Counter-Currents
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
  • Webzine
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • Mailing List
  • About
  • Contact
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Comments feed
    • Podcast feed

LEVEL2

  • Webzine
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • Mailing List
  • About
  • Contact
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Comments feed
    • Podcast feed
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
Print January 24, 2011 1 comment

The Warrior & the City

Dominique Venner

717 words

Translated by Greg Johnson

Translations: Portuguese, Spanish

In 1814, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, Benjamin Constant wrote with relief: “We have arrived at the age of commerce, the age that must necessarily replace that of war, as the age of war necessarily had to precede it.” Naïve Benjamin! He took up the very widespread idea of indefinite progress supporting the advent of peace between men and nations.

The age of soft commerce replacing that of war . . . We know what the future made of that prophecy! The age of commerce was imposed, certainly, but by multiplying wars. Under the influence of commerce, science, and industry—in other words “progress”—wars even took on monstrous proportions that nobody could have imagined.

There was, however, some truth in Constant’s false forecast. If the wars continued and even thrived, on the other hand, the figure of the warrior lost his social prestige to the profit of the dubious figure of the tradesman. This is the new age in which we still live, for the time being.

The figure of the warrior was dethroned, and yet the institution of the military has endured more than any other in Europe after 1814. It has endured from the time of the Iliad—thirty centuries—while transforming, adapting to all changes in ages, war, societies, and political regimes, but still preserving its essence, which is the religion of pride, duty, and courage. This permanence in change is comparable only to that of another imposing institution, the Church (or the churches). The reader is shocked. A surprising comparison! And yet . . .

What is the army since Antiquity? It is a quasi-religious institution, with its own history, heroes, rules, and rites. A very old institution, older even than the Church, born from a need as old as humanity, and which is nowhere near ceasing. Among Europeans, it was born from a spirit that is specific to them and which—unlike the Chinese tradition, for example—makes war a value in itself. In other words, it was born from a civic religion arising from war, whose essence, in a word, is admiration for courage in the face of death.

This religion can be defined as that of the city in the Greek or Roman sense of the word. In more modern language, it is a religion of the fatherland, great or small. As Hector put it 30 centuries ago in Book XII of the Iliad, to deflect an ill omen: “It is not for a good outcome that we fight for our fatherland” (XII, 243). Courage and fatherland are connected. In the last battle of the Trojan War, feeling beleaguered and doomed, Hector tears himself from despair with the cry: “Oh well! No, I do not intend to die without a fight, nor without glory, nor without some great deed that is retold in times to come” (XXII, 304–305). One finds this cry of tragic pride in all epochs of a history that glorifies the ill-fated hero, magnified by an epic defeat: Thermopylae, the Song of Roland, Camerone, or Diên Biên Phu.

Chronologically, the warrior band comes before the state. Romulus and his bellicose companions first traced the future boundaries of the City and laid down its inflexible law. For having transgressed it, Remus was sacrificed by his brother. Then, and only then, did the founders seize the Sabine women to ensure their descent. In the foundation of the European state, the order of free warriors precedes that of families. This is why Plato saw Sparta as far closer to the model of the Greek city than Athens.[1]

Weak though they may be, today’s European armies constitute islands of order in a crumbling environment where fictions of states promote chaos. Even diminished, an army remains an institution based on strong discipline and participating in civic discipline. That is why this institution carries in it a genetic seed of restoration, not by seizing power or militarizing society, but by reasserting the primacy of order over disorder. It is what the compagnonnages of the sword did after the disintegration of the Roman Empire and so many others after that.

Note

1. In Les métamorphoses de la cité, essai sur la dynamique de l’Occident (Paris: Flammarion, 2010), based on the reading of Homer, Pierre Manent highlights the role of warlike aristocracies in the foundation of the ancient city.

Source: http://www.dominiquevenner.fr/#/edito-nrh-52-homme-de-guerre/3777966

Related

  • “Should War Be Criminalized?”

  • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 440
    John Morgan & the Best Month Ever on The Writers’ Bloc

  • “Many Strange & Terrible Days”:
    Gothic Science Fiction & Modern War, Part 2

  • “Many Strange & Terrible Days”:
    Gothic Science Fiction & Modern War, Part 1

  • Implications of the Fall of Communism in Europe:
    A Visionary Reflection

  • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 434
    The Writers’ Bloc with HapaPerspective on Militias

  • Mortal Instruments:
    Mapping the Geomythologies of Western Fantasy, Part II

  • Guillaume Durocher’s The Ancient Ethnostate

Tags

commercial societyDominique VennerHomerJohnson translationthe militarytranslationswarwarrior ethicswarriors

1 comment

  1. Fourmyle of Ceres says:
    January 24, 2011 at 8:58 pm

    I think it is of critical importance to the metapolitical project (ours, at any rate!) to realize the importance of the warrior caste in the foundation and development of civilization.

    It is thus obvious that our racial enemies have sought at all points to remove the possibility of a warrior caste – much less an aristocratic warrior caste – from developing in our sociiety.

    The chemical castration of our sons in elementary school, on the low end, and the de facto gelding of the armed forces, on the high end, further exemplifies this tendency.

    The answer is to fight such tendencies, while consciously developing our own warrior caste in the aristocratic cultural framework.

    “Easier said than done,” I know, but we are literally having the masculine foundation of our posterity being literally killed in the womb, and marginalized at all points thereafter.

    We can learn from this.

Comments are closed.

If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.

Note on comments privacy & moderation

Your email is never published nor shared.

Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.

  • Recent posts

    • White Americans’ Racial Consciousness is No Longer an Unknown Quantity

      Beau Albrecht

      10

    • The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre

      Jim Goad

      14

    • White Identity Nationalism, Part 2

      Neil Kumar

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 448
      The Writers’ Bloc with Karl Thorburn on Mutually Assured Destruction

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The US Spring Primaries are a Sign that White Identity Politics is Here to Stay

      Cyan Quinn

      6

    • The Union Jackal, May 2022

      Mark Gullick

      3

    • White Identity Nationalism, Part 1

      Neil Kumar

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 447
      New Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • On Racial Humor

      Spencer J. Quinn

      25

    • Facts on the Ground

      Hamilton T. Burger

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 446
      James J. O’Meara on Hunter S. Thompson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco:
      Parte 3, Genocídio Branco

      Greg Johnson

    • The Worst Week Yet:
      May 15-21, 2022

      Jim Goad

      24

    • Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts

      Anthony Bavaria

      6

    • The Copypasta Apocalypse
      From Jesus to Gendron, via Brother Stair

      James J. O'Meara

    • The Life & Death of a Patriot:
      Personal Reflections on the Great Replacement

      Veiko Hessler

      2

    • Remembering Richard Wagner
      (May 22, 1813–February 13, 1883)

      Greg Johnson

    • This Weekend’s Livestreams
      James O’Meara on Counter-Currents Radio & Karl Thorburn on The Writers’ Bloc

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Every Man an Editor

      Greg Johnson

      7

    • Against the Negative Approach in Politics

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      6

    • What Christian Nationalism Looks Like in Current-Year America

      Robert Hampton

      25

    • “Should War Be Criminalized?”

      Greg Johnson

      5

    • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco:
      Parte 2, Extinção Branca

      Greg Johnson

    • Morálka lidské mysli Jonathana Haidta, část druhá

      Collin Cleary

    • Animals & Children First

      Jim Goad

      41

    • The Great Replacement Prize

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Julius Evola
      (May 19, 1898–June 11, 1974)

      Greg Johnson

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 445
      The Writers’ Bloc with Kathryn S. on Mircea Eliade

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco:
      Parte 1, Introdução

      Greg Johnson

    • Extremities:
      A Film from Long Ago that Anticipated Today’s Woke Hollywood

      Stephen Paul Foster

      10

    • The National Health Service:
      My Part in Its Downfall

      Mark Gullick

      10

    • Male Supremacism in the United States?

