|
|||||||
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||||
Interview with Robert Steuckers
Troy Southgate
Robert Steuckers is one of the New Right’s most foremost thinkers and his writtings, editorial and publishing efforts have been included in well-respected publications such as THE SCORPION, ORIENTATIONS, VOULOIR and NOUVELLES DE SYNERGIES EUROPEENNES.
When and why did you decide to become involved in politics?
I was never actually involved in politics, as I was never a member of a political party.
Nevertheless I am a citizen interested in political questions but of course not in the
usual plain and trivial way, as I have no intention to become a candidate, council deputy
or Member of Parliament. For me "politics" means to maintain continuities or, if
you prefer, traditions. But traditions that are embedded in the actual history of a
particular human community. I started to read historical and political books at the tender
age of 14. This lead to a rejection of established ideologies or non-values. From the age
of 15 onwards, with the help of a secondary school history teacher, a certain Mr.
Kennof, I realized that people should grasp the main trends of history in keys
and always make use of historical atlasses (I have collected them ever since) in order to
understand in one glimpse the main forces animating the world scene at a precise moment of
time. Maps are very important for politics at a high level (diplomacy, for instance). The
principal idea I acquired at this young age was that all ideologies, thoughts or blue
prints which wanted to get rid of the past, to sever the links people have with their
historical continuities, were fundamentally wrong. As a consequence, all political actions
should aim at preserving and strengthening historical and political continuities, even
when futurist (pro-active) actions are often necessary to save a community from a sterile
repetition of obsolete habits and customs.
The discourses of most ideologies, including the various expressions of the so-called far
right, were in my eyes artificial in the Western World just as communism was an
abstraction in front of the whole of Russian history in the East or an abstraction
obliterating the genuine historical patterns of the East-European peoples submitted to
Soviet rule after 1945. The rupture of continuities or the repetition of dead past
"forms" leads to the political-ideological confusion we know nowadays, where
conservatives aren't conservative and socialists aren't socialists anymore, and so on.
Fundamental political ideas are better served in my eyes by "Orders" than by
political parties. Orders provide a continuous education of the affiliated and stress the
notion of service. They feel reluctant in front of the mere politicians' petty ambitions.
Such Orders are the Chivalric Orders of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance in Europe, the
notion of fatwa in the Persian Islamic world as well as later experiments, including in
the 20th Century (The Legion of Michael the Archangel in Romania, the Verdinaso in
Flanders, etc.).
Please explain what you mean by the term "Conservative Revolution" and, if
possible, provide us with an outline of some of its chief ideologues.
When the phrase "Conservative Revolution" is used in Europe, it is mostly in the
sense given to it by Armin Mohler in his famous book "Die
Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932". Mohler listed a long list of
authors who rejected the pseudo-values of 1789 (dismissed by Edmund Burke
as mere "blue prints"), stressed the role of the Germanic in the evolution of
European thought and received the influence of Nietzsche. Mohler avoided,
for instance, purely religious "conservatives", be they Catholics or
Protestants. For Mohler the main brandmark of "Conservative Revolution" is a
non-linear vision of history. But he doesn't simply take over the cyclical vision of
traditionalism. After Nietzsche, Mohler believes in a spherical conception of history.
What does that mean? It means that history is neither simply a repetition of the same
patterns at regular intervals nor a linear path leading to happiness - to the end of
history, to a Paradise on Earth, to felicity, etc. - but is a sphere that can run (or be
pushed) in every direction according to the impulsion it receives from strong charismatic
personalities. Such charismatic personalities bend the course of history towards some very
particular ways, ways that were never previously foreseen by any kind of Providence.
Mohler in this sense never believes in universalistic political receipts or doctrines but
always in particular and personal trends. Like Jünger, he wants to
struggle against everything that is "general" and to support everything that is
"particular". Further, Mohler expressed his vision of the dynamic
particularities by using the some awkward terminology of "nominalism". For him
"nominalism" was indeed the word that expressed at best the will of strong
personalities to cut for themselves and their followers an original and never used path
through the jungle of existence.
The main figures of the movement were Spengler, Moeller van den
Bruck and Ernst Jünger (and his brother Friedrich-Georg).
We can add to these triumviri Ludwig Klages and Ernst Niekisch.
Carl Schmitt, as a Catholic lawyer and constitutionalist, represents
another important aspect of the so-called "Conservative Revolution".
Spengler remains the author of a brilliant fresco of the world
civilisations that inspired the British philosopher Arnold Toynbee. Spengler
spoke of Europe as a Faustian civilisation, at best expressed by the Gothic
cathedrals, the interaction of light and colours in the glass-works, the stormy skies with
white and grey clouds in most of the Dutch, English and German paintings. This
civilisation is an aspiration of the human soul towards light and towards self-commitment.
