Counter-Currents
1,215 words
German translation here
On November 14th, the day after the deadly attacks in Paris by Muslim terrorists, pianist Davide Martello set up his portable grand piano close to the Bataclan Theatre where 89 of the victims were murdered. In front of the assembled media he then played an instrumental version of John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
“I just knew I had to do something,” Martello said. “I wanted to be there to try and comfort and offer a sign of hope. I can’t bring people back but I can inspire them with music and when people are inspired they can do anything. That’s why I played ‘Imagine.’”
It would be easy to mock the naivety and impotent sentimentalism of such effusions, but the remarkable thing is how widespread this mentality actually is. In fact, “Imagine” is probably something of an atheist hymn, signalling the utopia to come if only we can all just hope hard enough. “Imagine there’s no heaven. It’s easy if you try.” Certainly it’s easy for the deracinated citizens of European countries slouching towards oblivion to imagine that heaven doesn’t exist. The default setting for any young, intelligent European is secularism, diversity, and consumerism. In fact, pretty much the values of the French Republic.
This presumably goes some way towards explaining why the response to this atrocity consists largely of people declaring that they will continue with their way of life/values as an act of defiance against the killers. The hope being that shopping and consuming junk culture will somehow magic away the enmity of the invaders. Or at least it might stop us from having to think about it.
“Imagine” is also a hymn to globalization, homogenization, and the erasure of identity: “Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion too.” For those citizen consumers who are deeply mired in notions of universalist, pacific fraternity, who implicitly believe in the end of history narrative whereby American style “freedom” and democracy will triumph over all preceding forms of statehood, it really is difficult to understand why we can’t just lose all borders and live as world citizens. After all, the jihadists are motivated by belonging to the caliphate, a religiously constituted state. Clearly, identity and religion are the cause of the problems, so we should eschew these things in order to provide a solution. More secularism, more migration, and more equality. More poison labelled as medicine.
Such wishful thinking is always appealing because nice fantasies are inherently more attractive than harsh realities. And the (rather obvious) reality is that an aggressive enemy will not be intimidated by pacifism. No matter how many “if onlys” we whisper to the sky the reality remains that Europe has invited within its borders a very large number of people who have every intention of carrying out further atrocities, and decadent whining only serves to strengthen their purpose. Because their purpose is transcendent, it is to do the will of God and they are entirely willing to die in this purpose.
Now, this is not really a reason to admire them; they should be rightly condemned as the callous killers that they are. But what we need to set in opposition to them is not a further erosion of our already crumbling sacred traditions, but a redoubling of our efforts to resanctify our own dormant traditions and, perhaps even more urgently, to create new ones. Only in this way will we be able to remember a sense of the transcendent that belongs to us. Only then will we begin to manifest the inner will that is required to halt our own decline and to regain our lands. Because the present generation of Europeans are in danger of becoming as much strangers to Europe as the Islamic newcomers.
But why is a sense of the transcendent necessary? Isn’t that just wishing for a utopia in the same way that those who revere John Lennon’s lyrics wish for their egalitarian utopia? Well, in fact, they are entirely distinct processes. The need to seek out that which is sacred to Europeans and to manifest a transcendent collective will is a movement above the level of the individual. The sort of secularism and egalitarianism that is increasingly held up as an ideal is a descent below the level of the individual to that of the mass entity. The need for a transcendent purpose is not at all the same thing as a need to escape the real world as it is actually constituted, it is instead a channelling of the highest impulses in man towards the creation of something better.
At his trial in 1951, Julius Evola said, “My principles are only those that, before the French Revolution, every well-born person considered sane and normal.”[1] Indeed, the beginning of the present malaise might plausibly be dated to the revolution of 1789 and the establishment of the French republic. The ideals of the republic have left us where we are now, with the assumption that anyone at all from anywhere in the world can in principle become a citizen of any European country they choose. Each individual is entirely interchangeable. But, of course, the recent arrivals to Europe are happy to claim citizenship without leaving behind their pre-French revolution beliefs. And, as Kipling wrote many years ago, we have no way of telling, “when the Gods of his far-off land / Shall repossess his blood.”
The reinstatement of these higher principles will be the great challenge for our generation. But it is important to note that in seeking the sacred and in re-embracing Traditional values we are not seeking to turn the clock back. Evola was clear about this: “For the authentic revolutionary conservative, what really counts is to be faithful not to past forms and institutions, but rather to principles of which such forms and institutions have been particular expressions, adequate for a specific period of time and in a specific geographical area.”[2]
Our traditions are varied and diverse but they all are expressive of a deeper principle that stands as the highest ideal of European man. This principle seeks to organise our societies and to orientate them towards an eternal truth. This truth exists whether or not we choose to acknowledge it. The particular forms of its expression will vary from country to country but the important thing is that it is manifested throughout the European continent.
