The European New Right: A Shi'a Response

A Radical Critique of Alexander Dugin, E. Michael Jones, and Alain de Benoist

Arash Najaf-Zadeh

• Publisher: Black House Publishing Ltd
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781912759798
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

After the defeat of National Socialism and Fascism in 1945 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the upshot of the performance of the vanquishing political ideology of Liberalism is that it has torn international law to shreds while bankrupting itself through the immoral practice of usury. Under its auspices, with the loss of faith in God, the traditional family has been destroyed, being replaced by moral depravity, leading to cultural decay. The isolation of the individual and anxiety about the future have become the hallmarks of 21st century liberal culture. In this midst, it would thus seem that there are three remaining contenders to the throne that Liberalism has vacated by its malfeasance and failure: traditional Catholicism; the European New Right, led by Alain de Benoist and the Grecists, and Alexander Dugin’s Eurasianist movement. Arash Najaf-Zadeh argues that Catholicism recused itself with the broadside that it self-inflicted at the Second Vatican Council of 1962-5, which was effectively the last nail in its coffin. On the other hand, he points out the fatal flaws of the philosophical underpinnings of de Benoist’s and Dugin’s thought, which are based on the thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger respectively, both of which posit a morally unsustainable subjectivist epistemology and its consequent pluralist ontology. This metaphysical posture, Najaf-Zadeh argues, is at variance with the reality of the world, whose existence is dependent on the only true ontological reality, which is God (and that which resides in God, by His leave). In addition to being a critique of the foremost Western ideologies, this treatise by a leading Shi’a scholar addresses the complex question of the efficacy of Shi’a Islam as an alternative religio-political ideology, and provides the broad outlines of the comprehensive and integral system of Shi’a Islam, which he posits as ultimately being the only truly viable alternative available to the West.

1. Ex Oriente Lux

The Islamic Revolution of 1979 as the Antithesis of the Collapse of the West’s Grand Récit

But before proceeding to that explication, let us first say that Alexander Dugin is mistaken in stating that there were only three political theories in the 20th century (and that what he proposes, therefore, is the fourth). As the Soixont-Huitards were doing their thing in Paris, and as the esteemed Alain de Benoist founded the European ‘New Right’ movement in France with the establishment of GRECE (Research and Study Group for European Civilization) in 1968, Imām Khomeinī (at the time, he was known as Grand Ayatollah Khomeinī) was teaching his theory of velāyat-e faqīh or the guardianship-type governance of the Shi'a doctors of sacred jurisprudence cum theologians cum theosophers while in exile in the seminary at Najaf. The notes of these lectures which were delivered in 1968 and 1969 were redacted by his students and presented to Imām Khomeinī for his review. The reviewed and amended version of these redacted notes were eventually published a year later in early 1970. Less than a decade later, the world was changed by the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79. I say the world, because not only did the Islamic Revolution of Iran change the Islamic world, and Iran, which has always been its intellectual if not spiritual capital; but it changed the whole world. It woke the world up from its secular humanist daydream. Indeed, it was Imam Khomeinī’s movement which woke the West up from the secular human belief that man is free to do as he pleases.

أَيَحْسَبُ الْإِنسَانُ أَن يُتْرَكَ سُدًى

[75:36] [What?!] Does man, then, think that he is to be left to himself to go about at will?

Brother Alexander and the ENR have (mostly) arrived at the right conclusions in terms of their deconstruction of the liberal order, but from the wrong path. And that is why their theories and movement will not be able to withstand the test of time. And even your prescriptions are generally correct. You have finally arrived at the position that what should be done is to adopt the left’s position on labor and environmental laws and on social justice, and the right’s position on traditional values, the importance of family, religion and hierarchy, and the rights of God and of the community being given priority over the rights of the individual, who, after all is said and done, can only grow out of the seedbed of community. In other words, you have arrived at a position that Shi'a Islam (and decidedly not Sunni Islam) has held consistently for fourteen centuries. So far, so good. But because your whole approach is philosophical and not religious, and even if it were religious, it would still be encumbered by the problems of Christianity – because of this, your methodological error, which has led to errors in your ideological positions, your theory has failed to take into account this most basic fact of the seismic event that 1979 was, even though Shi'a Islam’s positions on social justice and traditional values is exactly and not approximately what your position is, and has anticipated it by nothing less than fourteen centuries.

