Collapse Scenarios in the West and Their Implications

Note: The following is the text of the speech I delivered in Stockholm on 28 July 2012 at the Identitär Idé IV conference.

When we speak of moving towards a world with multiple poles we are, indirectly, operating within a narrative of collapse.

It’s the other side of the convergence of catastrophes.

Thus, on the one hand we are looking at the world before the collapse,

And on the other hand we are looking at the world after the collapse.

I want to talk about the collapse itself.

Because there is a standard narrative of collapse within our general our area of politics,

But no thoughtful examination of this narrative.

Even though it is recurrent, pervasive, and iconic,

To the degree that it has become invisible.

The fact that there is a narrative of collapse to begin with,

A conventionalised prophecy of catastrophe,

Is a notorious blind spot for a milieu that likes to think of itself as visionary.

The collapse is visualised as follows:

An event occurs, which is disruptive . . .

Morbidly obese, obsessed with video games, anesthesised by low-brow daytime television, the White man is suddenly re-Aryanised . . .

Brutal and ultra-masculine, with a newly grown pair, he grabs his Magnum 45, and rises up in revolt . . .

A race war ensues . . .

Weighed down by debt, thoroughly corrupt, and riddled with freaks, weirdoes, weaklings, and incompetents,

and with its hold on power increasingly tenuous due to hyperinflation,

the egalitarian liberal order is brought crashing down . . .

And a new order rises,

founded on organic principles of hierarchy, elitism, and tradition.

A golden age is restored,

the egalitarians are put on a boat to West Africa,

and Aryan man lives happily ever after.

This narrative is popular in the United States—

A country that has been defined by race and economics from the beginning,

and that for half a century or more has not really had a viable political party that explicitly defends the interests of its founding European stock.

The situation is somewhat different in our continent,

Due to the growth, in some countries, of identitarian political parties,

and the fact that some of them have scored a modicum of electoral success and even achieved representation in parliament—

which has kept alive the hope of a peaceful end to the reign of egalitarianism through serious, mature, responsible citizens politely expressing their opinion at the ballot box.

Many European citizens can sublimate their rage on the electoral ballot,

whereas the Americans have only revolutionary fiction, nuclear bunkers, freeze-dried seeds, and 9mm automatic submachine guns.

All the same the narrative of collapse I have just described is uncritically accepted by European dissidents.

We accept that the egalitarian political order is unsustainable;

We accept that we are entering, or have entered, a time of troubles;

We accept that race, economic decline, and colonisation by settlers from the Third World are integral to those troubles;

We accept that egalitarian politics are corrupt and doomed to fall;

And we accept that INegalitarian politics will eventually replace it.

But while we can be fairly certain of an eventual collapse in the West,

The disaster itself is unlikely to occur in the manner just described;

a collapse can, in fact, occur in many different ways,

Including ways we don’t usually recognise until long after the events,

Ways that fail to indulge the dissident’s nostalgia,

Ways that fail to flatter the dissident’s vanity,

Ways that fail to fulfil the dissident’s fantasies of revenge.

What’s more, however certain the collapse, the outcome is never certain.

We may be desiring a collapse and find that when it comes it results in a situation that is worse than the one have now.

For this reason, in a world that is to witness a relocation of its centres of power,

In a milieu that has become enamoured of a conventionalised narrative of collapse

We need to understand the typology of collapse;

And we need to understand that opportunities arise for all of those living on the inside,

as well as for all of those living on the outside.

Because a collapse wipes the slate clean for everybody—

A system collapse creates opportunities for all of those who desire a totally new system,

Which is usually their new system,

Not necessarily our new system.

So, what is the typology of collapse?

In which ways is the collapse of the egalitarian political dispensation in the West likely to unfold?

We could live through an awkward collapse;

We could live through a deferred collapse;

Or a slow collapse;

Or a soft collapse;

Or we could live through a collapse that unfolds in undulations.

Now, there is a tendency in our camp to think that the collapse will occur at a time of our convenience,

When we are fully prepared.

Whereas the fact is that there is almost never a convenient time for a total systemic breakdown.

More likely than not, it will happen on the day you start your new business;

It will happen on the day you become the proud father of six baby girls;

It will happen on the day your Masseratti breaks down on the motorway.

