For a European revolution!

For a European revolution!

Marion du Faouët

Source: https://institut-iliade.com/pour-une-revolution-europeenne/

Married with three children, Marion du Faouët has been a French teacher for the last ten years, studying late 13th-century Arthurian novels. An auditor with the Dante promotion, she has since become an executive at the Institut.

For a European revolution!

Our destiny as Europeans is not to remain on the margins of society. The Iliad Institute invites us to strive for excellence, to mobilise every fibre of our being in order to break out of our "backyard" and become revolutionaries in our own right. But the revolution we are calling for has nothing in common with the bloody revolts that have marked the history of European nations in recent centuries. This revolution will be a return to the roots of our identity, rather than the tabula rasa of the revolts that have marked the history of Europe.

    "And now they were weeping with joy as they stroked their sabres! Their forgotten weapons, rusty and debased, but which seemed to them to be a lost virility, because they are the only weapons that allow man to create the world. And that was the signal for rebellion, which was as beautiful as fire!
    And they all died as men!"
    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
    Citadelle, published by Gallimard, 1948. English title: The Wisdom of the Sands.

In the words of Henri Vincenot, this new conference of the Institut Iliade was "one of those singular days" that gave us "the feeling of really belonging to a caste apart, a kind of community which, on closer inspection, [lives] on the margins, absolutely and voluptuously separate, and within which nothing but prodigious things [can] happen".

But our destiny as Europeans is not to remain on the margins of society. The Iliad Institute is inviting us to strive for excellence, to mobilise every fibre of our being in order to break out of our "backyard" and become revolutionaries in our own right. The revolution we are calling for has nothing in common with the bloody revolts that have marked the history of European nations in recent centuries. From the 18th century to the present day, these revolutions, driven by an almost fanatical hatred, have sought to wipe out our past and consume the very foundations of our civilisation by exposing the peoples of Europe to the deadly 'black sun' of their unbridled modernism.

Revolution should not be seen as a break with the world before. The cosmological etymology of the word tells us exactly what it should be: revolvere in Latin means to return to one's point of origin. Until the 18th century, when the term took on a political meaning, it referred to a circular movement, a returning evolution, an eternal return: spring and its budding buds are therefore a revolution in themselves, just like the stars that guide sailors on the high seas.

The English philosopher Chesterton tells us:

    "The modern rebellious man hardly ever serves the object of his revolt. By rebelling against everything, he has lost the right to rebel against anything".

But each of us here has managed to regain or retain this right to rebel. So the European revolution in which we are all called upon to take part, while obviously a reaction to an established order made up of individualism, ugliness and a desire for constant homogenisation, must above all place us between the future and the past, making us aware once again of our role as transmitters of the long European tradition. It's not a question of going back in time, to a past that has gradually become legendary and musealised, in order to pitch our tents there, but rather of plunging into the treasures of our long memory, of feeding ourselves with its rich teachings in order to find in them the immanence of the European man. 

For the past," says Hélie de Saint Marc (picture), "enlightens the present, which holds within itself the essence of the future. [There is no isolated act, no isolated destiny. Everything is interconnected. We must believe in the strength of the past, in the weight of the dead, in the blood and memory of men; if a man were without memory, he would walk in the night; if a people were without memory, it would have no future, and the men of the future, those who will forge the future, will be those who have the broadest memory".

This European revolution will therefore not be achieved by erasing our common past; it will be brought about by the collective action of a people who have been able to reconnect with their great history and recreate a genuine solidarity between the peoples of Europe.

Let's not delude ourselves: for a European revolution to be possible, it must first and foremost be led by a type of man. The Iliad Institute is helping to train these future rebels, and has been providing them with metapolitical and cultural ammunition for ten years now.

Allow me to highlight three essential weapons for effectively combating the most deleterious excesses of modernity: humility, radicalism and community.

