1. An introduction
This is the program of Nationalist Alternative, an Australian nationalist organisation which is primarily an activist movement, but constituted like a political party.
Nationalist Alternative aims at finding, and developing, an alternative to the excesses, social unrest, greed, despair and arrogance of liberal democracy and universalism.
The primary aim of Nationalist Alternative is to reaffirm Australian cultural and national identity and restore the sovereignty and independence of the Australian nation. It is the belief of Nationalist Alternative that the modern liberal democratic state uses abstract concepts it deems absolute for all people, and then presumes at imposing its rules, from the top down, upon populations that have little in common culturally or ethnically. It classifies all human beings according to function and income, thereby stripping all particularities of differing people to one common denominator.
Such a state - where people are mere economic cogs - is declared by liberal democracy to be a “country”. It is a mere social construction, where the profit motive and economy is king, a marketplace only. It consists of constantly conflicting interests, ethnic tensions due to irreconcilable cultural values, alienation, unhappiness and no real consensus amongst its disparate constituents.
A nation, in contrast, is a living community, in which its values and heritage are inseparable from the philosophy of its rulers, and where the tools of politics and economics serve the cultural objectives of its people, not the oligarchs of world finance. As human beings we inherently want more than function and income. We want a place in a community, a culture that affirms the values we feel to be true and an organic base from which to build for a better future.
A nation is not a constructed concept but a ‘positive’, i.e., a factual description of the natural order of things since humankind’s earliest beginnings, which progresses from the family, familial clans, tribes and ties of kinship bonding the larger ethnic group as a homogenous people.
A nation can only be legitimately defined from people with a pre-existing bond who recognise that a higher order nation exists among them.? Contrast this with standard practice in liberal democracies, where the nation is defined from above by institutions and the population is coerced into accepting their national definition.? This disempowers people and does not allow people to identity or attribute their own national identity based on kinship and close cultural ties.
The Australian nation is the natural grouping of the Australian people, a living cultural entity, bonded by their common Anglo-Celtic-European cultural, ethnic, linguistic, spiritual, behavioural and biological heritage. This concept of the nation stands in contrast to that of the liberal democratic one, in which atomised citizens compete against billions of other unremarkable, non-distinctive other atomised citizens. This conception of the nation uplifts the people, providing hope, and helping them see beyond purely selfish pursuits, as they are now part of a culture, working for the health of that entity as well as fulfilling their personal lives.
Nationalist Alternative seeks to:
* Preserve true human diversity, plurality and difference, in the face of that which seeks to destroy it namely universalism, liberalism, imperialism and radical egalitarianism, enforced through human rights totalitarianism that is rampant in the ‘undemocratic’ liberal democratic state;
*Resurrect a national-communal based society with an economy harnessed as a tool to further the needs of the Australian people but is not an end in itself;
*Replacement of ‘universal’ values with cultural values specific to the individual nation concerned;
* Practice delayed gratification for future generations:
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in”;
to this end, we reject only living in the present, the worship of hedonism and personal pleasure as ends in themselves, and posit that sustainability of bio-diversity whether animal, plant or human requires protection and preservation of environmental, ethnic and cultural diversity now.
* Nurture a social consciousness which includes consideration of future generations and a long term outlook which extends beyond individual election periods and individual life spans.
*Further, we actively resist policies brought about by the practice of universalism, radical egalitarianism and human rights totalitarianism. For example, the policies of unlimited Chinese and Indian immigration into Australia; the undeniably massive flow of unwanted non-white migration into nearly all Western nations; the suppression of free speech by Orwellian political correctness and associated vicious ‘anti-vilification’ censorship laws; the globalisation of the world’s cultures into one Mc Culture, collapsing of hundreds of spiritualities into one or two religions only; the imperial march of humanism and enforcement of the ‘liberal democratic’ political system on peoples that reject it; the enforcement of the? ‘free market/laissez-faire? fundamentalist’ economic system everywhere. All of these agendas are pushed by the universalistic doctrines of capitalism and communism with their ‘open borders’, one world, one size fits all globalisation ideologies.
2. Why White Australia failed
It should be stated from the outset that any Australian nationalism must be for Australians: if we are nationalists, we must be nationalists for the country we live in, die in, enjoy prosperity and opportunities in, receive benefits in, enjoy the environment in and take advantage of by the mere fact of living in. This may be obvious - the concept that nationalism is local - but it needs to emphasised, simply because Australia has so many non-Australian (white) Europeans who are politically active on behalf of their own countries. In this country we have the strange phenomenon of what we call ‘expat nationalism’: that is large numbers of immigrants, who are biologically white, and come from Europe (mainly Eastern and Central Europe) who, even though they have lived in Australia for two, or even three, generations, have more nationalistic feeling towards their home countries than their adopted motherland If it is announced on the news that Ruritania has annexed a portion of Lower Slobenia, thousands of Ruritanians - of all ages, and both genders - can be guaranteed to organise a massive rally through the city streets, marching, banging drums, waving flags (of their home country) and generally agitating on behalf of the cause of their home country Ruritania, displaying more zeal, zest, initiative for the problems of that country than any Australian political problem.
Unfortunately, the influx of the (biologically white) European immigrants into Australia in the 1950s and 1960s helped pave the way for the arrival of the later, non-white immigrants from Vietnam, China, India, Lebanon, etc. How? Simply, Australians got used to living, side by side, with immigrant communities that would not - and perhaps could not - assimilate, having their own ethnic press, radio. These were Diaspora communities which could not fit into the Anglo-Celtic mainstream. (We have heard, on more than one occasion, Greeks calling the Anglo-Celtic Australians ‘white’, as if they - the Greeks - were not white). The arrival of these (irreducible) immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s, opened the way for the arrival other, self-isolating, self-segregating immigrant groups in the 1970s and after - immigrants who, this time, were non-white. Those sections of the Eastern and Southern European migrant communities, who were vociferous champions of ‘multiculturalism’, i.e., anti-assimilationism and Diaspora-ism, removed the ideological defences against mass, non-white immigration.
At present, a great many of our fellow Europeans from Southeast and Eastern Europe realise the folly of those earlier policies they had adopted so eagerly. As decades rolled on a slow realisation dawned that they, the immigrants from Europe, were used as the shock troops for the advancing non-white immigrants who followed on their heels. It slowly became apparent that the multicultural engineers cast them out in preference to the “new cause celebre” - the Vietnamese boat person, the Chinese, the Muslim, the Sudanese refugee. Now that these ‘real’ minorities were arriving, the Italian, Greeks and Yugoslavs were to be no longer embraced - after all, they are “just” white people from the continent Europe, like the Anglo-Celts.
Perhaps the realisation of these facts is why there was a noticeable amount of Italian, Greek, Polish and other non Anglo-Europeans amongst One Nation’s membership despite the media painting it as purely Anglo-Saxon. It is why the Europeans in Australia are reacting to the changes wrought by immigration and multiracialism in the Australian society which they have adopted as their own. That society has changed dramatically from the Western, Christian nation that they emigrated to.
Now, Nationalist Alternative welcomes members from Eastern and Southern Europe: in our experience, South-Eastern European nationalists in Australia - Serbian, Croatian, Hungarian, etc. - often display a greater energy and vigour than many Anglo-Celtic ones (and it goes without saying that immigrants from Italy, Greece, Poland, Estonia, etc., are infinitely preferable to immigrants from Bangladesh and Vietnam). And all Australian nationalists can learn from the experiences of the excellent nationalist groups in Europe (such as the Magyar Garda in Hungary, Forza Nuova in Italy, Golden Dawn in Greece, etc.). At the same time, any form of Australian nationalism has to champion the cause of the dominant ethnic minority which developed it over at least 157 years from (1788 until 1945), who happen to be Anglo-Celtic, Anglo-Saxon. Just as Argentina - a country which is, more or less, a European colony in the middle of South America - owes its culture and institutions to South-Western Europe (in particular, Italy and Spain), Australia owes its to North-Western Europe, in particular, the British Isles. Australia is, culturally and ethnically, a Commonwealth country - like South Africa, New Zealand and Canada. So while Australia is a white country - along with Bulgaria, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, Greece - it is more accurate to say that it is defined largely by its Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Celtic character and further shaped by struggle and history since 1788 into a uniquely Australian identity. To some extent at the turn of the last century many Anglo-Saxon Australians were still beholden to, and happy to take orders from, an overseas entity, namely, ‘Imperial Britain’ over an independent nationalist Australia. But nationalism must be local.
