Tag: political theory

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At the risk of courting redundancy, I would like to submit a few observations on the “left-right political spectrum” which has in late years been the subject of much debate in our quarters, and not only in our quarters. (more…)

Alain de Benoist

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Editor’s Note:

This is the transcript by V. S. of Richard Spencer’s January 9, 2012 Vanguard Podcast interview of Jonathan Bowden about the European New Right. You can listen to the podcast here. 

Richard Spencer: Hello, everyone! Today it’s a great pleasure to welcome back to the program Jonathan Bowden. (more…)

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Introduction

This essay examines Alain de Benoist’s book Beyond Human Rights, translated into English in 2011 by Arktos, originally published in French in 2004. This book is a powerful condemnation of the Western idea of natural rights, which it claims to be intrinsically associated with the idea that all humans across the world have human rights. It objects to the imposition of human rights obligations on an otherwise multicultural humanity. (more…)

2,047 words

Michael Anissimov
A Critique of Democracy: A Guide for Neoreactionaries
Zenit Books, 2015

Neoreaction is a philosophical movement, which emerged from social media in the past few years, seemingly in response to the hordes of social justice warriors that haunt the realms of message boards, blogs, and Twitter. (more…)

Albrecht Dürer, hombres salvajes de los paneles del Retrato de Oswald Krell, 1499

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English original here

Nota del Traductor:

“Might is Right” se conoce generalmente como “la ley del más fuerte”, pero por una cuestión de concordancia traducimos “como fuerza y derecho”.

Un lector me preguntó mis pensamientos sobre la relación entre la fuerza y el derecho. (Dicho sea de paso, yo soy feliz de responder cuestiones filosóficas).

(more…)

Albrecht Dürer, wild men from the side panels of the Portrait of Oswald Krell, 1499

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Spanish translation here

A reader has asked me for my thoughts on the relationship between might and rights. (By the way, I am happy to entertain philosophical questions.)

What are rights? Rights are principles defining political freedoms and obligations. If rights are political, what makes rights “natural” as opposed to conventional? What makes rights natural is an argument deriving them from human nature. Thus natural rights are socially instituted, protected, and enforced freedoms and obligations that are rationally grounded in nature, (more…)

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Francis Fukuyama
The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012

There’s so much meat in Francis Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order that someone could teach a college class on it, and someone should. It’s an expansive study of different political systems that attempts to develop a general theory of political development, and explain why different societies have formed different kinds of states — or none at all. (more…)

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Carl Schmitt, 1888–1985

The political regime under which much of the world labours (and the entire Western world) is called “Liberal Democracy.” Francis Fukuyama has praised the ever widening expansion of this regime over the globe as “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and [it consists in] the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”[1] The source of Fukuyama’s thesis, the Russian Hegelian Marxist, Alexandre Kojève, called this End State the “universal and homogeneous state”: it is the ultimate goal of both Liberalism and Communism.  (more…)

Graphic by Harold Arthur McNeill

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A lot of people like to think they are “non-violent.” Generally, people claim to “abhor” the use of violence, and violence is viewed negatively by most folks. Many fail to differentiate between just and unjust violence. Some especially vain, self-righteous types like to think they have risen above the nasty, violent cultures of their ancestors. They say that “violence isn’t the answer.” They say that “violence doesn’t solve anything.”

They’re wrong. Every one of them relies on violence, every single day. (more…)

Beyond Human Rights:
Defending Freedoms
Foreword by Eric Maulin
Arktos Media, 2011
118 pp

hardcover: $30
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paperback: $18
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Read F. Roger Devlin’s review here

Beyond Human Rights is the second of Alain de Benoist’s book-length political works to appear in English. (more…)

Preface by Tomislav Sunic
Arktos Media, 2011
104 pp

paperback: $16

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The Problem of Democracy is the first of Alain de Benoist’s book-length political works to appear in English. (more…)

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Alain de Benoist
The Problem of Democracy
Arktos Media, 2011

This deceptively brief study of democracy begins from the familiar point that the term can no longer mean much in an age when all regimes claim to be democratic. (more…)