Towards a New European Palingenesis

Pentti Linkola

2,392 words

The hallmark of all revolutionary ideologies has been the forlorn attempt to create a “New Man.” Like Pygmalion, this “New Man” takes on the characteristics of whatever political ideology is currently en vogue. For want of a better, meta-historical term, the so-called “Right” has enjoyed marginally more success in this endeavor than other revolutionary movements. Accounting for this marginal degree of success are the metapolitical underpinnings of all revolutionary, Right-leaning ideologies. Historically speaking, these objectives are revanchist in nature, and are usually premised upon adhering to the realities of the natural world, i.e. inegalitarianism, hierarchy, and order. Delving a bit deeper, the reimposition of both hierarchy and inegalitarianism would in truth signify the reintegration and harmonization of the natural world with the world of man.

Part of the enduring quality of the Right is its attempt to redefine the relationship between man, society, and the wider natural world, in a realistic manner from which the “Left” has always shied away. The reclamation of the championing of the natural world is a cause worthy of the human and political capital of the real Right. Before any tangential political gains can be made, the prevailing metapolitical discourse must be reshaped in our image. Transforming the discourse associated with an entire worldview takes time, but as revolutionaries, it is our duty to contribute to the movement by whatever means necessary. For example, some progress has been made in the mainstream, specifically in some of the environmental sciences, but a greater Right-leaning presence there is necessary. The contemporary “green movement” is a joke, but a robust environmentalist mentality should be, and has been, an integral component of all revolutionary Right-wing movements throughout the ages. The field of “deep ecology” was one such movement which, during its nascent stages, possessed great potential, but like all things born into this age, it’s been infiltrated by the dissolutive religion of postmodernism.

When it first came into existence, the science of “deep ecology” possessed a great deal of potential, but sadly, and not unsurprisingly, most of its adherents are fanatical liberals, save for a few isolated “radical” individuals. The term deep ecology was first coined and popularized by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss in 1972. Næss felt that “deep” helped to delineate his brand of ecology from the “shallow ecology” and environmentalism of his contemporaries. From Næss’s perspective, his type of ecology was “deep” in that it explored the nature of the relationship between mankind and the natural world in an innovative manner the postmodern scientific enterprise had ceased to pursue for quite some time. And yet sadly, and contrary to the intentions of most of its founders, contemporary ecology, “deep,” “shallow,” or anywhere in between, concerns itself chiefly with the exploration of the natural world from a purely scientific perspective. As such, ecology and the wider field of the environmental sciences is wholly disinterested in and woefully bereft of the tools necessary to examine the complex philosophical underpinnings surrounding the larger questions regarding mankind and his relationship to the natural world.

To deep ecology’s credit, individuals like Næss, and more controversial figures such as the “eco-fascist” Pentti Linkola, view the natural world from a non-anthropocentric perspective, predicated upon balance and harmony rather than exploitation. Unsurprisingly, it is within this innate notion of balance, as it relates to the natural world, where there is an organic coalescence between the environmental movement and ethnonationalism. With his usual rhetorical gusto, Greg Johnson quite aptly stated that it is the centrality of nature which gives birth to the affinity which exists between “eco-fascism” and ethnonationalism. Ultimately, as ethnonationalists, we seek not only a return to the normality of a natural world in balance, but also for it to flourish again. A healthy world in environmental and metaphysical equanimity is a world sought by all racially-conscious peoples. Moreover, by working towards environmental homeostasis, we are reorientating European civilization itself one step closer to the undertaking of a new European paleogenesis. Successful civilizations are those which are organic in composition, both physically and metaphysically, and as such they are centered upon cyclicality, proportionality, and harmonic order.