Ironically, it is the pursuit of secularism that is the superstitious distraction of the present age, not the pursuit of the sacred. It is superstitious because it believes that the current global conflict can be resolved through appeals to the ever shifting sands of rationality. It believes that ultimately the soldiers of Islam will come to share in the revelation of Enlightenment thinking and lay down with the lambs of the West. Rationality is a precision tool that will be of great benefit to us after the crisis has been averted. For now we must put aside the longing for a silly utopia of coexistence and peaceful shopping. At the close of the 21st century, Europe will be dominated by a particular religious world view. Which is it to be?
Notes
1. Julius Evola, Men among the Ruins: Post-war Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2002), 294.
2. Ibid., 115.
25 comments
I agree that we need a “channelling of the highest impulses in man towards the creation of something better.” But that doesn’t need to occur within the context of traditional religion, and I am not keen on the opposition to secularism in this essay.
There is nothing wrong with secularism itself. In fact, I think any pro-White movement must be secular in aggregate because there would be too many pro-Whites who do not follow whatever particular faith one might try to establish for it to succeed. We also must be tolerant of those with various faiths that can maintain pro-White positions for the same reason.
I know the point of this essay wasn’t to criticize secular pro-White advocates or nationalists, yet I still think opposition to the implication that secularism = bad needs to noted.
I think the author was using the term “secular” to refer to lack of spirituality, not per se legal practice. In other words, I don’t think Christopher Pankhurst is advocating theocracy, I think he is merely advocating an increase in spirituality. As for us being tolerant of “various faiths”, there is honestly not that many choices of faiths one can choose from that are comparable with European culture, you mainly have just Christianity and Paganism. My opinion is that there should be a reconciliation between these two, and once that happens we can simply speak of general spirituality among Europeans. As for atheists/agnostics, I have no desire to see them oppressed or coerced. Any individual should be allowed to believe in whatever he or she wishes, but I don’t think it is healthy for atheism to dominate a society. I think a society needs to be spiritual in order to be healthy.
This is an incredibly well-argued piece with some of the best critiques of the modern-day system/ideology put into simplified yet effective forms. I honestly hope it spreads and becomes popular. Many of the things you wrote don’t need clarification or elaboration, but there is just one that I would like to comment on.
First, to quote: “But why is a sense of the transcendent necessary? Isn’t that just wishing for a utopia in the same way that those who revere John Lennon’s lyrics wish for their egalitarian utopia?… The need for a transcendent purpose is not at all the same thing as a need to escape the real world as it is actually constituted, it is instead a channelling of the highest impulses in man towards the creation of something better.”
I think you make a good point about the difference between the egalitarian/leftist cause versus the transcendent one. The egalitarian/leftist cause does indeed aspire and lead to a base, nihilistic, and meaningless world. The problem however is that the leftists don’t see it that way, they actually believe that striving towards a secular, egalitarian, individualist world actually appeals to the “highest impulses in man.” They actually think that they are morally and philosophically superior to people like us who value identity, healthy culture, etc. And this is why you can’t just talk about “harsh realities” and “aggressive enemies”, because these egalitarian/leftist types believe that those “realities” are base and repulsive (even if they are indeed real) and are thus something to continually strive to overcome no matter how futile the cause seems. This is what they believe.
This is why the first thing that one needs to do when confronting the egalitarian/leftist worldview is to first prove that it is morally inferior and leads to an undesirable world. This is different from talking about “harsh realities.” In contrast to that, what I am saying to do here is that you need to prove that the leftist/egalitarian worldview is undesirable. Meaning, you should not focus on the fact that it is impossible to achieve, but rather that it is unattractive. In other words, you need to convince the person or people you are talking to that the egalitarian/leftist end goal is not something they would really want to see come about.
The second thing you need to do right after that is to of course offer them an alternative – your alternative. And you need to prove that it is a morally and philosophically superior alternative, because they have been brainwashed to think otherwise.
To quote the article again: “The reinstatement of these higher principles will be the great challenge for our generation.”
This is why the first thing that we need to do is not to focus on reinstating these higher principles into physical practice, but rather convincing the current generation that these higher principles are something that they want. The culture of the people must be changed from within them before it can manifest into something material. In other words, the people must be philosophically and spiritually transformed prior to political or material transformation taking place.
If Science, Nature, Aristocracy have given way to Technology, Materialism, Individualism so completely, it would seem that there is little left to promote!
You seek the transcendent. Transcending what? Normal, regular, profane, bourgeois existence?
Yet it is the vapid middle-class, even the shopkeepers, who still understand such simple notions as ‘quality over quantity’. As an aside, I tell you that our lords are frightened by the thought of a dozen or so people – in any industry – devoted to this notion and making them look like the very shabby hucksters that they are. And this is always more likely than something so grand as ‘the principle of aristocracy’ being restored.
