In an 1849 letter to a friend, Juan Donoso Cortes, Marques of Valdegamas and noble son of Spain, touched upon the essence of Christendom:
Today European culture is in ruins, and our master class has enshrined new ideals to replace the ancient faith. So forget your fathers, for they were unenlightened barbarians unworthy of even your memory, fools who from heathendom came to believe in the promise of divine love and salvation after death. Liberated through reason, we have evolved past such childish fairytales. As free and equal supermen, we attend to the total organization of happiness on earth.
The quest to build the Brave New World is a war without limits; proclaiming freedom to every nation, the forces of Revolution amass power unprecedented and lay claim to our very souls. In addition to the farce of voting, perversion, infanticide, and universal consumerism are sacraments of the new, militant cult, defended at home and promoted abroad through any means necessary. Western troops shredded by IEDs in Afghanistan and elsewhere perish not merely for energy routes, poppy fields or geopolitical position, but for the birth of a global civilization. Their patriotism and valor are employed to advance a society that holds such virtues in contempt. Blessed are those who kill for Chevron, Goldman Sachs and Two and a Half Men; blessed are those who die for democracy.
“Civilization” has become a macabre, pornographic Disneyland writ large, expanding across the planet to envelop disparate peoples and tribes and subordinate them to its model, the only permissible model, of political economy. Our sacred liberty succinctly translates to pleasure and material well-being, the bourgeois values of the oligarchs who dominate the liberal order. Should you reject this proposition, should you insist upon your culture freely forging its own destiny, fighting the predatory banking cartels and social engineers, demographic displacement and moral corruption, you must be an accursed and intolerant retrograde, an enemy of progress, a fascist.
Far from the actual ideology of twentieth-century interwar Europe, “fascism” in the postmodern age is just a nasty label reserved for the programs of political opponents. In the American context, established pundits left and right label their targets as fascists with regularity, thereby devaluing the term to another form of cheap invective in liberal discourse. Contemporary society in the West does indeed share some commonalities with popular notions of fascist praxis, from corporate-state fusion and militaristic triumphalism to the pervasive indoctrination and surveillance of mass man. Yet these are general features of modern totalitarianism irrespective of doctrine [1].
Within several currents of interwar fascism, one can find inspiration in the will to react- meeting the powers of subversion head-on in battle to defend what remained of the West. Along with this readiness to combat both Bolshevism and liberal plutocracy, there was restored an ethic of heroic sacrifice for the national community. Conservative-Revolutionary Arthur Moeller Van den Bruck flew the black flag of revolt against Weimar decadence and foreign exploitation, and the Falange were among the first to crash through Communist lines and free Spain during that country’s savage civil war.
While the ethic of struggle is to be upheld in a just hierarchy of values, certain rightist movements, particularly National Socialism, fell prey to the seductions of self-worship, what Russian White émigré Ivan Ilyin saw as “national megalomania” [2]. And from state, race or a leader of dubious inspiration, they crafted cruel idols commanding universal dominion and the enslavement and murder of other peoples. Today’s Europe, controlled by a U.S.-backed alliance of international capital and cultural Marxists, is largely the dialectical outcome of Adolf Hitler’s failed gamble for Weltmacht. Never is power, even over all the kingdoms of the world, worth the price of a man’s soul.
Physical survival is only the visible level of this contest. What we face, men and nations alike, is spiritual war, where neutrality is no longer possible. Let us take to heart this fervent appeal from the Captain of Romania’s Legionaries, the fearless and tragic Corneliu Codreanu:
[2] In the early 1930s Ilyin, living and writing in exile in Berlin, had supported the Nazis for halting Germany’s bolshevization, yet he would later come to realize that their plans were not traditional-authoritarian in nature, but totalitarian. Harassed by the Gestapo, he left for Switzerland in 1938, where he resided until his death in 1954.
With this casual observation, Donoso was able to express traditional Europe’s hierarchy of values and discern the contingent from the Absolute. The heritage of our fathers is accorded veneration, and to the God of our fathers we render all worship. Each nation, a communion of generations- the dead, the living and those yet to be born – is called to glorify Him in its own unique and unrepeatable way. Herein is found the true greatness of a culture."After the cult owed to God, there is nothing more beautiful than the cult of our ancestors."
