Conservativeism is usually positioned on the other progressive liberalism of the edge of the political spectrum.
It would so seem that it is simply a natural spore, and in any case a natural ally of the Anti-system and that its adepts should naturally slide towards the anti-system attitude. However, the empirical reflection of real conservatives contradicts the accuracy of specified predictions.
On a global policy level, conservatives practically always position themselves against those centres of force which, it would seem, should be seen by them as a natural ally of their anti-liberal cause. Conservatives, however, are always enemies of Russia, Islam, China and the ethnopogan movement, despite the fact that these centres, like conservativeism in the West, are based on Western liberalism, that states are more conservative than Western states, and that the peoples and countries representing them are more conventional than peoples and Western countries.
This is not a natural distance or even animosity due to cultural differences, but a negative relation embedded much deeper and much more strongly, causing this aversion much more acute than could consequence from a different religion, language or tradition. Russia, Islam, the Far East civilization, and ethno-gamy are a more than liberal enemy to the conservative. Faced with a conflict of Western liberalism with an entity of 1 of the categories listed, the conservative will always stand on the side of Western liberalism.
This attitude is characterized by both the well-known and active on social platforms of conservatives and historical representatives of this current – e.g. the Prussian conservative traditionalist Ernst Louis von Gerlach (1795-1877) Feared of Russian absolutism, likewise Spanish Conservative Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853), even Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), who in the Napoleonic era found refuge in Sankt-Petersburg, was more curious in Catholic papacy than in the country of his stay (I ignore Polish conservatism here, due to the fact that the full Polish national identity was developed as an anti-Russia identity, Polish conservatism is so distorted by Polish national prejudices).
The hostility of Western conservatives towards the East, paganism and Islam can in fact be described on the common denominator of hostility to "barbarity". This Western discourse was referred to as a "semi-civilised" community, which is little developed technology and little complex structure (although the belief of the second was usually wrong) than Western societies. technological formalization, this view was seen in the mid-19th century in the works of the Yankee anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881), but was present in the worldview of Western people at least from the beginning of the modern era and large geographical discoveries.
Values of Civilization Defended by Conservativeism
Conservatives, in their own view, act in defence of “civilization” against “barbarism” and even “governing”, the second usually associated with revolutions and caused by chaos. The values of which the vehicle is simply a Western civilization for the defence of which the conservatives argue, the thought is given by even so recognized representatives of this current in our times as Jean Raspail (1925-2020) or Roger Scruton (1944-2020): these are good paintings, elegantly given and eaten dishes, good manners and social label, elegant dress, conventional architecture, subtle salon conversations, rich libraries and collections, crafty music and poesy etc. Conservative German musician Josef Klumb (born 1968) considered conventional Catholicism to be well-composed with branded leather gloves and a good brand of cigars and whisky. The mentioned J. Raspail considered monarchism an attribute of modern dandys.
Conservatives will, of course, curse that their political doctrine is not about eating wine from an elegant glass, sitting in a suit in a leather chair, in a surviving area in the company of ladies, only about the post-platonian perfect of Catholic order as God's thought of the planet or about the evolutionary and organic nature of social change. But I pointed out above not the content of political doctrine of conservatism, but its values. If individual inactive insists on maintaining conservative values in the area of conservative political philosophy, he can correct my thesis from pointing to “the values of conservatism” to “material-cultural values of conservatism” or “material-cultural manifestations of conservative values”.
The emergence and Content of Civilization Defended by Conservativeism
However, it is crucial for this argument that the strategy of specified values alternatively than another values has entered into conservative doctrine in a very specific, socio-historic context of its origin. The beginning of conservative thought can be found even before the wave of liberal revolutions, which rose in Europe at the end of the 18th century. The subject of criticism of this pre-revolutionary protoconservatism has been the increasing absolutism and accompanying social and civilizational changes since the 17th century. mostly speaking, the breakdown of the medieval village and the strengthening of the state in the modern era let the improvement of cities from 1 and the large estates on the other. The city, on the 1 hand, and the land estate, on the another hand, "cannibalize" the agrarian society of the mediate Ages, which was also, in a sense, a "stateless" society – they were joined by not abstract legal-formal ties but individual ties.
Note that this process transforms in depth or even alters the erstwhile knighthood. In the mediate Ages, the knight functioned in anarchical sociopolitical environment, in exchange for armed service having the right to redistribute in his favour any part of the income from a given land. With the emergence of the modern state, medieval anarchy replaces order with state monopoly on violence. The service of the knight is lost in importance to the establishment of state armies, police and justice. Property rights replacing the medieval right to land income let agrarian land to be seized.
