Autor: Julius Evola

Automobil rýchlo opúšťa komickú panorámu, ktorá predstavuje centrum Bukurešti: nevysoké mrakodrapy a najmodernejšie budovy, prevažne funkčného typu, s výkladmi a obchodmi, zanechávajú dojem akejsi zmesi parížskeho a amerického štýlu. Jediným exotickým prvkom sú časté baranice na meštiakoch a trhovníkoch. Míňame Severnú stanicu a vezieme sa prašnou provinciálnou cestou, ktorá vedie spočiatku vpravo, potom sa prudko stáča doľava; nakoniec vychádzame na poľnú cestu a ocitáme sa pred osamelo stojacim domom uprostred polí: je to Zelený Dom, rezidencia hlavy rumunskej Železnej Gardy.

“Vlastnými rukami sme ho postavili,” poznamenávajú s miernou hrdosťou sprevádzajúci nás legionári. Intelektuáli i remeselníci sa spojili aby postavili rezidenciu svojho vodcu, čo sa pre nich stalo takmer symbolickým a obradným aktom. Budova je postavená v rumunskom štýle, z oboch strán rozšírená portikom pripomína kláštor. Vchádzame a vystupujeme na prvé poschodie. Naproti nám prichádza vysoký, urastený mladý muž športovej postavy, s výrazom budiacim dojem šľachetnosti, otvorenosti a sily. Je to Corneliu Codreanu, vodca Železnej Gardy osobne. Pravý ario-románsky typ, podľa všetkého potomok starého ario-italického sveta. V jeho šedomodrých očiach sa zračí tvrdosť a rozvaha vlastné vodcom a súčasne celá jeho osoba žiari idealizmom, energiou, vnútorným svetom a ľudským porozumením. I štýl jeho rozhovoru je charakteristický: skôr než odvetí zahĺbi sa v seba, vzdiali sa, potom odrazu prehovorí, vyjadrujúc svoje myšlienky s takmer geometrickou presnosťou zreteľnými a krátkymi vetami.

“Po všetkých tých novinároch rôznych farieb a národností,” hovorí Codreanu, “prvý krát, k svojej spokojnosti, vidím niekoho koho zaujíma predovšetkým duša, duchovné jadro môjho hnutia. Ale našiel som patričný spôsob, akým tých novinárov uspokojiť a povedať im aj niečo viac, ako im ukázať tvorivý nacionalizmus. Človek sa skladá z organizmu, to je organizovanej formy, životných síl a ďalej duše. To isté možno povedať i o národe. Preto je národná štruktúra štátu, hoci aj skutočne obnovuje všetky tri zložky, podriadená u každého hnutia v prvom rade jednej z nich (v závislosti od skúsenosti a dedičstva). Podľa môjho názoru, v fašistickom hnutí prevláda zložka štátu zodpovedajúca organizovanej forme. V tom sa prejavuje formujúca moc starovekéha Ríma, vládcu práva a politickej organizácie, ktorého priamymi následníkmi sú Taliani. V národnom socializme je na prvé miesto vyzdvihnuté to, čo je zviazané s životnými silami: rasa, rasový inštinkt, národno-etnická zložka. V rumunskom legionárskom hnutí sa dôraz kladie predovšetkým na to, čo v organizme zodpovedá duši: na duchovnú a náboženskú stránku. Odtiaľ pramení charakteristika rozličných nacionalistických hnutí, hoci v konečnom výsledku musia zahrnúť všetky tri zložky, neignorujúc ani jednu z nich. Osobitý charakter nášho hnutia je podmienený našim starovekým dedičstvom. Už Herodotus nazýval našich predkov nesmrteľnými Dákmi. Oni už pred prijatím kresťanstva verili v nesmrteľnosť a nepominuteľnosť duše, čo svedčí o ich sklone k duchovnosti. Rímska kolonizácia k tomu pridala rímsky duch organizácie a formy. Všetky nasledujúce storočia boli v znamení rozkladu a vyústili v bezvýznamnosť nášho národa, no tak ako v chorom a uštvanom koni možno rozpoznať ušľachtilú rasu, tak i v rumunskom národe možno odhaliť skryté elementy toho dvojakého dedičstva. Toto dedičstvo,” pokračuje Codreanu, “sa snaží prebudiť legionárske hnutie. Vychádza z ducha, chce vytvoriť duchovne nového človeka. Ak bude táto úloha prostredníctvom hnutia zrealizovaná, prebudí sa i druhé dedičstvo, to je rímska formujúca politická sila. Teda, duša a náboženstvo sú pre nás východiskovým bodom, a konštruktívny nacionalizmus je náším cieľom, to znamená, prostým následkom. Súčasne asketická a heroická etika Železnej Gardy spočíva v spojení oboch týchto zložiek.”

Pýtame sa Codreana nakoľko je jeho hnutie duchovne zviazané s pravoslávnym náboženstvom.

On odpovedá: “Vcelku sa snažíme oživiť, formou národného povedomia a priameho prežívania to, čo je v náboženstve až príliš často mumifikované a stalo sa iba tradicionalizmom ospalého duchovenstva. Nachádzame sa v priaznivých podmienkach, nakoľko nášmu národnému náboženstvu je cudzí dualizmus medzi vierou a politikou a je nám schopné zebezpečiť etické i duchovné elementy nevyhnutné k usporiadaniu nášho hnutia. Práve z nášho náboženstva čerpá Železná Garda svoju kľúčovú myšlienku – všeobjímajúcu ideu. Je to cesta pozitívneho prekonania ako internacionalizmu, tak i akéhokoľvek abstraktného racionalistického univerzalizmu. Všeobjímajúca idea je myšlienkou spoločnosti, chápanej ako organická jednota, živý organizmus, ako spoločný život nie iba s našim národom, no i s Bohom a našimi mŕtvymi. Uskutočnenie tejto myšlienky v podobe aktívnej skúsenosti je ústredným bodom nášho hnutia; politika, strana, kultúra a ostatné sú pre nás len následkami a postrannými záležitosťami. Musíme oživiť túto centrálnu realitu a tým obnoviť Rumuna, čo v budúcnosti umožní rekonštrukciu národa i štátu. Osobitým prvkom je to, že pre nás prítomnosť mŕtvych v zjednotenom národe nieje abstrakciou, ale realitou; naši mŕtvi to sú, predovšetkým, naši hrdinovia. Nemôžeme sa od nich oddelovať, oni sú sily, oslobodivšie sa od ľudskej podmienenosti, prenikajú a podporujú náš vyšší život. Legionári sa pravidelne schádzajú v neveľkých skupinách nazývaných hniezda. Tieto schôdze sú sprevádzané osobitými obradmi. Každá schôdza sa začína obrátením sa ku všetkým našim padlým kamarátom, na ktoré zhromaždení odpovedajú zborovým S nami! (Prezent!). Nieje to pre nás obyčajná ceremónia alebo alegória, ale skutočné obrátenie sa k duchom našich predkov. Rozlišujeme jednotlivca, národ a transcendentálnu duchovnosť,” pokračuje Codreanu, “a v heroickom sebaobetovaní vidíme to, čo vedie od jedného k druhému, až do vyššej jednoty. Zavrhujeme všetky formy princípu hrubého materiálneho prospechu: nie iba na úrovni jednotlivca, no i na úrovni národa. Okrem národa uznávame večné a nemenné princípy, v mene ktorých je potrebné byť pripraveným bojovať a umierať. Tak napríklad, pravda a česť sú metafyzické princípy, ktoré staviame vyššie než samotný národ.”

Je nám známe, že asketizmus Železnej Gardy nieje iba abstrakciou, ale úplne konkrétnou a praktizovanou činnosťou. Napríklad sa zachováva pôst: tri dni do týždňa asi 800 000 ľudí drží takzvaný čierny pôst; zdržiavajú sa jedla, alkoholu i tabaku. Tiež modlitba predstavuje dôležitú súčasť hnutia. Ba čo viac, pre vybraný zbor, nesúci mená dvoch legionárskych vodcov padlých v Španielsku – Mota a Marin, platí pravidlo celibátu. Žiadame Codreana aby nám objasnil zmysel podobných obmedzení.

Po chvíľke zamyslenia sa nám hovorí: “Sú dva aspekty, pre vyjasnenie ktorých je nutné vziať do pozornosti dualizmus človeka, ktorý sa skladá z prírodného materialistického elementu a duchovného. Keď prevláda prvý nad druhým je to peklo. Akákoľvek ich rovnováha je dočasná a náhodná. Iba plná moc ducha nad telom je normálnou podmienkou a predpokladom akejkoľve skutočnej sily, pravého heroizmu. Postíme sa pretože to napomáha zachovaniu podobných podmienok, oslabuje telesné putá, priaznivo vplýva na sebaoslobodenie a samoutvrdenie čistej vôle. Keď k tomu pridávame modlitbu, žiadame vyššie sily aby sa nám naklonili a neviditeľne nám pomohli. To vedie k druhému aspektu: je mylné myslieť si, že v boji rozhodujú iba materiálne a čisto ľudské sily; naopak, boja sa zúčastňujú i nevidené duchovné sily, aspoň tak účinné ako tie prvé. Uvedomujeme si prínos a význam týchto síl. Preto dávame legionárskemu hnutiu zreteľne asketický charakter. V starých rytierskych rádoch tiež dodržiavali zásadu celibátu. Zdôrazňujem však, že tá sa u nás týka iba údernej brigády, čo vyplýva z čisto praktických dôvodov; veď tomu, kto sa plne posväcuje boju a nemá sa báť smrti, je lepšie nemať rodinné záväzky. Nakoniec, v tom zbore ostávajú iba do tridsiatich rokov. No v každom prípade, uplatnenie princípu ostáva nemenné: z jednej strany existujú tí ktorí nepoznajú nič okrem života a úsilia o blahobyt, prosperitu, bohatstvo, prepych; z druhej tí ktorí poznajú viac než život – slávu i víťazstvo v boji, ako vonkajšom tak i vnútornom. Železná Garda patrí k tej druhej skupine. A jej vojenský asketizmus sa završuje posledným pravidlom: sľubom chudoby, ktorého sa drží celá elita hnutia. Predpisuje sa jej zrieknutie sa prepychu, jalového trávenia času, takzvaných svetských zábav – to znamená že je povolaná k skutočnej premene života.”

Rozhovor Juliusa Evolu s hlavou Železnej Gardy, Il Regime Fascista, 22. marca 1938.

Slovenský překlad byl převzat ze stránek Integra!: Asketické Legionárstvo.

Související články:

1. Legionarismo ascetico. Colloquio col capo delle “Guardie di Ferro”

Autore: Julius Evola

Rapidamente la nostra auto lascia dietro di se quella curiosa cosa che è la Bucarest del centro: un insieme di piccoli grattacieli e di edifici modernissimi, prevalentemente di tipo “funzionale”, con mostre e magazzini fra la parigina e l’americana, l’unico elemento esotico essendo i frequenti cappelli di astrakan degli agenti e dei borghesi. Raggiungiamo la stazione del Nord, imbocchiamo una polverosa strada provinciale costeggiata da piccoli edifici del tipo della vecchia Vienna, che con rigorosa rettilineità raggiunge la campagna. Dopo una buona mezz’ora, l’automobile svolta improvvisamente a sinistra, prende una via campestre, si arresta di fronte ad un edificio quasi isolato fra i campi: è la cosiddetta “Casa Verde”, residenza del Capo delle “Guardie di Ferro” romene.

“L’abbiamo costruita con le nostre stesse mani” ci dicono con un certo orgoglio i legionari che ci accompagnano. Intellettuali e artigiani si sono associati per costruire la residenza del loro capo, quasi nel significato di un simbolo e di un rito. Lo stile della costruzione è romeno: ai due lati, essa si prolunga con una specie di portico, tanto da dar quasi l’impressione di un chiostro. Entriamo, raggiungiamo il primo piano. Ci viene incontro un giovane alto e slanciato, in vestito sportivo, con un volto aperto, il quale dà immediatamente una impressione di nobiltà, di forza e di lealtà. E’ appunto Cornelio Codreanu, capo della Guardia di Ferro. Il tipo è caratteristicamente ariano-romano: sembra una riapparizione dell’antico mondo ario-italico. Mentre i suoi occhi grigio-azzurri esprimono la durezza e la fredda volontà propria ai Capi, nell’insieme dell’espressione vi è simultaneamente una singolare nota di idealità, di interiorità, di forza, di umana comprensione. Anche il suo modo di conversare è caratteristico: prima di rispondere, egli sembra assorbirsi, allontanarsi, poi, ad un tratto, comincia a parlare, esprimendosi con precisione quasi geometrica, in frasi bene articolate ed organiche.

“Dopo tutta una falange di giornalisti, di ogni nazione e colore, che altro non sapevano rivolgermi se non domande della politica più legata al momento, è la prima volta, e con soddisfazione” dice Codreanu “che viene da me qualcuno che si interessa, prima di tutto, all’anima, al nucleo spirituale del mio movimento. Per quei giornalisti avevo trovato una formula per soddisfarli e per dire poco più che nulla, cioè: nazionalismo costruttivo.

“L’uomo si compone di un organismo, cioè di una forma organizzata, poi di forze vitali, poi di un’anima. Lo stesso può dirsi per un popolo. E la costruzione nazionale di uno Stato, benché riprenda naturalmente tutti e tre gli elementi, pure, per ragioni di varia qualificazione e varia eredità, può soprattutto prendere le mosse da uno particolare di essi.

“Secondo me, nel movimento fascista predomina l’elemento Stato, che equivale a quello della forma organizzata. Qui parla la potenza formatrice dell’antica Roma, maestra del diritto e dell’organizzazione politica, della quale d’Italiano è il più puro erede. Nel nazionalsocialismo viene invece in risalto quanto si connette alle forze vitali; la razza, l’istinto di razza, l’elemento etnico-nazionale. Nel movimento legionario romeno l’accento cade soprattutto su quel che, in un organismo, corrisponde all’elemento anima: sull’aspetto spirituale e religioso.