It was the failure to recognise this fact, in combination with the ‘White Australia’ policy. The creators had admirable intentions towards protecting its European populace but which unwittingly became instrumental in helping the spread of the multiculturalist and then multi-racial virus and dismantling barriers against non-white immigration. How? It boils down to the psychology of identity, and the perhaps even unconscious but deep seated biological prioritised imperative of family that in tribes that forms ethnicity, and then race. (A biological linked concept of identity most liberals deny outright, believing only in environment as a factor in development of identity). Ben Chifley, Arthur Calwell and the other great Australian politicians were the architects of the post-war immigration policy, which led to many thousands of Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Poles, Hungarians, etc., into the country simply on the basis that they were white. These post-war White Australia proponents believed, instinctively, that all white men, all members of the white race, were brothers, which indeed on a racial level we are. And we know now, after many decades of expatriate nationalism, and agitation by certain prominent elements of for instance Greek- and Italian-Australian communities for more and more ‘multiculturalism’ in Australian life, how that turned out. The results have been so bad in Australia that a pure and strict doctrinal application of white nationalism has been shown not to work, simply because it is not true that at a deep seated biological level, the umbrella of race by and large trumps tribe or ethnicity: a fanatical expat nationalist will always feel a greater allegiance to his home country than the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Celtic Commonwealth of Australia. (It was only in the 1950s that large numbers of non Anglo whites started to arrive - i.e., ?after 160 odd years of nation building and nation-defining events). The expat nationalist, in order to ensure the survival of his Diaspora group, will reject any assimilation, and champion immigration on principle. ?(The dreadful irony is that often the European expat’s home country - e.g., Greece, or Italy - is drowning under a flood of non-white, non-European sub ethnicities like Turkish, Arab and African immigration).
It may well be that the timing of the immigration was decisive. That is to say, multiculturalism really attained prominence after the Second World War, in Australia at least. Before then, expatriate nationalism was not encouraged. In America, a great flood of immigration, from South-Eastern Europe and Russia, took place around the turn of the century. The American racialist author, Lothrop Stoddard, and others denounced it, and as a result, anti-immigrant laws were passed in 1924 (which were only dismantled in 1965). What is noteworthy about the American example is that immigrants were very much forced to assimilate - i.e., schooling in the English language was compulsory. America did a much better job of remoulding those white European immigrants, making them adopt a more Anglo-Saxon identity, than Australia did in the 1950s and 1960s: the result is that the fourth- or fifth-generation Italian or Polish American is more American, and more Anglo-Saxon, than Italian or Polish. In Australia, the European immigrants were more or less left alone, not forced to conform or assimilate, and even encouraged, especially in the Whitlam and Fraser years, to form diasporas and see themselves as being apart from the Anglo-Saxon host population. Which is why expat nationalism has been handed down, from generation to generation).
What are we basically enunciating here in regards to assimilation? In contrast to liberalism’s homogenized world of fractured cultures and peoples, Nationalist Alternative advocate a diverse, harmonious heterogeneous world of homogenous peoples, each rooted in the nation’s culture and soil. So in any given nation whether an ‘old world’ nation or newly formed one, longevity, harmony and strength arise from its collective inhabitants, pulling in the same direction not apart, being dedicated to their particular nation foremost. This includes the truism that independence and sovereignty only exist when decision making is made entirely by the nation not by overseas and external forces. This does not in the least mean pure isolationism or lack of co-operation and dialogue with nations and cultures different from ours. Hence, whilst we do not want an assimilated world or global melting pot of human sameness, homogenous nations implies homogeneity and assimilation within those nations, not just across race and ethnicity but of course culture.
Assuming existing homogeneity in the first place, if you have chosen to travel to a new land where you intend to live in, raise children in, be protected in, then you also have duties to that national community which you desire so much from. Anything else places one in the realm of purely a selfish individualist, concerned about himself or at best his immediate family only. Such an individual is merely an economic migrant happy to cherry pick whatever community he visits, and move on after a few years. Such behaviour is similar to a corporation that discards a region when it is no longer the cheapest cost base from which to manufacture from. Without dedication to your own nation and its associated culture and territory, the seeds of disharmony, the conflicted loyalties, start to threaten the long term survival of a truly independent, sovereign nation of people.
Nationalist Alternative is against the bastardising of culture and identity and prefers to foster a national identity in which assimilable elements can participate in, and in which there is an expectation, and reason to become part of.
As well as that, we have the strange cultural phenomenon, perhaps unique to Australia, of the ethnic ‘car hoon’. The ‘car hoon’ is a lout who spends all day hot-rodding his car, driving it around like a maniac and doing burn-outs, playing ‘doof-doof’ (loud thumping techno and hip-hop) music with super-bass speakers. He wears a uniform of track-suits, baseball caps, gold chains, his main hobby is body-building, and his nationalism consists of rioting whenever international tennis competitions (with players from his home country) are in town, or at the time of the FA World Cup (he of course barracks for the team of his own country). In this subculture again, which is maybe unique to Australia, we see white (for some reason predominantly South-Eastern Europeans) joining with non-white descendants of other immigrant families, the two groups, white and non-white, essentially dressing, talking and behaving like each other. Biologically white Greeks, Italians, Serbs, Croats, etc., and non-white Lebanese, Turks, end up becoming transformed into the one amorphous sub-cultural type - they even speak English with the same accent. This is a disproof of at least ‘absolute’ white nationalism - the notion that whites, instinctively, will feel solidarity with one another against the non-white and a cultural affinity which transcends nationality and ethnicity.
This is a strange phenomenon which could possibly not occur anywhere else except in a multiculturalist context. In the European mainland, one does not come across the subculture mentioned here. Certainly, there is boorishness in Europe - soccer hooliganism, the ‘chav’ phenomenon in Britain, and so forth - but not the multiethnic, expat nationalist ‘car hoon’, replete with gold chains and the rest. Italy, for instance, has its share of boors (as does Britain and Germany): but it is also one of the fashion and style capitals of the world, and, historically, one of the centres of Western European culture. It could be argued that what is really distinctive in Western painting and music is mostly Italian. As well as that, Italy is one of the richest countries in the world, and both Italy and Greece are two of the richest countries in Europe. A massive class divide (as well as cultural divide), or, more accurately, a gulf, exists between the Italians and Greeks of mainland Europe and the Italian and Greek immigrants here. If the Diaspora populations of Southern and South-Eastern Europe were magically transported back to the homelands of their grandparents, they would feel out of place. At the same time, however, these immigrants do not feel a sense of belonging to the Anglo-Saxon culture, hence the hostility and resentment to the ’skips’ (that is, Anglo-Australians), the ‘whites’, exhibited by these groups. The immigrant diasporas, then, feel caught between two worlds.
The source of this sense of diffusion lies within the multiculturalist ideology itself. Multiculturalism is, if anything, a series of metaphors: a country must be like a ‘rainbow’ of many colours (and none predominating); a ’smorgasbord’ with a wide range of ethnic delicacies. It is regarded, by today’s politicians, journalists, academics, that Australia consists of so many different ethnic groups, and that the Anglo-Saxon founders are henceforth relativised, one group among many, no longer the top dog, only one more face in the multi-coloured crowd. Token differences must be preserved - ethnic groups are encouraged to stage their own cultural festivals, folk dances and the like. But, because no one group can be allowed to achieve eminence, no one colour in the rainbow can be allowed to stand out, all groups must be placed at the same level, in terms of value. That is, all groups must be equal. And that has the side-effect of belittling, even destroying, those cultures. Italians, for instance, cannot be encouraged to think of themselves as belonging to a country which has made supreme achievements in the field of painting and music, for example (e.g., the operas of Verdi are at the same level of value as Hmong folk music). So multiculturalism, in its drive for relativism and equality, ends up giving a token version of the different nationalities and ethnicities around the world.
At the same time it suppresses the expression of a genuine deep primary culture of the original dominant people. If it is obvious? that assimilation on a global scale results in the death of diversity due to one huge melting pot of forced conformity, then multiculturalism is not the solution but the problem. By creating an all-encompassing superficial ‘rainbow’ culture and by demanding that it should be imposed say everywhere, true diversity disappears, as there is eventually not one place in the world where one culture is allowed to be the primary one - it must always be the skin deep smorgasbord. It is little surprise that many people upon returning from visiting ‘world’ cities likes Sydney, New York, London, Paris, Toronto, Vancouver often remark that ‘its just another big city’.? These cosmopolitan cities all have their little Chinatowns, Little Italys, Irish pubs, Little Indias and ‘great shopping’ zones. Experiencing one is increasingly not too different from another and each time you receive a ‘taste of all cultures’. Surely a trip to a mostly homogenous part of highland Scotland, hinterland Germany, jungle Cambodia or mountainous Peru is special because it is original and one experiences the virgin culture of the people that reside there. Should we inform Tibet or Iceland that they are culturally deficient and that, in order to correct this (lest they be racist), they should zone a little Chinatown, Little Italy, Irish theme pubs and shopping malls?
