Titans are in Town:
Preface to Pierre Krebs, Fighting for the Essence

[1]1,844 words

There are books that are timely, but there are also books whose time is yet to come. The time has come to urgently read and reread Pierre Krebs’ book Fighting for the Essence [2], which was first published in the German and French languages in 1997 and 2001, respectively. This excellent English translation, which was made by Dr. Alexander Jacob, has finally seen the light of day.

Dr. Pierre Krebs is a Franco-German philosopher and writer who, along with Alain de Benoist, was one of the founders of the think tank which came to be known in the late 1970s under the French acronym ‘GRECE’,[1] the first organisation of the so-called European New Right. Krebs was born in 1946 in French Algeria, and holds degrees from the Faculty of Law at the University of Montpellier, a degree from the Superior School of Journalism of Paris, and another from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. He is considered one of the foremost experts in the history of Scandinavian languages, specifically Old Norse, and he also holds a doctoral degree in French literature from the Paris 12 Val de Marne University. He has participated in numerous conferences and has published several books on philosophy, literature and metapolitics.

As a young student in the 1960s, Krebs was active in Europe-Action and Le Rassemblement Européen de la Liberté (The European Assembly for Liberty), whose main goal was the metapolitical rebirth of Europe in both the east and west. During the early 1980s, Krebs founded the group Thule-Seminar[2] in Kassel, Germany, and which continues to carry out research today. He is also one of the leading figures of the Neue Kultur (New Culture) movement. Krebs is an indefatigable fighter for the cause of the European peoples. Among his books, one must also single out Das unvergängliche Erbe: Alternativen zum Prinzip der Gleichheit (The Immortal Heritage: Alternatives to the Principle of Equality) in 1981 and Mut zur Identität (The Courage of Identity) in 1988.

[3]For some putative White nationalists or traditionalists, reared within the culture of Christendom, this book may serve as an introduction to an alternative worldview. But this book also needs to be read by every person who is searching for ways to extricate himself from the modern multicultural and politically-correct verbiage spewed out by the so-called ‘free’ Western media and its tenure-guarding scribes in academia. Granted, the book may not be an easy read for everybody in view of the fact that it presupposes at least cursory knowledge of the ancient pre-Christian mindset or, short of that, some insight into the significance of Nietzsche’s prose.

Krebs’ book actually urges the reader to decolonise his mindset, purging from it the images and concepts that have been contaminating White European brains over the last two millennia, and which resulted in a distorted perception of objective reality and a perverse form of White identity. In a word, this book can be described as an epistemological primer for those looking not just for the reasons behind the ongoing decadence in Europe and America, but also for those interested in the root causes of that decadence. Before combating the vileness of the present system, a modern man or woman of European extraction must make an effort to critically examine the origins of the founding myths of that system. Why waste time on futile talk about the ‘dying White race’, ‘the troubles of Europe’, ‘the dictatorship of the ideology of comfort’, or the ‘immigration disaster’ if the heart of the problem is wilfully ignored? In doing so, one only cures the symptoms of the disease while failing to address its causes.

[4]Even if a reader finds the answer to the problem, the cure may not be that simple. For even if his methodological analysis is fairly successful, the endless ranting and ravings, so common among many so-called White nationalists or others which attempt to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of others, who allegedly pollute academia and public discourse, must be tossed aside and replaced by more sober and serious analyses. To address these problems, we must first solve the issues that lie within our own cultural baggage. To put it in plain English, the house needs to be built up from its foundations, not down from its roof.

This book is important because it advises the reader about how to decipher the causes and consequences of our decadent age. Being himself a disciple of European heavyweights such as Homer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger – to name only a few – Krebs correctly traces the root of the problem of White racial decay and cultural decadence not to liberalism and multiculturalism, but to the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Above all, Krebs focuses on the destructive forms of the monotheistic Judaeo-Christian mindset which prevails among both the so-called Leftist and Right-wing intellectuals and their respective disciples. In fact, by using quotes from and commentaries concerning many important, albeit deliberately ignored European scholars, Krebs demonstrates that all political concepts that we take for granted today are basically modified ideas, myths, legends and impostures that originated in the Middle East and that are now making headway into our secular, godless society.

[5]Granted, the clergy have been dethroned from their former position in public discourse, but their ideas about bringing about paradise on Earth, as well as their arbitrary definitions about who is good and who is evil, or who is noble or who is a ‘terrorist’, are still anchored in the legacy of Judaeo-Christianity. Although many of the political revolutions of modern history have, on the surface, been hostile to this legacy, all of them have nonetheless retained the idea of linear history unfolding in the course of an ongoing conflict between ‘good’ believers fighting the ‘evil’ ones, ending with the inevitable victory of the former over the latter.

