• About
  • DONATE!
  • Links
  • Manifesto

Institute for National Revolutionary Studies

Institute for National Revolutionary Studies

Tag Archives: nationalism

The Long March: Defeating Liberalism in the West

14 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by emontsalvat in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

ideology, nationalism, socialism, The Long March: Defeating Liberalism in the West

“One must work in solitude as a man who opens a clearing in virgin forest, sustained by the unique hope that somewhere in its depths, others are working to the same end.” – Jünger

Today, to be Western is synonymous with being liberal. The general political consensus in the West accepts individualism, capitalism, and liberal democracy. However, this does not necessarily mean that the people of the West are satisfied with liberalism. There is a yearning for communal identity, protection from the atomizing forces of the market, and greater participation in the government than occasionally submitting a ballot, a yearning that has yet to be fully expressed in the political arena. As the forces of “progress” turn more and more regions of the West into de-industrialized hinterlands populated by people who have been completely abandoned by the political system, the bromides of the political elites will no longer serve to quell their unease. Yet, the ability to express this new political will has not yet developed. The people of the West have lived with liberalism so long their everyday attitudes and experiences are shaped by it. It becomes an all-encompassing and totalitarian system. All aspects of culture, language, religion are touched along with politics and economics. Not only is this a political struggle, but a cultural one as well, a struggle against liberal mentalities in all facets of life. It will be long, arduous, viewed with suspicion by both the elites and certain elements of the common people who have yet to be roused from their slumber.

First we must understand the penetration of liberal ideology in the West. There is not a uniform acceptance of liberalism in the West. We can understand the West today to be the developed nations of the world accepting the “Washington consensus,” by which we mean in general neo-liberalism, along with liberal democracy, and individualism in social matter. This West is fluid and not geographically bound, we can count South Korea and Japan as parts of the West as they generally accept American norms of governance. However, these nations have not been liberal for the entirety of their history, they may have long histories of anti-liberal political movements extending centuries. Even the history of the United States, the strongest bastion of liberalism, cannot be reduced to mere liberalism, as there existed older political traditions before the emergence of Enlightenment liberalism enshrined in the constitution, and communities living by old ways essentially untouched by the anything resembling free market capitalism. The West is quite heterogeneous. In France, there is a vast history of opposition to liberalism, on both the left and the right, encompassing movements as varied as monarchists and communists. Even Gaullism demonstrated a certain critique of liberalism, with its dirigiste economics and desire for a foreign policy independent of the United States. Moreover, the rise of nationalist forces in recent elections demonstrates a growing skepticism of liberalism. It will be necessary to engage these extant forces and the vast heritage to defeat liberalism. However, in the Anglosphere, the illiberal political tradition is much smaller. Therefore, the struggle against liberalism will be much more difficult in this context. Yet ultimately, the historical presence of anti-liberal movements, no matter how small, should be used to further today’s resistance to liberalism.

The purpose of understanding this history is to awaken the latent attachments to traditions outside of liberalism. To create a collective identity, outside of the forces of consumerism and individualism. Regional and local identities that have been threatened by globalization should be encouraged. Local arts and music that have been swamped by the mass produced pseudo-culture of Hollywood should be defended. Regional dialects that have escaped the homogenization and Americanization of language wrought by mass media should be revived. However, this cultural struggle cannot be won by turning these local things into hobbies for academics to be displayed like dinosaur bones at a museum. It must be living, omnipresent in the daily discourse of society. It would be futile to have a folk music performance at school, only to have the kids go back home to download the latest American rap music. This culture cannot be turned into a stale piece of history. This will be a very difficult task. In areas where local culture is vibrant, true to its historical roots, the people tend to be rustic, their livelihoods threatened by the rise of mass capitalist society, their children learn different ways and move to pursue careers. Traditional culture is seen as the domain of the elderly, who are living in the past, it is not seen as trendy to live with it. This is connected to economics. Wealth and power, as advertised in the media is possessed by those who reject traditions, thus the market serves to seduce people wishing to be economically successful into rejecting their own heritage. The fight against capitalism is therefore necessarily an essential component of the fight to preserve this heritage, as the market draws men away from their roots to pursue wealth anywhere across the face of the earth.

