FOR A POSITIVE CRITIQUE

DOMINIQUE VENNER

THE FLAWS OF THE NATIONAL OPPOSITION

The action undertaken after the failure of April 1961 has made use of new means. It has mobilised a greater number of partisans and has resolutely pursued a violent and clandestine path. This transformation of the forms of struggle, however, has not affected the fundamentals of the methods previously applied. It has remained in conformity to the characteristics of the “national” struggles, marked by acts of courage and by lamentable failures.

In 1917, Lenin ran the risk of a military defeat in order to create the conditions of the Bolshevik revolution. Franco marked his hold over the insurrectional command in 1936 by the execution of his own cousin, who refused to follow him. These are two examples of behaviour opposite to that of the “nationals.”

By contrast, the refusal to actually carry the action to Metropolitan France on April 22, 1961, like the bloody and futile Parisian demonstration of February 6, 1934, is typical of the “national” mentality.

CONCEPTUAL DEFECTS

The “nationals” who use the word “revolution,” without knowing its meaning, believe in a spontaneous “national awakening”! They also believe that “the army will move.” Trusting in these two unrealisable dreams, considered as the miracle cures, they do not conceive of the necessity of educating partisans by means of a sound doctrine that explains the causes of Western decadence, proposes a solution, and serves as a rudder for thought and action. This is why they wallow in a series of political maladies that are responsible for their failures.

Ideological Confusion

The “nationals” attack the effects of the evil, not its roots. They are anti-communists, but forget that capitalism and the liberal régimes are the principal agents of the propagation of communism. They were hostile to the Algerian policy of the government, but forgot that this policy was the product of a régime, of its ideology, of its interests, of its real financial masters and technocrats, as well as of its political and economic structures. They wanted to save French Algeria against the régime, but they carried into their calculations its principles and its myths. Can you imagine the early Christians worshipping the pagan idols and the communists singing the praises of capitalism?

Conformism

All the “nationals” have their good Gaullist, their good technocrat, their good minister. Yielding to an old bourgeois reflex, they dread “the adventure” and “chaos.” As soon as a man of the régime waves the flag, they give him their confidence. They prefer the comfort of blindness to lucidity. Sentimentalism and parochialism always prevail over political reasoning. In the vain hope of satisfying everybody, they refuse to take a side and satisfy nobody.

Archaism

For lack of imagination, the “nationals” continue to blow the bugle of Déroulède, which does not bring out many people. Programs and slogans are fixed to the pre-war tricolour flag. From the army in power to negative anti-communism, through to the counter-revolution and corporatism, the “national formulas” repel more than they charm. This political arsenal dates from half a century. It has no hold on our people.

ORGANISATIONAL DEFECTS

The reasons that cause the “nationals” to deny the necessity of ideas in the political combat also cause them to deny the necessity of organisation. Their action is vitiated by flaws that explain all their collapses.

Opportunism

The “national” notables, members of parliament and others, military and civilian, are opportunists through personal ambition. The pretext generally invoked to camouflage their ambition is that of “ability.” It is in the name of ability that the “nationals” have supported the referendum of 1958 and the enterprises of politicians ever since then. Behind each of these positions, there is the prospect of a medal, a sinecure, or an election. They can feel the wind and can become violent, even seditious, when this appears to be profitable. Their violent speeches do not frighten anybody. They attack a man, a government, but are careful not to attack the principal, which is the régime itself. Algeria was a good springboard and an occasion to make a fortune from the subsidies generously dispensed, whilst the militants had to fight with their bare hands. If the wind turns, they do not hesitate to betray their flag and their comrades. The seat in parliament is not a means but an end in itself: it must be kept at all costs. The simple partisans are opportunists through lack of doctrine and formation. They give their trust to the smooth talker and to superficial impressions rather than to the political analysis of ideas and of facts, they are dedicated to being duped.

Mythomania

The reading of espionage novels, the memories of the Resistance and other special services, the stories of plotters, Gaullists and others, plunge the “nationals” into an atmosphere of permanent dreams. A game of bridge with a retired general, a member of parliament, or a sergeant from the army reserve becomes a dark and powerful conspiracy. If they recruit as few as ten high school students, they think themselves Mussolini. If they boast that they command a group of five thousand organised men, it means they merely have a ragtag mob of several hundred. If, by chance, they receive a letter from a military institution, they display the envelope with the air of conspirators, sighs, and silences ominous with implications. They are partisans for unity and have only bitter reproaches against the sectarianism of militants who refuse to take them seriously. The same “nationals,” in a period of genuine clandestineness, are arrested with lists of addresses and documents, and begin to talk as soon as the police raise their voice.

Terrorism

The faulty analysis of a situation, the absence of doctrine and formation that push some towards opportunism, throw others into counterproductive violence and terrorism. The poor digestion of primitive studies, devoted to certain aspects of the communist subversion of the FLN, has increased this tendency. The detonators set under the concierges’ windows did not bring a single partisan to the cause of French Algeria. Blind terrorism is the best means to cut oneself off from the population. It is a desperate act. As much as clandestine action and the calculated use of force can be indispensable when a nation has no other means of defending itself, in which case the action aims at making the people participate in the struggle, terrorism places those using it outside the popular community and is condemned to failure.

Anarchism

The “nationals” who admire so much discipline in others are, in practice, veritable anarchists. Unable to identify their situation in the struggle, they have a taste for disorderly action. Their vanity pushes them to gratuitous individual acts, even if their cause suffers from it. They ignore their word of honour and nobody can predict where their fantasies will lead them. They rigorously follow a ringleader and blossom in small clans. The absence of a common ideological reference increases their scattering and forbids their unity.

FOR A NEW REVOLUTIONARY THEORY

Before even thinking of defining anything constructive, this critique of the flaws of the “nationals” is indispensable. Some, for lack of political maturity, will not be able to comprehend it. Those who have drawn the lessons of their own experience, on the other hand, will recognise its necessity.

Revolution is not the act of violence that sometimes accompanies a takeover of power. Nor is it a simple change of institutions or a political clan. Revolution is less about the taking of power than its use for the construction of a new society.

