Anti-Racism as the Bearer of Racism

by Guillaume Faye

Guillaume Faye critically examines the paradox where anti-racism inadvertently fosters racism, arguing for the recognition of ethnic consciousness and identity as legitimate for all peoples to combat racism.

This is the fourth part of Guillaume Faye’s essay ‘The New Ideological Challenges’, published in 1988. Also read parts one, two, and three.

Racist thought, which has gained the strength and form of an archetype, now remains in the pantheon of values as a possible recourse. Just as Christians give cause for black masses and demonic cults, so our dear democrats and those obsessed with anti-racist fraternalism have given cause for the emergence of a racist ‘culture’. In many cases today, anti-racism creates racism, not the other way around. More precisely, by unjustly and systematically branding as ‘racist’ either classic xenophobic behaviours that originally do not contain racial hatred or everyday social attitudes that are free from any racism, it ultimately contributes to making the said behaviours truly racist. The atmosphere of racial suspicion created by the obsessed racism hunters leads people of colour to suspect that they are exposed to discrimination everywhere, which sociologically drives them to behave in a racially discriminatory manner themselves.

This leads to an extremely detrimental situation where any claim of a European identity risks being discredited as ‘racist’. And this is the crowning of it all, as racism denotes the devaluation of the Other and not self-assertion. Thus, those who attempt to establish a connection between the perfectly legitimate claim of a European ethnic identity and racism must be identified as instigators of racism.

All Europeans suffer from self-blame to varying degrees. This manifests in anti-racist psychoses that take hold of the media and the public as soon as a case involving a non-European becomes the subject of a judicial chronicle. The anti-racist drama takes on pathological forms and acts as a kind of morbid autotherapy of society. It is about exorcising a demon that one carries within: by condemning an imaginary racism (the flood of so-called racist ‘crimes’ related to everyday brawls) or by officially refusing to punish the crimes committed by non-Europeans — for fear of being suspected of the grave sin. This masochistic syndrome further exacerbates mass racism.

Political and ideological groups that are focused on detaching Europeans from their roots and causing them to lose their sense of identity are particularly instrumental in intensifying this racism. On one hand, they promote the multiracial and cosmopolitan societal form that maintains ghettos and cultivates the uprooting of both the indigenous and foreigners; on the other hand, they provoke a popular racism by encouraging both authorities and citizens not to apply laws against foreigners and by pitting Europeans and foreigners against each other through subtle press campaigns — in short, by constantly talking about the ‘big bad wolf’, they let the wolf in. This strategy aims to transform European society into a duplicate of the simultaneously multiracial and racist American society. Following the example of the Americans, Europeans must become identity-less individuals, imprisoned in their ethnic jails, and connected through the Western-materialistic way of life or through the ‘communication’ of a foolish audiovisual apparatus.

Becoming aware of this reality, one can turn the issue of racism, as presented by official sources, upside down. Racism is on the side of those who strive for a multiracial society form for Europe and possibly other historical entities; racism is on the side of those who arrogate the monopoly of anti-racism; racism is on the side of those who devalue racial belonging and consciousness — i.e., the ethnicity of the world’s peoples — and who intend to eliminate the races (still an invaluable wealth of the human species) by reducing them to mere individual biological categories, to mere ethnographic, superficial ‘curiosities’. Racism is on the side of those who want to convince us that recognising racial reality and ethnic identities leads to a xenophobic superiority complex — while, in reality, the contempt of other races, superiority, and racial hatred arise in societies with an egalitarian coexistence of races (USA). In short, racism is on the side of those who devalue ethnic identity understood in a biocultural sense in favour of false, deculturating, and primitive affiliations: purely political models (‘Western democracy’, ‘civilisation of human rights’, etc.) or — worse — economic ones (‘socialism’, ‘free world’, etc.).

True resistance to racism rather necessitates that the affirmation of ethnic consciousness and the ethnic fact be recognised as legitimate by all peoples, including one’s own. The right to identity for a people also means the right to a relative ethnic homogeneity and the right to territoriality, that is, to sovereignty over a political unit, so that ethnicity and the independent territorial structure clearly coincide. A people’s right to identity is not ensured when it lives within a large political entity alongside other minorities and does not have sovereignty over an area where its ethnicity is most represented. A side-by-side existence of ethnicities within a ‘macro-society’ systematically leads to a social mosaic where ghettos, racial hatred, and cultural and religious hatred prevail. The United States, Lebanon, the West African countries, South Africa, and the Soviet Union illustrate the harm of ethnic cohabitation and display tribalised nations where internal colonialism reigns.

(translated by Constantin von Hoffmeister)