Counter-Currents
Arno Breker, Die Partei
1,138 words
A central tenet of the Dissident Right is its absolute rejection of human equality. The notion of equality encompasses a wide range of meanings, but is firmly rooted in the maxim that all human beings are fundamentally equal in worth, ability, experience, and understanding. As an abstract moral concept, this has blighted the present-day world by way of the philosophical construct of egalitarianism. The ubiquity of egalitarianism has been elevated to such heights that it is perceived not only as a fundamental value of Western civilization, but a supreme moral imperative. Friedrich Nietzsche correctly posits that as a fundamental societal value, egalitarianism is a “denial of life,” given that it acts as the agent of the “principle of dissolution and decay.”[1] Egalitarianism as a phenomenon is confined almost entirely to the white race and is used to precipitate our racial collapse.
The project of modernity is not universal, but is the sole proprietorship of the white race. Thus, the coupling of egalitarianism with modernity is the reason for the former’s enthronement as the predominant Weltanschauung of the liberal-humanist establishment. However, egalitarianism is no more “moral” than any other categorical imperative. The liberal-humanist establishment has enshrined egalitarianism as the teleological and eschatological raison d’être of white modernity. The preeminent legal scholar Prof. Robert Dworkin asserted that all modern political philosophy inhabits an “inegalitarian plateau,” but I would go one step further and posit that Western civilization itself sways precariously atop the dangerous precipice of equality. As this concept is etched more permanently into the European psyche, we solidify our own collapse.
As I pointed out in a previous essay, “Towards a New European Palingenesis,” it is the Dissident Right’s attempt to revitalize European man’s adherence to the realities of the natural world – inegalitarianism, hierarchy, and order – which has endowed our movement with a great deal of its revolutionary impetus. Nietzsche quite correctly asserted that egalitarianism is a “slave morality,” because norms of moral equality retard human flourishing; hierarchical societies which emulate the natural world and revel in it flourish, while those which do not, perish.
Conceptualizing equality as the highest good is not only a flagrantly irrational attitude, but a paltry cornerstone for a civilization. Moreover, egalitarianism is diametrically opposed to the European civilizational model, given that the historical success of European civilization is a result of our people’s affirmation of the natural order of inequality and the resulting constant struggle for the improvement of the white race. George Bernard Shaw described European civilization as being in service to what he described as the “Life Force.” It is through our people’s collective racial adherence to this “Life Force” that our species will be bettered and the Superman created. Indeed, Dr. William Pierce proclaimed that the destiny of the white race is “godhood.” The attainment of “godhood” will be gleaned from physical and spiritual evolution transfigured into a transcendent force for perpetual struggle. And in line with the thinking of Plato and others, Sir Oswald Mosley propagated his “doctrine of higher forms,” which asserted that the purpose of civilization is to aid in European man’s “Faustian” quest for an “eternal becoming.” Thus, the relationship between mankind and civilization is symbiotic, based upon fostering that which elevates vertically. Mosley posited that the purpose of civilization is the attainment of ever higher spiritual, aesthetic, and cultural forms, and that the unity of the vision shared by all great European thinkers adheres to the ancient principle of the natural order.
Thus, it is through inegalitarianism that we on the Dissident Right seek to ameliorate the degeneracy of the contemporary European world. As a metapolitical movement, the Dissident Right represents a collective European longing to return to the organic social models of times past, when our people and civilization served a higher purpose in accordance with the cosmic rhythm of a timeless natural order. The type of equality embraced by the contemporary liberal-humanist Zeitgeist of the present age is one based upon abstraction, and which in the end is meaningless as it pursues a nebulous and ever-changing chimera of equality. When it is elevated to a civilizational imperative, it is detrimental to European man.
The natural order is a cyclically occurring struggle without end, in the pursuit of palingenetic rebirth; the finality of utopia is non-existent. Both Plato and Aristotle, and the Greeks more generally, taught that the best polity is inegalitarian, and it wasn’t until the emergence of natural law theories, as formulated by Enlightenment figures such as John Locke, that absolute equality was seeded into the European psyche. Enlightenment philosophers held that all humans are fundamentally rational and good, despite believing that their ideas were a continuation of the Greco-Roman philosophical tradition.
Thus, it is the misinterpretation of Plato and others by thinkers like Locke, Montesquieu, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, rather than the Greeks themselves, which is to blame for our current predicament. Plato’s inegalitarianism was two-fold and possessed both ethical and political implications. Perfection is ethically possible, given that the “good” that all people strive for is a matter of knowledge, and by pursuing that which is “good” is to allow one’s life to be governed by it. However, individual knowledge, that is the ability to understand the “good,” is markedly inegalitarian in that each person possesses an unequal capacity for knowledge. For Plato, those of a lesser capacity are better off, and better serve the “good,” when they are governed by those who possess a greater understanding of the “good.” But beginning with the Enlightenment, the ethical and political dimensions of Plato’s inegalitarianism were confounded, and thus the idea that perfection can be achieved politically – that is in reality, rather than solely in the ethical realm – was born.
This utopian egalitarianism of the present age strives for an eschatological finality which is forever outside the realm of possibility because we live in an imperfect world. It is this modern propensity to deviate from the natural order which has allowed nihilism to rot Western civilization from within. According to Martin Heidegger, nihilism is a result of the “oblivion of Being.” The unending pursuit of that which is nonviable has removed the organic core of European civilization.