Michael O’Meara claims that the only historical cases conforming to the New Right’s imperial idea have been those of Rome, Byzantium, the Hohenstaufens, and the Hapsburgs, and that in these “traditionalist empires”, cultural, linguistic, national, and social boundaries did not coincide (as in a nation) nor were they subordinate to a single model of life (as the pax americana dictates), but that, rather, their unity “rested on an affiliation to a common ideal, upon whose basis their differences were integrated”. We cannot comment on the extent to which this is the case, but can state that while the immediate ambit and reach of the Islamic Revolution is limited to the borders of Iran which acts as the Shi'a citadel, its spiritual sovereignty and authority are based on the principle of ordo ducit ad Deum (an order leading to God), and thus shine bright outside of its Westphalian borders for those whose eyes are open and can see ex oriente lux (the light from the East). As such, its sovereignty and authority are universal, eternal, sacred, and salvific.

It was in this same watershed year of the Revolution of 1979 (The year 1400 of the Islamic lunar calendar) that Lyotard’s La Condition Postmoderne appeared; and as the roots of the Islamic Revolution took hold and the first adumbrations of the Islamic Republic began to crystalize in the East, the postmodern critique of modernity and of the whole Western project began to take hold in a parallel and seemingly unrelated procedure in the West. Jean-François Lyotard, the first and perhaps most influential philosopher to interpret the post-modern condition, describes it in terms of the collapse of the grand récit, or of the Great Narrative coursing through the discourse of modernity. It is the thesis of this writer that the Revolution of 1979, flawed as it inevitably is, is the only possible antithesis to the West’s “metanarrative collapse” – Nietzsche’s Will to Power, Heidegger’s uprooting of logos in favor of chaos, Kierkegaard’s rejection of institutionalized religion in favor of a radical individualism based on an irrational Leap of Faith, nor yet Brother Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory – none of these are able to withstand what William Connolly has called reason’s “perpetual process of self-critique” absent the only true and valid revelation that is the Final Testament of the Quran, which superseded the New Testament fifteen lunar centuries ago.

Brother Alexander correctly states that postmodernity cannot be transcended “without appeal to something that has been [in existence] prior to the reason of its decay.” He goes on to say that “we should resort to philosophies other than Western”, and that “If we seek well, we can find the real forms of such intellectual traditions in archaic societies, as well as in Eastern theology.” In an editorial footnote added by the excellent editors at Arktos Media to Alexander Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory, we learn that in his book The End of Our Time (1924), Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948), the influential Russian millenarian mystic and political philosopher, prophesied the imminent end of liberalism and humanism, and the return of what he termed a New Middle Ages, which would include a return to civilizations based upon religion and mysticism. Well – surprise! – the Islamic Revolution of Iran of 1978-79 is nothing less than the fulfillment of this visionary prophecy.