“Da ciò sorge la caratteristica dei vari movimenti nazionali, per quanto essi, alla fine, comprendano tutti e tre questi elementi, e non ne trascurino nessuno. Il carattere specifico del nostro movimento ci viene da una remota eredità. Già Erodoto chiamava i nostri progenitori: “I Daci immortali”. I nostri antenati getotraci avevano per fede, già prima del cristianesimo, l’immortalità e l’indistruttibilità dell’anima, ciò che prova il loro orientamento verso la spiritualità. La colonizzazione romana ha aggiunto a questo elemento lo spirito romano di organizzazione e di forma. Tutti i secoli successivi hanno fatto miserabile e disgregato il nostro popolo: ma come anche in un cavallo malato e frustro si può riconoscere la nobiltà della sua razza, così anche in ciò che ieri e oggi è il popolo romeno si possono riconoscere gli elementi latenti di questa doppia eredità.

“Ed è questa eredità che il movimento legionario vuole destare” continua Codreanu. “Esso parte dallo spirito: vuole creare un uomo spiritualmente nuovo. Realizzato come “movimento” questo compito, ci attende il risveglio della seconda eredità, cioè della forza romana politicamente formatrice. Così lo spirito e la religione sono per noi il punto di partenza, il “nazionalismo costruttivo” è il punto di arrivo e quasi una conseguenza. A congiungere l’un punto con l’altro sta l’etica ascetica e simultaneamente eroica della “Guardia di Ferro””.

Chiediamo a Codreanu in che rapporto stia la spiritualità del suo movimento con la religione cristiano-ortodossa. La risposta è: “In genere, noi tendiamo a vivificare nella forma di una coscienza nazionale e di una esperienza vissuta ciò che, in questa religione, molto spesso si è mummificato ed è diventato il tradizionalismo di un clero sonnolento. Noi poi ci troviamo in una condizione felice per il fatto che alla nostra religione, articolata nazionalmente, è estraneo il dualismo tra fede e politica ed essa può fornirci elementi etici e spirituali senza imporsi come una entità comunque politica. Dalla nostra religione il movimento delle Guardie di Ferro riprende poi un’idea fondamentale: quella della ecumenicità. Questo è il superamento positivo di ogni internazionalismo e di ogni universalismo astratto e razionalistico. L’idea ecumenica è quella di una societas come unità di vita, come organismo vivo, come un vivere insieme non solo col nostro popolo, ma anche con i nostri morti e con Dio. L’attuazione di una simile idea in forma di esperienza effettiva è il centro del nostro movimento; politica, partito, cultura, ecc. per noi non sono che conseguenze e derivazioni. Noi dobbiamo rivivificare questa realtà centrale, e rinnovare per tal via l’uomo romeno, per poi procedere e costruire anche la nazione e lo Stato. Un punto particolare è che, per noi, la presenza dei morti nella nazione ecumenica non è astratta, ma reale: dei nostri morti e soprattutto dei nostri eroi. Noi non possiamo separarci da essi; essi, come forze divenute libere dalla condizione umana, compenetrano e sostengono la nostra vita più alta. I legionari si radunano periodicamente in piccoli gruppi, chiamati “nidi” [cuib, n.d.c.]. Queste adunanze seguono riti speciali. Quello con cui si apre ogni riunione è l’appello a tutti i nostri compagni caduti, al quale i convenuti rispondono con “Presente”. Ma ciò per noi non è una pura cerimonia e una allegoria, bensì una evocazione reale.

“Noi distinguiamo l’individuo, la nazione e la spiritualità trascendente” continua Codreanu “e nella dedizione eroica consideriamo ciò che porta dall’uno all’altro di tali elementi, fino ad una superiore unità. Noi neghiamo in ogni sua forma il principio dell’utilità bruta e materialistica: non solo sul piano del singolo, ma anche su quello della nazione. Di là dalla nazione noi riconosciamo dei principi eterni ed immutabili, in nome dei quali si deve esser pronti a combattere, a morire e a tutto subordinare almeno con la stessa decisione in nome del nostro diritto di vivere e di difendere la nostra vita. La verità e l’onore sono, per esempio, dei principi metafisici, che noi poniamo più in alto della nostra stessa nazione”.

Noi abbiamo saputo che il carattere ascetico del movimento delle Guardie di Ferro non è generico, ma anche concreto e, per dir così, praticante. Ad esempio, vige la regola del digiuno: tre giorni alla settimana circa 800.000 uomini praticano il cosiddetto “digiuno nero”, cioè l’astinenza da ogni specie di cibo, da bevande, da tabacco. Del pari, la preghiera ha nel movimento una parte importante. In più, per il corpo scelto di assalto che porta il nome dei due capi legionari caduti in Spagna, Mosa e Marin, vige la regola del celibato. Chiediamo al Codreanu che ci indichi il senso preciso di tutto ciò. Egli sembra concentrarsi un momento, poi risponde: “Vi sono due aspetti, per chiarire i quali bisogna tener presente il dualismo dell’essere umano, composto di un elemento materiale naturalistico e di un elemento spirituale. Quando il primo domina il secondo, è l’”inferno”. Ogni equilibrio fra i due è cosa precaria e contingente. Solo il dominio assoluto dello spirito sul corpo è la condizione normale e il presupposto di ogni vera forza, di ogni vero eroismo. Il digiuno viene da noi praticato perché propizia una tale condizione, allenta i vincoli corporei, propizia l’autoliberarsi e l’autoaffermarsi della pura volontà. E quando a ciò si aggiunge la preghiera, noi chiediamo che forze dall’alto si uniscano alle nostre e ci sostengano invisibilmente. Il che conduce al secondo aspetto: è una superstizione pensare che in ogni combattimento solo le forze materiali e semplicemente umane siano decisive; in esso entrano invece in giuoco anche delle forze invisibili, spirituali, almeno altrettanto efficaci quanto le prime. Noi siamo coscienti della positività e dell’importanza di tali forze. Per questo diamo al movimento legionario un preciso carattere ascetico. Anche negli antichi ordini cavallereschi vigeva il principio della castità. Rilevo tuttavia che esso da noi è ristretto al Corpo di Assalto, anche sulla base di una giustificazione pratica, cioè che chi deve votarsi interamente alla lotta e non deve temere la morte è bene non abbia gli impedimenti della famiglia. Del resto, in quel corpo si resta solo fino ai 30 anni compiuti. Ma, in ogni caso, resta sempre una apposizione di principio: vi sono da un lato coloro che conoscono solo la “vita” e che quindi non cercano che la prosperità, la ricchezza, il benessere, l’opulenza; dall’altro lato vi sono coloro che aspirano a qualcosa più che la vita, alla gloria e alla vittoria in una lotta interiore quanto esteriore. Le Guardie di Ferro appartengono a questa seconda schiera. E il loro ascetismo guerriero si completa con una ultima norma: col voto di povertà a cui è tenuta l’élite dei capi del movimento, con i precetti di rinuncia al lusso, ai vuoti divertimenti, agli svaghi cosiddetti mondani, insomma con l’invito ad un vero cambiamento di vita che noi facciamo ad ogni legionario”.

* * *

Tratto da Il Regime Fascista del 22 marzo 1938.

Risorsa Centro Studi La Runa: Legionarismo ascetico. Colloquio col capo delle “Guardie di Ferro”, 1 gennaio 2000.

Související články:

1. Asketické Legionárstvo

ID: 04ANKARA7211
Dokument dato: 2004-12-30 05:05:00
Release dato: 2010-11-28 18:06:00
Kilde: Embassy Ankara
header:

This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

[...]

SUBJECT: ERDOGAN AND AK PARTY AFTER TWO YEARS IN POWER: TRYING TO GET A GRIP ON THEMSELVES, ON TURKEY, ON EUROPE

1. (C) Summary: PM Erdogan and his ruling AK Party seem to have a firm grip on power — if for no other reasons that there is currently no viable alternative and inertia weighs heavily in politics. Nevertheless, Erdogan and his party face enormous challenges if they are successfully to embrace core principles of open society, carry out EU harmonization, and develop and implement foreign policies in harmony with core U.S. interests. End summary.

…

5. (C) Yet Erdogan and AKP face politically fateful challenges in three areas: foreign policy (EU, Iraq, Cyprus); quality and sustainability of leadership and governance; and resolution of questions fundamental to creation of an open, prosperous society integrated with the broader world (place of religion; identity and history; rule of law).

…

7. (C) But there”s always a Monday morning and the debate on the ground here is not so neat. With euphoria at getting a date having faded in 48 hours, Erdogan”s political survival and the difficulty of the tasks before him have become substantially clearer. Nationalists on right and left have resumed accusations that Erdogan sold out Turkish national interests (Cyprus) and Turkish traditions. Core institutions of the Turkish state, which remain at best wary of AKP, have once again begun to probe for weaknesses and to feed insinuations into the press in parallel with the nationalists’ assertions. In the face of this Euro-aversion, neither Erdogan nor his government has taken even minimal steps to prepare the bureaucracy or public opinion to begin tackling the fundamental — some Turks would say insidious — legal, social, intellectual and spiritual changes that must occur to turn harmonization on paper into true reform. The road ahead will surely be hard.

8. (U) High-profile naysayers like main opposition CHP chairman Baykal, former Ambassador Gunduz Aktan, and political scientist Hasan Unal continue to castigate Erdogan. But theirs is a routine whine. More significant for us is that many of our contacts cloak their lack of self-confidence at Turkey’s ability to join in expressions of skepticism that the EU will let Turkey in. And there is parallel widespread skepticism that the EU will be around in attractive form in ten years.

…

10. (C) AKP”s lack of cohesion as a party and lack of openness as a government is reflected in the range of murky, muddled motives for wanting to join the EU we have encountered among those AKPers who say they favor pursuing membership…or at least the process. Some see the process as the way to marginalize the Turkish military and what remains of the arid “secularism” of Kemalism.

We have also run into the rarely openly-spoken, but widespread belief among adherents of the Turk-Islam synthesis that Turkey”s role is to spread Islam in Europe, “to take back Andalusia and avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683″ as one participant in a recent meeting at AKP’s main think tank put it.

This thinking parallels the logic behind the approach of FonMin Gul ally and chief foreign policy advisor in the Prime Ministry Ahmet Davutoglu, whose muddy opinion piece in the Dec. 13 International Herald Tribune is in essence a call for one-way multi-cultural tolerance, i.e., on the part of the EU.

…

11. (C) Those from the more overtly religious side of AKP whinge that the EU is a Christian club. While some assert that it is only through Turkish membership and spread of Turkish values that the world can avoid the clash of civilizations they allege the West is fomenting, others express concern that harmonization and membership will water down Islam and associated traditions in Turkey. Indeed, as AKP whip Sadullah Ergin confided to us recently, “If the EU says yes, everything will look rosy for a short while. Then the real difficulties will start for AKP. If the EU says no, it will be initially difficult, but much easier over the long run.”

…

13. (C) At the same time the government must reportedly hire a couple thousand people skilled in English or other major EU languages and up to the bureaucratic demands of interfacing with the Eurocrats who descend on ministries as harmonization starts. If the government continues to hire on the basis of “one of us”, i.e., from the Sunni brotherhood and lodge milieu that has been serving as the pool for AKP’s civil service hiring, lack of competence will be a problem. If the government hires on the base of competence, its new hires will be frustrated by the incompetence of AKP”s previous hires at all levels.

…

Two Big Questions
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24. (C) Turkey”s EU bid has brought forth reams of pronouncements and articles — Mustafa Akyol”s Gulenist-tinged “Thanksgiving for Turkey” in Dec. 27 Weekly Standard is one of the latest — attempting to portray Islam in Turkey as distinctively moderate and tolerant with a strong mystical (Sufi) underpinning. Certainly, one can see in Turkey”s theology faculties some attempts to wrestle with the problems of critical thinking, free will, and precedent (ictihad), attempts which, compared to what goes on in theology faculties in the Arab world, may appear relatively progressive.

25. (C) However, the broad, rubber-meets-the-road reality is that Islam in Turkey is caught in a vise of

(1) 100 years of “secular” pressure to hide itself from public view,
(2) pressure and competition from brotherhoods and lodges to follow their narrow, occult “true way”, and
(3) the faction-and positivism-ridden aridity of the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet).

As a result, Islam as it is lived in Turkey is stultified, riddled with hypocrisy, ignorant and intolerant of other religions’ presence in Turkey, and unable to eject those who would politicize it in a radical, anti-Western way. Imams are for the most part poorly educated and all too ready to insinuate anti-Western, anti-Christian or anti-Jewish sentiments into their sermons. Exceptionally few Muslims in Turkey have the courage to challenge conventional Sunni thinking about jihad or, e.g., verses in the Repentance shura of the Koran which have for so long been used to justify violence against “infidels”.

26. (C) The problem is compounded by the willingness of politicians such as Gul to play elusively with politicized Islam. Until Turkey ensures that the humanist strain in Islam prevails here, Islam in Turkey will remain a troubled, defensive force, hypocritical to an extreme degree and unwilling to adapt to the challenges of open society.

27. (C) A second question is the relation of Turkey and its citizens to history — the history of this land and citizens’ individual history. Subject to rigid taboos, denial, fears, and mandatory gross distortions, the study of history and practice of historiography in the Republic of Turkey remind one of an old Soviet academic joke: the faculty party chief assembles his party cadres and, warning against various ideological threats, proclaims, “The future is certain. It’s only that damned past that keeps changing.”

