Why are catastrophes wishful thinking?

by Benjamin Noyles

Criticized for his “extremism” by Alain de Benoist, Guillaume Faye was a founding intellectual of the New Right whose ideas and methods are so fashionable today. Now that Convergence of Catastrophes has been translated from the original La Convergence des catastrophes (2004) courtesy of Arktos, we can actually make a proper analysis of this thinking, now that a decade has nearly passed – but from the results it should act as a real wake up call for us.

The premise of the book itself is really quite straightforward; there are a dozen catastrophes that are set to make significant change on the face of the earth, and the events are already in motion. Cataloguing snapshots from the time and drawing conclusions, Faye’s predictions range from a future where western states become third world countries like South Africa (a managed situation with an unclear outcome, but otherwise an end of ‘progress’ as he sees it) to a total collapse that sends the rest of the world back to the Neolithic era and white Europeans get a second chance. All this is happening very soon; Faye gives a timetable of of 2015-2020.

The first thing you will notice from reading is that the real purpose of the book is about wiping the smug grin off all of these annoying people we meet and their overpaid professors who all that think they are going to save the world with energy saving light bulbs, diplomatic talks, and homosexual rights activists. What else is the point of being a catastrophist? Every point Faye makes is qualified with scorn heaped on the liberals for being naive and stupid enough to allow all this – and he really lays it on with a trowel with lots of colourful analogy in case you didn’t get the point. It is here we run into major problems with the book.

Faye’s definition of liberalism is very narrow which means there isn’t much of a challenge; arguing that the idealistic thinking that has intellectuals churning out eccentric thesis for coming universal brotherhood like “IPod liberalism” (if everyone buys an IPod, everybody buys into liberalism) and “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”(no two countries with a McDonalds fast food restaurant have ever gone to war with each other). Faye contends that the collapse of the economic global structure that makes humanitarian practices possible signals the end of liberalism. This implies that liberalism requires mass markets, social democratic excess, and the current degree of cultural Marxism to continue survival. This is maybe the view that liberalism itself has also converged into a single post modern liberalism as Alexander Dugin has argued.

There is a great danger for us here. It is very reassuring to say liberalism as we know it will eventually come to end, it is a security blanket – Even Faye admits that the prospect of complete collapse and the world population being shaved by a few billion is the most comforting scenario as the white race will be given a second chance to survive. Does this give us a sufficient idea of what is going on so we can take the appropriate steps?

It is all very negative and arrogant, in true French style. Faye asserts from the start that liberals are stupid – why? Because they are not taking action or preparing, therefore they must be stupid. My first thought was if liberals are so stupid maybe they know something you don’t.

Consider carefully the following; Faye provides several fault lines which will spell the end of liberalism – these shouldn’t be anything new to you, but try to think in terms of developments since 10 years ago. These points are essentially a summary of the whole book.

1. A declining Europe where the social fabric is falling to pieces; so called ‘regenerated’ urban spaces are being turned into financial black holes by waves of parasitic third world immigrants – European capitals, national symbols heading the way of Detroit and there is system gridlock. Where they can people go on strike – nobody is working and everybody is demanding more benefits from the system. Business and the educated youth are fleeing the country where they can. A good quote to describe the system; “In our economy, we have piled the disadvantages of both capitalism and socialism without receiving any of the advantages from either system. From capitalism, we receive only the free market system and the irresponsible open border policy without being helped by the advantages of the freedom to create business; from socialism, we receive only centralisation, union corporatism, high taxes and bureaucracy, with no advantages from social justice, real social solidarity and right to a job.”

2. The golden horn of plenty that is the white man will reach breaking point. In Europe the demographic coma will serve as a tipping point when the boomers reach retirement age and there are not enough new taxpayers to replace them. The system will collapse under the weight of old people as millions of Europeans join the ranks of the retired and hand the feeding of their ‘pets’, bad habits, and unsustainable system to the children most did not themselves bother to have. Europe will lose a population of 100 million between now and 2050 and it only gets worse. Russia, a collapsed society of mostly i

mpoverished Europeans is what we can expect to be reflected in the rest of an impoverished Europe’s future – Russia a country where every year they lose a million people in a ratio of births to deaths. This combined with mass immigration will mean that within this century the nations of Europe will be completely erased.