It will not wait for us to agree on strategies,

It will not wait for us to organise,

And it will not wait for us to plan for contingences.

The collapse will most likely catch us all by surprise,

even though we’ve been expecting it for decades.

There is a doomsday debt bomb ticking under every Western economy.

What if were detonated tonight?

What if currency traders caused confidence in the Euro, or in the Dollar, to collapse in the next few hours,

causing a surprise devaluation of 50 percent, or 100 percent—

causing prices to double first every month, then every week, then every day, then every hour.

Would you prepared?

Under such circumstances it’s not worth holding on to money;

Under such circumstances people spend their money as quickly as possible

To get hold of first necessities: food, fuel, and the means to defend themselves.

Likelihood is that supermarkets and petrol stations would be empty in a matter of days, if not twenty-four hours.

Merchants would refuse to sell their goods in exchange for worthless money.

Add to this that currency crises tend to last for years—

especially when there is no political will to do what’s necessary to solve it.

Which leads to the question:

How long can you survive with the groceries that you have in your kitchen cupboard right now?

A week? A month?

Can you survive three years without access money?

Without access to supermarkets,

Without access to petrol to put in your car.

And without access to the countryside,

And without access to fruit and vegetables and fish and other animals that you can eat?

Despite our general catastrophism, we’re not prepared,

because we’re so used to the way things are that a collapse seems unreal.

Even in our dissidence we are comfortable.

The only exception to this rule is when the collapse is engineered—

those who engineer systemic breakdowns are prepared because they already have something credible with which to replace the existing system,

And they’ve spent years developing the alternative to the existing system;

They have, indeed, a shadow government already in place.

Such is the case with the colour revolutions that we have seen visited upon the East and in North Africa in the interest of ‘régime change’—

Have you noticed how these revolutions are all colour coded and coordinated?

In recent years we’ve seen—

An orange revolution in the Ukraine;

A pink revolution in Kyrgysztan;

A jasmine revolution in Tunisia;

A white revolution in Egypt;

A red, green, and black revolution in Lybia;

And a green revolution in Iran.

These so-called ‘spontaneous uprisings’ all have the peculiar characteristic of being able to produce—apparently overnight—millions of artfully designed and professionally printed flags, banners, t-shirts, scarves, posters, tennis shoes, and baseball caps

—all accurately colour-matched

against a Pantone colour chart.

So unless we’ve been actively involved in precipitating a systemic breakdown with a clear objective, and a fully developed replacement in place,

The system collapse that we expect and that many desire is more likely to catch us unprepared than to catch us fully prepared.

In terms of timing it would be more like 9/11.

Some had been predicting a 9/11-style terrorist attack since 1991—ten years before the event.

And yet, 9/11 caught almost everyone completely by surprise—

Except those who organised it,

and a few others.

But there is a positive aspect to this form of collapse:

It is easily identifiable and those who evaluate the situation accurately and can mobilise effectively can exploit the shock to their best advantage—

and can get the citizenry to accept things that they would ordinarily reject.

That’s how the Americans had the Patriot Act foisted upon them,

and that how the oppressive laws of equality were yet again extended in Europe.

On the other hand, a shock also opens the way for necessary change—

It was not until they found that the ozone layer over the Antarctic had collapsed

That bans were introduced on CFCs, despite vested economic interests.

The shock of an awkward collapse typically causes a panic.

So the word for this type of collapse is PANIC.

A much different form of collapse is the collapse that is deferred, or delayed, or postponed.

The financial implosion that began with the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 can be described as a deferred collapse.

Austrian economists have been predicting Weimar-style hyperinflation for many, many years;

And yet, the central banks and governments of the West have managed somehow time and again to postpone the apparently inevitable.

They’ve deployed every subterfuge imaginable to levitate their national economies—

To puff them up, despite the yawning chasm within.

The central banks and governments of the West have invested in a strategy of deferment and concealment,

in hopes of averting a revolution,

in hopes of outwitting the Chinese,

in hopes that a spontaneous return to consumer confidence,

that a fortuitous policy,

or that a miraculous technological breakthrough brings the corpse of economic growth back from the dead.