28. (C) Until Turkey can reconcile itself to its past, including the troubling aspects of its Ottoman past, in free and open debate, how will Turkey reconcile itself to the concept and practice of reconciliation in the EU? How will it have the self confidence to take decisions and formulate policies responsive to U.S. interests? Some in AKP are joining what is still only a handful of others to take tentative, but nonetheless inspiring, steps in this regard. However, the road ahead will require a massive overhaul of education, the introduction and acceptance of rule of law, and a fundamental redefinition of the relation between citizen and state. In the words of the great (Alevi) Anatolian bard Asik Veysel, this is a “long and delicate road.”

A historic interview conducted by Andre Müller in 1979 with Arno Breker, Hitler’s favourite sculptor

Artist Arno Breker became notorious as Hitler’s favourite sculptor during the Nazi years, when he took on commissions from National Socialist government, created heroic, monumental figures and led Hitler around Paris. The first solo show of his sculptures in Germany since World War II opened July 22 in Schwerin, prompting much discussion on how Breker’s works should be shown today (review here). On this occasion we have translated a lengthy interview with Breker conducted in 1979 by Andre Müller, one of the most respected interviewers of his generation.

Interviewer Andre Müller introduces this discussion with sculptor Arno Breker with the following words:

During this interview, which was conducted at Breker’s Düsseldorf home, his wife and his art dealer, Joe F. Bodenstein, to whom the artist is bound by contract, were in attendance. Each of them interrupted the conversation a number of times to prevent the discussion from centring for too long on the topic of the artist’s political situation. Breker himself made no objections. When he mentioned the tragic consequences of his professional activities under Hitler, his isolation and desperation, his wife trembled with laughter. When I asked her what she found so amusing, she replied that normally her husband spoke in a completely different way. During a stroll around the garden, where several sculptures dating from the National Socialist period were on display, she told me: “I don’t listen when he tries to discuss politics, it bores me.” A macabre incident occurred when I asked the sculptor about his attitude toward the gassing of the Jews. Precisely at that moment, Bodenstein inserted a new tape into his recorder and mistakenly pressed the play button, so that my words were accompanied by a few bars of dance music. The autobiography mentioned in this interview first appeared in French under the title “Paris, Hitler et Moi.” The title of the German edition is “Im Strahlungsfeld der Ereignisse” (In the Radiation Field of Events). Breker’s first sentence when I mentioned the subject I wanted to discuss was: “I’m not afraid of politics.”

Andre Müller: Reading your autobiography, I have the impression you’re immensely dissatisfied. What’s the source of this dissatisfaction?

Arno Breker: You know, you can’t just say all the time that I made my large figures out of sheer perverseness. My artistic situation has been completely devalued by political history, cast in a false light. I don’t make large figures out of megalomania, as many people assume.

I don’t assume that. But I will say that your figures are expressions of your client’s, of Hitler’s megalomania.

That’s not true. That’s mistaken. I became close to him only very late, in 1936, when I won the silver medal in the sculpture competition at the Olympic Games. In the beginning, I wasn’t even participating in the competition. But the president of the committee, an Italian, knew my work and came to Rome where I was living on a scholarship from the German Academy, and said to me: I don’t have anything from you. That’s how I came to participate.

That does nothing to invalidate the assertion that you produced sculptures on commission from Hitler which gave expression to the regime’s ideology. Alexander Mitscherlich called this ideology “infantile fantasies of omnipotence” lacking any basis in reality. Wasn’t it all doomed to failure from the very beginning, based as it was on unreal assumptions?

No, look at the redesigning of Berlin, which I participated in. That wasn’t unreal. There are precedents from ancient history, from antiquity. They also made large buildings back then. Hitler was compelled to redesign the city as a consequence of increased traffic flow. New axes had to be created.

To what purpose?

To channel the traffic. He also began building highways for purely technical reasons related to traffic flow.

Yes, in order to create routes for his tanks.

As to that, I can tell you the following. We were planning something quite large, a grand arch sketched by Hitler when he was in a military hospital after being wounded in World War I, and for which I was supposed to design the figural decorations and reliefs. He never called it a victory arch, always a grand arch. Now here’s the important thing: Hitler had conceived the arch on a scale that was typical for the time, around 30 meters in height. The Arc de Triomphe in Paris is 40 meters high. But then there was this massive axis through Berlin, which called for an appropriate terminus, so Speer raised its height to 120 meters.

Against Hitler’s intentions?

No, but it was meant to be a surprise. It was now so large that the Arc de Triomphe could easily have fit into the passageway. But then the following happened: although the arch had now acquired these new dimensions, Speer was intent on slavishly adopting the old architectural plans. We had a talk. I’m an architect by training, and I told him it couldn’t possibly be done like that. If the arch is 120 meters high, then the architecture must have a different design. But Speer said: There’ll be no talk, it stays like that. And then a model was prepared. We had a marvellous team of sculptors, who fashioned it in such a way that it was just like standing in front of the finished city. Hitler came right from launching the “Deutschland” battle cruiser, and he was really moved by this structure. It flattered him. He said, look here, the entire new design costs as much as a single battle cruiser, but in perhaps three years time, the battle cruiser will already be scrap metal …

And the same was true of Berlin. But I want to get back to the question of your dissatisfaction. Today you are one of the busiest sculptors in Germany. Soon after the war, despite your National Socialist past, you were already receiving large architectural commissions. In the early 1950s, you were chief architect of the Gerling Company. Why then this sense of dissatisfaction?

Well, of course, political defamation had consequences.

Such as?

Such as the idea that I had nothing more to express as a sculptor. In 35 years, I received only two official commissions.

But certainly that has nothing to do with defamation. Your expressive force was lost because the regime to which your aesthetic mode of expression was so well suited now lay in the past. Surely it’s naive to think the Federal Republic of Germany would award you commissions on the same scale as Hitler, who led this country into the abyss?

I fail to see why an artist has to be somehow political, just because he’s received a commission. In that case, Hitler’s favourite firm, namely Mercedes, would no longer have any right to exist.

But Mercedes is a private enterprise.

I am also a private enterprise.

Yes, but you expect the state to give you work. As a private enterprise, you have enough customers to provide you with a secure life. Why then do you want state commissions?

I don’t want anything. I want peace and quiet, you understand? I’ve done nothing that went against artistic values or the dignity of the artistic vocation.

In what way have you been harassed then?

After the war, I could no longer exhibit. I was simply no longer invited.

Well then you had the peace and quiet you desired.

Pardon me, but I lost everything with the German defeat.

But you gained peace and quiet.

Yes, but peace and quiet alone can’t keep you alive. Sculpting is an enterprise requiring a great deal of money. You need models. You need plaster casters. You need bronze casters. Fortunately I’d studied architecture, and was able to live for 12 years designing for Gerling.

Did you have financial difficulties?

Yes, of course. During the third Reich, the fees I received were just enough to cover necessities. Speer told me the taxes were so high they would devour everything, and that I should wait until after the war to collect my fees. But after the war they were gone. When we had to flee Berlin, we had the 100,000 Reichmarks my wife had been able to save, and we deposited them at the Bavarian Hypothekenbank in Starnberg. But then it was confiscated by the state of Bavaria. So that was gone too. Then there was also the fact that I was denazified only very late, and by one of the strictest officers, a communist who’d been spent a long time in a concentration camp.

Fair enough, everyone was poor back then, for understandable reasons.

I don’t regret that I was poor. I come from a modest background, I’ve always known how to economize. Up to the present I’ve never taken vacations, and I’ve never had a passion for big cars or beautiful horses or glamorous women.

Which makes it all the more difficult for me to understand your complaints.

After the war, I lacked the resources needed to develop further.

So did everyone else. Surely you can’t expect that a country that had suffered such a defeat – and, moreover, for which it alone was responsible – could simply keep going as if nothing had happened?

Yes, that is difficult to accept.

The defeat?

No, the personal consequences.

Yes, that’s difficult. In such a situation, there are only two possibilities: one you live out the despair, or you repress it.

I suffered my first heart failure at the time.

In 1945?

Yes, after the defeat. If not for that, we wouldn’t be sitting here today. I’d received a series of offers to go abroad. When the war was over, I immediately received invitations from Peron, Franco and Stalin. When Stalin invited me, the American NATO general came to Bavaria personally to take me to Russia. That’s how much respect the Americans had for an offer like that.

It’s most illuminating that your art was appreciated so highly by dictators. But for now I’m more interested in your psychological state at that time. What was the source of this irrepressible drive to fling yourself immediately into your work, as though nothing had even happened?

I’m a vigorous worker, and I had a lot of ideas I wanted to realize. The sculptor Despiau, who was a friend of mine, once wrote a book about me which ended with a sentence expressing his amazement at my formidable stamina.

Do you know Mitscherlichs’ book “The Inability to Mourn”?

I mourned mightily.

What about?

About the defeat and the collapse of Germany. But there’s an aspect to this collapse you’re not aware of. We owned a house about 75 km east of Berlin, it was our refuge during the war. I could no longer work in Berlin, and my three Paris studios had been damaged by bombing raids. So we moved to the country. Then came the first attempt at Russian penetration. The attack was repelled, but at half past eleven we got a call from the Nazi district officer telling us we had to abandon everything within half an hour. We departed amid heavy snowfall. I had no idea why we had to leave so suddenly. I thought we’d be able to return the next day. As we sat in the car, Speer said: That’s out of the question. My wife asked me: What do you think? I answered that I felt liberated from my crushing work schedule. I’d been under pressure to finish the sculptures for the great arch.

Had Hitler put pressure on you?

No, never. He never pushed me, never gave me any kind of instructions. Everything I did, I did in complete freedom and under my own responsibility.

I’d like to confront you with a text you wrote in 1940. It appeared in a brochure about the construction of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. There, you wrote the following about your work with Speer: “No discussions, no trials preceded our work together. Speer gave the marching orders in Prussian style, and we met again when our results were integrated into the larger organism…”

Oh, you’re going back to my first commission?

Yes, for the sculptures for the Reich Chancellery. Someone else gave the marching orders, and you were only there to execute them.

No, no, look here, I’ll explain it to you. I’d like to tell you exactly how things were. I’d already wanted to offer my talents to Speer, I wrote him letters then tore them up and threw them into the wastepaper basket, never even sent them. Then suddenly I got a call, he wanted to speak to me. So I went to him, and he took me into the Academy of Arts, and I went inside and saw an architectural model which I considered highly successful, an inner courtyard with very good proportions, good profiles, restrained profiles, and so on. It was a model of the court of honour for the Reich Chancellery. I liked it, and I saw the two blocks on each side of the the staircase leading to the entranceway. My figures were to make sweeping gestures away from the entrance, and to have a relationship to the building. I could hardly install Adam and Eve there. In my view, the only sensible embellishment was to set a spiritual man on one side, symbolized by a flame, and on the other, the defender of the country, a man with a sword. So I set to work on it at home, and came back two weeks later with my sketches. They were displayed, and Speer didn’t say much. Then we parted. He immediately called Hitler, who saw them and was instantly enthralled. The names of the figures, “Party” and “Wehrmacht,” were his invention.

Good. So much for your story. But your text goes further. You write: “I perceive in this uncompromising collaboration the first elementary, energising heartbeats of a new style, one that can only become actualized in the intact community of equal natures, unified by the march set by the greatest renovator and perfecter of German being.” So once again, no talk about artistic freedom, but instead orders and marching.

I’d like to tell you the following. Listen carefully. I come from the Ruhr District. I studied there, experienced the total political disintegration after World War I when everything was destroyed. A little bit more and it would have been utterly destroyed. Then I turned the page, went to Paris, and made a new start there. The really big spiritual crisis came not after World War II, but after World War I. Things went so far that people wanted to burn down the museums, because they felt the entire past, and art as well, were responsible for the war and its aftermath. And then someone came along with a real concept. I didn’t experience Hitler’s rise to power, the rise of National Socialism that is, because I was in France at the time.

But you did experience how he organised the “Degenerate Art” exhibitions. You’d been back for a long time by then. And among the artists affected were many you held in esteem. How did you feel when these artists were defamed and banned?

You mean the business with Hausenstein?

What business?

The art historian Hausenstein, who was a friend of mine, came to see me in Rome and said: You’ve got to come back to Germany and save whatever can be saved. He meant I should bring my influence to bear, and in fact I was on the jury for the first Great German Art Exhibition in Munich.

Despite that, you did acquiesce to the “degenerate art” action. Why did you continue to obey a political system that did such things?

If I had opposed Hitler, I wouldn’t have been able to help my persecuted friends. I saved Hausenstein’s wife from imprisonment. I got Maillol’s Jewish model out of prison, and prevented Picasso from falling into the hands of the Gestapo.

Did you ever consider leaving Germany?

Yes, repeatedly. Later, there were great disappointments, because in 1943, the situation really did become grim. But where would I have gone? I had my studio here, my work. The most important thing for me was my work. I thought only of myself and my work.

I want to come back to the shock you suffered after the war. What was the immediate occasion for your collapse?

The Americans had destroyed 90% of my Berlin sculptures, and my money was gone.

Wasn’t it far worse to witness the destruction of the ideals in which you had believed for 10 years?

Yes, they were gone. My ideals, that is, everything that had driven me to execute the monumental sculptures, that was gone. On this subject, I must tell you about my artistic development. In Paris, I was still strongly influenced by Rodin. But through my own work I realized that Rodin’s sculptures lacked volume. His surfaces were dissolved. They never had the effect of light and shadow I was after. The volume is the place where a sculpture captures light and shadow. So the volumes must be shaped with great clarity. That’s how I arrived at my sleek, monumental forms.

And that was exactly what Hitler wanted.

No, at first, not at all. In the beginning, the National Socialist press didn’t support me at all. I didn’t know what Hitler wanted. I had never read “Mein Kampf.” The contents of my art were entirely my own affair, there was no political background.

What kind of background did they have, if not a political one?

