Michael O. Cushman
Our Southern Nation: Its Origin and Future
London: Mitre and Crown, 2015

Reviewed by Tom Sunic, Ph.D.

Many intellectual and political promoters of nation-state building end up on the “wrong side of history.” In fact, these are the code words used by mainstream historians when depicting those who failed in their political endeavors, lost the intellectual or political war, and earned themselves historical oblivion.

This is the main message resurfacing on the first page of Michael Cushman’s book. Being henceforth pushed into the realm of modern demonology, those on the “wrong side of history” and their hapless descendants are stripped of an objective historiographic narrative. Instead, they are forced to learn the language of the victor’s doubletalk: “reconstruction” or “reeducation.” Although Cushman does not venture into historical parallels with other European societies, one can draw a parallel between the post-Civil War South and post-World War II Europe. In his little book Sparte et les Sudistes (Sparta and the Southerners) (1969), French scholar Maurice Bardèche, himself a victim of the judicial “re-educational” process in the aftermath of World War II in France, traces the beginning of the end of Western civilization with the defeat of the South in 1865, which presaged the latter-day apocalyptic fallout in post-1945 Europe.

Cushman is clearly a serious scholar, as evidenced by the large number of footnotes and the impressive across-the-board bibliography containing citations of what are commonly described as “leftist” and “rightist” authors. Nowhere in his text are to be spotted grandstanding epithets on behalf of the Confederate Southerners or disparaging words against the Yankee Northerners. Mr. Cushman’s sober, erudite style will hopefully gain him an enthusiastic readership.

The author approach to the subject matter is highly intriguing, casting in hindsight a different light on the being and the becoming of the still strong American dream. The entire North American continent could have easily become something entirely different from what it actually became, or from what it still aspires to be in the years to come. The author realizes that history is open—that it is not a predetermined one-way street despite the all-too-frequent millenarian, eschatological, and end-times raving so often seen among those inclined to idealize America as a “city on the hill” located at the end of history. Most especially, this applies to the many neoconservative resident think tank scholars itching to spread the American dream to every nook and cranny of planet Earth—by military force if necessary.

In order to underscore the uniqueness of the birth and death of the South, the author examines its intellectual origins and its political-cultural development within the context of the “plantation civilization” encompassing the antebellum South, the Caribbean Basin, as well as parts of Latin America. The American Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, and the writings of the much-venerated Founding Fathers of America, such as Jefferson and Washington, had little impact on the Southern mind. The much maligned Southern culture had in fact borrowed much from the hierarchical ancient Greco-Roman cultures, as well as from the Mediterranean-based late Renaissance period, while combining these influences with some features of modernity. Its social and economic success was based on the ingenuity of White settlers and their Promethean will to power which stressed individual meritocracy and which provided for the needs of African laborers. It was a culture of planters and cavaliers based on chivalry and honor. Of course, the picture presented by this Southern comfort was not always rosy, and Cushman should have probably added a paragraph on the many young White indentured laborers—“White slaves”—from England and continental Europe who were often subject to serious social and economic abuse during the not-so-golden period of the Golden Circle.

The common denominator Cushman chooses for the plantation civilization of which the South was once a part is “the Golden Circle.” Other than the English language, White Southerners shared little with their free-trade-minded, progress-obsessed White Northern neighbors whose mindset revolved—and still does—around money, business, and starry-eyed world-improvement. Seen in hindsight, the supreme irony of the history of Western civilization is that the antebellum South, although being geographically far away from continental Europe, had been far more successful in preserving the ancient European code of honor and the sense of the tragic than Europe itself. Much of what many European conservatives or traditionalists like to hearken back to had already been violently removed in Europe by liberal and communist revolutions that had swept over Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ironically, traditional European mores survived in a much better shape in what was once the antebellum South.

The power of ideas whose time has come is more powerful than all the power of any political process. Cushman dismisses the Hollywood stereotype of Southerners as drunken hicks and toothless boors. Indeed, he should have been more forceful in uncovering the impressive intellectual credentials and accomplishments of many Southern thinkers, such as the now largely forgotten Southern Agrarians centered at Vanderbilt University of the mid-1930s, whose apocalyptic visions of modernity bear astounding similarities to the ideas propagated by contemporary nationalists and traditionalists in Europe. He mentions on several occasions George Fitzhugh, a Southern scholar and a visionary who, a century before the Englishman George Orwell, had a solid grasp of the egalitarian mystique and who showed an unusual insight into the nature of rhetoric of the elite British of his day, which has been recycled by the American ruling class today.

