Counter-Currents
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Contact
  • Webzine
  • About
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise

LEVEL2

Donate Now Mailing list
  • Webzine
  • About
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise
  • Recent posts

    • Remembering Roy Campbell (October 2, 1901–April 22, 1957)

      Greg Johnson

    • Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      Jim Goad

    • Remembering Savitri Devi (September 30, 1905–October 22, 1982)

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • The Counter-Currents 2023 Fundraiser: A Question of Degree

      Mark Gullick

    • Politics vs. Self-Help

      Greg Johnson

      32

    • The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      Jef Costello

      16

    • It’s Not All About You

      Spencer J. Quinn

      2

    • Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      Jim Goad

      21

    • The Stolen Land Narrative

      Morris van de Camp

      7

    • Neema Parvini’s Prophets of Doom: Cyclical History as Alternative to Liberal Progressivism

      Mike Maxwell

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 554 How Often Does Pox Think About the Roman Empire? . . . & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The “Treasonous” Trajectory of Trumpism

      Stephen Paul Foster

      7

    • A Haunting in Venice: Agatha Christie Is Back

      Steven Clark

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 553 Endeavour & Pox Populi on the Latest Migrant Invasion & More

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • White Altruism Revealed

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      2

    • The Union Jackal, September 2023

      Mark Gullick

      18

    • The Metapolitics of “Woke”

      Endeavour

      2

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 2

      Michael Walker

      2

    • Remembering Martin Heidegger: September 26, 1889–May 26, 1976

      Greg Johnson

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      Jim Goad

      39

    • Paper Boy: The Life and Times of an Ink-Stained Wretch

      Steven Clark

      1

    • Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke

      Matt Parrott

      5

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 1

      Michael Walker

      2

    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      5

    • Pox Populi and Endeavour on the Latest Migrant Invasion

      Greg Johnson

    • Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      A. C. C. Reader

      47

    • Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 2

      Travis LeBlanc

      18

    • Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      Beau Albrecht

      13

    • The Captivity Narrative of Fanny Kelly

      Spencer J. Quinn

      7

    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      52

    • Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      Travis LeBlanc

      40

    • Plastic Patriotism: Propaganda and the Establishment’s Crusade Against Germany and German-Americans During the First World War

      Alex Graham

      9

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 2

      Arthur Jensen

      2

    • Donald Trump: The Jews’ Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

      Travis LeBlanc

      14

    • Bad to the Spone: Charles Krafft’s An Artist of the Right

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      1

    • Independence Day

      Mark Gullick

    • The Unnecessary War

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Bad Cop! No Baklava!

      Beau Albrecht

      7

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 552 Millennial Woes on Corporations, the Left, & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

      6

    • Remembering Charles Krafft: September 19, 1947–June 12, 2020

      Greg Johnson

    • Marx vs. Rousseau

      Stephen Paul Foster

      4

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 10-16, 2023

      Jim Goad

      22

    • The Tinkling Cherub of Mississippi

      Beau Albrecht

      2

    • A Deep Ecological Perspective on the Vulnerability of Eurodescendants

      Francisco Albanese

      3

    • Remembering Francis Parker Yockey: September 18, 1917–June 16, 1960

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • The Counter-Currents 2023 Fundraiser: Idealism Alone Can’t Last Forever

      Pox Populi

      3

    • Ask Me Anything with Millennial Woes

      Greg Johnson

    • Most White Republicans at Least Slightly Agree with the Great Replacement Theory

      David M. Zsutty

      13

    • Field of Dreams: A Right-Wing Film?

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • Rich Snobs vs. Poor Slobs: The Schism Between “Racist” Whites

      Jim Goad

      99

  • Classics Corner

    • Remembering Maurice Bardèche
      (October 1, 1907–July 30, 1998)

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • Why Race is Not a “Social Construct”

      Greg Johnson

      19

    • Remembering T. S. Eliot:
      September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 1

      Greg Johnson

      22

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 2

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 3

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Remembering H. Keith Thompson
      September 17, 1922–March 3, 2002

      Kerry Bolton

      1

    • Be All You Can Be: On Joining the Military

      Ash Donaldson

      22

    • Transcript of FOX News’ Banned Report on Israel & 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

    • The Banned FOX News Report on Israel’s Role in 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

      12

    • The Psychology of Conversion

      Greg Johnson

      43

    • Animal Justice?

      Greg Johnson

      18

    • Uppity White Folks and How to Reach Them

      Greg Johnson

      6

    • Lord Kek Commands!
      A Look at the Origins of Meme Magic

      James J. O'Meara

      7

    • Major General J. F. C. Fuller
      (September 1, 1878–February 10, 1966)

      Anonymous

      5

    • Remembering Johann Gottfried von Herder
      (August 25, 1744–December 18, 1803)

      Martin Lichtmesz

      2

    • Moral Seriousness

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Columbus Day Special
      The Autochthony Argument

      Greg Johnson

      8

    • Remembering Knut Hamsun
      (August 4, 1859–February 19, 1952)

      Greg Johnson

      8

    • Sir Reginald Goodall: An Appreciation

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • 7-11 Nationalism

      Richard Houck

      28

    • Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as Anti-Semitic/Christian-Gnostic Allegory

      Greg Johnson

      7

    • Eraserhead:
      A Gnostic Anti-Sex Film

      Trevor Lynch

      17

    • Remembering Revilo Oliver
      (July 7, 1908–August 20, 1994)

      Greg Johnson

      17

    • Lars von Trier & the Men Among the Ruins

      John Morgan

      16

    • Heidegger without Being

      Greg Johnson

      17

    • Junetarded Nation

      Jim Goad

      8

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 338
      Ted Talk

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Hegemony

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • Cù Chulainn in the GPO:
      The Mythic Imagination of Patrick Pearse

      Michael O'Meara

      5

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • Salon Kitty: The Ultimate Nazisploitation Movie

      Travis LeBlanc

      14

    • The Relentless Persistence of Stalinism

      Stephen Paul Foster

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 548 Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson, Pox Populi, & David Zsutty

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Metapolitics in Germany, Part 1: An Exclusive Interview with Frank Kraemer of Stahlgewitter

      Ondrej Mann

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 546 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 5

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • A Call For White Identity Politics: Ed Brodow’s The War on Whites

      Dave Chambers

      6

    • The Fiction of Harold Covington, Part One

      Steven Clark

      21

    • Death by Hunger: Two Books About the Holodomor

      Morris van de Camp

      4

    • A Child as White as Snow

      Mark Gullick

      6

    • Jonathan Bowden’s Final Lecture on Video: Charles Maurras, Action Française, and the Cagoule

      Jonathan Bowden

      1

    • Who Was Lawrence R. Brown? Biographical Notes on the Author of The Might of the West

      Margot Metroland

      16

    • California Discontent, Part 2: Frank Norris’ The Octopus

      Steven Clark

      1

    • California Discontent, Part 1: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden

      Steven Clark

    • 12 More Sex Differences Due to Nature

      Richard Knight

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 545 Pox Populi and Morgoth on the Age of Immigration and More 

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • When White Idealism Goes Too Far: Saints of the American Wilderness

      Spencer J. Quinn

      10

    • A Compassionate Spy?

