Guillaume Faye
What follows is my own (admittedly rough) translation of an interview with M. Faye:
I will begin by quoting you. In the review Études et recherches, fifteen years ago, you wrote that one can arrive at the point where "a world civilization desirous to stabilize history opposes its conservative will to the forces which it had itself released". According to you, are we there? The Occident, longtime passive witness of the ethnic invasion, America longtime imprudent accomplice of the Islamists -- do they still have the moral strength "to stop the course of history" when the clash of civilizations has passed from the stage of the "cold war" to that of the "hot war"?
One epoch terminates, another commences. One cannot foresee what will occur: what we know is that we are at a crossroads, we live the end of an age of European civilization. Civilization which has known three great epochs: the ancient, the medieval, then the modern which commenced about the 1850s. Currently we live the end of this last epoch because Europe is invaded by the very ones it had conquered when it is in full demographic decline. On the moral, mental, psychological level, all the European values have reached their conclusion, diluted in humanism and total egalitarianism. The Hegelian enough thesis that I defend is that this situation is provoking a world catastrophe which can in the end regenerate us. One does not regenerate oneself cold: one can metamorphose oneself only hot. The central question that one can pose in a dialectical manner is to know if this ethnic, ecological, ethical, etc, catastrophe that European civilization caused by its own decline will be the occasion of a regeneration or a disappearance. Currently we are colonized and this invasion is coupled with an incredible masochism on the part of Europeans themselves. Thus, only a terrifying crisis - that I wish, in this respect - can change collective mentalities, awake Europeans. In my new book, Avant-Guerre [Pre-War Years], I develop my thesis of "the Colonization of Europe", while going beyond, by transcending the European context. Because for me, now that we have come right to the clash of civilizations, we go towards the third world war!
The shock of September 2001 seemed to awaken the capacity of analysis of certain media. Then, quite quickly, Bush specified that he did not make war on Islam, and the great media -- Le Monde or Télérama in France, Repubblica in Italy -- devoted all their energy to make Islam known to us, this religion of tolerance and culture, so near and so remote. Has censorship already returned?
This awakening was a shuddering, a flapping of wings. When Bush and Blair say that they do not make war on Islam, it is risible. Maybe we do not make war on Islam, but Islam makes war on us! It is not you who designate the enemy, it is the enemy who designates you! They knew very well that they declared the war on Islam, which besides is designated in Arabic by the same word as "Islamism": islamiya. There was thus a small awakening, but it is not very important. The war which Islam makes on us did not begin on September 11, 2001, but in the '60s. What is positive, it's that the Islamists went too far, too fast: it's the Arab mentality which wants that. They passed too quickly from the time of peace to the time of war, whereas they were underway to invade consciences. If they had been less pressed, nobody would have seen anything. No doubt, so that the eyes really open, there will be necessary a giant attack: but I do not believe that this will take place immediately, it is not in their interest to realize too much of it in the immediate future. It is possible that there be a period of calm. We are faced with a terrorism which does not depend on a true terrorist organization, but deploys itself according to the logic of a transnational war, in networks, and which goes beyond the sole capacities of a group like Al-Qaeda: Islam is a multinational, the war is not territorialized, nor reducible to the misdeeds of a single organization! The end of bin Laden will not solve anything at all because this last, simple sponsor of the jihad in spite of his posture of Prophet, had only made to applaud some acts that he undoubtedly had followed and financed, but certainly not organized directly himself!
Which strategy do you recommend for citizens who would like to prepare for the future conflicts? Some have said that you want to found your own political party.
It's idiotic! That would limit my audience. That goes completely against my current analysis, because I recommend a work in network. It is certainly necessary that there be parties to make agitprop. But the important thing is the network, on a European scale, without guru or bigwig! To found one more petty sect is completely counterproductive. My "party" is my secretariat and the many friends with whom I collaborate in all Europe. I do not want a label!
In the review Réfléchir et Agir, you recommended a "withdrawal" on associative action, following the example of that which the extreme-Left made. Could you develop this point?
