In our present analysis we will focus specifically on the essence and fundamental function of the aristocratic spirit, explaining its spiritual connotations and eliminating the various false and misleading modern interpretations of various hoaxes or half-truths about the so-called “Aristocrats” and “Aristocracy”. All of this must be examined from a historical and substantive perspective, with the necessary clarifications in relation to concepts such as totalitarianism and authoritarianism, tradition and race, the elite, bourgeois “intellectualism”, and so on.
There is clearly an aristocratic spirit and its various manifestations, linked to time and space. These particular manifestations have a special character: They experience a genesis, a development, and possibly even a deterioration and a decline. The aristocratic spirit, however, is superior and precedes each of these individual constituent evolutionary characteristics. It corresponds to a degree of reality, to a primordial function of the whole. It therefore has a suprahistorical nature and could even be called metaphysical. Precisely as such, it has endured after the birth and decline of historical aristocracies, which may embody it more or less fully in a given period, in the cycle of a given civilization and a given race.
Like the idea of the Kingdom, of the Regnum, or of the Order, or of Tradition, so too the aristocratic idea contains within itself its own establishment and legitimation. There is already a twilight within men when the hypothesis arises in their minds and judgments that it is “history,” the “objective cause” that creates a kingdom, an aristocracy, or a tradition, and that both are justified and valid on the basis of accidental factors, or utility, or purely material domination, or submission. History, and, in general, everything that is merely human, can only provide the “power,” the profound power that, under given conditions, allows a kingdom to be formed and the aristocratic spirit to manifest itself. But, in its deepest essence, this manifestation is surrounded by mystery: It is the mystery that always imposes itself where the paths from above intersect with those from below, where correspondences are created between the peaks of human ascent and the outlets of texts beyond human influence. These points of interposition are the fateful moments of history. They are the points where that which is a symbol becomes reality and that which is reality becomes a symbol, where that which is spirit becomes power and that which is power is transformed into spirit.
One of the most widely used tactics of the secret forms of world domination and subversion is, at the outset, the discrediting and defamation of persons. Where the aim is the dissolution of a traditional order, the forces of dissolution await the opportune moment when a certain decline manifests itself in the historical representatives of the fundamental principles of that order. This is the most opportune moment for subversive action: everything is done to ensure that the persecution of individuals is extended insidiously and imperceptibly against the principles they represent, so that these too are struck with the same discredit and are therefore considered obsolete or harmful and are replaced by others, more or less imbued with subversion. This tactic has already been adopted long ago against a certain traditional European aristocracy.
The obvious and undeniable degeneration of a part of this aristocracy was the most useful instrument for an attack on the aristocratic spirit itself: This degeneration did not result in the demand to depose and replace this rotten aristocracy with another, worthy of the idea from which alone it derives its power and reason for existence, but led to the generalized repudiation, the elimination and the condemnation of the aristocratic idea itself in favor of inferior forces and ideas.
This, moreover, was only an episode in a wider process of reversal, regression and counter-evolution, which is worth recalling briefly here. Consider the four fundamental levels of the ancient Aryan social hierarchy:
- spiritual leaders,
- warrior aristocracy,
- bourgeoisie,
- and workers.
The gradual degeneration of
- the first class did not serve to force the replacement of its unworthy spiritual leaders by worthy representatives of the same principle, but rather served as a valuable pretext through which
- the second class, the warrior aristocracy, was led to usurp and assume the power that legitimately belonged only to the first.
Subsequently, the degeneration of a part of the warrior aristocracy did not lead to a rebellion aimed at its restoration, but rather to a second usurpation, carried out by
- the third class, which as a bourgeois plutocracy, as an oligarchy of money, replaced the warrior aristocracy.
- The degeneration of the system of the third class, the bourgeoisie and its capitalism, did not lead to the timely elimination of its diseased and parasitic fossils, but, once again, through this degeneration a process began against the principle, encouraging the attempt at further usurpation by the fourth class, the class of that passionate, materialistic and proletarianized world of the uprooted masses (Marxism, Bolshevism).
From this brief historical retrospective summary, it is also absolutely clear that understanding the essence and significance of the aristocratic spirit is fundamental to combating any form of its overthrow, as well as for our correct political orientation, especially at turning points such as the one that Western civilization is facing today.
The dominant political line of the national movement-parties
Today, our remaining or even seminal renewal national movements have for the most part aligned themselves spiritually and materially against bourgeois culture and bourgeois spirit, against plutocracy, against capitalism. They want the end of the “bourgeois era”. However, there are two paths, not only different but also contradictory, to undo the ruling bourgeoisie, (i.e. the internationalized administrative organ of the International Sovereigns, the Merchants of the Nations) and to bring about the end of the “bourgeois era”.