Another important idea of Spengler is the idea of
"pseudo-morphosis": a civilisation never disappears completely after a decay or
a violent conquest. Its elements pass into the new civilisation that takes its succession
and bends it towards original paths.
Moeller van den Bruck was the first German translator of Dostoievski.
He was deeply influenced by Dostoievski's diary, containing some severe
judgements on the West. In the German context after 1918, Moeller van den Bruck
advocated, on the basis of Dostoievski's arguments, a German-Russian
alliance against the West. How could the respectable German gentleman, with an immense
artist's culture, plea in favour of an alliance with the Bolsheviks? His arguments were
the following: in the whole diplomatic tradition of the 19th century, Russia was
considered as the shield of reaction against all the repercussions of the French
Revolution and of the revolutionist mind and moods. Dostoievski, as a
former Russian revolutionist who admitted later that his revolutionist options were wrong
and mere blue prints, considered more or less that Russia's mission in the world was to
wipe out of Europe the tracks of the ideas of 1789. For Moeller van den Bruck,
the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia was only a changing of ideological clothe Russia
remained, despite the Bolshevik discourse, the antidote to the Western liberal mind. So
defeated Germany should ally to this fortress of anti-revolutionism to oppose the West,
which in the eyes of Moeller van den Bruck is the incarnation of
liberalism. Liberalism, stated Moeller van den Bruck, is always the final
disease of a people. After some decades of liberalism, a people will ineluctably enter
into a terminal phase of decay.
The path followed by Ernst Jünger is known enough to everyone. He
started as an ardent and gallant young soldier in the First World War, leaving the
trenches with no gun, simply with a hand grenade under his arm, worn with elegance like
the stick of a typical British officer. For Jünger the First World War
was the end of the petty bourgeois world of the 19th Century and the "Belle
Epoque", where everyone had to be "as it should be", i.e. behave according
to said patterns pre-cut by borrowing teachers or priests, exactly as we all today have to
behave according to the self-proclaimed rules of "political correctness". Under
the "steel tempests", the soldier could state his nothingness, his mere fragile
biological being, but this statement couldn't in his eyes lead to an inept pessimism, to
fear and desperation. Having experimented the most cruel destiny in the trenches and under
the shelling of thousands of artillery guns, shaking the earth thoroughly, reducing
everything to the "elemental", the infantrymen knew better of cruel human
destiny on the surface of this planet. All artificiality of civilised urban life appeared
to them as mere fake. After the war Ernst Jünger and his brother Friedrich-Georg
turned out to be the best national-revolutionist journalists and writers. Ernst
evolved to a kind of cynical, soft, ironical and serene observer of humanity and the facts
of life. During a carpet bombing raid on a Parisian suburb, where factories were producing
war material for the German army during WWII, Jünger was terrified by
the unnatural straight air path taken by the American flying fortresses. The linearity of
the planes' path in the air above Paris was the negation of all the curves and sinuosities
of organic life. The modern war implied the crushing of those winding and serpentine
organicities. Ernst Jünger started his career as a writer by being an
apologist of war. After having observed the irresistible lines thrust forward by the
American B-17s, he became totally disgusted by the unchivalrousness of the pure technical
way of running a war. After WWII, his brother Friedrich-Georg wrote a
first theoretical work leading to the development of the new German critical and
ecological thinking, Die Perfektion der Technik (The Perfection of Technics). The main
idea of this book, in my eyes, is the critique of "connection". The modern world
is a process trying to connect human communities and individuals to big structures. This
process of connection ruins the principle of liberty. You are a poor chained prole if you
are "connected" to a big structure, even if you earn £3000 or more in one
month. You are a free man if you are totally disconnected from those big iron heels. In a
certain way, Friedrich-Georg developed the theory that Kerouac
experimented untheoretically by choosing to drop out and travel, becoming a singing tramp.