Cushman’s book can be classified as a good prologue, or at least as a first chapter to his envisioned future work of his on this subject. It is also a roadmap for some other scholar willing to broaden the picture of the South. Alas, the ideology of progress, spearheaded by the modern United States, with its accompanying “re-educational” and “reconstructive” ukases against recalcitrant (“rogue”) states, has by now run its full course and is backfiring at home. The balkanized United States may soon be obliged to swallow the medicine it once forcefully administered to the South. The iron laws of nature cannot be wished away by pious preaching of the multicultural-multiracial dogma or the belief in perpetual economic growth. Neighboring Haiti, which had managed during the heyday of the Golden Circle civilization to get rid of allegedly wicked White slave masters, continues to languish as one of the most wretched spots on Earth. Its larger replica, the recently much praised post-apartheid South Africa, is being torn apart by chaos and turmoil. Similar violent fallouts from the multicultural dogmas being imposed throughout the West can be observed today in Detroit, soon to be followed by Atlanta, Los Angeles, and other cities in the United States. The good news is that history is always open, sometimes offering unexpected and pleasant surprises.

Despite the ban by the Hungarian government, the NPI conference did take place in Budapest on October 5, albeit in a truncated version but with an air of rebellion and emotional intensity. A day earlier, despite the arrest of the NPI Chairman Mr. Richard Spencer, despite constant police surveillance of all NPI guests, and despite the fact that there were only two official speakers, the conference turned out to be a surprising success.  The distinct possibility of a police crackdown on the venue did not prevent more than 70 people from attending the dinner and listen to the speeches delivered by Jared Taylor and myself.  Two journalists, one from the BBC, the other from the German daily Die Welt, covered the event and interviewed the speakers (BBC. Die Welte).

The genesis, the unfolding, and the subsequent end of the NPI event in Budapest, including the earlier arrest of  Richard Spencer, have been more or less  objectively  reported  by friendly  websites.  What lessons can we now draw? Here are some eclectic remarks and tentative suggestions,  from the lexical, legal, philosophical and sociobiological perspective.

Legality and Legitimacy 

The well -planned and well-advertised NPI conference scheduled to take place in Budapest from October 3 to October 5 as well as the shortened version, were in clear violation of a previous legal decision reached by the Hungarian government. One must emphasize that the official ban had not been decreed by local Antifa groups,  leftist hacklers,  paleo-communist students, LGTB agitators,  or some Jewish lobby—although, of course, one cannot rule out at all that these organizations had earlier put mighty pressure on Viktor Orban’s  government to ban the conference. Had the Leftists or the Antifas, instead of the government of Hungary, tried to disrupt the planned conference of their own,  as is so often the case in Germany, the NPI would have at least enjoyed some semblance of legal protection.

This was not the case. The Hungarian government ban was an official ukase right from the start. The ultimate consequences were to be reckoned with.  About the reasons of the ban, or about those who might have been behind it, one could speculate for years and never arrive at one single and persuasive conclusion. State legality, as the German legal scholar Carl Schmitt extensively wrote long time ago, lies often in contradistinction to state legitimacy. The ex-Soviet Union, or the present day North Korea, or Cuba for that matter, were and still are states abiding by the rule of law.  To what extent, however, the rule of law in these countries has a legitimate foundation  — well, this remains a very different story.

Lexicon and Locutions

The NPI dinner- talk was not a “racist gathering “or a “White supremacist” Oktoberfest or “Spencerfest,” as some media had derisively announced.  The shorthand version of the NPI conference took shape in the form of a dinner where the two speakers delivered their academic talks in front of approximately 70 guests. All the guests in attendance can be described as non- conformists and free thinkers of European extraction who had arrived to the venue from all parts of the world not to indulge in alleged nationalist and racist ravings, but to hear and meet other likeminded non-conformist individuals. The prime focus of the speakers’ lectures was the aberrant nature of multicultural mendacity of the System and the necessity for the unity of all the peoples of European extraction. In this sense, conference, although modest in size, was of historic importance.

The first conclusion one can draw:  The masters of the discourse of the System were nervous and afraid, which could best be seen in the unnecessary overreaction of the Hungarian government and the big publicity the NPI received thereafter. The System master plan backfired.  Undoubtedly, the main problem facing most White nationalists in the USA and Europe is how to come to grips with the terror of the liberal meta-language and its signifiers whose signified are being deliberately doctored up anew by the System and its scribes. Relatively new locutions such as  “hate speech,” “White supremacists,” “fascist,”  “neo- Nazis”, have been in use in the mainstream media  for a very long period of  time — to the point that they have by now lost their original meaning and their judicial weight, even among those who use them as shut-up words against modern non-conformists, rebels and heretics.

In fact, these signifiers have by now become a badge of honor for any would be non-conformist rebel, regardless of his or her ideological stripes. (Historical note: Leo Trotsky, a Bolshevik of Jewish origin was also dubbed “fascist” by Stalin in 1939, as was the former maverick communist head of the Yugoslav state, Josip Broz Tito). White nationalists in the EU and USA should start re-appropriating their own discourse and avoid insignia reminiscent of the fascism or National Socialism of the 1930s and 40s.  Why not use words, such as “Euro –American heretics,” or “European rebels” instead of the value loaded locution “White nationalist“  — a locution that  originated in the fevered brains of the thought police like the SPLC and the ADL?