1 Path: Following the first, the bourgeoisie with all its derivative forms and functions must be overcome to give way to the rule of the impersonal, agitated masses. But from another perspective, the real overcoming of the bourgeoisie is the return to the true aristocratic idea, that is, to the idea that, on the one hand, due to the degeneration of some of its representatives, on the other hand, through its usurpation, has been replaced by the hegemony of the bourgeoisie and its idols: By capital, gold and economy without a homeland, morality and human face.
2nd Path: This same alternative approach can certainly be clarified from another perspective: Renewal national movements undoubtedly have aspects of “integration” and socialization, externally similar to those that are also inherent in the Marxist-communist social “ideal”. But how much intellectual “space”, how much logic is there for the absurd assumption that these movements (albeit in different ways) belong to the end of a cycle, the very nature of which is the regression from the higher, the differentiated, the qualitative and the personal to the vulgar anonymity of the undifferentiated, vulgar and impersonal collective? To answer this question, we must be clear-eyed that the phenomenon of totalitarianism and state centralism has two opposite meanings, depending on its “direction” and the type of regime in society that preceded it. But, from this point of view, the cornerstone of the proof is today, once again, the aristocratic idea.
Let us suppose that the socio-political order that pre-exists the “totalizing and centralizing deviation” is that of a society well structured – not artificially, but by natural inclination – on various levels which are not closed and contradictory, but act in an orderly agreement within a hierarchical whole, as in the traditional caste-varna society of India. We must further understand in depth that the proud and honorable differentiation and the diffuse anti-collectivism of such a responsible society are also expressed through a certain distribution of power and sovereignty, are imprinted in a certain distribution of functions and specific rights, over which, however, the central power reigns, (strengthened, rather than diminished) in its pure, immaterial principle, precisely through this partial decentralization.
The meaning of anti-aristocratic and leveling absolutism
If centralism and totalitarianism were to be imposed on such a society, they would mean its destruction and disintegration, a regression from the organic to the amorphous. In this case, the absolute concentration of all power in the state-political “center” would mean the attempt to directly refer every function and activity of the social “body” to the “brain,” thus creating the condition of these lower animals, which consist only of a head and a vague and undifferentiated body. This is precisely the meaning of the anti-aristocratic and leveling absolutism, which was methodically pursued, under the pressure of various circumstances, especially by the kings of France.
It is no surprise that it was precisely in France, through the Jacobin Revolution, that demagogy and the advent of the Third Estate first appeared. These absolutist kings, the passionate enemies of the aristocracy, literally dug their own graves! On the one hand, their dignity became secularized and lost its original sanctification, its “establishment from above” and they were ultimately led to the decomposition of their power by concentrating, dissolving and dismantling the state. Replacing the bureaucratic state superstructure with its masculine, direct forms of authority, responsibility and partial, personal rule, the egotistical, foolish monarchs created a “power vacuum” around themselves, because the incompetent and shallow “court aristocracy” of the flatterers no longer meant anything and also the military aristocracy was deprived of direct relations with the country. Once the differential structure that served as a mediator between the function and the sovereign was destroyed, the nation as a mass remained, cut off from the sovereign and his secularized rule. The revolution, with a single blow, easily swept away this malleable superstructure and placed power in the hands of the homogenized herd masses. This is an example of the first, counter-evolutionary direction of the process of state “totalitarianism.”
Τhe political and social restructuring of the nation
In the interwar period, liberalism, democracy, rationalism and internationalism had reduced nations to the state of “unstable masses” ready to disperse in all directions and reach the bottom of the abyss, which is represented by Marxism and communism. Faced with such a state of affairs, the first and most urgent task was clearly to create, by any means, a barrier, a brake, to neutralize the centrifugal tendency, with a centripetal political force. And it is precisely this concept that can be attributed to the process of turning national renewal movements towards totalitarianism.
But once this first task is completed, the next step must be the political and social restructuring of the nation, which will return to itself, will be unified under the banner of various myths and symbols: It is about freeing it from every individual anthenotic collectivity, creating a stable, well-formed hierarchical structure, with a clear emphasis on the principle of personality and, moreover, on true spiritual authority.
Since the aristocratic spirit precedes and is superior to all its manifestations, the problem of any specific aristocratic formation presupposes a profound understanding of the very essence of this spirit. For the reconstruction, however, we must bear in mind that it is not simply a question of political order, more or less linked to the administrative or legislative body of the state. It is, above all, a question of prestige and example, which, linked to a very specific stratum, must be able to shape an atmosphere, crystallize a superior way of life, awaken specific forms of sensitivity, thus setting the tone for a new society.
One could therefore think of a kind of Order, according to the masculine and ascetic meaning that this term had in the medieval culture of the Imperial opponents of the Clergy, in the Ghibelline circle. But, even better, one could think of the most ancient Aryan and Indo-Aryan societies, where it is known that the elite was in no way materially organized, where it did not derive its authority from the representation of any tangible power or any given abstract principle, but nevertheless firmly maintained its position and set the tone for the corresponding civilization, through a direct influence emanating from its essence.
