Charlemagne by Albrecht Dürer, circa 1512
997 words
Translated by Greg Johnson
When you belong to a nation associated with St. Louis, Philip the Fair, Richelieu, Louis XIV, or Napoleon, a country which in the late 17th century, was called the “great nation” (the most populated and most dangerous), it is cruel to recount the history of repeated setbacks: the aftermath of Waterloo, 1870, 1940, and again in 1962, the ignominious end of French rule in Algeria. A certain pride necessarily suffers.
By the 1930s, many among the boldest French minds had imagined a united Europe as a way to an understanding with Germany and as a solution to the constant decline of France. After the disaster that was World War II (which amplified that of 1914–1918), a project was born that is in itself legitimate. New bloodlettings between the French and Germans should be outlawed forever. The idea was to tie together the two great sister nations of the former Carolingian Empire. First by an economic association (the European Coal and Steel Community), then by a political association. General de Gaulle wanted to make this happen with the Elysée Treaty (January 22, 1963), but the United States, in their hostility, forestalled it by putting pressure on West Germany.
Then came the technocratic globalists who gave us the gas works called the “European Union.” In practice, this is the absolute negation of its name. The fake “European Union” has become the biggest obstacle to a genuine political settlement that respects the particularities of the European peoples of the former Carolingian Empire. Europe, it must be remembered, is primarily a unitary multi-millennial civilization going back to Homer, but it is also a potential power zone and the aspiration for a future that remains to be built.
Why an aspiration to power? Because no European nations today, neither France nor Germany nor Italy, despite brave fronts, are sovereign states any longer.
There are three main attributes of sovereignty:
First attribute: the ability to make war and conclude peace. The US, Russia, Israel, or China can. Not France. That was over after the end of the war in Algeria (1962), despite the efforts of General de Gaulle and our nuclear deterrent, which will never be used by France on its own (unless the United States has disappeared, which is unpredictable). Another way to pose the question: for whom are the French soldiers dying in Afghanistan? Certainly not for France, which has no business there, but for the United States. We are the auxiliaries of the USA. Like Germany and Italy, France is a vassal state of the great Atlantic suzerain power. It is best to face this to recover our former pride.
Second attribute of sovereignty: control of territory and population. Ability to distinguish between one’s own people and others . . . We know the reality is that the French state, by its policy, laws, courts, has organized the “great replacement” of populations, we impose a preference for immigrants and Muslims, with 8 million Arab-Muslims (and more waiting), bearers of another history, another civilization, and another future (Sharia).
Third attribute of sovereignty: one’s own currency. We know what that is.
The agonizing conclusion: France, as a state, is no longer sovereign and no longer has its own destiny. This is a consequence of the disasters of the century of 1914 (the 20th century) and the general decline of Europe and Europeans.
But there is a “but”: if France does not exist as a sovereign state, the French people and nation still exist, despite all efforts to dissolve them into rootless individuals! This is the great destabilizing paradox of the French mind. We were always taught to confuse identity with sovereignty by being taught that the nation is a creation of the state, which, for the French, is historically false.
It is for me a very old topic of discussion that I had previously summarized in an opinion column published in Le Figaro on February 1, 1999 under the title: “Sovereignty is not Identity.”
No, the sovereignty of the state is not to be confused with national identity. France’s universalist tradition and centralist state were for centuries the enemy of the carnal nation and its constituent communities. The state has always acted relentlessly to uproot the French and transform them into the interchangeable inhabitants of a geographic zone. It has always acted to rupture the national tradition. Look at the July 14 celebrations: it celebrates a repugnant uprising, not a great memory of unity. Look at the ridiculous emblem of the French Republic: a plaster Marianne wearing a revolutionary cap. Look at the hideous logos that have been imposed to replace the arms of the traditional regions. Remember that in 1962 the state used all its strength against the French in Algeria, abandoned to their misery. Similarly, today, it is not difficult to see that the state gives preference to immigrants (construction of mosques, legalizing halal slaughter) at the expense of the natives.