Humility is all too easily presented as a specifically Christian virtue, yet it already finds expression in the ancient pagan virtue of standing one's ground. Just as the ancients practised asceticism as a physical preparation before a battle, humility must be a mental and spiritual preparation before the civilisational battle to be waged. Humility in the face of those who have gone before us in the struggle: there are countless examples of men who fought for the greatness of Europe; humility in the face of our own abilities: it's not a question of putting on the robe, but of agreeing to put all our abilities at the service of a cause that is greater than ourselves; humility in the face of the struggle: you don't go out guns blazing to fight a ferocious hydra. To bring any internal revolution to a successful conclusion, we need to accept our place in the world order and in our community and, of course, deploy all our talents. A European revolution will only be possible because we will have had the humility to accept the place that is ours and that obliges us, without ever failing to meet the standards we have set ourselves.

The revolution as we see it also implies absolute radicalism. To be radical, first of all, means going back to the root of the evils that are perverting our people: permanent guilt-tripping, the "great erasure" of the long memory that is the ferment of our European identity, the desire to turn us into liquid beings with no backbone, no ideals whatsoever, or, in the words of Renaud Camus, MHI: undifferentiated human matter (Matière Humaine Indifférenciée), good only for being dumbed down in front of television programmes. To be radical is not only to pull back on this perverse thread that seeks to annihilate us, it is also to reject its inevitability. The last free men, to paraphrase Erik L'Homme, are "today on the margins [iv]".

They have made a radical choice that involves their whole being. Because being radical also means rediscovering your roots. Ours are called Ulysses, Roland or Arthur; they have given rise to pagan temples and Gothic cathedrals; they have embraced the rhythm of the seasons of our old continent, singing and dancing to them; they are wisdom and memory, teaching us about the bitter struggle of man to domesticate the world. Being radical means being faithful, radically faithful to the youth of our tradition, which is reborn with each generation.

But this European revolution cannot take place without a community of solidarity. It is, in the words of Dominique Venner: "The spear [making] a bulwark for the spear, the shield for the shield, each supporting the other; the shield [leaning] on the shield, the helmet on the helmet, the warrior on the warrior [v]", that we will go to fight. In the intellectual, cultural and economic spheres, Europeans must rebuild solid, organic, deep-rooted communities. Across borders, the people of Europe need to recreate genuine solidarity, to form an empire of communities. As Michel Maffesoli says, "modernity is individualism, post-modernity is community".

Bernard Lugan described these communities of Europeans capable of such a revolution back in 2014:

    "When authority has disintegrated, when landmarks have been lost, when the majority despair, when some indulge in morbid feelings, seeing defeat as divine penance, then small groups arise who know who they are, where they come from, where they are going and what they want. They are the Rebels".

So, dear friends, let's be Rebels today! Europe, the land of our fathers, will be the land of our children if we manage to hold our own: to be the transmitters of memory, aware of the necessity of our role as sentinels watching over the embers of our past, the ramparts of our citadels and this new generation that is rising up, proud and daring, ready to defend our civilisation, and which, refusing the ugliness and ease of an artificial life, will in turn embark on the narrow path of revolution, out of loyalty to what it is: a Europe on its feet!

Marion du Faouët

Notes:

[i] Henri Vincenot, Rempart de la Miséricorde, published by Anne Carrière, 1998.
[ii] Gilbert Keith C hesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908, trans. Lucien d'Azay, éditions Flammarion, "Climats" series, 2010.
[iii] Hélie Denoix de Saint Marc, Speech at the presentation of his insignia of Grand Officer in the Order of the Legion of Honour, Fort de Nogent, 29 March 2003.
[iv] Erik L'Homme, Des pas dans la neige - Aventures au Pakistan, published by Gallimard Jeunesse, "Pôle fiction" series, 2010.
[v] Dominique Venner, Un samouraï d'Occident - Le Bréviaire des insoumis, published by Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2013.
[vi] Bernard Lugan, à propos des "Rebelles" du Salon du livre d'histoire de Blois : éloge de Dominique Venner, 9 October 2014.