3,999 words
Ethnopluralism
The ND distinguishes between racial lovers and racial haters: the former regard the plurality and ethnic diversity of humanity as its very richness, while the latter deny the existence of ethnic groups and desire the disappearance of races, therefore the uniformization of ways of life. Contrary to racial love, in which there is a taste for difference, xenophobia entails a rejection of difference, understood as a challenge that must be accepted because it is stimulating. All mentalities which, in one way or another, are unable to accept the difference and diversity of the existence of other peoples and other cultures may be described as alterophobic. [1] The origin of this mentality is a kind of social and political monotheism based on the idea of a universal and unique truth. From this derive all attempts to reduce human diversity to a single universal model, and all practices aimed at suppressing ethnic diversity (ethnocide) or dispossessing peoples of their national specificity and identity (acculturation).
This monotheistic attitude is based on the establishment of unifying and supposedly objective criteria, which are in fact nothing but the projection of particular values. Likewise, it rests on a lack of differential sense, which may be defined as the ability to perceive the relativity in time and space of biopsychological structures and psychosocial institutions. This alterophobic refusal also entails a rejection of the dialectical becoming of peoples, in favor of a theory of the end of history which presupposes the halting of the movement of the world set in motion by the play of human diversity.
One of the most subtle and harmful alterophobic manifestations is racial assimilationism. [2] In this phenomenon we find the idea that there are stages in the march toward a single civilization (the Western system). This idea draws inspiration from a homogeneous and linear conception of time, of Judeo-Christian origin, and from the idea that the cultural envelope of one population can be transferred to another, based on an essentialist and universalist concept of humanity. Furthermore, in the biblical perspective, history is eschatological, and the end of times coincides with a more uniform, homogeneous, and peaceful humanity, once disturbing differences have been abolished. This soteriology, once secularized, becomes an evolutionary and monolinear conception of history, identified with the realization of progress. By generating the myth of universal progress and justifying the contemporary idea of world development, this conception obliges all cultures to evolve toward the mercantilist omega of mass well-being in the Western system. It is the philanthropic ogre of ethnic groups.
Both ethnocide and ethnocentrism derive from this assimilationist conception. The primary axiom into which ethnocide and ethnocentrism are inscribed is the biblical dogma of the unity of humanity. Judeo-Christianity likewise promotes a conception in which the absolute is superior and determinant with respect to particular representations (a mode of thought that proceeds from the universal to the particular). Moreover, the Bible grounds the idea of a universal, abstract, and generic man, and it postulates monogenism, that is, that all men descend from a single primitive pair. Curiously, this monogenist viewpoint reduces culture to nature, valuing above all the unity of the human species (a zoological conception of man). This position also induces ethnocentrism, since ultimately Western man, who is the consummate prototype of the unified humanity, becomes the planetary model. In this essentialist conception of man, all cultural differences are transitory and inessential, and therefore must be neutralized or eliminated (the origin of acculturation and ethnocide).
The ND also criticizes all zoologism or biological materialism, which is a form of biological reductionism. Man is an animal and biology defines everything animal in him, but he possesses a properly human dimension that superimposes itself on the biological. This dimension is characterized by historical consciousness and culture. Nature determines the framework within which culture may be expressed, but does not determine the form of that culture. Furthermore, natural constitution is univocal, whereas cultural forms of expression are infinitely malleable within the natural framework.
Zoologism is also not far from a certain ontological metaphysics [3], since it takes into account only facts of biological invariability, tending to devalue everything that proceeds from history (the appearance of new forms). This theory likewise represents a unilateralism and a certain primacy of a theoretical, teleological, and immanent reason in history, since it postulates the existence of a global explanatory model (“the human race” or humanity) as the single criterion for explaining human phenomena. This ethnocentrism, which implicitly speaks of superior and inferior races—races identified with the direction of progress and races to be assimilated—implies once again the existence of a universal cultural referential, for without a common referential, differences are relative. Every universal paradigm is necessarily the projection of a particular value system, not an objective criterion. Moreover, this fixist language tends to absolutize entities that are always relative, denying all dynamic value to different populations and cultures, making of them Platonic entities, endowed with unilateral coefficients of superiority.