      Beau Albrecht

      11

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 544 Pox Populi, American Krogan, & Endeavour on the Metaverse

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Left, Part Two

      Collin Cleary

      2

    • Thoughts on an Unfortunate Convergence: Doctors, Lawyers, and Angry Women

      Stephen Paul Foster

      5

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 3: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 2: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 1: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part IV

      Kenneth Vinther

      2

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part III

      Kenneth Vinther

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 543 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 4

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part I

      Kenneth Vinther

      1

    • Jack London’s The Iron Heel as Prophecy, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

    • The Scottish Mr. Bond? An Interview with Mystic

      Travis LeBlanc

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 542 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 3

      Counter-Currents Radio

  • Recent comments

    • Martin Lichmez

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      It's really a pity that life-changing reading experiences like these only happen in youth, at least...

    • Martin Lichmez

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      I'm a stove checker too.

    • J, Smith

      Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      Aaron Russo's statements on feminism involving Rockefeller and the CIA and Guzziferno's 2006...

    • Margot Metroland

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      */ However, the strange strength of his two best texts (*The fountainhead* and *Atlas shrugged*)...

    • Anon

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      We need more nationalist activists like Dries and less of the roman saluting, swastika flag wielding...

    • curri

      Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 551: Ask Me Anything with Matt Parrott

      So you can only expect to be able to exercise your First Amendment rights in counties that voted say...

    • Stupid Boy

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      "We must present a vision and we must be likable." There are too many lance corporals with...

    • Illya

      Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 547 David Zsutty of the Homeland Institute

      Can someone link the poll about 18-34 years old far-right voters in Europe that Pox Populi mentioned...

    • Greg Johnson

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Can you link it? Thanks!

    • Liam Kernaghan

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Very young White man: "How do I get out of this mess?" Older White man: "I know the answer...

    • Scott

      The Stolen Land Narrative

      I love that quote, he he.I got banned from a major discussion forum just for quoting Napoleon (...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      I looked for a speech of his in front of a crowd as a candidate for CC. Here is what I found from...

    • Nah

      Paper Boy: The Life and Times of an Ink-Stained Wretch

      Great article about a good man. Thank you, Mr. Clark. I get the impression that Howie Carr is...

    • Jud Jackson

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      It has been a long time since I read "The Fountainhead" but I did like it although it was too long...

    • Daniel Ross

      Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      I agree. It's real hard to have much sympathy for the proverbial worms under the boot that Kant...

    • Just Passing By

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      "Ayn Rand’s writings are often silly" : indeed. For lack of time, I'll use a Google translation,...

    • Greg Johnson

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Thanks. I will ask Jared about that. You aren't the first person to recommend it. It is a great...

    • Greg Johnson

      Remembering Savitri Devi (September 30, 1905–October 22, 1982)

      Thanks Mark!

    • Margot Metroland

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      Ayn Rand's writings are often silly, but there is a purity of intention in The Fountainhead that...

    • Mark Gullick

      Remembering Savitri Devi (September 30, 1905–October 22, 1982)

      Great reference piece. Yet another writer I discovered through CC.

  • Book Authors

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Collin Cleary
    • Jef Costello
    • Savitri Devi
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Julius Evola
    • Jim Goad
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Greg Johnson
    • Charles Krafft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Trevor Lynch
    • H. L. Mencken
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Tito Perdue
    • Michael Polignano
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Fenek Solère
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Multiple authors
  • Webzine Authors

    Editor-in-Chief

    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.

    Featured Writers

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • Stephen Paul Foster, Ph.D.
    • Jim Goad
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick, Ph.D.
    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.
    • Spencer J. Quinn

    Frequent Writers

    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton, Ph.D.
    • Collin Cleary, Ph.D.
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
    • Richard Houck
    • Ondrej Mann
    • Margot Metroland
    • John Morgan
    • Trevor Lynch
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Kathryn S.
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Michael Walker

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Julius Evola
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Ernst Jünger
    • Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Dominique Venner
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey

    Other Authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Michael Bell
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Giles Corey
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Richardo Duchesne, Ph.D.
    • Emile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Tom Goodroch
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas Jeelvy
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • G A Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Millennial Woes
    • Michael O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Herve Ryssen
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solere
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunic
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Contact
Sponsored Links
Spencer J. Quinn Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Identaria Paul Waggener IHR-Store Asatru Folk Assembly No College Club American Renaissance The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Print October 21, 2022 1 comment

The Populist Moment, Chapter 2:
The Erasure of the Left/Right Divide, Part 2

Alain de Benoist

France’s Estates-General of 1789, where the concepts of a political Left and Right were allegedly born.

5,436 words

Introduction here, Chapter 2 Part 1 here

Translated by F. Roger Devlin

Many people who sincerely consider themselves to be on the Left or Right are glad to give a definition, often quite clear, of what this means, but their definition is rarely accepted by others of the Left or Right. Everyone is of course convinced he knows what the “true Right” or “true Left” is, but these subjective definitions — everyone privileges the notions most important to himself — are merely the reflection of an entirely personal conviction. Debate is still poisoned by the polemical use of some of these labels (“extreme Right”, “Leftism,” etc.), as well as by certain discursive strategies which aim to reduce what is new to what is familiar, or group in the same category antagonistic concepts or opposed families. For liberals, socialists and fascists belong to the same family (“totalitarian”); for socialists, fascists and liberals belong to the same family (“capitalist”); and for fascists, socialists and liberals belong to the same family (“the heirs of the Enlightenment”). All of this prevents us from getting to the bottom of things.

If one turns to specialists in political science, the result is scarcely more satisfactory. To demonstrate the pertinence of the Left/Right divide, they usually invoke the historical character of this dichotomy and allege the existence of two fundamentally opposed political cultures to which the dyad Left/Right applies. But their conclusions have never found unanimous acceptance. Political scientists have never arrived at agreement on a criterion or concept which could serve as a common denominator for all forms of the Left or Right. Many propositions have been set forth, of course, practically all of them based on binary oppositions: freedom or equality, conservatism or progressivism, order or justice, immobilism or movement, belief in or rejection of the idea of human nature, the perfectibility or imperfectability of that nature, the primacy of the innate or primacy of the acquired, a taste for the concrete or a taste for the abstract, nostalgia for the past or confidence in the future, anthropological pessimism or optimism, transcendence and imminence, etc. But whatever criterion is chosen, there are always too many exceptions.

Let us take the pair equality/freedom as an example. In 1994, the famous political scientist Norberto Bobbio published a book that was enormously successful in Italy.[1] In it he maintained, after many others, that equality is the key concept which allows us to distinguish Left and Right: the former will always be hostile to it, the latter always favorable (even if, as Bobbio recognizes, the Left has also created new forms of inequality). Bobbio distinguishes an egalitarian and authoritarian Left; a center-Left both egalitarian and liberal; a liberal and non-egalitarian center-Right; and an authoritarian, non-egalitarian Right. But this thesis does not stand up to careful examination: Not all the political forces habitually classed on the Left can be defined by the demand for greater equality. In both camps we find parties which consider that certain inequalities are not unjust (which raises the question of when they become so). Besides, legal equality and social equality are not the same thing. An old dilemma: Is it better to distribute less wealth in a more equal fashion or accept inequality in order to accumulate greater total wealth? Finally, what should we think of the concept of community, which seems to resolve and overcome the opposition between equality and freedom?[2]

Marx, moreover, explicitly disavowed egalitarianism and never structured his conception of the classless society around any idea of equality. Equality is in his eyes a fundamentally bourgeois idea which allows the justification of labor power’s exploitation. Thus, the abolition of inequality is not to be confused with the abolition of domination, the latter being defined as the subordination of one group’s interests to those of another. Engels himself writes that “the proletarian demand for equality amounts to a demand for the abolition of classes. Any demand for farther-reaching equality necessarily falls into absurdity.”[4] The slogan Marx takes from Louis Blanc — “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!” — is no egalitarian slogan, either. “If people have unequal needs, explains Wood, then we cannot expect that they should have both equal wealth and equal satisfaction of their needs.”[5] We may add that in September 2016, an IFOP poll sponsored by L’Humanité revealed that the word invested with the highest value by persons declaring themselves on the Left is “freedom” (with “equality” coming in third).

