Europe

The Logos of Europe: Catastrophe and the Horizons of Another Beginning

Modern European civilization is the historical continuation of Mediterranean civilization. The Indo-European element is predominant in this continuity, as the Indo-European tradition makes up Europe’s main linguistic and cultural matrix. If we recall Dumézil’s reconstruction of the trifunctional system here, then we immediately obtain a sociological map of Europe, the social structure of which is dominated by a constantly reproduced principle of three prevailing castes: priests, warriors, and producers. Indeed, we encounter none other than this stratification of European societies at the most different historical stages and under different names and titles.

The classic expression of this order was the ancient epoch of Mediterranean societies beginning with the Achaean conquests and Homeric Greece. Such a system was characteristic of Ancient Greece and Rome with the exception of periods of decline distinguished by a strengthening of the political positions of “urban dwellers”, who represented a mixture of higher castes with uprooted peasants that gave birth to a new type of merchant hitherto alien to classical Indo-European societies. This type of merchant could have taken shape through the degradation and materialization of the warrior caste (which Plato describes in his Republic as the phenomenon of timocracy), or from below through a specific deviation from social type on the part of former peasants or urban artisans. It cannot be ruled out that this was the result of influences that were altogether foreign to the Indo-European cultural circle, such as Phoenician or, more broadly, Semitic cultures, for whom trade was a widespread social occupation. In the city-states of Greece, “urban dwellers” and “citizens”, i.e., “townspeople”, formed a specific social milieu in which the three classical functions of Indo-European society found parodical manifestation. In the very least, this is what Aristotle presented in his Politics. The authority of king-priests (the sacred monarchy) transformed into tyranny. The domination of the warrior aristocracy gave way to domination by a financial oligarchy. The organic self-government of ethnically homogeneous and solidary communities (polity) became “democracy”, or the power of the sporadic and disparate crowd unified only by territory of urban residence.

Herman Wirth and the Sacred Proto-Language of Humanity: In Search of the Holy Grail of Meanings

In Wirth’s view, the main key to understanding this language, and all existing languages and traditions, is the year. The year and man, the year and God, the year and nature, the year and time, the year and space are, in Wirth’s view, synonymous concepts. Man is the embodiment of condensed time. Time in and of itself is a divine manifestation.

The northern, polar cycle is the highest knowledge and, as follows, everything else is to be explained through the calendar. Special attention should be paid to the natural features of the North Pole. We know that a day there lasts not 24 hours, but six months, as does a night. For example, such a notion as the “midnight sun”, which is addressed in many of the Dionysian mysteries and is a generally important element in multiple sacred theories, acquires an entirely natural sense in Arctida – natural-magical meaning. This is the sun that shines at midnight at the North Pole during the summer solstice. Indeed, there is sun, and there is midnight. The memory of this midnight sun, like the memory of the primordial homeland of our ancestors, has been preserved in traditional models and been passed down from generation to generation in the form of legends and stories.

Encounter with Heidegger: An Invitation to Journey

Heidegger is universally recognized as a great philosopher of world history.  No one seriously contests this, but someone calmly passes by, relying on other trends in philosophy, while someone responds keenly to his message, using his terms ("Dasein", "existential", "Angst", etc.) and allowing himself to be carried away by his thoughts.

            A different, special, exclusive place in the history of philosophy that can be set aside for Heidegger should be recognized in the case that we fully trust Heidegger, immerse ourselves in his thinking, and make him our highest authority.  In other words, Heidegger in the space of Heideggerianism will differ essentially from Heidegger in the average and conventional history of philosophy.  In this case, Heidegger will be revealed not only as a great philosopher, on par with the other greats, but as the greatest of them all, occupying the place of the last prophet, concluding the development of the first stage of philosophy (from Anaximander to Nietzsche) and serving as the transition, the bridge to a new philosophy, which he only anticipates in his works.  In that case, Heidegger is revealed as an eschatological figure, as the final interpreter and clarifier of the deepest and most enigmatic themes of world philosophy and the creator of a radically new thinking.  In this case he can be viewed as a figure of the religious pantheon, as an "envoy of being itself", a prophesier and preparer of the greatest event, in which the old history of the European world will end and a new one, which has never been hitherto, will begin.