In this scenario the collapse eventually happens, but much later than anyone anticipates.

With enough ingenuity, ‘later’ can mean many years—even generations—into the future.

In the worst case, the collapse is deferred for so long that when it eventually occurs it no longer matters—

Because by that time the society, or the world, have changed to such a degree that the issues that preoccupy us today have become completely irrelevant.

Take that organ piece that’s being performed in Halberstadt, in Germany, as I speak.

In 1987 the American music theorist John Cage composed a piano piece and left instructions for it to be performed as slowly as possible.

Only, he didn’t specify how slowly.

So in 1997 eminent musicologists and philosophers met to decide how slowly.

And after lengthy and erudite deliberations they decided that the performance of this piece should last 639 years.

In other words, they decided to prolong each chord, to delay each step of the composition, by a factor of tens of millions.

A special organ was built for this purpose.

The performance then began in 2001.

Since then they have only managed to play eleven chords . . .

Eleven chords . . .

The last change of chord took place earlier this month.

The next change of chord will take place in October next year.

If you’re planning miss it, you’ll have to wait a while,

Because they will be playing the same notes until the year 2020.

I imagine the performance will be abandoned sometime in the next one hundred years.

In a hundred years John Cage may no longer be considered important.

And if Europe comes to be dominated by radical Islam,

as various commentators and academics have predicted,

the local Wahhabist imams would be unlikely see any sense in continuing to perform the work a long dead American infidel.

In fact, by then even the composer’s nationality may no longer exist.

What we call the United States may have broken up into a number of mutually hostile entities—

Where different languages are spoken;

Where different religions are practiced;

Where different races are concentrated.

And if somehow the organ in Halberstadt is kept going for the full 639 years,

The philosophical and artistic principles that led to the composition and performance of that piece may no longer even be comprehensible;

There may not even be a place called Germany anymore.

Similar principles apply to the current political dispensation in the West—

If somehow the ruling clique of radical egalitarians and global plutocrats find ways to delay the implosion of their system long enough,

By the time their system comes crashing down,

It will come crashing down round the ears of a completely alien people,

And it will therefore no longer matter, because there won’t be enough of us left to gain anything from it.

In a deferred collapse resistance can be frustrating,

But the process of deferral also buys extra time,

And even creates opportunities for dissident groups to take control of the process of collapse,

Through organising artificially induced crises,

that put the collapse in a planned timetable.

In this scenario both the ruling cliques and those who benefit from their patronage live in fear;

So the word for a deferred of collapse is FEAR.

More insidious even than a deferred collapse is the collapse that unfolds in slow motion, over a long period of time.

In this scenario there are shocks and bumps along the way,

But none of them is sufficiently severe to precipitate a rupture;

Decline is managed pragmatically and technocratically.

In one version of this scenario a society living through a slow collapse lives in a permanent state of semi-crisis,

where discontent is kept simmering under the surface, prevented from reaching a critical threshold;

Various methods of social control are used to this effect.

In a more extreme version of the slow collapse, the collapse is never even recognised as such—

Except . . .  retrospectively;

And while it is still unfolding it is mislabelled as ‘social progress’, ‘gradual evolution’, or ‘changing times’.

An example is the British Empire, whose collapse took over a hundred years to unfold;

And after the end of Empire we can still say that the collapse of British power in the world is still unfolding.

A slow collapse does not necessarily end with a soft landing;

It can unfold over centuries, and end with a sudden implosion in the final stages.

By which time existing forms have lost not only their power but also their meaning,

By which time, the reason for those forms has been entirely forgotten,

Thus giving way to a new paradigm.

By the end of a slow collapse those who warned of it at the beginning are bones in the dust;

Their names and their cause are long forgotten,

Their ideals have long become irrelevant, meaningless, even absurd . . . 

Thus,

barring any economic or political shocks,

We can conceive the gradual demographic replacement of Whites in the West as part of a slow collapse,

Where Whites living two centuries from now will have no experience of greatness and will accept their diminished place in the world as normal.

Romans nowadays don’t talk about taking back their empire—

They accept their place in the world as normal.

Forcing systemic change in the midst of a slow collapse is difficult,

Because people are used to the way things are,

however mediocre they may be.