It is not a "withdrawal", but a general-purpose strategy. One needs parties, publishers, associations, trade unions. It is necessary that there be in civil society a presence of our ideas. But all the forms of action are necessary: it does not do to want to make metapolitics against politics. All actions, political, cultural, should be connected by the same vision of the world. It is not a strategy of withdrawal, but of spreading out, comparable with that which the Trotskyists had -- who are today at the head of the State and of the Catholic Church! - from the '60s. The French national Right is undermined by the culture of defeat, petty bosses, gossip: the different groups of Muslims and Leftists can detest one other, but they have each and all the same enemies against whom they unite. Whereas for many people of our ideas, the enemy is at first his own political friend, for simple reasons of jealousy!
I am stunned to see that associative action has so little been used. There is no association which defends Europeans! Well, there is AGRIF, but they do few things, and they belong too openly to the National Front, which undermines their credibility: S.O.S Racism had known to camouflage near enough its infeudation to the Socialist Party! At least, the Left moves: look at Act against Unemployment, ATTAC or Right to Housing, which represent 5,000 people in France! People in our circles are for order, but they are disorganized and inactive, whereas the Trotskyists, in spite of their ideology, are organized people. It is necessary to move! I am struck by the poverty of the associative activity in our camp. I repeat it, there is anti-European racism and no association really stirs itself to get it talked about!What do you think of this pro-Islamist drift that one observes in the French national Right, a drift often aroused by an anti-Americanism fed on ill-digested antisemitism?
This drift is recognized. They confound the enemy and the adversary: the adversary is that which weakens us, that is to say the United States, the enemy is that which invades us concretely: Islam and the Third World. The funniest thing is that it is I, among others, who, in the '70s, convinced this circle that one did not have to be deeply pro-American. All the obsessional anti-Americans of today were then pro-Americans! Giorgio Locchi and I, notably with my book Le Système à tuer les peuples, made Alain de Benoist topple over into anti-Americanism, who was an Americanophile before; to realize it, it is enough to re-read the numbers from before 1975 of the review Nouvelle École! Some suffer from an obsessional antisemitism, coupled with a kind of Stockholm Syndrome which makes them love the true enemy. The Muslims will not hold any liking of them for it: the French "identitarians" who perhaps admired the actions attributed to bin Laden will have their throats cut like the others! Islam is a religion of force which leads certain nationalist militants to prostrate in front of the conquering religion with the fascination of a colonized people. But even if they convert, which is already the case for some, they are always, as Occidentals, only second-class Muslims. Pro-Islamism in the nationalist Right is frequent enough. Plus these people are "nazis" in the most primary sense of the word, anti-Americans in the most idiotic sense of the term, and plus they are pro-Muslims, without knowing either America or Islam besides. They are fascinated by the neo-romantic illusions which they have of Islam. In circles which claim to be radical, there is an infantile reaction: these people are perhaps extremists, but not radical, because the radicals are those who go to the root of things. It is easy to tag "US go home" or "Long live bin Laden" in the subway; they risk less than if they were going to write "Islam out" in the projects.
As a journalist, which judgment do you give to the sociology of the current media? Does the "politically correct" find its roots in the Third-Worldism of the '50s and '60s, in communist engagement, or rather in May '68 and the years which followed?