To be sure, when we say that the crystallization of the values and ideals of the Islamic Revolution under the constitutional law of the Islamic Republic are taking place “in a parallel and seemingly unrelated procedure” to the collapse of the Grand Narrative in the West, we do not mean to imply that therefore, the Islamic Republic has stumbled upon the solution to all of the problems of the East and of the West and of humanity at large. By no means. First and foremost because the good people who are holding the reins of power in the Islamic Republic – who are surrounded by a tidal wave of apple polishers and hypocrites (who are worse than unbelievers) and idiots – must first clean out their own barn of such pigs before they can start to set an example for the rest of the world, starting with the Department of Justice, whose corruption is at the root of the intractability of many of the problems that we face. I’m sorry, but it is what it is; but at least it is better than the situation in some of the countries in the West where I have heard that one can actually marry such pigs in brothels who enjoy the sanction of their legislative plenums (and I am not talking about pigs in a metaphorical sense here, but ones with all that good back-bacon)! But the more important reason is that even if we here in the besieged Shi'a citadel were able to get our act together and were to act as real exemplary models for the rest of the world, the situation would still not be tenable, just as it is untenable in the West. And this, as I told Alexander in the conference in Mashhad, is because mankind’s rebellion against God’s order obtained in the world of those who attained to faith in Islam, just as it obtained in Christendom (the main reason being their failure to heed the words of warning of the Final Prophet, may God’s peace be with him and with the purified and immaculate members of his House); so that subsequently, eleven of the twelve Imams who were sent as divine guides to humanity after the passing of the Prophet as a grace and as a mercy from God, were martyred by agents of the Omayyad and Abbasid tyrants. And eventually the situation got so bad that the twelfth and final Divine Guide was taken up by God and is being kept in a state of physical occultation, so that our condition is beyond repair absent the advent of that Divine Guide and absent the Second Coming of the Christ Jesus, son of Mary (unto all of whom be God’s peace). All we can do is to work to the best of our ability in the seemingly Sisyphusian task of attempting to establish God’s will on Earth as it is in Heaven in the absence of the Imam al-Mahdī (the Guided One) and in the absence of the Christ Jesus, all the while being conscious of the impossibility of our task. The consciousness of this impossibility will prevent us from falling into the error and heresy of Pelagianism and what Eric Voeglin famously characterized as “the imminantization of the Eschaton”; imminantizing the advent of the Savior by the works of man (like the political Judaism of the Zionists) instead of waiting with active patience (entezār) for Providence’s will to be accomplished in the fullness of God’s own good time. But the function of this impossibility – the impossibility of having different poles live as different “humanities” in peace with each other – an impossibility which will become more and more obviated as we spiral down ever steeper into the vortex at the end of history (or into the “momentous historical turn”, to use Ayatollah Khāmeneī’s famous phrase) – the function of this impossibility is to awaken humanity from its absurd, self-assured and arrogant humanism, and to engender in mankind that original spiritual sense of dependence on a Higher Power, and subsequent need for Guidance from Above. To awaken, in other words, the original religious consciousness and impetus in mankind, and to humble his arrogance, so that he can better conform himself to reality, so that he can find salvation through God and the message that He has sent through His Apostles. The impossibility, in other words, acts as yet another Portal of Grace.1 But from our point of view, the difference between the impossibility of this self-critical Shi'a position and its active awaiting (entezār), and the impossibility of our Western brothers who are sitting on the fence or still going around in circles, is that the former posture is salvific and will have eternal rewards in the hereafter whereas the latter’s is as spiritually sterile as the zombies and spiritual chimaeras who gaily parade themselves in New Orleans on Mardi Gras every year, or in the Castro District in San Francisco or in the various capitals of the modern Sodoms and Gomorrahs of the West on Gay Pride Day.

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1 For a fuller discussion of this topic, see chapter 11. (From Multipolarity back to Unipolarity).

2. The Metaphysics of Chaos

At the beginning of the essay entitled The Metaphysics of Chaos Alexander Dugin defines logos as “the logical order of being” and, following Heidegger, states that “modern European philosophy began with the concept of logos” and that “All the potentialities and the principles laid in this logocentric way of thinking have by now been thoroughly explored, exposed and abandoned by philosophers” so that “this concept became fully exhausted”. Alexander Dugin then goes on to say that “chaos is something opposite to logos, its absolute alternative”, and that this concept has been neglected throughout the history of Western philosophy in favor of the discredited logos.

A little later, we learn that the European philosophy which was “based on the logocentric principle … of exclusion … [which] corresponds strictly to the masculine attitude and reflects a patriarchal, authoritative, vertical, and hierarchical order of being and knowledge… has come to an end”, and that we must therefore “consider another road for thought, [that is] not in the logocentric, phallocentric, hierarchical and exclusivist way.” In other words, “the most important and brilliant European philosophers (such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger) began to suspect that logos was fast approaching its end… [and that] we are living in the time of the end of logocentric philosophy, and approaching… something else.”

