On the Northern Alliance: A Response to Srdja Trifkovic

From the desk of John Laughland on Tue, 2009-02-17 12:57

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Recently I visisted Orléans cathedral. It is one of the largest cathedrals in a country of huge ones, a magnificent late Gothic construction whose interior soars more dramatically than the heavier interiors of Chartres or Notre Dame de Paris. Orléans is also one of the most dramatic towns in French history, the site of the greatest battle of the Hundred Years War when Joan of Arc, “the Maid of Orléans”, defeated the English and thereby ensured the liberation of her country from the foreign invader.
 
I have had few sadder disappointments than when I entered the cathedral. Not the architecture, to be sure, which is magnificent, but the ambience. It was like entering a morgue. There was not a soul to be seen. No clerics bustled about; no women arranged flowers; no one came and went to choir practice. There was certainly no Mass in progress or even, it seemed, in prospect. The side-altars had evidently not been used for decades. The magnificent Gothic revival confessionals gathered dust silently in the cold. The only sounds came from the rainwater which leaked copiously through the roof to form an enormous puddle by one of the columns, and the ridiculous sound of a CD playing, round and round, Verdi’s requiem. It was like a scene from a cheap movie in which frightened travellers stumble across a recently abandoned house, but it was frighteningly easy to imagine the cathedral, a few decades hence, completely ruined as so many cathedrals and former abbeys are elsewhere in Europe.
 
The choice of the requiem was, of course, sinisterly apt. The cathedral is its present state is nothing but a magnificent mausoleum to a dead Christian culture – with the only difference that, in modern mausoleum’s like that of Lenin and Atatürk, the dead man inside is venerated for his political action to this day. By contrast, the Christian culture of Europe has died not with a bang but a whimper.
 
Morose thoughts like this crowd in on my mind when I read magnificent panegyrics like Srdja Trifkovic’s recent appeal for the constitution of a “North”, i.e. a political alliance of the United States, Europe and Russia, to replace the current so-called “West” which, led by America, aims precisely at breaking what would otherwise be a natural link between the European nations on the European continent and those in the New World. The USA has done everything since the end of the Cold War to perpetuate the artificial fracture running across the continent, in pursuit of a geopolitical goal of pushing Russia ever further East and North by increasing the area of American domination to include Ukraine and the Black Sea, both Russia’s natural geopolitical space. It is a ridiculous and grotesque project and I hope that it fails quickly, as it is started to do last August when Georgia attacked South Ossetia, provoking a Russian response and the despatch of Russian troops to two breakaway Georgian provinces. Georgia will never now join NATO and nor, in my view, will Ukraine.
 
“The West” has often been a rather ridiculous politico-cultural concept in the past. As the great medievalist, Ernst Kantorowicz pointed out in an essay written in 1942, The Problem of Medieval World Unity [1], it was mythical for the Western Europeans of the Middle Ages to think of the Holy Roman Empire as “Christendom” because of course there was a rival “Roman Empire” to the East, based in Byzantium. The Byzantines, likewise, thought of themselves as the bearers of universal Christendom and the Western Empire as merely an irrelevant and irreverent construction of the Frankish kings. This was in spite of the fact that both the Western and Eastern empires were threatened, militarily and religiously, by Islam – and both within decades of the creation of that religion. The West started to repulse Islam at the Battle of Poitiers in 732; the East fell to it seven centuries later. But the pressure of Islam brought the self-consciousness of Christians into the sharpest possible focus and indeed it is precisely after the Battle of Poitiers that the term “Europeans” was used for the first time. [2]
 
Maybe the Islamic threat is now leading to a similar sense that what Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian ambassador to NATO whom Srja Trifkovic quotes, calls “the white Northern hemisphere” needs to hang together or hang separately. Unfortunately I think that the proposed solution – an alliance of Russia, Europe and the United States – misses not one point but two.
 
First, and as Srdja Trifkovic is the first to argue, Europe and Russia suffer from catastrophic demographic collapse. Even America’s projected population growth will be the result of immigration. Christian civilisation, in other words, is not threatened from outside by aggressive jihadists or Turkish expansionism as in the past. It is threatened by its own materialistic suicide – a protracted and determined suicide which has been going on for decades now and which consists not only of the refusal to have children (a flagrant indication, if ever one was needed, that modern so-called “progressive” Europeans and Americans think only of the present and never of the future) but also in the willful abandonment of the Christian religion of which the leaking roof in a deserted cathedral is a perfect illustration.
 