There is nothing new in this state of war against the living nation. The Jacobin Republic merely followed the example of the Bourbons, which Tocqueville has demonstrated in The Old Regime and the French Revolution before Taine and other historians. Our textbooks have taught blind admiration for the way the Bourbons crushed “feudalism,” that is to say, the nobility and the communities they represented. What a brilliant policy! By strangling the nobility and rooted communities, this dynasty destroyed the foundation of the old monarchy. Thus, in the late 18th century, the individualistic (human rights) Revolution triumphed in France but failed everywhere else in Europe thanks to the persistence of the feudal system and strong communities. Reread what Renan says in his Intellectual and Moral Reform in France. The reality is that in France the state is not the defender of the nation. It is a machine of power that has its own logic, willingly lent to the service of the enemies of the nation, having become one of the main agents of the deconstruction of identity.
6 comments
The worst disaster of all was the dysgenic slaughter of 1914-1918. It may very well still prove to be the death blow to the white race.
What about the French Revolution? According to Nesta Webster, about 8 million French died then. I suppose the French never recovered from the horrors of French Revolution? And shortly after that, Napoleon got the French involved in more wars.
What a sad, sobering article. The true irony is that the triumph of the 18th century “Enlightenment,” a European set of philosophical concepts, has turned against us everywhere. I suppose it could not be otherwise, however. When Libertie, Egalitie, and Fraternitie replaced Blood and Soil, it could only go downhill from there. A people can never forget their roots.
Our Race is our Nation.
Very interesting. The state is not the people. I have never heard of Dominique Venner or Ernst Renan. I have now and with the help of the internet know a bit more than I did before.
One could say that Breivik is fighting for the soul of Norway.
Thanks for this. I will explore their work further.
“The reality is that in France the state is not the defender of the nation. It is a machine of power that has its own logic, willingly lent to the service of the enemies of the nation, having become one of the main agents of the deconstruction of identity.”
Great essay. However I see more similarity than difference in the condition of France and the US. We could easily transform Venner’s closing statement,
The reality is that in the US the state is not the defender of the nation. It is a machine of power that has its own logic, willingly lent to the service of the enemies of the nation, having become one of the main agents of the deconstruction of identity.
Much of the rest of the essay could also apply, with the changing of a few details.
Neither Americana nor French soldiers die in Afghanistan for the benefit of their nation or ours, but for the benefit of “our” government. And what is the last war fought for the benefit of our nation? Perhaps WWII. I’m not an uncritical supporter of the Allies, and in many ways we weren’t very neutral even before we entered the war, but once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the Germans obligingly declared war on us, we probably had to fight. But have any of our wars since been for the good of the American people or nation?
“I see more similarity than difference in the condition of France and the U.S.” Indeed. Claes G. Ryn has written an excellent book, America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire (a revised edition of The New Jacobinism), which addresses what he calls “neo-Jacobinism” in the U.S. The contemporary state has effectively conscripted the nation to serve its anti-national interests and ideology. It reminds one of J. A. Hobson’s remark that imperialism is a parasite upon patriotism, as well as François Duprat’s remark that the French state was at one time both colonizing and colonized.
Some of the ideas and positions of the European New Right are interesting and relevant to the North American New Right, but they need to be properly adapted to the North American context. I think we need to fundamentally rethink the nature of the nation, the state, sovereignty, and nationalism. What should these things mean today and tomorrow for our people? How should we distinguish between friends and foes? How should we define our political mission and tasks?
“I’m not an uncritical supporter of the Allies, and in many ways we weren’t very neutral even before we entered the war, but once the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the Germans obligingly declared war on us, we probably had to fight.” The question is, for whom and for what did Americans fight? Their victory was a Pyrrhic — or rather Judaic — one. It’s not necessary to be sympathetic towards the Axis regimes to recognize this fact.
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