Nomos London Introductory Speech "Who is This We You Speak Of?"
Originally delivered as a speech at Nomos London October 29th 2022
This evening’s theme is to consider “What do we want?”, one can and will frequently answer this question with a quick assertion of their values, or possibly a reference to a certain catchphrase from one Jonathan Bowden. Numerous other responses would of course suit. However, if one takes the time to properly consider what it is that we truly want, it is not a simple task. Already amongst us there has been lengthy discussion of; Positive vs. Negative visions, the appropriate stratagem for effective political movements, the nature of politics in our current age and a myriad of others. Each when taken in as part of a whole will answer our question, not just of what we want, but latterly how we might also get there.
There is one other issue I would like to bring up with our theme tonight, this isn't just about “what we want”, it’s about “what I want”.
Joking aside, this highlights a consideration that is of the utmost importance to us if we are to tackle tonight’s theme. Modern man has an appalling tendency to speak often of “we”, when one really means “I”. Whether by his own fault or not, he has confused his interests with those of the masses around him. Now this happens to be true for the majority of people, and at the majority of occasions. But when one differs from that majority, speaks to the ills of our time, and attempts even to differentiate himself from it. There are tremendous difficulties. The I/we crossover no longer does the heavy lifting for helping the differentiated man identify himself with a group, nor is it likely he could be fully satisfied as an even further atomised individual. For we should all by now recognise that it is only participation in a meaningful group that allows an individual to exercise any worthwhile autonomy, granting them a more healthy balance of responsibility, support and specialisation.
We have already laid the groundwork for solving this conundrum ourselves, both with the socialising network of basketweavers, and our attempt to form an intellectual Vanguard through organisations such as Scyldings and our very own Nomos. Hence why I can Identify the “we” that I speak to in this room now. This is all very well, but I believe further investigation is required. If we are a Vanguard, what are we the Vanguard of, or to what does our Vanguard look to protect?
Typically we will default to either Western, European or British civilisation, or rather its people. However the looseness of this I believe could betray us, as a Vanguard we should strive to be more exact, and recognise our duty in ever more detail. It is to a Higher British and in places European culture that we serve.
To be defined as Western leaves us open to more modern and frankly American ideas, which it should be clear to most of us here do not provide appropriate answers to the troubles of our time, more on this later. Nonetheless, to just be British alone denies a great part of our tradition of developing and adopting European high culture into our own; would there be a Carlyle without a Goethe, a Filmer without Bodin. Look at what wonders have been achieved by adapting the Italian elite theory to our understanding of current British politics. Still, taking this process beyond the political is admittedly the real challenge–for we are not the defenders of mere civilisation. For we must always be of the mindset that we are engaging in politics in order to live, not living in order to engage in politics.
Parliament is a profane creature of civilisation, not culture. It can influence low mass-culture to the nth degree but it can never be part of the higher. It is a technical device and therefore alien to culture proper. It may very well be this that allows it to influence culture so greatly. For parliament like the vast majority of modern institutions are just technical means to utilitarian, pragmatic and Machiavellian ends. Despite all the best attempts no direct use or products of parliament could ever be recognised as organic, transcendent, and sacred– it lacks the very essence of what makes anything cultural. Erik Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn focuses on this civilisation vs. culture distinction in his rare, but worth being sought after work, The Menace of the Herd. Drawing I believe from Oswald Spengler, Leddihn suggests that:
“Culture is practically always personal; with the exception of the cinema and the ballet there is no collective art, no collective original creation. A sculpture, a picture may be the expression of somebody’s personality. A dynamo may represent the outcome of thought or intellectual effort, but it never is the manifestation of that greater complexity–the soul.”
“And while personalism and creative diversity is essentially human, the animals can appreciate the products of civilization. A cat will never be able to distinguish (in the artistic sense) between two paintings or sculptures, but a room provided with central heating, or a frankfurter, will have a definite meaning...”
Man, and especially the man of Europe, is not best demonstrated or explained as a creature of comforts, despite the current abundance. It is in his art, his music, his poetry and his writing that he is best explained. It is through these avenues that a select few will reconcile their discomfort, either physically or mentally, and in doing so create works of high culture through which European and British man can be understood. It is to our great detriment that we display our highest achievements to the rest of the world in the forms of mass corporate culture, ever more convenient methods of food consumption and flashy training shoes. A horrifically American affair to be engaging in.
For even the most miraculous of technical inventions, no matter what culture its creator originates from, will lose all of its cultural ties as it is proliferated–and its use vulgarised. No matter the strength of the Faustian spirit behind an innovation or its uniqueness in a certain time and place. Its use, and its normalisation leads an aggregation of men to interact with it in a strictly material, or even anti-transcendental fashion. Leddihn goes on to show exactly this with the example of America:
“Culture is personal and something rooted; civilisation on the other hand is ‘international’, interchangeable and ambulant. There could be no melting pot, no Americanisation on the basis of a new synthesis of Slovakian peasant dress, Sicilian songs and Swedish folk dances. Only the jalopy, overalls, the ice-cream soda and the corner drug store could serve as common denominators. … American society at large had to make its change from the emphasis on culture to the acclimation of depersonalised, collective and common civilisation.”
It is this rooted aspect of culture which allows the distinction to be seen in the most clear light. Culture and most certainly high culture, are rooted in a place, a people, a faith and more than likely a specific time. Not to say that culture cannot be timeless, its best products more often than not are timeless, but are also capable of speaking to us here and now. As mentioned before Thomas Carlyle does an incredible job of pulling off this feat, demonstrating to us all the problems of our time, he just happens to have identified them 150 years prior.
I also believe that the strict adherence to being a Vanguard for British and European high culture gives us an incredibly strong rhetorical backbone without painting too large a target on our backs. One can draw on the likes of Francis Parker Yockey and his conception of Men of Race, seeing our own efforts in a similar vein. Culture as we should recognise it, can only be the product of our people, on our lands, exercising our faith. And not just any people but the very best of a people, who Yockey himself would suggest are the only people recognisable as carrying the characteristic of Race:
“Men of Race are scattered through all populations everywhere, through all races, peoples, nations. In each unit they make up the warriors, the leaders of action, the creators in the sphere of politics and war. Thus in the subjective sense, there is also a hierarchy of race. Above the men of race, below—those without race. The first are swept up into action and events by the great cosmic rhythm of motion, the second are passed over by History. The first are the materials of high History, the second have outlasted every Culture, and when the stillness resumes its sway over the landscape after the whirlwind of events, these are the great mass.”
What we might even dare to refer to as big “C” culture should be the bedrock of all we do. For this view is a synthesis of civic, ethnic and religious patriotism which looks far beyond today’s ochlocracy, into the past and the future, for elites that can produce and protect what is most important to us.
A truly transcendent representation of who we really are.