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	<title>The Occidental Quarterly &#187; European unity</title>
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	<description>Western Perspectives on Man, Culture, and Politics</description>
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		<title>French Visions for a New Europe</title>
		<link>http://www.toqonline.com/2009/12/french-visions-for-a-new-europe/</link>
		<comments>http://www.toqonline.com/2009/12/french-visions-for-a-new-europe/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Dec 2009 04:19:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Stephan Chalandon and Philip Coppens</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dan Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[esotericism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[European unity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Eurosiberia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fascism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jean Parvulesco]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Julius Evola]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[literature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Philip Coppens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Priory of Sion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Raymond Abellio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[René Guénon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[secret societies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stephan Chalandon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Da Vinci Code]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Raymond Abellio claimed that the Flemish occultist S. U. Zanne (pseudonym of Auguste Van de Kerckhove) was amongst the greatest initiates of our time. But hardly anyone knows who he is. Some have placed Abellio in the same category &#8212; though he too is a great unknown for most. And those that have looked at [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_6667" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 201px"><img class="size-medium wp-image-6667" title="dali" src="http://www.toqonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/dali-191x300.jpg" alt="Salvador Dali, &quot;Crucifixion ('hypercubic Body'),&quot; 1954" width="191" height="300" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Salvador Dali, &quot;Crucifixion (&#39;hypercubic Body&#39;),&quot; 1954</p></div>
<p>Raymond Abellio claimed that the Flemish occultist S. U. Zanne (pseudonym of Auguste Van de Kerckhove) was amongst the greatest initiates of our time. But hardly anyone knows who he is. Some have placed Abellio in the same category &#8212; though he too is a great unknown for most. And those that have looked at Abellio, have largely concluded that he was a fascist politician, who was also interested in esoteric beliefs.</p>
<p>Is he? Part of the problem is that his writings &#8212; like that of so many alchemists &#8212; need a key. So much of their material is largely coded text, and Abellio himself used to laugh that most people’s keys “only opened their own doors” &#8212; not his. So who was he really, and what were his real political aims?</p>
<p>Raymond Abellio was the pseudonym of Georges Soulès (1907 &#8211; 1986), who rose to fame during the Second World War, when he became the leader of the MSR (Mouvement Social Révolutionnaire) in 1942, after the peculiar assassination of its leader, Eugène Deloncle. The invitation to join the organisation had come from none other than Eugène Schueller, owner of the cosmetics giant L’Oréal. As Guy Patton, author of <em>Masters of Deception</em>, has pointed out: “This group had evolved out of the sinister Comité Secret d’Action Revolutionaire (CSAR), also known as the Cagoule. Soules was now to become acquainted with Eugène Deloncle, head of the political wing, dedicated to secret, direct, and violent action.” Later, Patton adds: “So here we have a Socialist turned Fascist, deeply involved in political movements, who actively collaborated with the Vichy government. In the course of his political activities, he was to work closely with Eugène Deloncle, who . . . was closely acquainted with a fellow engineer, François Plantard, and whose niece married [French President Francois] Mitterrand’s brother, Robert.”</p>
<div id="attachment_6664" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 191px"><img class="size-medium wp-image-6664" title="abellio" src="http://www.toqonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/abellio-181x300.jpg" alt="Raymond Abellio" width="181" height="300" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Raymond Abellio</p></div>