      Margot Metroland

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 444
      Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • Fallen Castes

      Thomas Steuben

      18

    • Work to Be Such a Man

      Morris van de Camp

      6

    • Be a Medici:
      New Patrons for a New Renaissance

      Robert Wallace

      21

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 443
      Interview with Jim Goad

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Das Manifest des weißen Nationalismus:
      Teil 5, Die Wiederherstellung Unserer Weissen Heimatländer

      Greg Johnson

    • Where Do We Go from Buffalo?

      Jim Goad

      42

    • Rammstein’s Deutschland

      Ondrej Mann

      8

    • If I Lost Hope

      Greg Johnson

      5

    • Das Manifest des weißen Nationalismus:
      Teil 4, Wie Können Wir den Weissen Genozid Beenden?

      Greg Johnson

    • Payton Gendron & the Buffalo Massacre

      Greg Johnson

      66

    • The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Between Now and May 20th, Give a New Monthly Gift and Receive a New Book!

      Cyan Quinn

    • This Weekend’s Livestreams
      Jim Goad on Counter-Currents Radio & Kathryn S. on The Writers’ Bloc

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Hinton Rowan Helper

      Spencer J. Quinn

      11

    • Make Art Great Again:
      The Good Optics of Salvador Dalí, Part 3

      James J. O'Meara

    • Babette’s Feast

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      2

    • Das Manifest des weißen Nationalismus:
      Teil 3, Weisser Völkermord

      Greg Johnson

    • Hey, Portland Synagogue Vandal — Whatcha Doin’?

      Jim Goad

      26

  • Recent comments

    • Shift The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre Obama probably twatted that tweet about "For crying out loud, people, let's not forget career...
    • Shift The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre This one's dead, Beau.
    • Beau Albrecht The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre I figure it probably was a copycat crime, following all the other stuff that's been happening.  He...
    • Jud Jackson White Americans’ Racial Consciousness is No Longer an Unknown Quantity Excellent article.  One small objection.  You write "... keep in mind that only about a third of...
    • Jeffrey A Freeman White Americans’ Racial Consciousness is No Longer an Unknown Quantity When I was deep in my fallen state and hated the truth with a reactive passion, blessed was anyone...
    • Beau Albrecht White Americans’ Racial Consciousness is No Longer an Unknown Quantity I remember when comment sections used to be common for MSM and other leftist sites.  Most of them...
    • Beau Albrecht White Americans’ Racial Consciousness is No Longer an Unknown Quantity I've had some fairly similar experiences.  I say something contrary to The Narrative, and from the...
    • Philip White Americans’ Racial Consciousness is No Longer an Unknown Quantity More good news for white people. All races besides had fewer births year-over-year in 2021 vs...
    • speedoSanta The US Spring Primaries are a Sign that White Identity Politics is Here to Stay How disappointing.  I can’t imagine a candidate arguing more honestly, reasonably, patriotically, or...
    • The Alienation Constant The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre I think that all societies — even self-contained, racially and linguistically homogeneous societies...
    • Shift The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre It's a quandary:  How to pin this one on racist global warming?
    • Shift The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre It's the entertainers who tend to give us: "I care so much more about murdered children than...
    • Romulus The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre Ramos ended up killing two little white girls, so he can go to hell. Otherwise, this is not the...
    • James Kirkpatrick The US Spring Primaries are a Sign that White Identity Politics is Here to Stay Well put, Cyan!  This is very edifying. 16,400 people.  I don't care what percentage that is of...
    • Jeffrey A Freeman The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre Was Richard Ramirez reincarnated into globohomo?
    • La-Z-Man The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre The quiet type. I am reminded of a comedian who once said that it's the mosquitoes that don't buzz...
    • Peter Quint The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre All were gun controls psyops! Biden did the same thing, beginning in Obama's second term. Biden has...
    • Dr ExCathedra Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 447
      New Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson
      On the necessary link between the Constitution and the people whose culture it expresses: "......
    • Shift The Tex-Mex Misfit Massacre Can't help but notice that, so far, no one has called the killer a brown supremacist. These...
    • La-Z-Man White Americans’ Racial Consciousness is No Longer an Unknown Quantity These are very encouraging numbers. Assuming equal likelihood, 1/5 for each question response being...
  • Books

