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Preparing for World War III
Avant-Guerre: Chronique d’un cataclysme annoncé
(Pre-War: Account of an Impending Cataclysm)
Guillaume Faye
Paris: L’ Æncre, 2002
24 Euros
382 pp.
Reviewed by Michael O’Meara
Readers of The Occidental Quarterly are probably unfamiliar with the work of Guillaume
Faye, but his ideas are increasingly those of Europe’s nationalist vanguard.
An early associate of Alain de Benoist and one of the architects of the European New
Right, the young Faye left politics in the late 1980s to pursue a career in media.
In 1998 he returned, instantly re-establishing himself as the intellectual force on the
nationalist right.
He has since published five books, each of which has had a major impact on the struggle
against multiculturalism, Third World immigration, and globalization.1 Unlike Benoist and
other New Right theoreticians, whose defense of the European ethnos is waged almost
exclusively on the cultural terrain, and unlike Le Pen's National Front, which favors the
assimilation rather than the forced repatriation of non-Europeans, Faye claims that race
is not only primary to cultural identity, but that race and culture are, at root,
inseparable. For this reason he argues that the struggle to preserve Europe's
cultural patrimony is no less a struggle to defend its genetic heritage and the ethnic
integrity of its Lebensraum.2
His latest work—Avant-Guerre: Chronique d’un cataclysme annoncé (Pre-War:
Account of an Impending Cataclysm)—is reminiscent of Spengler’s Hour of
Decision. Like Spengler, Faye looks at the storm clouds on the horizon and predicts
that within ten years a coming era of world-altering tempests will descend on the white
race, determining if it is to have a future or not.
In his view, these cataclysms will be neither ideological nor economic in character, but
(à la Huntington) racial and civilizational, involving clashing continental blocs and
warring ethno-racial groups. They are thus likely to engender unprecedented violence and
destruction, forcibly shaking white people from the stupor that is leading them toward
extinction. Although presently unprepared to fight such wars and alienated from all
that is distinct to their race and heritage, the struggles of the twenty-first century, he
believes, will give Europeans on both sides of the Atlantic a final chance to throw off
the forces that have denatured and debilitated then over the last half century.
Europe and America
Like most "nationalists" who fight in Europe’s name, Faye is extremely
critical of the American government and the role it has played in repressing the worldwide
forces of white solidarity. But unlike many on the anti-American right, Faye does not
believe the U.S. is Europe’s principal enemy, even if its Judeo-liberal New Class has
been responsible for eroding European autonomy and demonizing its culture. An enemy, he
contends, does more than corrupt and intimidate, it threatens one’s biological
existence. Taking his cue from Carl Schmidt, he thinks it is more accurate to characterize
the U.S. as Europe’s "adversary"—an adversary that needs to be opposed
if Europeans are ever to re-assert the Faustian project distinct to their ethos—but
nevertheless one with whom a life-and-death struggle is not at all inevitable.
The real enemy threatening the white homelands comes, he claims, from the Third
World. Accordingly, the terror attack of "9/11" suggests one form his
predicted cataclysm will take. But while Islam is Europe’s principal enemy, it is
not, paradoxically, America’s. Based on the work of General Gallois, Alexandre Del
Valle, and a new generation of European geopoliticists, Faye argues that Islam has long
served the U.S. in furthering the hegemonic ambitions of its global village, specifically
in dividing Europe and weakening Russia. That its recruitment and arming of Islamic
fanatics to fight in Afghanistan and Chechnya and in Bosnia and Kosovo at last boomeranged
ought not to detract from the fact that for a quarter century the U.S. systematically
incited Islamic insurgencies for the sake of its strategic aims.
In Faye’s view, America’s principal Third World enemy, and thus the power it
will face in World War III, comes not from the Middle East (even if militant Islam
continues to target it), but from a rapidly developing and technologically armed China
bent on contesting its dominance in the Pacific. In this potential Sino-American conflict,
Faye believes the future lies entirely on the Chinese side. Unlike the Middle Kingdom, the
U.S.’s disparate mix of race and cultures has left it without a coherent heritage and
thus a destining project worth dying for. This makes it not a nation in the European
sense, but simply une symbiose étatico-entrepreneuriale. Because such an entity is likely
to fly apart if challenged by a determined enemy, in the great cataclysms to come it will
be Europe (and Russia), not the U.S., that will stand at the center of the struggle to
defend the white West from a hostile non-white world.