Each people has a different mentality, according to the style of life it has given itself, the worldview that shapes its thought, and the characterological traits it has acquired in the course of evolution, under the pressure of natural selection. Races are different, and their criteria of superiority are relative and always determined in relation to their own characteristics. [4]
One of the ND’s most relevant critiques is its rejection of the multiracial society and its analysis of the phenomenon of immigration.
Immigration arose as a prolongation of colonialism, which, desirous of resorting to cheap labor, transferred men as capital or commodities are transferred. A product of the liberal and mercantilist system, it is a modern form of deportation and slavery. [5] Immigration was decided in order to meet short-term mercantilist imperatives. It presented three advantages. [6] A low-paid labor force, little demanding in terms of working conditions. Companies could meet the strong demand of the growth years without investing in fixed capital (machinery, innovation). From this derived important immediate profits and lower prices. Secondly, a labor force that was not unionized, an advantage for employers but also for unions, which hoped to recruit this “union virgin” mass. And finally, a rootless labor force, which could be moved from one part of the territory to another according to needs.
Immigration is reprehensible because it harms the identity of the host culture as well as the identity of the immigrants. The ND is against immigration because it respects the immigrants—quite the opposite of the mercantilist society, which favors immigration because it despises peoples, justifying this contempt through progressive anti-racism. Moreover, the phenomenon of immigration is based on a conception of nationality as a transitory superstructure (Marxism) or a mere section of the great world market (liberalism). The people is nothing but a series of interchangeable individuals, gathered in an aleatory manner. Nationality is acquired or abandoned through a purely formal procedure. The more heterogeneous a society becomes, the less its members have in common, and the common social bond can only be based on abstract metaphysics devoid of roots, or on strictly material values.
Today it is recognized that the use of immigration has been profitable only in the short term and at a microeconomic level (individual corporate profit). In the medium term, the social cost, the loss in innovation and investment, and the wage burden generated by immigration have reduced GDP. Immigration has kept industries in an archaic structure, with heavy use of unskilled labor, and has prevented industry from entering the stage of the third industrial revolution. Immigration has also slowed the creation of skilled jobs, whose insufficient supply is the cause of unemployment. Immigrants have occupied the low-paid jobs that employers refused to revalue.
As their numbers increase and their conditions worsen, the excessive number of allogeneic populations produces racial conflict. The multiracial society [7] is the breeding ground of the worst racism. It produces ghettos, social hierarchies of ethnic basis, and apartheid. By insisting on the equality of all men and on the theme of the integration of immigrants, while at the same time the populations of color remain located in the lowest socio-professional ranks, the belief arises that the cause of this is the congenital inferiority of these groups; for the official humanitarian and universalist ideology asserts that all men are alike, whatever their culture, while also claiming that the Western model and its economic logic are consubstantial to all men. At the same time, the moralizing anti-racist discourse implicitly reinforces the idea of racial superiority, since this argument functions as the exorcizing counterweight of the daily reality of multiracial society (manifest inferiority of immigrants).
The multiracial society is tied to the construction of a multiracial world-subculture and a neo-colonialist world-economy. Essentially, it seeks to standardize types and customs in order to sell the same products and programs to all. It seeks to transform Europe into a New York (a heterogeneous, multicultural, and multiracial society), taking as its universal model the American example: a mosaic of ghettos and minorities linked by the mechanical gears of commercial firms and technocratic practices.
Thus is constructed the “world man,” but curiously ranked along racial lines, according to the logic of the planetary neo-colonialist economy. Paradoxically, the anti-racist and humanitarian ideology of the supporters of immigration and the melting pot—who deny ethnic and national boundaries under the pretext of humanitarism—introduces the specter of race as the only differentiating factor between the humanoid clans of the multiracial society.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right here
The access of immigrants to citizenship will not only fail to change their social situation, but will further accentuate inferiorizing discrimination. A foreigner at the base of the social hierarchy or with different customs maintains his dignity vis-à-vis the natives of the country in which he resides. A citizen, on the contrary, having been rejected by his own country, which he will have betrayed, will never again be able to claim the particularity of his foreign belonging, and will be nothing but a second-class citizen in a West that will never grant him the same social position as the autochthonous population. The latter will understandably manifest only indifference and inhospitality toward immigrants, whereas homogeneous and organic nations practice the spirit of hospitality toward the foreigner.