It is also interesting to note the stark observation that so-called ‘anti-racist’ activists never seem to demand non-white countries legislate multiculturalism and multiracialism - just those with currently majority white populations.
To conclude: whilst inter-white solidarity is something we strive for, especially given the low percentage of Europeans left in the world, it is essential to recognise the fact of the strong biological urge for ethnic or tribal identity and thousands of years of separate heritage amongst Europeans. We can then work as ethnic nationalists who must bond together in a pan European (co operative) stance to protect our common bond of race whilst still able to preserve our particularity and differences.
Nationalist Alternative, in addition to being Pan-European in its position, internationally calls for an end to ‘petty nationalism’ whereby various European nations or ethnic groups are pitted against each other - such as Irish versus English, or Macedonian versus Greek, or Croatian versus Serb. There are European examples of political co-operation that we agree somewhat with, in its attempt to both protect the separate European identities, and not degenerate into petty nationalism.
At the same time, it is arguable that those globalist forces, who would like to see a ‘one’ world grey- or brown-coloured race and one world culture, realise they need to proceed down that ‘melting pot’ path in slow steps and therefore would prefer it if Caucasians throw out the rich diversity of difference that exits amongst our sub tribes in Europe, the multitude of cultural and ethnic particularities - i.e., the Celt, Slav, Teuton, Anglo, Latinii or Italian, English, German, Russian, Greek, etc. Arguably even some current national definitions in Europe today are too broad; like the category “French”, for example, which includes Franks, Bretons, Corsicans, Normans. All of these groups were compounded, in the French Revolution in 1789, as French by mere citizenship alone, which is in accordance with the civic-state definition of nationalism, which regards any person as being a member so long as they possess citizenship. By forcing the diverse Caucasian tribes to only identify as white and ignore our close but separate histories and cultures, they then have the European peoples conveniently boiled down to just one category, having extinguished all other differences.
For those opposing global one-ness or same-ness that classification leaves humanity only three categories away from the one brown universal man, when those factors also combine all Asian and African differences into the simplistic ‘yellow’ and ‘black’. There are approximately 192 different countries in the world, and many more ethnicities. Acknowledging that fact preserves the diversity of genes, culture, spirituality, and is vastly preferable to three categories only.
3. Old World and New World considerations: the New World tribes.
What of assimilation: can it occur? The answer is, in Australia, it already has. The colonies of the West, such as America, Australia, Argentina, were formed by an assimilation, a fusion, of Western immigrant identities. The first settlers in America were British, French, German, Scandinavian, Swiss; their respective national identities, over time, dissolved, and re-formed into a new, distinctly American one. Likewise, the Argentineans (a country made up Spanish, Italian, Irish, German immigrants) and Australia itself (Irish, Scots, English, Welsh). Indeed, the new type of American, Argentinean and Australian is also genetic, biological: there are peculiarly American facial features, for instance, which make Americans distinguishable from, for instance, British or Australians. The result is that the phenomenon of an expat ‘Norwegian nationalism’ in the US, or a ‘Welsh nationalism’ in Australia, is absurd, at least before the advent of multiculturalism, for the reason that Scandinavian-ness, or Welsh-ness, has long ago disappeared. Australia’s cultural roots, and genes, are in the Commonwealth Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Celtic nations. For that reason, an immigrant from Britain or New Zealand, or a white refugee from South Africa or the former Rhodesia, will find it easier to ‘fit into’ Australian life than an Italian or Bulgarian. Each country has its biases - Argentina towards Southern Europe, South Africa, Australia and Rhodesia towards North-Western Europe. This fact needs to be acknowledged.
(Which is not to say that a future Polish or Hungarian immigrant to Australia could never become ‘Anglo-Saxonised’ and then further uniquely ‘Australianised’: the American example, from around the turn of the twentieth century, shows that this process can occur. But the process is impeded by the ideology of multiculturalism, which, as explained above, actively encourages the European immigrant not to assimilate to the culture of the host population, and belittles the host culture itself).
Given that, it would be understandable if the ideology of Nationalist Alternative were to be only located in the rich veins of Australian nationalist tradition of Henry Lawson, Alfred Deakin, William Lane, Jack Lang, and the rest. But Nationalist Alternative wants to up to date, even cutting edge, with today’s (Western) political thought: for that reason, much of the Nationalist Alternative ideology is based on the ideas of certain contemporary European thinkers though not solely, as shall be explained below. So called ‘Bush’ nationalism has its roots in the Australian nationalism of around the turn of the 20th century. The advantage of the ideas of the Nouvelle Droit and thinkers related to the Nouvelle Droit (such as Guillaume Faye), is that - unlike Henry Lawson - they are more contemporary, and tackle contemporary problems. No one is doubting that the analysis of Australia’s problems (e.g., the threat posed by Asian immigration to the Australian way of life) by the likes of Lawson, was, in its essence, correct. ?
In fact much of the writings and social analysis of Australia’s early nationalist thinkers is timeless - such as of capital using immigration and indentured labour against the Australian working and middle classes.
In fact as far as symptoms like say immigration are concerned, the position advocated by early Australian nationalists of demographic extinction of the Australian ethnicity due to one particular immigrant group over all others - Asian migration - continues statistically to be accurate. However, it is argued by some that we should only shout and scream about Islamic migration, because Asian migrants supposedly ‘integrate better’, keep their heads down, work hard and are ‘nicer’ in their social interactions with others. However, in terms of the long-term survival of the nation, the immigrant groups who are not overtly different and anti-social (i.e., become involved in crime and other socially destructive activities), constitute the greater danger. Observations of ‘niceness and hardworking’ whether true or not are mostly irrelevant, because as nationalists, we oppose not the mere fact of the existence of other non European people groups, but the causes like capitalism, which in its universalism and greed seek to destroy, in pursuit of profit, the preservation and dignity of the bio-diversity of humankind. Universalism will ultimately result in no distinct people groups and cultures - ?whether Asian, African or European. That is, a future scenario where a people, the Australian people, is outnumbered, holds no societal positions of decision making or authority and is reduced to a bossed-about minority. This does not uphold the principles of autonomy and global plurality whatsoever.
As far as symptoms go, injustice is injustice, whether that iniquity comes in the form of an aggressive ‘in your face’, difficult-to-assimilate migrant group, or a more socially amenable group that appears to integrate. Both result in the same end.
Nationalist Alternative uses modern nationalist and racialist European theory to look at the same problems from a different angle then that of just the early Australian nationalists, though as mentioned, we acknowledge their ongoing relevance.
4. Nationalist Alternative’s basis in the European New Right
The presuppositions behind the ideology of Nationalist Alternative are based on the thinking of the European New Right - a group of (mainly Continental) European intellectuals whose ideas are very much compatible with the contemporary nationalist struggle in the West.
A few paragraphs from Tomislav Sunic’s ‘Against Democracy and Equality: the European New Right’ (2004, 2nd edition, Noontide Press), will summarise some of the key New Right concepts:
The [European] New Right argues that, with minor exceptions, both modern liberalism and Marxism wish to impose on all nations the idea of equality, human rights, democracy, and economic progress. To counter this globalistic and universalistic trend, spearheaded by the Soviet Union [the first edition of this book was published in 1990] and America, the New right urges all nations, and particularly European nations, to disengage themselves, culturally and politically, from both superpowers, from both liberalism and Marxism, and join in the common fight for the “cause of the peoples”. In other words, instead of vague belief in universal human rights, the New right stresses the primacy of national rights; instead of abstract and elusive dreams of egalitarian democracy, and the myth of eternal economic progress, the New Right espouses the return to the “roots”, and the foundation of organic societies. [Sunic, p. 112].