    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Collin Cleary
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Julius Evola
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Greg Johnson
    • Jason Jorjani
    • Ward Kendall
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Trevor Lynch
    • H. L. Mencken
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • Andy Nowicki
    • James J. O'Meara
    • Michael O'Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Tito Perdue
    • Michael Polignano
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Savitri Devi
    • Fenek Solère
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey
  • Webzine Authors

    Contemporary authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Beau Albrecht
    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Michael Bell
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Collin Cleary
    • Giles Corey
    • Jef Costello
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Ricardo Duchesne
    • Émile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Stephen Paul Foster
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Jim Goad
    • Tom Goodrich
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Richard Houck
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas R. Jeelvy
    • Greg Johnson
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • Trevor Lynch
    • Kevin MacDonald
    • G. A. Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Margot Metroland
    • Millennial Woes
    • John Morgan
    • James J. O'Meara
    • Michael O'Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Hervé Ryssen
    • Kathryn S.
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solère
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunić
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Dominique Venner
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Michael Walker
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
    • Leo Yankevich

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Julius Evola
    • Ernst Jünger
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Francis Parker Yockey
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
Sponsored Links
Alaska Chaga Antelope Hill Publishing Imperium Press American Renaissance A Dissident’s Guide to Blacks and Africa The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Editor-in-Chief
Greg Johnson
Books for sale
  • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema
  • The Enemy of Europe
  • Imperium
  • Reactionary Modernism
  • Manifesto del Nazionalismo Bianco
  • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco
  • Vade Mecum
  • Whiteness: The Original Sin
  • Space Vixen Trek Episode 17: Tomorrow the Stars
  • The Year America Died
  • Passing the Buck
  • Mysticism After Modernism
  • Gold in the Furnace
  • Defiance
  • Forever & Ever
  • Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition
  • Resistance
  • Materials for All Future Historians
  • Love Song of the Australopiths
  • White Identity Politics
  • Here’s the Thing
  • Trevor Lynch: Part Four of the Trilogy
  • Graduate School with Heidegger
  • It’s Okay to Be White
  • The World in Flames
  • The White Nationalist Manifesto
  • From Plato to Postmodernism
  • The Gizmo
  • Return of the Son of Trevor Lynch’s CENSORED Guide to the Movies
  • Toward a New Nationalism
  • The Smut Book
  • The Alternative Right
  • My Nationalist Pony
  • Dark Right: Batman Viewed From the Right
  • The Philatelist
  • Confessions of an Anti-Feminist
  • East and West
  • Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Will Come
  • White Like You
  • Numinous Machines
  • Venus and Her Thugs
  • Cynosura
  • North American New Right, vol. 2
  • You Asked For It
  • More Artists of the Right
  • Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics
  • The Homo & the Negro
  • Rising
  • The Importance of James Bond
  • In Defense of Prejudice
  • Confessions of a Reluctant Hater (2nd ed.)
  • The Hypocrisies of Heaven
  • Waking Up from the American Dream
  • Green Nazis in Space!
  • Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country
  • Heidegger in Chicago
  • The End of an Era
  • Sexual Utopia in Power
  • What is a Rune? & Other Essays
  • Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • The Lightning & the Sun
  • The Eldritch Evola
  • Western Civilization Bites Back
  • New Right vs. Old Right
  • Journey Late at Night: Poems and Translations
  • The Non-Hindu Indians & Indian Unity
  • Baader Meinhof ceramic pistol, Charles Kraaft 2013
  • Pulp Fascism
  • The Lost Philosopher, Second Expanded Edition
  • Trevor Lynch’s A White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • And Time Rolls On
  • Artists of the Right
  • North American New Right, Vol. 1
  • Some Thoughts on Hitler
  • Tikkun Olam and Other Poems
  • Summoning the Gods
  • Taking Our Own Side
  • Reuben
  • The Node
  • The New Austerities
  • Morning Crafts
  • The Passing of a Profit & Other Forgotten Stories
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
Copyright © 2022 Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd.

Paywall Access





Please enter your email address. You will receive mail with link to set new password.

Edit your comment