This immense task cannot be envisaged amidst disorderly thought and action. It demands a vast apparatus of preparation and formation. The “national” combat is stuck in the old ruts of half a century. Before anything else, a new revolutionary theory must be developed.

THERE ARE NO SPONTANEOUS REVOLUTIONS

It is always possible to act, it is less easy to succeed. This is even more so in a revolutionary struggle, a fight to the death against an all-powerful, cunning, and experienced enemy, which one must fight more by ideas and shrewdness than by force. It is frequent, however, to hear of the opposition of action and thought. This is to believe in the spontaneity of revolutionary action. The example of the Fascist revolution in Italy is cited. One forgets that when the “fascios” were formed in 1919, Mussolini had been fighting for more than twelve years as an agitator and journalist. One forgets especially the conditions of the struggle in Italy after the armistice of 1918, which are nothing like the conditions in France today.

In Italy , like many other European Nations, the power of the State was extremely weak, totally incapable of imposing its law on the armed factions which were fighting over the country. The State had to deal with each of the veritable political armies. In October 1922, the army of the “Black Shirts” was the stronger and so took over the State. Today, the “liberal régimes” of the West are characterised by a large privileged caste, agents of financial groups, who control all the political, administrative, and economic levers, and are united by their close complicity. They can rely on a gigantic administrative apparatus that rigorously manages the population, especially through the social services. They hold a monopoly of political power and economic power. They control most of the media and are the masters of thought. They are defended with the favour of vast police forces. They have transformed the citizens into docile sheep. Only fictitious oppositions are tolerated.

At the end of the First World War, communist revolution was an immediate menace for all of Europe . The danger always determines a movement of defence: the fascist movements took advantage of it. The only force capable of opposing the violence of the Reds, fascism received powerful support and the adherence of a large number of partisans. Today, the factory Soviets, the Chekas, belong to the past. The communists of the West have become bourgeois, they are part of the scenery, they are the firmest defenders of the régime. The man with a knife between his teeth is no longer the communist but the activist. As for Russia , the capitalists see a new market there.

Contrary to the first half of the twentieth century, the satisfaction of elementary material needs is within the reach of all. The soup kitchens, the wildcat strikes, are forgotten. Save for some threatened minorities, the great mass of wage-earners are convinced that they have more to lose than to gain by violently taking what peaceful demands and time will ineluctably give to them. The yoke of social laws and the blackmail of credit make the rest withdraw all combativeness.

Public spirit, civic and political courage, is today limited to a small minority, whose legal means of expression have been systematically reduced. This takes us far away from Italy in the 1920s. The personal genius of Mussolini was sufficient to gather and mobilise a passionate mass and to conquer a State incapable of defending itself. Such is no longer the situation in Europe and in France . As power belongs to the adversary, a superior stratagem is needed. As the “great man” (besides being nonexistent) is depreciated too much, one must rely on the team. Quality of combatants, methodical and reasoned combat, collegial direction demands education, doctrine.

Since 1947, the French army fought to defend overseas territories, was victorious in the field, and forced into successive capitulations by the group of political and economic forces that constitute the régime. It was necessary to wait until the month of April 1961, fourteen years, for a tiny number of cadres to discern their true enemies. An enemy who was not so much in the field, under the guise of a Viet or of a fellagha, but rather in France itself, in the boards of directors, the banks, the editorial offices, the assemblies, and the ministerial offices. This hostile sentiment was against a mythical decadent Metropolitan France rather than the reality of the régime. This limited realisation was short-lived.

To conquer, it is necessary to comprehend what the régime is, to discover its methods, to flush out its accomplices, those who are camouflaged as patriots. It is necessary to determine the positive solutions that will allow the construction of the society of tomorrow. This necessitates a thorough self-scrutiny, a thorough review of accepted verities, a revolutionary consciousness.

A REVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS

Nothing is less spontaneous than the revolutionary consciousness. The revolutionary is wholly conscious of the struggle engaged between Nationalism, bearer of the creative and spiritual values of the West, and Materialism under its liberal or Marxist forms. He is free from the prejudices, from the falsehoods, and from the conditioned reflexes with which the régime defends itself. The political education that permits one to be free of these is obtained by personal experience, of course, but especially through the learning that only study can bring. Without this education, the most courageous and most audacious man is only a puppet manipulated by the régime. According to circumstances, the régime pulls the strings that regulate his behaviour: patriotism, blind anti-communism, the fascist menace, legalism, the unity of the army, etc. Through a permanent one-way propaganda, to which everybody is subjected to from childhood, the régime, in its many aspects, has progressively intoxicated the French people. All the nations under democratic rule are at this point. Any critical intelligence, any personal thinking is destroyed. It is sufficient for the keywords to be pronounced to trigger the conditioned reflexes and suppress any reasoning.

Spontaneity allows the conditioned reflexes to remain. It leads only to revolts, so easy to defuse or to divert with a few superficial concessions, a few bones to chew on, or a few changes of scenery. And so it was many times with the French Algerians, the army, and the “nationals.”

In the face of mortal danger, it is possible to set up a defensive front. The Resistance at the end of the last war and the OAS are examples. The issue of the fight was a question of life or death; the physical struggle against the physical force of the visible adversary can be total, without pity. Supposing that the revolt triumphs, as soon as the peril is averted, the front explodes into multiple clans, and the mass of partisans, having no more reason to fight, returns to its familiar tasks, demobilises, and entrusts the city that had been saved to those who had lost it in the first place.

France and Europe must accomplish their nationalist revolution in order to survive. Superficial changes will not strike what is evil. Nothing will be done until the germs of the régime are extirpated to the last root. For this, it is necessary to destroy its political organisation, overthrow its idols and its dogmas, eliminate its official and secret masters, show the people how much it had been deceived, exploited, soiled. Then, reconstruction. Not on paper constructions, but on a young and revolutionary élite, imbued with a new conception of the world. Can the action that must impose this revolution be conceived without the direction of a revolutionary doctrine? Certainly not. How can you oppose an adversary that is armed with a well-tested dialectic, rich with long experience, powerfully organised, without ideology, without method?

NO REVOLUTIONARY DOCTRINE, NO REVOLUTION!

