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19 responses to “Europe in Dormition”

1. 

   fnn

   2014-01-15

   “Even if the numbers of immigrants in Europe were much higher, it would be an illusion to suppose that the immigrants are mounting a concerted effort to change the character of the place to which they have come.”

   It’s the neoliberal ruling elites who are usually accused of this-at least in more sophisticated circles See,for example, Paul Gottfied’s trilogy on liberalism and “the managerial state.”

   “Immigration in Europe, as in, say, the Southwestern United States or within the former Soviet Union, is determined by deep historical links and patterns of circulation between the immigrants’ countries of origin — in France’s case, particularly North Africa and sub-Saharan Françafrique — and the places of destination.”

   Ireland, Sweden and Norway?.

2. 

   Michel

   2014-01-15

   Hello Mr. Logres, it’s good that your children are given a chance to interact with the freshness of nature in these atrophied days. Anyways, about the airport, among other “questionable” monuments, we should note that the people behind them churn out billions of dollars for their construction. Billions. I doubt that, with that kind of money involved (at least from their point of view), they just randomly chose murals, or architectural shapes without giving some serious thought into it. If I can recall, I think that Denver International Airport, costed $4.1-$4.6 billion dollars. No one is joking with that kind of money and commitment. The apocalyptic horse at the entrance, the Hitler wearing a gas-mask, the various Freemasonic elements (used in a malefic way) all tell a story that is slowly unraveling, a story that these people take very seriously, other than the use of magical sigils for literal hypnotic processes, these inverted art forms are a way for “those with the eyes to see”. On that note, I still wonder why other than Guenon and the re-introducers of Metaphysics, no one takes the existence of such groups seriously, nor the most simple implications of their actions on society.

3. 

   Logres

   2014-01-13

   Michel, I’m glad someone else finds the Denver airport murals disturbing (other than conspiracy theorists, who are still closer than most to the truth). It’s quite possible that liberalism as a whole is being used to foster a new tripartite society of ethnic status and color, although I think they may not have made up their mind if they want it to be multi-cult, or just white at the top. My guess is that the real hard core elements are mostly white “supers” in the counter-initiation. That is, they are probably interested in things like “genetic” weapons. That said, they are willing to let others in, at a price. Remember, it’s just like the real thing, except evil. I think white people in America could do worse than stop worrying about being “white”, and start learning Gaelic, German, Dutch, or whatever their ancestors real language was. If we are to be movement of quality, it doesn’t make sense to buy into generic whiteness – that way lies powder-puff store-bought bread like Ideal. To speak personally, I’d rather acknowledge, for instance that I myself am a hybrid of German-Celt, and try to discern clearly the elements of my own soul, including learning those languages, or at least a lullaby or two, remembering my ancestors, and recapturing what is good and can be remembered from the past. The rest will take care of itself, if I work very hard. My wife has a little bit of Indian heritage (many Southerners do), and there’s something of value there, as well. Someone near here just took my kids and I on a falcon hunt with Harris hawks. It was just squirrels we were after this time of year, but such activities help me stay out of the always present attraction to far-right populist movements, which will no doubt have their day. Uranus and Saturn are conjuncting (I am told) around 2030, and this is supposedly favorable to right wing movements. In the end, it’s up to the “I” to change the world, not a mass movement. “The poor, you will always have with you” – so too, the masses. In the USA, you will eventually see a fragmentation of regions, with the Southwest being Anglo-Hispanic, the Deep South continuing with an African influence, and the West Coast having a lot of settlers from Asia. I don’t think they can hold it all together, without very dangerous repercussions. “Light federalism”, with regional differences, might work for awhile maybe indefinitely.

4. 

   Cologero

   2014-01-12

   Although I have never visited that part of the World, I see what you mean from various images.

   So Constantine, you seem to know God’s will, so what more do you expect? The rest, then, depends on man and theosis, i.e., aligning his will with God’s. I’m afraid there are many distractions along the way, but it should not be impossible, even in something basic such as the architecture you point out.

5. 

   Constantine Aetos

   2014-01-11

   @Cologero

   Look at it Abu Dhabi and look at Isfahan, Iran. I highly doubt Emir Zayed was inspired by Allah to build skyscrapers.

6. 

   Michel

   2014-01-11

   Yes August, that could also be the case.