Islam
While America’s future holds out the prospect of an interstate war with China, Faye
believes Europe faces an intrastate war with the forces of an insurgent Islam—a war,
to repeat, that will resemble 9/11 more than the conventional military engagement the U.S.
can expect in the Pacific.
In the four decades since 1962, when Africa broached Europe’s southern frontier, the
continent, especially France and Belgium, has been inundated by successive waves of Third
World immigrants. The amplitude of this immigration, involving masses not individuals, is
such that not a few demographers contend that it is more accurately described as
"colonization." Due to disproportional birthrates, the unrelenting influx of
non-white, unassimilable, and largely Muslim immigrants has already begun to
"de-Europeanize" Europe. For example, virtually everywhere they have settled in
France they have succeeded in "ethnically cleansing" former neighborhoods,
establishing not ghettos, but conquered territories, from which future conquests are being
prepared. With their seven to eight million inhabitants, these territories have become, in
effect, hostile African/Middle Eastern encampments within an increasingly besieged
France.3
This immigration is creating an extremely volatile situation, for Europe lacks the massive
police apparatus and vast geographical expanses that have kept ethnoracial tensions
‘manageable’ in the U.S. Typically, in urban areas where neighborhoods have been
lost to Islamic civilization, Europeans have come to experience not only escalating levels
of violence and insecurity, but the loss of their laws and institutions. There are now
more than 1400 zones de non-droit in France (including eleven towns), and in nearly a
hundred of these, republican jurisdiction has been supplanted by the shari`a (Islamic
law).4
Within such zones, whose deteriorating conditions politically correct public officials
persist in describing in socioeconomic rather than biocultural terms, it is nearly
impossible for a Frenchman to reside in the public housing estates (HLM) built for the
French working class, to find a café serving wine or ham, or for his wife to dress or
behave in public as do European women. In contrast to the Little Italies and Germantowns
arising in many American cities in the last century, these non-European enclaves have not
the slightest intention of assimilating into the dar-al-Harb (the "impious"
non-Islamic world, which Muslims view as the "world of war"), and have, in fact,
begun to assert their autonomy vis-à-vis it. In recent years, hardly a week passes
without a newspaper report of a riot or bloody incident provoked by clashes between police
and Muslim gangs.
Since 1990, urban violence has grown five percent annually—since 2000, by ten
percent—as the anomie, violence, and disintegration associated with America’s
inner cities becomes an increasingly familiar European reality. In fact, in 2000, for the
first time in history, French criminality, whose ethnoracial character is overwhelmingly
non-European, surpassed that of the U.S. crime rate; and Paris, once the City of Lights,
became the least safe of the major European cities.
In the face of these threats to the continent’s demographic, cultural, and
institutional foundations, the media, the academy, and the established
"anti-racist" organizations (mostly controlled by Zionists) attempt to silence
whoever criticizes such changes, all the while making the term
"multiculturalism" emblematic of the mobile postmodern society of optional
values and fashionable identities that comes with globalization. Instead, then, of
mobilizing the Christian West against such threats, these New Class forces preach
cowardice, resignation, escapism, and a self-destructive humanitarianism.
An ethno-masochistic response of this kind has naturally emboldened the more militant
members of France’s Muslim community, who now call for jihad against the "white
cheese." Public authorities, though, persist in distinguishing between violent
fundamentalists (who number perhaps 40,000) and the "peace-loving" Muslim
community, unable or unwilling to acknowledge Islam’s inherent hostility to
Europe’s secular society. Between orthodox and fundamentalist Islam, Faye,
though, claims there is solely a difference in temperament. And even this is increasingly
compromised by fundamentalist aggressions. Years before the 9-11 attack on the symbols of
U.S. hegemony, this "monstrous offshoot of Judaism" had already begun its third
great offensive against the dar-al-Harb, targeting Europe as a future Muslim homeland.5
Buoyed up by U.S.-protected strongholds in Southeast Europe (Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo),
U.S. pressure to admit Muslim Turkey to the EU, and large stockpiles of sophisticated
arms, Islamists have already begun organizing for a new conquest.