Even when it assumes military forms, the revolutionary struggle is above all psychological. How to conduct it, how to convert and inspire new partisans, without a clear definition of the new ideology, without doctrine? A doctrine understood, not as an group of abstractions, but as a rudder for thought and action.

Maintaining the moral offensive of its own partisans, communicating its convictions to waverers, are two indispensable conditions for the development of Nationalism. It has been proved that in action or in prison, when demoralisation is close by, when the adversary seems to triumph, the educated militants, whose coherent thought supports their faith, have superior powers of resistance.

A new doctrinal development is the only answer to the infinite division of activists. There is no doubt about the unifying value of action. It is obvious. But this unification cannot be durable and useful without ideological unification around a sound doctrine. The editor of France-Observateur, the functionary of the SFIO, the communist, all have the same ideology in common: Marxism. Their doctrinal reference is therefore the same, their conception of the world is similar. The words they use have the same meaning. They belong to the same family. Despite their profound divisions in action, they all concurrently impose the same ideology. It is not so in the national opposition. The activists do not recognise any common ancestors. Some are fascistic, others are Maurrasians, others are Integrists, and all these categories contain many variants. Their only unity is negative: anti-communism, anti-Gaullism. They do not understand each other. The words that they use—revolution, counter-revolution, nationalism, Europe , etc.—have different, indeed opposite meanings. How can they not oppose each other? How can they have the same ideology? Revolutionary unity is impossible without unity of doctrine.

The works of Marx are immense, unreadable, and obscure. A Lenin was needed to extract a clear body of doctrine and to transform this enormous hotchpotch into an effective weapon of political war. Nationalism has behind it its collective Marx, just as obscure and unsuitable as the companion of Engels could be for the Russia of 1903. It is imperative to create a collective Lenin.

Nationalism is the heir to an infinitely rich body of thought, but it is too diverse, incomplete, and vitiated with archaism. The time has come to make a synthesis and to add the attributes, the qualifying statements, imposed by the arrival of new problems. For example, a documented study on High Finance, or on the Doctrines of Nationalism, would constitute excellent approaches to answering this need.

The causes that precipitated, at the end of the nineteenth century, the birth of Nationalism as a political ideology (and not simply the awakening of the national consciousness in a narrow sense) have not varied much from that time. Nationalism was born from the critique of the liberal society of the nineteenth century. Later on, it was opposed to Marxism, the illegitimate child of liberalism.

Coming after the counter-Encyclopédistes, after the Positivists, after Taine and Renan, of whose teaching a part remains in Nationalism, Drumont and Barrès have outlined the permanent characters of this ideology, to which Charles Maurras, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Robert Brasillach, Alexis Carrel, and many others in Europe gave the collaboration of their own genius. Founded on a heroic conception of life, Nationalism, which is a return to the sources of popular community, intends to create new social relationships on a community base and to build a political order on the hierarchy of merit and value. Stripped from the narrow envelope imposed by an era, Nationalism has become a new political philosophy. European in its conceptions and its perspectives, it brings a universal solution to the problems posed to mankind by the technical revolution.

NATIONALIST PERSPECTIVES

The passivity of public opinion and the cowardice of traditional élites in the face of the events of Algeria have opened the eyes of all the men capable of reflection. Often at the price of painful revisions, of rupture with their past convictions, they regroup around a new definition of Nationalism. This is not the place to attempt a doctrinal test. Studies and confrontations will be necessary. It is, however, possible to outline the fundamental propositions.

CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM AND MARXISM

Liberalism could charm, for a time, by its appearance of generosity. Reality has dissipated this dream. This dead idea is today the camouflage of the hypocritical dictatorship of international capitalism encompassing all Western democracies.

The capitalist oligarchy was born at the end of the eighteenth century. The liberal ideas spread in that era in France were used to justify the combined interests of the high aristocracy and the rich against the authority of the central power that for a long time had kept them in check. This struggle of the large interests against the popular power (in this case the French monarchy) is found consistently over the ages. In organised societies, once the institutional envelope of monarchical or republican forms that hide realities has been stripped, one can discern two principal types of power: the first one is based on the people so as to contain the large interests, feudal or financial, the second is in the hands of the large interests so as to exploit the people. The first one identifies with the popular community and becomes the servant of its destiny, the second subjects the popular community for the sole satisfaction of its appetite.

Modern democracies, which belong to the second type, followed the evolution of capitalism, of which they were only the political emanation. Capitalism having lost its personal and national form to become financial and stateless, the democracies came under the control of the international financial groups. The few differences that remain between the latter cease as soon as the threat of a popular awakening appears. If the lies and the ruses in which they have become masters prove to be insufficient, they employ the more deadly weapons, the more violent restraints. They have never recoiled in front of genocide, atomic bombings, concentration camps, torture, and psychological rape.

The capitalist oligarchy is indifferent to the fate of national communities. Its goal is to satisfy an insatiable will to power through the economic domination of the world. Mankind and its civilisations are sacrificed for its purely materialistic designs, which parallel those of the Marxists. For the technocrats as well as the communists, man is an economic animal endowed with two functions: produce and consume. What cannot be measured by a slide rule is classed as superfluous. The superfluous must submit to the essential: economic output. Individualist tendencies, which are an inconvenience for the edification and the application of plans, must disappear. In the materialist societies, there is only room for the perfectly docile, homogenous, and standardised masses.

Those who do not accept the conditioning of minds and the castration of the masses have to wear the label of “fascists.” To doubt the sincerity of the masters of opinion in a democracy or to challenge the contradictions of the “line” in a communist régime, refusing to compare the culture of the West to the prehistoric wailing of negritude or the morbid decomposition of a certain modernism, despising the “universal conscience,” smiling when one talks of the right of peoples to self-determination, are the proofs of a suspicious and rebellious spirit. Rebellion leads to physical elimination in a communist régime and to social elimination in a liberal régime. Thus, the one and the other destroy creative individualism and popular roots, the very essence of mankind and its community. They commit humanity to a dead end, to the worst kind of regression.

The history of mankind is one long effort to liberate itself from the laws of matter. Religion, art, science, and ethical rules are all conquests of the spirit and of the human will. The permanence of these victories has given birth to civilisations. Arbitrary creations of the sensibility, of the intelligence, and of the energy of peoples, civilisations develop and mature for as long as they maintain their creative power. The peoples who gave them birth lose the strength to defend themselves against external assaults when their original virtues and their vital energy disappear, and in turn their civilisation follows into annihilation or decadence.