3. By contrast to the decline of Europe the developing world has been doing lots of developing, and it will all collapse. In half a century world population has doubled especially in the new sprawling cities where it’s formerly subsistence peasant population aims for a middle class American lifestyle. This was simply a terrible idea, these new unstable centres have been established on a model that doesn’t suit them, and propped up by an international system – there is no local economy to fall back on and collapse will be disastrous. The teaming overpopulation of the global south will lead to humanitarian catastrophes and increased mass immigration. It is all too much for the world to bear; though in this instance humans will be the ‘adjustment variable’.

4. A resurgent Islam that will geopolitically threaten the liberal hegemony and whose terrorist atrocities will only increase in scope ‘giga-terrorism’. The role of Islam is the most important because it signalled the first major challenge to Fukuyama’s the ‘End of History’ – this was something liberals had been completely unprepared for. As it stands any continued efforts to defeat Islam militarily will only bring a victory for Islam.

5. A ‘North-South’ conflict. Anti white rhetoric and feelings of victimisation by ‘western imperialism’ provide a universal agreement on who to blame the minute anything goes wrong in the world as is surely the case. International relations will be strained and large third worldist blocs in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East will begin to take what they feel belongs to them. Playing out in demographic disparity on a global level, the collective rage and entitlement of the third world will be felt strongest on the front lines in Europe where civil war is inevitable and is already occurring. The subliminal message in daily stories of ethnic crime which on the face of it appears so cruel, pointless, and destructive – the refusal to integrate, resentment – is evidence we are already in a low key civil war.

6. Ecological disasters that will cause massive destruction and depopulate the earth. Flooding and drought caused by climate change will wreak coastlines and increase desertification. The return of a plague on a global scale is inevitable, and diseases like AIDS may well have only begun to reap their harvest.

7. Shortages; the presence of food and water will dramatically decline in some parts of the world which will promote conflict. There is no renewable energy source to replace the increasing demands on our finite resources.

8. Lastly the spectre of a looming financial crisis which is considered inevitable in an economy based on gambling and debt. This crisis will be worse than the great depression and because the world is globalised it will be a single world collapse. Though specific details can be somewhat vague – it is more implicit that all of the above will make modern economics impossible.

Those things considered they are all just as true today – but now they are explainable. There are any number of examples as to how every one of these points and the ensuing collapse scenario, might in some aspects accord with the long term survival of liberalism: population reduction and economic collapse is the key to disenfranchising the non essential consumer base, it would extend the life of the fossil fuel indefinitely, the collapse of the industrial nation state into manageable and financially enslavable localities is the EU-UN dream. Examples like these are what I am getting at with fatal oversight.

Now we return to Faye’s work with our blind spots uncovered to the long term aims of our enemy, the whole sobering truth is before us, and I think we got played.

The role if Islam is central to Faye’s theory because you have a the West whose goal of implementing global liberalism is being stonewalled by Islam yet the global elites are doing everything they can to destroy that west and empower the Muslims to the point where the Islamic world can conceivably win; their grandchildren have already beaten our grandchildren figuratively speaking. So what is going on here? The conclusion of Faye is that this is simply proof of liberalism’s short sighted stupidity and eventual extinction.

This is not so due to the stunning revelations of the past few years. Faye rightly predicted new Islamic revolutions, but assumed they would stem from what we as anti globalists considered ‘our people’ in the middle east; Libya, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran etc. Who would have believed a decade ago that these parties and regimes would be fighting for their lives and going under an uprising of Jacobin Islamic fundamentalism across the Middle East in 2011 – helped every step of the way by humanitarian airstrikes from NATO? Tens of thousands of foreign mujahedeen fighters who are still affectionately called democracy protestors by the media. Yes, Islamic fundamentalism has been co-opted into the liberal sphere – who the hell saw that coming?

The liberals did; Faye laughs at the absurd idealism being churned out of the institutions of the leftist elites about how the democracy cult will succeed in the Arab world. I remember this was when all the really absurd anti-Islamophobic stuff started to be pushed – followed by more hate speech laws, it seemed like such tripe at the time, It didn’t make sense – all western leaders were unanimous in stressing that this was not a conflict geared against Islam which was our ally, and how the reason for all this was that the Muslim world had not yet had its ‘renaissance’. Though we didn’t have the details, a great many other signs were there, but very few nationalists saw it and that is terrible. That is a major intelligence flaw.