Ludwig Klages was another philosopher of organic life against abstract
thinking. For him the main dichotomy was between Life and Spirit (Leben und Geist). Life
is crushed by abstract spirit. Klages was born in Northern Germany but
migrated as a student to Munich, where he spent his free time in the pubs of Schwabing,
the district in which artists and poets met (and still meet today). He became a friend of
the poet Stefan Georg and a student of the most original figure of
Schwabing, the philosopher Alfred Schuler, who believed himself to be the
reincarnation of an ancient Roman settler in the German Rhineland. Schuler
had a genuine sense of theatre. He disguised himself in the toga of a Roman Emperor,
admired Nero and set up plays remembering the audience of the ancient Greek or Roman
world. But beyond his lively fantasy, Schuler acquired a cardinal
importance in philosophy by stressing for instance the idea of "Entlichtung",
i.e. the gradual disappearance of Light since the time of the Ancient City-State of Greece
and Roman Italy. There is no progress in history: On the contrary, Light is vanishing as
well as the freedom of the free citizen to shape his own destiny. Hannah Arendt
and Walter Benjamin, on the left or conservative-liberal side, were
inspired by this idea and adapted it for different audiences. The modern world is the
world of complete darkness, with little hope of finding "be-lighted" periods
again, unless charismatic personalities, like Nero, dedicated to art and Dionysian
lifestyle, wedge in a new era of splendour which would only last for the blessed time of
one spring. Klages developed the ideas of Schuler, who
never wrote a complete book, after he died in 1923 due to an ill-prepared operation. Klages,
just before WW1, pronounced a famous speech on the Horer Meissner Hill in Central Germany,
in front of the assembled youth movements (Wandervogel). This speech bore the title of
"Man and Earth" and can be seen as the first organic manifesto of ecology, with
a clear and understandable but nevertheless solid philosophical background.
Carl Schmitt started his career as a law teacher in 1912 but lived till
the respectable age of 97. He wrote his last essay at 91. I cannot enumerate all the
important points of Carl Schmitt's work in the frame of this modest
interview. Let us summarise by saying that Schmitt developed two main idea the idea of
decision in political life and the idea of "Great Space". The art of shaping
politics or a good policy lays in decision, not in discussion. The leader has to decide in
order to lead, protect and develop the political community he is in charge of. Decision is
not dictatorship as many liberals would say nowadays in our era of "political
correctness". On the contrary: a personalisation of power is more democratic, in the
sense that a king, an emperor or a charismatic leader is always a mortal person. The
system he eventually imposes is not eternal, as he is doomed to die like any human being.
A nomocratic system, on the contrary, aims at remaining eternal, even if current events
and innovations contradict the norms or principles. Second big topic in Schmitt's
work the idea of a European Grand Space (Grossraum). "Out-of-Space" powers
should be prevented to intervene within the frame of this Great Space. Schmitt
wanted to apply to Europe the same simple principle that animated US President
Monroe. America for the Americans. OK, said Schmitt, but let us
apply "Europe to the Europeans". Schmitt can be compared to the
North-American "continentalists", who criticised Roosevelt's
interventions in Europe and Asia. Latin Americans also developed similar continentalist
ideas as well as Japanese imperialists. Schmitt gave to this idea of
"Greater Space" a strong juridical base.
Niekisch is a fascinating figure in the sense that he started his career
as a Communist leader of the "Councils' Republic of Bavaria" of 1918-19, that
was crushed down by the Free Corps of von Epp, von Lettow-Vorbeck,
etc. Obviously, Niekisch was disappointed by the absence of a historical
vision among the Bolshevik trio in revolutionist Munich (Lewin, Leviné, Axelrod). Niekisch
developed a Eurasian vision, based on an alliance between the Soviet Union, Germany, India
and China. The ideal figure who was supposed to be the human motor of this alliance was
the peasant, the adversary of the Western bourgeoisie. A certain parallel with Mao
Tse-Tung is obvious here. In the journals that Niekisch edited,
we discover all the German tentatives to support anti-British or anti-French movements in
the colonial empires or in Europe (Ireland against England, Flanders against a Frenchified
Belgium, Indian nationalists against Britain, etc.).
I hope I have explained in a nutshell the main trends of the so-called conservative
revolution in Germany between 1918 and 1933. May those who know this pluri-stratified
movement of ideas forgive my schematic introduction.
Do you have a "spiritual angle"?