Ever since the Second Vatican Council, any growth in Christian observance has been exclusively a Third World phenomenon, helped along by a liturgy which is as moronic as it is ugly. As a result, the great Catholic shrines in Paris (the miraculous medal chapel of the rue du Bac, for instance) is staffed entirely by nuns from the Philippines, a pleasant irony since the seat of the Missions étrangères which evangelised Asia from the 17th century onwards is right next door. Nature abhors a vacuum and is it therefore any wonder that Islam steps in where Christians fear to tread? The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.
 
Second, and concomitantly, I feel that such grand geopolitical plans are a distraction. The natural political unit is the nation. It is the unit which makes sense to its citizens because it is real. Nations are the irreducible facts of political geography, rather like mountains in ordinary geography and rather like families with a state, and it is absurd and dangerous to try to overlook them or to overcome them. No doubt the idea of a Grand Alliance against a revanchist or Muslim Third World can give us a frisson of excitement and a moment of escape from the reality of our willful self-destruction.  But it is just that – an idea, a wish, a dream – not a realistic political project.
 
Even if the men existed to put it into place, it would not last. If even the deeply Christian men who led the Eastern and Western empires could not unite in the 8th century against the Muslims who had overrun France and Spain; if instead of recovering the Holy Land in 1204, Venetian Crusaders sacked the capital city of the Eastern empire; if Greeks preferred the Sultan’s turban to the Cardinal’s hat when they rejected the agreement reached at the Council of Florence in 1439, when the reunion of the Western and Eastern Churches was agreed and signed, then there really is not much hope of us doing so now. Far better to put our own houses in order first, itself a monumental task. Once we have done that, then we can start talking about grand alliances.
 
 

[1] Reprinted in Ernst Kantorowicz, Selected Studies, Selected Studies, Locust Valley, J.J Augustine Publisher, 1965, p.78
 
[2] See Roberto de Mattei, De Europa, Tra radici cristiani e sogni postmoderni, Roma: Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 2006, p. 84.

red squirrels

Submitted by kappert on Sun, 2009-02-22 15:49.

The migration of red squirrels has the same impact as the invasion of Europeans in the New World. The natives die with imported diseases.

just inbetween

Submitted by kappert on Sun, 2009-02-22 15:45.

"I will fight for a smoke free working environment."

Do you mean carbon emitting power plants, fuel consuming automobiles, forest fires, tobacco use, ..., as you know, humans make immensely smoke.

Nuts!

Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Thu, 2009-02-19 12:27.

@ Peter

 

Few things in this world are simply black or white, and it is alway incumbent upon the thinking individual never to overlook the grey, and I don't know about you but people who do so always make me 'see red' . Take the case of the grey squirrel. (really, I mean it, just TAKE it!). Both the grey squirrel and the red squirrel are squirrels (agreed?). Both squirrels occupy  the same 'space' and eat the same 'cuisine'. Surely, with these basic similarities they SHOULD be capable of  peaceful co-existence, right? So, all squirrels are squirrels and  all "newcomers" are just 'oldcomers' waiting to happen. 

 

Wrong!

 

 

 

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4635330.stm

 

 

Peter, "We are all squirrels now!" might be your mantra, but to that I simply reply, NUTS !!!

 

 

 

 

@marcfrans: Thank you

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Thu, 2009-02-19 11:20.

@marcfrans:

Thank you for the information. I didn’t know about “old glory” and the flag. No need for hurting peoples feelings (even if they are patriotic) I’ll keep it in mind.

 

@antlanticist911

“Make” may need some explanation indeed. As may be clear from my comments, I see “culture” and all it entangles like habits, language and moral principles, as something that is constantly changing. Furthermore they’re not uniform. Within the ethnic Flemish population there are a lot of differences. A few days ago I was walking behind a few pupils that had bought hamburgers and cola at the Quick. I think fast-food is a first attack on my culture, but on the other hand I believe that everybody has the freedom to do what ever he wants with his body  On their way back to the school they left a trail of trash. At the end I made a remark, because it made me boil inside. They were violating my and other people’s basic right of a clean environment. Those youngsters were as “Flemish” as I was. But their “culture” was definitely not mine. How can I “make” those youngsters stop littering? In a democratic society there are a lot of ways to try to influence this behavior. I think values (and habits and language) are in that perspective a constant struggle.