It is not surprising, then, that Faye interprets the growth of European Islam as the
opening salvo in a larger struggle for the continent’s future.6 Faye’s militant
opposition to Islam does not, however, bear a resemblance to that of President Bush’s
handlers. The struggle against Islam, he insists, is a struggle to free Europe from a dire
threat to existence—not a justification for further Zionist aggression.
What War Will Bring
In the coming cataclysms—likely to involve street battles between rival racial
communities, guerrilla skirmishes, mega-terrorism, perhaps even small-scale nuclear
exchanges with "dirty bombs," along with conventional-style invasions from
neighboring Islamic armies—Faye believes Europe will either perish or experience a
rebirth. In any case, the confrontations ahead will create a situation in which the
present politically correct delusions are impossible to sustain.
For like every great struggle affecting human’s natural selection, war privileges the
elemental and the vital. With it, the subtleties and distractions that sophists and
simulators have used to misdirect Europeans cannot but cease to count, as will those minor
differences that have historically divided them. Then, as "money and pleasure"
cede to the imperatives of "blood and soil," only the traditions, the way of
life, and the genetic principles defining them as a people will matter.
The situation the white race finds itself in today may therefore be unconditionally bleak,
but in that hour when everything risks being lost, Faye believes a final opportunity for
renaissance will present itself.
In this vein, he predicts that the dominant musical theme of the twenty-first century will
be neither an orchestral ode to joy nor the doggerel of an urban savage, but rather a
solemn military march based on ancient hymns. Europeans on both sides of the Atlantic, he
advises, would do well to keep step with its strong, marked rhythm.
Michael O’Meara is a scholar who resides and teaches on the West Coast of
the United States. He is the author of numerous articles and book reviews.
End Notes
1. L’archéofuturisme (1998); Nouveau discours à la nation européenne, 2nd ed.
(1999); La colonisation de l’Europe (2000); Pourquoi nous combattons (2001).
All these works have been published by L’Æncre and can be purchased at the Librairie
Nationale, 12 rue de la Sourdière, 75001 Paris, or on the Internet at
www.librairienationale.com/.
2. See Michael Torigian, New Right, New Culture: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003).
3. The number of non-Europeans in France is not officially known. The cited figure is the
estimate of one of the country’s leading demographers. See “L’avenir
démographique: Entretien avec Jacques Dupâquier,” in Krisis 20-21 (November 1997).
Another academic (J. P. Gourevich) claims it is closer to 9 million. Some put the figure
as high as 14 million, while the media usually refer to 4, 5, or 6 million. But more
alarming than these figures is the fact that one-third of the population under 30 is now
of non-European origins and has a birth rate four or five times higher than the European
one.
4. Jeremy Rennher, “L’Occident ligoté par l’imposture antiraciste,”
in Écrit de Paris 640 (February 2002). Even the politically correct editor of Violences
en France (Paris: Seuil, 1999), Michael Wieviorka, acknowledges that the explosion of
violence and criminality since 1990 is an outgrowth of Islamic power. Because the French
government keeps most data on immigrant crime and racial terror securely under wraps, the
little that is known has been surreptiously leaked by frustrated officials. The
publication with the best access to these leaks is the monthly J’ai tout compris!
Lettre de désintoxification, edited, not coincidentally, by Guillaume Faye.
5. The first, Arab wave of the seventh century brought the Muslims to Poitiers, and the
second, Turkish wave of the twelth through the seventeenth centuries led to the
destruction of Christian Byzantium and the seige of Vienna. The third wave, in the form of
the present colonization, is stealthy in character, but potentially even more
catastrophic.
6. Accordingly, the more militant Europeanists now invoke the need for a new reconquista.
This is especially evident in Philippe Randa’s novel Poitiers demain (Paris: Denoël,
2000) and the album Reconquista by the group Fraction (Heretik Records).