Regarding the Borean Bomber (Anders Behring Breivik)
“Here, what do you know of madness and despair?” [asked Ossipon]
The Professor passed the tip of his tongue on his dry, thin lips, and said doctorally:
“There are no such things. All passion is lost now. The world is mediocre, limp, without force. And madness and despair are a force. And force is a crime in the eyes of the fools, the weak and the silly who rule the roost. You are mediocre. Verloc, whose affair the police has managed to smother so nicely, was mediocre. And the police murdered him. He was mediocre. Everybody is mediocre. Madness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I’ll move the world. Ossipon, you have my cordial scorn. You are incapable of conceiving even what the fat-fed citizen would call a crime. You have no force.” He paused, smiling sardonically under the fierce glitter of his thick glasses.
~ Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent
Ding Dong the Witch is Dead
In Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Ilych, Ivan, seemingly healthy, feels a sudden pain and eventually finds himself bedridden. The doctors offer no cure, and it slowly dawns on Ivan that he is dying. Meanwhile, his family continues on as though nothing was wrong, dining, talking, entertaining guests. They refuse to even discuss his condition. Ivan is left alone to die, wondering how such a thing could happen to a man who has lived so well.
Western civilization is in the situation of Ivan Ilych. Seemingly healthy, it suddenly finds itself sick. No one wants to admit it, so the condition gradually worsens. Eventually, the symptoms become too obvious to ignore, at least for some, and they cannot remain silent. Nevertheless, the doctors do not know the cure; most do not even understand the diagnosis.
Unwanted Sons
Throughout history, when the West was healthy, a man desired sons. The shooter in his manifesto has several charts displaying the decline of the number of Nordic blue-eyed blondes in the world. Whose fault is that? Arthur Schopenhauer considered the world to be so bad that the rational choice would be to end it by refusing to procreate. The scientific progress of the West led to the perfection of contraception and its logical corollary, abortion, making it possible to fulfil his program. Suddenly, there are two categories of sons: the wanted and the unwanted. The unwanted are either eliminated through abortion, or even deprived of the opportunity to incarnate due to contraception. We are not moralizing here, we are stating an obvious fact.
Those unwanted sons left a large gap in Europe: its factories could not be manned and its social programs could no longer be maintained without importing, by the millions, the wanted sons of other men. The blame cannot be placed on liberals, or neo-Marxists, or Jews. Weep for your unwanted sons, O Europe, and accept the consequences of your folly.
Misdiagnosis
In a recent article at the Brussels Journal, we read:
Perhaps the greatest contribution of Western civilization to our present well-being is democratic institutions that allow for peaceful political expression.
How much wrong-headedness can be packed into a single sentence? First of all, is Western civilization presently in a state of well-being or not? If the former, then this Journal, that made its reputation by constantly sounding the alarm, needs to tone down the rhetoric. If not, then aren’t the very democratic institutions that is has praised the precise cause of the problem?
Then, we have to wonder about what exactly is Western civilization. When, in the entire history of Europe, let us say, the past 3000 years, has the high points of Western civilization been characterized by “democratic institutions”? Exactly never, leaving out of account the modernist deviations of the past two and a half centuries.
In the cleaned-up English translation of Rene Guenon: A Teacher for Modern Times, Julius Evola claims that Guenon was resisted by “occult” and “anti-traditionalist” forces. In the original version, published in La Vita Italiana of February 1935, Evola explicitly identifies these “very dark forces” as “democratic, jewish and masonic”. I don’t know if all that is true, or why those forces would even concern themselves with Guenon. The shooter himself was a mason. Of course, those were yesterday’s conspiracy theories, and there are better ones today — just check Twitter. We are just pointing out an anti-Tradition frame of mind associated with the Borean.
The Traditional Understanding
One of the very first posts on Gornahoor addressed this very issue that is dominating the news. It also announced a project from which we have never deviated. Guenon offered three scenarios:
- Barbarism. The West, “abandoned to its own fate, would sink into the lowest forms of barbarism.”
- Assimilation. The second possibility is that outsiders from the East would rescue the West through assimilation, either by consent or by force. Guenon predicted 75 years ago that there would be a “transition period of extremely painful ethnical revolutions.” Only the deliberately ignorant — for the information has been available (except for the machinations of the dark forces) — can now claim to be surprised. I understand that the West may find it difficult to accept that Islam is a possible means to save the West from itself; there are also patients who refuse to take their medicine.
- Transformation. This is the best scenario, but it requires the “return to true and normal intellectuality.” This can only happen through the spiritual transformation led by a new cadre of elite. Even after more than 1.9 million page views on Gornahoor, no one yet understands this.
Barbarism
It would appear that the West prefers to sink into barbarism, but the final aria has not yet been sung. If so, we will continue to have bombers as described by Joseph Conrad.