The origin of my sculptural work is the beauty of the human body. My human forms are always intact. I come from a very wholesome family that was strongly influenced by Christianity on my mother’s side. My grandfather was a minister. I had a fantastic family life. We were a marvellous entity. My father was a highly gifted sculptor, who was derailed from the profession by fate, so to speak, because his father died young, and he had to feed a family of seven. For him, I represented the overcoming of his unhappy fate, because I achieved what he had aspired to.

So your task was to compensate for your father’s failure?

I wouldn’t put it like that. My affinity for beautiful bodies had other origins. The strengthening of the body, the vitality of sports and the prevalence of sports, a hunger for nature, even for a culture of nudity, nude bathing out of doors: all of these things are elements of the feeling of being safely enclosed in a shell, in which we travel through the world.

So nude bathing was an important source of beauty for you. That’s certainly quite consistent with the kind of twaddle the National Socialists liked to peddle to people: that everything would be grand, that a thousand years of paradise was just around the corner. A couple of years later, everything fell apart. What happened inside of you then?

I entered a clinic, and wasn’t able to work for a whole year. I was totally debilitated.

Did you experience anything like anger against the regime, or against the people who had deceived you so dreadfully?

May I say the following: in Berlin during the war, we had many parties, and at every one, politics was discussed, which I found nauseating, because it was always the same thing. But I was fortunate enough to have access to music. I was on a first name basis with Wilhelm Kempff and Alfred Cortot. My brother-in-law is a pianist. Elly Ney was also a friend of mine. So to avoid all of that, we had only musical evenings. On one of these evenings the situation in Stalingrad was acute, and people were terribly agitated. Speer was there, and so were some other government ministers, and I said to Speer: either you people know a way out of this situation, or else you’re all criminals.

That’s hardly an answer to my question. I want to know what you felt in 1945 when you realized that these people with whom you’d been together on a daily basis had murdered six million Jews. Was your image of the human being still perfectly intact? Or did you repress it all?

Today I’ve repressed it. Today it’s gone. Because I’m still living, and I have the drive to develop further. Last year I had a heart attack, but after eight days I already had my sketchbook with me under the covers.

Did you continue to produce the same heroic figures after 1945, or did the contents of your sculptural work change?

No, not at all. Look here, I’ve got a problem right now. I’ve received an invitation from Greece to produce a monument to Alexander the Great. Of course, It’s a wonderful thing for me. But I’m 79 years old. I can no longer produce figures that are 10 meters tall. I’m restricted by my age. But the theme, this look, it still fascinates me.

Nevertheless, it’s possible that your conception of the human form underwent a change. It’s not purely a question of the size of the figures. Did you ever produce after the war the kind of giant statue you made for the National Socialists?

Excuse me… you’re assuming once more that a political component was in play.

No, I am assuming that personal experiences can alter an individual’s world picture.

About that I can say: I’ve just made a sculpture of Europa. In political terms, I have only a single concern: the association between Germany and France. If these two states come together, everything will be fine. As far as my picture of the world goes, it has remained unaltered despite the catastrophe, or has slowly recovered after the catastrophe.

What was decisive for this recovery?

My enthusiasm for people, for beautiful people. Last Sunday, I watched a tennis match. The six or seven players I saw would have been superb models for me. When I look at these athletes, I feel confirmed in my point of view. My ideal image of humanity is reinforced. Alongside the other kinds of proportionality, shouldn’t the artist disclose the inner beauty of the human form before all else? I’ve come to realize that the man who is outwardly perfect is also inwardly beautiful. I had such a perfect man available to me in the decathlete Gustav Stührk. He was the model for most of my male nudes.

Could you also talk with him?

Yes, of course. He was highly-educated. You can visit him in Munich. He’s still alive. I’d be happy to give you his address.

If he really was a brilliant man, then you failed to capture his intellectual qualities in your sculptures. Have you ever done a bust of him?

No, never.

So you were only interested in his body?

Yes, he was the best-looking athlete in Germany at the time. And above all, he was a decathlete. Decathletes are uniformly developed. Tennis players aren’t developed like that, neither are sprinters. They have well-developed muscles in their legs, but the upper body and arms are not correspondingly well-developed. But these are really specialized requirements. I aspire toward the divine, the perfected human being.

Does this mean that with divine humans, breast and leg musculature must always be in harmony?

Yes.

But then Gerhart Hauptmann, for example, whose portrait you did, was not divine, nor was Cocteau. He was rather thin.

No, you see, in order to look like Stührk, you have to do physical training. An intellectual type like Hauptmann, who writes books, can’t possibly spend enough hours every day cultivating his body. That’s why in antiquity, they modelled their heroes and emperors not as whole figures, but instead set the heads of emperors on muscular statues that has been done previously. I’m quite sure Pericles was no athlete, nor Socrates, but they certainly had interesting heads, and because the Greek sought wholeness, they set their heads on the bodies of athletes. In their studios, the sculptors had breast pieces with splendid drapery folds, and above was a space, a cavity where a head could be inserted.

Then you should have set Hauptmann’s head on Stührk’s body. But Hitler might not have liked that. Your mistake is to perpetually confuse Ancient Greece with National Socialist Germany. The political situation and the situation of art in Germany were totally different from those in antiquity. You’ve described the situation in your autobiography. There was a gap between the people and the artists, and Hitler, in order to draw close to the masses, attempted to bridge the gap. He eliminated the artist and heralded a utilitarian art, that is to say, he sought to channel that which you refer to in your book as the “stream of average talents” into a solitary, officially sanctioned direction.

Yes, there he was mistaken.

How so?

In setting this direction. He admitted this to me later on. He wanted me to straighten things out. He told me himself that he’d been wrong. Hitler was an artist by nature, and he had no reservations against French culture, as many people believed. And if fate hadn’t driven him into the arms of politics, he would have become a painter. The measures he took in the area of the arts had purely political motives. You simply have to understand how things were. As a politician, he wanted to bring art closer to the people, and he could only do that with the help of artists with an intact image of the human form. He turned away only from those who transformed the image of the human form, to an extent destroying it, occasionally disintegrating it. He resisted this. His mistake was to have thrown out the baby with the bath water.

I refuse to accept your attempts at justification. There are no excuses. Inexcusable things happened. What I do accept is your distress, your despair, your attempts at reflection.

Perhaps you think I don’t suffer? You won’t get a photo of me smiling today. I can’t smile into the camera any more. You should write: Breker has been deserted by laughter. I’m a beaten man, a victim of the times. I’ve been totally deprived of the impact of my artistic achievement. Fifty years from now, when someone looks at my figures impartially because the political point of reference will no longer apply, then my works – and your presence here shows their actuality – will be seen for how I depicted arms and legs and human beings in general. And then I will be understood.

You can have that kind of understanding from me already today. I have no ulterior political motives when I find the sculptures you made for Hitler repellent.

What don’t you like about them?

Their cold, necrophilic aesthetic, the ludicrous poses, the primitivity of expression.

Fair enough, it’s a question of perception.

I’m not reproaching you for having worked for the NS state, but because even today you remain blind to certain things expressed in your works.

You’ll have to be more precise.

I mean you do not see any difference between your early things, the ones produced in Paris, and the sculptures for the new Reich Chancellery, for example.

All right, then you would have to say that I went in a false direction by moving away from studio pieces and turning to public sculpture. I wanted my sculptures to have an impact on the public. In order to do so, they required architecture, and, so to speak, urbanistic features. I wanted to pursue the figure in an architectonic direction. My earlier works were influenced by Rodin. Later, I found my ideal in the Greeks.

There is absolutely nothing Greek about National Socialist buildings. This pseudo-Classicism has nothing whatever to do with Ancient Greece. But I realize I can talk for hours, I’ll never be able to get anything across to you. You were under influences, no matter which ones, and you excelled at delivering what was required of you. Take your figure “Die Flehende” (Supplicating Woman), for example, created in your Rodin phase. What were you trying to express there?

I wanted to show that there are abysses that human beings are unable to overcome. She begins to pray, to make an appeal, to return from total isolation to normality, to enter a protective atmosphere.

And as a comparison, your sculpture “Bereitschaft” (Readiness), which crowned Berlin’s Mussolini Memorial. What is expressed there?

My model was Germany’s youth, who were soldiers in body and soul. That really made an impression on me.

Were you conscious of the political symbolism of these sculptures?

No, my work is too realistic for that. My point of departure is the human form. I am guided solely by the human image.

Here, I really must confront you, once again, with something you yourself wrote. “The obsessive will to immortalize National Socialist Germany through native cultural creations has been realized in a grandiose manner. The path toward the representation of form develops with elementary fury… The building as such is a symbol of our political situation and of our world view… Here, this symbolism speaks its most convincing language… The rooms are aglow with the fire of political power…” And so on and so forth.

Where’s that written?

In the same brochure I cited earlier, the one on the construction of the new Reich Chancellery.

No, I didn’t write that. I’m anything but a coward. I stand by what I’ve done in my life, I have a clear conscience, I’ve helped persecuted people, I’ve helped Jews, I saved Picasso from being arrested … but I’ve never spoken in such a bombastic manner. That’s not my style. You got that from the newspapers. I can’t possibly have written that. My orientation was entirely French, that is to say, what the French refer to as ‘mesure’, good measure in judging all things. If you want to condemn me, Herr Müller, you’re doing a good job. Politically, that’s exactly what’s in vogue today.

But I’m not condemning you at all. I’m only trying to make you aware of what happened back then, to your own benefit. An artist can’t create out of repression. Whether you wanted to or not, you fulfilled the intentions of your client with exactitude. That’s not a reproach, it’s a fact.

Michelangelo received commissions from the popes.

Yes, but above all, he had an idea. He didn’t adopt the ideology of the papacy as the content of his creative work. On the contrary, he used the papacy to realize his own conceptions. No one denies your technical abilities. What distinguishes you from Michelangelo is the absence of any idea. That’s why you’ve been so incapable of resisting all manner of external influences. After the war, you suddenly began to do abstract work again.

I made abstract things after World War I, in the wake of the shattering experience of defeat, when the human image had nothing more to say. At the art academy in Düsseldorf, where I studied, I was considered to be on the Left. Unfortunately, all of those things were lost. You’d be amazed at the fantastic abstract works I did back then.

I’ll take your word for it that in the wake of events you functioned very well. You also produced abstract works after World War II.

No, not after World War II.

Of course you did. There is the “Gewandfigur” (Robed Figure) you made for Mannheim, and the figures of girls in the 1950s, those are very stylized.

In Mannheim, I had to adapt to the given architectural conditions. The building had a completely smooth facade.

That’s what I’m saying: you’ve always conformed to existing conditions.

That goes without saying. I’m a visual person.

All right, but then it’s not really correct to say you made the same kind of things after the war as you did under Hitler, namely heroes.

Look here, I wouldn’t have made so many heroes if I hadn’t had to produce the reliefs for the grand arch in Berlin. It was to have been a memorial to German warriors of all historical epochs, it was conceived in their honour, so I was confined to a very narrow framework, it took me a long time, because construction work could only be started once the reliefs were finished.

So Hitler wanted heroes, and you delivered them.

Yes, what was I supposed to do? Tell me someone who would have done things right.

It’s not a question of right or wrong, but of giving some thought to the causes when you’ve become as entangled as you were.

You’re preaching to the choir there. Look here, I myself want to be finished with these things, with all of these problems. But for that, I would need time and quiet. My commissioned activities are not so great that I could speak of financial independence. I live from hand to mouth. Just consider the cost of bronze casting. With a larger sculpture, you have to reckon with 40,000 marks just for casting alone. Today, the bronze caster drives a Mercedes, but not the sculptor.

I wouldn’t say that in your place. First of all, you do drive a Mercedes. Secondly, you don’t necessarily need to insist upon making such enormous things.

Look, if you’re a sculptor with a penchant for the monumental, now and then you have to produce a large sculpture. It’s only human. You could call it human weakness. The impulse toward monumentality is a part of me. The monumental is my sickness. I’m always delighted to see a successful monumental sculpture, whether it’s Michelangelo’s David, or Andrea del Verrocchio’s statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, or the Venus de Milo.

But none of that is comparable to the sculptures you made during the NS era. The monstrosity of your figures is not merely a function of their size, but of their habitus, their cramped pathos.

You’ll have to define that more precisely.

I hinted at it earlier. The roots of your susceptibility to National Socialism lay in the fact that failure never manifests itself in your image of humanity. Of course, that suits the Nazis, for whom the possibility of defeat had to be repressed. There was the ultimate victory and the Thousand Year Reich, and right up to the end there was the possibility of a meaningful death for the sake of this phantasmatic empire. In this way, quasi-religious sentiments of sacrifice replaced fears of death, and out of gratitude for this liberation from the pressure of fear, millions of people allowed themselves to be slaughtered. In reality, human existence is a thoroughly broken one, full of hesitations and doubts.

Not for me. There is no hint of decadence in me, you know.

Human doubt, fear, ambivalence, you call that decadence?

The disintegration of the human image, as we are experiencing it today, that is undoubtedly a manifestation of decadence.

Then Michelangelo was also decadent. Virtually no one else ever gave form to human imperfection in such a harrowing way.

Listen, in Michelangelo’s case, there were purely technical reasons. There was a series of figures he wasn’t able to complete. He wouldn’t have left them unfinished if the pope hadn’t compelled him to work on other commissions.

I’m not talking about the incomplete works, but about the element of incompletion in the finished works.

There is none.

I disagree. Take David for example. It’s quite large, obviously, but it entirely lacks the tacked-on triumphalism of your heroic figures.

Look, the kind of relaxed stance we find among the Italians, it never existed among northern peoples. Christianity expunged the motif of the supporting and non-supporting leg, because it called the worldly sphere into doubt, transporting it to another plane.

Yes, to the level of a stability that is possible only in the ideal or in the divine. But Hitler was no God, even if he perhaps liked to pose as one.

