The May 26 Protests & Heidegger

Venner2 [1]554 words

Translated by Greg Johnson

French original [2]; translations: Czech [3], Finnish [4]Hungarian [5], Portuguese [6]Spanish [7]

Editor’s Note:

On May 21, 2013, French author Dominique Venner, whose writings have featured prominently [8] at Counter-Currents/North American New Right, entered the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, placed a sealed envelope on the altar, and shot himself in the head.

Surely the contents of the envelope will explain his reasons fully, but his last post on his website (now offline) reads like a suicide note and indicates that he hoped to turn the attention and momentum of France’s massive and ongoing protests against gay marriage legislation toward stopping a far greater threat: non-white immigration, particularly Muslim immigration from North Africa. I wish to thank John Morgan for providing me with a copy of this text. 

Protesters on May 26 [against France’s recently passed “gay marriage” law] will cry out in their impatience and anger. An infamous law, once passed, can always be repealed.

I just listened to an Algerian blogger: “In any case,” he said, “in 15 years the Islamists will be in power in France and will remove this law.” Not to please us, we suspect, but because it is contrary to Sharia (Islamic law).

This is the only superficially common point between the European tradition (that respects women) and Islam (which does not respect them). But the bald assertion of the Algerian is chilling. These consequences will be far greater and more catastrophic then the detestable Taubira law.

It should be clear that France may well fall into the hands of the Islamists. For 40 years, politicians and governments of all parties (except the National Front), as well as employers and the Church, have been actively accelerating Afro-Maghrebi immigration by every means.

For a long time, great writers have sounded the alarm, beginning with Jean Raspail in his prophetic Camp of the Saints, the new edition of which is experiencing record sales.

The May 26 protestors cannot ignore this reality. Their struggle cannot be limited to the rejection of gay marriage. The “great replacement” of the population of France and Europe, denounced by the writer Renaud Camus, is a far more catastrophic danger for the future.

It is not enough to organize polite street protests to prevent it. This is a real “intellectual and moral reform,” as Renan said, and should be conducted as such from the start. It must make possible the recovery of French and European memory of our identity, the need for which is not yet clearly perceived.

It certainly will require new, spectacular, and symbolic gestures to stir our somnolence, shake our anesthetized consciousness, and awaken the memory of our origins. We are entering a time when words must be authenticated by deeds.

We should also remember, as brilliantly formulated by Heidegger in Being and Time, that the essence of man is in his existence and not in “another world.” It is here and now that our destiny is played out until the last second. And this final second is as important as the rest of a lifetime. That is why you must be yourself until the last moment. It is by deciding, truly willing one’s destiny, that one conquers nothingness. And there is no escape from this requirement, because we only have this life, in which it is our duty to be fully ourselves — or to be nothing.