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Louis-Ferdinand Céline, 1984–1961
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A translation of Karlheinz Weißman’s entry on “Anarchismus
von rechts” (right-wing anarchism) in the Lexikon des Konservatismus (Graz
and Stuttgart: Leopold Stocker Verlag, 1996) edited by Caspar von
Schrenck-Notzing.
The concept of right-wing anarchism seems paradoxical,
indeed oxymoronic, starting from the assumption that all “right-wing” political
viewpoints include a particularly high evaluation of the principle of order. .
. . In fact right-wing anarchism occurs only in exceptional circumstances, when
the hitherto veiled affinity between anarchism and conservatism may become
apparent.
Ernst Jünger has characterised this peculiar connection in
his book Der Weltstaat (1960): “The anarchist in his purest form is
he, whose memory goes back the farthest: to pre-historical, even pre-mythical
times; and who believes, that man at that time fulfilled his true purpose . . .
In this sense the anarchist is the Ur-conservative, who traces the health and
the disease of society back to the root.” Jünger later called this kind of
“Prussian” . . . or “conservative anarchist” the “Anarch,” and referred his own
“désinvolture” as agreeing therewith: an extreme aloofness, which nourishes itself
and risks itself in the borderline situations, but only stands in an
observational relationship to the world, as all instances of true order are
dissolving and an “organic construction” is not yet, or no longer, possible.
Even though Jünger himself was immediately influenced by the
reading of Max Stirner, the affinity of such a thought-complex to dandyism is
particularly clear. In the dandy, the culture of decadence at the end of the
19th century brought forth a character, which on the one hand was nihilistic
and ennuyé, on the other hand offered the cult of the heroic and vitalism
as an alternative to progressive ideals.
The refusal of current ethical hierarchies, the readiness to
be “unfit, in the deepest sense of the word, to live” (Flaubert), reveal the
dandy’s common points of reference with anarchism; his studied emotional
coldness, his pride, and his appreciation of fine tailoring and manners, as
well as the claim to constitute “a new kind of aristocracy” (Charles Baudelaire),
represent the proximity of the dandy to the political right. To this add the
tendency of politically inclined dandies to declare a partiality to the
Conservative Revolution or to its forerunners, as for instance Maurice Barrès
in France, Gabriele d’Annunzio in Italy, Stefan George or Arthur Moeller van
den Bruck in Germany. The Japanese author Yukio Mishima belongs to the later
followers of this tendency.
Besides this tradition of right-wing anarchism, there has
existed another, older and largely independent tendency, connected with
specifically French circumstances. Here, at the end of the 18th century, in the
later stages of the ancien régime, formed an anarchisme de droite,
whose protagonists claimed for themselves a position “beyond good and evil,” a
will to live “like the gods,” and who recognized no moral values beyond
personal honor and courage. The world-view of these libertines was intimately
connected with an aggressive atheism and a pessimistic philosophy of history.
Men like Brantôme, Montluc, Béroalde de Verville, and Vauquelin de La Fresnaye
held absolutism to be a commodity that regrettably opposed the principles of
the old feudal system, and that only served the people’s desire for welfare.
Attitudes, which in the 19th century were again to be found with Arthur de
Gobineau and Léon Bloy, and also in the 20th century with Georges Bernanos,
Henry de Montherlant, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. This position also appeared
in a specifically “traditionalist” version with Julius Evola, whose thinking
revolved around the “absolute individual.”
In whichever form right-wing anarchism appears, it is always
driven by a feeling of decadence, by a distaste for the age of masses and for
intellectual conformism. The relation to the political is not uniform; however,
not rarely does the aloofness revolve into activism. Any further unity is
negated already by the highly desired individualism of right-wing anarchists. Nota
bene, the term is sometimes adopted by men–for instance George Orwell (Tory
anarchist) or Philippe Ariès–who do not exhibit relevant signs of a right-wing
anarchist ideology; while others, who objectively exhibit these criteria–for
instance Nicolás Gómez Dávila or Günter Maschke–do not make use of the concept.
Bibliography
* Gruenter, Rainer. “Formen des Dandysmus: Eine
problemgeschichtliche Studie über Ernst Jünger.” Euphorion 46 (1952)
3, pp. 170-201.
* Kaltenbrunner, Gerd-Klaus, ed. Antichristliche Konservative:
Religionskritik von rechts. Freiburg: Herder, 1982.
* Kunnas, Tarmo. “Literatur und Faschismus.” Criticón 3 (1972) 14, pp.
269-74.
* Mann, Otto. “Dandysmus als konservative Lebensform.” In Gerd-Klaus
Kaltenbrunner, ed., * Konservatismus international, Stuttgart, 1973, pp.
156-70.
* Mohler, Armin. “Autorenporträt in memoriam: Henry de Montherlant und Lucien
Rebatet.”Criticón 3 (1972) 14, pp. 240-42.
* Richard, François. L’anarchisme de droite dans la littérature
contemporaine. Paris: PUF, 1988.
______. Les anarchistes de droite. Paris: Presses universitaires de
France, 1997.
* Schwarz, Hans Peter. Der konservative Anarchist: Politik und Zeitkritik
Ernst Jüngers. Freiburg im Breisgan, 1962.
* Sydow, Eckart von. Die Kultur der Dekadenz. Dresden, 1921.
* Karlheinz Weißman, “Anarchismus von rechts,” Lexikon
des Konservatismus, ed. Caspar von Schrenck-* * Notzing (Graz and Stuttgart:
Leopold Stocker Verlag, 1996). Translator anonymous. From Attack the
System, June 6, 2010,
* Facebook: National-Anarchist
Movement (N-AM)
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