I’d to say the following about that: clarifying that remains a matter for historians. This is where words come in. You need the distance of time, a voltage curve lasting a few months, in order to formulate that. I can’t discuss such a far-reaching things with you now. I’m not prepared to do so. I’m not an author, not a man of words.

Do you find it insulting when I characterize you as an artisan?

No, not at all. I come from the crafts, my father was a stonemason, and the artisan is hardly a rewarding object for psychologists. I have a friend, he’s the director of an insane asylum, his name is Heinrich, a highly gifted man, he gave a speech at the Rotary Club on schizophrenia among artists. I said to him: there’s one profession you’ve left out, the sculptor. If you look at history, you’ll see there are no schizophrenic sculptors, because sculpture comes from the handicrafts, and has a completely different basis, for example, than music or poetry. Just consider the degree of schizophrenia Richard Wagner managed to attain. Just read the diaries of Cosima Wagner: what a titan of neuroses! It’s exactly the same with painters and writers. Many authors have been psychopaths. We sculptors, however, are too close to the material. We have to deal with stone, with the material. The overcoming of the material is a monumental task, one that challenges me from the moment my day begins. If you like, you might classify me among the naive.

Precisely that is the tragedy of your life. Because you arrived at a time when there was only one thing that was entirely impermissible, namely being naive.

I wasn’t in a position to choose the moment of my birth, otherwise I would have waited.

Or better: set the date back in time.

Fair enough, there was Rodin, and before Rodin there was Carpeaux, also a giant, and afterwards came Maillol and Despiau, and today, its over. Today things are quiet, the quiet before the storm. Today, humanity is only occupied with various materials. Someone takes a piece of railroad track and sets it on a lawn, and that’s supposed to be art.

It bespeaks a profound scepticism about inherited values.

Really?

Yes, it must have some reason for being. There’s no more trust in the order of things, in the health of the world.

Well I have it. My relationship to humanity is unbroken.

You see, that’s exactly what I’m unable to comprehend, after everything that’s happened, and after what you must have experienced.

If I may reply in a rather grandiloquently way: in this context, I am a real phenomenon.

In which context?

To be able to see people the way I see them, despite everything.

In fact, it’s phenomenal, an impressive kind of obstinacy.

I don’t find it at all obstinate. It’s just how I am. The French like to say; c’est a prendre ou a laisser, take it or leave it. I was recently in Paris again, and I went to a fruit stand, there were bananas there, all the same size, but with different prices. I must have had a funny look because the seller said: c’est a prendre ou a laisser, either take it or else leave. That’s how it is. That’s how things are. I see something that irritates me, and I try to fathom the reason for the irritation, and then I’m rebuked by the seller, who was observing me.

Then why did you put up with it?

What was I supposed to have done? Should I have said: I don’t understand why they have different prices? Then I would have had to endure a longer explanation. That wouldn’t have done any good.

You never know until you try. Maybe it would have irritated the banana seller. No one stop you from reflecting.

He was so categorical. I just tipped my hat and left.

That was a mistake. But I don’t want to delve into that right now. I want to come back to the question of how you manage, after all the experiences you have behind you, to hold onto your healthy image of humanity. What significance does the gassing of the Jews have for your thinking?

I can give you a very simple answer. I belong to the so-called believers. The Jews, that is to say, the fact of the Jewish people, is a part of the history of creation. No one has the right to interfere with the history of creation, whether it’s a question of millions of deaths or only a single one. That’s my point of view.

When did you learn of the gassing for the first time?

After the war was over. If I’d known earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to work. Not a single word was ever spoken about the concentration camps. I lived like a pure fool during this period. I lived for my work alone. It was really a formidable achievement in terms of sheer volume. I won’t say anything right now about the quality. I worked, and that was all. I was completely blind to my surroundings.

In retrospect, how did you reconcile yourself to having befriended people who turned out to be mass murderers?

I was never a friend of Hitler’s. Nor was I, as people always say, his favourite sculptor. That was Thorak. For years, Hitler didn’t want to know anything about my work. And I only received the commission for the Reich Chancellery because he had rejected the proposals of his favourite sculptor. Speer said: Führer, I don’t know what to do next. Hitler replied: Why not try Breker? I only had one an intensive conversation with him. It was on the day the peace treaty was signed with France, after I’d shown him around Paris. After dinner, he came outside, I was standing with the officers, and he came up, pointed to me and said: Breker, I want to speak with you. Then he went with me into the woods, and once we were out of sight he stood still and grasped my right hand with both of his hands and said: I really must apologise to you formally. For years I was wrong about you, I was the victim of informers… so I was not his friend. He had no friends at all. He was a historical phenomenon, I just want to be through with all that. But I need time. To define Hitler is the task of the historian, not the artist. I say he was a reaction to the Treaty of Versailles. Had there never been a Treaty of Versailles, there never would’ve been a Hitler. That’s the most concise way to sum things up. The time is not yet ripe to bring all of the components together objectively. When this period is written about objectively, in accordance with the facts, then these things will quickly be overcome, and no longer worthy of conversation.

What will remain, I would argue, is an awareness that belief in salvation and promises of salvation are well-adapted to the exercise of power and the subjugation of human beings. This does not necessarily have anything to do with politics. The consequence of this knowledge is – as you can observe in my case – an incapacity for idealism.

There, I am your polar opposite. My energy and drive for work are directed toward overcoming the disintegration of the image of the human being. I want to bring back the human being as he is.

But first you have to recognize reality. The human being, as he has been experienced in Germany after the war, is nothing more than a pile of bones.

To that, I can only say, let’s hope very soon I can close my eyes too, and just be done with the whole business.

The interview originally appeared in German in the book “Entblößungen” (Disrobements – Goldmann Verlag) in 1979. Excerpts were printed by the Berliner Zeitung on July 29, 2006. English version – Andre Müller, Arno Breker: “The monumental is my sickness” Sightandsound.com, 3rd August 2006.

André Müller is one of the foremost journalists of his generation, and one of Germany’s most feared – and respected – interviewers.

Translation: Ian Pepper.

Faye also provides a critique of the New Right; an analysis of the continuing damage being done by Western liberalism, political inertia, unrestrained immigration and ethnic self-hatred; and the need to abandon past positions and dare to face the realities of the present in order to realise the ideology of the future. He prophesises a series of catastrophes between 2010 and 2020, brought about by the unsustainability of the present world order, which he asserts will offer an opportunity to rebuild the West and put Archeofuturism into practice on a grand scale.

The book is avalaible directly from the publisher HERE, or through Delian diver bookstore (via Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk).

This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with the course that the Right must chart in order to deal with the increasing crises and challenges it will face in the coming decades.

Guillaume Faye was one of the principal members of the famed French New Right organisation GRECE in the 1970s and ’80s. After departing in 1986 due to his disagreement with its strategy, he had a successful career on French television and radio before returning to the stage of political philosophy as a powerful alternative voice with the publication of Archeofuturism. Since then he has continued to challenge the status quo within the Right in his writings, earning him both the admiration and disdain of his colleagues.

‘Archeofuturism is thus both archaic and futuristic, for it validates the primordiality of Homer’s epic values in the same breath that it advances the most daring contemporary science.’ –Michael O’Meara, from the Foreword.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Michael O’Meara
A Note from the Editor
Introduction

1. An Assessment of the Nouvelle Droite
2. A Subversive Idea: Archeofuturism as an Answer to the Catastrophe of Modernity and an Alternative to Traditionalism
3. Ideologically Dissident Statements
4. For a Two-Tier World Economy
5. The Ethnic Question and the European
6. A Day in the Life of Dimitri Leonidovich Oblomov – A Chronicle of Archeofuturist Times

Additional Information

Author: Guillaume Faye
Full Title: Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Arktos Media (2010)
Pages: 249
ISBN: 978-1-907166-09-9
Language: English

Il nostro fine non é solo “la raccolta” dei materiali in diverse lingue (come per esempio nel caso del web della Nueva Derecha) neanche la pubblicazione degli articoli separati (per esempio web dell Euro-Synergies). Il presupposto di base é pubblicazione, della versione originale e della sua traduzione in Ceco, e poi (sempre nel caso che siano ancora disponibili) anche delle versioni in altre lingue.

Speriamo che le pagine del Delsky potapec cosí diventino (oltre le sue presenti funzioni) anche il portale nei pensieri diversi dalla provenienza casalinga e anche diffonde orizzonti del lettore che vorremmo spingere al pensiero europeo e al milglioramento della sua conoscenza linguistica. Speriamo pure che le pagine diventino il luogo dell’incontro delle persone dal movimento identitario europeo nel quale essi si scambino le loro idee e i loro pensieri.

Anni 70

1. “Strategia della tensione” degli anni 70 in Italia secondo i comunisti era il risultato di manipolazioni della CIA con i neofascisti. Secondo Lei, qual è il ruolo di KGB?

Poco importante. CIA e KGB hanno più osservato che altro una lotta tra potenze mediterranee loro alleate (e loro subalterne) che si svolgeva in Italia; attrici la Francia, la Libia ma soprattutto l’Inghilterra – che ha sempre allontanato l’Italia dal mare – e Israele.

Le vittime illustri della strategia della tensione (Mattei e Moro) erano degli statisti filoarabi e anti-inglesi. La strategia della tensione non fu assolutamente fatta per allontanare i comunisti dal governo, anzi ad ogni strage i comunisti progredirono e furono attratti nella stanza dei bottoni. Che la posta fosse la politica italiana nel Mediterraneo lo hanno sostenuto i più importanti attori politici dell’epoca, lo stesso Aldo Moro lo spiegò alle Brigate Rosse durante la sua prigionia.

Esistono molti studi compiuti da esperti che sono di sinistra, anche comunisti e brigatisti, (Fasanelli, Pellegrino, Tassinari, Franceschini) che hanno fatto luce sulle manipolazioni straniere e principalmente israeliane nella strategia della tensione.

Infiltrazioni israeliane o americane sono documentate nelle Brigate Rosse ma anche nella sinistra estrema. Addirittura il gruppo leader, Lotta Continua, che stampava un quotidiano, aveva tra i suoi soci fondatori il futuro braccio destro di Ronald Reagan per la politica americana in Europa, Robert Hugh Cunningham Jr.

La tesi della strategia della tensione come azione della Cia in complicità con i neofascisti è un’invenzione grossolana del partito comunista che, per il suo forte potere mediatico, ha tenuto per anni; ma fa acqua da tutte le parti e riceve smentite ogni giorno che passa. In particolare da chi militò a sinistra e si è poi sentito tradito e manovrato.

In un capitolo del mio “Quel domani che ci appartenne” ricostruisco e documento molte delle infiltrazioni americane, inglesi e israeliane nell’estrema sinistra e nelle operazioni terroristiche e stragistiche.

2. Esisteva il gruppo L´Internaltionale noire (Aginter press, Guérin –Sérac) oppure si trattava di una buscherata dei giornalisti?

Si parla di un’epoca in cui ero bambino e di cui so poco. Ritengo che da parte comunista si sia volutamente travisato ed enfatizzato l’arruolamento di mercenari in Africa costruendovi attorno un romanzo delirante. I dettami del leninismo sull’utilizzo della calunnia e della propaganda spiegano questa bufala.

3. Che cosa definiva la Terza posizione, per esempio verso l’Ordine Nuovo o Nuova Destra, Tarchi? Inoltre Evola, Lei si è stato ispirato di più a Thiriart?

La Terza Posizione si fondava su di un’equidistanza tra Fronte Rosso e Reazione, tra Usa e Urss, nella logica del peronismo e dell’Europa Nazione ma anche dell’autonomia sociale, dell’azione diretta, delle occupazioni di scuole e fabbriche nella logica di laboratori rivoluzionari.

Tarchi all’epoca stava nel Msi. La Nuova Destra italiana non ha mai prodotto nulla d’interessante, niente a che vedere con il GRECE che ha avuto una funzione importante e ha espresso altissima qualità.

Ordine Nuovo, a parte qualche figura eccezionale come Clemente Graziani, era semplicemente reazionario.

Evola è fondamentale per l’aspetto esistenziale, per quello che definirei esistenzialsmo metafisico guerriero. Thiriart è puramente politico. Diciamo che ci siamo improntati a tutti e due.

Anni 80 e 90

4. Lei ha vissuto 20 anni in esilio politico in Francia. E ‘vero che la Troisieme Voie doveva associarsi con la Nuova Destra francese (Nouvelle Droite) a metà degli anni’80? Lei personalmente ha cooperato con Jean-Gilles Malliarakis?

Non ho mai saputo che la Troisième Voie si dovesse associare al GRECE ma forse lo ignoro. Sì a tratti ho collaborato con Mallarakis. Ma parliamo di ventidue, venticinque, ventotto anni fa.

5. È vero che la Sua venuta alla redazione della rivista Orion, nel 2000, ha provocato la partenza di Claudio Mutti e la trasformazione dell’orientamento dall’eurasiatico a Movimento identitare (Mouvance identitaire, Les Identitaires)?

Nulla di più falso. Io ho preso la direzione di Orion quando la sua direttrice, Alessandra Colla, stava allattando il figlio neonato e lei e Maurizio Murelli mi chiesero di occuparmene pro tempore, tant’è che più tardi tornò lei a gestirlo. All’epoca Orion non aveva più una redazione e dovetti produrla io partendo da zero e seguendo l’orientamento che mi era stato richiesto. L’équipe nazionalbolscevica non c’era più da tempo. Quella dinamica si era esaurita da sola e molto prima che intervenissi io.

6. Come classifica l’inclinazione di Claudio Mutti (e Carlo Terracciano) per l’Islam?

Distinguiamo. Carlo Terracciano che è stata una delle persone migliori e più coerenti che abbia mai conosciuto, sognava una “Rivolta contro il mondialismo moderno” come intitolò un suo documento politico, e credeva in un fronte intransigente anticapitalista e anti-atlantista in cui ravvedeva un importante ruolo per l’Islam. Io ho un’altra interpretazione del presente e del futuro, ma la sua era comunque fondata su di una logica d’intransigenza rivoluzionaria.