Rebels vs Dissidents

Right in forefront of the first circle of Dante’s Inferno we encounter opportunists of all stripes. Let us be honest. Yes-men and sycophants make up the vast majority of citizens in any contemporary Western society.  Both the Hungarian Prime minister Viktor Orbán and his head of the police, himself a former big time communist police official, Sándor Pintér,  had started their career as  communist youth members, i.e. komsomolci in  the  former communist Hungary.

Alas, old dogs cannot be taught new tricks! Their homo sovieticus phenotype may have changed, but their communist genotype has remained the same. They, along with practically all East European political elites, will dance to the music of any new world hegemon — if historical circumstances require it. This is known as the “German syndrome,” as for example when the German government needs to prove over and over again and beyond any public doubt that Germany is a more philo-Semitic country than any other country in Europe.  Not long ago politicians in Eastern Europe avidly hurried to the Kremlin in order to display their communist party loyalty. Now, in order to display their liberal credentials the same ones and their younger liberal progeny, even if not invited, avidly hurry to Tel Aviv, with all due subsequent genuflections in Washington DC and Brussels. The same could be said about many modern academics in the USA and the EU who privately share every word of the NPI speakers, but who publicly realize that systemic brownnosing to the System pays off much better than upholding their honor.

Many non-conformists  of European extraction, aka White nationalists, make a serious mistake when using synonymously the words ‘dissident’ and  ‘rebel.’  Many anticommunist dissidents who had come from the Soviet Union to the USA during the Cold War remained self-proclaimed dissidents, yet learned quickly how to fawn over their new masters. Hundreds of them have made glorious careers as advisors and professors in the USA.

But they are not rebels; they never questioned the other side of the same System. The writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a rebel. On the other hand, Alexander Sakharov, the human rights preacher and the former Soviet party hack who transformed himself into a Western anticommunist, was not a rebel. Sakharov preferred American fame and glitz even if it implied selling out his soul twice. Rebels never sell out to any Mephistopheles even if they sometimes unwittingly conjure up bad spirits that turn against them. Rebels not only question the prevailing regime; they question themselves and their own ideas 24 hours a day.

In classical literature we encounter true rebels, as for instance in the works of Ernst Jünger, or in the dramas of Friedrich Schiller. A rebel never sells out.  Richard Spencer is a true non-conformist and rebel and a true hero, precisely because he would reject these flattering labels. He did not crave the media limelight, nor did he  mimic a heretic, like so many “right-wingers” or Hollywood nutsies do.  He fought for a simple right to free speech. A rebel is a man of impeccable character and of absolute moral integrity who puts the interests of his community above his own private interests, and above the interests of his family.

One could illustrate the spirit of the rebel by the quote of the philosopher Emile Cioran: “A rebel never expects anything from anybody; neither from people, nor from gods.”

Below is the English translation of my speech given on June 14, 2014 at a historic manor house, in the village of Guthmannshausen, in the vicinity of Weimar, the state of Thuringia, Germany. The speech was delivered on the occasion of the 100thanniversary of the beginning of WWI, the 100^th anniversary issue of the magazine Deutsche  Militärzeitschrift (DMZ) and the monthly magazine of politics and culture ZuErst! whose host and editor in chief, Dietmar Munier, marked on that occasion his 60th birthday.  This was a private event attended by approximately 150 people, mostly journalists and contributors to these journals, accompanied by their families.

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Each anniversary year brings back memories of times past which one either wishes to revive for himself and his people, or administer to others as a political-pedagogical year of admonition. The German word “Gedenkjahr” cannot be easily translated into other languages, ​​and often this word causes serious misconceptions among different nations. The word “Gedenkjahr” is translated into English or French as “memorial year” and as “jubilee year” — two completely opposing political notions.  Depending on different nations, depending on their historical sentiments, an anniversary year can be memorized as hope, joy, and nostalgia. But it can also be used as an exhortation, a threat of punishment, or a fear-inducing tool. As far as our own anniversary year is concerned, we recall today our own life span and we enthuse about cheerful dates in our nation’s history.  When celebrating one’s happy birthday, and if one, as an old man, still retains good memory, such as Ernst Jünger and Johann Wolfgang Goethe did, then one can say that life has some meaning.

When one is past his 60th birthday one needs to raise a question: “Why any more anniversaries?” The Franco-Romanian philosopher Emile Cioran, an ultra-nihilist and cultural pessimist, wrote that one shouldn’t live past one’s 40th birthday. On the occasion of his 70th birthday Cioran said that any further well-wishing for further life sounds grotesque to him. In an interview, in 1987, several years before his death, he said:” Within fifty years, the Notre Dame will become a mosque.”

By contrast, when hostile nations or groups commemorate the anniversaries of their political disasters, they are often inclined to use the buzzphrase: “Never again!” Commemorative years convert then quickly into symbols of the year of the dead and the days of admonition, especially when hostile nations and groups start cobbling together their endless anniversaries and present them as victimhood teachings at the expense of other nations.