Going further in this vein, Sunic writes:
For the New Right and its “ideologue” Louis Rougier, the organic community is the only valid reference for someone’s rights, whereby a person’s rights can be enhanced, measured or curtailed only by the degree of a community’s generosity or the lack thereof. To the advocates of universal human rights, the authors of the New Right oppose a view that each person is first defined by his birth, heritage, a country of origin, and the value system inherited from his community. De Benoist wittily remarks: “I see a horse, but I do not see horsehood”… Similar view were once jokingly expressed by the conservative Joseph de Maistre in his sharp critique of liberal democracy in France. he wrote that during his travels had seen “Poles, Russians, Italians, but as to man, I declare have never seen him”. [Sunic, Op. Cit., p. 142]
So a person - at least, politically - is defined by the community he lives in:
De Benoist argues that man can only define his liberty and his individual rights as long as he is not divorced from his culture, environment, and temporal heritage. “[Man] does not live on Sirius, he does not live on a lone island, or in the kingdom of the blessed, but here and today, and in a very specific society”. [Sunic, Op. Cit., p145]
So why does the New Right oppose immigration and multiculturalism? The answer, paradoxically, is that it causes racism:
Krebs [Pierre Krebs, a prominent New Right author] writes that contemporary racism and violent nationalism usually occur in multi-cultural and multi-racial societies, notably when a dominant and larger ethnic group feels that an alien minority or smaller ethnic group threatens its national and historical identity. Accordingly, a large nation coexisting with a smaller ethnic group within the same body politic, will gradually come to fear that its own historical and national identity will be obliterated by a foreign and alien body unable or unwilling to share the same national, racial and historical consciousness. When negative forms or racism and racial exclusion occur, they can basically be traced to the individuals and peoples who feel more and more alienated from their former communal bonds. Krebs implicitly argues that in multi-racial and multi-cultural environments, abstract human rights will make very little sense. Indeed, such environments may become eventually harmful to all ethnic and racial groups coexisting with each other… Consequently, according to Pierre Krebs, and Hans Eysenck, the aberrant and inevitable aggressive behavior that usually accompanies racism is in part a response of a stronger group to the prospects of impending uprootedness. [Sunic, Op. Cit., p. 136]
5. The Human Rights Cult
The New Right strives, intellectually, against two kinds of totalitarianism: human rights, or humanitarian, totalitarianism; and monotheistic totalitarianism.The cult of human rights is pro immigrant: much of the non-white immigration into the West is the consequence of humanitarianism. The first wave of Vietnamese boat people - all 48,000 of them - arrived on Australian shores in the late 1970s, and were taken in and made citizens, all in the name of “humanity” (the Asian nations of Indonesia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, being less “humane” than we, rejected them). Now the Africans - and the Iraquis and Afghanis - are the new victim class; humanitarian liberals insist that these people be allowed to emigrate here in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Today, socialist priests, immigration lawyers and social workers agitate for more and more immigration from the Third World, in particular, from Africa, in the name of humanity.No-one is allowed to dispute with multiculturalist humanism. Many nationalists have been fined, and even sent to jail, on the grounds that something they have written or said has offended the ‘dignity’ and ‘human rights’ of minority groups and has ‘hurt their feelings’. The most recent example, reported in the mainstream media, is Brigitte Bardot, who has been fined (yet again) for denouncing the ritual slaughter of animals by Muslim immigrants living in France. These are the self-appointed anti-racist watchdogs, with (largely undefined) powers to fine, and even imprison, Westerners who ‘offend the feelings’ of immigrants. One of the most notorious is the Canadian Human Rights Commission.The human rights ideology, and the accompanying totalitarian repression of anyone who disagrees with it, has its origins in the French Revolution. In the ideology of the Jacobins, the community or tribe with unique ethnic and racial characteristics has been replaced by ‘Man’, or, the ‘Citizen’. The end result is a progressive political system, which recognises the equality, the sameness, the rights of all human beings (which are human rights, not the rights of a particular group, i.e., the Corsicans, the Bretons), eradicates all racial, ethnic and even linguistic differences. As de Benoist writes, in his essay ‘On Identity’:
The current denunciation of demands for identity, in the name of the “Republic” or of globalization is a repetition of the Jacobin assimilation discourse, which saw the will to maintain traditional identities as equivalent to a refusal of “progress.” The arguments against “communitarianism” used nowadays are exactly the same that were used earlier to oppressminorities or to eradicate regional cultures and languages. The paradox of this fight against particularities lies in the fact that, historically, it has always been waged in the name of a connection that is just as specific, but was presented as universal, and relied on its alleged universality to legitimate its designs for assimilation or domination. It is obvious in the Republic’s fight against regionalisms. As Savidan notes, “Brittany’s identity has not been negated in the name of the Ile de France, but in the name of reason, progress, freedom, equality and the universality of the Law.”
Further, in the same essay, he writes:
Refusal to recognize identities has been especially prominent and constant in the “republican” tradition of French Jacobinism… It redefined the nation as a post-communitarian space, i.e., as a political space based on the normative principle of cultural and ethnic homogeneity. The idea of “citizenship” lost its specific substratum (one is always a member of a given society), and was given a “universal” dimension. From this perspective, every polity implies a clean sweep; each attempt to reaffirm a particularity becomes a secession attempt. To be “republican” would mean to refuse differences, at least their political visibility, i.e., their recognition in the public sphere… I.e., the “Republic” can only be based on the omission or the negation of communities.
Sunic expands on this process of ‘de-ethnicisation’ as defined by de Benoist:
Refusal to recognize identities has been especially prominent and constant in the “republican” tradition of French Jacobinism… It redefined the nation as a post-communitarian space, i.e., as a political space based on the normative principle of cultural and ethnic homogeneity. The idea of “citizenship” lost its specific substratum (one is always a member of a given society), and was given a “universal” dimension. From this perspective, every polity implies a clean sweep; each attempt to reaffirm a particularity becomes a secession attempt. To be “republican” would mean to refuse differences, at least their political visibility, i.e., their recognition in the public sphere… I.e., the “Republic” can only be based on the omission or the negation of communities.
Sunic expands on this process of ‘de-ethnicisation’ as defined by de Benoist:
De Benoist argues that the proclamation of the same rights for all peoples leads in the long run to deprivation of each people of its own specificity. “People exist”, writes De Benoist, “but a man by himself, the abstract man, the universal man, that type of man does not exist. For De Benoist, man acquires his full rights only within his own community and by adhering to his national and cultural memory. He writes: “The category of ‘people’ cannot be confounded with language, race, class, territory or nation alone. A people is not a transitory sum of individuals. It is not a chance aggregate. It is a reunion of inheritors of a specific fraction of human history, who, on the basis of the sense of common adherence, develop the will to pursue their own history and give themselves a common destiny”. [Sunic, op. cit., pp. 140-141.]
Sunic adds:
For the authors of the New Right, culture and history are the “identity card” of each people. Once the period of assimilation or integration begins to occur, a people will be threatened by extinction - extinction that according to De Benoist does not necessarily have to be carried out by physical force or by absorption into a stronger and larger national unit, but very often, as is the case today, by the voluntary or involuntary adoption of the Western Eurocentric or “Americano-centric” liberal model. [Sunic, ibid].
For the authors of the New Right, culture and history are the “identity card” of each people. Once the period of assimilation or integration begins to occur, a people will be threatened by extinction - extinction that according to De Benoist does not necessarily have to be carried out by physical force or by absorption into a stronger and larger national unit, but very often, as is the case today, by the voluntary or involuntary adoption of the Western Eurocentric or “Americano-centric” liberal model. [Sunic, ibid].
It should be added that the “Americano-centric” liberal model is of French origin: privileging ‘Man’, the ‘Citizen’, ‘Humanity’, the ‘Rights of Man’, before the race, tribe, ethnic group, even the nation itself. Indeed, they are the one and same:
The implicit message of the Declaration of human rights involved the assumption that universal human rights precede the narrow communal or national rights and that the American-adopted legal principles could be valid for all peoples on earth, regardless of their national origin. Berard notes that the American and French Declaration, by intending to be universal, in fact became the most pernicious expression of Western… ethnocentrism. The Declaration posits that what is viewed as self-evident by Western peoples, must also be self-evident for non-Western peoples. The end result is the loss of one’s cultural and national memory. Berard writes: “Historically, human rights are the ideological expression of Jacobinism. They become today the expression of Western ethnocentrism (”occidentalo-centrisme”) - the underlying discourse of the new international order. [Sunic, op. cit., pp. 139-140].
6. Monotheism
Another source of the modern-day equality cult, the New Right thinkers argue, is monotheistic universalism: that is, religions like Judaism and Christianity. Sunic writes:
Although egalitarian experiments were known to have taken place very early in history and about which there is scant information, it was with Judaism and, later on, Christianity that we can trace with more consistency the genesis and the gradual consolidation of the modern egalitarian belief…. A number of authors of liberal, socialist, and conservative persuasion maintain that the modern ideal of equality significantly owes its rise to early Jewish prophets. Thus the French author Gerard Walter, in his book ‘Les origines du communisme’, maintains that the roots of the modern egalitarian ideal and the belief in brotherhood and democracy, can best be traced to Judea and early Jewish scriptures. In a similar vein, the American scholar Emanuel Rackman, in his piece “Judaism and Equality”, writes that Judaism derives human likeness from the fact that God created only one man from whom all humanity is descended. [Sunic, op. cit., p. 119]
Although egalitarian experiments were known to have taken place very early in history and about which there is scant information, it was with Judaism and, later on, Christianity that we can trace with more consistency the genesis and the gradual consolidation of the modern egalitarian belief…. A number of authors of liberal, socialist, and conservative persuasion maintain that the modern ideal of equality significantly owes its rise to early Jewish prophets. Thus the French author Gerard Walter, in his book ‘Les origines du communisme’, maintains that the roots of the modern egalitarian ideal and the belief in brotherhood and democracy, can best be traced to Judea and early Jewish scriptures. In a similar vein, the American scholar Emanuel Rackman, in his piece “Judaism and Equality”, writes that Judaism derives human likeness from the fact that God created only one man from whom all humanity is descended. [Sunic, op. cit., p. 119]
The New Right subscribes to Carl Schmitt’s famous dictum, ‘Political concepts are secularised theological concepts’, that is, political ideas have their roots in religion. Sunic writes:
For Carl Schmitt, who was already discussed in previous chapters, the “political theology” of liberalism and socialism continues to borrow from Jewish and Christian eschatology, albeit by bestowing its discourse with a more secular flavour. This view is shared by the New Right which also concurs that the ideal of equality, human rights, constitutionalism, and universalism, represent the secular transposition of non-European, Oriental, and Judeo-Christian eschatology. [Sunic, op. cit., p. 123].