Claudio Mutti invece si è convertito all’Islam, il che è ben diverso anche perché significa che un’eventuale lotta anti-imperialista nella sua logica è importante per la causa islamica mentre per Carlo Terracciano era esattamente l’inverso.

La conversione di Mutti io non la capisco ma non la giudico.

Oggi

7. Che senso ha oggi riferirsi al Mussolini? Così si conclude la recensione di Suo libro Nos belles années de plomb di Alain de Benoist. Che cosa gli risponderebbe?

Che de Benoist è un po’ troppo francese. Troppo cartesiano e molto poco italiano. In Italia Mussolini è ancora oggi considerato dalla gran parte degli italiani, di diverse posizioni politiche, come il padre della Nazione e come il punto di riferimento più sicuro. Il mondo neofascista ha avuto il torto di non accorgersene per decenni, ma proprio quando si è riscoperto Mussolini si sono aperte quelle strade che hanno portato il Msi fino al governo. Mussolini oggi in Italia è quello che era Napoleone in Francia un secolo fa. Non solo una guida ma un valore sicuro e un elemento di riconoscimento tra le persone.

8. Dice che “Bisogna uccidere il borghese che sta in noi” („Il faut tuer le Bourgeois qui est en toi“). Che cosa significa esattamente? Molte persone confondono borghesia con umanità…

Significa che la si deve smettere di pensare come un consumatore che ha dei diritti o come un individuo che è il centro del mondo; che non si deve ragionare per vantaggi e comodità. Bisogna recuperare il senso comunitario e popolare, la disciplina, la gerarchia e la socialità.

9. Di che cosa è il Suo nuovo libro Pensées Corsaires? Qual è la sua intenzione e soprattutto per chi l’ha scritto?

Parla un po’ di tutto: uomini storici, scrittori, concetti, epoche, ideologie, evanti storici, potenze geopolitiche. L’idea è quella di riproporre, sotto forma di flash ordinati alfabeticamente, i frammenti di un’Idea del Mondo che non è stata coltivata a dovere e che ha finito con il confondersi con concezioni non sue che scuole di pensiero controrivoluzionarie o democratiche gli hanno sovrapposto. E’ un’operazione che potremmo definire di restauro futurista. Si rivolge un po’ a tutti.

10. È grande la differenza tra i Cuori neri di oggi e quelli degli anni 70?

Oggi non siamo accerchiati e gli antifascisti non provano ad ammazzarci ogni giorno. Anzi, per la prima volta dal dopoguerra, da dopo la caduta del Muro di Berlino non c’è stata la solita repressione generazionale e così molti di noi, oggi trentenni e quarantenni, anzichè carcerati sono divenuti politici, professori universitari, professionisti, pubblicitari ecc.

Oggi si può finalmente fare qualcosa di costruttivo e duraturo.

11. Oggi sta accanto a Pierre Vial, nel catalogo ha i lavori di Guillaume Faye, probabilmente ha letto anche i suoi libri nuovi (dopo 2000). Crede che era un “agente sionista”, o qual era / è il suo problema? (Movimento identitare è sempre in gran parte il suo lavoro)

E’ ridicolo pensare che Guillaume Faye fosse un “agente sionista”, è un intellettuale di spettacolo che ama stupire.

12. Secondo Lei, che cosa è più importante oggi: La lotta per il salvataggio di identità europea (contro il terzo mondo) oppure la lotta contro il liberalismo (con il terzo mondo)?

Non esiste alcun salvataggio possibile dell’identità europea nel liberismo. Non esiste poi IL terzo mondo, ce ne sono parecchi.

Si devono costituire diverse zone geopolitiche e geoeconomiche e stabilire delle cooperazioni internazionali in controtendenza sulle ondate migratorie. E’ quello che il partito atlantico (Usa, Inghilterra e Israele) cerca di impedire e non è un caso che i regimi arabi che vengono destabilizzati siano sempre quelli sociali e nazionali e che si cerchi di rimpiazzarli con la novità dei fondamentalismi islamici che proprio gli americani e gli israeliani, malgrado le affermazioni propagandistiche, incoraggiano e sostengono.

Ma per fare tutto ciò, che è un sogno d’Impero, serve una coscienza d’identità e una volontà di potenza; e qui torniamo a Thiriart.

13. Secondo Lei si vede oggi in Italia o in Francia almeno qualche sviluppo positivo?

In Francia di positivo c’è una parte delle azioni compiute dal suo capitalismo che stanno producendo una serie di avvicinamenti alla Russia. Politicamente invece non c’è nulla di incoraggiante.

In Italia si registra, sul piano del capitalismo e dell’energia, la stessa tendenza che in Francia, ma in più esistono forti elementi politici positivi. In primo luogo c’è una forma di gollismo all’italiana che si aggrega intorno alla figura di Berlusconi, poi ci sono dei ministri craxiani (Sacconi, Brunetta e Tremonti) che compiono delle scelte politiche interessanti. La Lega sta contribuendo non poco a cambiare orientamento sull’immigrazione. L’équipe di governo è in conflitto con i sindacati, infeudati alle multinazionali, con le lobbies della magistratura e con i comunisti. L’antifascismo è agonizzante. I giovani sono sempre di più attratti dalle formazioni fasciste. Mussolini – ed è quello che non ha capito de Benoist – è un collante certo tra estrema destra, giovani di Alleanza nazionale, Lega e persino Forza Italia.

14. Lei organizza le università d’estate che consentono la coesistenza di gruppi molto diversi, tipo Forza Nuova e Fiamma Tricolore, Fronte nazionale ed Alleanza nazionale. Quindi – è possibile cooperare? Che cosa in particolare separa Lei ad esempio da Franco Freda o Pino Rauti?

Ho smesso di organizzare le università d’estate nel 2006 perché le forze vive avevano preso a dialogare assiduamente tra loro mentre le reroguardie – che di solito rappresentano le varie segreterie politiche – non lo avrebbero mai fatto. La cooperazione avviene puntualmente: ad esempio in abruzzo, in aiuto alla popolazione colpita dal terremoto, o per i bambini di Gaza o per quelli di Beslan. Su cose concrete e condivise non sulle pagliacciate elettorali.

Freda è un uomo convinto che non si possa fare molto nel “kali yuga” oltre a trasmettere messaggi ideali e culturali cui si dedica mediante le edizioni di Ar. Lui è politicamente un evoliano di stretta osservanza.

Rauti è un vecchio politico di mestiere che ha avuto il grande torto di coltivare un equivoco e un’ambiguità nel Msi che ha fatto molti danni perché ha illuso migliaia e miglia di giovani vendendo fumo e, nel frattempo, ha impedito loro di confrontarsi in modo più dinamico con le altre componenti del partito. Non è stato, il suo, un ruolo positivo; senza di lui si sarebbe guadagnato molto tempo e si sarebbero sprecate molte meno energie.

15. Occupazione delle case [i squat ci sono sinonimo di caos, sporcizia, droghe] tattica di creazione dei “spazi liberi” che sono le intersezioni di attività culturali e sociali. Come funziona? Affronta attacchi dei istituzioni o altri nemici politici la Casa Pound? E per quanto riguarda i conflitti interni?

Funziona così: si getta il cuore oltre l’ostacolo. Nove volte su dieci ti sgombrano ma ne basta una sola che vada bene per creare una dinamica. Quali conflitti interni?

16. Adesso è uscito “Cavalcare la tigre”, il primo libro di Evola pubblicato in ceco. Che parte del suo lavoro è la cosa più vivace politicamente secondo Lei?

Cavalcare la tigre non è un libro politico. Evola spiega che con esso si rivolge a chi non se la sente più di fare politica. E’ un libro esistenziale. Ma Evola non va letto per la politica in cui, francamente, è disastroso. Va letto proprio per l’esistenziale.

17. Alla fine avrei una domanda personale. Come un soldato politico, ha avuto qualche tempo per la vita privata?

Sì certo. Ma è politica anch’essa; come si vive è già politica.

18. Qual è la Sua opinione in merito alle attività di Massimo Fini e Movimento Zero?

Ottima provocazione intellettuale. Con Massimo Fini poi abbiamo un vero e proprio feeling. Ma non parlerei propriamente di attività: non è esattamente il suo campo.

19. Come si spiega che Silvio Berlusconi in passato poteva costruire una coalizione con Alleanza Nazionale e Forza Nuova senza essere l’obiettivo delle forte critiche, che succederebbero a qualunque premier di qualsiasi paese dell’Europa occidentale o centrale?

Perché in Italia si ha di Mussolini quella percezione di cui parlavo prima. In ventuno anni ha fatto per la mia Nazione molto più di tutti gli altri statisti degli ultimi venti secoli messi assieme. E la gente lo sa bene. Il fatto che qualche soviet della comunicazione si ostini da decenni ad affermare il contrario non ha mutato idea e sentimento nel mio popolo.

Per le aperture di Berlusconi al neofascismo non parlerei di passato, ci sono sempre.

20. Come percepiscono le Sue attività gli italiani fuori politica? Ha qualche commenti (comprese le opinioni sul gruppo Zetazeroalfa)?

Il gruppo nato intorno al complesso musicale Zetazeroalfa ha prodotto molte cose. Innanzitutto Casa Pound, che è la perla delle occupazioni non conformi, quindi una rete di pub, librerie, studi di registrazione musicale, sale di tattoo, agenzie di servizi. Ha proposto una legge per la proprietà della casa per tutte le famiglie italiane, ha prodotto un marchio e una casa editrice ed è oggi strutturata in gran parte della Nazione con migliaia e migliaia di aderenti col nome Casapound Italia. E’ di gran lunga l’avanguardia di movimento di cui si sentiva la necessità. Esistono poi altre realtà per l’intervento sociale diretto (Soccorso Sociale) cui partecipano diverse forze politiche e singoli cittadini. Infine abbiamo una serie di centri artistici, come il Circolo Futurista, e culturali. Tra questi ce n’è uno che guido direttamente io, il Centro Studi Polaris, che opera per divenire un vero Think Tank.

Infine c’è un quotidiano online, www.noreporter.org

Stiamo sperimentando l’unione strategica di metodologie diverse, applicate a vari livelli d’intervento (società, gioventù, élite e politica) per una logica di rivoluzione quotidiana, graduale e progressiva che sia impersonale, non individualistica, e lontana dalle logiche avide e stupide dei politicanti, professionisti e dilettanti, che ancora riempiono il nostro mondo.

Da quando la strada giusta, che ci sono voluti anni a preparare, è stata intrapresa, non si finisce di avere risultati soddisfacenti. Ma bisogna partire dalla considerazione che non siamo i ragazzi della Via Pal o i Mods, bensì una componente della Nazione che deve agire per costruire un futuro comune, libero e fiero.

Per arrivare a comprendere davvero questo, perché non si tratti di uno slogan, perchè non si ragioni più come una tribu di hooligans, si deve compiere una rivoluzione culturale piena e profonda. E’ lunga e dura ma si parte obbligatoriamente da lì.

As you have probably noticed, on our webpage there have been added several texts written in different European languages. This atttude is not about publishing of some random materials, as the goal of our project – which we called Septentrion – is to introduce important identitarian ideas into Czech scene as like as like as transmitting them into various European language spheres.

Therefore we do not consider our main aim to be neither just pure “picking” of some multilingual texts (as it may be in case of  webpages Nueva Derecha), nor publication of separate articles (with Euro-Synergies as the main example). The main prerequisite of our project is publishing of the original version, its Czech translation and then (whenever possible) publishing of the original article in different language versions.

We hope this approach will help the Delian Diver webpage (aside its hitherto objective) to become a gateway to the ideas originating beyond the borders of Czech republic and to broaden our readers’ horizons which we would like to push towards European thinking and improving of language skills. We also suppose they will serve as a agora – meeting point and place for European identitarian ideas.

jistě jste si všimli, že v poslední době začaly přibývat články v různých evropských jazycích. Nejedná se o nesystematické publikování náhodně vybraných materiálů. Cílem projektu – který jsme nazvali Septentrion – je uvést důležité identitární myšlenky do českého prostředí a zároveň je zprostředkovat i do dalších evropských jazykových okruhů.

Naším cílem není prosté “sbírání” různojazyčných materiálů (jako tomu je v případě stránek Nueva Derecha) ani publikace separátních článků (např. stránky Euro-Synergies). Základním předpokladem je uveřejnění původní verze a jejího českého překladu a poté (pokud jsou k dispozici) i verze v dalších jazycích.

Doufáme, že se stránky Délského potápěče tímto stanou (mimo své dosavadní funkce) i vstupní branou k myšlenkám jiné, než domácí provenience a také rozšíří čtenářské obzory, které bychom rádi posunuli směrem k evropskému myšlení a zkvalitnění jazykové vybavenosti. Stejně tak doufáme, že se stanou místem setkávání lidí z evropského identiárního hnutí, ve kterém bude docházet k výměně jejich idejí a myšlenek.

Pregunta: ¿Cuándo y por qué decidiste involucrarte en política?

Hasta la actualidad, nunca me he involucrado en política, nunca he sido miembro de un partido político. No obstante, soy un ciudadano interesado en cuestiones políticas pero, por supuesto, no en los usos triviales que tiene la palabra “política”. Para mí, “política” significa mantener continuidades, o, si así se prefiere, tradiciones, pero tradiciones que estén involucradas en la historia actual de una particular comunidad humana.