<p>Though never confirmed, it is claimed that Abellio was involved with Bélisane publishing, founded in 1973. Bélisane published several books on Rennes-le-Château, the village so intimately connected with the Priory of Sion. In his book, <em>Arktos</em>, Joscelyn Godwin refers to Raymond Abellio as another ‘Bélisane’ pseudonym. For Guy Patton, Abellio is part of a network that tried to create a New Europe, ruled by a priest-king, whereby various modern myths, like the Priory of Sion, are meant to provide the modern Westerner with a longing of sacred traditions and rule, very much like the myths of King Arthur that gave a surreal dimension to European politics in medieval times.</p>
<p>Abellio’s views of politics have therefore been described as very utopian, and he has been suspected of synarchist leanings -– the belief that the real leaders of the world were hidden from view, politicians being largely their puppets. But in truth, Abellio had a well-defined vision for social change. When the battle lines of the Cold War were drawn after the Second World War, he tried to find the best of both camps, and hoped he could reunite them. Why? To create a type of Eurasian Empire, stretching from the Atlantic to Japan, an idea that was taken up by the novelist, theoreticist and his friend Jean Parvulesco. “Parvu” has been identified as the man largely responsible for acquainting at least some with the visions of Abellio &#8212; though whether it was the real Abellio or a character created by Parvulesco, remains for some open to debate.</p>
<p>Guy Patton thus sums up Abellio’s view as being “typical of an extreme right-wing esotericism, the aim of which is to ‘renew the tradition of the West’. He wanted to replace the famous Republican slogan, ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ with ‘Prayer, War, Work,’ to represent a new society built on an absolute hierarchy led by a king-priest.”</p>
<p>The implication, however, is that several of the people involved, were not truly devoted to such spiritualism and merely used it as a mask for making money, acquiring more power, and pushing an extreme right wing agenda. Though that is the case for many of those involved, within the mix of powerful and/or money-hungry people, most are agreed that Abellio was truly a “spiritual” man. And it was professor Pierre de Combas who is credited with Abellio’s transformation from politician Georges Soulès into the visionary Abellio (the Pyrenean Apollo), making him not merely a “man of power,” but also a “man of knowledge” &#8212; an initiate?</p>
<p>To understand his vision, we need to acknowledge that Abellio’s system, as mentioned, needs a key, and without a key, there is no understanding &#8212; hence, no doubt, why he is often misunderstood. Secondly, his system is complex and difficult to summarize in a few words and is perhaps best described by listing some examples.</p>
<p>He wanted to “de-occultise” the occult (e.g. his book <em>The End of Esotericism</em>, 1973), whereby he hoped this would help science. His knowledge of science &#8212; acquired as a polytechnic student &#8212; meant that he could build bridges between the two subjects, for example between the 64 hexagrams of the Yi-King and 64 codons of DNA, or the correspondences between the numbers of the Hebrew alphabet and the polygons that could be inscribed in a circle.</p>
<div id="attachment_6665" class="wp-caption alignright" style="width: 227px"><img class="size-medium wp-image-6665" title="JeanParvulesco_Paris2000" src="http://www.toqonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/JeanParvulesco_Paris2000-217x300.jpg" alt="Jean Parvulesco" width="217" height="300" /><p class="wp-caption-text">Jean Parvulesco</p></div>
<p>The most famous of his works is <em>The Absolute Structure</em> (1965), which made him be regarded as an heir to phenomenological philosopher Husserl. Such topics, of course, hardly make for bestsellers, but are the type of study one would expect from a genuine alchemist.</p>
<p>His drive for an “absolute structure” is a vital ingredient for his visions of the “Assumption of Europe,” i.e. what he sees as the destiny of Europe: “the Occident appears to us not to be only as an interval separating the opposing masses of the East and the West, but is the most advanced carrier of the dialectical of the present time.” In short, he did not believe in the subject-object duality that continues to drive most politicians into fear-mongering and the other usual tactics employed by their ilk, but instead preferred a more complex model, centered on Conscience (the zero point), which evolved along the base towards Quantity (science) and upwards to Quality (knowledge), which gave him a six-armed cross, or the “hypercubic” cross, to use Salvador Dali’s words &#8212; a man who equally spoke of the “Assumption of Europe” in some of his paintings. In short, the “hypercubic cross” allowed Abellio to express all ontological and spiritual problems in dynamic terms &#8212; and it is clear that he used complex wording, making his thinking difficult to understand, which is no doubt why he is easily misunderstood, was thought to be writing mumbo-jumbo, or simply neglected.</p>
