By J.R. Nyquist
A few months ago the Website AlternativeRight.com made a laudatory reference to a work by French author Giullaume Faye. Curious about Faye's apocalyptic ideology, I bought and read his book, which is titled Archeofutursim: European Visions of the Post Catastrophic Age, published in Europe during the 1990s, and recently translated into English. The book proposes the creation of a new Eurasian empire in which the countries of Europe are demoted to mere provinces, and the new nationality will be that of white Europeans. As Faye told a gathering of Russians from the People's National Party in 2005, "I believe that Russia must be the center of a great white confederation. It's the same goal as your organization."
Faye's book opposes the "ethnic masochism" of the ruling liberal ideology, which he says is exacerbated by hedonistic individualism. Faye blames individualism for "triggering a boom in anti-natural practices: divorces made automatic ... rejection of the housewife model ... the glorification of homosexuality [and a] ... demographic fall caused by anti-natalism...." Faye predicts calamity, though he doesn't say exactly what the calamity will be. Modernity is failing, he says, because it is "based on a dream-like view of human nature and fallacious anthropology." An apparent believer in global warming and various environmental scares, Faye is even more attuned to the incompatibility between Afro-Asian Muslims and Europeans. He believes that a social explosion is coming, along with hard economic times. Liberalism is dead, says Faye, and the rationalism of the Enlightenment has no future whatsoever. "[T]he post-catastrophic world will have to reorganize social fabrics according to archaic principles -- which is to say, human ones."
What will this reorganization entail? There will be a return of authority, of family power and "the subordination of rights to duties." He vaguely mentions the possibility of communitarian structures, "the power of hierarchy" and "the principle of punishment over prevention" along with "the rehabilitation of the aristocratic principle." The European soul, he says, longs for the future, and also longs for a plan. This plan entails the overthrow of the liberal order. Why? "Because the egalitarian and humanitarian mindset of modern man ... does not allow him to manage the explosive possibilities behind genetic engineering" which Faye would embrace. We are approaching the day when science will be able to make super-humans and sub-humans; and we must embrace these new creatures, Faye suggests, eradicating the "pseudo-ethical obstacles raised in opposition to genetic engineering, the creation of 'modified' human beings, and positive eugenics."
Faye plays with such themes as a child might play with matches. He is an incendiary, setting fire to God's creation to make way for man's. Having no real sense of history, he nonetheless recognizes that modernity is an unsustainable chaos, and a retreat into old forms (with new technology) is inevitable. Having no sense of right or wrong, he nonetheless recognizes that old forms of moral authority must be re-established. "Archeofuturism," he writes, "is a concept of order, a concept that upsets modern minds, which are shaped by the fallacious individualist ethics of emancipation and the rejection of discipline that has led to the swindle of 'contemporary art,' and wreaked havoc in the educational and socio-economic systems." Faye is a revolutionary. He would favor Marx insofar as Marx was anti-bourgeois, but he realizes that Marxism is unworkable. Some other brand of anti-bourgeois ideology must therefore be cobbled together. And so, a new form of critical theory emerges.
Faye opposes "the weak spirit of humanitarianism, a sham ethic which raises 'human dignity' to the rank of ridiculous dogma. this, not to mention the hypocrisy of the many well-meaning souls who yesterday forgot to denounce Communist crimes and today have nothing to say about the embargo on Iraq [1998] and Cuba by the American superpower ... [and] the oppression of the Palestinians."
About religion he says that everyone is in agreement that modernity has overseen a process of de-spiritualization and the destruction of transcendental values. According to Faye, "The failed attempt at establishing secular religions, the empty disenchantment created by a civilization that bases its ultimate legitimacy on the value of exchange and the cult of money, and the self-destruction of Christianity have engendered a situation that cannot endure." If we are not careful, he warns, Islam may become the religion of the future. This is dangerous because a triumphant Islam would destroy "the creativity and inventiveness of the European soul...." On the other hand, he laments, the Machiavellian plans of certain American strategists has led them to encourage the penetration and entrenchment of Islam in Europe in such a way as to induce paralysis."