However, the defense of the small pockets of traditional, pre-liberal culture is a small task compared to the fight needed to reintroduce some semblance of anti-liberal culture to places where it is totally dominant. Firstly, it must avoid becoming another commercialized counter-culture, a collection of goods to be marketed at alienated youth who want to assert their discontent with their parents and peers. It must become a replacement for mass produced, capitalist culture. In many ways we can look at how the Irish language was reintroduced in Ireland by Irish nationalists, after years of marginalization and repression everywhere outside the most remote rural reaches of the nation, as a useful example. The establishment of schools of national culture, youth organizations, athletic groups to immerse the people in their true national culture is imperative. These must not be fringe cultural activities, but things that are open to people from all walks of life. They mustn’t be elite clubs. The goal of recreating national culture can only be achieved by the direct involvement of the people of the nation.

In addition to defensive measures to preserve and promote national culture, there must be offensive measures against the organs of culture industry. The reputation of corporate media must be blackened. The representatives of the corporate press dismissed as liars. The bearers of national culture must bring the fight to the agents of corporate culture. Campaigns of propaganda against the media should be launched. Active measures should be used to discourage people from consuming it. Protests, strikes, and occupations are all measures that can break the back of the corporate media. Those considering careers in the media should be guided towards alternatives. The vast masses working under the media moguls should be mobilized against them. We must always reiterate that the struggle for national culture is also a struggle for economic justice.

And economic justice will come, slowly and surely. The vast jungle of capitalism that has swallowed the soil of Western nations is rotting. It is leaving large openings of fertile ground. In the de-industrialized hinterlands the people are increasingly left with nothing but what they can build themselves. Now throughout the West, people have been indoctrinated into believing that socialism means total state control and central planning. This ideological hurdle will have to be overcome. There are many variants of socialism. What socialism means varies from place to place, North Korean socialism doesn’t mean the same thing as French or American socialism. For the people of the West, it will take a few determined organizers to show a path to their own unique variety of socialism. It should begin with small scale cooperatives, producing basic foodstuffs and handicrafts. They can be democratically organized in line with the democratic traditions of the West, the workers decide collectively how to manage the operation. Ironically, this direct democracy would be more democratic than the liberal democracy currently in place, where the people are only involved once every election cycle to mark a ballot. The workers can occupy disused farmland, squat housing, and production facilities. It may be necessary to organize some form of self defense to stop agents of capitalism, such as repossession agents from seizing the property taken by cooperatives. Once several cooperatives are established, they should work cooperatively among each other, rather than competing. Very importantly, for the emergence of larger cooperative industries, forming cooperatives in the area of raw material extraction, such as timber, oil, or mining should be the next line of attack. In the United States, there is a long history of radical labor agitation in the mining and mineral extraction industries that should be consulted as a guide. Wildcat strikes, sporadic leaderless actions to seize control of enterprises are an important tool. After small scale industry has been formed, to take care of the basic necessities, larger scale cooperatives focused on heavy industry can arise. They can repossess shuttered factories, and place orders for raw materials with cooperative mining, farming, timber producing enterprises.