<p>First of all, to get our heads around his terminology, we need to know that the Bible was one of Abellio’s most often consulted books and he described the stages of the evolution of a civilization in Christian terminology: birth, baptism, communion, etc. Hence why he said that the next stage in Europe’s development mimicked assumption, which is specifically linked with the Virgin Mary &#8212; the Saint who was deemed to play a pivotal part in Europe’s future. She is, of course, also a supernatural being, which was said to have appeared on numerous occasions, to advice Christian Europe what to do and what not, such as in the politically charged “secrets” of Fatima in 1917.</p>
<p>In 1947, in his book <em>Towards a New Form of Prophecy, an Essay on the Political Notion of the Sacred and the Situation of Lucifer in the Modern World</em>, he notes: “not more than any other being, man is but an addition, a juxtaposition of Spirit and Matter, but an accumulator and an energy transformator, of variable power according to the individual, and capable of passing his energetic quantity of one qualitative level to another, higher, or lower.” Thus, we see a mixture of Christian eschatology, prophecy, as well as quite Gnostic doctrines on what it is to be truly human.</p>
<p>Abellio was therefore a modern visionary, but he was also an astrologer. He predicted the fall of the Soviet Union for 1989, as well as the ascent of China. He qualified its Marxism as “Luciferian,” which he did not suggest should be interpreted in a moral sense, but that the Chinese materialism had to be integrated in terms of the Absolute Structure, in opposition to the individual and “Satanic” materialism of the United States.</p>
<p>In the West, it was the task of terrorists &#8212; freedom fighters &#8212; to bring about this change. These “heroic” terrorists’ battles were brought to life in his novels. In retrospect, he said that his first three novels were indeed “apprenticeships”, where his heroes evolved, whereas his final novel &#8212; published 24 years after <em>The Pit of Babel</em> (1962) &#8212; <em>Motionless Faces</em> (1986) was for him “that of the companion who is trying to become master.”</p>
<p>However, many consider <em>The Pit of Babel</em> to be his best work and it is here that he plots intellectuals that are disengaged from all forms of ideology and scruples engaging in wide-spread terrorism. It is a theme he revisited in <em>Motionless Faces</em>, where the primary character attempts to poison the population of New York, not through any straightforward means, but by using the creation of an illuminated architect who had built a type of “counter-structure” underneath Manhattan, which was reserved for an elite &#8212; a type of urban Aggartha.</p>
<p>The heroine of his last novel is named Helen, also &#8212; not coincidentally &#8212; the name of the companion of Simon Magus. In the end, she perishes, taken to the center of the earth by a subterranean stream, underneath Manhattan. In the case of Simon Magus, Helen was the personification of Light, held prisoner by matter. Abellio specifically chose his name because he identified himself with Apollo, another deity connected with light and the initials of Raymond Abellio &#8212; RA &#8212; were of course those of the Egyptian sun god.</p>
<p>Abellio himself never met his “ultimate woman,” even though he searched for her. She may have been Sunsiaré de Larcone, herself a writer of fantasies as well as a model, who died at the age of 27 in a car crash in 1962. She had labeled herself his disciple. Other &#8212; equally beautiful &#8212; women had gone before, and would go after, but no-one was apparently worthy of being “his” woman. Hence, his tomb contains an empty space for his “Lady.”</p>
<p>It is in <em>Motionless Faces</em> that Parvulesco studied in detail in his essay, “The Red Sun of Raymond Abellio,” published in 1987. Parvu was a novelist who is both close and far removed from Abellio. Close, because they shared a similar vision of the “Great Eurasian Empire of the End.” He too had his initiators, and he saw himself heir to the “Traditional School,” which had previously had authors such as René Guénon and Julius Evola, whom he met in the 1960s. He was preoccupied with the “non-being,” the forces of chaos, which make him into something of a dualist, i.e. a Gnostic. With Evola, he shared the idea that there was a need for a final battle against the counter-initiatory and subversive forces (the non-being), as well as having a certain desire for Tantrism.</p>