By answering this question, I risk being too succinct. Among the group of friends who
exchanged political and cultural ideas at the end of the Seventies, we concentrated of
course on Evola's Revolt Against the Modern World. Some of us rejected
totally the spiritual bias, because it lead to sterile speculation: they preferred to read
Popper, Lorenz, etc. I accepted many of their criticisms
and I still dislike the uttermost Evolian speculations, alleging a spiritual world of
Tradition beyond all reality. The real world being disregarded as mere triviality; But
this is of course a cult of Tradition mainly supported by young people "feeling ill
in their own skin", as we say. The dream to live like beings in fairy tales is a form
of refusing to accept reality. In Chapter 7 of Revolt Against the Modern World, Evola,
on the contrary, stresses the importance of the "numena", the forces acting
within things, natural phenomena or powers. The initial Roman mythology laid the accent
more on the numena than on the personalised divinities. This bias is mine. Beyond the
people and the gods of the usual religions (be they Pagan or Christian), there are acting
forces and man should be in concordance with them in order to be successful in his earthly
actions. My religious/spiritual orientation is more mystical than dogmatic, in the sense
that the mystical tradition of Flanders and Rhineland (Ruusbroec, Meister
Eckhart), as well as the mystical tradition of Ibn Arabî in the
Muslim area or of Sohrawardî in the Persian realm, admire and worship the total splendour
of Life and the World. In these traditions, there is no clear-cut dichotomy between the
godly, the sacred and the holy on the one side and the worldly, the profane and the simple
on the other. Mystical tradition means omni-compenetration and synergy of all the forces
yeasting in the world.
Please explain to our readers why you place such importance on concepts like
geopolitics and Eurasianism.
Geopolitics is a mixture of history and geography. In other words of time and space.
Geopolitics is a set of disciplines (not a single discipline) leading to a good governance
of time and space. Geopolitics is a mixture of history and geography. No serious power can
survive without continuity, be it an institutional or historical continuity. No serious
power can survive without a domination and a yielding of land and space. All traditional
empires first organised the land by building roads (Rome) or by mastering the big rivers
(Egypt, Mesopotamia, China), then lead on to the emergence of a long history, to the sense
of a continuity, to the birth of the first practical sciences (astronomy, meteorology,
geography, mathematics) under the protection of well structured armies with a code of
honour, especially codified in Persia, the womb of Chivalry. The Roman Empire, first
empire on European soil, was focussed on the Mediterranean Sea. The Holy Roman Empire of
the German Nation couldn't find a proper core as well coordinated as the Mediterranean.
The waterways of Central Europe lead to the North Sea, the Baltic Sea or the Black Sea,
but without any link between them. This was the true tragedy of German and European
history. The country was torn between centrifugal forces. The Emperor Frederick II
Hohenstaufen tried to restore the Mediterranean realm, with Sicily as the central
geographical piece.
His attempt was a tragic failure. It is only now that the emergence of a renewed imperial
form (even under a modern ideology) is possible in Europe: after the opening of the canal
between the Rhine-Main system and the Danube river system. There is a single waterway now
between the North Sea, including the Thames system in Britain, and the Black Sea, allowing
the economical and cultural forces of Central Europe to reach all the shores of the Black
Sea and the Caucasian countries. Those who have a good historical memory, not blinded by
the usual ideological blue-prints of modernism, will remember the role of the Black Sea
shores in the spiritual history of Europe: in Crimea, many old traditions, be they Pagan
or Byzantine, were preserved in caves by monks. The influences of Persia, especially the
values of the oldest (Zoroastrian) Chivalry in world history, could influence the
development of similar spiritual forces in Central and Western Europe. Without those
influences, Europe is spiritually mutilated.
Therefore the Mediterranean area, the Rhine (also coupled to the Rhone) and the Danube,
the Russian rivers, the Black Sea and the Caucasus should constitute a single civilisation
area, defended by a unified military force, based on a spirituality inherited from Ancient
Persia. This, in my eyes, means Eurasia. My position is slightly different than that of Dughin
but both positions are not incompatible.
When the Ottomans gained complete control over the Balkan Peninsula in the 15th Century,
the land routes were cut for all Europeans. Moreover, with the help of the North African
sea rovers assembled by the Turkish-born Barbarossa based in Algiers, the
Mediterranean was closed to peaceful European commercial expansion towards India and
China. The Muslim world worked as a bolt to contain Europe and Moscovy, core of the future
Russian Empire. All together, Europeans and Russians joined their efforts to destroy the
Ottoman bolt. The Portuguese, Spaniards, English and Dutch tried the sea routes and
circumvented the African and Asian land mass, ruining first the Moroccan kingdom, which
drew gold from subtropical Western African mines and claims in order to build an army to
conquer again the Iberian Peninsula. By landing in Western Africa, the Portuguese got the
gold more easily for themselves and the Moroccan kingdom was reduced to a mere residual
superpower. The Portuguese passed around the African continent and entered the Indian
Ocean, circumventing definitively the Ottoman bolt, and giving for the first time a real
Eurasian dimension to European history.
At the same time, Russia repelled the Tartars, took the City of Kazan and destroyed the
Tartar shackle of the Muslim bolt. This was the starting point of the continental Russian
Eurasian geopolitical perspective.
