Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: The Neocons and Charles Maurras Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/leo_strauss_the_neocons_and_charles_maurras#6526 Post contents: Another one for the files. Finally someone is bring Maurras to public attention in the Anglophone world. Thank you, Paul Gottfried! I’ve said it before: Let’s get some of his stuff – preferably free of his Judeophobia – into an English translation, called the <i>Charles Maurras Reader</i>, or translate some of the works Paul Gottfried mentions. Let’s include some of his aesthetic work as well. Thanks also for at least mentioning Luigi Sturzo, the man who coined the phrase “clerical Fascist". Frankly, I find myself torn between the appeal of Sturzo and that of Maurras. I’m someone who is a regionalist and a Leo XIII Catholic and opposed to all nationalism and to “propositional” nations (at least secular propositions). Short observations. I was disappointed only when the essay began to drift from Maurras to Strauss, though perhaps this is the more timely concern . Teutonophobia is indeed a problem, not just among Neocons, but in the Anglophone world; I wonder if it has died out in France. John Lukacs is certainly correct that Maurras was not ant-Semitic (a racial concept) as he was Judeophobic (a religious and cultural one); Paul Gottfried seems to following this view. Lukacs and Gottfried are also quiet correct that Maurras was not a Fascist, correcting Ernst Nolte’s error. And I know of no racialist tendencies in Maurras thought; like a Real Conservative, he knew that history made people who they are. I continue to fuss that “Left” and “Right” are meaningless, utterly meaningless, concepts, – not even useful but rather distorting. Where I fault Maurras is from a Personalist perspective: The person is never a part of a whole, a means to an end, or someone who is not sui juris; Maurras was not alone in making this error in promoting a group, sect, class, or national cohesion. I also fault him for seeing the West exclusively as the achievement of Athens, and ignoring Jerusalem. Questions i. Is John Lukacs correct that Maurras is more of a Conservative (“extremist conservative”) than a Nationalist? ii. As a League of the South member, I’d like to know, Is he more of a regionalist than a central-statist Nationalist, such as Clemenceau and T. Roosevelt? iii. I was surprised to hear of neopagan tendencies. Wasn’t he simply an atheist? What did he really mean be calling himself “the Catholic atheist”? Just a cultural admiration? iv. Who his the greater influence upon him, de Maistre, Taine, or Comte? v. Isn’t the Croix de Feu better called a Fascist organization that “right republican”? Roger Griffin thought so. vi. If Maurras was so anti-German and anti-Nazi (not the same thing, by the way) – and I don’t doubt this – what did he mean by saying the events of June 1940 were a “divine surprise”? I’ll have a question for Christians later in the day. Sent at: 2008 05 16