<p>Parvulesco often uses the term “Polar,” which he used to refer to the “polar fraternities” &#8212; of which Guénon had once been a member &#8212; and which he saw as important instruments in the creation of modern Europe. He also used the term to refer to the Hyperborean origins of the present cycle of humanity, which he argued would soon end with a polar reversal. Here, he is close to Guénon, but far from Abellio’s thinking, who had an altogether more optimistic vision of the future. So despite their kinship and a common goal, how that New Europe would be accomplished, was not identical &#8212; or compatible.</p>
<p>Parvulesco has often been cited by the European extreme right-wing. It has meant that several authors have seen him as one of them, but it is clear that no single writer is in charge of who and where his name is used.</p>
<p>In the early 1960s, “Parvu” was close to the OAS, the “Organisation Armée Secrète,” a terrorist group that was opposed to allowing Algeria to become independent. This meant that he was opposed to De Gaulle, yet he is largely known to have claimed everywhere he could that he was a strong supporter of De Gaulle. Incidents such as these have therefore made him another person that is difficult to place on the political landscape, and it would be best simply to not try and put him into one category. Indeed, what sets him and Abellio apart, is largely that they had an independent vision of the future &#8212; and the role of politics. They realized that the world was radically changing, and though their models might in the end prove not to work or be unrealizable, it does not negate the fact that they were innovative thinkers.</p>
<p>It is Parvulesco who brings further detail as to what this New Europe would be and why, specifically, a priest-king is needed as its ruler. In ancient times, these rulers were primarily seen as a denizen of both worlds, a mediator between this reality and the divine realm and Parvulesco makes it clear that “the beyond” is guiding us towards Europe’s destiny, whereby the role of European leaders is first and foremost to correctly interpret the signs, rather than invent new goals and targets.</p>
<p>Parvu has a few constant themes running through his writings, one of them being that of gateways to other dimensions. Whenever historical people (most often politicians) make appearances in his novels, they are not the politicians we know, but their doubles, who evolve in our and another dimension. The novels of Parvulesco are hence often seen as those of the “eternal present” or the “ninth day.”</p>
<p>In <em>Rendez-vous au manoir du Lac</em>, the setting is a strange site where there is a gateway to heaven &#8212; Venus in particular &#8212; from where, according to Parvulesco, some chosen ones have to transit. In <em>En attendant la junction de Vénus</em>, he repeats this claim, but links it with Mitterrand and specifically the Axe Majeur of Cergy-Pontoise, near Paris. This axis is the creation of artist Dani Karavan and is the “soul” of this new town. It stretches for three kilometres and, if ever archaeologists were to stumble upon its remains in future centuries, it would be classified as a leyline. Though the project commenced before Mitterrand’s presidency, it was during his term in office that the line became properly defined and executed. Today, it is seen &#8212; in France &#8212; as an enigmatic work, far superior to the Louvre Pyramid or Arche de la Défense, which has set the likes of Dan Brown and Robert Bauval questioning the reasons behind these projects. The Axe, however, is a far more ambitious, greater and more enigmatic project. When we note that Abellio was closely associated with the Mitterrand family, we can merely ponder whether he had a hand in the project.</p>
<p>With the Axe Majeure, it is clear that we are in a strange world where politics and esoterica mingle, partly in this dimension and partly in a divine realm. Well, Abellio hoped that from this mixture, a new form of politics, and a New Europe, would arise. And it is here where we need to see the role of the Priory of Sion, not so much &#8212; as Dan Brown and others would like it &#8212; as the preservers of a sacred, old bloodline, but a new priesthood &#8212; a mixture of politician and esotericist, i.e. like Abellio himself &#8212; that can rule a New Europe.</p>