Conceptually speaking, there are a number of problems with the “green movement,” and the severity of these issues makes the movement in its current iteration virtually useless to ethnonationalists. More precisely, the problem with individuals like Næss, and quite frankly with the entirety of the contemporary “green movement,” is ideological inconsistency and, ultimately, hypocrisy. Individuals like Rachel Carson, credited as the founder of the modern “global environmental movement,” rally for the preservation of the natural environment, but do so haphazardly, as they never satisfactorily seek to address, quantify, or rectify the relationship between mankind and the wider natural world. Ostensibly, environmentalism is a field concerned with caring for and improving the Earth’s environment, yet issues pertaining to mankind’s deleterious effect on it such as by overpopulation are systematically ignored. Herein lies the philosophical inconsistency intrinsic to all variations of postmodern environmentalism: The field is fixated upon the environment only as it relates to the level of utility which it affords to mankind. Channeling Savitri Devi, the natural world is impersonal, neither good nor bad, and its improvement or impoverishment is in no way connected to its utility for mankind. Even the speciously labeled “non-anthropocentric” mainstream approach to the environmental issue, which operates under an alleged “ecocentric lens,” is structurally inconsistent given that it skirts around the real issues, such as the steps which must be taken to halt overpopulation. Of course, a minority of brave individuals such as Linkola have advocated drastic solutions to these problems, but they are largely ignored and ostracized by mainstream elements within the “green movement.”

A perspective which has gained some popularity in radical ethnonationalist circles is biocentrism. Popularized by members of the German “vitalist” philosophical school, most notably Ludwig Klages, biocentrism is a metaphysical perspective on life, politics, and the environment. The biocentric worldview posits that all creatures, human and non-human alike, possess intrinsic value, and that notions of biodiversity and environmental protection should be accorded the utmost importance. More specifically, and in contrast to both mainstream “deep ecology” and the modern “green movement,” biocentrism is innately inegalitarian. The metaphorical well from which biocentrism springs is the natural world and its indifference to mankind and the equalitarian predilections of our species.

For we ethnonationalists, a return to the normality of the natural world is a return to inegalitarianism and its interrelated concepts of hierarchy and order. All social animals function along hierarchical lines, and in this regard, human beings are no different from any other creature. Civilizational order comes from adhering to hierarchical social patterns, and as such is an innate component of human nature and of the natural order itself, of which mankind is a product. The commonalities between the natural world and the inegalitarian worldview is evinced not only by their similarity, but also graphically illustrated in the naturalistic tendencies of the European philosophical tradition. From Plato’s Republic to Aristotle’s Historia Animalium, to the the later works of Plotinus and Proculus, all the way to the Church Fathers, notions of hierarchy and order, as dual philosophical manifestations of the inegalitarian worldview, have been extemporized as being analogous to both the natural world and the divine. The natural world is inegalitarian in operation and function, and as ethnonationalists, our idealized society is one in which this timeless principle is mirrored.

Up until very recently, the perennial resurgence of the inegalitarian worldview across the European philosophical tradition was a testament to the close relationship between European man and the natural world. In medieval Europe, the notion of the scala naturae was the guiding basis for social order and harmony. Scala naturae, or “ladder of Being,” colloquially referred to as the “Great Chain of Being,” is evidence of this. By the same token, the scala naturae was an attempt by medieval Europeans to both understand and thus systematize the natural world, and by extension, replicate it within their social order. Of course, during the Christianization of Europe, the philosophical concept of the Great Chain of Being was infused with an overly semiticized Christianity, and its propensity for anthropocentrism, but that is a topic for an altogether different essay. One could argue that until very recently, the inegalitarian, biocentric worldview was the metaphysical fundament for all of Europe.

Further proof of the bond between the natural world and ethnonationalism is the immutable reality of race. A more modern derivation of the Great Chain of Being as it relates to race is the concept of “Blood and Soil.” This refers to the indivisible relationship between a racially unique people and the land in which they reside. Blood and Soil was first conceptualized by the nineteenth-century Romantics Ernst Moritz Arndt and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, and later popularized by the brilliant National Socialist philosopher and activist, Walther Darré. For Darré, a profound and dangerous shift had occurred in Weimar Germany, and throughout the entirety of post-war European civilization itself: one which the concept of Blood and Soil sought to correct. From Darré’s perspective, the reality of race and its connection to the land was being systematically extirpated from the European psyche by those hostile to Europe. Darré went so far as to declare that “the unity of Blood and Soil must be restored,” and it was this assertion that best encapsulates the raison d’etre of the German National Socialist movement.