7. 

   August

   2014-01-10

   “Thus any theories or attitudes that take as their foundation elements based on duality (and the lowest kinds in this case, disentangled psychic influences and gross physical qualities) must be either out of genuine stupidity, or worse, out of reaction to satanic forces.”

   Or, a third possibility, attempted resistance to dissolution of the remaining psychic elements that still persist, consciously, in these people.

8. 

   Michel

   2014-01-10

   sorry, I meant 500 million people, not 500,000 people.

9. 

   Michel

   2014-01-10

   I thank you for the link Cologero and for the post Inaki. Of course, such topics, when taken from an extremely constricted point of view lose any attraction they might have had to me. The one thing I see is that there seems to be an encroachment on the opposites of true values within a Traditional Society so that when taken within a inverted context, they become the foundations for a near-upside down society. There would be the need for some sort of tire-like structure that further stratifies or simply makes the already existing stratification of the biological races more apparent. For one, this awakening is not based on the thing that gave Europe, as a ‘collective unit’ its identity, viz Catholicism, but rather from loosely jointed ‘paganism’ (for example, Astaru or Asatru or whatever) in a chaotic demetrian guise. On the one hand, if a so called ‘spiritual dimension’ is to be considered, the only thing that interests popular culture is interaction with as I said, and as you stated in one of your articles, bardo. On the other hand, in relation to something most people can relate to, as you also stated, this is further given weight by a loosely understood and external unifying factor, viz biological race, and as for example, indicated by the author of the post on Immigration and European ‘culture’.

   The people that Venner sees/saw as ‘going back to their roots’ are indifferent to anyone who happens to have a white or pink skin pigmentation (whereby white non-Frenchmen are treated as expatriates and black or brown people are seen as parasitic sub-human carriers of strange diseases). That’s it. In the end, its just a collegiate of fascination with psychic elements that correspond to dead bodies and corpses in the gross world and with a stupid justification for this fascination based on skin color. This is hardly a re-awakening to true identity. If anything, certain counter-initiatic ambitions, such as the establishment of a superior biological race and the demise of those that they deem inferior comes to mind when such attitudes are encountered. For instance, in the Georgia Guidestones, one of the aims or ‘commandments’ for the new world is the reduction of the current earth’s population by about 92.8%, so that only 500,000 people are left alive. Most probably, all of them white, or ‘Aryan’ as Hitler would have loved. Moreso, certain murals at the Denver International Airport show the death of both black and brown races and the hailing of what appears to be a bravarian boy. This is indicated by the motionless corpse of a black girl and that of an native American Indian. The entire airport is also designed to look like a giant swastika, interpreted in the Nazi sense. So in the end, I’m led to believe that this ‘nostalgia’ is just bardo, or the reaction to suggestion by the counter-initiatic forces, as they slowly continue to reveal themselves and popularize their values.

   At any rate, as is obvious, a true resurgence must be shown via the existence of genuine Dcotrinal Priniples, upon which disemminated practice would be based. These Doctrinal Principles would not be based on ‘convention’ neither would they be based on discursive analysis, even of the highest kind, they would rather be based on Transcendence, and would be rooted within the essential way that things are fashioned in accordance to their Divine Principles, asserting their Transcendent Unity (beyond even gods or goddesses, even though they correspond to supra-individual states of consciousness). Thus any theories or attitudes that take as their foundation elements based on duality (and the lowest kinds in this case, disentangled psychic influences and gross physical qualities) must be either out of genuine stupidity, or worse, out of reaction to satanic forces. Don’t you at least see that while Genuine Tradition relays its Doctrine from the Top down, this one tries to mimic the same in a near inverted sense? That ultimately, the things that define the manner of being of creatures, their dharmma or predisposition are the things that are most external to them, viz gross characteristics? And that it is these things that should be considered when trying to ‘rediscover identity’ ?

10. 

    Cologero

    2014-01-10

    “Would the reconstruction of Europe be done by man only or aided by God?”
    How would you know the difference, Mr. Aetos?

11. 

    mohenko

    2014-01-10

    What an inspirational piece, thank you.

12. 

    Constantine Aetos

    2014-01-10

    “The intellectual contemplation of nature, excellence, and beauty, as taught to us by the Greeks, is our foundation. However, European civilization advanced because it was creative, something constructed, not merely contemplated.”

