510 words
Translated by Guillaume Durocher
Translator’s Note:
Perhaps the greatest threat to the Right is our elites’ ability to have our people “rally-round-the-flag” against those who are not our primary enemies in the name of parochial chauvinism and state loyalty. This was arguably true in both World Wars and largely sums up the entire counter-jihadi movement. Let us take Carl Schmitt to heart and not be Israel’s useful idiots . . .
[. . .] I recognize that Charles Maurras behaved in an exemplary fashion during his trial of 1945 [. . .].
Yet, I do not forget that Charles Maurras was in 1914 one of the political leaders who pushed French patriots to go off and be killed en masse in the trenches. What was the result of this disastrous policy?
- The cosmopolitan republican regime was reinforced.
- The German empire collapsed and gave way to a socialistic republic.
- The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismembered and replaced by masonic regimes. It is true that this empire was passably worm-eaten and decadent, which does not prevent many people in French nationalist circles from missing this eyesore, for the sole reason that the emperor was . . . Catholic! In an old issue of Éléments, Alain de Benoist contributed to perpetuating the myth that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was conservative and traditional. At the beginning of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, who did not know the world only through books, wrote some fairly eloquent pages on this topic.
- The Ottoman Empire collapsed and opened the way for the Sabbatean sect (Jewish heretics) whose members were close to Kemal Ataturk.
- The Russian empire collapsed to the benefit of a dictatorship of Bolshevik Jews, who exterminated 30 million Christians over 30 years.
Well, certainly, Alsace-Lorraine was recovered. What a bargain!
A century later, we can say: Maurras’ political choice was a disaster for our side. As far as I am concerned, I cannot walk through a village and see the names of Frenchmen on the monuments to the dead without cursing this war.
And let it not be said that we need to put things back in their context, that anti-German sentiment was widespread among the French public after the defeat of 1870, that we first and above all had to defend our borders, etc.
Édouard Drumont wrote his books after 1870 and was never a fanatical and ridiculous Germanophobe like Charles Maurras. He [Drumont], at least, understood who the enemy was. In the following generation, Lucien Rebatet and Céline, among others, had also understood the nature of the evil to be fought against. One needs to read Lucien Rebatet’s Les Décombres and Céline’s L’École des cadavres.
I have kept a few of Maurras’ books in my little library. I’ve had to place them between the biographies of Louis XV and Marie de Médicis. It is true that at least they are here, whereas hundreds of others did not successfully pass the test and have inopportunely fallen into the garbage. There is a small book by Alain de Benoist, folded in half, which I use as a wedge for the IKEA couch on which I am sitting as I write. That way one is comfortable! [. . .]
The original French version of this article appeared at Hervé Ryssen on September 21, 2015.
8 Comments
Haha, I take it Ryssen did not approve of de Benoist? I wonder what book he is referring to.
Given Hervé Ryssen’s scorn for Alain de Benoist, it’s immaterial what book it is.
https://herveryssen.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/alain-de-benoist-et-les-hommes-qui-tournent-en-rond
I can identify with Charles Maurras – a man of agnostic and a republican beliefs who preached Catholicism and Monarchy because it was good for France.
“Yet, I do not forget that Charles Maurras was in 1918 one of the political leaders who pushed French patriots to go off and be killed en masse in the trenches.”
I assume Ryssen meant “1914.” He wrote “1918” in the original ( https://herveryssen.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/charles-maurras-et-le-nationalisme-de-grand-papa ), but it doesn’t make sense.
To quote the author: “The Ottoman Empire collapsed and opened the way for the Sabbatean sect (Jewish heretics) whose members were close to Kemal Ataturk”
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire was a good thing, because it unjustly kept multiple Balkan nations in Europe under its heel. It’s not as if these peoples enjoyed Ottoman rule, as they would have been much better off without it from the beginning.
“In an old issue of Éléments, Alain de Benoist contributed to perpetuating the myth that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was conservative and traditional. At the beginning of Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, who did not know the world only through books, wrote some fairly eloquent pages on this topic.”
I don’t recall exactly everything that Hitler said regarding the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but I remember it being largely complaints about how it was multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic. To me this seems a simplistic critique because back then it was typical for Europeans to form multi-ethnic empires (I’m not saying it was right, just that it was typical). As for Alain de Benoist, I think it was justifiable for him to say that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was conservative and traditional, because it actually was, at least no more and no less than other nations considered “conservative and traditional” at the time in Europe. Yes there was some decadence within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but one can find at least some decadent elements in almost any country that is considered “conservative and traditional” (excluding very rare cases in history).
“There is a small book by Alain de Benoist, folded in half, which I use as a wedge for the IKEA couch on which I am sitting as I write.”
Why, because he praised the Austro-Hungarian Empire? In any case, this is such a cheap and immature attack. What was the point of including this?
From memory, I recall that Ryssen criticizes Alain de Benoist at some length in his book La guerre eschatologique, but it’s been some time since I’ve read it, and don’t recall the specifics of what Ryssen said about Benoist. Ryssen’s book contains a section punningly titled “Les hommes qui tournent en rond” (The Men Who Turn in Circles) which criticizes both the cyclical theory of history and the Nouvelle Droite.
Ryssen’s book has been severely criticized, if not condemned, by Philippe Baillet, who is perhaps best known as a translator of Julius Evola. Baillet’s review of Ryssen’s book in Tabou, no. 20., is sarcastically titled “Les ‘hommes qui tournent en rond’ et ceux qui vont dans le mur” (“The ‘Men Who Turn in Circles’ and Those Who Go Into the Wall). It charges Ryssen’s book with harboring “numerous errors, approximations, and flagrant falsehoods.”
For his part, Baillet is quite hostile to Benoist: he has written a scathing article, “Le cas Alain de Benoist,” published in Rivarol, 29 April 2011, as well as a scathing review of Benoist’s memoir, Mémoire vive, published in Tabou, no. 19.
I have no desire to go into these things in more detail. I lack the time and patience for such things. I have no power to adjudicate in quarrels of this kind. I have no hope of resolving such disputes or getting to the bottom of them. It’s best to keep clear of feuds: watch them if you must, if you really have nothing better to do, but don’t participate in them. What Lenin wrote of politics is also of true of metapolitics: “In politics spite generally plays the basest of roles.”
Theorists and writers are often incredibly vain, petty, peevish, quarrelsome, and vindictive. They sometimes combine truly admirable intelligence, energy, and erudition with truly deplorable small-mindedness.
I think that one should be a partisan of one’s people and culture, but never of any one theorist or writer. I think that, as theorists and writers, both Ryssen and Benoist have their virtues and vices, their strengths and weaknesses, their blindspots and errors of judgment. Accordingly, I think that the works of both Ryssen and Benoist are worth reading, blasphemous as this might sound to their partisans. One can learn from both of them. (Incidentally, I think that Greg Johnson and Tomislav Sunic would agree with these points.)
In any case, you should know that there’s more to Ryssen’s dislike of Benoist than the latter’s remarks on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And you shouldn’t read too much into a translation of a single short blog entry. Is it not petty, pedantic, and unfair to condemn people on a few lines, in the spirit of Cardinal Richelieu’s dictum (“Show me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough therein to hang him”)?
Charles Maurras almost took power in the 1930s, France was ready for a Fascist government but in the end the power went to the jew Leon Blum and the Socialists.