You can buy Georges Sorel’s Reflections on Violence from Imperium Press here.

Another classic dichotomy is that of order (or conservation) and movement (or progress). But no sooner have we stated this than the equivocation can be seen: What is to be conserved? In what direction does one want to move? Edmund Burke, in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), stated that “a State without the means of some change, is without the means of its own conservation.” Moisei Ostrogorski also noted that “it is as impossible for a social order to preserve itself without change as to transform itself instantly.”[6] “There is,” said de Gaulle, “the eternal current of movement toward reforms, toward changes, which is naturally necessary; and then there is also a current of order, rule, and tradition which is also necessary. It is with all of this that France was made.” “Conservatism and progress,” observes Vincent Coussedière, “are categories that in themselves do not mean anything: Everything depends on what one wants to conserve and toward what one wants to progress.”[7]

Jean-Claude Michéa, for his part, has shown that socialism, if often associated in people’s minds with the spirit of progressivism, is at its origin completely foreign to it, just as it is foreign to “blank slate” ideology which rejects all the traditions of the past in the name of “sunny tomorrows”: “The memory of practices of mutual aid proper to traditional village communities — from which the rising industrial proletariat generally issued — certainly played an important role in constituting the socialist imagination.” Better still, he adds, it was undoubtedly because of its association with the idea of progress that it invited people into communion with the scientistic cult of modernity, in which it is possible to see a threat to individual autonomy, which socialism has so often rejected.[8] The Left ended up confusing that which was innovative (or “modern”) with that which was genuinely liberating. It did not see that modernity is rich in all sorts of new forms of alienation.

The ideology of progress is at first a bourgeois liberal ideology that secularizes the old Biblical idea of a linear conception of history oriented toward the best by restricting it to the secular sphere. Theorized by Turgot, and then by Condorcet (Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain, 1794), it postulates that humanity as a whole is being directed — thanks especially to scientific progress — toward a moral progress without end. This is the basis of Enlightenment philosophy.[9] Fundamentally oriented toward the future, and having nothing but distrust of what Pasolini called the revolutionary force of the past, it demonizes the concepts of tradition, custom, and rootedness, seeing in them only obsolete superstitions and obstacles to the triumphal forward march of humanity. Aiming to unify the human race, it demands that one repudiate every archaic form of belonging, and that the organic base of all traditional forms of solidarity be systematically destroyed. The new world must necessarily be built upon the ruins of the previous one. As Jacques Julliard correctly noted, this also goes

in tandem with individualism, that form of individualism which asserts itself with the French Revolution. It is associated with the political and moral flourishing of the individual, while the absolutist doctrine of the Ancien Régime gives priority to communal values, those found within the family, social bodies [la corporation], the province, and the State itself. The “revolution of the rights of man” (Marcel Gauchet) is essentially a revolution of individuals: They and they alone bear rights.[10]

In his works, Louis Dumont has also demonstrated that individualism is fundamentally an ideology of the Left. “It is the human individual who is the measure of all things,” said Jaurès.

Thus, the concept of change is not fundamentally characteristic of the Left. With the idea of progress, the cult of novelty, especially in the technical sense, affected all political families. Progress has been challenged on the Left (by ecologists and the partisans of degrowth) as it has been on the Right (by positivists and liberals). Today it is rather the liberal Right which wants to “get things moving” in the face of a Left intent on preserving social gains (and which for this reason finds itself charged with being “archaic”). We could say the same about the conventional scheme that puts social justice and generosity on the Left, and authority, tradition, and the defense of the family and private property on the Right. Only going back to configurations of circumstance, this amounts to plastering concepts over an accidental cleavage which cannot themselves be derived from that cleavage.

There have also been attempts to relate the difference between Left and Right to a question of “temperaments.” André Siegfried, e.g., in his celebrated Tableau politique de la France de l’Ouest sous la IIIᵉ République (1903), lists three “principal temperaments,” five principal parties, and five “basic tendencies.” The procedure is tempting, since temperaments, i.e. constant psychological dispositions, are a reality. Arising long before the Left/Right divide, and attesting to the diversity of human nature, they even have a biological basis which numerous studies have allowed us to grasp. But what political conclusions can we draw from this? That there are more conservative temperaments and others more drawn to change is obvious, but historical experience has never allowed us to make any of them the prerogative of a single political family. The same goes for the “authoritarian personality” (Theodor W. Adorno), which was said not so long ago to be coextensive with men of the Right’s temperament. Nor do temperaments and characters allow us to predict actions exactly. Besides, it is not temperaments which delineate the field of politics, but ideas.

“There are several ways to be on the Right and as many to be on the Left,” remark Michel Marmin and Eric Branca.[11] This is the least one can say. What is there in common — e.g. between the counter-revolutionary Right, the personalist and communitarian Right, the European federalist Right, the liberal Right, the bio-hygienist Right, the libertarian Right, the national-revolutionary Right, the racialist Right, the Christian democratic Right, the monarchist Right, the national liberal Right, the Gaullist Right, the Pétainist Right, the regionalist Right, the Jacobin Right, the nationalist Right, the positivist Right, the aesthetic Right, the anarchist Right, the fascist Right, the Hussard Right, the entrepreneurial Right, the activist Right, the moralistic Right, the republican Right, the anti-Communist Right, the technocratic Right, the organicist Right, the Poujadist Right, the atlanticist Right, the moderate Right, the romantic Right, the militarist Right, the Catholic Right, the völkisch Right, the conspiratorialist Right, the traditionalist Right, the ecological Right, and the esotericist Right? And we could pose the same question regarding the various Lefts.

Thus, we observe the impossibility of identifying a common denominator that could describe all forms of the Left or Right. This is all the more so in that there exists no airtight barrier between the ideologies and themes which compose them (all combinations are possible), and a number of these themes, far from being assigned a particular residence, have historically never ceased passing from Right to Left or Left to Right.

