Alba Rosa Page 9
No other nation is obliged to help the Dutch nation in its present predicament; it is even dangerous and wrong to help those who do not want to help themselves. For its imminent disappearance the Dutch nation has only itself to blame. At most, other nations may one day soon be asked to show mercy to individual refugees seeking to escape the disasters facing the Netherlands. If they are not ‘climate refugees’ escaping the drowning cities of the Low Countries when the seas start to rise, then they may be the remnants of the indigenous population, escaping endemic terror, ethnic strife, social implosion and civil unrest — perhaps even civil war. All that these poor refugees may hope for is that other nations will view them as useful immigrants, remembering the old qualities of the Dutch people — productivity, self-reliance, intelligence and endurance. Before this comes to pass, however, it may be that other Western peoples can profit from the example of the Dutch predicament. Given the fact that other Western nations are now facing a somewhat similar predicament, a correct analysis of the mistakes of the Dutch nation may convince other nations to steer clear of the pitfalls that brought down the Netherlands. Such an analysis may still convince the relatively intact nation-states of Eastern Europe to resolutely defend their national sovereignty and national identity. With this in mind, it may be useful for foreign observers to study the preliminaries of the imminent ‘Dutch doomsday’.
Dutch Doomsday
Although the Dutch word noodgeval, ‘emergency’, renders an aspect of the German word Ernstfall, ‘case of seriousness’, the reach of the Dutch is much more restricted: the precise content and grave severity of the German word cannot be easily translated into Dutch. Untranslatability always provides a reliable linguistic marker of the unique psychological qualities and spiritual peculiarities that characterize different peoples and cultures — even peoples and cultures that are so intimately related in ethnicity and history as the Dutch and German nations. Behind the solemn German word Ernstfall we can discern the profundity of German philosophy as well as the weight of German history. Even at its surface, we can discern the legal philosophy of Nomos and Katechon and the political practice of Ausnahmezustand and Führerprinzip. Behind the rational calculation of the Dutch word noodgeval we can discern the dispassionate sobriety of a typically Dutch sense of realism as well as the modest heroism of a typically Dutch resilience. Even at its surface, we can discern associations with a calculating ‘insurance’ culture (collective sea dike taxes, social security, limited liability) and a dramatic history of luctor et emergo.2 German culture is historically characterized by a collective commitment to structurally anticipate ‘emergencies’ through ideas and measures based on Ernstfall considerations. Thus, German history is characterized by socio-economic harmony in peacetime and political-military cohesiveness in wartime. Dutch culture is historically characterized by a collective pragmatism and improvisation in dealing with entirely unique ‘emergencies’. Thus, Dutch history is characterized by institutionalized hyper-individualized socio-economic anarchy in peacetime and short bursts of astounding collective heroism in wartime.3
The societal reality of the contemporary Western world, however, is such that there is no longer any clear boundary between war and peace: the entire West is confronted with a rapidly escalating social-Darwinist ‘civil war’ of unprecedented scope and depth. To the good old-fashioned capitalist war of all against all are now added the new wars of young against old, women against men and immigrant against native. Increasingly, these various new forms of societal conflict tend to coalesce into one single ‘permanent revolution’ against all residual forms of social hierarchy and order. Those who have joined the kleptocratic elite through lucrative ‘privatization’, globalized ‘outsourcing’ and financial malpractice can deprive the working poor of their just wages. Those who ‘immigrated’ to the West through bureaucratic loopholes, ‘investment schemes’ and fraudulent ‘asylum procedures’ can cheat their host nations out of their birthright. Those who nurture old black and brown racial grudges against ‘white privilege’ can indulge in the sadistic humiliation of the women and children of the remnant Western natives with virtual impunity. Those who disguise their cultural primitivism in the pseudo-religious cloak of ‘Islamism’ can ‘prove’ the inferiority of the Christian message of peace by applying the label of ‘holy war’ to acts of barbaric terrorism. Resentful feminists can ‘deconstruct’ manhood and its political derivates: honour, fidelity and honesty. Narcissist ‘baby boomers’ can fatally compromise the future and happiness of naive millennials. Only a few of the most drastic incidents of this near-global ‘civil war’ pass through politically-correct (self-)censorship: only occasionally does the international conglomerate of Lügenpresse media report an incident of an illegal ‘drone strike’, a terror attack, a ‘farm killing’, a ‘rapefugee’ event, a ‘grooming gang’ or a ritualistic child murder. This new reality of ‘permanent revolution’ — the Postmodern equivalent of the Trotskyite ‘no war, no peace’ recipe — demands a thorough reflection on the permanent merger of enduring Ernstfall and incidental emergency. The structural lack of facilities to cope with Ernstfall conditions aggravates the permanent reality of continuous ‘emergencies’.