The first step to ‘reviving’ the tradition is to recognise the SPECIFIC ways in which YOUR PREDECESSORS WERE YOUR SUPERIORS, not to say wistfully that their gods were false and are dead.
Quote: “You seek the transcendent. Transcending what? Normal, regular, profane, bourgeois existence? Yet it is the vapid middle-class, even the shopkeepers, who still understand such simple notions as ‘quality over quantity’.”
The only thing these bourgeois types value about ‘quality over quantity’ is how it will help them make money or how it will help them consume better material goods. These are not the values we care to promote. Sure material existence is a part of life and some effort should be put into making it go well, but it should not dominate culture and life so totally like the way it does today. It is simply not healthy. People need higher things, whether they consciously realize it or not. The current materialistic culture is one of the things that is leading to our doom as a people. “Transcending what?” you ask. I think I just answered it right there.
Of course, I agree – but I note that most of the Western critics of modernity have emerged from the middle-class, with its very worldly emphasis on education and on health.
It is increasingly evident that European man is NOT simply suiciding – spiritually or physically.
“most of the Western critics of modernity have emerged from the middle-class”
Not really. Not if you consider all the many critics from the multiple European countries, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc. They come from a variety of different classes (I can think of many from peasant, upper class, or even particularly noble class).
Well since I do not wish to ‘hijack’ this discussion, let me just say that I disagree on this point – I think that the middle-class would be over-represented on any list covering the last 150 years.
I don’t think you are right, factually speaking. But does it really matter? Even if it were true, that may be because at one point in Western history most people belonged to the middle class in Western countries, hence the middle class would be the class that would produce the most of anything. Another reason it may be is because the middle class was the class most experienced with modern life and culture, hence people coming from the middle class would know best what is wrong with it. Again, this is assuming you are right.
It matters for the following reason – you will not transform the majority of an atheistic, materialist, comfortable middle-class into a group of self-sacrificing warrior-poet-priests ( I am not ascribing this view to you!).
You may be able to transform certain things that are held dear, for instance, individualism, materialism, technology – into something that is at least equivocal and not simply ‘progressive’. And I think that there is already equivocation on most of these things – but the left has totally controlled the tenor of any critique. At many universities, Nietzsche and Heidegger are taught under the umbrella of ‘continental philosophy’ which means little more than post-war Marxo-Freudianism.
You’d be surprised how willing people can be to change given the right circumstances. A lot of the things that are seemingly entrenched in Western society are not as deeply entrenched as you might think, they are really here only because of particular circumstances.
I must also say that, in any case, class is not what matters. We’re talking about values here, not class.
The jews are conducting damage control now; they are dispatching their white christian clerics (WCC) to assess the situation. The WCCs will ensure that the white population remain passive, if they do not they will receive a midnight visit from the police. The jews are worried because numbers and equipment are still on the side of the French whites, they don’t want the muslims to strike too soon. There will be an increase in non-white immigrants to France now.
The overt “peace” narrative is entirely deliberate. The intentions being:
1) ‘Trigger’ those who oppose liberals into advocating the opposite of peace as the solution
2) Ensuring that they ‘own’ the peace narrative and that it cannot be used by their opponents
A bit off the main point, but I ‘liked’ the use of the shocking picture that illustrates this article. Instead of hiding the real sight of the outcome of the acts of terror, we have to show it to the large audiences. That’s what they have been doing when promoting the ‘Holocaust’: through that endless cue of documentaries it was probably the first time when we saw a starving (fe)male integral nude, a pile of dead corpses, and other more or less shocking things. This was shown and allowed to do so in order to shock the audience. No other event has ever been allowed (maybe a part from 9/11 -no coincidence-) such horrible sights. And shock it caused. Instead of what the MSM is doing now, by focusing on the reaction of the people, their fear, sadness, and other material for afternoon TV talkshows. To focus on collective fear and hysteria ultimately will be used in order to justify to further erode our civil liberties. So, we have to spread this (terrible) images. Bravo.
Also, another short remark: I hope everyone on our field remains calm and wise. Just one more/any WN lone-wolf would be a disaster. Instead, we must focus on how to build beyond ourselves, networking and setting up discussion and information forums, and so on. That’s the real challenge. No more warrior-like fantasies, but hard and wise work for the long term success and change.
“We need to a redoubling to resanctify our own traditions”….