To carry the right to difference to its ultimate consequences, one must reject the multiracial society and consider the return of immigrants to their respective countries. For a world composed of homogeneous peoples is preferable to a multiracial world-state. For it is fair that Europeans preserve their ethnocultural specificity, threatened by the strong growth of allogeneic populations, just as it is fair that immigrants have roots and a homeland. For the multiracial society reinforces mercantilist universalism and opposes the right of peoples to a diversified model of world organization. And because, ultimately, it is an obstacle to a policy of understanding with the nations of the Third World, which should be the natural allies of Europe against the blocs. Between multiracial society and civil war—the prelude to the expulsion of immigrants—there is a third solution: organizing, together with their countries of origin, the progressive return of immigrants to their respective homelands.
Metapolitical strategy
Today, politics is no longer conducted only in traditional venues. Every field of thought and action, insofar as it belongs to the human sphere, exhibits an ideological dimension. No field escapes ideology, since man, having to determine himself constantly before things, must read the world [8] and therefore needs an interpretive filter (ideology) that allows him to extract from chaotic reality directional schemes for action, to be harmonized voluntarily and deliberately. Thus, in human societies nothing is neutral. To remain silent simply amounts to giving extra power to those who speak.
Moreover, the State today exercises its rule not only through the coercion of political power, as the Marxists thought, but also benefits from a kind of “ideological hegemony” [9] that consolidates and justifies it, since it rests on values shared by the majority of society. Wherever a specific cultural atmosphere reigns to which most of society spontaneously adheres, there is no seizure of political power without a prior seizure of cultural power. This taking of political power is effected through a long ideological labor within civil society that prepares the ground. It is a transformation of general ideas, equivalent to a slow remodeling of minds, the axis of this war of positions being culture, considered as the command post where values and ideas are specified. In other words, to obtain a political majority one must first obtain an ideological majority; only when society has been won over to values different from those on which political power rests will society begin to waver at its foundations and effective power begin to crumble. The situation can then be exploited on the political plane. In addition, the susceptibility of public opinion to a metapolitical message is all the more effective in that its directive and suggestive character is not perceived as such, becoming in the long run politically more efficacious because it produces a slow shift of mentalities from one value system to another. The ND recognizes the importance of Gramsci’s theory of cultural power, which, rather than preparing the rise to power of a political party, aims to transform mentalities in order to promote a new system of values. This is why the ND has chosen to be a school of thought and not a political movement. As the bylaws of GRECE (Groupement de Recherches et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne), the cultural association that disseminates the ideas of the French Nouvelle Droite, specify, it is a society of thought with an intellectual vocation. Its goal is to stimulate ideological debate [10], entirely necessary and urgent at a time when European society is invaded by disenchantment, uncertainty, and the temptation to give up.
The ND therefore positions itself at the level of metapolitics: that is, it seeks to disseminate within civil society values and ideas (a worldview), so that these ideas are able to generate a historical impact—a mobilizing project capable of eliciting new adhesions and engendering hope.
A worldview [11] is a set of values, ideas, and ideals, as well as interpretations of reality, proper to a community. The worldview is the basis of cultures and civilizations. As the place where the collective unconscious operates, the worldview is directly influenced by the biology and anthropology of the group that expresses it. One and the same worldview can give rise to different ideologies, which may oppose one another yet all express a single historical and social project. For the ND, two worldviews have confronted each other in our world for two millennia: one, Christianomorphic, centered around the sensibility and teaching of Judeo-Christianity, which has given rise to the egalitarian ideologies dominant today; the other, of Indo-European origin, of pagan sensibility, which, although politically and historically censored, has constantly expressed itself in European culture, philosophy, and art. With Nietzsche, this worldview attained a conscious formulation. The role of the ND is to embody it and draw from it those ideologies that may one day both oppose and complement each other. This metapolitical strategy of cultural combat is carried out by a new kind of organic intellectual [12], capable of awakening and guiding the historical consciousness of the national community. The mission of this new kind of intellectual may be summed up in four imperatives: first, to take positions regarding the immediate, that is, to be a committed observer of the present situation while preserving great freedom of appraisal and reflection; second, not to be imprisoned by a bipolar dialectic, that is, by the supposed need to choose between liberal right and the egalitarian Christian-Marxist utopia; third, to create and emit a discourse that breaks with the dominant ideology, in which liberalism and social democracy represent only two complementary facets of the same egalitarian and economistic worldview—something that, in the world of simulacrum in which we live, presupposes creating a new mythical dimension capable of giving meaning to reality, for the strength of an idea stems above all from its lyrical capacity. It falls to the ND to give birth to the poetic emotion of the twenty-first century. The fourth and final imperative is total and permanent commitment between theory and action.