The modern age gives birth to a figure of the possessor-arear surviving from the work of others and not performing any social function in fulfilling which could not be replaced. The areas are a ‘empty class’, leading a dull, idle and comfortable life. The Polish creator of specified a life was not accidentally surviving in the modern age Nicholas Rej (1505-1569). specified a lifestyle gave space for the improvement of sensitivities and talents that had no conditions to flourish in the anarchical planet of the mediate Ages: care for the beauty of their own and their possessions, care for good manners and improvement of useful art, exercises of the art of beautiful speaking and writing; poetry, literature and philosophy, subtlety of culinary and aesthetic tastes, etc.
The Earth class grew in the modern age, devouring the conventional village and parasitising in the modern country. Historical currents that elevated it to the surface, however, besides fueled the natural improvement of cities. The latter, of course, were more dynamic than the earthly estates, so the rapidly born intelligence in the cities began to receive political leadership (the emergence of a proto-meritocratic "official nobility", in the modern era of abolishing state barriers) which it inherited from its heroic knightly ancestors, while the plutocracy born in the cities took its management in the economy and the dominance of property in the country (development of capitalism). Conservatism is thus born in the modern age by protesting 1 of the dimensions of its transformations, but its birth has become possible in general due to these changes and it has benefited from another aspect of it: conservatism fed on the emergence of an area class, but tried to halt the improvement of cities, capitalism and modern state. Conservative values are so a kind of scum of modern change and the lifestyle that conservatives consider to be a model in fact was a social organism degeneration.
Conservativeism as a Decadence
The anti-system seeks to abolish liberalism, or to overcome decadence, in the name of the rebirth of Nature. What is natural is what is functional for a peculiar ethnos in the environment of his life. The values of conservatism do not represent what is natural, but degeneration, deformation and grotesque overgrowth of functionally unnecessary or even burdensome and harmful elements. conventional orders are those under which the possible of what is natural for a given people is freely updated. These are not necessarily conducive to hypertrophic conditions of what Western conservatives consider to be "civilization".
Civilization, as conservatives realize it, represents a decadence. Determining, as Nietzsche teaches us, means distance from Nature. It is about both the distance to wildlife and the distance to its own nature – to the stimulating instincts. The erstwhile causes the latter. Conservative-valued civilization is opposed by them to “wild” and “barbarbarity”, Nature trying to replace culture.
The Earth's aristocrat lives surrounded by service, which causes him to lose his most simple instincts and to neglect to satisfy his basic needs of life on his own – even if he prepares himself a meal or multiply himself and defends his possession. Among the earth’s women, even the maternal instinct fades, for they give their own children to suckling mothers. Christian religion destroys among the "cultural layers" the instinct of reproduction, the sex act being reduced to a purely method "marriage obligation", the sexual drive of a man is to satisfy him in a brothel and the female suppresses him.
The Fear of Conservatives Before Life
Conservative president Andrzej Duda In 1 of his speeches, he warned against the threat to Western civilization created by the existence of "serious regimes", mentioning Russia and China, and most likely referring besides to muslim states and non-western peoples of another regions of the world. The conservatives, in fact, are hostile to non-Western centers, to what is “barbaric” to them: to live outside the “crystal palace” of Western liberal civilization, in conditions requiring the cultivation of our natural potential, and not leaving besides much space for values specified as “eating a patch of ham on the leaf of a silver platter” or conducting a free, open and rational debate in parliament.
Even erstwhile we take high-tech and organized Asian societies or wealthy Persian Gulf countries as a mention point, they inactive hold the importance of patriarchy, authority, community, manhood based on courage, physical strength, honor and skill (Islamic militants and revolutionaries frequently come from privileged Arabian clans), and comfort occupies an incomparably inferior position on the ladder of values than even work. In more conventional countries specified as Africa, the Caucasus, Central Asia or Mexico, war, clanism and anarchy are constant elements of social life. Even in the Russian planet there is simply a different attitude of the community to the human individual, another is the position of power, another perception of time, and even different is the Christian with the Church calling for a "holy war" behind Western Satanism in Ukraine.
Western Conservatives are afraid of all this. The transfer of specified a "barbarity" to the West or even the gain of specified a "living in the state of Nature" society over the liberal West would jeopardise the comfort region they dream of as part of their political philosophy. This was well illustrated by J. Raspail in his loud fresh “The Camp of the Saints” (1973), where the western civilization of comfort and sophistication destroys the “wilders” from overseas. He identified the dangers of R. Scruton in his "West and all the rest" (2002), where muslim "barbarics" are the origin of danger.