For Carl Schmitt, who was already discussed in previous chapters, the “political theology” of liberalism and socialism continues to borrow from Jewish and Christian eschatology, albeit by bestowing its discourse with a more secular flavour. This view is shared by the New Right which also concurs that the ideal of equality, human rights, constitutionalism, and universalism, represent the secular transposition of non-European, Oriental, and Judeo-Christian eschatology. [Sunic, op. cit., p. 123].
So, in the New Right view, the modern day fanatics of equality, democracy and liberty are secularised Christians or Jews (it is no coincidence that commentators have observed the influence of messianic, Christian thinking in the discourse of George W. Bush, who, as we know, believed in democracy and freedom (or ‘moxy an freem’, as he pronounced it) as if it were religion, and sought, like an evangelical, to spread it around the entire world):
The New Right asserts that the belief in equality rests more on the principles of social desirability inherited in secular forms from the Judeo-Christian scholastic, than on the facts established by scientific analyses. According to Pierre Krebs, the contemporary theories of the egalitarian mythos deliberately associate a pseudo science (historical materialism [e.g., the Marxist theory of history] with a messianic catechism (the universalist dogma), which are in turn implemented on each level of society…. In the process of this “levelling”, argues Krebs, the role of heredity, the role of national consciousness, the importance of popular and ancient mythology and religion is significantly neglected. [Sunic, op. cit., p. 133].
7. The New Right and Islam
Islamic immigration is a problem in Europe, and it is fast becoming a problem here in Australia and for that reason, nationalists should pay attention to it. However, it should be stated that, unfortunately, if a nationalist starts speaking in a hostile fashion about the spread of Islam, certain other nationalists will react in a knee-jerk like manner and accuse him of “neoconservatism”. If that said nationalist is only concerned with Islam and blind to problems such as (non-Islamic) immigration, societal decay, consumerism, etc., then quite possibly that nationalist is just solely practising ‘Islamophobia’. Given that Islam is a religion that one can choose, just like Christianity, it may not even be a real nationalist at all. In the Middle Eastern world historically, nationality is not defined by ethnicity or race, but by belong to a particular religion - i.e., Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism - or a particular sect within that religious groups.
We would also add that we do not see Islam as ‘the’ major threat to Western civilisation but one of many and also do not recognise as a counter to it, the ‘war on terror’ pushed by the neo cons. We should also add that we do not see Islam as the only threat, the major threat, to Western civilisation, but one of many; and that we do not recognise, as the counter to Islam, the ‘War on Terror’ pushed by the neoconservatives. The neoconservative response to Islam is to impose the capitalism and secular humanism of the liberal democratic state model on Arab states like Iraq.
Given that both Islam and neoconservatism are universalist, we are opposed to both; but we would rate the neoconservative model, which currently has nearly all European ethnicities entrapped within its confines, as the higher threat. It is exactly the oppressive chains of liberalism that has stifled a vibrant European and Australian identity, through the messages, implicit in the political discourse and the media, that European and Australian identity do not exist, or if they do, are not relevant.
To the extent attacks on Islam are allowed and seemingly encouraged by the present system, a nationalist should realise that it is only the defence mechanism of one absolutist system, liberal democracy against another, Islam. Having said that, nationalists should make use of any ‘free kicks’ given to them, so to speak, and use them for nationalist ends, and not those of those representing the status quo. Therefore, opposition to Islam (which is, in theory, a religion any ethnic group can adopt) can also be used to resist Arab migration. The Australian public generally consider both to be one and these same, and so some ethnic awareness, and an acknowledgement of the need to defend Australian culture, arises. Nationalists need not let the right-wing conservatives frame and own the debate; by not participating at all in the attack, sanctioned by the liberal media, on the ’soft target’ of Islamism, nationalists allow conservatives to appropriate the cause, to diffuse public sentiment against immigration and divert it, confining to the safe grounds of ‘civic nationalism’.
Given the above qualifier on Islam, it must be explained, then, why a) opposition to Islam stems naturally from acceptance of New Right doctrines; and why b) there should be opposition to neoconservatism as well.
Firstly, though: why? Why should it be a subject for a New Right attack? Because it is a universalistic, monotheism and thereby totalitarian creed making it more than just another ethnic group, but one? Islam for most of its variants is a Sunic writes:
De Benoist attempts to uncover the roots of totalitarianism… in the Bible and the Judaic religious legacy. As we already observed in our previous chapters, for De Benoist the precondition for a non-totalitarian world is the return to religious polytheism and the abandonment of Judeo-Christian eschatology. For him, biblical monotheism is by definition a religion of totality, which excludes all opposing “truths” and all different value judgements. It follows, according to De Benoist, that all countries that are attached to the biblical message show a latent proto-totalitarian bent. He writes:‘ Each egalitarian and Universalist ideology is necessarily totalitarian, because it aims at reducing all social and spiritual reality to a single model. Thus, monotheism implies the idea that there is only one truth, one God, one type of man that could please God. The Bible places on the scene one “God only” (Deut. 6.4) who is also a “jealous God” (Deut. 6.15). Jesus says: “Those who are not with me are against me”. Henceforth, to be against God, means to be for the Evil. And against the Evil everything is permitted; genocide, torture, Inquisition. It is only with Judeo-Christianity that totalitarianism appears in history, at the moment when Yahveh, makes the massacre of infidels his primary task (Deut. 13.9); when he declares to his people: “you are going to destroy all peoples which the Lord, your God, will deliver to you” (Deut. 7.16)’ . [Sunic, op. cit., p. 176].
Now, as many (ex-Muslim) authors have chronicled, Islam takes universalism to extremes. In ‘Leaving Islam: apostates speak out’ (Prometheus Books, 2003), Ibn Warraq quotes the Islamic philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who wrote in his Muqaddimah: ‘In the Muslim community, the holy war is religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and the (obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force’. [Warraq, p. 425].Warraq’s book is an eye-opener, mainly because it is a collection of essays from ex-Muslims who have the ‘inside scoop’ on life, and the attitudes, in Islamic societies. One thing that emerges from the book is that there is no such thing as a ‘moderate’ Islam, any more than there is such thing as a ‘moderate’ communism.The defenders of Islam like to say that Islamic fundamentalism is not the ‘true’ Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran; in the same vein, the Liberal defenders of communism like to say that ‘Communism (in the Soviet Union and elsewhere) wasn’t Marxism’. It is true that Marxist-Leninism did differ on a few points of doctrine, but: surely the citizens of Red Russia, China, etc., who had Marx and Engels rammed down their throats 24 hours a day, would have noticed any glaring contradiction between the Soviet-style system of communism and that preached in the works of Marx? The answer, as we know from history, is that they did not. And the same is true for Islam. The practices in Muslim countries which so many Westerners, accustomed to a high degree of personal freedom, are in the vast majority of cases sanctioned by the Koran: they are not a ‘deviation’ or ‘distortion’ or ‘perversion’ of the Islamic doctrine. If it were otherwise, liberals in Islamic countries could cite verse and chapter of the Koran and the Hadith (commentaries on the Koran) against the ‘religious police’ who arrest young Iranian men for ‘Western’ spiky hair-dos or young Yemeni couples caught holding hands; or the Saudi courts which prosecute adultery with cruel vehemence while ignoring rape.