What is “basic” then?

Basic are those parts of your culture were you are prepared to fight real hard for. I wouldn’t fight for language or against fast-food. But I will fight for the right of my daughter to be treated as an equal and free human being. I will fight for a smoke free working environment. I will fight for respect for each other also, although the means to fight for this shouldn’t collide with other values, like free speech and democracy.

 

We will have to look at each value separately, and we’ll have to fight for each of them. Schools are a very important way of trying to get values across, just as laws and punishment but also your own behavior, and showing the benefits of it, are a strong mean.  

Some of the values of these new-comers like pro-life stands and respect for elderly people will sound very well in the ears of the “far-right”. Others might not. We will loose some, we will gain some. And having lost doesn’t mean “lost for eternity.” We can keep on struggling.  

 

@Armor

Submitted by Ronduck on Sun, 2009-02-22 11:38.

But as soon as my country gets its freedom back, I will support a Grand Alliance between Serbia, Russia, and Brittany. Together, we'll try to save America.

Thanks!

peter vanderheyden wrote...
I will fight for a smoke free working environment.

Just wow, you will fight to be smoke free which is really quite trivial in the grand scheme of things.

@ Atlanticist911

Submitted by traveller on Thu, 2009-02-19 08:14.

She must really be a brilliant mind.
Where do you breed those idiots like Porritt today? Before we knew the "Lord" had transferred some disease to his poor offspring, but today? Schools?
To avoid any confusion, the "Lord" here means the "Lord-gentleman-landlord", not God.

Old Glory # 3

Submitted by marcfrans on Wed, 2009-02-18 19:45.

@ pvdh

For many Americans the term "Old Glory" is seen as an endearing reference to their flag (the stars and stripes).  They may object to you using it to lambast a presumed "far right"-ist like Mr Laughland.

I also think that Atlanticist's (rethorical) question requires an answer, if not on paper (or on the screen) at least in the mind.  Only strong societies/cultures can induce assimilation.  And a good indicator of 'strength' is the ability and willingness to control one's own borders and to assert one's own values.  By contrast, large-scale illegal immigration and 'multiculturalist' accomodations are signs of weakness, not of strength.  They will prevent integration and assimilation.

I have no sympathy for the racism of the SMALL extreme-right (neither the implicit kind of Laughland, nor the explicit one of Armor).  They make judgments on the basis of trivial physical phenomena, not on the basis of moral values and behavior patterns.  Laughland's 'apologia' for Russian authoritarianism, and his blind anti-Americanism, are clear enough. 

But I do not have any sympathy for the multicul illusions of the LARGE (and ruling) cultural-Left either.  They are moral relativists, in the sense that they refuse to make moral judgements of ideas and behavior patterns of 'newcomers'.  They are defeatists, and will ensure their own cultural destruction.    

@ pvdh

Submitted by traveller on Wed, 2009-02-18 21:34.

As a man with 5 sons and 13 grandchildren I hope you 'll believe me when I say that the materialistic approach to an expensive education for children is the reason for the low birthrate, is utter nonsense. The real reason is the egoism of the new parents and the comfortable laziness of the new mothers and fathers. Further is giving birth frowned upon by the new "feminist" culture, they find it too painful and even degrading.
If you count the amounts of money spent on entertainment and fashion, the cost of educating children pales in view of the other "necessary costs".

Further, as far as the nintegration in our culture is concerned, foreign university graduates with useful skills will never be a problem in any society. Foreign university graduates in social and political sciences will mostly be a problem, look at Tariq Ramadan, and uneducated slumdwellers will ALWAYS be a problem for many reasons, mostly because they will be useful election cattle for the left and for the religious zealots.

Just some practical hints.

Old Glory, News Story, All Change

Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Wed, 2009-02-18 11:23.

@ Peter

 

But, but, but. All actions and inactions lead to consequences, so what happens if those people, like yourself, who wish to make (please define "make") the newcomers adapt to "the basics of our culture" (again, a precise definition, please) fail in that noble endeavour and, instead, the newcomers increasingly come to dictate what is and is not permissible in 'our' culture and society, what then? 

It is written

Submitted by KO on Wed, 2009-02-18 13:37.