Now certainly this will not be easy, it will be long and arduous task. The smaller scale industries, bakeries, restaurants, farms will be easier to organize cooperatively, they face less competition from oligarchic or monopolist capital that dominates in the heavier industries. They will emerge sporadically, like clearings in a forest. They must not be disheartened that they find themselves isolated or alone, but instead be filled with the home that others are working towards the same end, and that they can unite in common struggle. Next, the seizure of raw material production will be a very crucial line of attack, if that fails, there is no hope for heavy industry. In the worst case scenario, military style action, along the lines of sending the National Guard to crush strikers may take place. To prevent this, the workers should seek to undermine the loyalty of the police and military, and bring them to their side. In the past, we have seen policeman’s unions go on strike, it is a certainly an open possibility that they can be swayed. Also, in the United States, much of the military is made of men from the dispossessed regions of the nation, as the military is the only one offering a stable career. Once they recognize that they will be firing on their own hometown compatriots, it is quite likely they will refuse to do so or even join them. When faced with a choice between the empty lies of politicians and organizations based on true democracy, their faith in the former will certainly be shaken. Of course, the government need not rely on its military, it can employ mercenaries, private military contractors armed with the same weapons. Facing government mercenaries will likely be the greatest threat. Small organizations with commercially available armaments have failed, disastrously, time and time again when they have holed themselves up for a last stand against government special ops. One only need to look at Waco or Bundy Ranch for relevant examples. In this case, preparing for a last stand will only result in a very bloody and futile last stand. In contrast to this strategy, hit and run tactics, emphasizing limited, surprise engagements, playing the defender’s knowledge of the territory and a supportive population should be employed. We can look at numerous example of how guerrilla tactics by relatively poorly armed units have brought much stronger forces to their knees. However, admittedly this may required a protracted struggle lasting for years. The embryonic socialist movement may face an incredibly fierce challenge. It should be an imperative matter to recruit well armed police and military to the side of cooperatives for self defense, hopefully with enough speed and in enough numbers to dissuade the capitalist government from making war upon its own citizens. In a more positive scenario, a town can become entirely cooperative as the local government takes the side of the cooperatives, encouraging surrounding ones to follow its path, to form a region dominated by a confederacy of local cooperatives, thus a greater clearing came be made in the rotting jungle of capitalism until the entire nation has been organized in a cooperative form. Realistically, there may be long term division in the nation as the centers dominated by capitalism resist the growing cooperative movement rising in the hinterlands.

In the hinterlands, the national struggle is quite evidently linked with the social struggle. Local culture is obliterated or marginalized, profits are carted off to distant cities, the capitalist class is far away, appearing as a race of aliens. In the centers, outside of the periphery, the traditional national culture has been replaced by urban alienation. The penetration of pre-liberal culture will be slow. However, in the urban center, we can make resort to basic theses of class struggle, not necessarily linked to spatial or national concerns. Austerity means that the workers cannot be bought off, as their lot worsens, increased agitation to overthrow the capitalist class will emerge. And this will look towards the growing cooperative movement in the periphery as an ally and a model. They will welcome their admission to the growing confederacy of free local cooperatives. There will emerge the bond between the national struggle and the old class struggle as they look towards the people of the periphery, not as backwards peasants, but as bearers of liberation.

The liberation of the West will be a long and arduous journey. The deep roots of liberalism must be torn up slowly, methodically. The souls of Western men must be liberated from the consumerist culture industry. From the farthest reaches of the abandoned hinterland, the march must begin, and must continue with a stubborn determination, the faint echoes of an ancient world before commercial exploitation must be carefully amplified into a thunderclap that shakes the foundations of liberalism. The ways of local cooperation and brotherhood must be recovered. The men of the West are faced with a final choice: national unity or destruction.

Advertisement

First World and Third World in the Age of Austerity

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by emontsalvat in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

First World and Third World in the Age of Austerity, ideology, Juan Domingo Perón, Lenin, nationalism, socialism

To begin we must first understand how neo-liberalism functions in both the Third and First World. Let us start by identifying neo-liberalism as a form of imperialism. In today’s neo-liberalism we see the accumulation of capital in a few countries at the expense of others, who are the debtors of these advanced capitalist economies. In a certain sense Lenin’s critique of imperialism, which he articulated in the age of British imperialism, is apt here:
“Imperialism is an immense accumulation of money capital in a few countries … Hence the extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of rentiers, i.e., people who live by “clipping coupons”, who take no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idleness. The export of capital, one of the most essential economic bases of imperialism, still more completely isolates the rentiers from production and sets the seal of parasitism on the whole country that lives by exploiting the labour of several overseas countries and colonies…For that reason the term “rentier state” (Rentnerstaat), or usurer state, is coming into common use in the economic literature that deals with imperialism. The world has become divided into a handful of usurer states and a vast majority of debtor states.” (Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism).