Empecé a leer libros sobre historia y política a los 14 años. Esto me condujo a un rechazo de las ideologías establecidas, que para mí carecen de valor. Desde los 15 años, con la ayuda de un profesor de historia de la escuela secundaria, el querido señor Kennof, comprendí que las gentes pueden entender los rumbos esenciales de la historia en claves simples, usando atlas históricos, por ejemplo (los colecciono, desde entonces), para así aprehender en un vistazo las principales fuerzas que animan la escena mundial en un momento preciso del tiempo. Los mapas son muy importantes para los políticos de alto nivel (para los diplomáticos, por ejemplo). La idea principal que adquirí en la juventud es que todas las ideologías o pensamientos o impresiones buscan librarse del pasado, y que negar los lazos que el pueblo tiene con sus continuidad histórica era un error fundamental. En consecuencia, todas las acciones políticas, desde mi punto de vista, debieran asegurar la continuidad histórica y política, y que las acciones futuristas son también necesarias para salvar una comunidad de las repeticiones estériles de hábitos y costumbres obsoletos.

Los discursos de muchas ideologías, incluyendo las varias expresiones de la así llamada “extrema derecha”, aparecían ante mis ojos artificiales para las necesidades del mundo occidental, como el comunismo fue una abstracción frente a la historia rusa, y una abstracción todavía mayor en los diferentes pueblos sujetos al rol soviético después de 1945. La ruptura de la continuidad o la repetición de “formas” pasadas ya muertas concluyen en la confusión político-ideológica que vivimos hoy día, donde los conservadores no son conservadores, ni los socialistas socialistas.

Las ideas políticas fundamentales, ante mis ojos, están mejor representadas por las “órdenes” que por los partidos políticos. Las “órdenes” proveen a sus afiliados de una educación continua e incluyen la noción de servicio. Las “órdenes” nunca se fijan meros objetivos políticos de pequeñas ambiciones. Tales “órdenes” fueron las órdenes de caballería, en la Edad Media y Renacentista europea. La noción de “fotowwa” en la Persia islámica obedece a esta idea, como también algunos experimentos en pleno siglo XX (La Legión de San Miguel Arcángel, del rumano Cornelio Codreanu, el “Verdinaso” flamenco, etc.)

Por favor, explíquenos qué entiende por el término “Revolución Conservadora” y, si es posible, indíquenos algunas de sus claves ideológicas y de sus figuras fundamentales.

Respuesta: Cuando el compuesto “Revolución Conservadora” fue usado en Europa, fue mayormente en el sentido que le dio Armin Mohler en su famoso libro “Die Konservative Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932″. Mohler dictó una larga lista de autores que rechazaban los pseudo-valores de 1789 (despreciados por Edmund Burke como meros “blue prints”), ensalzaban el rol de la germanidad en la evolución del pensamiento europeo y recogían la influencia de Nietzsche. Mohler evitó las instancias puramente religiosas “conservadoras”, fuesen católicas o protestantes. Para Mohler, el punto esencial de contacto de la “Revolución Conservadora” era una visión no-lineal de la historia, pero no recogió simplemente otra vez la visión cíclica del tradicionalismo. Después de Nietzsche, Mohler creyó en una concepción esférica de la historia. ¿Qué significa esto? Esto significa que la historia no es una simple repetición de los mismos sucesos a intervalos regulares, ni un camino recto que conduzca a la bienaventuranza, al fin de la historia, al Paraíso en la Tierra, a la felicidad, etc., sino que se asemeja a una esfera que puede rodar (mejor dicho, ser empujada) en todas direcciones, acorde con los impulsos que reciba de las personalidades carismáticas, fuertes. Tales personalidades carismáticas dirigen el curso de la historia hacia algunas vías muy particulares, vías que de ningún modo están previamente fijadas por la mano de la providencia. Mohler, en este sentido, nunca creyó en las doctrinas políticas universalistas, sino en las personalidades que las encarnaban. Al igual que Jünger, creía que lo “general” (en su sentido histórico) es residuo de lo “particular”. Mohler expresó su visión de las dinámicas particulares usando el muy problemático término de “nominalismo”. Para él, “nominalismo” era la expresión certera que quería indicar cómo las fuertes personalidades y sus seguidores eran capaces de abrir nuevas y originales vías en la jungla de la existencia.

Las principales figuras del movimiento fueron Spengler, Moeller van den Bruck y Ernst Jünger (y su hermano Friedrich-Georg). Podemos añadir a este triunvirato los nombres de Ludwig Klages y Ernst Niekisch. Carl Smitt, como abogado católico y constitucionalista, representa otro aspecto importante de la llamada “Revolución Conservadora”.

Spengler quedará como el autor de un brillante fresco de las civilizaciones mundiales que inspiró al filósofo británico Arnold Toynbee. Spengler habló de Europa como civilización faústica, cuya mejor expresión fue las catedrales góticas, la interacción de la luz y los colores de las vidrieras, las tormentas de nieve con nubes blancas y grises de muchas pinturas holandesas, inglesas y alemanas. Esta civilización es una aspiración del alma humana hacia la luz y hacia el autocompromiso. Otra importante idea de Spengler es la idea de “pseudo-morfosis”: una civilización nunca desaparece completamente tras una decadencia o una conquista violenta. Sus elementos pasan a la nueva civilización que asume su sucesión y reemprende las vías originales.

Moeller van den Bruck fue el primer traductor alemán de Dostoievski. Se dejó influir profundamente por los diarios de Dostoievski, tan llenos de severas críticas al Occidente. En el contexto alemán después de 1918, Moeller van den Bruck abogaba, con argumentos de Dostoievski, por una alianza Rusogermana contra el Oeste. ¿Cómo podían los respetables caballeros alemanes, con una inmensa cultura artística, mostrarse a favor de una alianza con los bolcheviques? Sus argumentos fueron los siguientes: durante toda la tradición diplomática del siglo XIX, Rusia fue considerada el escudo de la reacción contra todas las repercusiones de la Revolución Francesa y contra la mentalidad y los modos revolucionarios. Dostoievski, un antiguo revolucionario ruso que más tarde admitió que su opción revolucionaria fue un error, consideraba más o menos que la misión de Rusia en el mundo era borrar en Europa los rastros de las ideas de 1789. Para Moeller van den Bruck, la Revolución de Octubre de 1917 solo fue un cambio de ropajes ideológicos: Rusia continuaba siendo, a despecho del discurso bolchevique, el antídoto a la mentalidad liberal de Occidente. Derrotada, Alemania debiera aliarse a esta fortaleza antirrevolucionaria para oponerse al Occidente, que a los ojos de Moeller van den Bruck es la encarnación del liberalismo. El liberalismo, expresa Moeller van den Bruck, es siempre la enfermedad terminal de los pueblos. Tras unas décadas de liberalismo, un pueblo entrará inexorablemente en una fase de decadencia final.

El camino seguido por Ernst Jünger es suficientemente conocido. Empezó como un ardiente soldado y joven galante en la Primera Guerra Mundial, formando en las trincheras parte de los cuerpos de asalto que manejaban la granada de mano con la misma elegancia que los oficiales británicos usaban la fusta. Para Jünger, la Primera Guerra Mundial fue el fin del mundo pequeño burgués del XIX y de la “Belle Epoque”, donde todo había de ser “como debía ser”, por ejemplo, obrar acorde a los ejemplos ofrecidos por profesores y sacerdotes, como hoy se obra de acuerdo a las autoproclamadas reglas de la “corrección política”. Bajo las “tempestades de acero”, el soldado se veía reducido a la nada, a su mero y frágil ser biológico, pero esta visión no significó a los ojos de Jünger una excusa para un pesimismo inepto, de miedo y desesperación. Habiendo experimentado el más cruel de los destinos en las trincheras, bajo el bombardeo de miles de piezas de artillería que sacuden la tierra, viendo todo reducido a lo “elemental”, el soldado de infantería conoció mejor que otros el cruel destino humano sobre la faz de la tierra. Toda la artificialidad de la vida civilizada urbana apareció de repente como pura impostura. En la posguerra, Ernst Jünger y su hermano Friedrich-Georg fueron los mejores escritores y periodistas nacional-revolucionarios. Ernst se armó de una buena dosis de cinismo, ironía y serenidad a la hora de observar la vida y los actos humanos. Durante un bombardeo sobre un suburbio parisino, donde las fábricas estaban produciendo material de guerra para el ejército alemán durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Jünger se aterrorizó ante la innatural ruta aérea, recta, tomada por las fortalezas aéreas norteamericanas. La linealidad de las rutas aéreas hacia París era la negación de todas las curvas y sinuosidades de la vida orgánica. En la guerra moderna está implícita la destrucción de los devaneos y las serpentinas que caracterizan lo orgánico. Ernst Jünger empezó su carrera como un escritor apologista de la guerra. Después de haber observado las irresistibles arremetidas de los B-17 americanos, se desengañó completamente de los antivalores desplegados en la guerra por la pura técnica. Después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, su hermano Friedrich-Georg escribió el primer trabajo teórico crítico al desarrollo de la nueva Alemania en clave ecologista, “Die Perfektion der Technik” (La Perfección de la Técnica). La idea principal de este libro, a mi entender, es la crítica de la “conexión”. El mundo moderno es un proceso de intento de conexión de las comunidades humanas y los individuos a grandes estructuras. Este proceso de conexión destruye el principio de libertad. Eres un pobre proletario encadenado si estás “conectado” a una gran estructura, aunque ganes 3000 libras al mes, o más. Eres un hombre libe cuando estás completamente desconectado de esos enormes tacones de acero. En cierto sentido, Friedrich-Georg escribió la teoría que Kerouac experimentó de forma no teórica mediante la elección de la “caída” y del “viaje”, convirtiéndose en un cantante vagabundo.

Ludwig Klaes fue otro filósofo de la vida orgánica contra el pensamiento abstracto. Para él, la dicotomía principal se daba entre la Vida y el Espíritu (“Leben und Geist”). La vida se encuentra aplastada por el espíritu abstracto. Klages nació en la Alemania del Norte, pero emigró, como estudiante, a Munich, donde gastó su tiempo libre en las tabernas de Schwabing, el distrito donde se reunían los artistas y los poetas (y donde todavía se reúnen). Fue amigo del poeta Stephan Georg y un estudioso de las más originales figuras de Schwabing, como el filósofo Alfred Schuler, quien creía ser la reencarnación de un colono romano en la Germania de las orillas del Rhin. Schuler tenía un genuino sentido del teatro. Solía disfrazarse con la toga de los emperadores romanos, admiraba a Nerón y montaba representaciones recordando la audiencia del antiguo mundo grecorromano. Pero más allá de su vida de fantasía, Schuler adquirió una importancia cardinal en filosofía por su hincapié en la idea de “Entlichtung”, es decir, la desaparición gradual de la Luz desde los tiempos de la antigua Ciudad-Estado griega y la Italia romana. No hay progreso en la historia, sino todo lo contrario, la Luz se va desvaneciendo, al igual que la libertad del ciudadano libre a la hora de elegir su propio destino. Hannah Arendt y Walter Benjamin, desde la izquierda de la postura conservadora-liberal, se inspiraron en esta idea y la adaptaron a diferentes audiencias. El mundo moderno es el mundo de la completa oscuridad, donde existen pocas esperanzas de encontrar de nuevo períodos donde “ser-iluminados”, a menos de dar con personalidades carismáticas, como Nerón, dedicado al arte y a los modos dionisíacos de la vida, que nos introduzcan en una nueva era de esplendor, la cual habría de durar sólo como la bendita estación de la primavera. Klages desarrolló las ideas de Schuler, quien nunca escribió un libro completo, después de su muerte en 1923, debido a una operación mal preparada. Klages, justo antes de la Primera Guerra Mundial, pronunció un famoso discurso en la colina de Hoher Meissner, en la Alemania central, frente a la asamblea de los “Wandervogel”, el movimiento de la juventud. Este discurso tenía en título de “El Hombre y la Tierra”, y puede ser visto como el primer manifiesto orgánico-ecologista, claro y compresible, no obstante sus sólidos fondos filosóficos.

Carl Schmitt empezó su carrera como profesor de derecho en 1921, aun cuando vivió hasta la respetable edad de 97 años, escribiendo su último ensayo a los 91 años. No puedo enumerar todos los puntos importantes de la obra de Carl Schmitt en el curso de esta modesta entrevista. Resumámoslos diciendo que Schmitt desarrolló dos ideas fundamentales: la idea de la decisión en la vida política y la idea del “Gran Espacio”. El arte de dar forma a la política, el arte de una buena figura política, reside en la decisión, no en la discusión. El líder ha de tomar decisiones en orden a guiar, proteger y desarrollar la comunidad política. La decisión no es dictatorial, como dicen ahora muchos liberales en estos tiempos de la corrección política. Al contrario: una personalización del poder es algo más democrático, en el sentido de que un rey, un emperador o un líder carismático es siempre una persona mortal. El sistema que impone eventualmente no es eterno, terminará muriendo como todo ser humano. Un sistema nomocrático, al contrario, trata de permanecer eterno, incluso cuando los eventos e innovaciones contradigan sus normas o principios. El segundo gran tema de los trabajos de Schmitt es la idea del “Grossraum”, el Gran Espacio Europeo. Los poderes “fuera-del-espacio” estarían impedidos para intervenir en el cuerpo de este Gran Espacio. Schmitt quería aplicar en Europa el mismo principio que animó el presidente Monroe de los Estados Unidos: “América para los americanos”. Schmitt podría compararse a los “continentalistas” norteamericanos, críticos con las intervenciones de Roosevelt en Europa y Asia. Los iberoamericanos también desarrollaron similares ideas continentalistas, y los imperialistas japoneses que hablaban del Gran Área del Pacífico. Schmitt dotó a esta idea del “Gran Espacio” de una fuerte base jurídica.