It’s all they know,

It’s comfortable,

Even if they know that things could be better.

You see, mediocrity is comfortable:

It does not require effort,

It does not require discipline,

It does not require being noticed,

It does not require upsetting someone—

Because excellence upsets those who cannot produce it;

And glory upsets those who cannot be part of it.

Thus a slow collapse involves an endless series of small, pragmatic capitulations . . .

An endless series of small, petty indignities,

which are grumblingly accepted.

A challenge is never mounted because the compromises involved are too seemingly trivial to be worth the inconvenience of a dissident posture . . .

The pragmatic capitulations and the petty indignities thus become possible because people are apathetic.

So the word for the slow collapse is APATHY.

Then we have the soft collapse—

Which is perhaps the most insidious collapse of all because it is never recognised as such, even retrospectively.

A soft collapse is pleasant.

And it is variously seen as an improvement,

As progress,

As development,

Or simply as modernity.

In Western societies the collapse of discipline,

the collapse of traditional metaphysics,

and the collapse in elitist conceptions of Whiteness and Western civilisation,

are all examples of a soft collapse—

These are seen as progressive changes,

As development towards a kinder, more tolerant, more enlightened, more modern society.

Obviously, its nice to relax and live unrestricted by any kind of discipline,

It’s nice to be able to do anything you like, because you don’t really believe in anything,

And it’s nice to think that you can be friends with everybody—

That you can smile and open wide the doors to your home,

And let them all in,

And let them help themselves to anything they like,

Even your wife,

And that you can still continue to enjoy a safe, placid, middle class, double-glazed, centrally heated lifestyle,

And that they won’t empty your fridge, steal your television, gang rape your wife, kill your children, set you on fire, and spit on your name.

It’s nice for a great many to think that maintaining barriers,

That cultivating strength,

that living up to certain ideals of greatness,

Is not necessary.

It’s nice for a great many to believe that the money will always be there,

Torrents of money endlessly flowing,

a tropical rainstorm of gold and silver,

pouring down from the sky, like confetti,

to meet every whim and every capricious fantasy, however frivolous or absurd.

This collapse is possible because it unfolds in a rather infantilised atmosphere where people love their loss of power because they love their loss of responsibility that comes with it,

Enslavement occurs because people enjoy their slavery,

So the word for this type of collapse is JOY.

Finally, there’s the undulating collapse,

Which is a slow implosion that is concealed by a pattern of peaks and troughs.

In economic terms the troughs are recessions and the peaks are booms.

This type of collapse is almost as insidious as the previous one,

Even after a trend of long-term decline is identified,

Because the upswing that follows each trough gives people hope—

Hope that a turnaround point has finally come.

And that ahead lies a new gilded age prosperity.

The fact of collapse is hidden because the significance of each upswing is exaggerated by wishful thinking,

By the fact that people see what they want to see.

The fact of collapse is also hidden because the peaks and troughs offer opportunities,

Which enable those who know how to exploit them to gain tremendous advantage.

In modern economies the slow implosion is hidden by inflation,

Which distorts perceptions by the popular tendency to rely on nominal values.

The decline of the equity markets in the West since the year 2000 exemplifies an unfolding undulating collapse.

It seems obvious that a prolonged depression opens pathways for dissident politics that pursue systemic change and realigned alliances,

But it seems also obvious that the possibility of an upswing, or the upswing itself, or the individual success stories that occur in these conditions, or all three, maintain the suggestion that there’s light at the end of the tunnel,

And that as bad as things may be now,

If only we hang on for a little longer,

if we stick it out for a little longer,

Things will start to improve,

And all the unpleasantness of the present will eventually be left behind,

And prosperity will return,

And everything will be good and happy-clappy once again.

A collapse of this kind is either stopped too late or never stopped because those living through it are sustained by hope,

So the word for the undulating collapse is HOPE.

Now, the different types of collapse I have described are no more than a typology—

Or a sampling of a typology.

Reality is much messier—

In reality the different types of collapse overlap, coincide, interact, or appear in hybrid or compound form.

Different collapse scenarios may be unfolding at any one time.

Simultaneously, in different areas.