            It seems to me that the second approach is more productive for a true understanding of Heidegger (even if at some time, in the distant future, it will be revised).  It allows for full and complete immersion into Heidegger's thinking, without hurried attempts at interpreting him through appeals to other authorities (and to their separate traces in our consciousness) and allows Heidegger to communicate to us without hindrance what he intended to communicate.  And only after accepting this message in its main features and believing in its significance and inevitability can one, if need be, take a certain distance in regards to it.

Herman Wirth: Runes, Great Yule, and the Arctic Homeland

There exists no greater mystery in human existence than the mystery of life and death, dying and becoming. For man, the Year is the supreme Revelation of divine action in the Universe. The Year is the expression of God’s providential cosmic law, in accordance with which occurs the becoming of the world in the infinite and everlasting return. The most magical and profound phenomenon before us in nature is the Year of God. A number of days makes up the Year, and in each of these days is opened the image of the Year: the birth of the Light from which comes all life, its climb to the highest peak, and its descent, death, and sinking, only to rise again. The morning, noon, evening, and night in a day correspond to spring, summer, autumn, and winter in the Year.

The first conference was on 4 ª Political Theory

During the last days 24 and 25 of February was held in San Lorenzo de El Escorial the Seminar of metapolitics: "Keys and visions for a metapolitical resistance in Spain."

Half a hundred people from different and distant points of the Spanish geography, came to listen to the papers and participate in the round tables with the speakers who generously and selflessly responded to the invitation of the seminar.

In this way, José Alsina Calvés opened the sessions with the conference "Hispanism and Fourth Political Theory", where he gave a brief introduction on the nature and fundamental points of the 4th Political Theory proposed by the Russian thinker and philosopher Alexander Dugin, and on The idea of ​​Hispanism and Hispanism as possible genuinely Spanish ways of expression for their own counterhegemonic discourse and for the creation of a differentiated geopolitical space.

Alsina explained the philosophical bases that Dugin has used to articulate a metapolitical paradigm that goes beyond liberalism (1st Theory), Marxism (2nd Theory) and Nazi-fascism (3 \ Theory), inspiring to do so among other sources in Eurasianism, The New French Right (without falling into the acerbic accusation of Christianity as the matrix of modernity, case of Alain de Benoist), or the work of the philosopher Martin Heidegger and the consideration of the concept of time.

The Geopolitics of the European “New Right”

One of the few European geopolitical schools which has preserved an uninterrupted link with the ideas of the pre-war German continentalist geopoliticians is that of the “New Right.” This trend appeared in France in the late ’60’s and is associated with the philosopher and publicist Alain de Benoist, the leading figure of the movement. 

The “New Right” sharply differs on practically all matters from the traditional French right consisting of monarchists, Catholics, Germanophobes, chauvinists, anti-communists, conservatives, etc. The “New Right” includes those who support “organic democracy,” pagans, Germanophiles, socialists, modernists, etc. At the beginning, the “left camp” so conventionally, extremely influential in France considered such to be a “tactical maneuver” by typical rightists, but with time the gravity of this evolution was proven and came to be recognized by all. 

One of the fundamental principles of the “New Right’s” ideology, analogues of which soon appeared in other European countries, is the principal of “continental geopolitics.” In contrast to the “old right” and classical nationalists, de Benoist believed that the principle of the centralized Nation-State has been historically exhausted and that the future belongs only to “Great Spaces.” The basis of such “Large Spaces” are to be not so much associations of various states in a pragmatic political bloc, but the equal-footed conglomeration of ethnic groups of different scales into a “Federal Empire.” Such a “Federal Empire”  is supposed to be strategically unified, yet ethnically differentiated. Moreover, such strategic unity is to be underpinned by the unity of primordial culture.

Europe: On the Eve of the Civil War?

There is a second agenda the US has concerning Europe. There is official, open American agenda – US wants to continue the liberal strategy of the integration of Europe within the existing framework. America will continue to proceed with this as long as everything is going well. However, the second agenda is much more radical – an emergency or alternative agenda. This agenda would entail the American instigation of a civil war in Europe. The real state of things (rather than at the propaganda level) would be that mass immigration provokes more and more of a reaction, anti-systemic parties and groups start to gain power and influence, gender politics start to be rejected, and the middle class continues to decline. This wouldn’t fit with what we hear, so it makes sense that there would be another agenda of the US concerning Europe. There is a growing interest in the US and above all Israel in funding and influencing the far right movement in Europe, the identitarian movement being the most obvious example. 