Traditionalist concepts can contribute to a correct assessment of the acute social crisis facing the contemporary West. From a Traditionalist perspective, this crisis is a deeply tragic but entirely logical result of the failure of the Ernstfall provisions of Western civilization. The militant secular nihilism, hyper-altruistic culture relativism and warped historical-materialist world-view of the Western intellectual discourse are only compatible with the construction of secular and material Ernstfall provisions — and only to the extent that these are ideologically compatible with the neo-liberal model of the ‘night-watchman state’. Only a few underpaid police officers are still left to investigate the alarming proliferation of terrorist networks. Only a few overburdened soldiers are still left to deliver ‘hit and run’ pinpricks against the world’s most dangerous totalitarian state and non-state actors. Only a few unsupported customs officers are still left to occasionally pretend that Rotterdam Port and Amsterdam Airport are not the primary wholesale outlets for the world’s greatest drugs cartels. These few hold-outs aside, the only Ernstfall provisions Holland has left are represented by material infrastructure — most sensationally the Zuiderzee Works4 and the Delta Works.5 In the past, however, Holland also had a number of immaterial — institutional, socio-cultural — Ernstfall provisions that have been largely abolished in the course of Modernist ‘progress’, but which were of even more vital importance for the continued existence of the Dutch nation and people than its dikes and sluices. These were the Ernstfall provisions that Holland inherited from the pre-modern world of Tradition, the socio-political institutions and cultural-historical structures that created and protected the border, ethnicity, language, values and culture of Holland throughout the centuries. Monarchy, Nobility, Chivalric Order, Academy and Guild were all among these Ernstfall provisions: these were the institutions that Traditionalist thinkers have always considered as manifestations of the Katechon, of the shield of civilization that protects every authentically Traditional community. A broken dike, a flooded polder, a ruined house — they can be rebuilt. An extinct people, a forgotten language, a lost faith, a ruined culture — they never return.
2. Ernstfall
Christ’s Descent into Hell (student of Hieronymus Bosch, 2nd half 16th century), Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. The apocalyptic visions of the Bosch School date back to the great upheaval of the early Reformation in the Netherlands, prefiguring the titanic struggle of the Dutch Eighty Years’ War against Spanish tyranny. The theme of this specific painting is divine deliverance from a human-made hell: Adam and Eve can be seen kneeling as they see the Saviour knocking down the gate of Hell.
Modernity: ‘Progress’ & ‘Freedom’
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious
is the first duty of intelligent men.