It is a sequence; but I believe that it is the post-'68 period which weighed the most. Those who hold the media are people 50 years old, of my generation, who grew up in a neo-Marxist atmosphere. But one needs to know that there reigns among journalists a true Stalinian single thought: Marxism has ceded in this respect its place to Third-Worldism, then to immigrationism. To succeed socially, it is necessary to have a position which goes in the direction of the anti-racist, immigrationist and egalitarian software-ideology (as at the time of the USSR, where it was necessary to be pro-Soviet). Knowing that even people disapproving of it participate in this vulgate. Everyone sees the truth in the street, everyone except the current elites, who play ostrich. Some great journalists, totally of my ideas, signed the petitions for the "undocumented": they explained to me that if they had refused, their career was screwed. It does not suffice not to speak of it: one must claim to be anti-[white] racist, as it was necessary to be Stalinophile in the '50s. Charlie-Hebdo attacked Gérard Depardieu because he refused to sign! That did him no harm, because he is at the top. But a young actor would have seen his career cut short. One must know that many do not speak by conviction, but from fear: they want to be on the side of the whip hand. One must proclaim oneself anti-[white] racist, for immigration, etc. as in the XIXth century one must go to Mass every Sunday! That means Charlie-Hebdo, directed by "old schmucks," is the classic example of the "Stalinian rag and informer," a "media of thought-police and collaborators," the "freezing point of journalism." For Europeans to have a true awakening from the conformism and ethno-masochistic blindness of our self-styled "opinion leaders," we have need of a terrible crisis, which alone can give us the energy to defend ourselves.
Ed Mick
He has a blog and describes himself as a "libertarian nationalist." His comments:
I began calling myself this 3 or 4 years ago. As far as I was concerned, I was making the term up, though I'm sure others were using it somewhere. I've since learned that there's a group of people who call themselves this who are essentially white supremacists. I am NOT in their camp.
Let me try to tell you what I mean in a nutshell. I begin with the premise that we must accept the fact that the nation-state exists, and always will, at least in the foreseeable future. One problem I have with many libertarians is that they tend to make the perfect the enemy of the good. That is, any policy prescription that doesn't result in a philosophically pure version of libertarian utopia is rejected out of hand. I see this as not only impractical, but INEVITABLY self-defeating. (This is particularly a problem with flat-earth types such as those found at the Von Mises Institute and LewRockwell.com.)
The "nationalism" is primarily an analytical framework by which I analyze questions of foreign policy and international engagement. Looking at the political geography of the world today, I have concluded that that which advances the interests of the U.S. by and large constitutes an advancement of libertarianism, our own deficiencies from libertarian nirvana notwithstanding.
Let me give you two specific examples of how my version of libertarian nationalism diverges from traditional (and the vast majority of contemporary) libertarianism.
#1 - The Cold War. This was a battle between two forces, one of which constituted a genuine threat to the freedom of the entire world. As a libertarian nationalist, I think aggressive anti-communism (as opposed to "containment") was entirely justified. By this I mean such things as funding anti-communist insurgencies, aggressive espionage, and such non-libertarian notions as loyalty oaths, "blacklists," etc. These are obviously anathema to theoretical libertarianism -- but I question the value of any doctrine that requires the acceptance of conditions that create the destruction of any hope for its ultimate survival (i.e., the triumph of global communism).
#2 - Borders. Most libertarians oppose strict policing of borders or strict penalties for illegally entering the country. I regard this as folly. Again, nation-states DO exist. As such, the protection of the physical integrity of our national borders should be a primary function of the goverment (along with providing police, military and a court system). Since our nation is much more libertarian than most if not all others on the globe, anything that dilutes the efficacy of our borders, in my opinion, constitutes a threat to our liberties.
I am, in the final analysis, pretty much of a classic Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman libertarian. However, I believe that we ignore the reality of national sovereignty and its impact on the path the world will take -- whether toward more freedom or less -- at our extreme peril. Consider where the European Union is headed. Would any libertarian deny that it is in our interest to implement aggressive strategies to advance OUR interests and those of less statist nations in opposition to the statist monolith that the EU is becoming? I would hope not.
John Tanton
Finally got to poking around the Internet to learn more about the founder of FAIR, plus several other organizations devoted to the immigration and language issues. Here's a short profile and a couple of his writings. Worth quoting at length:
A New Decalogue For An Increasingly Crowded World
World population growth of 10,000 per hour, 250,000 per day, 90-plus million per year, dwarfs the absorptive capacity of the few countries still willing to receive legal (and certainly illegal) immigrants. The stresses caused by population growth cannot be solved by international migration. They must be confronted by and within each individual nation.