“In 1815 nationalism, ‘La Marseillaise,’ and the tricolor flag were symbols of the extreme Left. In 1900 they had become those of the extreme Right,” observed Dominique Venner.[12] “Certain themes frequently pass from Left to Right and vice versa,” confirms Arnauld Imatz. “This is the case with imperialism, colonialism, racialism, anti-Semitism, anti-Masonry, anti-Christianism, anti-parliamentarism, anti-technocracy, federalism, centralism, anti-statism, anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, and more recently, regionalism, ecologism, anti-immigrationism, and anti-Islamism. All completely evade the opposition, the obsessive Left/Right debate.[13]

For example, historically liberalism is a doctrine of the Left, which was dominated for the entire nineteenth century by the English ideology, and which the rise of socialism and then of Communism displaced toward the Right (which explains the sense which the word liberal has preserved in the United States). Racialism, eugenics, and social Darwinism were also born on the Left at the same time as scientistic materialism. The same goes for modern nationalism, which is tied to a political conception of the nation not older than the Revolution, and also the reference to “our ancestors the Gauls” (which originally sought to minimize the Franks’ importance). Colonialism was at first defended by the Left before being defended by the Right. Contrariwise, ecologism first appeared on the Right before passing to the Left. As for the Republican idea, it completely changes meaning depending on whether it is perceived by way of the French Revolution, French-style secularism, or civic republicanism from Titus Livius to Harrington.

It is no less difficult to situate certain individuals. Napoleon, Clemenceau, and de Gaulle have in turn been rejected and claimed by both Left and Right. Likewise, certain unexpected declarations also confuse things. In 1945, it was the Communist Jacques Duclos who shouted, “France for the French!”[14] while ten years earlier the Falangist José Antonio Primo de Rivera condemned nationalism and saluted the “genius” of Karl Marx![15]

Many other examples could of course be cited. “The historian of ideas,” as Arnauld Imatz reminds us, “knows that according to historical ages, places, and sensibilities, the various forms of Right and Left have in turn been universalist or particularist, globalist or patriotic, free-tradist or protectionist, capitalist or anti-capitalist, centralist or federalist, individualist or holist, and organicist, positivist, agnostic, and atheist, or theist and Christian.”[16] There has been a revolutionary Right and a conservative Left, an anti-colonialist Right and a colonialist Left, a communitarian Right and an individualist Left, a materialist or atheistic Right and a Christian Left, a Right that wanted everything to be uniform and a Left which defended differences, a mechanistic Right and an organicist Left, a conspiratorial Left and a rationalistic Right, an optimistic Right and a pessimistic Left, a philo-Semitic Right and an anti-Semitic Left, a permissive Right and an authoritarian Left, a cosmopolitan Right and a nationalist Left, an anti-racist Right and a racialist Left, a Right involved in the Resistance and a Left involved in Collaboration. Equally, there have been Left- and Right-wing productivists, Left- and Right-wing anti-productivists, Left- and Right-wing Statists, Left- and Right-wing anti-Statists, Left- and Right-wing centralists, Left- and Right-wing local autonomists, and so on.

You can buy Kerry Bolton’s The Tyranny of Human Rights here.

Things get still more complicated once we cross national frontiers. From one country to another, the same political families are differently configured, and the same concepts do not necessarily have the same content. In Spain, Carlist traditionalism explicitly rejects Maurassianism and the traditionalism of a de Bonald or Joseph de Maistre. The German concepts corresponding to the völkisch or bündisch movements scarcely have equivalents in the Latin countries. Spanish anarcho-syndicalism is not the same thing as revolutionary Italian syndicalism, and so on.

In the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon countries, the division occurs between Conservatives and Labour, conservatives and liberals or social-democrats. In the United States, the Left/Right distinction had practically no meaning until after the Civil War. It only appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century as the result of the pre-existing political infrastructure’s disintegration, which essentially rested on communal life and local autonomy. Moreover, on the other side of the Atlantic this distinction only covers an opposition between “two different versions of liberalism: the classical version of laissez-faire inherited from the nineteenth century as against the twentieth century version based on the welfare state.”[17] In Israel, Left and Right only really oppose one another concerning peace with the Palestinians and the annexation of the occupied territories.

Whereas in Germany, England, the United States, or Canada, the conservatives constitute a family unto themselves and the term is widely employed to designate a current of thought benefiting from a strong intellectual tradition (from Hume to Oakeshott by way of Burke and Coleridge, in the case of the English Whigs), the word “conservative” (or “conservatism”) is remarkable for its absence from the French political vocabulary, as André Siegfried observed in 1930 in his Tableau des partis en France. François Huguenin advances a historical explanation for this.[18] Observing that in Germany and the Anglo-Saxon countries, we find among conservatives both “nationalists” and “liberals,” he believes such an alliance was made impossible in France by the Revolution of 1789. The Revolution in fact irremediably opposed those who absolutely rejected the revolutionary ideas (from Joseph de Maistre or Louis de Bonald all the way to Charles Maurras) and those who, on the Right, accepted the essential even if they rejected the practice (from Tocqueville and Benjamin Constant to Raymond Aron and Bertrand de Jouvenel). So the two camps split definitively, thereby making any “conservatism” impossible. All through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the liberal Right, won over to the ideology of progress, attached to the primacy of the individual, and traditionally mistrustful of political power, has never ceased opposing a Right which, traditionalist or not, defended the State’s prerogatives, the concept of the common good, and an organic and communitarian conception of society.

The question remains, however, whether it is possible to be both liberal and conservative. In 1960 the great liberal theoretician Friedrich Hayek answered in the negative in a text which has remained famous: “Why I am not a conservative.”[19] He explained that conservativism is a form of constructivism while liberalism presupposes no social project. At most, as partisans of “spontaneous order” (as opposed to “constructed order”), liberals can admit the well-foundedness of some traditions or “traditional values.” Analyzing society beginning from the individual, they can only reject any collective approach to society’s problems.[20]

So across space as across time, we observe an extreme diversity of Lefts and Rights. This diversity explains why certain Rights have recognized greater affinity with certain Lefts than with other rights — or certain Lefts with certain Rights than with other Lefts. It also explains why appeals to a “union of the Rights,” indefatigably preached in certain milieus, have never resulted in anything: “If we call Right everything which is not Left, this leads to strange groupings so heterogeneous that they cannot result in any common political action.”[21] As for the “union of the Left,” it existed only during the Popular Front (1936-38); within the National Council of the Resistance (1943-47), when the “common program” was adopted in 1972; and when the Communist Party participated in the government between May 1981 and July 1984 — in other words, for less than 13 years over nearly three centuries.

Since it is not possible to reduce all the forms of the Left and Right to a single criterion, most political scientists have stopped talking of them in the singular, preferring to speak in the plural of Rights and Lefts.[22] At the same time, they have undertaken to class them by means of a certain number of typologies.

One of the best-known classifications is that proposed by René Rémond, who distinguishes the traditional and counter-revolutionary Right — supposedly the “original” Right — from the liberal or Orleanist Right, as well as from the Bonapartist or plebiscitary Right represented not only by properly so-called Bonapartism, but also by fascism and Gaullism:

Other authors distinguish two Rights: radical and conservative, and two Lefts, progressive and revolutionary. Others hold that there is only a single (eternal or sublime) traditional Right and four Lefts: authoritarian-nationalist, liberal-bourgeois, anarcho-libertarian, and socialist-Marxist. Still others mark out a single reactionary Right and two Lefts, bourgeois and totalitarian. Finally, there are some who think there are a dozen tendencies: six Rights and six Lefts.[23]

Marc Crapez for his part distinguishes an egalitarian Left, a fraternitarian Left, a liberal Left, a liberal Right, a conservative Right, and a reactionary right.[24] In 1999, the journal Eléments even identified 36 “families of the Right,” each of which can be described by certain watchwords, references, theoreticians, writers, films, and so on.[25]