The Terrorist Attacks in Paris: Lesson of Enantiodromia

We are living in the decisive moment when Western civilization is approaching its end. Such terroristic acts as that of Paris 13.11 show it clearly and unmistakably. The West we knew doesn’t exist any longer. Can’t exist any longer. One upon a time there was a certain West. With patriarchic heroic values, Christian identity, deep and exquisite culture with Greek-Roman roots. The West of God, man and nature. There is nothing like that in sight. The ruins. The weak and poisonous liberal civilization based on self-indulgence and at the same time on self-hatred. With no identity but purely negative one. Peopled by humans egoistic and ashamed of themselves. It can have the future. In front of brutal post-modern ISIS-fighters it can’t affirm anything, can’t oppose anything, can’t suggest anything. The West can’t be any longer Western. It is loosing itself. It is drowning.

What is wrong with Europe?

Geopolitically Europe is today atlanticist entity. The geopolitics imagined by Englishman Sir H. Mackinder declares that there are two type of civilizations – the civilization of the Sea (Seapower) and the civilization of the Land (Landpower). They are constructed on the opposite systems of values. Seapower is purely merchant, modernist and materialist. The Landpower is traditionalists, spiritual and heroic. That dualism corresponds to the pair of Werner Sombart concept – Händlres and Helden. Modern European society is fully integrated in the civilization of Sea. That is manifested in the North-American strategic hegemony and in the NATO.This situation prevents Europe from becoming independent geopolitical entity. More profoundly it perverts the geopolitical nature of Europe as continental entity – Landpower. So there is a need to change the situation and to restore the Landpower strategy based on the real European sovereignty. Instead of atlanticism Europe need to become continental strategic power.

ALEKSANDR DUGIN: THE FOURTH POLITICAL THEORY

The principal aim of Professor Dugin's work is not simply to deconstruct the previous failed political theories, which he lists as fascism, communism, and liberalism, but to fashion a new fourth theory, utilising what may be learnt from some of the previous models after their deconstruction rather than dismissing them outright on the basis of particulars worthy of rejection. That is not to say that the Fourth Political Theory is simply a synthesis of ideas that in their singular form have seen their day. Dugin is conscious of the necessity to bring something new to the table, with one of the principal of these novel ideas being the rejection of the subjects of the old ideologies, such as class, race, or the individual, in favour of the existential Heideggerian concept of Dasein (roughly Being or being-in-the-world. Literally da – there; sein – being) as the primary actor.

The Turning Point?

Russia, for its part, is seeking to implement a new geopolitical axis with Beijing and Tehran, a factor of multipolar balance of power opposed to the Atlanticist endeavors. The Chinese, after long procrastination, are no longer hiding their desire to “de- Americanize the world.”  Yet, the future of Russia, a great power, albeit still fragile, in a similar way as China, with its own inner contradictions, remains uncertain. Countries of Eastern Europe are still hesitant  as to which path to follow—all the more so as Germany is seeking to replace the former USSR as a federating factor in Eastern and Central Europe.

We are witnessing a restructuring of the forms of world domination. The United States, with its financial markets, its armed forces, its language and its culture industries remains the leading world power. Its economic impact, however, is decreasing bit by bit (its share of global industrial output has fallen from 45% in 1945 to 17.5% today), with the dollar representing today only a third of world trade in comparison to more than a half in 2000.  The process of “de- dollarization” has already and simultaneously begun, in oil and gas trading and on the monetary front. Russia and China, emulated by other Third World countries, are using more and more their national currencies in trade and investment. The project of trade in energy and raw materials, without resorting to the dollar, is beginning to take shape. Meanwhile, the purchase of gold is gathering momentum. The advent of a new international reserve currency, designed to replace the dollar, seems inevitable.