It would be all very well if the Muslims restricted such practices to their own countries: but the massive numbers of Islamic immigrants into the West - five million in France, one million in the Netherlands, and so on - are intent on doing the same thing. This is so well known to nationalists that there is no need to recount, at great length, how Islamists attempt to spread similar practices in the West when they emigrate here. It shall suffice to quote from Guillaume Faye, from a talk delivered in Moscow on May the 17th, 2005:
Islam is again on the offensive. With single-minded persistence, its totalitarian and aggressive religion/ideology seeks the conquest of Europe. We’ve already suffered three great assaults by Islam, which today stretches from Gibraltar to Indonesia. The first of these offensives was halted at Portiers in 732 by Charles Martel; the second in 1683, during the Ottoman siege of Vienna; the third [in the form of the present invasion and colonization] is now underway [and virtually unopposed]. Islam has a long memory and its objective is to establish on our continent what [the leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, the ayatollah] Khomeini called the “universal Caliphate.” The invasion of Europe has begun and the figures [testifying to its extent] are alarming. The continent, including Russia, is now occupied by 55 million Muslims, a number that increases at a 6 percent annual rate. In France, there are at least 6 million. Like those in Belgium and Britain, these French Muslims are starting to demand a share of political power. The government, for its part, simply refuses to take seriously their objective of transforming France into an Islamic Republic by the year 2020, when the demographic weight of the Arab/Muslim population will have become determinant. Meanwhile, it is financing the construction of Mosques throughout the country in the hope of buying social peace; there are already more than 2,000 in France, nearly double the number in Morocco. Islam is at present the second largest religion in France, behind Catholicism, but the largest in the numbers of practitioners.[The republic's president] Jacques Chirac has even declared that “France is now an Islamic power.” Everywhere in the West there prevails the unfounded belief that there’s a difference between Islam and “Islamism,” and that a Western, secularized, that is, moderate, Islam is possible. There’s no such thing. Every Muslim is potentially a jihadist. For Islam is a theocracy that confuses the spiritual with the temporal, faith with law, and seeks to impose its Shari’a [Islamic law] on a Europe whose civilizational precepts are absolutely incompatible with it.
8. The New Right and neoconservatism
The doctrine of neoconservatism is well-known, and derided by all - even the Rolling Stones have written a song about it. It is an ideology cobbled together by a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals, journalists, publicists and shady types mainly from America: Kristol, Podhoretz, Krauthammer, Friedman, Pipes, Sharansky, Feith, Frum, Abrams, Wolfowitz, Perle, to name a few. Bush Jr. and John McCain are the most famous political proponents of neoconservatism.So what is it, in the New Right analysis, that makes neoconservatism so bad? The answer is, its messianic devotion to the cause of American-style democracy, liberalism, freedom, equality, the rule of law (its law), peace, which, in turn, sanctions the use of extreme force, ending up in extreme cruelty, against the countries which do not, in the neocon view, adhere to these noble precepts. Few people can deny, at this point in time, that the democratic crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan, have turned into a disaster for their respective peoples (the benefits from living under “democracy” aside); no-one can deny that the Iraqi and Afghani wars are being waged for what Bush, the neocons and their supporters see as the highest good. The two are not unrelated, as shall be argued below.
One of the biggest influences on New Right thinking is Carl Schmitt, who defined the political as the choosing of enemies:
Using Hobbes as a reference, Schmitt argues that the notion of the political consists in distinguishing between the foe and the friend (hostis vs. amicus). But whereas Hobbes transposes the state of nature to the realm of individuals and states, Schmitt enlarges the same concept by adding to it global significance. In Schmitt’s “state of nature” the subjects are individuals, countries, empires, nations, classes, and races. The process of depoliticization, undertaken by both Marxists and liberals in an effort to create a war-proof world, is a dangerous illusion that runs counter to human historical development. Human history it its entirety is primarily a history of perpetual struggle between foes and friends - the ocean of wars in the parentheses of peace. [Sunic, op. cit., p. 57].
Using Hobbes as a reference, Schmitt argues that the notion of the political consists in distinguishing between the foe and the friend (hostis vs. amicus). But whereas Hobbes transposes the state of nature to the realm of individuals and states, Schmitt enlarges the same concept by adding to it global significance. In Schmitt’s “state of nature” the subjects are individuals, countries, empires, nations, classes, and races. The process of depoliticization, undertaken by both Marxists and liberals in an effort to create a war-proof world, is a dangerous illusion that runs counter to human historical development. Human history it its entirety is primarily a history of perpetual struggle between foes and friends - the ocean of wars in the parentheses of peace. [Sunic, op. cit., p. 57].
Neoconservatives are portrayed, in the media, as warmongers who desire war for its own sake: but, in fact, they urge war for the sake of peace - and freedom, democracy, liberty, equality. (In other words, they are against politics, as Schmitt defines it). Such a war - a liberal war against the warmongers (like Saddam Hussein) - must take on, by necessity, a vicious character:
Should man - who is by definition a political being - refuse to use the political, he then also renounces his own humanity. And to those who use war in order to stop wars, Schmitt responds, “To curse war as a crime against humanity, and then to require from people that they wage war and that they will kill in war and let themselves be killed for the sake of war to end war, is a manifest deceit”. [Sunic, op. cit., p.59].
Should man - who is by definition a political being - refuse to use the political, he then also renounces his own humanity. And to those who use war in order to stop wars, Schmitt responds, “To curse war as a crime against humanity, and then to require from people that they wage war and that they will kill in war and let themselves be killed for the sake of war to end war, is a manifest deceit”. [Sunic, op. cit., p.59].
Suppose we were to live in a world in which politics had been abolished altogether: would that mean the end of war?
No, continues Schmitt; the decision would be reached to proclaim total war against those recalcitrant individuals or “warmongers” who refused to join this depoliticised polity. But this time, however, the war would be total and of titanic dimension, waged, naturally, in the name of eternal principles of justice and peace. The war against war will thus be conducted, as the definitely final war of humanity. Such a “necessary” war would be particularly intensive and inhuman because the enemy is no longer perceived as a person with a sense of justice, but rather as an “inhuman monster” who needs not only be repelled, but totally annihilated. “The adversary”, writes Schmitt, “is no longer called enemy, and consequently, he is placed aside humanity as an enemy of peace… as an outlaw. Another pacifist vocabulary takes shape, which ignores war, but [knows} only of executions, sanctions, punitive expeditions, pacification, safeguarding of contracts, the international police, measures to protect peace...". [Sunic, op. cit., pp. 58-59].
The same applies when one’s enemy is declared to be “evil”: which is what Bush Jr., Blair and the neocons do regularly: Slobodan Milosevic is evil, Yassir Arafat is evil, Sheik Yassin of Hamas is evil, Saddam Hussein is evil, Osama bin Laden is evil, and now Ahmedinejad is evil. By declaring one’s enemy to be evil, one is sanctioning the most vicious treatment against him - and the civilian population of the countries from which they came. One cannot show any mercy to an individual, or political group, or country which is judged to be supremely wicked.
This is the main consequence of the moralisation of politics - the introducing an element (morals) into a sphere of activity which should be kept free of such things. In justifying his keeping the two separate, De Benoist writes in his essay, ‘On Politics’:
This is the main consequence of the moralisation of politics - the introducing an element (morals) into a sphere of activity which should be kept free of such things. In justifying his keeping the two separate, De Benoist writes in his essay, ‘On Politics’:
Politics cannot be subjected to morality, and even less confused with it, because they are not from the same order. A political command has nothing to do with a moral duty, with a “commandment” (Gebot) in the Biblical sense; it is only an order (Befehl). Similarly, political action does not depend on “truth” and “falsity.” To make a political decision, whetherby voting or by a governmental act, is to create the necessary conditions for achieving a concrete objective, not to state a truth. Finally, Socrates to the contrary notwithstanding, morality and politics cannot be identified because what is morally just, from a personal and private viewpoint, is not necessarily synonymous with what is politically good from a collective and public viewpoint. Thus, a political choice concerning the common good cannot be decided according to principles of private morality; it is different from a personal moral choice. As Freund writes, “morality and politics do not have the same goal. The former responds to an internal requirement and concerns the righteousness of personal acts, each one assuming fully the responsibility of its own behavior. Politics, on the other hand, responds to a social necessity, and whoever takes this road expects to take charge of the global fate of the collectivity.” [De Benoist, 'On politics', p. 16].
So why is neoconservatism more important, and more dangerous, than neoliberalism? Why is Islam a greater threat than the monotheistic creeds, e.g., Christianity? The answer is: both are political, by Schmitt’s definition. No-one can deny that there are Christians in the West engage in odious activities: there are plenty of Christian groups in Australia who work to bring in shiploads of African refugees, in the thousands, in the name of Christian love and humanity, making no distinction between white and non-white (both are equal in the eyes of God). But the days of Christians seeking to take over the world, to spread their creed by force, are over: whereas Islam never stopped. And the difference between Islam and Christianity is that the former raises the distinction between believer and un-believer to a political intensity: that is to say, it makes war on unbelievers. The same goes for the neoconservatives. The neoliberals believe in markets, freedom, competition, free trade and the rest, and more than a few of the neoliberal think-tanks endorse open borders and mass immigration (finding themselves, oddly enough, at one with the socialists on that issue); but they do not believe in spreading their ideas by force (indeed, they are a pacifist bunch), unlike the neoconservatives. Neoconservatism believes in force, war, to bring about liberal democracy: in other words, it is political.