<p>So even though Abellio and Parvulesco have been described as synarchists, they repeatedly referred to themselves as terrorists &#8212; freedom fighters, laying the foundation for this New World. The new powerbrokers would not always remain hidden puppet masters, but would clearly one day step to the forefront, to take up the role of priest-king. And for such thinkers, it was a given that France had come closest to attaining this ideal under De Gaulle, whereby the “Great Work” of Mitterrand was seen along the same lines, though clearly not to the same extent, or drive.</p>
<p>Abellio and Parvulesco were therefore new agers, building “An Age of Aquarius”: however, they did not focus on personal transformation, but on social transformation. As an author, one might argue that Parvulesco operates within the domain of the “esoteric thriller,” which in Hollywood is visualized like Roman Polanski’s <em>The Ninth Gat</em>e or Umberto Eco’s <em>Foucault’s Pendulum</em>. But both works have great difficulty in convincingly integrating the “passage to another world” within their storyline, often leaving the reader/viewer unsatisfied, or &#8212; alternatively &#8212; unconvinced of the end goal. Lovecraft has a better reputation and others argue that Parvulesco, thanks to the influence of both Abellio and Dominique de Roux, has gone further, and done better. But the main point is that his esoteric thrillers were to make this step through this “interdimensional passage” not as an individual, but as a society &#8212; as Europe.</p>
<p>De Roux (1935 &#8211; 1977) was a great inspiration for novelists that evoked what is known as “novels of the End” &#8211;  however they visualized that transformation of Europe. Parvulesco actually began his literary career in the magazine <em>Exil</em>, published by de Roux. De Roux traveled widely, and in 1974 wrote <em>The Fifth Empire</em>, about the struggle for independence in Portugal’s colonies, which brings up the same struggle for a new future of a country. The title <em>The Fifth Empire</em> is an allusion to a popular Portuguese myth, namely that of the lost king. Like King Arthur, the Portuguese king Dom Sebastian was said to one day return, to lead his people to a fabulous destiny &#8212; which, as can be expected in light of Abellio and Parvulesco’s ideology, was not necessarily of this plane. To quote the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (a friend of Aleister Crowley): “We have already conquered the sea, there only remains for us to conquer the sky and leave the earth for others.”</p>
<p>What Algeria and De Gaulle had been for Abellio, what Portugal was for De Roux, Putin’s Russia was for Parvulesco. But it is in Abellio’s preface to <em>The Fifth Empire</em> that we find an interesting note that explains the true context and “key” that will unlock their works: “those who attach a profound meaning to coincidences cannot be but stricken by the fact that the last message of Fatima was delivered in October 1917, at the moment when the Bolshevik Revolution begun. What subtle link of the invisible history was thus established between the two extremities of Europe?”</p>
<p>For esotericists who saw our dimension as being infiltrated by the other plane of existence, the coincidences of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima and her clearly political messages, to do with the future of Russia and how it should embrace the Virgin Mary, are part and parcel of how this Great Europe was not merely a political ambition, but part of their vision as to how “real politicians” worked together in league with the “denizens of the otherworld,” so as to accomplish the Assumption. Hence why Parvulesco held Putin’s Russia to be so important. Hence why, no doubt, Abellio tried to make contact with the Soviets to enable this New Europe, which indeed has come about largely under Putin’s presidency.</p>
<p>As mentioned, for Guy Patton, Abellio and Parvulesco were largely Fascists, who abused newly created myths like that of the Priory of Sion, to exert their influence, make money and group power. But that, of course, is merely one interpretation. Take the literature of the Priory and its creator Pierre Plantard and we find that he was close to De Gaulle’s regime. Plantard was in fact responsible for running part of De Gaulle’s “terrorist cells” in Paris when De Gaulle was trying to get to power. Then, Plantard used the Priory to create an ideology that saw a unified Europe, from the East to the West, and it is clear that those involved in the promotion of the Priory later spoke of the importance of Francois Mitterrand.</p>