The nation-state, remains an essential unit of human governance. Sovereignty is the guarantee of a nation's and its citizens' right to exist. Sovereignty includes the right to regulate entry into one's territory. The United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes this by enumerating a right of emigration, but not of immigration. The alternative to delineating and controlling borders is anarchy.
Each nation has a solemn responsibility to provide for the health, education, employment, and security of its own citizens. No nation can expect to solve deficiencies in these areas by exporting its surplus people. Fundamental to the concept of national rights and responsibilities is the duty of each nation to match its population with its political, social, and environmental resources, in both the short and the long term. No nation should exceed what the biologists call its ''carrying capacity.''
In setting its immigration policy, any nation must first look after the interests of its own citizens, including those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. The long term consequences of any actions, including the need to ensure social cohesion, and the long range management of social, political, and environmental resources must be considered.
Passing these on in healthy condition to future generations must be a fundamental objective of public policy. This is not selfish; it is a requirement of social responsibility.
Each nation should train its own technical and professional personnel, matching supply to demand. The developed countries in particular should not continue to encourage a brain drain from the less-developed countries, luring their talented people, and thus benefiting from the scarce capital that went into their education. On their part, the less-developed countries should educate their citizens in fields appropriate to their own country's needs, and not for some personnel export market.
Each nation should arrange to do its own drudgery work, even if this means extra expense to improve the wages and conditions of service workers. Communities within the developed countries that have few or no immigrants have long demonstrated their ability to maintain themselves without outside help. In the long course of human history, there have always been those who wanted to harvest the product of another's labor. This was the underlying theme of slavery. It is time we closed this chapter of human history.
Illegal immigration is unacceptable, both for the individual migrant and for the recipient nation. Newcomers should arrive legally, indicating their respect for the laws and customs of their prospective new land. If workers have legal status, it will reduce the temptation of potential employers and others to exploit newcomers because of their illegal status. Illegal immigration should be held to the irreducible minimum.
Legal immigration should come under the discipline of a ''budget'' concept, one that specifies an all-inclusive ceiling. If more in one category are to be admitted, balancing cuts must be made elsewhere.
The three fundamental questions that must be answered to set a policy on legal immigration are,
1. How many people shall we admit, and what factors should be taken into account in setting this limit?
2. Who should be chosen to immigrate, and what criteria should be used for choosing among candidates?
3. How can we humanely enforce the rules we decide upon?
[Wait a second -- shouldn't the first question be: Why should we let anybody in at all?]
To be taken seriously, any proposed legal immigration policy must set out specific answers to this ''How-Who-How'' trilogy.
To underscore the value of citizenship, legal immigrants should enjoy a lesser ''bundle of rights'' than citizens during their trial period of legal resident alien status. When they become eligible for naturalization, they should either commit themselves fully to their new country by becoming citizens and receiving full rights and accepting full responsibilities — or, if they choose not to make this commitment, should return home, making room for someone else. Both dual citizenship and permanent, lifelong resident alien status are ethically unacceptable. People should commit themselves to one polity or another, and participate fully in efforts to improve its social, political and economic life.
Concerning asylees and refugees, the emphasis should be on temporary succor with eventual repatriation, rather than permanent settlement. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees states that repatriation must be the solution for most refugee problems, given the numbers involved.20 The limited refugee funds available are better spent on the relatively inexpensive per capita maintenance of many refugees in their region of origin, rather than on expensive permanent resettlement of a few in the developed countries. Refugees should not be introduced to the developed countries if there is to be any hope of repatriation.
The Epoch of International Migration as a solution to human problems is over for the overwhelming majority of mankind. Most people will never be able to move from their place of birth; there are simply too many people and too few places left to go. Instead, individuals will have to work to change conditions they find unacceptable.
The Puppeteer is a grotesquely amusing smear-job by the Southern Pinko Law Center. The idiots accompanied this "report" with primary sources: a Memo to FAIR and Memo to WITAN IV Attendees -- which contain nothing to shock or disturb any sensible person, at least as far as Dr. Tanton is concerned. The Puppeteer Replies crushingly to those sanctimonious phonies.