To the opposition against the current system [13], one must say that no historical battle can be durably won without a line of thought, without a truly coherent ideology. The idea comes first [14], and those who forget this are condemned either to frenetic, risible activism, devoid of any end or future, or to reformist pragmatism, impotent to arouse passions, since it is confined to a purely material and managerial horizon. The great upheavals of history were prepared by intellectuals. The ND proposes that the opposition abandon ideological neutrality and counter the adversary’s offensive with a counter-offensive of superior power, that is, to work at creating a cultural counter-power. The ND proposes munitions for the ideological war so that the opposition to the system can organize its response. It proposes new themes for reflection, ideological positions that will allow it to escape false dilemmas and overcome false alternatives. The ND aims to offer an alternative strategy capable of turning defeat into victory. This strategy presupposes abandoning primary schemas and placing oneself outside the factions that, on the occasion of the electoral circus, confront their reciprocal archaisms. It presupposes exploring the possibilities of a third position and also changing universe and principles, that is, stepping outside the dominant problematic in which liberalism and socialism are the opposite poles within a single egalitarian matrix.
Finally, according to the ND, new configurations are appearing in the ideological domain that transcend the outdated divisions of right and left, liberalism and socialism. These are the new trends [15], which set the supporters against the adversaries of human rights, the supporters against the adversaries of an imperial Europe allied with the peoples of the Third World, and the supporters against the adversaries of a new overhuman paganism. The good fortune of the ND is that it has refuted the predictions of all those who, according to G. Faye, wished the Nouvelle Droite to convert to liberalism and devote itself to the eternal struggle against Marxism. On the contrary, the Nouvelle Droite has taken the lead of these new trends. In the ND’s view, the coming decade will center on the ideological struggle between a “third left” and the “Nouvelle Droite.”
Basic lines for a new educational policy
At the beginning of 1976, a study group for a “New Education” was created at the initiative of GRECE. This group [16] set itself a twofold objective: first, to study, analyze, and take positions on the problems of education in today’s world; and second, to work on the elaboration of a global educational project that forms an integral part of a worldview and a way of life. This project seeks to place itself beyond the sterilizing reactionism of a certain traditional pedagogy and the impracticable utopianism of a certain modern pedagogy.
Man is the creator of himself. His capacities, shaped by genetic inheritance, are only potentialities. Hence man needs an appropriate environment in which to express himself, but also a training in order to exercise those capacities in the chosen direction. Hence the need for education.
To educate is also to form a certain type of human being, according to a certain type of society. Since men’s aspirations differ qualitatively, they cannot be added or averaged; the criteria chosen to educate them will always be arbitrary, depending on the image one has of man. A political will is essential to form that type of human being. Education and politics cannot be dissociated. There is interdependence between the objectives of education and the ends of politics. The realization of such a project presupposes the reinsertion of pedagogy into its communal and historical context. The pedagogical process is empty of meaning if it does not transmit to the person the cultural patrimony of the community into which he is born. Therefore there is no educational system with a universal vocation.