On the Left, Jacques Julliard discerns four principal families: the liberal Left, the Jacobin Left, the collectivist Left, and the libertarian Left. The liberal Left mainly favors a certain culture of government. It advocates for the market economy, the separation of powers, the ideology of the rights of man, and the distinction between civil society and the State. It is distinct from Right-wing liberalism only by its principled attachment to the concept of equality. The Jacobin Left also favors a “society of individuals,” but insists on “republican” values at the same time. It preaches civic virtue, gives the State a prominent role, and is instinctively hostile to “communitarianism,” regionalism, and decentralization. It strongly professes secularism, a single national form of education, uniformity of lands [l’uniformisation des terroirs], and the one and indivisible republic (“unity is the philosophical and political name of centralization,” says Julliard). The collectivist Left, which is not historically limited to the Communist Party, is distinguished from the Jacobin Left in that it believes in the power of organization, rejects the idea of a general reconciliation under the auspices of procedural reason, and remains convinced that the antagonism between the world of capital and the world of labor is irreducible. The libertarian Left, the Left’s least familiar form (it has never had legislative representation), goes back at least to Proudhon. It does not reject order, but power (“The highest perfection of society,” writes Proudhon, “is found in the union of order and anarchy,” proof that in his eyes these terms are not incompatible). Hostile to parties and to intellectuals, it puts all its confidence in the ability of producers to organize themselves on the basis of freely negotiated contracts.

You can buy Anthony M. Ludovici’s Confessions of an Anti-Feminist here.

None of these typologies is without interest, but none succeeds in “explaining the complexity of possible combinations and alliances within a constellation of elements between which movement is continuous.”[26] Their very diversity — and their contradictions — show that none is a permanently valid truth. At best, they can help us better understand the disposition of forces at a given moment. At bottom, the categories that flow from them remain problematic, and are inevitably oversimplifications. Jacques Julliard, in his book on the varieties of the Left, himself recognizes this when he tries to discern “aggregates” which unite — e.g. collectivism, traditionalism, and fascism (those who above all want to avoid a society only formed of rights-bearing individuals); Jacobinism and Bonapartism (those who make the State the founder and organizer of the social bond); or Left-liberalism, Orleanism, libertarianism, and Christian Democracy (those who share a similar distrust of the State and have confidence in civil society’s capacity to resolve its own problems). “There are now Jacobins of the Left and extreme Left, but also of the Right and extreme Right,” he observes. This demonstrates well the relative character of any typology.

So there is no eternal Left or Right, nor any man of the Left or Right constituted from all eternity. Left and Right are labels which do not rigorously correspond to distinct ideas or different strategies of action. They are certainly not insignificant, but they cannot be dissociated from particular topoi. If circumstances change, if the relations of topos to topos are overturned, the representation of the political system as a binary axis becomes unable to give an account of the situation.

“I deny that there exist ‘permanent values of the Right’ and ‘immortal principles of the Left,’” concludes Arnaud Imatz:

I am not unaware that numerous politicians and journalists of the Left (and of the Left of the Left) and of the Right (and of the Right of the Right) cling desperately to the old dyad as to a sacred relic, but I think they are mistaken. . . . The constant ideological crossover in the course of the years . . . demonstrates that this obsessive dichotomy does not in any way correspond to any intangible opposition between two kinds of temperament, character, or sensibility; they are not inalterable essences, original and absolutely irreducible data of public life; there is no eternal definition of Right and Left valid for all times and in all places. Right and Left are relative positions; each clarifies and explains the other. They are the result of contingent situations.[27]

In 1955, in The Opium of the Intellectuals, Raymond Aron already characterized the concepts of Left and Right as “equivocal.” Since then, there has been no lack of observers and authors to observe that this dyad, which has been so widely employed, no longer means anything. Regarding the Left/Right distinction, described by Costanzo Preve as “an artificial prosthesis of political science,”[28] Jean Baudrillard writes: “If one day the political imagination, political demand, and will have a chance to recover, it can only be on the basis of the radical abolition of this fossilized distinction which has negated and disavowed itself over the course of decades, and which is only held together today by complicity in corruption.”[29] “For a long time now,” states Cornelius Castoriadis, “the Left/Right divide in France and elsewhere has no longer corresponded to the great problems of our time or to radically opposed political choices.”[30] For his part, Régis Debray observes: “When there are no more differences between Left and Right than between the services of a nationalized bank and a private bank, or between the news program of a public network and a commercial network, we can, with no cause for regret, get by without either, and, who knows, perhaps even without realizing it.”[31]

We seem to have reached this point, and it gives one the impression of the end of an epoch. “The political form of modernity is exhausted, because it has run its course,” thinks Serge Latouche:

The Left and Right have essentially achieved what they set out to do. The game of alternation has succeeded extraordinarily well. The enlightened Right and the Left claim the Enlightenment’s heritage, but neither claims it entirely. Each has seen part of its program realized. The Left, whose imagination is attached to the Enlightenment’s radical side, is in love with progress, science, and technology; from Condorcet to Saint-Simon, we find these same themes. The liberal and enlightened Right, from Montesquieu to Tocqueville, exalts individual freedom and economic competition. The Left demands welfare for all, the right to growth, and the right to enjoy the fruits of one’s undertakings. The modern State has realized all of these things, albeit not without jolts and crises.[32]

What has rendered the Left/Right distinction obsolete most of all are society’s deep transformations that have been induced by mutations of the capitalist system. But we also see that all great events cut transversally across all political families. Whether the question is the Gulf War; the intervention of NATO forces in the Balkans; negotiations within the framework of the projected Transatlantic Treaty; the reunification of Germany and its consequences; the attitude to be adopted with regard to Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the debate on the construction of Europe and the common currency; controversies with regard to ecology, Islam, secularism, cultural identities, or biotechnologies — all the debates which have taken place in these last years have produced divisions irreducible to the traditional cleavages. The fracture lines are henceforward transversal: They run through the Left as well as the Right. Henceforth they sketch out new divisions.

Born of modernity, the Left/Right divide is disappearing along with it. Only those who fail to understand that the world has changed, and that obsolete conceptual tools no longer allow us to analyze it, still cling to this cleavage for reasons of habit, convenience, laziness, or interest. In the domain of public opinion, the concepts of Left and Right can still create illusions because they continue to form part of political and parliamentary language, which uses them as mantras in the hope of calling upon conditioned reflexes. Then people have recourse to phantasmagorical repoussoirs[33] (an anti-fascism without fascism, an anti-Communism without Communism), while those who notice the end of the traditional divide are criticized for “deliberately creating confusion” [taxés de « confusionnisme »] or are accused of muddying the waters for their own obscure purposes. In the world of politicians, the theatrical use of Left/Right opposition in fact aims principally at masking the convergence of camps whose identities have been lost. Arnaud Imatz is not wrong to see in this a “debilitating myth designed to break popular resistance to an oligarchy’s crystallization.”[34] All this will only go on for just so long.

* * *

Like all journals of dissident ideas, Counter-Currents depends on the support of readers like you. Help us compete with the censors of the Left and the violent accelerationists of the Right with a donation today. (The easiest way to help is with an e-check donation. All you need is your checkbook.)

GreenPay™ by Green Payment

Donation Amount

For other ways to donate, click here.

Notes

[1] Norberto Bobbio, Destra e sinistra. Ragioni e significati di una distinzione politica (Rome: Donzelli, 1994).