    Would the reconstruction of Europe be done by man only or aided by God?

13. 

    Ash

    2014-01-09

    The Stoic doctrine of suicide can be summed as being that suicide is permissible when it is impossible to live virtuously. Cato would be an example, as he took his life when he felt that it was no longer possible to serve Rome by continuing his war or reconciling with Caesar. Refusing to return would be dishonourable. In Gentile’s terms, what would the Christian do in such a case? I ask because this is why Venner chose the path he did, as I understand his last writings. Whether he was correct in this is beside the point; if he believed that there was no more honour to be gained through living, what should he have done? Turn his focus inward through Catholic practice and seek to change reality that way instead of the non-cooperation which his suicide effectively was?

    As an aside, this post is quite prescient with the continuing appearance of cracks between the neopagan elements of the New Right who interpret Tradition in Venner’s terms and those who acknowledge the Tradition which we discuss here. I think Cologero once mentioned the possibility of Pagans who knew and accepted the mission of Christianity in the world, but I’ve yet to see many.

14. 

    Iñaki Luna

    2014-01-09

    We do confirm : france is TOTALLY OVER , it is a shadow of the Past , and besides it’s become a totalitari$m , a real & deep DICTATORSHIP ! :

    Opinionator – A Gathering of Opinion From Around the Web
    The Stone January 5, 2014, 7:30 pm 736 Comments
    Does Immigration Mean ‘France Is Over’?
    By JUSTIN E. H. SMITH
    The Stone

    The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.
    Tags:

    americans abroad, Europe, Finkielkraut, Alain, France, Immigration and Emigration, L’Ouverture, Toussaint, Paris (France), Philosophy

    I.

    PARIS — It is difficult to go more than a day in France without hearing someone express the conviction that the greatest problem in the country is its ethnic minorities, that the presence of immigrants compromises the identity of France itself. This conviction is typically expressed without any acknowledgment of the country’s historical responsibility as a colonial power for the presence of former colonial subjects in metropolitan France, nor with any willingness to recognize that France will be ethnically diverse from here on out, and that it’s the responsibility of the French as much as of the immigrants to make this work.

    When equality is invoked, it is understood that this is equality among equals.

    In the past year I have witnessed incessant stop-and-frisk of young black men in the Gare du Nord; in contrast with New York, here in Paris this practice is scarcely debated. I was told by a taxi driver as we passed through a black neighborhood: “I hope you got your shots. You don’t need to go to Africa anymore to get a tropical disease.” On numerous occasions, French strangers have offered up the observation to me, in reference to ethnic minorities going about their lives in the capital: “This is no longer France. France is over.” There is a constant, droning presupposition in virtually all social interactions that a clear and meaningful division can be made between the people who make up the real France and the impostors.

    I arrived here in 2012 — an American recently teaching in a Canadian university — to take a position at a French university in Paris. I had long been a moderately interested observer of French history, culture, and politics, but had never lived here for any length of time, and had on previous stays never grown attuned to the deep rifts that mark so much of daily life here.

    When I am addressed by strangers anxious about the fate of their country, I try to reply patiently. They hear my American accent, but this in itself does not dissuade them, for I belong to a different category of foreigner. I am not read as an “immigrant,” but rather as an “expatriate,” here for voluntary and probably frivolous reasons, rather than out of economic necessity or fear for my own survival or freedom. This division is not just a street-level prejudice: it is also written into the procedure at French immigration offices, where all foreigners must go to obtain their residence permits, but where the Malians and Congolese are taken into one room, and Americans and Swedes into another. For the former, the procedure has an air of quarantine, and the attitude of the officials is something resembling that of prison guards; for the latter, the visit to the immigration office feels rather more like a welcome ceremony, and everything about our interaction with the officials bespeaks a presumption of equality.

    Equality is of course one of the virtues on which the French Republic was founded, yet critics of the Enlightenment philosophy behind the Revolution have long noticed a double standard: when equality is invoked, these critics note, it is understood that this is equality among equals. Political and social inequality is allowed to go on as before, as long as it is presumed that this is rooted in a natural inequality. In the late 18th century, such a presumption informed the reactions of many in the French to the revolution led by François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture in Haiti, who was himself inspired by the events of 1789 and who took the idea of equality to be one with universal scope.