Education must be based on equality of opportunity, which must not be confused with egalitarianism, which entails leveling and the annulment of differences. It is therefore a question of instituting a “pedagogy of difference,” a tailor-made teaching that takes into account the heterogeneity of pupils and the variation of their pace of learning. Education must adapt to pupils’ tastes, aptitudes, and merits, that is, adjust to the inequalities observed. The point is to avoid egalitarianism, which prevents pupils from learning and progressing at their own pace, producing boredom and maladjustment among the most gifted and discouragement among the less able. Hence the need to diversify types of schools, as well as programs and methods. Teaching must be varied and of quality, offering different goals in order to allow the best possible orientation according to each person’s potentialities, and it must allow passage from one type of teaching to another, as well as from one track to another.
In short, it is a matter of establishing an organic pedagogy capable of giving learners a global vision of the world. This presupposes interdisciplinarity and the definition of common guidelines and convergent curricula, implemented by homogeneous teaching teams, rather than juxtaposed and incoherent educational activities.
Opposed to a reductionist conception of education that privileges only the cognitive aspects of personal development to the detriment of the physical, aesthetic, and ethical aspects, one must set a conception of the complete education of youth in their totality.
Education must aim at the optimal development and expansion of the person’s potentialities and capacities. It must form free and responsible citizens, and it must transmit and bring to life a culture grounded in the heritage of the past, which will make it possible to build the future.
Biological realities, long rejected by the dominant ideology, cannot be ignored today. The learner cannot be reduced to his family milieu and socio-cultural environment. His psychology, genetics, and behavior must likewise be considered.
Certain trends in current pedagogy are also objectionable: among them, the way History is taught in schools, which renders pupils amnesic regarding their historical and cultural roots by depriving them of clear chronological references; or the predominance of the oral over the written; or the fact that the language of the street and television prevails over the literary; or that creativity is preferred to imagination, spontaneity to reflection, and freedom to rigor.
If it is admitted that the school’s vocation is to transmit a cultural heritage, the present school does not fulfill its mission. We must return to a culture that is a way of being oneself, a will to surpass oneself, and a way of life.
—Carlos Pinedo Cestafe. Zaragoza, Fall 1985.
Translated into English by Francisco Albanese.
Notes
[1] Benoist, Alain de: Les idées à l’endroit, op. cit., pp. 145-158.
[2] Berard, Pierre: “Ces cultures qu’on assassine,” in: Actes du XV colloque national du GRECE (la cause des peuples), Le Labyrinthe, Paris, 1982, 13-37.
[3] Benoist, Alain de: “Le totalitarisme raciste,” in: Eléments no. 33 (February-March), 1980, pp. 13-20.
[4] Benoist, Alain de: “Race et psychométrie,” in: Vu de Droite, op. cit., pp. 178-180.
[5] Benoist, Alain de: “Avec les immigrès, contre le nouvel esclavage,” in: Eléments no. 45 (Spring 1983), p. 2.
[6] Vouloir no. 4 (March 1984), pp. 3-4.
[7] Faye, Guillaume: “La société multiraciale en question,” Eléments no. 48-49, pp. 69-76.
[8] Wayoff, Michel: “Pourquoi un gramscisme de droite?,” in: Actes du XVI colloque national du GRECE (Pour un gramscisme de droite), Le Labyrinthe, Paris, 1982.
[9] Benoist, Alain de: Les idées à l’endroit, op. cit., pp. 250-259.
[10] Vial, Pierre: “Le combat culturel du GRECE,” in: Eléments no. 32, pp. 21-22.
[11] Vouloir no. 10 (November 1984), p. 2.
[12] Vial, Pierre: “Les idées qui mènent le monde. Les intellectuels et l’histoire.” (Pour un granscisme de droite), op. cit., pp. 39-53.
[13] Benoist, Alain de: “Les fausses alternatives,” in: La Troisième Voie, op. cit., pp. 59-61.
[14] Vial, Pierre: “Les idées qui mènent le monde. Les intellectuels et l’histoire.” (Pour un gramscisme de droite), loc. cit. pp. 39-53.
[15] Faye, Guillaume: “Dans les replis du déclin: La métamorphose,” in: La Fin d’un monde. Crise ou déclin, op. cit., p. 76.
[16] Vial, Pierre: “Une nouvelle éducation,” in: Pour une renaissance culturelle, op. cit., pp. 175-192.