Such is the logical result of the exploitation of mankind by the caste of technocrats or by the “new ruling class.” These two forces come from the same philosophy.

Liberalism and Marxism have taken different paths which have brought them to oppose each other but which lead to the same result: the subjection of peoples first misled by the democratic myths. Democracy is the new opium of peoples.

A VIRILE HUMANISM

The European peoples have built a unique civilisation in history. Its creative power, despite the millennia, has not diminished. Those who are its declared enemies implicitly recognise its universality. Between the traditional East submissive to metaphysical rules and the new materialist societies, European civilisation synthesises spiritual aspirations and material necessities. Even when the uniformity of the mass is proclaimed as an ideal everywhere in the world, it exalts the individualism of the strong, the triumph of human quality over mediocrity.

It summarises within itself the equilibrium to be established as a solution to the upheavals created by the technical revolution in the life of mankind. Founded on the values of the individual and the community, this new harmony can be defined as a virile humanism.

A new table of values, this virile humanism rejects the false laws of numbers and seeks to submit the power of technique and of the economy to the civilising will of the European man. He will find again, on a familiar ground, within his lineage and in the original culture of his own people, a world to his measure. He will discover the meaning of his life in the accomplishment of his own destiny, in the fidelity to a way of life founded on the European ethic of honour.

The ethic of honour is opposed to the slave morality of liberal or Marxist materialism. It affirms that life is a battle. It exalts the value of sacrifice. It believes in the power of the will over events. It bases the relationship between men of the same community on loyalty and solidarity. It confers on work an importance independent of profit. It recovers the sense of the true dignity of mankind, not granted but conquered by permanent effort. It develops in the European man the consciousness of his responsibilities in relation to the humanity of which he is the natural organiser.

A LIVING ORDER

The legitimacy of a power cannot be summarised as the observation of eminently variable written laws or to the consent of the masses obtained by the psychological pressure of propaganda. A power is legitimate which observes the rights of the Nation, its unwritten laws revealed by history.

A power is illegitimate which departs from the national destiny and destroys the national realities. Then legitimacy belongs to those who struggle to restore the rights of the Nation. A lucid minority, they form the revolutionary élite on which the future rests.

The world does not yield to a system, but to a will. It is not the system that you must look for, but the will. Of course, the very structure of the State must be conceptualised around some guiding principles: authority, continuity, the power of design are combined in a collegial form; this one must draw on a hierarchical corps of political cadres, assisted by a true popular representation of the professions and the regional communities qualified to deliberate on their own problems. But it is especially important to forge the men on whom the community and the future of civilisation will rest.

It is neither electronic equipment nor the scientists that will decide the fate of humanity. The immense problems presented by the new technical developments demand a political élite called by vocation, endowed with an iron will at the service of a clear consciousness of its historical mission. This overwhelming responsibility will justifiably demand more from them than from other men.

Five percent of individuals, the sociologists admit, are profoundly perverted, crazy, vicious. At the other extreme, one can observe the same proportion of men who possess, naturally and in a developed way, particular qualities of energy and self-sacrifice that predispose them to serve the community and to lead it. The democracies that install the reign of fraud and money are, in large part, dominated by the first. The Nationalist revolution will have to eliminate the former and impose the latter.

The selection and the education, from youth, of this élite of men will be among the primary preoccupations of the new society. Their formation will stimulate the vigour of their character, develop their spirit of sacrifice, and will open their intelligence to the intellectual disciplines. Maintained in their original purity, not only by their commitment of honour, but also by a strict and particular rule, they will form a living order constantly renewed over time, but always similar in its spirit. Thus, the power of financiers will be replaced by that of believers and of combatants.

AN ORGANIC ECONOMY

The economy is not an end in itself. It is an element in the life of societies, among the principal ones, but only one element. It is not the source or the explanation of the evolution of humanity. It is an agent or a consequence. It is in the psychology of peoples, their energy, and their political virtues that one finds the explanation of history.

The economy must be subjected to the political will. Let this disappear—as is characteristic of liberal régimes—and unchecked economic forces drag society towards anarchy.

Also, the immense problem of the economy is naturally part of the Nationalist revolution. It would be to revert to the mortal errors of the “nationals” to deny its importance or to get rid of it by a miracle word also subject to confusion and to dispute, such as “corporatism,” for example.

Capitalism has created an artificial world where mankind is maladjusted. In other respects, the popular community is exploited by a narrow caste that monopolises all power and aspires to international supremacy. Finally, capitalism hides under a debauch of new words an anachronistic conception where the economy carries all the consequences. These criticisms apply word for word to communism.

The solution to the maladjustment of mankind in a world that is not made for him is, as we have seen, a political problem. Technical and economic development does not find in itself its own justification; this is dependent on its utilisation. The new State will subject the economy to its designs, to make it a tool of a new European spring. Creating civilised values, forging the weapons of the necessary power, elevating the quality of the people, will then be its goals.

It is in a total transformation of the structure of the company (we speak only of the company that financial capitalism has assimilated, not the small family company which must be preserved and where there is no problem) and the general organisation of the economy that the means reside to destroy the exorbitant power of the technocratic caste, to suppress the exploitation of the workers, to establish a real justice, to find again true economy and healthy functioning.

In a capitalist régime as in a communist régime, the company is the exclusive property of the financiers in the former and the State in the latter. For the wage earners, be they managers or simple workers, the results are the same: they are robbed, the wealth produced by their work is absorbed by capital.

This privileged position gives to capital all the powers of the company: direction, management, even when they are external and aim before everything else to make a financial profit, sometimes to the detriment of production and of the enterprise itself.

The famous words of Proudhon find their full meaning here: “Property Is Theft!” To abolish appropriation is the just solution that will give birth to the community enterprise. Capital will then take its just place as an element of production, side by side with work. The one and the other will participate, with a power proportionate to their importance in the enterprise, in the appointment of management, in its economic management, and in the distribution of real profits.