Then things get serious. We all remember today the anniversary of the Vienna Congress of 1814 which redrew the state borders in Europe. We all remember the year 1914 which began with the new Thirty Years War in Europe, rushing in the era of mass killings and mass expulsions. Everything is fine and beautiful with anniversaries when no state of emergency looms on the horizon.

Such a linear and optimistic mindset, inherent to the modern System, comes directly from the Age of Enlightenment. However, it can get problematic. It prevents modern citizens from getting a full insight into the cyclical mindset of their ancestors. In our so-called enlightened and freedom-loving System, citizens are embroiled in bizarre infra-political anniversaries, in a number of hagiographical tales going back to the Second World War.

Consequently, any criticism of the official anniversaries of the System is interpreted as criminal or pathological behavior. How dare one criticize the “anniversary of democracy” or “the anniversary of human rights” without getting punished?

I hope our colleague Mr. Munier and the magazines DMZ or ZuErst! will continue providing us with superior educational material. We are badly in need of a new anniversary of a new Enlightenment and a new process of demythologization of our contemporary history. It is useless to keep complaining about the present intellectual climate, as is the case with many of our colleagues. Calculated pessimism is often an excuse for idleness and passivity. The course of history remains always open, offering to all of us new opportunities.

The problem arises, though, when a historical separation breaks into the course of time and when, consequently, all well-wishing turns into death wishes. Many once praised and well-known politicians, just as many great thinkers and writers from our history then become trademarks of horror and their names are used by the System in order to better highlight its own do-gooders. What would Europe be today without countless days commemorating the fascist scarecrow? Probably the European Union would come apart and its architects would become jobless. We tend to forget that there is a fine line between the anniversary day and the memorial day, between adulation and defamation, between life and death.

When a state of emergency occurs, or in other words when a historical upheaval sets in, then we all become witnesses of a tragedy, whereby this tragedy can cause a permanent political neurosis for a people. This was described by Carl Schmitt in his little book Hamlet or  Hecuba, especially with his description of a sudden intrusion of political times into a relatively carefree and apolitical life. In other words, if tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, a state of emergency breaks into our fun-loving society, we will start commemorating differently our anniversary years.

Many of our acquaintances are not aware of such turning points in the flow of time. Many still believe in the theology of progress, in the Happy Ending where good always prevails. This is false. Only some of us, with a good sense of the tragic and with an extended sense of history can fully grasp it. We live without illusions. For example, in June 1941 the spiritual situation amidst the majority of Croats, on the occasion of the establishment of their new state was different from what it was in June 1945. In June 1945, Croatia disappeared from the map. In 1991, most Croats were full of joy with the re-emergence of their state, an event standing in sharp contrast to the present day situation with many Croatian citizens raising questions about any further utility of their state. Schopenhauer taught us that too much optimism always turns into its opposite.  

The Culture of Remembrance

Another problem with anniversaries lies in their record keeping.  After each upheaval new opinion makers always have the final word on the choice of the anniversary day. Many of today’s anniversaries are commemorated in the Federal Republic of Germany, but also elsewhere in the EU, as if they were to retain their permanent validity for all eternity. For the month of January we have the Holocaust Memorial Day, the Auschwitz Liberation Day (One can of course raise the questions as to what the Red Army had previously “liberated” in Pomerania or East Prussia on its way to the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945). In December we celebrate Human Rights Day; then in March, the Women’s Day. In the U.S., Martin Luther King commemoration holiday falls also in January. Soon we will have to mark our wall calendars with Gay-and-Lesbian and Transvestite Days. Cat lovers and crocodile worshippers will soon be scrambling for the anniversary days of their pets.

We live in the culture of the museum, in the culture of remembrance, where lost tribes or exotic species from hidden parts of the world must be now commemorated. For example, in Germany and Central Europe there are sites dedicated to the now extinct Neanderthal species. In Croatia, close to where I live, there is a village with the Neanderthal museum, with the world’s largest collection of the remains of Neanderthal man. It must not be excluded that a state or a government from Northern Africa or the Near East will, in the following years, demand restitution from the Croatian or German authorities on the basis of their alleged relationship to the late Neanderthals and the alleged extermination of the Neanderthals by the Croatian and the Germanic homo sapiens. To be a German today means to be a good paymaster.

By contrast, many former anniversaries finish their journeys in collective oblivion.  Who can remember the anniversary of the London drafted Beneš decrees of 1944, ratified in March 1946 by the new Czechoslovak government in order to legitimize the previous mass expulsions of millions of Germans? We have learned from our history that each beautiful anniversary can easily convert into a symbol of absolute evil. A heroic age can be reinterpreted by subsequent times as a terrorist age. Consequently, anniversaries are then no longer meant to be the days of anniversary celebrations, but instead they adopt the role of the Days of Warning. They serve as the basis for identity for the new ruling class. Thence, the new political and intellectual class builds up, in addition to its victimhood, its official demonology, whose arsenal is designated to induce fear, terror and self-censorship among citizens.