The aim of American global strategy, developed by a man like Zbigniew Bzrzezinski,
is to recreate artificially the Muslim bolt by supporting Turkish militarism and
Panturanism. In this perspective, they support tacitly and still secretly the Moroccan
claims on the Canary Isles and use Pakistan to prevent any land link between India and
Russia. Hence the double necessity today for Europe and Russia to remember the
counter-strategy elaborated by ALL European peoples in the 15th and 16th Century. European
history has always been conceived as petty nationalist visions. It is time to reconsider
European history by stressing the common alliances and convergencies. The Portuguese
seaborne and the Russian landborne actions are such convergencies and are naturally
Eurasian. The Battle of Lepante, where the Venetian, Genoan and Spanish fleets joined
their efforts to master the East Mediterranean area under the command of Don Juan
of Austria, is also a historical model to meditate upon and to remember. But the
most important Eurasian alliance was without any doubt the Holy Alliance lead by Eugene
of Savoy at the end of the 17th Century, which compelled the Ottomans to
retrocede 400,000 sq. km of land in the Balkans and Southern Russia. This victory allowed
the Russian Czars of the 18th Century, especially Catherine II, to win decisive battles
once more.
My Eurasianism (and of course my whole geopolitical thought) is a clear answer to Bzrzezinski's
strategy and is deeply rooted in European history. It is absolutely not to be compared
with the silly postures of some pseudo-national-revolutionist crackpots or with the poor
aesthetic blueprints of new rightist would-be philosophers. Besides, one last remark
concerning geopolitics and Eurasianism: my main sources of inspiration are English. I mean
the historical atlas of Colin McEvedy, the books of Peter Hopkirk
about the secret service in the Caucasus, in Central Asia, along the Silk Road
and in Tibet, the reflections of Sir Arnold Toynbee in the twelve volumes
of A Study of History.
What is your view of the State? Is it really essential to have systems or
infrastructure as a means of socio-political organisation, or do you think a decentralised
form of tribalism and ethnic identity would be a better solution?
Your question needs a whole book to be properly and completely answered. Firstly, I would
say that it is impossible to have A view of THE State, as there are many forms of States
throughout the world. I make of course the distinction between a State, which is still a
genuine and efficient instrument to promote the will of a people and also to protect its
citizens against all evils be they machinated by external, internal or natural foes
(calamities, floods, starvation, etc.). The State should also be carved for one population
living on a specific land. I am critical, of course, of all artificial States like those
that were imposed as so-called universal patterns. Such States are pure machines to crush
or to exploit a population for an oligarchy or foreign masters. An organisation of the
peoples, according to ethnic criteria, could be an ideal solution, but unfortunately as
the events in the Balkans show us the ebbs and flows of populations in European, African
or Asian history have very often spread ethnical groups beyond natural boarders or settled
them within territories which were formerly controlled by others. Homogenous States cannot
be built in such situations. This is the source of many tragedies, especially in Middle
and Eastern Europe. Therefore the only perspective today is to think in terms of
Civilisations as Samuel Huntington taught us in his famous article and
book, The Clash of Civilisations, first written in 1993.
In 1986, you said "the Third Way exists in Europe at the level of theory. What it
needs is militants." [Europe: A New Perspective in The Scorpion, Issue #9, p.6] Is
this is still the case, or have things developed since then?
Indeed, the situation is still the same. Or even worse because, growing older, I state
that the level of classical education is vanishing. Our way of thinking is in a certain
way Spenglerian, as it encompasses the complete history of the human kind. Guy
Debord, leader of the French Situationnists from the end of the 'Fifties until
the 'Eighties, could observe and deplore that the "society of the spectacle" or
the "show society" has as its main purpose to destroy all thinking and thought
in terms of history and replace them by artificial and constructed blueprints or simple
lies. The eradication of historical perspectives in the heads of pupils, students and
citizens, through the diluting work of the mass-media, is the big manipulation, leading us
to an Orwellian world without any memory. In such a situation, we all risk becoming
isolated O'Brians. No fresh troops of volunteers are ready to take over the struggle.
Finally, tell us about your involvement with Synergies and your long-term plans for the
future.
"Synergies" was created in order to bring people together, especially those who
publish magazines, in order to spread more quickly the messages our authors had to
deliver. But the knowledge of languages is also undergoing a set-back. Being plurilingual,
as you certainly know, I have always been puzzled by the repetition of the same arguments
at each national level. Marc Lüdders from Synergon-Germany agrees with
me. It's a pity for instance that the tremendous amount of work performed in Italy is not
known in France or in Germany. And vice-versa. In order to keep this short: my main wish
is to see such an exchange of texts realised in a swift manner within the next twenty
years.