This revolution in the enterprise will fit in a new organisation of the economy having for its base the professions and the regional geographic framework. To do away with the parasites and the power of financiers, it will create a group of intermediary bodies. These new structures, capable of being easily integrated into Europe , can find no better definition than that of “organic economy.”

A YOUNG EUROPE

The American and Soviet victory in 1945 has put an end to the conflicts of European Nations. The menace of adversaries and the common dangers, an obvious solidarity of fate in good and bad days, and similar interests have developed the sentiment of unity.

This sentiment is confirmed by reasoning. Unity is indispensable to the future of European Nations. They have lost the supremacy of numbers; united, they would recover that of civilisation, of creative genius, of organising power, and of economic power. Divided, their territories are doomed to be invaded and their armies to defeat; united, they would constitute an invincible force.

Isolated, they will become satellites, with the certainty of falling, as some have already done, under Soviet domination. European civilisation will come under systematic attack and it will be the final end of the evolution of humanity. United, they will have, on the contrary, the means of imposing and of ensuring their civilising mission.

Unity does not mean the continuation of financial and political organisms instituted after the war. Their purpose is to extend the international power of the technocracy that controls all its mechanisms, and to preserve the political and economic privileges that are hidden behind the advertisements of democracy. These institutions bring today, on a European scale, the vices and the words generated by the régime in each Nation, and multiply them. In the name of Europe , the development of these institutions accelerates its decline.

Unity does not mean levelling. Standardisation and cosmopolitanism would destroy Europe . Its unity will be built around the national realities that each people intend to defend: historical community, original culture, attachment to the soil. To want to limit Europe to either Latin or Germanic influence would be to maintain its division, even develop a new hostility. But above all, it would deny the European reality realised by Rome and by the mediaeval era in the fusion of its two currents, Continental and Mediterranean .

To imagine Europe under the hegemony of one Nation would be to renew a bloody dream of which history bears recent scars. The diversity of languages and of origins is not an obstacle. Many States are multilingual and the Roman Empire, which built up the first European unity with regard to the peoples assembled and their cultures, had Emperors born in Rome as well as in Gaul, in Elyria , and in Spain .

Europe ’s boundaries do not stop at the artificial limit of the Iron Curtain imposed by the victors of 1945. It includes the totality of European nations and peoples. Thinking of unity is, in the first place, to think of the liberation of all the captive nations from the Ukraine to Germany . The destiny of Europe is in the East: breaking the chains, overthrowing the Soviet tyranny, driving back the Asiatic tide.

Out of the European continental bloc, the peoples and the States that belong to its civilisation form the West. Europe is its soul. Its complete solidarity will assert itself, notably with the Western centres of Africa . These positions are the bases for a new organisation of the African continent, whose fate is tied to that of Europe .

In the construction of Europe , the underdeveloped peoples will find an example and solutions to their own difficulties. It is not beggary that they need, but organisation. Europe possesses an incomparable corps of cadres specialising in overseas matters. No other power could compete with the organisational talent of these cadres shouldered by the awakened European dynamism. They will take these people out of misery and anarchy and bring them back to the West.

It will not be economic treaties that will unify Europe, but the adherence of its peoples to Nationalism. The obstacles that appear insurmountable are due to the democratic structures. Once the régime is swept out, these false problems will disappear by themselves. It is therefore obvious that without revolution no European unity is possible.

The success of the revolution in one Nation of Europe—and France is the only one to possess all the necessary conditions—will allow a rapid extension to the other Nations. The unity of two Nations independent of the régime will develop such a force of seduction and dynamism that the old system, the Iron Curtain, and the frontiers will collapse. The first step of unity will be political and will create a single collegial State in an evolutionary form. The other steps, military and economic, will follow. The Nationalist movements of Europe will be the agents of this unity and the core of the future living European order.

Thus the Young Europe, founded on the same civilisation, the same space, and the same destiny, will be the active centre of the West and of the world order. The youth of Europe will have new cathedrals to construct and a new empire to build.

ORGANISATION AND ACTION

The struggle conducted around the events in Algeria has shown that the “nationals” can contribute to create a favourable situation. But the demonstration is equally clear (without going back to events prior to the Second World War) of their total impotence to transform a popular revolt into a revolution. The embryonic nationalist organisation, despite the efforts of the militants, did not keep pace with the spontaneous revolt. Thus, the “national” conceptions prevailed, and the new resistance engaged under favourable political conditions after April 22, 1961, with an abundance of partisans and means, sank into ridicule and dishonour.

However, this period of clandestine struggle and repression has forged revolutionary combatants, mostly young, and the circumstances of the collapse have educated a good number of partisans who placed confidence in “national” methods. This is why Nationalism will find tomorrow the militants and the cadres that it lacked in the past.

French youth will be marked for years by the last fights conducted for the defence of the integrity of the national territory in Algeria . Its best elements participated actively. They risked all, torture, prison, death. The condemnation of terrorist methods does not apply to those who courageously executed orders and who are examples, but to the chiefs who decided to use these harmful methods. The revolt of the Youth against a senile and hostile society is a reality.

Nobody foresaw either the Poujadist tidal wave of 1955 or the peasant revolts of 1961. Despite refrigerators and televisions, men, by the hundreds of thousands, went into the streets. The malfeasance of the régime will create in the future new popular explosions. Disorganised, these revolts will collapse like previous ones. All the action must therefore aim to introduce the yeast into the dough.

The work of organisation, of penetration, of popular education, is always slow. It must be remembered that all the revolutionaries of the twentieth century had to fight a long time before they triumphed: Lenin close to thirty years, Hitler thirteen, Mao Zedong thirty-three . . . In the difficulties of the struggle, the masses acquire a revolutionary consciousness, new cadres emerge, the organisation is broken in and is reinforced.

The development of the revolutionary action is never progressive and harmonious. Similar to a broken line, it is made up of partial successes, of setbacks, of recoveries, of new falls, of apparent stagnations. All the revolutionary movements have known catastrophic reverses when victory seemed to be within reach: the Bolsheviks in 1905, the National Socialists in 1923, the Chinese Communists in 1927 and 1931. Their success was due to their ability to analyse the causes of these setbacks, to draw the lessons, to correct themselves, and to adapt to the new conditions of the struggle. The Bolsheviks abandoned exclusive illegality in order to explore legal and illegal opportunities. The National Socialists rejected the insurrectional path in order to undertake the legal conquest of power. Mao Zedong left the urban proletariat and directed himself towards guerrilla campaigns. Revolutionary action, like war, obeys imperative laws. The Nationalists must search for them in the light of their own experience and adapt them to the new situation.

