Monday 25 May 2020

Aris Roussinos on the man who predicted 2020

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I forgot to recommend this essay in Unherd about a leading intellectual of the French New Right of whom I had scarcely heard called Guillaume Faye. One of his books was on Michael Gove's shelf, alongside a David Irving book which incensed leftists on Twitter. How unpleasant, sanctimonious and vindictive much of the Left is. 

I have quit the Augean stables of Twitter. It is useful, I suppose, but very depressing to realise how many fools there are in the world. I quit Facebook too, which is the thief of time.

In case you don't click on the rather long article here are some key quotations.
'Actively supporting Third World national liberation movements, decrying globalisation for its homogenising effects, and sounding urgent warnings of looming ecological collapse, de Benoist and Faye anticipated the anti-globalisation movement of the millennium, before it petered out into commodified pseudo-protest.

'Equally, by warning that mass migration into Europe would lead inexorably to ethnic conflict and mass casualty terrorist attacks, and by railing against the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of globalisation and cosmopolitanism, the Nouvelle Droite anticipated much of the discourse of today’s populist Right, though they explicitly rejected what they saw as their petty nationalisms in favour of the unification of Europe and Russia into a single civilisational superpower.


'....By the year 2020, he claimed, as a result of the inherent fragility created by a globalised financial and political system, civilisation would buckle under a cascading set of interlinked crises. Waves of pandemics, of political disorder and state collapse in the Middle East and Africa, of global financial crashes and ecological degradation would rebound off each other, escalating the pressures upon the international system to the point that the world of the late 20th century would become impossible to sustain. 

'In Faye’s words, “a series of ‘dramatic lines’ are drawing near: like the tributaries of a river, and will converge in perfect unision at the breaking point (between 2010 and 2020), plunging the world into chaos. From this chaos- which will be extremely painful on a global scale- a new order can emerge based on a worldview, Archaeofuturism, understood as the idea for the world of the post-catastrophic age.”'

I am a million miles away from Guillaume Faye on many things, I better add, to defend myself from accusations of fascism. A liberal told me I was a libertarian and I iam pretty close to one, in fact, so long as libertarian does not mean liking abortion and wanting to close down public libraries. (Actually libraries might be anachronistic, now I think of it, though they provide a nice place for unemployed and retired people to shelter and drink tea. )

I want to know much more about the libertarian par excellence Ron Paul, who seems close in his thinking to mine on many things, including unjust liberal wars, abortion and immigration. 

But Faye, unlike left-wing thinkers of the last fifty years, was very prescient. 

Who were the interesting left-wing thinkers since 1945? Anthony Crosland, who pointed the way to Blairism, was interesting. John Gray was not, while he was on the left. He keeps swapping over, but has become interesting since becoming a Brexiteer. Slavoj Zizek seems barren. The French Marxists who invented structuralism were very malign and barren. 

Going further back, Gramsci was a seer who foretold the world we live in, as did writers like Adorno, Marcuse, Reich and the rest of the Frankfurt School of Marxism, a sort of plague bacillus stored in the deep freeze until unfrozen by left-wing students and academics in the 1960s and 1970s.

There have been few if any great thinkers since 1945 just as there have been few or no great writers, artists, composers or statesmen. This probably fits in with the world view of Guillaume Faye. Perhaps I ought to read some of his stuff. 

9 comments:

  1. That is certainly a dark, pessimistic, even paranoid view of current historical convergences. The "mass casualty" terrorist attacks at least seem to have died down in the past few years, thank God.

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    1. Dark yes, pessimistic yes. Paranoid? I am not sure. Interesting, though. As for terrorism that is not going away. The idea of killing innocent people deliberately was something terrorists before the 1990s usually avoided but it has been shown to work. Thanks to the stupidity of the Americans it led to foolish wars that did Al Qaeda's job for them. Muslim terrorism is certainly going to figure in European history for a long time to come.

      By the way this man's authoritarian views do not attract me. The united Europe he wanted (he died recently) sounds like the one Mosley wanted - all white - perfectly possibly when Mosley advocated it, just after the war, but not now.

      But refreshing to read views that someone has thought through - unlike ones like Peter Sutherland's which Peterkin learnt from his Jesuit schoolmasters. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-18519395

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    2. I am a million miles away from Guillaume Faye on many things, I better add, to defend myself from accusations of fascism. Someone tole me I was a libertarian and someone else said I certainly was not one. I am pretty close to one, in fact, so long as libertarian does not mean liking abortion and wanting to close down public libraries. (Actually libraries might be anachronistic.) I want to know much more about Ron Paul, who seems close in his thinking to mine. But Faye, unlike left-wing thinkers of the last fifty years, was very prescient.

      Who were the last interesting left-wing thinkers? Anthony Crosland was interesting but wrong. So was John Gray while he was on the left. Slavoj Zizek seems barren. The French Marxists who invented structuralism were malign and barren.

      I just added this to the post. I'd enjoy your comments. I should read much more but life is short and I feel left wing thinkers are a waste of my time.

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    3. Priti Patel will today unveil proposals for a fresh clampdown on convicted terrorists in the wake of yesterday’s bloody knife attack on the streets of south London. The home secretary is expected to address the House of Commons this afternoon as the government scrambles to respond to the second violent attack by a newly released extremist in two months. Sudesh Amman was let out of prison just a few days ago and was still under active surveillance by police when he stabbed two people on Streatham High Road yesterday afternoon. He was shot dead by plainclothes officers within seconds. Both his victims have survived.

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  2. How unpleasant, sanctimonious and vindictive much of the Left is.

    Politics in general has become hysterical, emotionally driven and nasty. The Right is just as unpleasant as the Left, it's just unpleasant in a different way.

    The moral witch hunt being directed at Joe Biden by the Right is no better than the moral witch hunt the Left directed against Trump in 2016.

    I'm not sure that it has much to do with Left or Right. I think people have just become more hysterical, emotionally driven and nasty. It may be mostly due to social media. It's possible that social media is inherently unhealthy, for everybody.

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  3. The right is stealing the left's clothes when it accuses Biden of patronising black people or accuses Jeremy Corbyn of anti-semitism.

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    1. The right is stealing the left's clothes when it accuses Biden of patronising black people or accuses Jeremy Corbyn of anti-semitism.

      And I'm not convinced that's a good idea. By using such dishonest cynical tactics the Right is willingly giving up the high moral ground.

      The Tories cannot now complain if Labour uses underhanded tactics to smear Boris Johnson. Republicans cannot now complain when the Democrats use underhanded tactics to smear Republican candidates. And to be honest it was the Republicans who got the ball rolling with their ill-considered attempt to get rid of Bill Clinton on morals charges.

      The end result is that the voters grow ever more cynical and disillusioned.

      The political right seems to be incapable of thinking things through.

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    2. Absolutely it's not a good idea, because it legitimises witchhunts and attempts to close down debate. Bill Clinton is a long time ago but he was accused of perjury - that was the accusation that led to his impeachment.

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  4. 'interesting left-wing thinker'

    Christopher Lasch.

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