We see this situation today, the financial class of the developed nations makes loans and investments in the Third World, which provides cheap labor and raw materials for them to use, and which in turn makes them a profit, while the governments of the Third World pay the usurers loans back at the expense of their native populations. These rentier states do not do any of the labor, they merely subsist off the earnings of their capital investments. The division between the rentier state and the Third World can be described as a relation of core and periphery. The rentier state constitutes the core, it controls money, it controls technology, if need be it can control the government and the media of the Third World debtor state, the Third World is the periphery, it provides resources and labor, though the earnings of the laborers doing the work of the First World rentiers is certainly not sufficient for it to develop autonomously, and the meager share of profits it keeps often go to pay off the debt it accumulated from the “aid” of the rentier state. The Third World is kept in a state of dependency, it needs the rentier to provide jobs, technology, investment, but the rentier only gives it to them in the measure where it can maintain its control over it. In the Third World this leads to social dislocations, such the creation of mass urban conglomerations around new industrial projects, uprooting people from their traditional agrarian lives, the formation of shanty towns where living conditions lead to serious health issues, and corruption in the Third World comprador class that acts as the enforcers of the rentier states.

One would think that this would be an immense boon to the populations of the First World rentier nations. Marxist Third World theorists have stated that the working classes of the First World constitute a “labor aristocracy,” where the profits made off the back of the Third World ease their sufferings. First World welfare states, funded in part from profits of Third World exploitation would seem to justify this analysis. However, in an age of austerity this critique is increasingly proving antiquated. In the United States and Western Europe vast swaths of once vital industrial territory rust away. The welfare state that once provided for the victims of outsourcing to Third World nations has been shredded over the past 30 years. There are no “labor aristocrats” in Detroit and Appalachia, nor in Glasgow or Languedoc-Roussillon. In response to economic crises, the displaced working class of the First World is told time and again to “tighten their belts.” In response to stagnant or declining wages, people are increasingly forced to rely upon credit to make up for the lack of purchasing power. Moreover, this situation is exacerbated by the mass importation of immigrants from the Third World to undercut wages in the First. In many respects, these deindustrialized regions are becoming the peripheral territories of the large financial centers. The usurious interest taken from their purchases on credit flows to the big banks in New York City or London, who in turn flood their local markets with cheap goods manufactured overseas to kill the homegrown economy. In short, the rentier state has become reduced, in the age of neo-liberalism, to the rentier city, and perhaps even the rentier neighborhood (Wall Street and the City of London). Beyond the City and Wall Street, lies the periphery. Ultimately, the political dimension of this situation is xenocracy, rule of aliens, that is to say rule by an elite completely foreign to the lives of the people being ruled. The financial elite at the center of the rentier state is alien, in differing degrees, to both the displaced industrial worker of the First World and the sweatshop laborer of the Third World.

That leaves the question, what is to be done? In many ways the Third World is far ahead of the peripheral regions of the First World in addressing this problem. For the Third World, the rentier class is immediately identifiable as foreign, he lives in a foreign country, he speaks a foreign language, in most cases he looks different, he may practice a different religion, hold a different set of moral values. Instantaneously, a dichotomy between the nationalist, anti-capitalist forces and the international, capitalist forces arises, as soon as some global corporation breaks the soil on a new development. Moreover, in the Third World there is no nostalgia for the days when they were at the center of the market, simply because they never were. The history of capitalism in the Third World is nasty, brutish, and short. The capitalists came first as foreign invaders, then as a foreign investors. There were no halcyon days of the welfare state as in the First World, where the average worker could expect to afford house and car with his wages. For the people of the Third World, the national and social struggle is clear. The small comprador class, which serves as the liaison between the First World capitalists and the Third World nation, is seen as treasonous. The great Juan Domingo Perón, called the class of collaborators in Argentina sepoys, after the native Indians who served with the British colonizers. To combat them, Perón wisely offered some advice to developing nations in 1972:
“We protect our natural resources tooth and nail from the voracity of the international monopolies that seek to feed a nonsensical type of industrialization and development in high tech sectors with market-driven economies. You cannot cause a massive increase in food production in the Third World without parallel development of industries. So each gram of raw material taken away today equates in the Third World countries with kilos of food that will not be produced tomorrow.