NOTABLES OR MILITANTS

For a Man or an Idea?

The voter, the simple partisan, follows the heading on posters, a well-known name, the saviour of the day. The “nationals” like that facility. Passive herds, they expect everything from the miracle man. Even the small groups have their idol. The inevitable disappearance of the great man leaves the naïve embittered and discouraged. The Nationalist does not need followers but militants who are defined in relation to a doctrine, not in relation to a man. He does not fight for a pseudo-saviour, for the saviour is found in himself. Those who assume the direction of the struggle can disappear or make mistakes, the value of the cause is not tainted by this, they are replaced. The militants sacrifice themselves for their ideas, not for a man.

The organisation must be a community of militants, not a personal property. It will be managed by officials who will only be temporary spokesmen for Nationalism. The officials will direct the action of the militants, as they will have been proven to be the best qualified to serve the Organisation, without which they would be nobody.

Bluff and Effectiveness

The enormous sums of money collected for the cause of French Algeria were absorbed by the notables and the politicians to whom they were entrusted. Some pamphlets, some conferences, some travel, some posters pretended to justify their use. With these colossal means the notables did nothing.

During this time, militants were developing a coherent activity with ridiculous means coming only from their personal contributions. They held public meetings, covered the country with inscriptions, made posters by hand, realised spectacular actions with little money, used Roneos from one end of France to the other. They did a lot with nothing. That is characteristic of the militant.

The Notables and the Rank and File

For the notables who direct the “nationals,” militants are an inferior class. They are only the rank and file to be used for political struggles. They are part of the electoral material. They are the pawns of the perennial plots. Their self-sacrifice serves as a steppingstone for the ambitions of careerists. If the affairs turn out badly, the militants are coolly abandoned.

The Nationalist Organisation will push aside the notables. Its members and its leaders will be militants coming, not from the electoral laboratories or the hotbed of plots, but from combat: the nights of billposting, the public speeches, the blows, the stormy meetings, the printing of leaflets at night on a Roneo and their distribution at dawn, the arrests, the interrogations, the brutalities, the prisons, the trials, the disappointments, the insults, the indifference, the setbacks . . . Here, it will be the most tenacious, the most devoted, the most conscious who will be first, here is formed the revolutionary élite.

UNION OF “NATIONALS” OR ORGANISATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES

The Camouflaged Enemies

A number of politicians, civilian or military, for a long time turned to Algeria as a springboard for their ambitions. Men of the régime by interest and by formation, they remained the sworn enemies of the revolution. They were even more suited to combat it, for they seemed to be partisans for it. The Gaullists, until May 13, certain members of parliament, certain leaders thereafter, are the illustrations of the infiltration of the revolt by the régime.

One of the plotters of May 13, Léon Delbecque, shamelessly explained this method: “I was the organiser of May 13,” he declared on July 6, 1958, at the conference of the Social Republicans. “In the offices I occupied, I was solicited to participate in plots often directed against the Republic and the republican régime, plots the police knew of but were unable to stop. I managed to be at the right place at the right time, to divert towards General de Gaulle the uprising which was to occur.”

The directorate of the OAS was full of such individuals who “managed to be at the right place at the right time” to commit the revolt to a dead end. If the Secret Army could have dethroned de Gaulle, the same ones would have enabled the régime to traverse this crisis without mishap, as on May 13.

They are skilful at using the confusion born of apparently similar goals. They know that the “nationals,” without political education, succumb to the union blackmail and have a culpable penchant for the supposedly repentant adversary.

To accept their game would be to fall into their hands. It would be to become their accomplice to be quiet and not reveal them to the entire people. No union with the men of the régime! They must be denounced with the utmost vigour. At this price, the masses will cease to be misled, the partisans will lose their natural naïveté and will become educated militants.

Zero plus Zero

Zero plus zero always equals zero. The addition of mythomaniacs, plotters, nostalgics, careerists, and “nationals” will never yield a coherent force. Preserving the hope of uniting the incapable is to persevere in error. The few elements of value are paralysed by the cranks that surround them. Popular opinion is not mistaken here. Also, they do considerable harm to Nationalism, with which they are frequently confused. They make the healthy elements run away and prevent any recruitment of quality.

With them, union is out of the question. It is necessary, on the contrary, to proclaim the fundamental differences that separate them from Nationalism. The cranks must be pitilessly pushed aside. On this condition, it will be possible to attract new elements, effective partisans.

Unions and Committees of Agreement

Even the OAS, with its dynamic action, with its single direction, its enormous means, and an essential common objective, did not succeed in federating in Metropolitan France the partisans of French Algeria. How can one think that this pious dream, as old as the national opposition, can be realised in the future with infinitely less valid conditions?

The unions and the fronts have only one goal: benefiting those who organise or control them. The Popular Front favoured the communists, as the national grouping served Soustelle. The other participants were the dupes.

Proposed by the notables, the unions and committees of agreement more often than not have an electoral goal. They procure at a low price billposters and teams of stewards; they are excellent siphons of money. When the electoral period is closed, the union is put to sleep to await a new occasion to exploit the unalterable credulity of the “nationals.”

With the first serious difficulty, for example, a decision to be taken on a controversial event, the front explodes and everybody retakes his liberty. The dream has ended. The political fight, just like a war, demands manoeuvre: dissimulation, retreat, attack. It necessitates a total discipline and a single direction capable of taking initiative instantaneously, engaging all its forces. The heterogeneous composition and the diversity of the conceptions of its leaders prohibit the unions from applying these laws; they are thus devoted to opportunism and disintegration.

How can it be imagined that an incoherent herd, dominated by blabbermouths, careerists, and weirdoes, undermined by the quarrels of clans and individuals, is capable of struggle against the superior organised force of the régime? It is true that this is not a goal of the “national” notables. This form of action is definitively condemned by experience. The tactics of the front cannot be envisaged without a powerful Nationalist organisation capable of imparting its élan and imposing its political line.

