Tag Archives: Alain de Benoist

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EUROPE – ALAIN DE BENOIST

Europe: The Text of Alain de Benoist’s Colloquium, April 26th 2014

Ladies, Gentlemen, dear friends,

A quarter century ago, Europe seemed as the solution to nearly all problems. Today, it is perceived as a problem which adds itself to the others. Under the influence of disillusion, reproaches rain down from everywhere. People criticize the European commission for everything: multiplying constraints, interfering in that which doesn’t concern it, desiring to punish everyone, paralyzing our institutions, being organized in an incomprehensible manner, being devoid of democratic legitimacy, annihilating the sovereignty of peoples and nations, only being a machine for not governing. In the majority of countries, positive opinions on the European Union have been in free fall for at least ten years. The proportion of those who, in France, think that “belonging to the European Union is a bad thing” has even leaped from 25% in 2004 to 41% in 2013. Still more recently, an Ipsos poll revealed that 70% of French people wished to “limit the powers of Europe.”

It’s a fact that the European Union is going through an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy today. It’s also a fact that the spectacle offers nothing to excite. But how did we get there?

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DE-GLOBALIZATION – ALAIN DE BENOIST

It is all the more difficult to oppose globalization from a more restricted base. Isolated countries, for example, can hardly stand alone against the omnipotence of financial markets. That’s also the reason why, taking into account the risks of retaliation (or “commercial war”), protectionism on the European continental scale would be more effective than a simple national protectionism – which is nevertheless better than no protectionism at all.

For several years, some authors haven’t hesitated to speak of “de-globalization”. Is this an objective observation or a pious wish?

Since the start of the 2010-s, following the publication of the famous work by Philippin Walden Bello (Deglobalization, 2002), a number of authors (Jacques Sapir, Emmanuel Todd, Frédéric Lordon, Edgar Morin, etc.) have actually started to speak of de-globalization. Marine Le Pen, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Arnaud Montebourg and Jean-Luc Mélenchon have also seized upon this theme. The debate has even expanded recently: Donald Trump was elected through denouncing the effects of globalization and Brexit won thanks to the vote from regions devastated by de-industrialization. However it’s less an observation than a watchword. The general idea is that it is possible to end globalization or, at least, it is possible to give it a different content, an idea that 65% of French people are favorable towards, according to polls.

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IDENTITY AND SOVEREIGNTY: TWO INSEPARABLE NOTIONS – ALAIN DE BENOIST

In certain milieus, there is a tendency to contrast two notions about which everyone is talking today: identity and sovereignty. In the Front National, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen would have represented the first, in contrast to Florian Philippot, who defends the second before all. Does such an opposition seem legitimate to you?

Questioned a few months ago in the magazine Causeur, Marine Le Pen declared: “My project is intrinsically patriotic because it defends the sovereignty and identity of France at the same time. When we forget one of the two, we cheat.” Well, don’t cheat. Why must we see opposed ideas in identity and sovereignty, when they are complementary? Sovereignty without identity is only an empty shell, identity without sovereignty has every chance of turning into ectoplasm. So we must not separate them. Moreover, both are transcended in freedom. To be sovereign is to be free to determine one’s own politics. To conserve one’s social identity, for a people, is to be able to freely decide the conditions of social reproduction.

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THE IDEOLOGY OF THE NEW PARADIGM

As political parties collapse, Traditionalist philosophy is on the rise. Mark Sedgwick assesses the political topography of our strange new days:

Western politics has changed. Sometimes it still seems to fit into a familiar framework, as at least at some points the last British election did, but even then, nothing is quite the same. Despite occasional patronising talk of “the white-van man” and disadvantaged regions, it is becoming clear that something fundamental is shifting. The classic left-right shape of the political contest no longer holds. The broad liberalism that for so long seemed the natural background to Western politics is beginning to look like only one option among many.

There have been changes in what people hope for and what people fear. Underlying these are changes in the way many people live. There have also been changes in the ideologies that inform political life. As well as the familiar trio of liberalism, socialism and conservatism, previously unfamiliar thinkers are now important.

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