This is nothing new. We encounter evil incarnate among the ancient Greeks and their revenge goddesses, who are later followed by European witches of sorts. Today’s anniversaries are grandstandingly stylized by contemporary System politicians as fiery events, whereas ancient wisdoms are hushed up or put on display solely as symbols of absolute cruelty. The new Culture of Memory, designated by the System in regard to the Other, plays an extremely important role in today’s identity building process of the EU. The former German President Horst Köhler said in February 2005 in the Israeli Knesset that “the responsibility for the Holocaust is part of German identity.”  Victimhood tutoring by non-European peoples has become a new civil religion of the West.

The Price of Freedom

Everything has its price. Free-thinkers, not to mention some uncompromising but rare academics in Germany and elsewhere in the EU, pay a high price for their daily bread. In fact, the DMZ and ZuErst! also cost money. But at least these journals have so far remained critical of the System. Ultimately, it all boils down to whether a journalist, a writer, or an academic is willing to collaborate  with the System in order to secure himself and his family a cozy life, or whether he wants to live a life of an outsider. But even the line between cautiousness and self-censorship is often difficult to tell. Cautiousness may be cowardice. By contrast, power of decision making and courage to liberty often yield opposite results and can, in subsequent decades, have disastrous consequences for the younger generations. The young Hamlet and the young Faust were both sharp thinkers with a remarkable insight into the world of differently minded individuals, including for the differentiated Other. However, both were neurotics lacking any decision-making power. It was always the bad spirits who made the decisions in their stead.

The other type is a well- armed and combative hero, like the young warrior Siegfried from the Nibelungen Saga or the young Achilles from the Iliad. Both men had no fear of their premature and anticipated death because for both a sudden death meant eternal glory. But with their reckless, albeit well-intentioned conduct, they inflicted irreparable damage to their clans respectively.

I do not know which model to recommend. Maybe a mix between a courageous warrior and a poet? An Anarch with the Jüngerian lifestyle?   We have already seen this type of man in our history. On the other hand, living a long and self-centered life of an expert idiot or a book worm, or as an old man constantly brooding over the lies of the System or bewailing his incontinence, is also a waste of time. To live as anonymous sheep without leaving any after-effects on his contemporaries is pointless. All things considered even the peaceful sheep usually die after 10 or 12 years, even though there might be no wolves in their vicinity.

Forty-two years ago I was also young, or maybe I was already way too old. I had also searched my memorial year as a hippy in India with my own  “rapprochements,” my own “dangerous encounters,” and my own “radiations” without a penny in the pocket (Anäherungen,  Eine gefährliche, Begegnung, Strahlungen. (These are allusions to Jünger’s essays — novels full of magical realism — as well as Jünger’s experiments with hallucinogenic drugs.) Fortunately, I learned early on that one could better fight the System when dressed in a good suit and decked up with a university degree than with long hair, tattoos and earrings.

I will close my speech with the verses from the Böhse Onkelz song, Der Preis des Lebens (“The Price Of Life”):

Der Preis des Lebens ist der Tod                              The price of life is death,
Deshalb hab’ ich dich geholt                                      That’s why I’ve brought you in
Du lebst für mich                                                        You live for me
Und jetzt nehm’ ich dich                                             And now I’ll take you
In meine Arme, in meine Arme                                  In my arms, in my arms
…..  .                                                                                       …….

Ich mache keinen Unterschied                                  I make no difference
Zwischen Jung und Alt                                              Between young and old
Ob du arm oder reich bist                                         Whether you’re rich or poor
Läßt mich kalt                                                           Has no effect on me whatsoever
Ich heiß’ euch alle willkommen.                                I’d like to welcome all of you!

Dr. Tom Sunic is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Freedom Party. His new book Chroniques des temps postmodernes (Avatar, 2014) has just been released.

The following is the English translation of a video of my speech at the conference at the prestigious Jesuit center in the capital of Croatia, Zagreb, on May 22. The conference was held on the occasion of the recently published book, Titov Jasenovac (2014) by a Croat historian Mladen Ivezic. Jasenovac is a location in Croatia that is frequently associated by antifascists and procommunist scholars with the alleged mass killings of hundreds of thousands Communists, Serbs and Jews during WWII by the pro-fascist Croat nationalists, i.e. the “Ustashas.”  The event was attended by many prominent Croat nationalists, survivors of communist camps and many other public figures, including a number of Catholic clerics and a local bishop.

Ivezic rejects body counts put forward by the former communist Yugoslav government and offers a substantial bibliography on how the camp of Jasenovac was used instead, in the aftermath of WWII, by victorious Yugoslav communists for their mass killings of imprisoned nationalist and anticommunist opponents. He shows that subsequently, the Yugoslav communists attributed the overall number of the killed at the Jasenovac camp as the work of the defeated local Croat fascists.