Peter seems to take the god's eye view of history as inevitable and to view with equanimity the racial transformation of the West, which may or may not, he thinks, result in its cultural transformation. He thinks assimilation is a better bet than futile and cruel exclusion. However, there is nothing wrong with repelling invaders or promoting the well-being of one's own nation.

Peter's point about conservative impotence on demographics, however, is excellent and profound. What is involved in overcoming the work-slavery and materialism, and I would add the liberalism and feminism, of the contemporary West? Only disasters cause people to abandon their most dearly held beliefs, and sometimes not even disasters suffice. Hence Takuan Seiyo's advice to faithful Westerners to withdraw from pod-society and create enclaves of virtue, as in the Free Counties in Frederick Turner's epic poem, The New World. Basically, men and women need to believe that raising good children is their highest calling, which means believing in the future of their peoples. How do we translate this into policy in the degraded political environment of our times? Tax credits for children that are proportionate to gross income instead of a fixed amount? People need to have contempt for consumer goodies compared to the substantial significance of the family and the nation. All suggestions welcome.

old-glory

Submitted by peter vanderheyden on Wed, 2009-02-18 10:42.

I always find it rather touching when the far-right starts lamenting about the shift in racial structure of the “west” or the “north”. It’s the atmosphere of old noble people without descendents trying to keep up appearances of grandeur in an old crumbling medieval castle.  (In this perspective I find the first paragraphs of Laughland rather well written.)  Rather then looking towards the future, they’re looking back to what was; as if it was mend to be for eternity, but some tragic accident of history made it vanish anyway. Like the Maya’s, ones the great culture of Central America suddenly stopped to be. Hidden in small words in Laughland’s prose like twice “natural” or “it would not last” as in “mend to be for ever” one can feel the bitter disappointment of people not able to change and look forward.   

 

The racial shift is happening, no doubt about that. And there are two reasons for it:

First: In the west, the present culture isn’t compatible with having a lot of children, or having them early. There are multiple reasons for that: Our working culture doesn’t allow too many children. But also we want to be able to give the very best to our children (materialistically spoken), and that means having one or two.  I never hear the far-right give any solution to this. They’re not getting further then bitterly accusing the low patriotic standards of their compatriots, not willing to save the nation by trying to combine our western working culture with an abounded descend.  

 

The other reason is of course immigration. Again two underlying reasons can be found: The lack of possibilities in the third world countries, and the current moral code within the west that we should help each other combined with the need of cheap workforce in our aging society. On this issue the far right has an answer: Building walls, deportation, using violence if needed. Demonizing the other is of course important to make it morally acceptable in a cultural environment where violence, even if it is patriotic, has gradually become unethical. And it must be said. The last few years there discourse has won a lot of ground. Fortress Europe is more and more a reality. Proof are the hundreds of people drowning trying to reach the EU, the thousands of them becoming a pray of traffickers. But the result is painfully disappointing. It is not really stopping them.

 

Luckily more and more people, even from the far right slowly understand that saving the basics of our culture by trying to make the newcomers adapt to them, is much more important then trying to keep them out. Laughland is not one of them.     

 

immigration and an idea

Submitted by Hal K on Wed, 2009-02-18 03:29.

This is a modified version of a comment I posted earlier.

The West would survive if it would stop immigration. It is not clear that John Laughland appreciates this.

Racial commonalities were part of what Trifkovic was writing about. The question is, with the demographic composition of the "North" changing so rapidly, what exactly is the purpose of talking about an alliance of the North before the demographic picture has stabilized? This puts the cart before the horse. At the same time, if present demographic trends continue and some countries start to break up, there will be pieces to be picked up. This point in the future might be the time for an alliance of certain peoples of the North.

There is potentially an opportunity for a country like Russia to expand its influence by exploiting racial affinity, but it would have to proceed carefully. Perhaps the time for this is not here yet, though.

Interesting...

Submitted by Natalie on Tue, 2009-02-17 23:52.

But I still disagree.  We don't necessarily have to maintain very close ties after Islam is defeated--indeed, are close ties truly necessary to defeat Islam anyway?  Perhaps we just need to stop actively provoking Russia and actively working against them.

Northern Alliance - Let's be concrete

Submitted by Armor on Tue, 2009-02-17 21:12.

J.Laughland: "I feel that such grand geopolitical plans are a distraction. The natural political unit is the nation. It is the unit which makes sense to its citizens because it is real."

My own nation is quickly decomposing, and it feels less and less real.