9. Where we differ from the New Right
We may have given the impression, by this point, that Nationalist Alternative agrees with everything the European New Right believes in; but that is not the case. For one thing, De Benoist is a communitarian, federalist and regionalist because he opposes France’s traditional oppression of ethnic minorities such as the Basques, Bretons, Corsicans, Germans in the Alsace-Lorraine province. Indeed, nationalism itself is a Jacobin plot designed to crush the rights of minorities:
The arguments against “communitarianism” used nowadays are exactly the same that were used earlier to oppress minorities or to eradicate regional cultures and languages. The paradox of this fight against particularities lies in the fact that, historically, it has always been waged in the name of a connection that is just as specific, but was presented as universal, and relied on its alleged universality to legitimate its designs for assimilation or domination. It is obvious in the Republic’s fight against regionalisms. As Savidan notes, “Brittany’s identity has not been negated in the name of the Ile de France, but in the name of reason, progress, freedom, equality and the universality of the Law.” The assimilation of republican values with “universal” values should not fool anyone. The attitude, which opposes the “Republic” to “community” identities, is only a linguistic trick… To proclaim that republican identity should prevail over all others is a way of saying that the connection to the nation supersedes any other connections. As Alain Touraine noted, “The goal is to eliminate differences and real social and cultural identities, and to place the relation to the nation above everything else.” Implicitly, it is a zero sum game where anything granted to specific identities would take away from the “Republic.” Common law is not perceived as what exceeds and includes duly recognizeddistinctive identities, but as what permits ignoring or eliminating them… All it takes to get out of this dilemma is to understand that the nation with its necessary common law can also recognize different identities, it can (re-)build them, instead of ignoring or destroying them. [De Benoist, 'On Identity', p. 35-36].
All this is true enough of France: but what of Australia? One cannot claim that the Australian national identity is (like the French) a construction of universalist egalitarians, bent on repressing inter-ethnic differences and identities. Our country is (prior to the mass immigration wave) ethnically homogenous: there are no Australian equivalents of the Basques, Bretons, Corsicans. Indeed, the Western colonial nations were all largely ethnically homogenous with the national identities of America, New Zealand, developing fairly recently, in countries which (before white settlement) could not be said to exist as such, i.e., as nations.
Secondly, De Benoist takes a soft stance on the number-one ethnic issue in France (and Europe) today: mass immigration from Africa and the Middle East. When questioned on it in a 2003 interview, De Benoist evades it and descends into waffling:
T&P: In your opinion, is communitarianism an effective response to the problem created by the introduction of millions of non-Europeans into Europe? Indeed, isn’t community important because it is a function of its specific place and time? For instance, there exist communities that are more rather than less dynamic, especially in terms of natality. Given the failure to integrate non-Europeans, the utopia of a Reconquista, and a communitarianism cloaking a demographic time-bomb, isn’t this enough to make one pessimistic? AdB: First, let me say that whenever men fail to find a solution to their problems, history finds one for them. Second, history is always open (which doesn’t mean that anything is possible). Finally, in posing a problem in a way that has no solution, it shouldn’t be surprising that one is condemned to pessimism. Today, in Europe there are 52.2 [sic] million Muslims (25 million in Russia and 13.5 in Western Europe), a majority of whom are of European stock [Note: This statement is not credible to me.]. The rest, as far as I know, are neither Black nor Asian. If Europeans are less demographically dynamic, it is not the fault of those who are. If they no longer know what their identity is, again this is not the fault of those who do. In face of peoples with strong identities, those lacking such an identity might reflect on why they have lost their own. To this end, they might look to the planetary spread of market values or the nature of Western nihilism. In an era of general de territorialisation, it might also be useful to think of identity in ways that no longer depend on locale. For my part, I attach more importance to what men do, than to what they presume themselves to be. . . [Terre et Peuple 18, (Winter Solstice 2003), at http://foster.20megsfree.com/468.htm].
Now, politically, such an attitude is disastrous: the indigenous French do not want to waffling and evasions on the immigration issue, and they certainly do not want soft soap. Unfortunately, de Benoist has garnered himself the reputation of being a pedlar of soft soap, which has led to Guillaume Faye’s split from the Nouvelle Droit and GRECE. Indeed, Faye takes a more martial approach to these questions, which is more in line with the thinking of Nationalist Alternative and most Western nationalists.
Secondly, there is the question of the source of egalitarianism: does it stem from Judaism and Christianity? There are two objections to this.
The first is that, according to scholars of Judaism and Jewish culture and history, such as Kevin MacDonald, Michael Hoffmann III, and Jewish writers like Israel Shahak and Israel Shamir, one of the chief characteristics of Judaism is the distinction that religion makes (especially in the Talmud) between Jews and non-Jews. That distinction is, to put it mildly, radically inegalitarian: and certainly the Jewish God, Yahweh, is not the god of all peoples (especially not the god of the Christians, Christianity being a religion which, according to these authors, Judaism vehemently opposes).
The second is that the most radically inegalitarian society that the West has ever experienced - Europe in the Middle Ages - was a Christian one. The Europe of that period was based on a caste system, where everyone’s place, everyone’s role - as a serf, monk, merchant, warrior, ruler - was defined for them by God. That is, the social, political and economic structure, which was non-democratic and hierarchical, was divinely ordained: an Evolian would say that it was ‘Traditionalist’. Compared to then, we live in very democratic, egalitarian and liberal times; so how it is it that liberalism, democracy and egalitarianism have made their furthest advances the more belief in Christianity has receded?
It could be argued, it is true, that today’s Christianity is radically egalitarian, especially in regard to immigration and race. One can find plenty of examples of Catholic and other Christian priests in the West who work ceaselessly to bring impoverished non-white immigrants from the Third World to the West to live here, permanently, to have those refugees enjoy a ‘better life’. Immigration is seen as a kind of wealth-redistribution: if one cannot redistribute the wealth of the Western countries to, say, the African nations, then one must bring the peoples of those nations to the West to enjoy that wealth. This is a way of making people equal. (Jean Raspail, in his classic novel The Camp of the Saints (1973), had one character remark that such priests had, in their ideology, replaced the Kingdom of Heaven with the Kingdom on Earth, here and now, to be achieved by redistributing the West’s wealth to the Third World - a deed which was to be accomplished chiefly by encouraging the Third World to migrate to the West).
10.The pros and cons of populism
All Australian nationalists accept that Australia’s cultural identity, and even the existence itself of the Australian Anglo-Celt/Anglo-Saxon/European biological stock, is endangered by immigration: to judge by the immigration policies of the Australian governments of the past few decades, the intentions of our liberal democratic masters seems to be to turn Australia into a Malaysian-style republic - one third Malay, one third Chinese, one third Indian. Sydney has been hit by a massive wave of Chinese immigration; Melbourne, Indian. (If the multiculturalists have their way, Sydney will be renamed New Shanghai, Melbourne New Mumbai, and Australia itself will be renamed the Republic of Chindia). The question is: what do we who care for this country to do about it? Do we go ahead and form a populist political party? Do we, being an English-speaking, mostly Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Celtic nation, biologically and culturally, follow the BNP model?
Ultimately, daydreams by some of a direct revolution aside, it is arguable whether one can succeed in nationalist politics without the vehicle of a political party, if only in conjunction with other, extra-parliamentary forms of political activity: namely, the struggle to get one’s message across in the political domain, ?in the street (through demonstrations and community building grassroots activities), as well as in the intellectual domain. A political party is very effective in organising large numbers of nationalists for political activity, of raising large sums of money for activism, advertising and the rest. And, for our repatriation policies to succeed, we need the powers that reside in the self-governance of one’s territory: the South African strategy - where leaderless mobs rampage through immigrant areas, trying to persuade them to leave the country through force and terror - is not open to us. Eventually, then, as long as the liberal democratic system presides, it would be good for Nationalist Alternative or any nationalist group to start contesting winnable council seats in conjunction with extra-parliamentary tactics (e.g., building a strong local community presence).
The electoral path is always difficult for nationalists: even One Nation, at the height of its popularity, had trouble getting the requisite 500 signatures (from party members) to register itself as a party competing in federal elections. So we have a long way to go, as do the other Australian nationalist groups (which have, so far, only constituted themselves as unregistered political parties). The question is one of tactics: should we follow the Nick Griffin approach?