The official number of the pro-fascist Croat Ustashi victims has wildly varied ever since:  from 700,000 victims, claimed during the communist period in ex-Yugoslavia, to the official 70,000 victims in contemporary Croatia, with more and more attempts at downsizing the number of the camp victims.

The issue of Jasenovac puts very serious strains on the relationship between Serbs and Croats. Moreover, the symbol of the Jasenovac camp reflects not just deep divisions between the so-called antifascists and nationalists in today’s Europe but also points to very serious and highly inflammable rifts between and among all European nationalists. Following the recent electoral success of nationalist parties in Europe, it would be foolish, naive and dangerous to fantasize about some “common White European homeland,” having in mind the radically conflicting “cultural memories” of all European peoples.  The case in point is that time and again, as in modern Ukraine, there are two mutually exclusive visions of its future by pro-Russian and Ukrainian nationalists respectively.

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A good portion of Croatia’s modern historiography, covering the period from 1941 to 1945, can be described as an exercise in the antifascist demonology. Such historiography rests on a poor empirical basis. It should be borne in mind that modern historiography, just as the study of other fields in social sciences, is still subject to specific historical and political circumstances, especially the military victory of the Allies over the Axis forces in 1945. Without Stalin and the Communists, the Western Allies would have never won World War II. Without Roosevelt and the capitalist America, the Soviet Union and Stalin would not have won World War II. Without the help of the Allied British and Americans, the Yugoslav Communist Josip Broz Tito and his Party would have never come to power in communist Yugoslavia.

Of course, Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army in late January 1945, although the same Red Army forces, five years earlier, had secretly murdered thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest. On its way to Auschwitz, the Red Army had murdered and expelled millions of German civilians — from the Baltic states to Silesia. Modern historiography, taught at universities across America and Europe, has not only a pedagogical purpose, but also serves to demonize political opponents in order to better conceal its own home-grown skeletons in the closet. Moreover, each historiographical demonology is accompanied by an oppositional victimology teeming with a subjective and hypermoralistic narrative whose prime purpose is to highlight one’s own body counts while diminish the other.

Fascist Bestiary

Fascist snakes, fascist serpents, fascist dragons, and the whole arsenal from the fascist bestiary were always at hand in former communist Yugoslavia, because this was the surest way for communist Yugoslavia to justify its existence. Today, a significant number of historians and journalists in Croatia continue to resort to the same arsenal of the fascist bestiary. However, the unofficial Croatia — the Croatia that exists apart from political, media and academic elites —  rejects this bestiary because it reminds her of hard times in former communist Yugoslavia. The old political rule comes again to light: there is a legal Croatia; but there is also a legitimate Croatia, each with its own symbols, its own demonology and its own conflicting and exclusive victimhood. The question needs to be raised: Can the modern global system and its extension in the new political class in Zagreb survive without its antifascist demonology, without its Jasenovac camp, without its demon Ante Pavelic— and without the timeless demon Adolf Hitler?

Each historical event is unique, single and cannot be repeated. But in the present age of transformational changes across Europe, the historian interprets each historical event based on his own ethnic, ideological and theological pedigree. The first conclusion we must draw is that before we read history, we must first read the historian. We must ask: What are the historian’s motives for such and such approach to a historical subject matter, or in our case the body counts of Croatia’s Jasenovac and the Croatian Bleiburg? Jasenovac was a pro-fascist Ustasha concentration camp; Bleiburg was a communist killing field — not a concentration camp. From the technical point of view, each political concentration camp, anywhere in the world, in any political regime, at any historical epoch, is not designated for immediate destruction of prisoners, but rather for their slave labor. If it were not so then concentration camps would cease to exist. Our second conclusion is therefore of legal and logistical nature; war crimes are not the same as crimes committed in the aftermath of war or crimes beyond the battle lines. Prison camps are not the same as nameless graves, abandoned mine shafts, ravines and pits for which we still have little documentation available.

Demonological, mythological, criminological, and pathological approach to recent Croatian history constituted the core of the former Yugoslav identity, but also formed the legal crux of antifascist Yugoslavia. The distorted communist historiography was the main cause of the breakup of Yugoslavia and the ensuing war against the newly formed Croatian state 1991. In the light of recent historical research, based to some extent on forensic investigations, as well as access to archives, the former Yugoslav antifascist historiography is beginning to show cracks, and as time elapses, it takes on hagiographical and science fictional traits.

It is interesting to note that when antifascist historiography becomes empirically untenable, it begins assuming “civil-religious” traits, as is the case today all over Europe. These new “civil-religious” traits reject and often legally censor any critical reassessment of the history of WWII. The best example again is the case of former Yugoslavia before its dissolution. The media and the intellectual war between Croatian and Serbian historians and journalists had been in full swing regarding both the victims of the Jasenovac camp and Bleiburg — a verbal war of historical memories that inevitably spilled over into real armed conflict in 1991. The symbolism of Jasenovac and Bleiburg had a different meaning for a Serb peasant living near the Croat town of Sisak, a completely different meaning for a Croat peasant living in the same vicinity, and a completely different meaning for a former Croatian émigré living in the vicinity of Santiago, Stuttgart or Sydney.

