a nation whose population is less than one-thousandth of that of China).

On the other hand, if Estonia is part of an Imperium, and its territory is that of the Imperium, then by definition an attack against that territory is an attack against the entire Imperium itself. By analogy, an attack against, say, Rhode Island, is an attack against the entire USA. Now, as part of the Imperium, Estonia must have local sovereignty (as even Yockey agreed must exist) and all measures to safeguard its ethnic and cultural uniqueness would exist.  Estonia would have representation among the councils of this Imperium as would all other constituents of this confederated “empire.” But as regards is interactions with the Outer World, it is part of the Imperium.  In a sense, the Sallisian Imperium would be both more and less integrated than the EU.  With respect to relations with the Outer World and with respect to responsibilities and obligations of constituent states and peoples to each other – more integrated. With respect to issues of local sovereignty and the maintenance of borders between states, preserving the ethnic and cultural uniqueness of member states – less integrated.  That is part of the “deal” – giving up external sovereignty to ensure local sovereignty and preservation.

Meanwhile, ethnonationalism is a proven failure, not only historically with two world wars and a wrecked White World to its debit, but even today, ethnonationalism brings failure after failure.  Exhibit A is Brexit, where anger at “Polish plumbers” has led to an increase in non-White immigration into Britain and genocidal plans such as this.

In addition, ethnonationalists like to make comments such as “hey, when you can get Czechs and Slovaks to agree to live together in the same nation, get back to me about Imperium” – the implication is how can you get these people to abide being in the same Imperium if they can’t live in the same nation together.  This is a particularly stupid argument, since both Czechia and Slovakia are members of the EU.  They may not want to be stuck together alone in a single nation state (historically, Slovaks resented Czech domination), but they were, and currently are, perfectly willing to both be part of an overarching European super-state, where specific Czech-Slovak conflict is not a significant issue. So, I answer back – if the Czechs and/or Slovaks demand to leave the EU specifically because they cannot abide being in the same union with the other, then get back to me with your silly and illogical ethnonationalist “arguments.”