The Liberal, according to the Western Conservative, washes the foundations of the planet in which you can live comfortably in your agrarian estate, cost alcohol and another exquisite dishes, partaking with doctrine and literature, delight with beauty and contemplate music, ride and hunt, dedicate yourself in parliament to debates with educated gentlemen, and in surviving area subtle conversations with cultural ladies, wear elegant suits, etc. However, the Liberal knows and can even appreciate all these values, not only their foundations in the form of religion, tradition and superstition, university, monarchy, etc. Meanwhile, the Barbarian is individual completely “outside” – the value of Western civilization does not know, understand, or share them, usually treating them purely robberyous.
Antisystem as palingenesis
The anti-system could be divided into "outside-System" (against Western liberalism non-Western centres) and "counter-System" (contest of liberalism in the West itself). As I mentioned above, the “outside-System” is present the real Russian World, Zhengguó and the region of its civilisational influence, muslim umma and non-westernized peoples of different parts of the world. In the West itself, the "contra-System" is an environment that opposes state technocracy and corporate capitalism and the liberal ideology promoted by them, occurring from the position of "working autochthons". I have already pointed out that life attitudes in the "outside-System" do not match the perfect of Western civilization, about which Western conservatives believe that the preservation of its deposit in the unrelented state requires first of all the social elite to cultivate it, whereas Western progressives believe that we should accept the price of even a certain depletion of the deposit of civilization, in order to spread its achievements among all.
With respect to the Anti-system of Intra-Academics, or "contra-System", its historical antennae could be sought among raubritters, hajduks, thugs, clefs, hajdamaks, anti-feuding peasant movements, anti-area slave movements and serfs, luddists and agrarian parties, the Lebensreform movement, neo-Paganian and völkist movements, anti-liberal revolutions of the first half of the 20th century, anti-colonial and anti-racist movements, Nouvelle Droite/Neue Rechte and Alt-Right. The essence of doctrine and political attitude of the intra-secondary counter-System render the names Nietzsche and Sorel.
As it is easy to see from this enumeration, the accession to the Antisystem in the West consisted of rejection – usually with the undisclosed ideical manifestos and the publicist contempt – of the value of Western civilization in the form of a "beautiful life in comfort" which the Western Conservatives and Liberals worship. Western perfect “life in comfort” anti-systemists argue Aryan perfect “heroic life”. Heroism in the Aryan perfect is simply a way of creation, while beauty is expressed in it – the knowing of beauty in the Western Antisystem is so rather different from Western conservatism.
It is rather different than in Western civilization, due to the fact that it is not hard to see that the Western Antisystem is simply a Western “Barbaric”—a turning distant from the artificiality of Western civilization to reconstruct the ethnos of the West in more natural ways for them. The Aryan heroic perfect was expressed straight – the request for the revival of the warrior's spirit, now occurs in any streams of the "manosphere" as the perfect for the rebirth of manhood. It has besides been expressed by the slogans ‘work’, ‘work-based country’, ‘working self-organisations’, ‘work chamber’, ‘proletariat dictatorship’. Regardless of the emphasis, the same spirit of the Indo-European peoples was expressed here. The heroic perfect expressing the slogans of both cultural identity, conflict and work was well visible, among others, in the French movement of the Giles jaunes, in the publications preconfiguring it Alain Soral, in more ephemeral phenomena specified as the Yankee "Traditionalist Workers Party".
If we were to indicate a set of recurring anti-system motives in Western environments, this collection would include: going to the gym, practicing martial arts, settling in working classes and aversion to capital and pensioners, cultural identity, frequently regional and aversion to globalisation and immigration, European patriotism and rejecting "the wars between Europeans", patriarchal household and expressive fatherhood, aversion to cities, industrial food production and mechanized agriculture, longing to decision to the countryside, a dream of food and economical self-sufficiency, an interest in endurance and frequently besides a strong anarchical trend. The U.S. civilian Militia movement, any controversial subcultures from the UK 1980s, could be mentioned. going down to the level of the political underground, motorcycle gangs in North America and Western Europe (e.g. those presently animated in France by Serge Ayoub) and even certain currents of the Polish bushcraft movement referring to a "wolf" symbolism, whose names I will not callback here, however, due to the fact that their adaptors may not want it.
As you can see, the anti-systemic neo-maskulistic/Aryan/Sharmacco-Scythic/Eurasian perfect is something very different from listening to Gregorian illness in a leather chair and with a cigar in your mouth. We can say here that the perfect of the Western counter-system – even if we imagine him as a muscular individual after working reading Hegel or watching Dowżenka films (or would he be so different from the literary Conan, in the free moments of studying the teachings of east sages?) – it is simply a heroic ideal, so it is simply a "barbaric ideal".