    For most of the history of the French Republic, the boundary between the equal and the unequal was determined by the dynamics of empire: equality within continental France was in principle absolute, while in the colonies it was something that had to be cultivated: only if a colonial subject could demonstrate full embodiment in his manners and tastes of the French identity was he to be considered truly equal.

    With the contraction of the empire and the reorientation of French nationalism from an imperial to a cultural focus, the distinction between equal and unequal contracted from a global to a local scale. Francophones from around the world began to move to metropolitan France in large numbers, but now their status was transformed from that of colonial subjects to that, simply, of foreigners. But of course the fact that these unequal subjects have settled in France has very much to do with the historical legacy of French imperialism; Francophone Africans do not choose to come to France on a whim, but because of a long history of imposed Frenchness at home.

    II.

    I became a philosopher, like many others, in large part because I imagined that doing so would enable me to rise above the murky swamp of local attachment, of ethnic and provincial loyalty, and to embrace the world as a whole, to be a true cosmopolitan. Yet history shows that many philosophers only grow more attached to their national or ethnic identity as a result of their philosophical education.

    This second tendency seems particularly widespread in Europe today, and most of all in France. Many Americans imagine that French philosophy is dominated by mysterians like the late Jacques Derrida, who famously beguiled innocent followers with koan-like proclamations. But a far more dangerous sub-species of French philosopher is the “public intellectual,” whose proclamations, via the French mass media, are perfectly comprehensible, indeed not just simple but downright simplistic, and often completely irresponsible.

    Take, for example, the self-styled philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, who in his recent popular book “L’identité malheureuse” (“The Unhappy Identity”), proclaims, in effect, that immigration is destroying French cultural identity. He bemoans the “métissage” of France, a term one often sees in the slogans of the far right, which translates roughly as “mongrelization.” The author, whose father was a Polish immigrant and a survivor of Auschwitz, and who has made much throughout his career of what he calls “the duty of memory,” claims to be defending the values of the “français de souche” — the real French. In this way, he is stoking the rising xenophobia in France, a trend that has been exacerbated here, as elsewhere in Europe, by recent economic uncertainty.

    Talk of ‘overrunning’ and ‘invasion’ describes much more accurately the motions of European colonialism.

    Is there any justification for the two-tiered distinction between expatriates and immigrants, or for the extra impediments members of the latter group face when they try to settle in a new country? Nativist Europeans such as Finkielkraut will often express a concern about being “overrun” by members of ethnic groups from economically disadvantaged states or regions. Most of us can agree that even if there is not an absolute right to preserve one’s culture’s purity, it is at least a genuine good to be able to spend one’s life surrounded by others who share many of the same values and traditions. Something would be lost if, say, massive immigration led to a sudden shift in the demographics of Iceland, so that native Icelanders were now a minority in that once homogeneous island nation — and this would be a loss both for the country itself, as well as for those of us on the outside who value something akin to the cultural equivalent of biodiversity.

    But there is nowhere in Europe where anything remotely like a shift on such a scale is taking place, even in the countries that have seen the most immigration, like France and Britain. Alongside the genuine good of a life spent among others who share one’s values and traditions, there is also what the philosopher Michael Dummett describes in his influential work “On Immigration and Refugees” as the right to live one’s life as a first-class citizen. This right, he notes, depends in part on the conduct of a state, and in part on the behavior of its people. Whether or not the right of immigrants to first-class citizenship is set up in conflict with the right of earlier inhabitants to cultural preservation, has very much to do with both state policy and with popular opinion.

    III.

    Even if the numbers of immigrants in Europe were much higher, it would be an illusion to suppose that the immigrants are mounting a concerted effort to change the character of the place to which they have come. Talk of “overrunning” and “invasion” is analogical, and in fact describes much more accurately the earlier motion of European states into their former colonies, a motion which, again, is a crucial part of the account of patterns of migration toward Europe today. Immigration in Europe, as in, say, the Southwestern United States or within the former Soviet Union, is determined by deep historical links and patterns of circulation between the immigrants’ countries of origin — in France’s case, particularly North Africa and sub-Saharan Françafrique — and the places of destination.