And the incorruptible Professor walked too, averting his eyes from the odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable, and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.
updated 29 July 2020
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CORRECTION: “…and I doubt this is NOT the option Guénon meant or wanted.”
Matt (and others), there is of course always a possibility – this may be the miracle I talked about – that remaining traditionalist forces in Europe and traditionalist moslems come into an understanding with each other and create a new order together, which would inaugurate a new era for Europe under the sign of trancendental unity. This might be close to the third option in Guénon’s prophecies. In the current climate this seems unlikely though, and it is not the spiritual unity that is emphasized (the only possible unity in the long run), but the secular and the humanist one. But as things get propabaly more worse in time, even those who currently lack understanding upon the cyclical phase the world is going through and are opposed to any sort of tradition, may very well turn towards religion and spirituality voluntarily.
It is also possible that currently moslems are modernizing themselves due to the force of circumstances (every traditionalist must know how difficult it is to be “wholly integral” in the midst of secularized McWorld), and when there are enough of them in Europe, they will turn again to their traditions and force it upon others (including the naive utopians). But then again, this would happen very easily more under the sign of quantity than quality, and I doubt this is the option Guénon meant or wanted.
Hard to say: all this will certainly not happen in one night in 2012. More likely in 2312, meaning with this the time when the current cycle closes and the new one begins “in an instant”. Is this not, after all, what tradition says about the end of the cycle and the beginning of the new one?
One thing is for sure: currently the likes of Breivik are increasing the confusion and digging the ground from any true understanding and spiritual renewal. I believe he epitomises the efforts of the “counter-tradition” in the end of the cycle. Apparently religious, apparently spiritual, apparently “traditional” – in reality the very opposite of any of these.
I,
I tend to agree. Most of the older generations of european moslems seem to have become modernized (though maybe not quite to the extent as an average white european is). And although the younger generation of european moslems may not be engaging in the type of hedonism their young white european counterparts are doing, they are just as immature and undisciplined. When you mix that with an angry exoteric fundamentalism, I think you have a recipe for chaotic disaster, not a traditional revival (the Middle East has been degenerating aswell, and fundamentalist Islam hasn’t been successful in bringing any normal order to that region either). Young moselm fundamentalists might create a temporary order, but one that would be pretty short lived, and one that would only be seen in some areas of western europe.
I think if Guenon were alive today he would most likely have greatly modified what he wrote on Europe’s future possibilites. To me, a spiritual revival is not just the best option, its the only option for the West.
With all due respect, it seems to me that the only moslems modern Europeans, left-wingers and democrats, really welcome are those who can be “westernized” through the process of assimilation and indoctrination (brain-washing) that includes adopting modernist values. Besides this, many european moslems are modernizing themselves willfully and they are leaving their integral traditions “behind”, either to be more tolerated or because they don’t wish to follow them any longer themselves, which means that secularized, europeanized, modern islam is transforming into the same kind of pseudo-conservationist veneer that characterizes modern christianity. On top of this there are fundamentalists, barbarians and alienated “angry young men” from the sub-saharan regions who simply want to have an easy and comfortable life with the money that the socialists are filling their pockets with. I really can’t see how this scenario could transform into a traditional re-construction; maybe Guénon was a little too optimistic and despite his brilliance and wisdom couldn’t see the reality of the phenomenon? Maybe he was looking for some sort of a miracle?
Yes, order will come whether the Europeans seek it or not. Nature abhores a void.
As a concrete example, we can point to the fall of Rome, due in part to the depopulation of the city, whether voluntarily or by disease. Into that vacuum, the Germanic and Gothic tribes arrived to restore order. Let us point out that they were civilized and Christian, not the Hollywood version of pagan Barbarians. Their efforts led to the Nordic-Roman creation of the Middle Ages, as Evola asserts. But we can quote a more neutral party here. Renan writes:
We have pointed out more than once that the Norman invasion of Sicily made that land the center or European civilization for a couple of generations.
I’m not defending the unsustainable policies of perpetual growth, but that is the “reason” given for immigration policies. While a sustainable, or small, population growth is ideal, the incredible (voluntary) depopulation of most European nations is a symptom of some deeper malaise.
Re Islam, did you check what Guenon wrote? As things slip into formlessness and barbarity, order will either be imposed by strangers, or by an indigenous spiritual renewal.
´Those unwanted sons left a large gap in Europe: its factories could not be manned and its social programs could no longer be maintained without importing, by the millions, the wanted sons of other men.´
Actually there is no need for more workers, either indigenous or immigrant, if there were not for the overproduction “required” by the hyperindustrial consumer society.
Horizontal breeding is very dangerous.
How would, as you state, Islam be a possible means to save the West from itself?