SOLDIER, WORKER, REBEL, ANARCH: AN INTRODUCTION TO ERNST JÜNGER

In Ernst Jünger’sIn Ernst Jünger’s writings, four great Figures appear successively, each corresponding to a quite distinct period of the author’s life. They are, chronologically, the Front Soldier, the Worker, the Rebel, and the Anarch. Through these Figures one can divine the passionate interest Jünger has always held toward the world of forms. Forms, for him, cannot result from chance occurrences in the sensible world. Rather, forms guide, on various levels, the ways sensible beings express themselves: the “history” of the world is above all morphogenesis. As an entomologist, moreover, Jünger was naturally inclined to classifications. Beyond the individual, he identifies the species or the kind. One can see here a subtle sort of challenge to individualism: “The unique and the typical exclude one another,” he writes. Thus, as Jünger sees it, the universe is one where Figures give epochs their metaphysical significance. In this brief esposition, I would like to compare and contrast the great Figures identified by Jünger.

These Ukrainian nationalists playing the USA's game

History never repeats itself, but there are historical constants. The tension between Land Power, represented by the Eurasian continent, and the Sea Power, represented by the USA, is one of those constants. A return of the Cold War? I would rather say it has never ended. The proof is that NATO, who should have disappeared at the same time as the Warsaw Pact, has, on the contrary, become an american-centered war machine with planetary vocation.  Since the fall of the Berlin Wall it never ceased to deploy itself in the East, in a blatant violation of the assurances given to Gorbachev at the moment of the German reunification. The Ukrainian crisis is inscribed in this very context. To the Americans, it is about being present as far as the Russian borders - something Russia cannot, obviously, accept. Could you imagine the USA accepting the installation of Russian bases in Mexico?
What is news is that Europe doesn't even have the excuse of the "soviet threat" to justify its atlantism. The way with which the public opinion is systematically uninformed regarding Ukraine confirms the servilism in which the European Union has fallen. The government issued from the coup in Maidan make their bombers and tanks shoot the Russian "separatists", the civil war has already made 2.500 casualties, and those who yesterday have accused Bashar Al-Asad of "massacre of his own people" are the ones applauding this today (or they don't care absolutely).

CIVILIZATION CLASHES IN EUROPE: THE PHILOSOPHICAL CAUSES

  Philosophy is not only a science, like the other scientific disciplines, but it is primarily a state of mind. The very meaning of the word philosophy (derived from the Greek compound philo + sophia  love of wisdom) indicates a special attitude and a special purpose. In particular, philosophy is a free and unprejudiced quest for truth, for the sake of having a vision of the truth (i.e. theorizing) and for the sake of the human being whose consciousness is motivated, attracted, and enriched by the quest for the truth. Thus, even though philosophy can be considered as a science, its object consists of all the objects that are studied by the other sciences. Moreover, philosophy is the creation of a world of meanings that expresses the spiritual freedom of the human being. 

    The main areas of philosophy are the following: (i) ontology (or metaphysics): it is concerned with questions about the nature and the mode of being of the world and of God; (ii) epistemology: it is concerned with questions about the validity of knowledge, and it investigates how we know what we think we know; and (iii) ethics: it investigates how we discern right from wrong, and, also, it is concerned with the meaning of ‘good life’.

Face to face with God/god

Each symbol is ambiguous. In geography, the eight-pointed star is the compass, something that provides orientation, introducing order in the seemingly chaotic space, the geometric symbol of the Universe. In Orthodoxy, it is eight-pointed star of the Virgin Mary; It is found in religious icons. It is the morning star and evening star, a guide and point of orientation. It is the star of Lucifer, Ishtar and Venus, and a powerful symbol of “chaos magic”… In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says: “Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether, Spirit, Intelligence and Ego are my eight separated energies.” The symbol is basically an over-rational one. It’s impossible to explain in a rational way, at least not from the limited position of human beings. Our understanding of symbols is therefore necessarily incomplete, and their meanings, from our perspective, are contradictory. The symbol is possible to know, but can not be explained. Science is, of course, an inferior method of cognition. Science is, after all, constantly redefined, changing their methods and findings. A rational approach is necessary, but is just not enough. Tradition is over-rational, and their learning over-temporal. Rene Guenon speaks about their superhuman origin.