Today European culture is in ruins, and our master class has enshrined new ideals to replace the ancient faith. So forget your fathers, for they were unenlightened barbarians unworthy of even your memory, fools who from heathendom came to believe in the promise of divine love and salvation after death. Liberated through reason, we have evolved past such childish fairytales. As free and equal supermen, we attend to the total organization of happiness on earth.
The quest to build the Brave New World is a war without limits; proclaiming freedom to every nation, the forces of Revolution amass power unprecedented and lay claim to our very souls. In addition to the farce of voting, perversion, infanticide, and universal consumerism are sacraments of the new, militant cult, defended at home and promoted abroad through any means necessary. Western troops shredded by IEDs in Afghanistan and elsewhere perish not merely for energy routes, poppy fields or geopolitical position, but for the birth of a global civilization. Their patriotism and valor are employed to advance a society that holds such virtues in contempt. Blessed are those who kill for Chevron, Goldman Sachs and Two and a Half Men; blessed are those who die for democracy.
Far from the actual ideology of twentieth-century interwar Europe, “fascism” in the postmodern age is just a nasty label reserved for the programs of political opponents. In the American context, established pundits left and right label their targets as fascists with regularity, thereby devaluing the term to another form of cheap invective in liberal discourse. Contemporary society in the West does indeed share some commonalities with popular notions of fascist praxis, from corporate-state fusion and militaristic triumphalism to the pervasive indoctrination and surveillance of mass man. Yet these are general features of modern totalitarianism irrespective of doctrine [1].
Within several currents of interwar fascism, one can find inspiration in the will to react- meeting the powers of subversion head-on in battle to defend what remained of the West. Along with this readiness to combat both Bolshevism and liberal plutocracy, there was restored an ethic of heroic sacrifice for the national community. Conservative-Revolutionary Arthur Moeller Van den Bruck flew the black flag of revolt against Weimar decadence and foreign exploitation, and the Falange were among the first to crash through Communist lines and free Spain during that country’s savage civil war.
While the ethic of struggle is to be upheld in a just hierarchy of values, certain rightist movements, particularly National Socialism, fell prey to the seductions of self-worship, what Russian White émigré Ivan Ilyin saw as “national megalomania” [2]. And from state, race or a leader of dubious inspiration, they crafted cruel idols commanding universal dominion and the enslavement and murder of other peoples. Today’s Europe, controlled by a U.S.-backed alliance of international capital and cultural Marxists, is largely the dialectical outcome of Adolf Hitler’s failed gamble for Weltmacht. Never is power, even over all the kingdoms of the world, worth the price of a man’s soul.
Physical survival is only the visible level of this contest. What we face, men and nations alike, is spiritual war, where neutrality is no longer possible. Let us take to heart this fervent appeal from the Captain of Romania’s Legionaries, the fearless and tragic Corneliu Codreanu:
The final aim is not life but resurrection. The resurrection of peoples in the name of the Savior Jesus Christ…There will come a time when all the peoples of the earth shall be resurrected, with all their dead and all their kings and emperors, each people having its place before God’s throne. This final moment, “the resurrection from the dead”, is the noblest and most sublime one toward which a people can rise. Overcome self and sin; rise and conquer. Through struggle we are called to the highest honor- to become loyal companions of the Savior, He who trampled death underfoot. Babylon shall be razed, and the West resurrected.
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Notes:
[1] An excellent post-war analysis of Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s National Socialism in practice is Julius Evola’s Critique of Fascism from the Right (Russian translation). Evola wastes no time in bringing to light fascism’s proletarian and Bonapartist inclinations, as well as the quintessentially modern social mechanization and racial materialism of the Third Reich.[2] In the early 1930s Ilyin, living and writing in exile in Berlin, had supported the Nazis for halting Germany’s bolshevization, yet he would later come to realize that their plans were not traditional-authoritarian in nature, but totalitarian. Harassed by the Gestapo, he left for Switzerland in 1938, where he resided until his death in 1954.