Krebs aptly dissects the discourse and the mindset of modern Marxists and liberals who, in spite of the fact that they often profess to be atheists or agnostics, nonetheless adhere to the monotheistic conceptualisation of the world that was handed down by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, through its secular and postmodern offshoots. In the same vein, Krebs adroitly warns against those modern political neuroses which appear quite often among many so-called Right-wingers, which causes them to rely too much on blaming all the problems of Whites on outsiders; or, in a grotesque flip side, to embrace outsiders at the expense of one’s own. Both manifestations are wrapped up in the same Judaeo-Christian package. How can a White nationalist, a racialist, or a traditionalist, or whatever he may call himself, and regardless of whether he lives in Europe or America, successfully combat hostile and alien worldviews and adopt different methods of conceptualisation, while at the same time revering these same alien referents and the same paradigms which are, ironically, part and parcel of the same non-European mindset he wishes to reject?

Here we have a case study of a classic pathogenic scenario, so well exposed by Krebs, namely that the so-called archetypical ‘Right-wing White man’, while desperately attempting to reject the alien Other, forcefully and violently tries to make him look the same. What is the point of attacking one’s opponents while adorning oneself with words, epithets, and signifiers whose entire conceptual arsenal is traceable directly to belief systems that originate from other traditions, including those which preach the gospel of racial and cultural promiscuity for all the peoples on Earth?

[6]Krebs applies the same method of analysis to studying the mindset of the so-called Leftists and liberal world-improvers, who in the name of a fictitious egalitarianism advocate racial panmixia,[3] which they mendaciously dub ‘diversity’, thereby killing all cultural differences and erasing all forms of genuine racial and intellectual diversity. As a result, not only the White European race and culture, but all cultures and races worldwide are threatened by extinction through intellectual and racial mongrelisation – courtesy of the globalist mindset.

The book covers several important topics. First, the author rejects the synonym ‘the West’ for Europe. He sees Europe as being the very opposite of the ‘West’. The very concept of ‘the West’ has today lost its original meaning, a meaning once assigned to Europe by the very same people who now use it as a synonym for the vanishing White civilisation. For that matter, so-called Western civilisation, which long ago attained its apex in America, is the very opposite of what Europe is or what Europe was intended to be. Both White America and White Europe (the West?) are in mortal danger today. The matrix of the West, as Krebs argues, is no longer territorial or political. It lies in the White man’s experiment with Christianity, which began as merely an obscure Oriental cult – a cult which has absolutely nothing in common with the spiritual homeland of the White man: ancient Greece.

The book also covers the unstoppable steamroller of the ideology of progress and its obsession with economic growth, for which the French language uses the word économisme – an obsession which has done so much harm to all White peoples worldwide. Both the idea of economic progress, coupled with its infatuation with egalitarianism and racial panmixia, stem again from ideologies which have their roots in the Judaeo-Chistian tradition, and which have, today, become an integral part of the public discourse of the West.

[7]Krebs wrote this book before the economic and racial chaos had reached its current levels, a chaos we are witnessing today in all its destructive splendour. The Titans[4] are back in town today, and this may be very good news. Why? The pending economic and racial cataclysm will inevitably provide some opportunities for the revival of our own, European traditions and our own concept of the sacred. The answer Krebs offers to intelligent White readers in America and Europe who are seeking an exit from the modern multicultural straitjacket and the conceptual mendacity of liberalism is simple, although it will require a great deal of courage: the return to our lost pre-Christian European roots. Novus rerum nascitur ordo.[5]

Tomislav Sunic
November 23, 2011
Zagreb, Croatia

Notes

[1] The Groupement de Recherches et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne, or Circle for the Research and Study of European Civilisation — Ed.

[2] Thule-Seminar maintains a Web site in German at www.thule-seminar.org [8]. — Ed.

[3] Panmixia is a term from biology which refers to a population in which all members are potential reproductive partners for all other members, leading to random mating. — Ed.

[4] In Greek mythology, the Titans were the gods who had ruled the universe during the earlier, paradisiacal Golden Age. They were eventually overthrown by the Olympians, who comprised the pantheon of gods worshipped by the ancient Greeks. — Ed.

[5] Latin: ‘a new universal order is born’. It is taken from Virgil’s fourth Eclogue, in which he is describing the birth of a leader who will usher in a new age. Its exact meaning is debated, with some claiming it heralded the rise of the Roman Empire with Julius Caesar, and others claiming that it was a reference to the birth of Jesus Christ. — Ed.