And when we speak of a convergence of catastrophes that will have worldwide implications

Out of the many catastrophes now converging

Two will collide first,

Probably not the ones we imagine,

Probably not in the place we image,

Probably not with the immediate consequences we imagine.

Whichever two, and the place, and the immediate response, will determine what follows.

And what follows, and how it follows, will determine the outcome.

Which takes me to the next point,

Which is that,

As necessary as it is, and as satisfying as it would be, to see an end to the liberal dispensation in the West,

And as necessary as it is, and as satisfying as it would be, to see the fall of the equality ideology in our civilisation,

The collapse of liberalism,

and the disgracing of egalitarianism,

will not necessarily lead to an outcome that is beneficial to us,

Will not necessarily advance the European cause,

Even if it removes an obstacle.

Because when catastrophes converge,

And a generalised collapse occurs,

An entirely new game begins,

Which is open for anybody and everybody and where anything and everything goes.

Some years ago there was a newspaper report about a prison warden in Colombia,

Who while observing the inmates playing a game of football,

Noticed that the football had an unusual shape,

It wasn’t exactly round,

And when this ball came rolling in his direction and stopped by his feet,

He realised it was the head of a local politician, who’d been convicted of fraud.

Everybody—

every self-identified group or entity,

every faction on the inside,

every nation on the outside,

will be looking to gain or maximise advantage,

ruthlessly and pragmatically.

And in the absence of a credible indigenously European alternative,

To replace the existing liberal, egalitarian, universalist, globalist dispensation in the West,

Power will default to whomever is strongest, most numerous, and / or most ruthless at that time;

It could be a strongman,

It could be radical Islam,

It could be something else;

Because in times of chaos and uncertainty,

Because in times of disorder and disorientation,

People have proven quite willing to give up freedom in exchange for security.

***

What is, then, a credible alternative?

Well, we know it’s not a variation of the values of the French Revolution or the American Revolution;

We know it’s based on an entirely different set of principles,

Instead of individualism, we think individuality;

Instead of liberty, we think autonomy;

Instead of equality we think quality;

Instead of brotherhood, we think kinship;

And instead of universal, homogenised mass societies of alienated strangers who feel no loyalty towards each other unless there is an economic interest;

We think of a vast mosaic of organic societies, each with a distinct character, engaged in friendly collaboration.

This much is clear.

But there is one area that not been sufficiently emphasised.

And that’s the area of moral philosophy.

Many people out there find our general outlook appealing on many levels,

Many people out there think our observations and analyses are correct,

Many people out there are repelled by liberal, egalitarian, universalist, and globalist ideals,

And would love to see them replaced with something else;

But they are afraid of expressing it.

They fear that if they say something that might in some way be construed as slightly illiberal or somewhat inegalitarian

they might be called a name;

And the idea of being called that name,

That name that begins with ‘r’, or ‘f’, or an even scarier letter.

Makes them very uncomfortable.

And it’s not just because they fear for their jobs, or their lives,

Because oftentimes they’re among friends,

Or among family,

Or even alone.

And they still worry about being called a name,

They still worry about friends or family members, even in the privacy of their own brains, thinking of them in terms of that name.

And the reason is that although our outlook appeals to them

Although they think that our assessments are correct,

They don’t believe in the moral goodness of our ideas.

Deep down they fear that thinking in our particular way makes them bad people.

And that’s because the present dispensation in the West is predicated on a moral philosophical system that enshrines equality as an absolute moral value;

And they’ve been trained to believe in the absolute moral goodness of equality,

Even if equality doesn’t personally appeal to them,

Even if equality doesn’t tally with what they observe in every day life.

‘I’m not racist, but . . .’

So if we aspire to reorganise the politics of Europe, or of the West, in a post-collapse world, in a manner that advances the European cause,

Our philosophical formulations need to be founded upon a belief in the absolute moral goodness of inequality—

Or, as I would prefer to call it, the moral goodness of difference, of being different, and distinct, from a unique lineage or tradition,

In the absolute belief,

That you don’t make things good by making them equal;

That you make things good by making them unequal.

By allowing distinguishing qualities,

By allowing superior quality

To flourish,

And accord each individual and each collectivity on the earth their own unique destiny and source of pride.

Ultimately, this belief is essential for our future prosperity.