<p>The Priory is indeed a fabricated myth, a non-existent secret society. But it is equally clear that those involved (Plantard) and those that could be linked with it (Abellio, and to some extent Parvulesco), had genuine convictions of what a future Europe should be. It is equally clear that their interest in Marian apparitions was genuine, and that they saw them as divine guides along the path that Europe had to walk to its future and its next stage, its assumption. And as Parvulesco pointed out: it depends whether you believe in coincidences or not. If not, then you will argue that the major political events of the past century are but tangentially related to the messages received from these apparitions and which are subsequently shuttled to the Vatican (to some extent, together with the British queen, the only priest-king ruling in Europe at the moment). If you do believe that coincidences have meaning, then it is clear that this New Europe is slowly emerging.</p>
<p>In the 1980s, Parvulesco reviewed a strange novel, <em>La boucane contre l’Ordre Noir, ou le renversement</em>, by one “Father Martin,” who had already published “livre des Compagnons secrets. L’enseignement secret du Général de Gaulle.” For an avowed Gaullist, Parvu was obviously in his element. The novel itself has certain common points with one volume of the tetralogy of Robert Chotard, <em>Le grand test secret de Jules Verne</em>. Both books speak of a “reserved region” in Canada, from where there is a conspiracy directed to change the world’s climate. The base is controlled by the sinister “Black Order” and aims to create a pole reversal &#8212; a theme also explored by Jules Verne. We can only wonder whether the stories of HAARP &#8212; set in nearby Alaska &#8212; might be inspired, or reflective, of this. But it is here that we see the final framework of their political ambition: they saw their quest not so much as a desire, a longing, but as a genuine struggle of good versus evil: if a New Europe did not come, the “Black Order” would have won. And in the end, perhaps Abellio and Parvulesco should thus be seen as modern knights, fighting for Europe &#8212; a new Europe.</p>
<p>This article appeared in <em>New Dawn</em>, vol. 10, no. 11 (November &#8211; December 2008).</p>
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		<title>Keyserling’s Europe (1928) and Spengler’s Hour of Decision (1934)</title>
		<link>http://www.toqonline.com/2009/08/keyserling-and-spengler/</link>
		<comments>http://www.toqonline.com/2009/08/keyserling-and-spengler/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:01:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Thomas F. Bertonneau</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cultural renewal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[decadence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egalitarianism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[European unity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hermann Keyserling]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oswald Spengler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[philosophy of culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[philosophy of history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thomas F. Bertonneau]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[white dispossession]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.toqonline.com/?p=4381</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Snapshots Of The Continent Entre Deux Guerres: Keyserling’s Europe (1928) and Spengler’s Hour Of Decision (1934)
from The Brussels Journal, August 18, 2009
[. . .]
The Hour of Decision, like everything that Spengler authored, is a rich mine of observation and insight, difficult to summarize, mainly because it communicates so thoroughly with the monumental Decline, to which it [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-4384" title="spengler2" src="http://www.toqonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/spengler2-198x300.jpg" alt="spengler2" width="198" height="300" />Snapshots Of The Continent <em>Entre Deux Guerres</em>: Keyserling’s <em>Europe </em>(1928) and Spengler’s <em>Hour Of Decision</em> (1934)<br />
from <em><a href="http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4055">The Brussels Journal</a></em>, August 18, 2009</p>
<p>[. . .]</p>
<p><em>The Hour of Decision,</em> like everything that Spengler authored, is a rich mine of observation and insight, difficult to summarize, mainly because it communicates so thoroughly with the monumental <em>Decline,</em> to which it forms an epilogue.  The core of <em>The Hour </em>is its diptych of concluding chapters on what Spengler calls “The White World-Revolution” and “The Coloured World-Revolution.”  [. . .]</p>