— George Orwell
All those who refuse to be a nation and all those who wish to deposit religion and culture in the dustbin of history can rejoice in the fall of ancient Ernstfall provisions. For those who think in such a manner, there exists no ‘loss of identity’ and no ‘oikophobia’;6 for them there is only scheduled ‘progress’ and commendable ‘freedom’. This is the experiential bubble in which the Dutch social elite is living and in which the Dutch political regime is operating. For those whose inner orientation and natural habitus is defined by neo-liberal globalisation, anti-nationalist universalism and secular-cosmopolitan nihilism the advances of ‘progress’ are cause for joy: the ‘homeopathic’ dilution of ethnicity,7 the ‘internationalizing’ reform of language, the ‘deregulating’ disruption of economic life, the ‘deconstructing’ subversion of religion and the ‘emancipating’ dissolution of social cohesion. These are the revolutionary processes of Modern ‘progress’ which create the existential vacuum of Modern ‘freedom’: the freedom to ‘live’ without a king who inspires fear and admiration, without a nobility that sets standards of public behaviour and good taste, without a church that requires piety and respectability, without an academy that demands knowledge and wisdom, without a husband who guards honour and virtue, without a father who decides on social boundaries and standards.8 It is literally a borderless freedom — without constraints on materialism, without social norms, without cultural baggage, without moral duties and without pangs of conscience. It is not only the freedom of drug barons in fancy restaurants and pimps in fancy cars, but also that of smooth-talking politicians in custom-made suits9 and bonus-grabbing bankers in stately mansions. It is the freedom to bury the law in bureaucratic ‘governance’ and to ridicule public justice in rigged ‘debate’. It is the freedom to offer housing, healthcare, employment and subsidies to hundreds of thousands of fake ‘refugees’ and criminal asylum-seekers while hundreds of thousands of indigenous people are homeless, ill, unemployed or buried in ruinous debt. It is the freedom to hand over education and culture to unscrupulous ‘financial managers’ and resentful ‘affirmative action’ appointees at the expense of precious knowledge and irreplaceable heritage. It is the freedom to reserve scarce employment for bored feminists and incompetent allochtonen, or ‘non-natives’,10 at the expense of unemployed bread-winners and potential heads of family. It is the freedom to quickly amass a fortune through drugs trade and prostitution and to reduce hard work and prudent thrift to laughable anachronisms. It is the freedom to kill unborn children and ‘redundant’ senior citizens for the sake of abstract illusions such as ‘personal autonomy’ and ‘quality of life’. It is the freedom which gives a democratic ‘right’ to car ownership and air travel holidays, even if anthropogenic climate change has reduced former Dutch pastimes such as ice-skating and snowball fights to distant childhood memories. It is the freedom of ‘parents’ to build yet another holiday home when their children fund their education through ruinous student debts.11 It is the freedom to indulge in fashionable abuse of your children or stepchildren with virtual impunity when serial monogamy and wife-swapping no longer suit your jaded appetites. It is the freedom to cheaply feed yourself on dead animals every day without having to think about the millions of innocent creatures that are ground into mincemeat by Holland’s industrialized torture programme euphemistically known as the ‘bio industry’.
This is the combined neo-liberal and cultural-Bolshevik freedom that allows Modernity’s self-appointed Uebermensch to truly be ‘himself’, ‘herself’ or — according to the ironically accurate gender-neutral fashion — ‘itself’. In that ultimate freedom the perfectly contented Postmodern consumer can finally withdraw into the undisturbed illusion of paradisiacal happiness: Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘last man’ has been finally realized in Holland, Western Modernity’s true gidsland, or ‘guiding nation’.12 This is the freedom which beckons in the ‘Orphaned Society’ described by Pim Fortuyn and which is promised to the ‘bastard children’ described by Peter Sloterdijk. The baby boomers have been pioneering this freedom, the ‘Canal District’ people13 are practising this freedom and ‘Planet Section K’14 is the guiding star leading to this freedom. Unlike that long-forgotten star of 2000 years ago, ‘Planet Section K’ does not shine for wise kings: instead, it lights the broad democratic road to the five-star inn of Postmodern ‘self-redemption’. There stands the stable of the Modern Anti-Bethlehem, where everybody lives by bread alone, and the great prostitution of New Babylon, where nobody is disturbed by God or Law. There reigns the redeeming certainty that the struggle for a humane existence, the struggle for a dignified identity and the struggle against animalistic atavism are over for all time — simply because humanity has been replaced by the Untermensch reality of measureless materialism and heartless hedonism.