Demons, ghosts, snakes, evil spirits, witches, beasts, devils and monsters, were negative images used by the former regime-sponsored Yugoslav antifascists for the personification of the pro-fascist Ustasha government during WWII. In a similar fashion modern day antifascists use similar labels to depict their right-wing nationalist opponents. Seventy years after the end of World War II and nearly 25 years after the founding of modern Croatia, the identity of the Croatian state remains fragile. On the one hand we are witnessing the demonological, snake-like, criminogenic  and pathogenic Croat identity, largely instilled by world-wide antifascist propagandists, mythographers, and demonologists; on the other hand, there is a considerable number of domestic victimological Croats who condense their entire identity into to  pronounced anti-Serbianism, and to posthumous-commemorative obituaries of their own victims only.

Killing Sprees

This is nothing new. Demonology in regard to the “Other” carries always its counterpart — its own self-serving victimology. After all, the henchman has his own victimhood — for himself and his family. And each victimhood, including the Croat victimhood in regard to Bleiburg, has ultimately — and unfortunately — a vindictive side. The Croat dead in the aftermath of May 1945, be they victims of the Bleiburg killing fields or those at Tito’s post-WWII Jasenovac, did not fall from the sky; those victims were caused by somebody, and that ” somebody,” or that “Other,” or his children, still live in Croatia today .

The entire classical literature is full of ghosts, demons and evil deities, with even the heroes turning into henchmen, as was the case with Siegfried and Hagen in the Nibelungenepic, or Hector and Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, or our well-known Western neurotics with suicidal fantasies, like Faust and Hamlet. The ancient god of the underworld, Hades delivered only one way tickets for politically incorrect characters who had dared to defy the rites of their times. The guardian of the Hades underworld was Cerberus, a three-headed political dog with a snake tail — one could almost say a forerunner of the future Bolshevik commissar, very similar in looks to the Yugoslav communist Moshe Pijade.  \

Hell awaits all — both good men and bad men, especially when a good man loses a sense of the tragic and begins raving about how historical times must come to an end. Even our cherished heroes like Odysseus and Agamemnon, after they had burned down Troy and killed the young and old of the city, experienced in their turn a terrible fate. Ulysses’ crew members, after a decade of wandering through the rough seas, were eaten alive by Cyclops. The powerful king Agamemnon, on his return to home sweet home, was ambushed and butchered by his own wife. Their son, the hero Orestes underwent torments by the furies, the goddesses of revenge, because he had avenged his father by killing his own mother Clytemnestra, who had previously killed his father — her legitimate husband.

It is futile to debate with modern demonologists the veracity or mendacity of WW II body counts or attempt to provide empirical or forensic evidence regarding diverse victimhoods. All of us rightly clamor that ” victims, regardless of their size and number deserve respect.”

Agreed.  And this regardless of whether the figure of the dead in the pro-fascist Ustasha camp of Jasenovac was 700,000 or 70,000 or 7,000 or 700 dead! If we were to accept the 700 figure, as put forward by the author of this book, the difference is in 699,300 lives — which is no small thing for a small Croatia, let alone for the great mythical Homeric stories, and let alone for the antifascist demonology!

Demonology is a matter of faith, a kind of collective mystique, just like today’s democratic mystique about the everlasting European Union and limitless economic growth. It is naive to believe that the modern antifascist demonology, including the hagiographical tales about the Second World War, can be disputed by facts. And even when such antifascist demonology becomes outmoded, another one will spring up in its place. Demonologies have always been around, ever since the beginning of time, irrespective of the period of the Enlightenment. In fact, the period of the Enlightenment in the 18th century ushered in its own dangerous myths: the myth of progress and the myth of permanent economic growth. If by chance somebody today ventures to voice his disapproval of today’s modern myths, such as the myth of liberal democracy, the myth of multiculturalism, the myth of parliamentarianism, the myth of coexistence between peaceful peasants and pristine pederasts promoted by the LGBT lobby, he will likely be declared insane by the System.

Not long ago a large number of historians in today’s Croatia were avid spokesmen of the Communist demonology only to become today avid supporters of the American liberal mystique. What must be of our concern are not their communist bygone times but rather how quickly they recycled their former beliefs. Tomorrow, when new demonologies set in, they will swiftly start praying to new gods and bow down before new lares and penates.

Dr. Tom Sunic is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Freedom Party. His new book Chroniques des temps postmodernes  (Avatar, 2014) has just been released.

Translated from the original French interview by Tom Sunic.

Q:  The French government has recently decided on the removal of the word ‘race’ from all official documents. Removing the word in order to eradicate the evil, is this not, spot on, some magical thinking? Moreover, if there are no races, how can there be any racism? And in passing, how can there be any antiracism at all? Antiracism without race, well, this may be quite complicated!