Because the morality of equality is an evil and destructive morality:

What is equal, is replaceable.

And what is replaceable has no value.

Equality makes everyone a slave.

Value comes from two sources:

superiority and scarcity.

What is superior in quality has higher value than what is average.

What is scarce, what is rare or unique, has higher value than what can be found everywhere.

Thus the ultimate consequence of an egalitarian morality,

Is the destruction of human value.

It’s no surprise that the history of egalitarianism is a history of state terror and mass murder.

The French Revolution led to the guillotine and the Reign of Terror.

And since the only people in the world who honestly believe in the absolute moral goodness of equality are the European descended peoples of the West, and those in the White Western diaspora elsewhere,

The egalitarian morality is ultimately a methodology for destroying the value of Western man in the eyes of Western man.

And what makes this especially nefarious is that Western man is deeply preoccupied with morality,

That’s why he’s more worried about being called a name, than about his own continuity and prosperity,

That’s why he’s more worried about being thought a bad person, than about feeling at home in his own homeland,

That’s how he becomes an ethnomasochist.

You may think it strange to speak of Western man’s moral preoccupation in a time of perceived widespread immorality,

But the truth is we are living in puritanical times,

When it comes to the belief in the moral goodness of equality,

The consequences of heterodoxy are severe.

So Western man is and remains deeply preoccupied with morality.

And ultimately this has geopolitical implications,

Because most of the peoples of the world value their own uniqueness;

they think tribally, ethnically, and racially,

and are willing to act in consequence,

no matter what it says on their passport.

For them this is right and good and completely uncontroversial.

And in a scenario of Western collapse,

We know that they will band together,

According to race and ethnicity,

And make use of whatever means they have to grab more power for themselves and increase their prosperity at our expense.

Whereas Western man, because his current moral system forbids him from recognising and valuing his uniqueness,

will be divided by class, by ideology, by religion, by anything you can imagine,

And will not unite for his own sake.

During the French Revolution the Whites in what later became Haiti were divided into the Jacobins,

Who supported equality and the abolition of slavery,

And the Creoles, who did not.

And it was the egalitarian Whites who did the most damage to the population in the colony,

Because it was their revolutionary ideology that inflamed the Black slaves and the mulattoes,

And led ultimately to Black rule and White extermination.

When Jean-Jacques Dessalines crowned himself Emperor of Haiti,

Which is only one half of the tiny island of Hispaniola.

The Whites were thinking—

Liberté, egalité, et fraternité

Dessalines was thinking—

‘Now I can do what I want—

And I want to see the White man’s BLOOD!’

Egalitarianism leaves Western man morally disarmed in a racially competitive world.

The geopolitical consequences of egalitarianism in the great realignments of power of the twenty-first century,

Is that the United States eventually breaks up into ethnically based components, which are less powerful,

And are less European,

Is that Europe becomes progressively Islamicised through a process of settler colonisation from North Africa, the Near East, and South Asia,

Is that power, on Earth and then also on the Moon, defaults to China,

Which will remain deeply ethnocentric, deeply conservative, and deeply committed to its own sense of superiority.

In this scenario Russia becomes a more important player—

Eurosiberianism may end up the only game in town for Europeans,

In a continent most of which has been colonised by non-European settlers.

Whatever the optimal strategical orientation may be, any credible effort to bring about a European renaissance in a post-collapse world needs,

Firstly to consider the many forms of collapse—

awkward, deferred, slow, soft, or undulating—

and the emotions associated with them—

panic, fear, apathy, joy, or hope—

because these are often not the first thing that comes to mind;

Secondly, to offer a credible alternative for the world beyond the collapse,

because a collapse will remove an obstacle but it will by itself not solve the problem;

And thirdly, to predicate that alternative on the moral goodness of quality rather than equality,

because quality implies an appreciation for that which is special, and unique, and not readily replaceable,

And I think European man and European civilisation are special and unique,

And cannot be replaced.

And as catastrophes converge at this point in the twenty-first century,

And we look a the power shifts and realignments that lie ahead,

We must remind those who are like us that be world can be made again,

That there’s something worth believing in,

That there’s something worth fighting for,

That is good and righteous,

And that there can also be greatness for us in the world to come.

Thank you very much!