Friedrich Schiller said it best when he wrote, “The Greeks are what we were; they are what we shall become again.”[2] By rekindling our connection to the enduring principles which animate our civilization, we as Europeans possess the ability to restore the splendor of Classical civilization. Fyodor Dostoevsky posited that the nihilism of the modern world is an opportunity to do this, and we can begin this quest with the reassertion of the precepts of the natural order.
Notes
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Essential Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil and the Genealogy of Morals (New York: Chartwell Books, 2017).
[2] Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, and Letters to Prince Frederick Christian Von Augustenburg (London: Penguin Books, 2016).
12 comments
(a) well written. (b) the cause is not philosophers (whose influence is overrated) but christianity’s submissiveness and the leftist academy’s doctrine, the introduction of women into the political system, the commercial and political incentives at the top outweighing kinship incentives in the middle. And worst, the economists who measure consumption (income statement) rather that changes in capital (balance sheet).
Can you explain a bit more on the difference between income and balance?
I dont reject equality “absolutely”, I reject it only empirically. A society of rough equals might actually do well with freedom and voting.
Nor do I believe the natural order has room only for the mightiest; as a child I was weak, as a man I am stronger but still vulnerable, I will become old and weak sooner than I would like. Nor would political and martial strength be the only strength I respect.
Notions of “godhead” could go far in explaining why something so easy – getting white people to desire the safety and prosperity that our own land would enable – has been so hard in practice; people sniff an “evil be my good” vibe.
The traditional order is God*, Man, woman, child, pet, animal, plant, inanimate object. It is also the correct and only order for a stable society.
*The ancients understood the universal Order to above even the Gods, though they did not personalize it; they knew that to personalize it would be silly if not profane.
Brilliant Article!!
I only wish that I had read this article when I was 19, in 1975, instead of today when I am 63. It would have made things much more comprehensible.
This article is riddled with so many gross misstatements, I am surprised Counter-Currents published it. Modern political thought does not aim at “perfection,” but rather an “effective” regime, by lowering the sights. Rousseau did not think all men fundamentally rational and good, but malleable. I could go on.
Thank you for reading Dominique.
Utopianism, i.e., earthly perfection, has been a major theme in both the Western philosophical and literary tradition for centuries, from the time of the ancient Greeks, to Thomas More, to H.G. Wells and beyond. Exoteric political thought differs greatly from the esoteric.
Concerning Jean-Jacques Rousseau, read his first published work, “A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences” (“Discours sur les sciences et les arts”), in which he literally, verbatim, writes “that man is naturally good.” According to Rousseau, the “malleability” of the human condition didn’t circumvent its innate “goodness,” as it is the mortal creations, i.e., the human institutions, of man which is corrupting.
A great article that I would circulate on Facebook, but I been blocked for thirty days. I’ll save it for when I’m released from jail.
Styxhexenhammer666 did a video on this back in March of last year:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=unw1G-6_xjM&list=PLe6Bc4vsmzwKYjFfE5KeyZpm9J8oKgeP7&index=41&t=0s
The left has moved away from an absolute devotion to egalitarianism and toward a perverted hierarchical structure based on degrees of ‘oppression.’ Value is measured purely based on claims to victimhood. Lowly whites occupy the bottom rung, with the least virtue and value. Not a recipe for a thriving, stable society.
In my opinion the “New Right” over-identifies with the dis-contextualized premise of anti-egalitarianism, a principle which does largely, but certainly not entirely, correctly describe it’s expressed ideology, as observable on this website. There is a distinct limited egalitarianism buried even in this overtly anti-egalitarian article, and it resides with the premise of European nationalism. Every nationalism is intrinsically quasi-egalitarian, and a generic nationalism like the one endorsed by Greg Johnson possesses an even more pronounced egalitarian component than the typical mono-ethnic nationalism. The European nationalistic “Old Right” did not shy away from egalitarianism, instead it emphasized it’s egalitarian aspect, and, for the most part, profited for it. This emphasis appears most clearly in National Socialism’s economic policy which called for profit-sharing in large industries, nationalization of trusts, expropriation of farms, extensive tax programs, and other Marxist policies, even though it condemned Marxism as a whole. There was also intro-ethnic cultural egalitarian propaganda. I believe it’s a balance of egalitarianism and classism that best defines the “right”, rather than total rejection of either, and that the two “lefts”, wrongly conjoined, make the extremes.
Consider it.
Hi A.M.,
Thank you for taking the time to both read and comment!
Concerning inegalitarianism, and more aptly its fetishization within our “movement,” you are 100% correct. All nationalism, whether ethnic, racial, national or other, is intrinsically egalitarian with regards to in-group preference. Ethno-national solidarity presupposes this.
The intended purpose of the above essay was two-fold. First, it was meant to assert that egalitarianism is by and large a white racial phenomenon, and thus the common practice of applying it at the universal, multiracial level, is not only preposterous but racially suicidal.
Second, the essay was also meant to posit that a return to what I call the “natural order,” and the innate inequality implicit to this natural order, based on differentiated levels of capacity and thus individual ability, is one of the many objectives that we ethnonationalists should seek to restore, should we wish to rejuvenate Western civilization.
Note that Schiller was a classical humanist who believed in the ennoblement of all men through their participation in beauty.
As he wrote, “it is only through Beauty that man makes his way to Freedom.” What does this mean outside of an understanding that all men are capable of being beautiful souls, and therefore deserving of being politically free to the degree of the development of their souls?
He also wrote of “the most perfect of all works of art—the establishment and structure of a true political freedom”. What does this mean if not equality before the law, and equal educational opportunities, and equal freedom from the pinch of material want?
We must contend with Schiller if we would hack our way back to the vaunted Greeks’ “tigrish lust to annihilate”.
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