    Europe has enjoyed constant traffic — human, financial, material, and cultural — with the extra-European world since the end of the Renaissance, yet within a few centuries of the great global expansion at the end of the 15th century a myth would set in throughout Europe, that European nations are entirely constituted from within, that their cultures grow up from the soil and belong to a fixed parcel of land as if from time immemorial. It is this conception of the constitution of a nation that has led to the fundamental split that still distinguishes European immigration policies from those of the United States.
    Related
    More From The Stone

    Read previous contributions to this series.

    The American approach to immigration is plainly rooted in historical exigencies connected to the appropriation of a continent, and it is this same history of appropriation that continues to induce shame in most Euro-Americans who might otherwise be tempted to describe themselves as natives. America has to recognize its hybrid and constructed identity, since the only people who can plausibly lay claim to native status are the very ones this new identity was conjured to displace. But in Europe no similar displacement plays a role in historical memory: Europeans can more easily imagine themselves to be their own natives, and so can imagine any demographic impact on the continent from the extra-European world as the harbinger of an eventual total displacement.

    There are values that are not easy to mock or dismiss informing European nativist anxiety. These values are not completely unconnected to the various movements to defend local traditions: the celebration of terroir and of “slow food,” the suspicion of multinational corporations. But like the celebrated tomato and so many other staples of various European cuisines, European cultural identity too is a product of longstanding networks of global exchange. These networks have tended to function for the enrichment of Europe and to the detriment of the rest of the world for the past several centuries, and it is this imbalance that in large part explains current patterns of immigration. Europe has never been self-contained, and its role in the world has both made it rich and left it with a unique legacy of responsibility to the great bulk of the world from which this wealth came.

    I witness the present situation from a position of privilege, as a special kind of foreigner: not the kind who is thought to be here to take up resources and to threaten tradition, but rather, it is supposed, to celebrate these traditions and to passively assent to native sentiments. The privilege, for me, is not just that I am not the target of discrimination, but also that I am able to learn quite a bit that would be kept from me if I had a different kind of accent, or darker skin. And while it is disheartening, what I hear in the streets is really only an echo of the rhetoric of politicians and purported intellectuals, who have found it convenient to blame the most powerless members of French society for the instability of the present and the uncertainty of the future.

    Related from The Stone: Seyla Benhabib, “The Morality of Migration.”
    Justin E. H. Smith

    Justin E. H. Smith is professor of the history and philosophy of science at the University of Paris 7, Denis Diderot. He is the author of “Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life” and the forthcoming “Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference: Race in Early Modern Philosophy.”

15. 

    Iñaki Luna

    2014-01-09

    Yes , we agree ; but do you know HAYEK ?
    Have you read ” The Road to SERFDOM” ??

    Authors & thinkers like HAYEK or René Guénon had understood it all as soon as the late 30’s and the 40’s !! … Amazing, isn’ it ?!?

16. 

    Cologero

    2014-01-09

    At least, Michel, that is what Venner believes. Perhaps this short piece by an American philosopher in Paris confirms it:
    Does Immigration Mean ‘France Is Over’? It is indeed curious that the American is disappointed by the remnants of French identity.

17. 

    Michel

    2014-01-09

    “This is happening now, “behind the scenes”, as it were, in popular culture although not yet in the political sphere.”

    Really? You mean that the public is undergoing some sort of re-awakening to true European identity? I thought all that new-age, new-atheism,new-right stuff was just bardo, the sort of shimmering glimmers of wandering influences from different epochs, slowly fading away, flicking them here and there, or that it was the result of suggestion from the counter-initiation in prepration for their establishment of the parody of genuine Spirituality.

    Or perhaps being more ‘positive’ it was a sort of minor pre-figuration of the new Golden Age. After all, the sun will rise from the West (though with globalization, what does ‘west’ mean? Is it really Europe, or is it possible that it just indicates the furthest extent of exhaustion in terms of possibility, from whence, due to the intense rapidity of this development, everything will suddenly be ‘suspended’ and become motionless, before the wheel starts turning again?) .

18. 

    Cologero

    2014-01-09

    I am familiar with Hayek’s work … do you see a relevance?

19. 

    Iñaki Luna

    2014-01-09

    And do you know HAYEK ( “The Road to Serfdom” ) ??

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