At the crossroads of the roads to the superman and the last man
It will be useful for Nietzsche to separate between “superman” and “last man”. Simplifyingly, the superhuman is the 1 whose culture increases the creative possible of his nature, increases his will for Powers, makes his life more intense and lush. "The Last Man" in turn is individual bound by abstractions and artificiality, whose culture does not intensify life in it, but weakens it, suppresses it, and deforms it – Life is in the "last man" sick, scolded, lame, and distorted. The “last man” could be illustrated with a image dressed in crinoline and an aristocrat's wig, which is incapable to take off its clothes on its own, take out physiological needs and faints from hypoxia.
The conservatives themselves will most likely disagree with this, their perfect of "culture" and "civilization" as "crossing beyond Nature" (i.e. in fact denying it) is the perfect of "the last man." Conservativeism takes as an perfect social formation, which is in fact a "unadaptative" mutation of the social body, or, in terms of progressive-linear terms, a "blind alley of history". As such, traditionalist conservatism is simply a "impossible permutation of Western civilization", due to the fact that the return of the earth's aristocracy and its political superstructure is simply a fantasy without a chance of realization – it was a unique historical phenomenon, increasing out of an unrepeatable interplay of historical circumstances. The very presumption that the hub of culture is expected to be the social elite, while the remainder of ethnos is the "shaped mass" which is yet to be "culpted" into culture reveals the profoundly unnatural, constructivist and compradorical nature of the conservative worldview.
For us – Antisystem-Barbaric conservative values in the form of culture which the conservatives want to cultivate are not any values. alternatively of a comfortable (drinking) life, we want a heroic (creative) life whose inherent reverse is danger and suffering, due to the fact that we know that the inherent dimension of life is its tragicism – a man does not strive to live long and "good", but to live gloriously, willing to pay the price of scars and early death for glory.
More figuratively speaking, the performance in the performance hall is better than the performance of birds in the forest and their own singing accompanying us in everyday life (it is not accidental for conventional societies to consider the "talk of birds" singing and poesy as the preface of humanity). From the painting gallery – a beautiful landscape. From experiencing individual else's life in literature or movie – surviving a full life, experiencing the full possible of your body, waking your senses, reaching the deepest layers of your personality.
Japanese author Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) He started as a man of civilization (western) – he started as a man of the Word. However, he fulfilled himself as a Barbarian – entering the way of the Body; in his essay “Sun and steel” he writes that he manages to “capture” life, experience life in the way of exertion and pain, as he tightens his will, muscles, lungs, etc. Mishima, in order to experience Life, had to feel suffering – effort and pain. The top experience of Life became for him heroic action and heroic death in glory; he died like the Barbarian Man, on the altar of glory laying down his life. Prior to his death, he accused civilization that by separating him from Nature (the kid spent locked up by his grandmother-aristocrat in a area without sunlight and clean air), she deformed, made him sick and mutilated his young Life – for a man should start with the experience of the Body, after him only experiencing the Word.
Embedded in Different Worlds
I have many antisystemists among my friends who want to settle in a conservative tradition. any of them point out that conservatism should be considered a more average and diluted expression of traditionalism, which undoubtedly falls beyond the political spectrum of liberal systems. I encourage them to reflect on their political recognition in terms of what model of social life is considered to be "natural" in conservative political philosophy. The recognition of this conservative perfect allows us to easy respond to why conservatives in the face of conflict between liberals and the planet of Tradition – against the expected continuity between conservativeism and traditionalism – always support liberals and liberal civilization.
Conservativeism fetishizes a phenomenon in Western civilization in the form of modern Earth elites, already surviving in the conditions of the modern state. The anti-system is the fresh Barbarianism. That is, nurturing and cultivating the male virtues essential for life in anarchy. And a slight shift towards anarchy – the dismantling of the modern "careful" state and possible thanks to it technocratic piers of capitalism, so that more natural formations and social relations can be reborn. Even if we look at Russia or independent Korea (where "everything is in a state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state), we request virtues and attitudes more manly to live in these "regimes" than in seeking to destruct (or in any case to cast into the shadow) the tragedy of the life of Western civilization.
The support of conservative liberal civilization is not a coincidence, therefore, arising from political opportunism, intellectual or spiritual weakness, or yet the deficiency of an ideological axis or the failure of a given conservative, but from the very sources and essence of conservative doctrine. It represents something that is unnatural, degenerate and as specified unworthy of defense. The anti-system as a “back to Nature” represents in the eyes of the conservative Barbarianism, archaic Manhood, the youth of the race, and as specified is something alien, fear and hostility. So we are set up as “in different worlds.”
Ronald Lasecki
No 17-18 (27.04-4.05.2025)
A polemic with this text by Vladimir Kowalik was published and was published in the latest MP issue.