Monolithic and Disciplined Organisation

The work of the last few years was accomplished by small teams, even by isolated militants. This hard core was composed of veritable militants, educated, reliable, competent. With tiny means, but with tenacity and imagination, they were the authors of all the partial successes recorded in the struggle.

The proof is here that five militants are more valuable than fifty weirdoes. The quality of combatants is, by far, preferable to their quantity. It is around a small and effective team that the masses will assemble, not the reverse.

That the revolutionary movements are effective minorities evidently does not mean that all minority groups are likewise revolutionary. It is a too easy excuse for the mediocrity of some. The effective minorities are not sterile sects, they are in direct contact with the people.

Destined to fight, the Nationalist Organisation must be one, monolithic, and hierarchical. It will be formed by the grouping of all the militants won over to Nationalism, devoted and disciplined. Their age, no more than their milieu, is of no importance. Be they students or peasants, workers or technicians, these militants will be in all milieus the propagandists and the organisers of the revolution.

Depending on the circumstances, their action will be apparent or not. Its aspects will enable them to ensure the generalised penetration of the Nationalist Organisation, up to and including the mechanisms of the régime.

PLOTS OR POPULAR ACTION

Behind the Times

The example of the Gaullist plots, the systematic terrorism of the FLN or of the IRA in Ireland , has appealed to a number of “nationals.” It is easier to copy the past than to imagine the future. Anachronism in politics, as in the military field, ensures defeat; one cannot conduct trench warfare in the age of tanks.

Certain images have caused great damage in the past. The Spanish Civil War, the national insurrection of 1936 around the army. May 13 and the military pseudo-revolt. The appeal to the soldiers, so dear to the “nationals.” The French army is one of the components of the régime; its chiefs have been carefully chosen for their self-interested submission, its cadres are, in majority, simple functionaries, but not the army with a capital A. That will only be good for helping the enterprise of patching up the régime.

It is through lack of self-confidence and rejection of effort that the “nationals” have discharged their responsibilities on the blind hope of imaginary military plots. It is intellectual cowardice, a false excuse to escape from the patient and difficult tasks of the militants.

A Thousand Revolutionary Cadres

Popular consent, no more than street action, is not sufficient to assure the success of the revolution in a technically developed society. There is no power without the control, from the interior, of the technical mechanisms that ensure the functioning of a modern State. The extreme complexity of the High Administration, its covert power, and its colonisation by the caste of technocrats make it a world apart, impenetrable, and all-powerful. Only the presence in these mechanisms of revolutionary cadres, even in very small numbers, will allow it to be neutralised and to yield to the nationalist will. Certain public services of vital interest for the functioning of the country, infiltrated by the technocrats and the communists, are within the same framework of concerns.

In the open, as the standard-bearer of Nationalism, the political movement itself will have the task of publicly speaking to the people and winning them over. It will utilise, according to the necessities of the hour, all the legal means of propaganda and action. Built on a hierarchical corps of cadres and educated militants, organised on a cellular basis, both territorial and professional, it will appeal for widespread support.

In overt or covert liaison with the political movement, the “bases” will be progressively organised. As explained above, the purpose of the “bases” is to handle and control a specific milieu by way of social as well as political action, the adversaries being eliminated and the neutrals absorbed. This work will give birth to diverse associations adapted to the selected milieus. It will rest entirely on the Nationalist cadres, specialised and capable of looking after the organisation.

Penetrating the mechanisms of the State, the political movement and popular bases will be the principal branches of the Nationalist Organisation. They will be built on a corps of cadres, hierarchical, specialised, present in all the social organisations, connected to a centralised direction of collegial form. The organisation will thus be capable of orchestrating the same campaign throughout the country and in all its aspects. It will be able to manoeuvre with discipline and promptness in the battle. Cadres and militants in the people will be like the yeast in the dough. A thousand élite revolutionary cadres will give victory to Nationalism.

ON THE SCALE OF THE WEST

An Exterior Lung

During all the time following April 22, 1961, the action in favour of French Algeria received a permanent and active support from various groups of Nationalist tendencies in Europe and even the United States . For the first time, an effective solidarity united Westerners over the frontiers.

The propaganda means of these groups were mobilised in order to support the action conducted in France . Newspapers, brochures, conferences, meetings, demonstrations, support committees adopted the same watchword in all languages.

Several Nations became, in some way, the exterior lungs of the French resistance, allowing it to regain its breath. Working groups were set up. The lodging of fugitive partisans was organised. The régime understood the danger. It intervened on the diplomatic level to stop support for the French combatants and to repress acts of solidarity.

Solidarity and Orchestration

Faced with the permanent plot of the liberal régimes and the international communist organisation, the Nationalists of the West must not only persevere in this way, but also increase the action and perfect the method. The militants of the European Nation must find outside their frontiers support for a propaganda that explains their combat, exalts their courage, denounces the repression and the brutality of which they are victims, and awakens the sentiment of a common combat of the European peoples for their survival against those who want to enslave them.

The expansion of these initiatives must allow a true orchestration around a very simple central theme: struggle against communism and against all those who support it.

Through highly diverse channels—the press, circles of students, unions, members of parliament, political movements, cultural associations, ex-servicemen, youth organisations, committees of intellectuals—a vigorous counterattack could be conducted against the Soviet enterprises and those who indirectly support them. Such as an event susceptible of demonstrating the collusion of the liberal régime and communism, such as others capable of arousing popular indignation, could be immediately displayed and pinned down, everywhere and at the same moment. A coordinating body leaving to everybody their freedom of action will have to collect information and distribute it for purposes of exploitation.

New Blood

The entry of the youth into the political combat, the influence of struggles conducted in France, the new problems, have accelerated the need for a new definition of Nationalist ideology as a doctrine of the Young Europe. The numerous contacts, the exchanges of ideas, the joint conferences have displayed a convergence of the conceptions of all the European militants.

The last few years, which are an incomparable source of education for the Nationalists of France, appear at the same time as an unparalleled experience offered to the Nationalists of Europe. Here is forged a method adapted to the new conditions of struggle. In the positive critique undertaken by the French militants, the European combatants will find the lessons that will guide their action.