Halting the exodus of our natural resources will be to no avail if we cling to methods of development advocated by those same monopolies, that mean the denial of the rational use of our resources.

In defense of their interests, countries should aim at regional integration and joint action.

Do not forget that the basic problem of most Third World countries is the absence of genuine social justice and popular participation in the conduct of public affairs. Without social justice the Third World will not be able to face the agonizingly difficult decades ahead.”

These basic tenets, namely refusal to allow the parasitic foreign extraction of resources, the development of autonomous means of managing resources, regional and continental unity in the face of neo-colonial exploitation, and the wise use of resources to promote social equity in the nation, are the basis for Third World resistance. They are exemplified by the Pan-Arab, Pan-African, and Bolivarian movements and among men such as Nasser, Gaddafi, Chavez, and Sankara, in addition to the aforementioned Perón. Moreover, let us salute the tremendous history of Third World revolution encompassing figures such as Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Ho Chi Minh, who rose up against the foreign backed capitalist class. For the Third World, the struggle for national and social liberation has been alive for over sixty years, and despite the setbacks it has seen, its heart still beats strongly.

For the First World, there is certainly much to be done. There is a nostalgia for the “thirty glorious years” from 1945 to 1975 where the welfare state, and Keynesian economic policies in general ensured the prosperity of the working masses. Those days are gone, definitely, irrevocably. The era where the political elite acted in a paternalist fashion to the working class is over. Though the working class has yet to see the political elite as an alien, hostile elite. In many respects this is a much harder task than in the Third World. The political elite generally looks like them, they speak the same language, they may pay lip service to the same religious creeds, they live in the same country. But we must ask, does Detroit look like it belongs to the same country as Wall Street? It may as well be an entirely different one. In terms of moral values, does the working class man in West Virginia hold the same fundamental beliefs as the stockbroker in New York or the politician in Washington? Once again, a resounding no. Certainly things like television reinforce a common national culture, but then again so does global mass media reinforce a global mass culture from Libya and Venezuela to Hollywood. It is becoming increasingly clear that the average denizen of the American Rust Belt has absolutely nothing in common with the Hollywood glitterati he sees on television. As this alienation becomes clear, the struggle will enter a more active phase.

The people will no longer wait on the political elite to come and save them. They will see the political and financial class as a group of jet-setters disconnected from the essence of their lives, their national traditions, their economic well being. They will take things into their own hands. The old class struggle will become a national struggle for the survival of the people of the deindustrialized hinterlands. The old labor struggles will become icons of resistance, the strikes of coal miners and factory laborers will inspire new movements. Autonomous action will be key, people should begin to grow their own food, take control of their leased or mortgaged homes, establish their own cooperative economic enterprises. This will be sporadic at first, it will be bottom up local movements seizing control, if necessary forming armed units for self defense. The elite class will react, they will accuse the people of the nation of treason against them. Yet once they begin to take things into their own hands, petty appeals to a false patriotism made by the political elite will fall on deaf ears. The calls of aliens mean nothing to the true bearers of the national spirit, for the nation is not the politicians and stock jobbers of the capital and the big cities, it is the vast majority of the people they exploit. These people who can jet off to their tax havens are not the nation, and the sooner the people of the nation realize it, the sooner the nation will rise. The elite is as rootless as the dollars they transfer around the world, they may occupy certain districts of the First World, but they belong to no world. Their values are abstract, the rule of the laws of the market, they are not shaped by the experience of belonging to a community, with its historically defined social relations and codes of honor, but by pure individual self interest according to economic axioms. Their cultural productions are merely standardized, lifeless, consumer goods, as meaningless as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, they do not spring from the soil and the blood of a people’s history. This is the enemy, it must be targeted, and decisively defeated.

Against the greed of Wall Street and the filth of Hollywood, those discarded and exploited by the system will affirm their own ways of life, their own self sufficient economies, their own creeds. From the sweatshops of the Third World, to the shuttered factories of the First, the cause of the nation, the cause of the people, resounds with a thunderous call.