<p>Conjuring the image of the modern megalopolis and echoing Ortega’s alarm over the <em>masses,</em> Spengler writes, “A pile of atoms is no more alive than a single one.”  Crudely quantitative in its mental processes, the modern mass subject equates “the material product of economic activity” with “civilization and history.”  Spengler insists that economics is merely a sleight-of-hand discourse for disguising the real nature of the “catastrophe” that has overcome the West, which is a failure of cultural nerve.</p>
<p>In <em>The Hour,</em> Spengler builds on notions he had developed in <em>The Decline,</em> particularly the idea that the West has ceased to be a “Culture,” a healthy, vital thing, and has entered into the moribund phase of its life, or what Spengler calls “Civilization.” Into the megalopolis, “this world of stone and petrifaction,” writes Spengler, “flock ever-growing crowds of peasant folk uprooted from the land, the ‘masses’ in the terrifying sense, formless human sand from which artificial and therefore fleeting figures can be kneaded.”  Spengler stresses the formlessness of “Civilization,” in which “the instinct for the permanence of family and race” stands abolished.  Where “Culture is <em>growth,</em>” and “an abundance of children,” “Civilization” is “cold intelligence… the mere intelligence of the day, of the daily papers, ephemeral literature, and national assemblies,” with <em>no</em> urge to prolong itself as settled custom, well-bred offspring, or a posterity that honors tradition.  The “White World-Revolution” consists in the triumph of “the mob, the underworld in every sense.”</p>
<p>The mob, which sees everything from below, hates refinement and despises anything permanent.  The masses want “liberation from all… bonds [and] from every kind of form and custom, from all the people whose mode of life they feel in their dull fury to be superior.”  Hence the appeal of egalitarianism to the masses.  But, as Spengler argues, egalitarianism is really only a slogan, a euphemism.  The real trend is “Nihilism.”</p>
<p>The pattern of “Nihilism” emerged in the French Revolution, with its vocabulary of leveling, as in the radically politicizing etiquette of <em>“</em><em>citoyen”</em> and in the supposedly universal demand for “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”  “The central demand of political liberalism,” writes Spengler, consists in “the desire to be free from the ethical restrictions of the Old Culture.”  Yet as Spengler insists: “The demand was anything but universal; it was only called so by the ranters and writers who lived by it and sought to further private aims through this freedom.”  We see this identical pattern today in the various concocted emergencies and so-called universal demands that the current thoroughly liberal-nihilistic regime in the United States trots out serially to justify its consolidation of power, whereby it ceaselessly attacks what remains in the American body-politic of form and custom.  In Spengler’s aphorism: <em>“Active liberalism progresses from Jacobinism to Bolshevism logically.”</em></p>
<p>In Spengler’s judgment, moreover, one would make a mistake in equating Bolshevism, as people would have done in the 1930s, uniquely with the Soviet Union.  “Actually [Bolshevism] was born in Western Europe, and born indeed of logical necessity as the last phase of the liberal democracy of 1770 – which is to say, of the presumptuous intention to control living history by paper systems and ideals.”</p>
<p>When Spengler remarks on the theme of <em>tolerance</em> (so-called) in liberalism-nihilism, one thinks again of the existing situation in Europe and North America the first decade of the Twenty-First Century.  Inherent to form is its rigorous exclusion of the formless.  In its aggressive demand for inclusion of the rightly excluded, which belongs to its destructive impetus, the liberal-nihilistic regime works actively to de-stigmatize anti-social behavior.  Thus under liberalism-nihilism “tolerance is <em>extended,</em>” by self-denominating representatives of the people,<em> </em>“to the destructive forces, not <em>demanded </em>by them.”  Of course, the “destructive forces” do not <em>refuse </em>the extension.  On historical analogy, Spengler refers to this as “the Gracchan method.”  When once, as had already happened in Europe in Spengler’s time, “the concept of the proletariat [had] been accepted by the middle classes,” then the formula for cultural suicide had at last all of its ingredients in place.  “I am aware,” writes Spengler, “that most people will refuse with horror to admit that this irrevocable crashing of everything that centuries have built up was intentional, the result of deliberate working to that end… But it is so.”</p>
<p><strong> [. . .]<br />
</strong></p>