So far, we are in basic agreement with Brothers Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Dugin. We do not necessarily agree with their definitional framework or with their specific characterizations of the issue, but that is not important at this juncture. We agree with their diagnosis, as well as with their prescription, or more precisely, their proscription, which is to jettison the entirety of the Western philosophical tradition overboard. But the reason why we agree with the proscription differs from our fellow pilgrims. They reason that the Greeks reasoned incorrectly (and therefore, all those who followed them, especially Plato and Aristotle, and Augustine and Aquinas, also reasoned incorrectly). Let us not get into the broad classifications of the supposed errors, such as referentialism and nominalism at this juncture; suffice it to say that we agree that the entire Western philosophical tradition got off on the wrong track. And we would add that the entire Islamic philosophico-mystical tradition, from Eben Sīnā (Avicenna) to Fārābī to Eben ‘Arabi to Sohrevardī to Mollā Sadrā and Allāme Mohammad Hosayn Tabātabāī – all of these got it wrong too. So they reason that all these people reasoned incorrectly, and that they should reason in a different way, namely, correctly! Where we differ concerning the prescription is that we are with the logical positivists with respect to the efficacy of reason, or more accurately, the absence of any efficacy for reason, when it comes to the metaphysical or trans-physical realm; the realm which the Quran refers to as al-ghayb which is commonly translated as “[the world or domain of] the unseen” but which Mohammad Asad, may God rest his blessed soul, masterfully translated as “the domain which is beyond the ken of ordinary understanding”. In other words, we are with A.J. Ayer, W. Quine, and especially Ludwig Wittgenstein when he said, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

Strange bedfellows, I hear you say; and I would agree. But we only agree with them with respect to their implacable insight that where reason’s calipers do not have any purchase, then one should put reason aside and see what other instruments or faculties are available (if any). They could not find any other instruments or faculty, and so they reasonably limited their search to where the spotlight of reason shines, which is downward onto the material plane and no higher. Where they were mistaken is to then claim that reason’s spotlight is the only place where a light shines, and so proceeded to make fools of themselves. To put it slightly less delicately but more to the point, reason reasons that the trans-physical realm or the realm of al-ghayb is a realm where the angel of reason fears to tread; and thus reason bows to true revelation when it encounters it, knowing that it speaks of a realm concerning which it has no jurisdiction. Reason reasons that the trans-physical realm is dark to it as a faculty of intellection and understanding, and that a failure to bow to revelation with respect to basic questions concerning being and its nature will result in just more verbal, that is to say, philosophical diarrhea. And so, where we differ with our fellow travelers Brothers Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Dugin is that when reason has taken us to the edge of the Abyss (to use Nietzsche’s word), we see the limitations of the faculty of intellection which can only think in terms of discrete concepts and finite entities, and follow reason’s bidding to open the door of that other special faculty of intellection known as revelation, and enter through that door in order to be able to see beyond the veil of reason; whereas our fellow travelers are still standing at the edge of the abyss arguing about what to do and where to go, and doing so with that same faculty which itself has told them that “this logocentric way of thinking has by now been thoroughly explored, exposed and abandoned.” Yet they refuse to abandon it, and go on and on about a pre-ontological chaos, a will to power, and an irrational leap of faith of the supra-individuated individual, in the case of Brother Kierkegaard.

If they did abandon it as their reason bids them so to do, and if they followed us through that door of revelation which is not the Old Testament or the New Testament, which have been superseded, but the Final Testament which is the Quran; then this is what they would find. In other words, what we say to the anti-modernists is that it is all well and good to inveigh against modernity and maintain some nebulous connection with the Christian tradition, but let us not forget that ultimately, the Enlightenment thinkers were right to insist that revelation be subject to the rigorous examination of reason; where they erred was in the overplus of the scope which they afforded reason, holding it in an irrationally high level of esteem in terms of its efficacy and competence, which is why they rightly rejected Greco-Pauline Christianity as irrational (as we shall prove presently), but continued their hyper-rational sweep to include all religions, thereby not affording the Islamic revelation the scrutiny that it richly deserves.

3. Finitude and the Tripartite Proof 1

The full name for this chapter is Finitude and the Tripartite Proof for the Existence of God, for H...

Table of contents

• Table of Contents
• The European New Right
• Précis
• Preamble
• 1. Ex Oriente Lux
• 2. The Metaphysics of Chaos
• 3. Finitude and the Tripartite Proof
• 4. Elaborations on the Proof of Finitude
• 5. al-Haqq and the Referential Theory of Knowledge
• 6. Philosophical Ding-Dong at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
• 7. Philosophy as the Continuance of a Pagan Farce
• 8. The “Curious Disputations” of Greek Philosophy
• 9. Alain de Benoist contra the Totalitarians
• 10. From Unipolarity to Multipolarity
• 11. From Multipolarity Back to Unipolarity
• 12. Dasein and the Barzakh
• 13. Logos and the Light of the Eye
• 14. Objective Truth and Radical Postmodern Subjectivism
• 15. Welāyat and the Principal of Tavallī and Tabarrī
• Summary and Conclusion