 

The Decay of Modern Society

Decadence in modern mass multicultural societies begins at a moment when there is no longer any discernable meaning within society. Meaning is destroyed by raising individualism above all other values, because rampant individualism encourages the anarchical proliferation of egotism at the expense of the values that were once part of the national heritage, values that give form to the concept of nationhood and the nation state, to a state which is more than just a political entity, and which corresponds to a particular people who are conscious of sharing a common heritage for the survival of which they are prepared to make personal sacrifices.

First words on Lithuania

First of all… First of all, I would like to say that I have never said one single word concerning Lithuania. No word at all… That doesn‘t mean that I am great friend of modern Lithuania, but that doesn‘t mean absolutely that I am enemy of Lithuania or that I have smallest form of hostility toward your people.

To say the truth, I love Lituanian identity and Baltic identity in general, I am fan of Marija Gimbutas‘ works, concerning all European identity and I think that the Baltic ethnic groups are descendents of the ancient European tribes with very particular ant very original cultural identity.

So in general I have a very positive relation towards Lithuania. So never, nowhere, not once have I mentioned any negative comment toward Lithuania, including the fact tht(that is difference from many political patriots of Russia) I have nver criticized modern Lithuania.

 

Some Suggestions Regarding the Prospects for the Fourth Political Theory in Europe

But there is one interesting fact: the 4PT diverges from the modern versions of anti-liberalism (namely, socialism and fascism) by proposing not a critique of the individual as viewed from the outside, but rather his implosion. This means not to take a step back into pre-liberal forms of society, or one step sideways into the illiberal types of modernity, but rather one step inside the nihilistic nature of the individual as constructed by liberalism. Therefore, the liberal discovers his way to the 4PT when he takes one step further and achieves self-affirmation as the unique and ultimate instance of being.  This is the final consequence of the most radical solipsism, and can lead to an implosion of the ego and the appearance of the real Self (which is also the goal of the practices associated with Advaita Vedanta).

Nietzsche called his Übermensch “the winner of God and nothing.” By this he meant the overcoming of the old values of Tradition, but also the nothingness that comes in their place. Liberalism has accomplished the overcoming of God and the victory of pure nothingness. But this is the midnight before the breaking of dawn. So taking one step further into the midnight of European nihilism is how a liberal who wishes to leave this identity, which is more consistent with a peculiarly Western destiny of decline (because the Occident itself is nothing but decline at present – more on this later) behind, arrives at the horizon of the 4PT.

Thoughts on the Creation of Intellectual Eurasianism

Geographically speaking, Eurasia means the continental unity of Europe and Asia, which stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. As a cultural notion, Eurasianism was a concept conceived by Russian emigrants in the early 20th century. It proved to be a fertile framework, since it has been reinterpreted several times and will surely continue to be so in the future as well. Nicolai Sergeyevich Trubetskoy is widely considered as the founder of Eurasianism, while Alexandr Dugin is referred to as the key ideologist of the concept. Trubetskoy was one of the greatest thinkers of the Russian emigration in the early 20th century, who attempted to redefine Russia’s role in the turbulent post-World War I times, looking for new goals, perspectives, and meanings. On the one hand, he rejected Pan-Slavism and replaced the Slavophile ideology with a kind of “Turanophile” one, as Lajos Pálfalvi put it in an essay. He tore Russian thinking out of the Eastern Slavic framework and found Genghis Khan as a powerful antetype, the founder of a Eurasian state. Trubetskoy says that it was the Khan’s framework left behind that Moscow’s Tsars filled with a new Orthodox sense of mission after the Mongol occupation. In his view, the European and Western orientation of Peter the Great is a negative disruption of this process, a cultural disaster, while the desirable goal for Russia is to awaken as a part of Eurasia.

Ukraine, Russia and “Westernia”

Western Ukrainians are a sub-ethnos, which historically separated itself from the Western Russian population, formed in Volhynia and Galicia, having experienced significant Polonization and the influence of Catholicism (in the form of the Uniate—Eastern Catholic—Church). Western Ukrainians consider themselves an autonomous group, opposing themselves to other Eastern Slavs (first and foremost, these areVelikorossy, “moskali” (a derogatory term that means “Russians”)), Orthodox peoples, but also Poles and Austrians. Therefore, they have never had (and will never have) statehood, since it is impossible to build a State on the basis of hatred toward all surrounding peoples.