<p><strong>IV. </strong>Like another, later analyst of modernity in its agony, Eric Voegelin, Spengler sees at the root of Liberalism-Nihilism the perversion of a religious idea.  “All Communist systems in the West are in fact derived from Christian theological thought: More’s Utopia, the Sun-State of the Dominica Campanella, the doctrines of Luther’s disciples Karlstadt and Thomas Münzer, and Fichte’s state-socialism… Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.”  The materialism – which is again a type of nihilism – of Marxism and socialism never contradicts the case for liberalism-nihilism as a perversion of Gospel themes.  “As soon as one mixes up the concepts of poverty, hunger, distress, work, and wages (with the moral undertone of rich and poor, right and wrong) and is led thereby to join in the social and economic demands of the proletarian sort – that is, money demands – one is a materialist.”  But, this being Spengler’s point, one may have the belief-attitude with respect to one’s materialist doctrines that the fanatic of God has for his mental idol, with the concomitant fierceness and ruthlessness.  The end of real Christianity is “renunciation.”  With reference to the sentence of Adam, writes Spengler, the Gospel tells men, “do not regard this hard meaning of life as misery and seek to circumvent it by party politics.”</p>
<p>In a precise description of the modern, immigration-friendly, general-welfare state, Spengler remarks that “for proletarian election propaganda,” an opposite principle to the Gospel one is required: “The materialist prefers to eat the bread that others have earned in the sweat of their face.”  When the Gracchan rabble dominates from below so that the demagogues might manipulate from above, then it will come to pass that “the parasitic egoism of inferior minds, who regard the economic life of other people, and that of the whole, as an object from which to squeeze with the least possible exertion the greatest possible enjoyment” will seek its bestial end in <em>“panem et circenses.”</em> Once the majority descends to vulgar consumption through extortion – and through a mere pretence of work under the welfare-umbrella of “the political wage” – then the society has doomed itself.  It can only lurch in the direction of its inevitable demise.  Even the keen-eyed will not want to confront reality.  They will, as Spengler writes, “refuse in horror” to believe what they see.  Spengler might have been thinking about a letter from his correspondent Roderich Schlubach dated 9 October 1931.  Schlubach writes: “I frankly admit that much of what you prophesied [in <em>The Decline</em>] has taken place.  The decline of the West seems to be at hand, and still I do not believe in an end of the world, only in an entire change in our circumstances.”</p>
<p>That is “The White World-Revolution” – the triumph of rabble-envy, the destruction of form, childlessness, and the childishness of mass entertainments.  Indeed, “an entire change in our circumstances,” as Schlubach says, not grasping that his words mean the opposite of what he intends.  What of “The Coloured World-Revolution”?  Keyserling had admonished, in the concluding chapter of <em>Europe,</em> that Europe in its chafing unity would come under threat from the nearby non-European world.  In Spengler’s historical theory, the threat of external barbarism always coincides with the passage of the “Culture” into its deliquescent rabble-stage – the stage that the <em>Decline-</em>author ironically calls “Civilization.”  Earlier, in the robustness of the culture-stage, the ascendant people inevitably imposes itself on neighboring and foreign peoples whose levels of social complexity and technical sophistication are lower and who cannot effectively resist encroachment.  Spengler emphasizes that it cannot be otherwise.  The people of the less-developed society gradually grow conscious of a difference, which the emergent demagogue-class of the more-developed society in its liberal paroxysm swiftly encourages them to see as an injustice.</p>
<p>Thus, Spengler asserts, “the White Revolution since 1770 has been preparing the soil for the Coloured one.”  The process has followed this course:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">The literature of the English liberals like Mill and Spencer… supplied the “world outlook” to the higher schools of India.  And thence the way to Marx was easy for the young reformers themselves to find.  Sun Yat Sen, the leader of the Chinese Revolution, found it in America.  And out of it all there arose a revolutionary literature of which the Radicalism puts that of Marx and Borodin to shame. . . . <a href="http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4055">Read the whole article</a>.</p>
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