What does Faye propose as a religious alternative to Islam? "The archeofuturist answer might be as follows," Faye explains: "a neo-medieval, quasi-polytheistic, superstitious and ritualized Christianity for the masses and a pagan agnosticism -- a 'religion of philosophers' -- for the elite." As for the secular religion of "political correctness," he finds it to be ethnically insincere, based on "intellectual snobbishness and social cowardice." He calls it chic, soft, and a bourgeois form of Stalinism. To talk of a threat to Europe from Islam is to be barred from trendy restaurants, and loses its appeal in the eyes of beautiful girls. "Being politically correct is a matter not of ideology," says Faye, "but of social acceptance."
Faye believes today's opposition to political correctness is also politically correct. Rebellion is neutralized, he says, "through sham rebellion." Here the politically correct merely hide behind the mask of political incorrectness. As for freedom of speech, instead of outright censorship what we have is a media that relies on diversion, focusing on side issues and entertainment. The media careerist craves safety, and knows how to win an audience through trivia. "What we are dealing with here," writes Faye, "is not simply the usual brutalization of the population via the increasingly sophisticated mass-media apparatus of ... the spectacle -- a veritable 'audiovisual prozac' -- but rather a concealment of essential political problems...."
Faye refers to consultation and negotiation as the "scourges of modern democracy." He says that "Constantinople is under siege and we're debating the gender of angels." Though his meaning is given indirectly, he appears to suggest that the racism and bigotry of old was not entirely bad; that the class system was not entirely oppressive; that male dominance is a biological imperative. The old ways and institutions are coming back, he says, whether we want them or not. There is nothing overtly anti-Semitic in the book. There is nothing overtly racist, though it is racist. His argument is an appeal to the native European stock, warning that one day they are going to react against liberalism and egalitarianism and Islam. These are the forces destroying European civilization. And the ultimate blame, he says, must be put upon liberal economics and hedonistic individualism. It is the permissiveness engendered by market systems, he says, which have most undermined the authoritative structures of civilization. Once the ancient notion of aristocratic order was taken down to make way for bourgeois economic power and plutocracy, authority was bound to unravel and a rising tide of chaos became inevitable.
As for "conservative" politicians and right-wing governments, Faye says they "have always been soft. They fear confrontation and do not dare to implement the ideas and programs by which they came to power.... A Right-wing government would rather avoid displeasing those who voted against it rather than please its own electorate. Winning the favor of the Left is the delight of the Right." Democracy, he says, is therefore headed for failure, and the emergence of a new aristocracy is necessary. Everything is thoroughly rotten. Multiculturalism, he says, merely signifies multi-racism. Only now everyone is going to truly hate everyone else. Only the Americans still have imagination and epic vision. "Culturally, as well as politically and geopolitically, Americans are strong because we [Europeans] are weak, absent, stiff, and we lack dynamism and will. Let us stop moaning: America is only quite naturally occupying the space we have abandoned."
This takes us to Faye's shocking conclusion. He points westward to what he calls "the Imperial American Republic." He says that America's decline "has already been 'virally' programmed for the first quarter of the twenty-first century...." Then he points to the east, to the emergence of what he calls "Eurosiberia." According to Faye, France should no longer be called France. This is not its true name, after all. France should resume the name it had under the Roman Empire, and henceforth become the Eurosiberian province of Gaul. To build an empire of our own, says Faye, will require the emergence of predators who are "on guard for a historical disaster to happen and make their prey emerge from the undergrowth in panic." The predator, in this case, is Russia. The prey would be the petty bourgeois states of Europe.