That’s right! I don’t know how many times I have made this point on various blogs appropriate to this kind of topic. I get a huge number of standard responses, having to do with the founding fathers being deists, religion is a primitive explanatory model of reality, before science came on the scene.etc. They always miss the point, the point being that it doesn’t matter two hoots if you don’t believe that the wine is the blood of Christ literally or other Christian beliefs. What matters is that by abandoning the Christian tradition instead of supporting it as a keystone to Western culture, you are leaving a huge vacuum, that will be filled by some other value system. Afterall, as I point out to every person I always debate on the value of our traditional Christian culture in the U.S. and , it is traditional, because anyone who can see, can see that from one end of Main St. anywhere U.S.A. to the other, there are thousands of buildings, some quite old, that have a cross on top of them!! So, you better believe Christianity was and is an American tradition/religion..
I really hope that picture takes off as a meme. It could be far more effective than countless articles at possibly changing the minds of those types. Especially if they feel any type of ownership of what happened because of their actions.
I don’t believe that Islam can ultimately conquer Europe because the religion itself is essential national. Arab ways will never mesh with western ways. It might be good for the French to fall into Muslim hands for a while. Maybe they’ll be forced to Man up.
The closing line “Which is it to be?” should more properly read “Whose is it to be?” A point of identitarian grammar.
I find it obscene that choruses of cretins started singing kumbaya right after the attacks in Paris. I wish that Islamists would blow themselves up in the midst of these cretins, but however stupid and savage the Islamists are, they probably know better than to attack their objective collaborators in the colonization and Islamization of France.
A German translation of Christopher Pankhurst’s essay can be found here:
Nach dem Pariser Massaker
I also recommend reading these posts:
Germany is going down by Dunkler Phönix
What is at stake by Deep Roots
To all Europans (in five languages) and
Massive immigration is genocide (in three languages) by the team of the blog As der Schwerter („Ace of Swords“)
“Germany is going down” – is this the best that German Nationalists can do and say ?… that their country is going down ? : Are we all supposed to join in the sobbing ?
Are these German Nationalists not familiar with that political wisdom: Never let a good crisis go to waste ?
The way to make a big positive gain out of the Refugee-immigration crisis engulfing Germany and Europe, is to agree and to say, “Yes, the refugee crisis is a human tragedy, and the cause of the tragedy is the wars that the American -led NATO has inflicted on the countries of the Arab-Muslim Middle East: the wicked and wilful destruction inflicted by the USA and its NATO allies on Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and possibly Iran and who knows who else in the near future .”
The Europeans should apologise for the war-crimes committed by their political leaders. [Tony Blair, the British Prime Minster, who launched these wars in tandem with the US president, George W. Bush, is regularly condemned as a “war criminal” even by the leaders of his own socialist party here in the U.K.]. The Europeans can make amends – financial compensation- for the damage done to those lands made unliveable by the NATO war-mongers. Financial compensation and generous aid will then enable the refugees to return to their own countries – it is taken for granted that everybody wants to live, at peace, in their own country. And then the Europeans can close down NATO by requiring the American military forces that have been in occupation of Europe this last seventy years to return to the United States of America.
Really all things considered, how to turn this situation around, is as simple as ABC.
“Really all things considered, how to turn this situation around, is as simple as ABC.” True, but as Clausewitz said in On War, “Everything is very simple in War, but the simplest thing is difficult.” The full paragraph from the chapter “Friction in War” — something you must be more than familiar with as a veteran British nationalist — is worth citing in full:
“Everything is very simple in War, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen War, Suppose now a traveller, who towards evening expects to accomplish the two stages at the end of his day’s journey, four or five leagues, with post-horses, on the high road — it is nothing. He arrives now at the last station but one, finds no horses, or very bad ones; then a hilly country, bad roads; it is a dark night, and he is glad when, after a great deal of trouble, he reaches the next station, and finds there some miserable accommodation. So in War, through the influence of an infinity of petty circumstances, which cannot properly be described on paper, things disappoint us, and we fall short of the mark. A powerful iron will overcomes this friction; it crushes the obstacles, but certainly the machine along with them. We shall often meet with this result. Like an obelisk towards which the principal streets of a town converge, the strong will of a proud spirit stands prominent and commanding in the middle of the Art of War.”
The last line puts it nicely: “the strong will of a proud spirit stands prominent and commanding in the middle of the Art of War.” This spirit is the very antithesis of the ethnomasochism which currently dominates Western countries.
Dear Proofreader, shall I now quote back at you Winston Churchill’s brutally realistic : “I promise you nothing, but Blood, Sweat and Tears.”, declared to the British people in the summer of 1940, at probably the lowest ebb in the fortunes of the British people in their thousand year-long history (dating from 1066).
Never trust (Crocodile) Sheep tears. The mentality of sheep is to win by numbers a few sheep taken by wolves wont matter to them one bit (and deep down they know it), so no matter how many terrorist attacks take a dozen or even more victims the sheep will be soldiering on with the Multicultural Utopia because their true objective is not to defeat the wolves but to disarm the sheep dogs.
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