TO COMMENCE

To commence, it is necessary to create the conditions for a new, popular, and resolutely legal action. From this perspective, the last after-effects of the OAS, which from now on is a powerful asset of the régime, must be eliminated because they are harmful.

It is important to develop everywhere and at all levels the positive critique of the previous action, to work collectively for a new definition of Nationalism. It is necessary to speak, to write, to explain, to request the opening of the national opposition press for this work. All opportunities must be grasped and personal works must be inspired by this concern and this need.

The action of propaganda must be pursued so as to maintain the presence and permanent explanation of Nationalism. Crying over the past or practising a policy of resentment would be contrary to the goal pursued. The responsibility for the abandonment of Algeria lies, not with a misled people, but with the régime and the politicians (civilian and military) who directed the “national” combat.

In the same way, it is necessary to maintain contact with all sincere partisans. To aid those who have suffered. To be actively present beside our refugee compatriots from Algeria and not leave the initiative solely to the forces of the régime.

This transitional period must be put to good use for a in-depth work so as to prepare for the time when the militants, formerly dispersed, will get together so as to set up the Nationalist Organisation, define its program, and begin the fight.

No, the plots do not solve anything, they are harmful. The plotters resemble the old maids who meet to vent their spleen and their venomous feelings. Salon plotters or terrorists, they cut themselves off from their compatriots. They take a misunderstood mentality, become bad-tempered, and resentment dominates them. They thus move away permanently from Nationalism and victory.

Theatrical Revolutionaries

It is not the means utilised, but the goals that characterise a revolutionary organisation. The means, by themselves, are dependent on the circumstances. Thus, the Bolshevik party used illegality and violence, whereas the National Socialist party, also a revolutionary organisation, used solely legal means to conquer power.

Extravagance in expression, the promise of Apocalypse, has never made Nationalism advance by one step, on the contrary. The adversary finds easy arguments, the people go away from men who appear like dangerous fools, the partisans are discouraged or become deformed in their turn.

The theatrical revolutionaries, in their remarks, their attitude, and their action, are enemies of the revolution. In particular, the young elements should be on their guard. Dressing in a costume called a uniform, confusing sectarianism with intransigence, displaying gratuitous violence, are infantile practices. Some would find the exaltation of a morbid romanticism here. The revolution is neither a fancy dress ball nor an outlet for mythomaniacs. Revolutionary action is not the occasion for an increase in purism.

Bases in the People

The action aims to enlighten the people intoxicated by the powerful propaganda of the régime, to propound the nationalist ideal, and to organise for victory. This is why priority is given to propaganda. Directed at the masses, this action must be strictly legal.

Working among the people is not a privilege of communism. It only needs a suitable method. Systematic and patient penetration, it will cover the most varied aspects. The discontent of workers in a company against the official unions, the revolt of the badly housed in a district, the concentration of refugees from North Africa in a high density block of flats, an opening in a local federation of farmers, a student guild, the elections in a favourable municipality, an instruction centre of the army, a professional school, here are so many opportunities to progressively form, with perseverance and perfect adaptation to their milieu, nationalist “bases.” The teacher, the engineer, the officer, the unionist, Nationalist militants, everybody will be in their milieu the potential organisers of these “bases.”

The organisation of such bases in popular milieus implies a specialisation of work and the concentration of the efforts of all on a few points chosen after a thorough analysis of the chances and the means to be employed. Better to control in all of France only one company, only one municipality, only one university faculty, than to deploy a generalised agitation without any hold over the masses. These strongholds of Nationalism will become by example its best assets of propaganda. They will be schools of militants and organisers who, in their turn, will pursue their work in other milieus.

It is a long and exacting action without glory and without panache. It is a painstaking action. But only this action will prove to be effective.

CRAFT INDUSTRY OR EFFECTIVENESS

Craft Industry

At the origin of the Nationalist combat, the scattering of initiatives and the weakness of the initial means concentrated on a very small number of militants the totality of the tasks. What was necessary during the first stage becomes catastrophic when the organisation develops. A few organisers are overburdened by innumerable activities, each of which is as necessary as the rest. Around them, it is the custom to rely on them for everything. For fear of seeing a task poorly executed by a new member, the organiser continues to do everything by himself. The spirit of initiative disappears and with it the taste for action. The militants of value see themselves relegated to basic duties; they lose their faith and their dynamism.

In this craft industry stage, everybody must know how to do everything and nobody is responsible for anything in particular. The personal abilities of militants are ignored. Craft industry work leads to an extraordinary loss of energy and quality. Thus, one saw an excellent economic journalist, well connected in the United States , charged with distributing the circulars of the OAS in post offices. He was arrested in the course of one of these operations that young partisans, high school students or others, could have accomplished in his place, when nobody could replace him in his speciality, where his utility should have appeared obvious.

The overwhelmed organiser, like the unused militant, concur in the same sentiment of ineffectiveness and disgust. The one and the other are conscious of working in a vacuum.

The proven militants exist in sufficient numbers for the future Nationalist Organisation to refuse craft industry work that will result in suffocation.

Division of Labour and Centralisation

The variety of the activities of the Organisation, the diversity of the milieus that it must penetrate, the overt and covert character of the struggle, imposes a division of labour that must go, in certain cases, up to compartmentalisation. This division by branches of activity, entrusted to proven officials, is logically accompanied by a single and centralised command at the top.

Within each branch of activity, the division of labour and the specialisation of members must be practised equally. The local organisations must be able to be devoted with the maximum of effectiveness for the action, the centralisation and the specialisation of tasks should give them the possibility. To take an example, the one for propaganda should be able to rapidly supply material adapted to local groups, rather than craft industry initiatives powerless to struggle against adverse propaganda.

Through its militants, the Organisation must be present everywhere, including inside the adversary. The presence of militants in certain economic and administrative mechanisms can be of infinitely superior utility than their participation in the activities of an activist group. The struggle does not take a single form. This is why the division of labour must be equally applied at the level of local organisations. The members must be the active elements of a common work, responsible for specific tasks, and not simply executing orders. On this condition, effective militants, organisers, and cadres will be formed.