[2] Cf. Marcello Veneziani, Sinistra e destra. Risposta a Norberto Bobbio (Florence: Vallecchi, 1995); and Sergio Benvenuto, “Par-delà droite et gauche,” in Krisis, May 2009, 74-87.

[3] Cf. Allen Wood, “Marx et l’égalité,” in Krisis, June 2009, 51-73, who believes we should view Marx as an opponent of the ideal of equality, although “he was also an opponent, and not the least important, of all forms of social privilege and oppression” (52).

[4] Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring [1878], Moscow 1954, 143.

[5] Allen Wood, “Marx et l’égalité,” 61.

[6] Moiséi Ostrogorski, La Démocratie et les partis politiques [1902] (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 221, Cf. also Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: “Qui dit révolution dit nécessairement progrès, dit par là même conservation” (Idées révolutionnaires [1848], Tops-Trinquier, Antony 1996, 223).

[7] Vincent Coussedière, interview with Alexandre Devecchio, website Figaro Vox, March 18, 2016, 5.

[8] “Jean-Claude Michéa répond a dix questions,” in Gilles Labelle, Éric Martin, & Stéphane Vibert (eds.), Les Racines de la liberté. Réflexions a partir de l’anarchisme tory, op. cit., 302-304; 317. Cf. also Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (New York & London: Norton, 1991).

[9] “It is absurd to say that the philosophes of the Enlightenment were on the Left,” writes Jacques Julliard, “but it is legitimate to hold that the Left is the party of the Enlightenment” (Les Gauches françaises, 1762-2012).

[10] Ibid.

[11] Michel Marmin & Éric Branca, Gauche-Droite. Le tour de la question (Paris: Chronique, 2016).

[12] Dominique Venner, in Enquete sur l’histoire, no. 6, “L’âge d’or de la droite 1870-1940,” Spring 1993.

[13] Arnaud Imatz, Droite/gauche: pour sortir de l’équivoque. Histoire des idées et des valeurs non conformistes du XIXe au XXIe siècle (Paris: Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2016), 71.

[14] Jacques Duclos, in L’Humanité, November 26, 1945.

[15] “We are not nationalists, because nationalism is the individualism of peoples,” he said on November 17, 1935 (Escritos y Discursos, op. cit., 811). Echoing this thought, we may cite Jean Mabire: “I am not a Communist because I am a revolutionary” (L’écrivain, la politique et l’espérance [Paris: Saint-Just, 1966, 50). On April 9, 1935, José Antonio Primo de Rivera declared in Madrid: “From the social point of view, I find myself in agreement (without trying to be) on more than one point of Karl Marx’s critique. . . . What did he do? Just this: He sat beside the living reality of an economic form of organization, that of English manufacturing at Manchester, and he deduced from it, implacably, that within this structure certain constants prevailed which would end by destroying it. Karl Marx wrote this in an enormous book . . . but truly just as interesting as it was enormous, a densely written book [un livre d’une dialectique serrée] full of genius.”

[16] Arnaud Imatz, “Le clivage droite/gauche en question,” in La Nouvelle Revue d’histoire, July-August 2016, 17. Cf. also “L’antagonisme droite/gauche en question,” in Arnaud Imatz, Droite/gauche : pour sortir de l’équivoque, 35-115.

[17] Paul Piccone, “De la Nouvelle Gauche au populisme postmoderne,” in Krisis, February 2008, 77.

[18] François Huguenin, Le Conservatisme impossible. Libéraux et réactionnaires en France depuis 1789 (Paris: La Table Ronde, 2006).

[19] Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1960).

[20] Cf. Pascal Salin, “Est-il possible d’etre ‘libéral-conservateur’?”, in Les Cahiers de l’indépendance, Summer 2016, 59-65.

[21] Henri Guaino, in Valeurs actuelles, September 8, 2016, 20.

[22] Cf. Jean François Sirinelli (ed.), Histoire des droites en France, 3 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1992); Jacques Julliard, Les Gauches françaises, 1762-2012. René Rémond, who in 1954 published La Droite en France, significantly adopted the plural beginning with the fourth edition: Les Droites en France (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1982). In it he describes the Right as “a hybrid being, full of contradictions.”

[23] Arnaud Imatz, Droite/gauche: pour sortir de l’équivoque, 23.

[24] Marc Crapez, La Gauche réactionnaire. Mythes de la plèbe et de la race dans le sillage des Lumières (Paris: Berg International, 1997).

[25] Alain de Benoist, Charles Charpentier, Michel Marmin, & Grégory Pons, “Les 36 familles de droite,” in Éléments, February 1999, 24-32.

[26] Arnaud Imatz, Droite/gauche: pour sortir de l’équivoque, 32.

[27] Arnaud Imatz, “Le clivage droite/gauche en question,” 16.

[28] Constanzo Preve, “Une discussion pour l’instant interminable,” 2-15.

[29] Jean Baudrillard, De l’exorcisme en politique ou la conjuration des imbéciles (Paris: Sens et Tonka, 1998), 19-20.

[30] “Castoriadis, un déçu du gauche-droite,” in Le Monde, July 12, 1986.

[31] Régis Debray, Que vive la République (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1989).

[32] Serge Latouche, “Le MAUSS est-il apolitique ?,” in La Revue du MAUSS, third trimester 1991, 70-71.

[33] The use of an object such as a curtain or tree extremely close up to the picture plane, especially in Baroque painting, to create a sense of depth. It could be translated as “foil.” (Tr.)

[34] Arnaud Imatz, Droite/gauche: pour sortir de l’équivoque, 13-14.

Related

  • The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

  • It’s Not All About You

  • Neema Parvini’s Prophets of Doom: Cyclical History as Alternative to Liberal Progressivism

  • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 554 How Often Does Pox Think About the Roman Empire? . . . & Other Matters

  • White Altruism Revealed

  • The Metapolitics of “Woke”

  • The Matter with Concrete, Part 2

  • Remembering Martin Heidegger: September 26, 1889–May 26, 1976

Tags

Alain de BenoistAnglo-Saxon conservatismDominique VennerEuropean New RightF. Roger DevlinFranceFrench New RightJean-Claude MichéaJosé Antonio Primo de RiveraKarl MarxLeft-Right dichotomyLeft/Right dividemodernityNorberto BobbiopaywallpopulismprogressivismRaymond Aronthe leftThe Populist Momentthe Right

Next

» What Is Philosophy?

1 comment

  1. John says:
    October 23, 2022 at 2:32 pm

    “Diversity is a strength.”

    The less we have in common the more strength we have, the idiocy of western people.

    0
    0

Comments are closed.

If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.

Note on comments privacy & moderation

Your email is never published nor shared.

Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.