Tradition: Palingenesia & Anagogics
We sleep safe in our bed because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
— George Orwell
Many Dutch people, however, still refuse to practice such bestiality and to live such beastly lives. There are still well-intentioned people who wish the Dutch people a different future. For all those who wish to stand up for the future of the Dutch people, it is vitally important that they be able to gauge the true depths of the Ernstfall facing the nation. They should recognize the unmistakable symptoms of René Guénon’s crise du monde moderne and of Carl Schmitt’s Ausnahmezustand. A number of recent politico-philosophical developments that have recently occurred in the wider Western world are relevant to the crisis facing Dutch society, and can help achieve a correct contextual assessment of that crisis. In recent years, a number of Western thinkers have taken the first cautious steps towards an intellectual Bewältigung of the escalating ‘Crisis of the Modern World’. Peter Sloterdijk’s Die schrecklichen Kinder der Neuzeit, Guillaume Faye’s Archéofuturisme and Jason Jorjani’s World State of Emergency contain a number of analyses and hypotheses that are directly relevant to this crisis. The recent rediscovery of older relevant material, exemplified by recent re-editions and reappraisals of the work of Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola, clearly indicate a general trend to a fundamental Vergangenheitsbewältigung throughout the Western world. The unofficial but very real ‘state of emergency’ that is prevailing throughout the West is already causing scattered incidents of metapolitical rearmament. These first centres of resistance cover a wide political spectrum, ranging from neo-liberal ‘populism’ (represented in the Netherlands by Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom) and libertarian ‘renaissance’ (represented in the Netherlands by Thierry Baudet’s ‘Forum for Democracy’) to alt-right ‘ethnonationalism’ and old-right ‘romanticism’. The ultimate weapon available to the West, however, is also its oldest weapon: its Traditionalist heritage. The Traditionalist ‘Sword of Gnosis’ is its weapon of last resort, to be drawn at the final hour: it can only be drawn from the stone of history by those who are aware of what is truly at stake.
The Dutch people are facing the abyss of historical oblivion. The young generation cannot ignore the double reality of true Ernstfall and acute emergency. True awareness of the existential crisis facing the Dutch people will force the young generation to urgently re-think the Ernstfall provisions with which this crisis can be overcome. So much time has passed since these provisions have been the subject of serious consideration, however, that it is necessary to first review their basic premises. What counts in any confrontation with an existential crisis is always the shortest way to safety and the first weapon at hand — this is true in the physical as well as the psychological sphere. Surviving a profound crisis requires the willingness to engage in total war — within and without. Confronted with an existential crisis a nation must rise above itself and re-invent itself. A nation’s capacity for ‘palingenesia’ — self-renewal — rests on its ability to access the same agglomerate of impersonal and e
lementary powers that created it in the first place. This ability is both sub-human, because it rests on bio-evolutionary adaption, and super-human, because it rests on a transcendental reference. In older literature, the power agglomerate accessed is termed the ‘nation’s soul’ and in ancient myths it is related to super-natural ‘destiny’. In modern science this power agglomerate is described by means of abstract sociological and anthropological terminology. But this fact does not alter the experiential realities represented by the ‘nation’s soul’ and its ‘destiny’. All pre-modern communities, from the smallest jungle tribe to the greatest historical Imperium, are characterized by simultaneously sub-consciously and super-consciously real socio-political mechanisms and societal structures that foster biological and cultural continuity. These mechanisms and structures, which shield ethnicity, language, religion and culture from the wear and tear of history, are the Ernstfall provisions of the pre-modern world. Traditionalist symbolism expresses the dual nature of these Ernstfall provisions in the double-edged sword: it refers to a combined physical and spiritual power. At its highest level, this power creates the supra-national force of Imperium. When Imperium fails, power devolves to the next level — the level of the nation-state. What Jacob Needleman termed the ‘Sword of Gnosis’ refers to a power agglomerate of physical strength, intellectual discernment and spiritual insight. This combination grants the power of self-renewal not only to individuals and tribal communities but also to whole peoples and great states. This principle is symbolically represented in the mythologies surrounding magical swords such as Gram and Excalibur. The shining ‘Sword of Knowledge’ is always recovered or re-forged when disaster looms closest — in other words: when the ultimate Ernstfall must be faced.