For whites throughout the Western world, we live in an era of an increasingly concealed zeitgeist.
The concept of a ‘silent majority’ is more salient now, I would argue, and more persuasively influential, than in 1968 and 1980. As such, it’s long been my contention that some art resonates deeply with what is, for whites, an increasingly obscured or channeled collective belief system, wherein things take the shape of ‘implicit whiteness’ due to the strictures of political correctness.
In Carl Jung’s essay “The Fight with the Shadow” (1946), he reflects upon premonitions he had about various psychological compensations native Germans were engaging in after their crushed national ego after their WWI defeat:
As early as 1918, I noticed peculiar disturbances in the unconscious of my German patients which could not be ascribed to their personal psychology. Such non-personal phenomena always manifest themselves in dreams as mythological motifs that are also to be found in legends and fairytales throughout the world. I have called these mythological motifs archetypes: that is, typical modes or forms in which these collective phenomena are experienced. There was a disturbance of the collective unconscious in every single one of my German patients. One can explain these disorders causally, but such an explanation is apt to be unsatisfactory, as it is easier to understand archetypes by their aim rather than by their causality. The archetypes I had observed expressed primitivity, violence, and cruelty. When I had seen enough of such cases, I turned my attention to the peculiar state of mind then prevailing in Germany. I could only see signs of depression and a great restlessness, but this did not allay my suspicions. In a paper which I published at that time, I suggested that the “blond beast” was stirring in an uneasy slumber and that an outburst was not impossible.
And so today, I find it strange, albeit welcome, that the NYT, despite spinning it in their obligatory quasi-op-ed angle, has a piece titled “Authors Tap Into Mood of a France ‘Homesick at Home’”.
Earlier this week, before the attack in Paris, President François Hollande said he would read it. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing National Front, whom the fictional Muslim leader defeats in the novel, cashed in, calling it “a fiction that could one day become a reality.” Late Thursday, Agence France-Presse reported that Mr. Houellebecq (pronounced WELL-beck) had stopped promoting the book.
With an ambitious initial print run of 150,000 copies, “Submission” is already the No. 1 seller on Amazon in France. It is likely to join another book with a similar theme on best-seller lists: “The French Suicide,” a 500-page essay in which the journalist Éric Zemmour, 56, argues that immigration, feminism and the 1968 student uprisings set France on a path to ruin. The top seller in France, the book has sold 400,000 copies since its release in October, according to its publisher, Albin Michel.
Though Mr. Zemmour’s is a work of reactionary nostalgia and Mr. Houellebecq’s a futuristic fantasy, both books have hit the dominant note in the national mood today: “inquiétude,” or profound anxiety about the future.
Fueling this anxiety for many French are the fears of non-Muslims about Muslims, the threat posed by groups like the Islamic State and their recruiting in Europe, and rising anti-Semitism. More broadly, concern has grown that the political center is eroding and that extremes are rising in a way reminiscent of the 1930s, along with a sense that France, which prides itself on its republican tradition and strong, centralized state, has ceded too much power to the European Union.
Alas, the NYT reporter then seems to impart a degree of blame for yesterday’s slaughter upon … the likes of Houellebecq. Say what?
This week, before the attack, some critics said the novelist was playing with fire, that “Submission,” its title a play on the literal meaning of the word Islam, was more than a literary exercise in that it could have an impact on French politics and civil life…
Wake up, Europe.