A: Don’t’ you worry. If the French Republic indeed claims not to recognize any longer “the existence of any alleged race,” it nonetheless declares that it “condemns racism.” Indeed, what will be more difficult to justify is the indictment for “incitement to racial hatred”, that is to say, the incitement to hate something that does not exist in the first place. From now on it will also be more difficult to justify the defense of miscegenation, since from now on this notion will refer to a mixture of imaginary entities, or the promotion of “diversity”, having in mind that “we do not recognize any race diversity.” (François Hollande, March 12, 2012). Finally, given that people insist on seeing and recognizing the “races” around them, somebody will really need to convince them that they are victims of optical illusions. Good luck to all those wishing to take on this task!

This being said, you’re not wrong at all when you mention magical thinking, given that both the words and the things are becoming all mixed up. For that matter we might just as well talk about demonology insofar as its focus is to exorcise the “evil thoughts” by uttering ritual formulas and mantras.  One must indeed be awed by the coincidence in the assertion of non-existence of races and the offensive of the gender ideology which also started out from the same premises. Thusly, race, just like sex, is only a “social construct” without any substantive reality. Hence the occurrence of  the same and typically Orwellian strategy with its lexical substitutes: “people” instead of “race”, “gender” instead of “sex”,  “parent” instead of “father” and “mother.” The underlying idea is that fighting racism implies the denial of the existence of races in a similar vein as fighting against sexism leads to the denial of the existence of sexes. Actually, one can attribute to men and women the same rights without requiring them to become androgynous. And that equality cannot be ascertained by the denial of diversity or by its reduction to sameness.

Q: And what do scientists have to say about this concept, which, to say the least, is controversial? Is there any unanimity on this subject?

A: The study of race has much evolved since the typological approach of the nineteenth century. In his book, published in 2008, L’humanité au pluriel, Bertrand Jordan emphasizes that DNA analyses can help us define ancestry groups (in- groups) within the human species and that “genetic differences between human groups exist,” and that they “are rooted in the long history of mankind.”

The reality is that ever since the first sequencing of the human genome (2001), the research keeps growing on genetic markers that identify group membership. Human diversity is not only individually based but also collective in nature.  One must take into account that these genetic pools enable us the tracing of the phylogenetic tree of human populations. Obviously, this is not just a matter of skin color given that forensic science can just as well identify ethnicity by examining the skeleton or the DNA. As Nancy Huston and Michel Raymond wrote in Le Monde, on May 17, the argument that the human species has become diversified during the evolution of different populations, with each carrying distinct genetic markers, is a simple observation which implies no value judgment. Henceforth, some researchers prefer to retain the word ‘race’, while others prefer to dismiss it, which, in the last analysis, is of no big importance. The “debate about race” is more a subject of semantics than molecular biology or population genetics. In passing, you may note that in 2008, Barack Obama published a book sub-titled A Story of Race and Inheritance.  Furthermore, ethnicity statistics are widely used in the United States.

Q: Which may help us understand why Barack Obama owes his elections to the “minorities” …

A: Let us not exaggerate. In the sixteen presidential elections that took place in the United States between 1952 and 2012, only one Democrat, Lyndon B. Johnson, received in 1964 a majority of White votes. As for Obama, he has seduced more Whites than many of his Democratic predecessors. Nine Democratic candidates, all of them Whites, had secured a lower percentage of votes among  the White electorate than the one obtained by Obama in 2012. For instance, in 1980, Jimmy Carter received only 33% of the votes of the [White] electorate.

Q: You wrote two books condemning racism (Contra el racismo et Europe, tiers monde, même combat), can you summarize your thoughts on this topic?

A: Well, this is a huge topic! Le Dictionnaire historique et critique du racisme, which has just been published by the PUF under the direction of Pierre-André Taguieff, has almost 2000 pages. … To sum it up, it is essential to distinguish  between the theories, on the one hand (whose study refers the history of ideas) and behavior (whose study is sociology) on the other. Racist theories are those that either postulate the inequality of races, or consider racial adherence as a key factor in the history of mankind, which implies the omnipotence of racial determinism. There aren’t many people today who subscribe to this kind of theory. As far as behaviors are concerned, “racism” is an attitude of distrust or irrational hostility, often instinctive and spontaneous toward those who belong (or are believed to belong) to another race. In order for this mistrust or hostility to occur, obviously, there is no need for people to subscribe to a theory. Among many others this is a form of “alterophobia” or “heterophobia,” that is to say an allergy to the Other-than-Ourselves.

I must add to this a third type of racism—the one that claims that differences are nonexistent, superficial, or with no importance. The Other is no longer stigmatized; instead, the Other is supposed to be non-existing and must ultimately be reduced to the Same. This brand of racism decorates itself often with the mask of “antiracism”. Being more perverse it is therefore also more dangerous.