Niekisch es una figura fascinante en el sentido en que su debut público lo ejerció como líder comunista del “Soviet” de la República Bábara de 1918-19, que fue aplastado por los Freikorps de von Epp, von Lettow-Vorbeck, etc. Obviamente, Niekisch se desilusionó por la ausencia de una visión histórica en el trío bolchevique de la revolución muniquesa (Lewin, Keviné, Axelrod). Niekisch desarrolló una visión eurasiática, basada en la alianza entre la Unión Soviética, Alemania y China. La figura ideal que habría de ejercer como motor humano de esta alianza era el campesino, el adversario de la burguesía occidental. Aquí es obvio un cierto paralelismo con Mao-Tse-Tung. En las revistas que editó Niekisch descubrimos continuamente tentativas germanas de apoyo a todos los movimientos antibritánicos o antifranceses en sus imperios coloniales o en Europa (Irlanda contra Inglaterra, Flandes contra la Bélgica afrancesada, el nacionalismo Indio contra la Gran Bretaña, etc.).

Espero haber explicado en pocas palabras las principales tendencias de la llamada Revolución Conservadora en Alemania entre 1918 y 1933. También espero que quienes conozcan este movimiento pluridimensional puedan perdonar mi introducción esquemática.

¿Tiene usted un “ángulo espiritual”?

Para contestar esta pregunta, intentaré ser sucinto. En el grupo de amigos que intercambiábamos ideas políticas y culturales a finales de los setenta, nos topamos con la obra de Julius Evola “Rebelión contra el mundo moderno”. Algunos rechazaban totalmente cualquier predispuesto espiritual, argumentando que se trataba de especulaciones estériles: preferían leer a Popper, Lorenz, etc. Yo acepté algunas de sus críticas, y todavía me disgustan algunos argumentos de las especulaciones evolianas, alegando un mundo espiritual de la Tradición contra toda realidad. El peligro está en desatender el mundo real como mera trivialidad; pero este es, por supuesto, el culto a la Tradición principalmente apoyado por los jóvenes “que sienten el mal en su propia piel”, como dice el refrán inglés. El sueño de vivir como seres de cuentos de hadas es una forma de rechazo de la realidad. Pero en el capítulo 7 de “Rebelión contra el mundo moderno”, Evola, al contrario, reafirma la importancia de los “numena”, las fuerzas que actúan en las cosas, los fenómenos (mejor “los poderes”) naturales. Evola describe cómo la primitiva mitología romana ponía el acento en los “numena” antes que en las divinidades personalizadas. Hago mía esta idea. Más allá de la gente y de los dioses de las religiones usuales (sean paganos o cristianos), existen fuerzas actuantes, y el hombre puede colocarse en concordancia con ellas, con objeto de salir triunfante en sus acciones terrenas. Mi orientación religiosa-espiritual es más mística que dogmática, en el sentido de la tradición mística de Flandes y Renania (Ruusbroec, Mesister Eckhart.), pero también en el sentido seguido por Ibn Arabi en el área musulmana o de Sohrawardi entre los persas, que admiraban el real esplendor de la vida y del mundo. En estas tradiciones se rechaza el culto dogmático, la dicotomía entre la divinidad, lo sagrado, por una parte, y el mundo, lo profano, por la otra. Las tradiciones místicas significan la omni-compenetración y la sinergia de todas las fuerzas actuantes en el mundo.

Me gustaría que explicase a nuestros lectores el por qué dedica tanta importancia a conceptos tales como geopolítica o eurasismo.

La geopolítica es una mixtura de historia y geografía o, en otras palabras, del tiempo y del espacio. La geopolítica es un conjunto de disciplinas (no una disciplina) que interesan a un buen gobierno en el tiempo y en el espacio. Como punto de contacto entre la historia y la geografía, la geopolítica interesa a todo poder serio que se entienda a sí mismo como institución, es decir, como continuidad histórica. Ningún poder serio puede sobrevivir sin una dominación y una sujeción de la tierra y el espacio. Todos los imperios tradicionales, antes que nada, organizaban la tierra mediante la construcción de vías de comunicación (Roma es el ejemplo) o mediante el control de grandes ríos navegables (Egipto, Mesopotamia, China), y solo así pudo emerger una larga historia, en el sentido de continuidad. Y de ahí también el nacimiento de las primeras ciencias prácticas (astronomía, meteorología, geografía, matemáticas) bajo la protección de estructuras armadas, con un código del honor especialmente codificado en Persia, matriz de las órdenes de caballería. L Imperio Romano, primer Imperio sobre el solar europeo, se centralizó alrededor del Mediterráneo. El Sacro Imperio Romano-Germánico no encontró su propio corazón, tan bien organizado como lo era el Mediterráneo. Las vías fluviales de Centroeuropa conducían al Mar del Norte, el Báltico y el Mar Negro, pero no estaban conectadas entre ellas. Esta fue la verdadera tragedia de la historia germana y europea. La nación fue devorada por las fuerzas centrífugas. El emperador Federico II Hohenstaufen intentó restaurar el control del Mediterráneo, con Sicilia como pieza geográfica central. Su intento fue un trágico fracaso. Sucede que sólo ahora la emergencia de una renovada forma imperial (bajo una ideología moderna) es posible en Europa: después de la realización del proyecto “Blue Stream”, la apertura de un canal que permita el tráfico fluvial entre el Rhin y el Danubio. Una conexión directa entre el Mar del Norte (incluyendo el sistema fluvial del Támesis en Gran Bretaña) y el Mar Negro, permitiendo a las fuerzas económicas y culturales centroeuropeas extenderse hasta las orillas de los mismos países caucásicos. Quienes posean una buena memoria histórica, no cegada por los tópicos ideológicos del modernismo, recordarán el rol de las orillas del Mar Negro en la historia espiritual de Europa: en Crimea, muchas viejas tradiciones, paganas y bizantinas, fueron preservadas en las cavernas de los monjes. Las influencias de Persia, especialmente los valores de la vieja caballería zoroástrica, alcanzaron la Europa central y Occidental también siguiendo las orillas del Mar Negro. Sin estas influencias, Europa estaría espiritualmente mutilada.

Por ende, el área del Mediterráneo, el Rhin (con su afluente el Rhone) y el Danubio, los ríos navegables rusos que desembocan en el Mar Negro y el mismo Mar negro y el Cáucaso pueden constituirse en una verdadera área de civilización, defendida por una fuerza militar unificada, basada en una espiritualidad heredera de la antigua Persia. Esto es lo que significa, a mis ojos, Eurasia. Mi posición es levemente diferente a la de Alexandr Duguin, y ambas posiciones son perfectamente compatibles.

Cuando los otomanos tomaron el control completo en la Península Balcánica, en el siglo XV, las rutas terrestres estuvieron prohibidas a los europeos. Además, con la ayuda de los piratas berberiscos del Norte de África, con base en Argel y capitaneados por Barbarroja, los turcos cerraron el Mediterráneo al comercio pacífico europeo y a su expansión hacia la India y China. El mundo musulmán trabajó en el sentido de degollar mediante el bloqueo a Europa y a Moscovia, corazón del futuro Imperio Ruso. Todos ellos, europeos y rusos fijaron sus esfuerzos en la destrucción del bloqueo Otomano. Los portugueses, los españoles, los ingleses y los holandeses lo intentaron mediante la búsqueda de nuevas rutas marinas, circunvalando el África y las masas terrestres asiáticas, arruinando primero el reino de Marruecos y su monopolio del oro procedente de las minas del África Ecuatorial, y que clamaba para construir una armada capaz de conquistar de nuevo la Península Ibérica. Con sus expediciones al África Occidental, los portugueses fueron ellos mismos a buscar el oro, y Marruecos se convirtió en un mero poder residual. Más tarde, los portugueses regresaron de la India con el primer cargamento de especias, rompiendo para siempre el bloqueo otomano, dando también por vez primera una verdadera dimensión eurasiática a la historia europea.

Al mismo tiempo, los rusos estaban rechazando a los tártaros, tomando la ciudad de Kazán y rompiendo el cerrojo tártaro del bloqueo musulmán. Fue el comienzo de la perspectiva geopolítica eurasista rusa.

El blanco de la estrategia global americana, desarrollada por un hombre como Zbigniew Bzrzezinski, es recrear artificialmente el bloqueo musulmán, sosteniendo y apoyando el militarismo turco y el panturanismo. En esta perspectiva, apoyaron tácitamente, y todavía secretamente, las reivindicaciones marroquíes sobre las Islas Canarias y usan a Pakistán para impedir los contactos territoriales entre la India y Rusia. Por ello es doblemente necesario para la Europa y para la Rusia de hoy recordar la contraestrategia elaborada por TODOS los pueblos europeos en los siglos XV y XVI. La historia europea siempre ha sido pensada en claves y visiones pequeño-nacionalistas. Es hora de reconsiderar la historia europea en claves y visiones de convergencias y alianzas comunes. Las hazañas marinas de los portugueses y las hazañas terrestres de los rusos son ambas convergentes, convergentes como acciones de Eurasia. La batalla de Lepanto, en la cual las flotas genovesa, veneciana y española unieron esfuerzos bajo la dirección de Don Juan de Austria para controlar el área mediterránea oriental, es un modelo histórico para meditar y recordar. Pero la más importante alianza eurasiática fue sin duda la Santa Alianza liderada por Eugenio de Saboya, a fines del siglo XVII, que hizo retroceder a los otomanos en 400.000 kilómetros cuadrados de tierra en los Balcanes y en el sur de Rusia. Esta victoria permitió a los zares rusos del siglo XVIII, especialmente a Catalina la Grande, vencer en otras ocasiones otras batallas decisivas.

Mi eurasismo (y, por supuesto, todo mi pensamiento geopolítico) es una clara respuesta a la estrategia de Bzrzezinski y está profundamente enraizada en la historia europea. No es comparable en absoluto con las estúpidas posturas de algunos pseudo-nacional-revolucionarios chiflados, ni con las bonitas estampas estéticas de los neo-derechistas que quieren pasar por filósofos. Por otra parte, he de hacer una última anotación sobre geopolítica y eurasismo: mis principales fuentes de inspiración son inglesas, como el atlas histórico de Colin McEvedy, los libros de Peter Hopkirk sobre los servicios secretos en el Cáucaso y en Asia Central, a lo largo de la Ruta de la Seda y en el Tibet, las reflexiones de Arnold Toynbee en sus veinte volúmenes de “A Study of History”.

¿Cuál es su visión de Estado? ¿es necesario tener sistemas o infraestructuras como medios de organización sociopolítica, o piensa usted que una forma descentralizada de tribalismo e identidad étnica pudiera ser una mejor solución?

Su pregunta requiere un libro entero para ser contestada en su integridad. Primero, quisiera decir que es imposible tener una visión de “EL” Estado, pues hay muchas formas de Estado en el mundo. Por supuesto, hay que hacer distinciones entre un Estado, que todavía es un genuino y eficiente instrumento para la promoción de un pueblo, y también para proteger su civilización contra las amenazas maquinadas por sus enemigos externos o internos, o naturales (calamidades, inundaciones, hambrunas, etc.). El Estado es esculpido por un pueblo viviendo en un territorio específico dado. Por supuesto, soy crítico con los estados artificiales, como aquellos que son impuestos por las así llamadas necesidades universales. Tales estados son simples máquinas para someter o explotar una población por una oligarquia o por intereses alógenos. Una organización de los pueblos, acorde con los criterios étnicos, podría ser una solución ideal, pero desafortunadamente, como los eventos en los Balcanes nos han mostrado, la mengua y el flujo de poblaciones en la historia de Europa, África o Asia muy a menudo ha desplazado a los grupos étnicos más allá de sus fronteras naturales, instalándose en territorios formalmente controlados por otros. Los estados homogéneos no pueden construirse en tales situaciones. Esta ha sido la fuente de muchas tragedias, especialmente en la Europa Oriental y Central. La única perspectiva, hoy, es pensar en términos de Civilización, como propone Samuel Huntington en su famoso artículo y libro “The Clash of Civilisations” (“El choque de las Civilizaciones”), escrito en 1993.

En 1986, usted escribió: “la Tercera Vía existe en Europa al nivel de teoría, lo que necesita son militantes” (“Europe: A New Perspective”, en The Scorpion, Issue #9, p.6). ¿Es todavía el caso, o ha habido cambios desde entonces?

Básicamente, la situación es la misma. O quizás peor, porque, al avanzar en edad, puedo percatarme que los niveles de educación clásica se han desvanecido. Nuestro modo de pensar es en cierto sentido spengleriano, abarcando toda la historia del género humano. Guy Debort, líder de los situacionistas franceses desde finales de los cincuenta a los ochenta, pudo observar y deplorar que la “sociedad del espectáculo” o “show society” tiene como objetivo principal destruir todos los modos de pensamiento basados en términos históricos para reemplazarlos por tópicos artificiales o simples embustes. La erradicación de las perspectivas históricas de las cabezas de los alumnos, de los estudiantes y de los ciudadanos, por medio del trabajo diluido de los mass-media, es la gran manipulación que nos conduce a un mundo orwelliano, sin memoria. En una situación tal, todos nos arriesgamos al aislamiento de O´Brians. No hay tropas frescas de voluntarios dispuestas a ese esfuerzo.

Para finalizar, háblenos sobre su compromiso con “Synergies Européennes” y sus planes para el futuro

“Synergies” fue creado con la idea de agrupar gentes de todos sitios, especialmente quienes publicaban revistas, con la idea de difundir más rápidamente los mensajes que nuestros autores habían desarrollado. Pero el conocimiento de lenguas siempre es un problema. Siendo políglota, como usted sabe, siempre me he abrumado ante la repetición de los mismos argumentos en todos los niveles nacionales. Marc Lüdders, de Synergon-Alemania, coincide conmigo. Es triste que los numerosos e importantes trabajos desarrollados en Italia no sean conocidos en Francia o Alemania, y viceversa. Con relación a lo aquí dicho, mi mayor deseo seria ver cómo el intercambio de textos se realiza de forma rápida en los próximos veinte años.