With the above in mind, it’s no coincidence that both the nascent fields of environmentalism and ecology originated in nineteenth-century Germany. Indeed, it was the prominent German biologist Ernst Haeckel who first coined the term “ecology.” To Haeckel, ecology as a field of scientific endeavor was holistic in orientation, as it concerned itself primarily with understanding the nature of the relationships that all organisms, and not just mankind, share with the surrounding natural world. To Haeckel, mankind wasn’t special, but rather: “Man is not distinguished from [the animal world] by a special kind of soul, or by any peculiar and exclusive psychic function, but only by a higher degree of psychic activity, a superior stage of development.”[1] Conversely, in an attempt to liberate mankind from the shackles of metaphysical superstitions, radical scientific materialists such as Haeckel, John Tyndall, Ludwig Büchner, and others propagated a purely materialistic worldview which was not only antithetical to any notion of the spiritual, but also marked the beginning of the process of alienating European man from his natural world.

The works of Ernst Haeckel and others wielded a great deal of influence upon the radical ecological and environmental perspectives which permeated National Socialist ideology. National Socialism, however, had the unique ability to take the positive scientism of individuals like Haeckel and synthesize it, in a coherent and organic fashion, with the more metaphysical musings of Ludwig Klages and his biocentric worldview. Under this, a rebirth of the inegalitarian worldview was able to take shape. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler summed up this new synthesis by writing that:

Man must not fall into the error of thinking that he was ever meant to become lord and master of Nature. A lopsided education has helped to encourage that illusion. Man must realize that a fundamental law of necessity reigns throughout the whole realm of Nature and that his existence is subject to the law of eternal struggle and strife.[2]

Hitler’s exposition is reflective of the European predilection for revering the natural world, but is also illustrative of the indissoluble bond shared by all Europeans with it. In an even more naturalistically-orientated, metaphysically revanchist manner, Hitler wrote, “The subordination of the interests and life of the individual to the community . . . [is] the ultimate will of Nature,”[3] and this goal is still being pursued by many within the ethnonationalist movement to this very day.

The worldview articulated above was one which up until very recently was implicitly embraced, to a greater or lesser extent, by the whole of European civilization. Further, the acceptance of the realities of race, social order, and hierarchy as being connate to the natural world were deemed to be so glaringly obvious that to reject them was pure absurdity. As ethnonationalists, we seek a return to the sanity of times past. As the most evolved members of mankind, it is our duty to safeguard the sanctity of the Earth, and our first step towards this goal is recognizing that not only is race real, but that earthly and cosmic balance comes from adhering to the timeless principles of the inegalitarian worldview of hierarchy and order. Indeed, we must evangelize about this.

In physics there is a principle of perfect internal disorder. This principle posits that it is the nature of the relationship between order and disorder (entropy) which brings about balance. When a system is said to exist in perfect internal disorder, it is existing in a state which is in equilibrium, or more specifically in balance, and balance comes from an adherence to that which is natural. At present, European civilization is standing at a great precipice, and in Nietzschean fashion, it is the duty of our race to serve as the “bridge” to the other side which restores order to the planet.

The first step towards a return to normality starts with acknowledging our position within the Great Chain of Being, and more precisely with realizing that all life, both human and non-human, has intrinsic value regardless of its utility. We must also again embrace the ideas most recently manifested by the Germanic concept of Blood and Soil, in other words that race is a natural reality and must be recognized as such and safeguarded for future generations of Europeans. In a manner similar to our forebears, we must also strive to seek a relationship of equipoise between the scientific and the metaphysic. By embracing the interrelated concepts of hierarchy, race, and the sacrosanct importance of a natural world in balance, we Europeans will be one step closer towards a revitalization of the inegalitarian worldview which has been the impetus for the success of our race since time immemorial. The first step towards ushering in a new age of European palingenetic rebirth begins with the Reconquista of the natural world – and this conquest should begin from within.

Notes

[1] Ernst Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe (New York: Andesite Press, 2015).

[2] Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Stone Mountain, Ga.: White Wolf, 2015).

[3] Ibid.