Without the benefit of hindsight we find all those supposed inconsistencies and contradictions have purpose.

Islam was the axis on Faye’s judgment and now in one swoop most of the other points are now accounted for. There is no contradiction in allowing Islam into Europe for instance because they are on the globalist side as an occupying force and the policy of genocide against Europeans is back on a sane and rational course. Who cares if there is a collapse after that? It makes long term sense now; what better market is there for a post collapse society than a population of dumb, backwards, immaterial, and religiously obedient dirt people? It’s perfect, but that is market logic; the market doesn’t care about what your skin colour is, only who it can make the biggest buck off of – the point is to strip us till we have nothing to give before moving on to a new consumer base on the flip side.

There is a ‘convergence’, yes, but it is a managed energy flow – Muslims will be the new ‘West’ born untimely ripped out of Europe. The ‘catastrophe’ is for us, planned by our leaders well in advance. A decade long charade has been lifted and you just have to admire the sheer genius of it all.

So are they still stupid? Perhaps I am right or perhaps I am wrong, this though is a demonstration that we are missing something very crucial. Faye is correct that liberals as individuals may not be the smart people they are cracked up to be, but what he has missed is they have a world view that allows them to adapt, change, project itself into the future.

What this book proves it that without the same solid cause and plan of action on our side – that is the thousand year stare of a world view we will be unable to exploit any development, and the enemy will always be one step ahead.

Faye had his eye off the ball, and by targeting only the already doomed political class world of our current politicians he was putting all his eggs in one basket. How old is this political class and its values – the me generation elite? Only a few decades really, starting at the social revolution. What is to say that what comes after isn’t going to be worse?

With such disregard, Liberal worlds collapse all the time – but independently of one another; In our lifetimes we saw the collapse of a major egalitarian system; communism. Did the areas where it fell in Europe become less liberal? Were even euro-communists and Trotskyites affected by this event? If liberalism ever looks like it is on the way out it will come up with something else to replace it because even in one single liberal there are several contradicting positions. As Faye points out with his denigration of liberals, they are all narrative; big talks, empty speeches, stupid blogs, they will believe anything – that is not the substance of liberalism. Sitting and waiting for a collapse to happen will in no way guarantee a positive outcome, it is something that has to be worked towards; we have a job to do.

If we want a future we need to be thinking about it the same way the liberals do – modifying our approach to fit the events. The strength we lost in 1945 and haven’t been able to replicate since, we can have that again, we just have to bring it into the world with a well thought out plan. We can start cutting out a lot of movement deadwood, things that have weighed us down – all that patriotard stuff can go. A huge movement sticking point has been the inability to develop a new concept of nationalism that is separate from what exists, so its message and ideals cannot be misinterpreted or betrayed – what better precedent for this is there than anticipating the collapse of the modern nation state?

So there are many positive remarks to be said for the work of catastrophists like Guillaume Faye – it helps break down barriers and prejudices, grinds down pretention – it ties us to reality and things that are going on. Forward for the 2012 edition of Convergence of Catastrophes is by Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, stresses the progress that has been made – speaking of Faye;

“As one of the founders of the French New Right, he shared the group’s deep suspicion of Americans, and in his 2001 book Why We Fight he wrote at considerable length about ‘the American adversary’. I certainly do not support most of what the Unites States government does, but I believe Mr Faye was mistaken … Anyone with a vision of the West must look beyond governments to the people they misgovern, and what Mr. Faye and I discovered at the meeting in 2003 was, indeed , what became the theme of his 2012 talk: that the people of America and Europe are brothers-in-arms … For virtually any other member of the French New Right it would be heresy”

To conclude, the key to developing what is called a ‘total strategy’ is the ability to see our fight on a global international level – the closer we are to seeing the whole picture the easier it is to see what it is we are fighting for. When I say fight – I mean a real fight, observations like that of what Guillaume Faye provides the context for. We have comrades around the world, and by seeing what we have in common (not only that we face the same challenges but are in the same struggle) do we recognise it in a universal form that can adapt well enough to see us into the post-collapse future.