  • Recent posts

    • Remembering Roy Campbell (October 2, 1901–April 22, 1957)

      Greg Johnson

    • Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      Jim Goad

    • Remembering Savitri Devi (September 30, 1905–October 22, 1982)

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • The Counter-Currents 2023 Fundraiser: A Question of Degree

      Mark Gullick

    • Politics vs. Self-Help

      Greg Johnson

      32

    • The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      Jef Costello

      16

    • It’s Not All About You

      Spencer J. Quinn

      2

    • Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      Jim Goad

      21

    • The Stolen Land Narrative

      Morris van de Camp

      7

    • Neema Parvini’s Prophets of Doom: Cyclical History as Alternative to Liberal Progressivism

      Mike Maxwell

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 554 How Often Does Pox Think About the Roman Empire? . . . & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The “Treasonous” Trajectory of Trumpism

      Stephen Paul Foster

      7

    • A Haunting in Venice: Agatha Christie Is Back

      Steven Clark

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 553 Endeavour & Pox Populi on the Latest Migrant Invasion & More

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • White Altruism Revealed

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      2

    • The Union Jackal, September 2023

      Mark Gullick

      18

    • The Metapolitics of “Woke”

      Endeavour

      2

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 2

      Michael Walker

      2

    • Remembering Martin Heidegger: September 26, 1889–May 26, 1976

      Greg Johnson

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 17-23, 2023

      Jim Goad

      39

    • Paper Boy: The Life and Times of an Ink-Stained Wretch

      Steven Clark

      1

    • Richard Hanania’s The Origins of Woke

      Matt Parrott

      5

    • The Matter with Concrete, Part 1

      Michael Walker

      2

    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      5

    • Pox Populi and Endeavour on the Latest Migrant Invasion

      Greg Johnson

    • Crowdsourcing Contest! Our Banner

      A. C. C. Reader

      47

    • Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 2

      Travis LeBlanc

      18

    • Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      Beau Albrecht

      13

    • The Captivity Narrative of Fanny Kelly

      Spencer J. Quinn

      7

    • The Virgin Queen Chihuahua Has Spoken!

      Jim Goad

      52

    • Adult Cartoons Are a Disaster for Western Civilization, Part 1

      Travis LeBlanc

      40

    • Plastic Patriotism: Propaganda and the Establishment’s Crusade Against Germany and German-Americans During the First World War

      Alex Graham

      9

    • Race and IQ Differences: An Interview with Arthur Jensen, Part 2

      Arthur Jensen

      2

    • Donald Trump: The Jews’ Psycho Ex-Girlfriend

      Travis LeBlanc

      14

    • Bad to the Spone: Charles Krafft’s An Artist of the Right

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      1

    • Independence Day

      Mark Gullick

    • The Unnecessary War

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Bad Cop! No Baklava!

      Beau Albrecht

      7

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 552 Millennial Woes on Corporations, the Left, & Other Matters

      Counter-Currents Radio

      6

    • Remembering Charles Krafft: September 19, 1947–June 12, 2020

      Greg Johnson

    • Marx vs. Rousseau

      Stephen Paul Foster

      4

    • The Worst Week Yet: September 10-16, 2023

      Jim Goad

      22

    • The Tinkling Cherub of Mississippi

      Beau Albrecht

      2

    • A Deep Ecological Perspective on the Vulnerability of Eurodescendants

      Francisco Albanese

      3

    • Remembering Francis Parker Yockey: September 18, 1917–June 16, 1960

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • The Counter-Currents 2023 Fundraiser: Idealism Alone Can’t Last Forever

      Pox Populi

      3

    • Ask Me Anything with Millennial Woes

      Greg Johnson

    • Most White Republicans at Least Slightly Agree with the Great Replacement Theory

      David M. Zsutty

      13

    • Field of Dreams: A Right-Wing Film?

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • Rich Snobs vs. Poor Slobs: The Schism Between “Racist” Whites

      Jim Goad

      99

  • Classics Corner

    • Remembering Maurice Bardèche
      (October 1, 1907–July 30, 1998)

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • Why Race is Not a “Social Construct”

      Greg Johnson

      19

    • Remembering T. S. Eliot:
      September 26, 1888–January 4, 1965

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 1

      Greg Johnson

      22

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 2

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 3

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Remembering H. Keith Thompson
      September 17, 1922–March 3, 2002

      Kerry Bolton

      1

    • Be All You Can Be: On Joining the Military

      Ash Donaldson

      22

    • Transcript of FOX News’ Banned Report on Israel & 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

    • The Banned FOX News Report on Israel’s Role in 9/11

      Spencer J. Quinn

      12

    • The Psychology of Conversion

      Greg Johnson

      43

    • Animal Justice?

      Greg Johnson

      18

    • Uppity White Folks and How to Reach Them

      Greg Johnson

      6

    • Lord Kek Commands!
      A Look at the Origins of Meme Magic

      James J. O'Meara

      7

    • Major General J. F. C. Fuller
      (September 1, 1878–February 10, 1966)

      Anonymous

      5

    • Remembering Johann Gottfried von Herder
      (August 25, 1744–December 18, 1803)

      Martin Lichtmesz

      2

    • Moral Seriousness

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Columbus Day Special
      The Autochthony Argument

      Greg Johnson

      8

    • Remembering Knut Hamsun
      (August 4, 1859–February 19, 1952)

      Greg Johnson

      8

    • Sir Reginald Goodall: An Appreciation

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • 7-11 Nationalism

      Richard Houck

      28

    • Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as Anti-Semitic/Christian-Gnostic Allegory

      Greg Johnson

      7

    • Eraserhead:
      A Gnostic Anti-Sex Film

      Trevor Lynch

      17

    • Remembering Revilo Oliver
      (July 7, 1908–August 20, 1994)

      Greg Johnson

      17

    • Lars von Trier & the Men Among the Ruins

      John Morgan

      16

    • Heidegger without Being

      Greg Johnson

      17

    • Junetarded Nation

      Jim Goad

      8

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 338
      Ted Talk

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Hegemony

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • Cù Chulainn in the GPO:
      The Mythic Imagination of Patrick Pearse

      Michael O'Meara

      5

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • Salon Kitty: The Ultimate Nazisploitation Movie

      Travis LeBlanc

      14

    • The Relentless Persistence of Stalinism

      Stephen Paul Foster

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 548 Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson, Pox Populi, & David Zsutty

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Metapolitics in Germany, Part 1: An Exclusive Interview with Frank Kraemer of Stahlgewitter

      Ondrej Mann

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 546 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 5

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • A Call For White Identity Politics: Ed Brodow’s The War on Whites

      Dave Chambers

      6

    • The Fiction of Harold Covington, Part One

      Steven Clark

      21

    • Death by Hunger: Two Books About the Holodomor

      Morris van de Camp

      4

    • A Child as White as Snow

      Mark Gullick

      6

    • Jonathan Bowden’s Final Lecture on Video: Charles Maurras, Action Française, and the Cagoule

      Jonathan Bowden

      1

    • Who Was Lawrence R. Brown? Biographical Notes on the Author of The Might of the West

      Margot Metroland

      16

    • California Discontent, Part 2: Frank Norris’ The Octopus

      Steven Clark

      1

    • California Discontent, Part 1: John Steinbeck’s East of Eden

      Steven Clark

    • 12 More Sex Differences Due to Nature

      Richard Knight

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 545 Pox Populi and Morgoth on the Age of Immigration and More 

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • When White Idealism Goes Too Far: Saints of the American Wilderness

      Spencer J. Quinn

      10

    • A Compassionate Spy?

      Beau Albrecht

      11

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 544 Pox Populi, American Krogan, & Endeavour on the Metaverse

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Nietzsche and the Psychology of the Left, Part Two

      Collin Cleary

      2

    • Thoughts on an Unfortunate Convergence: Doctors, Lawyers, and Angry Women

      Stephen Paul Foster

      5

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 3: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 2: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Against Liberalism: Society Is Not a Market, Chapter I, Part 1: What Is Liberalism?