The problem with geostrategists is that they deal with broad ideas and do not always explain how to translate those ideas into something someone can do. In this case, I don't know if the problem comes from Trifkovic or from Laugland. What does Srdja Trifkovic have in mind: is it a set of vague ideas, or does he give a few concrete examples of how the Western/Northern Alliance can work? In the article that Laughland links to, Trifkovic says he's been advocating "a paradigm shift in the West that would pave the way for a genuine Northern Alliance". But I haven't read his previous articles. If he concretely explained what kind of cooperation he has in mind, then Laughland should mention that and say exactly what he objects to. I think the USA, Europe and Russia are in the same boat. We are basically the same people (with some differences), and the loss of American and Western Europe can only be a great loss to Russia. Anti-immigration activists have a lot to learn from each other, whether they are in the USA or in any other European country, and the internet makes that easy. I don't think Laughland will object to that. What else can be done? Probably a lot more, but we need concrete examples. I think the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish governments used to work closely together because they knew they were the same people. Since the Swedish government has embraced the idea of replacing Swedes with Javanese immigrants, I suppose inter-Nordic cooperation has relaxed quite a bit. Conversely, I think the idea of flouting the EU and establishing partnership between consciously white countries would be a good way to affirm our right to exist. But our anti-white governments will oppose that. Maybe we need to develop initiatives at the citizen level. Except in Russia and a few other countries, I think we need to be openly defiant towards our governments. Their aim is to destroy us, and we must clearly advertize that fact, so everyone will understand the sad truth.

Maybe we can learn something from our enemies. A lot of their energy goes into propaganda: anti-white propaganda, anti-Russian propaganda. And I think their tactics make sense. The fact that the Western media is full of anti-Russian propaganda will probably translate, at some point, into some anti-Russian action by Western governments. For example, when Georgia attacked Ossetia, and Russia retaliated, Western governments reacted as if Russia had started hostilities. So, defending broad ideas has consequences, even if we do not support particular actions. It is better than doing nothing.

"Far better to put our own houses in order first, itself a monumental task. Once we have done that, then we can start talking about grand alliances."

Every white nation that can secure its future will be a tremendous encouragement to all other white nations in the world. That is not to say that I am against grand alliances. Today, an alliance between Washington and Brussels could only be anti-white. But as soon as my country gets its freedom back, I will support a Grand Alliance between Serbia, Russia, and Brittany. Together, we'll try to save America.

Tragic mistakes

Submitted by marcfrans on Tue, 2009-02-17 18:32.

1) Mr Laughland's basic message is correct: it is better to put one's own house in order first before talking about grand alliances.  However, some of his comments suggest that he has not thought deep enough about what kind of alliances are worth pursuing, and that he has a lot of own housekeeping to do.

2) How could the US ever be part of a grand Northern Alliance, when many proponents of the latter are so blatantly anti-American?  Mr Laughland's assertion that the "artificial fracture" running across Europe was an American goal, and not a Russian one, is a blatant anti-historical lie, and his (implied) notion of Paris and Berlin belonging to an area of "American domination" is manifestly ludicrous.  In what realistic sense were/are Schroeder and Chirac "dominated" by the US?   He also clearly does not want to understand why Georgia and Ukraine do not want to be under real "domination" (from authocratic Moscow that is).

3) And what should one think about a Russian Ambassador's call for a Northern Alliance against "the Islamic threat", when it is Russian (and French) governments that are (and have been) supplying nuclear 'facilities' to Iran and Iraq, and that have been allying themselves with these countries' abominable regimes in their struggles against the US in the recent past?   And, if the Ayathollahs will soon be able to go 'nuclear' - with all that that could imply -  their biggest enablers/protectors in the (fictional) Northern alliance have been Moscow and Berlin.   

4) There is also something very inconsistent in Mr Laughland's lament about the decline of "Christian religion" in the West.  That religion has a universalist creed.  The real lament should be about the moral decline in the West, of which the current religious 'vacuum'  in Europe (and in Russia too) is only an indication.  But, Mr Laughland should not have the illusion, nor pretense, of being a real Christian.

5) There is also something very wrong with his equating the Third World with "the Muslim Third World", but that only underscores again his difficulties in making accurate empirical observations.    

Postcript: The US is increasingly strengthening its alliances with countries like Japan and India.  Reading anti-Americans, like Mr laughland, it should be easy to understand why.