Nick Griffin, and the BNP, are controversial topics in nationalist circles. One only has to look at Griffin’s champion of Churchill, his mimicking of Churchill’s ‘V for victory’ sign. Churchill, in traditional British nationalism, is seen as a villain, not a hero. Churchill bankrupted and ruined Britain financially during the Second World War, made Britain into a vassal of America and thus removed Britain’s status as a world power; his actions were instrumental in the decline, and break up, of the British Empire - the most far-flung Empire the world has ever seen. On top of that, Churchill appeased Stalin, helped, along with the Americans, Stalin win his war (through generous Lend-Lease aid) and handed over half of Europe to communism (including Poland, on whose behalf the war was supposedly fought). In short: Churchill, as a politician, was a failure: a statesman aims at increasing power for his State, not throwing it away, or rather, giving it away, as Churchill did. All this thinking is very “Nazi” in Griffin’s view, no doubt, but nevertheless, it is the cold, hard truth.
Nick Griffin, and the BNP, are controversial topics in nationalist circles. One only has to look at Griffin’s champion of Churchill, his mimicking of Churchill’s ‘V for victory’ sign. Churchill, in traditional British nationalism, is seen as a villain, not a hero. Churchill bankrupted and ruined Britain financially during the Second World War, made Britain into a vassal of America and thus removed Britain’s status as a world power; his actions were instrumental in the decline, and break up, of the British Empire - the most far-flung Empire the world has ever seen. On top of that, Churchill appeased Stalin, helped, along with the Americans, Stalin win his war (through generous Lend-Lease aid) and handed over half of Europe to communism (including Poland, on whose behalf the war was supposedly fought). In short: Churchill, as a politician, was a failure: a statesman aims at increasing power for his State, not throwing it away, or rather, giving it away, as Churchill did. All this thinking is very “Nazi” in Griffin’s view, no doubt, but nevertheless, it is the cold, hard truth.
On top of that, foreign policy aside, can one name one accomplishment of Churchill’s while he was in office? (And remember, he was prime minister, not once, but twice). Churchill’s enemy Hitler had his autobahns, his Strength through Joy leisure cruises, youth labour brigades, Munich Olympics, Nuremberg rallies… Churchill, on the other hand, did hardly anything. He was a negative - a man defined by his opposition to something, not by his deeds.
But Griffin’s championing of Churchill is a clever tactic, in Britain at least. After all, the British liberal democratic establishment venerates Churchill - Churchill, the ultimate British Antifascist, the man who was prepared to destroy an empire (his own) to prove a point, the man who united the British cause with that of the progressive, humanist Soviet Union. By flashing the ‘V for victory’ sign, and waving the Union Jack (and the St George’s Cross) wherever he goes, Griffin seizes the enemy’s own weapon and turns it against them. Like the seafarers of old, who painted eyes on the bows of their ships (to ward off evil spirits), Griffin’s watered-down, respectable, establishment form of nationalism (so redolent of the flag-waving ‘Britpop’ music movement in the 1990s) repels the enemy - who always seek to pin the label ‘fascist’, ‘Nazi’, ‘anti-Semite’ on the British nationalist. Likewise, Griffin’s incorrigible philo-Semitism and Zionism (a tactic Nationalist Alternative rejects) can also be viewed (and is, in establishment quarters) as a cynical stunt. The same goes for the philo-Semitism of the other Euro-populist parties - the Front National, the Danish People’s Party, the Dutch Party for Freedom.
Suppose that Griffin placed a large ‘Free Ernst Zundel’ icon on the BNP website: how would that help the cause of British nationalism, and the British themselves? The answer is, it would not. Zundel is a supremely important figure in German nationalism, but not in British. The truth is that Britain’s geopolitical decline and drifting into the American sphere of influence (which began in the 1930s, but was sealed by Churchill) did not affect British life in an immediately obvious way: not its culture, traditions, sense of decency, the warmth, friendliness and good humour of its people. It was the reverse immigration from Britain’s non-white colonies, acquired as the result of its own past imperialism (and not the United States’ newer imperialism), and the decade of Blairism, which changed that, turning the British into the country of over-paid, binge-drinking, depressed, complaining yobs that they are today. And Blairism, and multi-cultism, is a recent phenomenon which have little, to do with the events of the war. So why go on about Zundel, or Churchill’s perfidy? While the BNP does still have some measure of co-operation with German nationalists, it recognises that the problems of the British must be solved by the British themselves; and that British nationalists cannot expend time and effort on solving Germany’s problems for it. (Indeed, German nationalist groups like the NPD never worry about the British, or French, or the Danes or any of Germany’s ‘European brothers’).
At the same time Australian nationalists must reject any appeals to or pacts with Zionism, which, as a cursory examination of the Jewish community ethnic media reveals, opposes, through various channels and representative organisations, white ethnocentrism and European ethnic nationalism in western nations. Indeed in many cases, such organisations are strong proponents of multiculturalism, and helped craft the racial and vilification laws in Australia that limit freedom of speech and the battle of Australian nationalists in promoting the Australian identity. As for being ‘philo-Semitic’, we simply advocate being ‘philo’ Australian only, and reject culture pandering to non Australian, non European movements.
Griffin justifies the BNP’s ideology on the grounds that its new-found ’sensibility’ and ‘respectability’ has been the cause of their electoral success. Now, we unsure that they have been that successful, electorally: the council seats they have won make up less than 1% of the total. But we believe that the BNP’s policies can be justified on grounds of economy: their activists save more time, more effort, by tackling purely British problems which are part and parcel of recent British political history. Ernst Zundel, the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, and all the other subjects which Western nationalists devote so much time and energy to, are not as relevant to the British cause as the large amount of time given to them.On top of that, the nationalists who have competed in elections (and managed to win seats) have had some measure of success in stemming the immigration tide through legislation. One only has to look at Italy’s Northern League and the Danish People’s Party, which have managed to get anti-immigration laws passed. If centre-right liberal democratic parties have been forced to pass these laws (in order to satisfy their far right coalition partners), so much the better for the people of Italy and Denmark respectively.
What is being argued for here is not “pragmatism”, “revisionism”, “opportunism” (which the likes of Griffin so often get accused of), but economy. This boils down to the principle, each nation for itself. Here, the Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Celts and fellow Europeans who have become Australian are on their own and need not look for, or at least depend on, Britain, Germany, Russia for wholesale import of tactics or help. Self sufficiency and tactics that will work in local conditions is what is needed.
However: it is not the case that populism is the right way for nationalists to proceed forward. Populism, after all, means doing what the ordinary person, the average person, the man in the street (who is not a politician, or a journalist, or an intellectual) wants: populism aims at breaking down the distinction between the political class (who are separate from the people) and the people - that is, bringing politics to the level of the people, or, more accurately, the little man. Which is why the rhetoric of the populist BNP resembles that of the tabloid Daily Mail, which shares the same concerns as the BNP on immigration, Islam, etc. Unfortunately, the BNP ideology is pitched at the same intellectual (and cultural) level of the Mail, going no further - and at times, it resembles that of a disgruntled, old unreformed Tory, always moaning about the EU, youth gangs, immigration, political correctness gone mad and the like…The correct relationship between the Australian people - who still possess some spark of nationalism and racialism, despite years of multi-culti brainwashing and conditioning - and a nationalist party resembles that between the working-class and a communist party. The Leninist ideology is that a communist party is made up of people who are not of the working-class, but who instruct the working-class, direct it, lead it, educate it; the goal is to foment class consciousness in the workers, and eventually lead them in a revolutionary uprising against capitalism. In the same way, a nationalist party needs to foment national consciousness in the Australian people, and lead them in a revolutionary uprising against the multi-cultist liberal democratic, capitalist system. That revolution may be drastic and immense or a sudden big electoral breakthrough - both unlikely in apathetic recreational Australia - or more likely a slow breakdown in people’s allegiance to the current system and realignment along new lines. An Australian rebirth if you like. The Australian people want race-based immigration policies, but don’t know how to about getting them: indeed, many of them are too terrified by political correctness to stand up to Islam, Chinese immigration, Indian immigration, and the destruction of Australian culture and the Australian way of life. They need a nationalist organisation that will remove that fear, show them the way and lead them forward.We nationalists should put trust in the people, and in Australia, the Australian people. The Cronulla riot, for incident, was a completely spontaneous expression of Australian nationalism and racialism - celebrating and defending the values of Australian culture against Lebanese immigration and Islam. The media tries to link the Cronulla riots to nationalists, but really, Cronulla happened without our help. The incident resembles the spontaneous Chinese peasant risings against wealthy landowners in rural China in the 1930s - which occurred any prompting or direction from the Chinese communist party, which, at the time, devoted its energies to fomenting a proletarian uprising in the cities (it took Mao Tse-Tung to see the revolutionary potential of the Chinese peasant movement).