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part IV

      Kenneth Vinther

      2

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part III

      Kenneth Vinther

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 543 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 4

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Misrepresentative Government: Why Democracy Doesn’t Work, Part I

      Kenneth Vinther

      1

    • Jack London’s The Iron Heel as Prophecy, Part 2

      Beau Albrecht

    • The Scottish Mr. Bond? An Interview with Mystic

      Travis LeBlanc

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 542 Greg Johnson on Plato’s Gorgias, Lecture 3

      Counter-Currents Radio

  • Recent comments

    • Martin Lichmez

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      It's really a pity that life-changing reading experiences like these only happen in youth, at least...

    • Martin Lichmez

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      I'm a stove checker too.

    • J, Smith

      Having It All: America Reaps the Benefits of Feminism

      Aaron Russo's statements on feminism involving Rockefeller and the CIA and Guzziferno's 2006...

    • Margot Metroland

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      */ However, the strange strength of his two best texts (*The fountainhead* and *Atlas shrugged*)...

    • Anon

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      We need more nationalist activists like Dries and less of the roman saluting, swastika flag wielding...

    • curri

      Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 551: Ask Me Anything with Matt Parrott

      So you can only expect to be able to exercise your First Amendment rights in counties that voted say...

    • Stupid Boy

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      "We must present a vision and we must be likable." There are too many lance corporals with...

    • Illya

      Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 547 David Zsutty of the Homeland Institute

      Can someone link the poll about 18-34 years old far-right voters in Europe that Pox Populi mentioned...

    • Greg Johnson

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Can you link it? Thanks!

    • Liam Kernaghan

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Very young White man: "How do I get out of this mess?" Older White man: "I know the answer...

    • Scott

      The Stolen Land Narrative

      I love that quote, he he.I got banned from a major discussion forum just for quoting Napoleon (...

    • ArminiusMaximus

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      I looked for a speech of his in front of a crowd as a candidate for CC. Here is what I found from...

    • Nah

      Paper Boy: The Life and Times of an Ink-Stained Wretch

      Great article about a good man. Thank you, Mr. Clark. I get the impression that Howie Carr is...

    • Jud Jackson

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      It has been a long time since I read "The Fountainhead" but I did like it although it was too long...

    • Daniel Ross

      Who Drinks More, the Rich or the Poor?

      I agree. It's real hard to have much sympathy for the proverbial worms under the boot that Kant...

    • Just Passing By

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      "Ayn Rand’s writings are often silly" : indeed. For lack of time, I'll use a Google translation,...

    • Greg Johnson

      Politics vs. Self-Help

      Thanks. I will ask Jared about that. You aren't the first person to recommend it. It is a great...

    • Greg Johnson

      Remembering Savitri Devi (September 30, 1905–October 22, 1982)

      Thanks Mark!

    • Margot Metroland

      The Fountainhead: 80 Years Later

      Ayn Rand's writings are often silly, but there is a purity of intention in The Fountainhead that...

    • Mark Gullick

      Remembering Savitri Devi (September 30, 1905–October 22, 1982)

      Great reference piece. Yet another writer I discovered through CC.

  • Book Authors

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Collin Cleary
    • Jef Costello
    • Savitri Devi
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Julius Evola
    • Jim Goad
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Greg Johnson
    • Charles Krafft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Trevor Lynch
    • H. L. Mencken
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Tito Perdue
    • Michael Polignano
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Fenek Solère
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Multiple authors
  • Webzine Authors

    Editor-in-Chief

    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.

    Featured Writers

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • Stephen Paul Foster, Ph.D.
    • Jim Goad
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick, Ph.D.
    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.
    • Spencer J. Quinn

    Frequent Writers

    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton, Ph.D.
    • Collin Cleary, Ph.D.
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
    • Richard Houck
    • Ondrej Mann
    • Margot Metroland
    • John Morgan
    • Trevor Lynch
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Kathryn S.
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Michael Walker

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Julius Evola
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Ernst Jünger
    • Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Dominique Venner
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey

    Other Authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Michael Bell
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Giles Corey
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Richardo Duchesne, Ph.D.
    • Emile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Tom Goodroch
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas Jeelvy
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • G A Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Millennial Woes
    • Michael O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Herve Ryssen
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solere
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunic
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
Sponsored Links
Spencer J. Quinn Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Identaria Paul Waggener IHR-Store Asatru Folk Assembly No College Club American Renaissance The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Donate Now Mailing list
Books for sale
  • The Trial of Socrates
  • Fields of Asphodel
  • El Manifiesto Nacionalista Blanco
  • An Artist of the Right
  • Ernst Jünger
  • Reuben
  • The Partisan
  • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema
  • The Enemy of Europe
  • Imperium
  • Reactionary Modernism
  • Manifesto del Nazionalismo Bianco
  • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco
  • Vade Mecum
  • Whiteness: The Original Sin
  • Space Vixen Trek Episode 17: Tomorrow the Stars
  • The Year America Died
  • Passing the Buck
  • Mysticism After Modernism
  • Gold in the Furnace
  • Defiance
  • Forever & Ever
  • Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition
  • Resistance
  • Materials for All Future Historians
  • Love Song of the Australopiths
  • White Identity Politics
  • Here’s the Thing
  • Trevor Lynch: Part Four of the Trilogy
  • Graduate School with Heidegger
  • It’s Okay to Be White
  • The World in Flames
  • The White Nationalist Manifesto
  • From Plato to Postmodernism
  • The Gizmo
  • Return of the Son of Trevor Lynch’s CENSORED Guide to the Movies
  • Toward a New Nationalism
  • The Smut Book
  • The Alternative Right
  • My Nationalist Pony
  • Dark Right: Batman Viewed From the Right
  • The Philatelist
  • Confessions of an Anti-Feminist
  • East and West
  • Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Will Come
  • White Like You
  • Numinous Machines
  • Venus and Her Thugs
  • Cynosura
  • North American New Right, vol. 2
  • You Asked For It
  • More Artists of the Right
  • Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics
  • The Homo & the Negro
  • Rising
  • The Importance of James Bond
  • In Defense of Prejudice
  • Confessions of a Reluctant Hater (2nd ed.)
  • The Hypocrisies of Heaven
  • Waking Up from the American Dream
  • Green Nazis in Space!
  • Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country
  • Heidegger in Chicago
  • End of an Era: Mad Men & the Ordeal of Civility
  • Sexual Utopia in Power
  • What is a Rune? & Other Essays
  • Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • The Lightning & the Sun
  • The Eldritch Evola
  • Western Civilization Bites Back
  • New Right vs. Old Right
  • Journey Late at Night: Poems and Translations
  • The Non-Hindu Indians & Indian Unity
  • I do not belong to the Baader-Meinhof Group
  • Pulp Fascism
  • The Lost Philosopher
  • Trevor Lynch’s A White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • And Time Rolls On
  • Artists of the Right: Resisting Decadence
  • North American New Right, Vol. 1
  • Some Thoughts on Hitler
  • Tikkun Olam and Other Poems
  • Summoning the Gods
  • Taking Our Own Side
  • Reuben
  • The Node
  • The New Austerities
  • Morning Crafts
  • The Passing of a Profit & Other Forgotten Stories
Copyright © 2023 Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd.

Paywall Access





Please enter your email address. You will receive mail with link to set new password.

Edit your comment