One Wild Hunt for Loneliness

I know Kazakhstan very well and I can say with certainty that there never was and never will be any conflict between our two countries. President Noursoultan Nazarbaïev foresaw the situation in which Georgia and Ukraine finally found themselves. He was the first to understand the essential law of the post-soviet space : the territorial integrity of every State on the territory of the ex-USSR depends on its relationship with Russia. If the relationship is acceptable, integrity is guaranteed. No post soviet country has been blackmailed with the “Russian factor” in order to annex territories where ethnic Russians live. Not one time. And no Russian politician has ever contested the right of Kazakhstan to be sovereign. It is Nazarbaïev himself who has engaged the process of integration within the Eurasian space. He said: “I am for integration if my interests are respected.” Belarus President Loukachenko has adopted a similar stance.

Russian Crossing of The Rubicon or the Birth of a New World

The crisis in Ukraine is still far from over, but it is clear that it is the most important central event in the early 21st century to date, much more important than Libya, the invasion of Afghanistan, or the question of the future of Iraq. Even Syria can be measured with it. The crisis is not yet resolved, but some answers are already apparent: Crimea is Russian again. The fate of the South East of Ukraine is now almost certain: it certainly will not be part of a future unitary Ukraine, Ukraine in the European Union and the North Atlantic military alliance. There was during the rebellion a (pro) Russian population, which articulated its requirements for many unexpected “Russian Springs”. Southeast – Novorusija can become part of a future federal or confederal Ukraine, independent states dependent on the Russian Federation – but only as interim solution – and in the future an integral part of Russia.

 

Manifesto of Millennium

The new millennium dawning on the horizon of History suggests us a major paradigmatic upheaval, a reversal of the categories of thought that, at a time of extreme political and ideological confusion, requires a rethink. At the threshold of a new era, a new global disorder stands out: mankind must face the approaching of several cultural universes, pushed towards a collision and a mutual annihilation by the new world-wide perspective. Economy, designed according to bourgeois criteria, demonstrates its finiteness, projecting the future of humanity towards a peak of exploitation and alienation. Peoples, despoiled of any decision-making power and sovereignty, render any authority to minorities who direct world affairs according to their own interest. Cultures and religions die on the altars of postmodern simulacra. The new law is chaos.

"United by Hatred"

Prof. Dugin, the Western mainstream media and established politicians describe the recent situation in Ukraine as a conflict between pro-European, democratic and liberal oppositional alliance on the one side and an authoritarian regime with a dictator as president on the other side. Do you agree?

Dugin: I know those stories and I consider this type of analysis totally wrong. We cannot divide the world today in the Cold War style. There is no “democratic world” which stands against an “antidemocratic world”, as many Western media report.

Your country, Russia, is one of the cores of this so called “antidemocratic world” when we believe our mainstream media. And Russia with president Vladimir Putin tries to intervene in Ukrainian domestic politics, we read...

Dugin: That´s completely wrong. Russia is a liberal democracy. Take a look at the Russian constitution: We have a democratic electoral system, a functioning parliament, a free market system. The constitution is based on Western pattern. Our president Vladimir Putin rules the country in a democratic way. We are a not a monarchy, we are not a dictatorship, we are not a soviet communist regime.

Heidegger, Left and Right

Why, then, democratic?  Marchart provides the best answer to this question.  In Democracy and Minimal Politics: The Political Difference and Its Consequences (2011), Marchart argues that democracy, understood as “the meeting point between a political and an ethical logic”, is the regime that relates to the “irresolvable contingency of social affairs” such that “the absence of an ultimate ground of the social…is institutionally accepted, even promoted".  Democratic politics or the politics of democratization is involved in the differential-political-ontological process of founding and instituting itself, on one hand, and constantly subverting itself, “deliberately undermining the very foundation it seeks to institute”.  For Marchart, democratic ethics is as such unpolitical, inasmuch as it recognizes its own groundlessness.  However, the necessity of ongoing re-founding renders it an “antinomy”.  This positive account of democracy’s inherent self-criticism resembles somewhat Derrida’s arguments in favour of “democracy to come”. 

            Of course, we might fairly ask whether the isomorphism of the democratic antinomy to the “play” of differential political ontology is a good enough reason to be democratically oriented; but our own thoughts aside, this reasoning does underlie the HL’s democratic politics, at least in some cases. 

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