"In human history," says Faye, "the establishment of a Eurosiberian complex would represent a revolution greater than that of the short-lived Soviet Union or even the United States of America." The reasons given to justify this empire, he admits, are of little importance. In his view a Greater Europe absolutely must emerge. He calls the nations of Europe a "disorderly grouping," which is somewhat shocking insofar as nationalism is the authentic European heritage while the Roman Empire was the very embodiment of European decadence in the original. The example of imperial Rome's progressive ossification, the strangulation of the economy by State decree, is clearly in evidence from Diocletian to its ultimate culmination in Theodosius; but this is utterly forgotten by Faye (if he ever knew it). And yet, Faye would celebrate his new imperial project, with Russia at its core, as "Leviathan and Behemoth rolled into one." He then writes, "From the harbor of Brest to Port Arthur, from our frozen islands in the Arctic to the victorious sun of Crete, from the fields of the steppe and from the fjords to the maquis, a hundred nations free and united, regrouped to form an empire...." He fully and rightly credits Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev with the idea.
Faye's book was published in 2010 by Arktos Media Ltd., where Arktos is the Greek word for bear -- the same bear that symbolizes the ruling party in Russia, and is connected with the name of a Russian publishing house named ARKTOGEYA, and the Website arcto.ru, where elements of Bolshevik and nationalist terminology are knitted together by the Russian geopolitical "philosopher" Alexander Dugin, who is somehow ideologically linked to Faye's project (insofar as Dugin is also preaching the establishment of a Eurasian empire). The discerning investigator cannot help but see a connection between the various projects of Arktos Media and ARKTOGEYA, between Faye's publisher and Dugin's. Why should we not discover, in due time, a common source of funding for these two curious men (as well as a common strategic direction)?
There is a peculiar tendency of alliance between the Red and the Brown, between the Communist and the National Socialist. This may be seen in Stalin's support for Hitler in 1932, and in the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, and more recently in the parliaments of certain "former" Communist countries. The Red-Brown alliance deserves our close attention. Its new rhetoric, no longer stale or lacking insight, is more conducive to European unity than the rhetoric of Hitler, and more anti-capitalist than Stalin. The fall of America is here anticipated, and welcome. The rhetoric of Faye and Dugin suggests that Russia is their instrument; but we must ask ourselves whether they are the instruments of Russia.
In May 2005 Faye said the following to members of the People's National Party in Russia: "I am often asked if I'm racist. If I am a Nazi. No. My concept is, I am against war. I don't want to conquer Algeria. But if they attack us, they have to be destroyed.... So I completely agree with the teachings of Russia-ism. I believe that Russia must be the center of a great white confederation. It's the same goal as your organization [the People's National Party]. " Commenting on this rhetoric, a Ukrainian researcher told me, "This is theater. They want to create a Nazi atmosphere without the Nazi stigma. They are exploiting the emotional idea that Hitler came close to liberating Russia from Bolshevism. This is why a lot of anti-Soviets have this unconscious sympathy toward Hitler. The stupid will be led by such emotions."
It must be understood that methods now exist, in terms of psychological warfare, for leading the Right and the Left toward the same end. What we find today is two varieties of rhetoric, each tending to the same outcome, each connected to the same secretive system. Readers should check out the images and symbolism of the People's National Party at nnpr.su. According to Wikipedia, the People's National Party was allegedly founded by Aleksandr Ivanov-Sukharevksy with help from two veterans of the Black Hundreds. Ivanov-Sukharevsky allied himself with Semyon Tokmakov, the leader of a skinhead group. Oddly, the two great heroes of the People's National Party are Tsar Nicholas II and Adolf Hitler.
It might be said that a bizarre mixing-up of diverse personalities and causes is an outgrowth of an experimental approach to political adaptation, perhaps overseen by a particular country's special services. However intriguing or brilliant the ideological formulations presented by writers like Faye, the character behind these formulations nonetheless cannot help revealing an unabashed lack of moral sensibility. This we also find in American ideologists who appear on the Right, yet aim their blows at the Left's favorite targets.