What We Are and What We Are Not

18 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by emontsalvat in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ideology, nationalism, socialism, What We Are and What We Are Not

We Are:

Nationalist: We stand for the right of the people to live by their own ways, culturally, linguistically, religiously, economically, among their own kind.

Socialist: We stand for putting the economy in the hands of the people. This does not mean we want to take the home of the average man or the family farm, rather it means that the workers of an enterprise control it, from the single family business to the largest factories. It means that the vital industries of the nation are not subject to the dictates of international corporations.

Revolutionary: We stand for direct action against the system, rather than working inside of it. We know that it is a rigged game and it has nothing to offer us.

Continentalist: We believe that the greatest opportunity for national liberation comes from the cooperation of nations on a continental scale, which provides them with a large enough space to command the resources necessary for true economic, military, and cultural autonomy. We are for Pan-Arabism, Eurasianism, Pan-Africanism, and Bolivarianism.

Anti-Colonialist: Colonialism represents the capitalistic exploitation of another nation. It harms the working people of the colonial nation as well, who are recruited as cannon fodder for the imperial ambitions of the capitalist class or forced to compete with colonial slave labor. We stand for all national liberation across the globe.

Anti-Zionist: Zionism represents the most pernicious form of colonialism in the world today. We demand total liberation of Palestine.

A United Front: We are for a united front of all socialist and nationalist forces against the system to achieve national liberation, we reject the power games of the elite to play the so-called “left” and “right” against each other.

Allies: We stand in solidarity with all national liberation causes across the globe. No petty squabbles or prejudices will prevent us from extending our fullest support to those who share our fundamental struggle.

Open Minded: We do not bind ourselves to the dogmas of any particular form of nationalism or socialism. Rather we seek to combine influences from the grand history of such movements to forge our own path, we are not followers, rather we draw inspiration from our heroes to find our own unique voice, fit for its proper place and time.

We Are Not:

An Organization of the “Extreme Right”: Nationalism is beyond right and left. We reject the siren calls of the inherently globalist capitalist class to rally nationalists against socialists fighting the capitalist system.

An Organization of the “Extreme Left”: Socialism is beyond right and left. We reject the siren calls of the capitalist class to rally socialists against nationalists struggling to free the nation from the bonds of capitalist globalism.

Chauvinists: We reject unequivocally the false nationalism that defines itself in opposition to another people. These fights between nationalists only serve the cause of international liberalism that seeks to malign the cause of national freedom and break the cooperation of peoples against it. Furthermore, we reject the “clash of civilizations,” we do not believe there exists a fundamental existential struggle between great civilizations that would require the victory of one over the others. We support every civilization within its historical space.

Tags

1973 1992 1996 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Action Française Adam B. Bartoš Alain de Benoist Anarchism Antonio Medrano Apache Magazine Ba'athism Consumerism Eduard Limonov Ernst Jünger Eurasianism Falangism First World and Third World in the Age of Austerity François Duprat Gauche Prolétarienne Georges Sorel Henning Eichberg Hoxha ideology Introduction to the dossier “Africa – Europe” from issue 76 of the magazine Rébellion Jean-Philippe Chauvin Jean Thiriart Juan Domingo Perón Ladislav Zemánek Lenin Mai 68 Mao Maurras Michel Clouscard National-Syndicalism National Bolshevik Party National Democracy nationalism NazBol Québec Neither Right nor Left: The Epic of Fiume New Left Nouvelle Action Française Patriotism and Socialism Philitt Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Québec Ramiro Ledesma Ramos Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, The Creator of National-Syndicalism reaction Richard Chartrand Robert Steuckers Russia Rébellion Situationism Slaying the Hydra of Reaction socialism Strategika Syndicalism The Ba'ath - Ideology and History The Long March: Defeating Liberalism in the West The Québécois National Communist Manifesto Thibault Isabel Thiriart Understand and Fight the Advent of Neo-Capitalism with Michel Clouscard URGENT: Zionist Repressions in the Czech Republic Vouloir What We Are and What We Are Not Youth Zionism

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Institute for National Revolutionary Studies
    • Join 36 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Institute for National Revolutionary Studies
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar