New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe [Paperback]

Michael O'Meara (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: 1stBooks; 1st edition (March 19, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1410764613
• ISBN-13: 978-1410764614
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #818,619 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an excellent exposition of european traditionalism, September 17, 2010

By 

Ian Wright (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe (Paperback)

Curious about some of the material I've encountered at alternative right blogs, I found this work and can recommend it as one of the best books on the Western question in a long, long time.

American traditionalists would do well to read this work carefully since it is aimed at correcting, informing and explaining the European right through the voices of its prominent figures. European traditionalism is not Thatcher/Reagan conservatism sprinkled with nostrums inspired by the free market, consumerism and unfettered individualism. Too many American intellectuals misunderstand or, worse, are happily ignorant of the important work being done by GRECE and its confreres.

Europe is often viewed as a case of reverse colonization by an economically superior America, so its indigenous movements are ignored if they don't fit neatly into the framework imposed by America's New World Order and its intellectual fellow travelers in the EU. O'Meara brings to light many important contributions to traditionalism made by men like Alain de Benoist, ones that are substantive when put against the thin gruel of Anglo-American conservative thought.

Compounding the problem is that the reductionist left/right spectrum glosses over significant differences between so-called conservatives in America and their nominative counterparts in Europe. After reading O'Meara's, I am more certain than ever that America is Jacobinism light.

For the New Right, most if not all the immediate problems faced by Europe are seen as either being inspired by or aggravated by the sharp rise of Americanism in the post-World War II period. A frequent motto in the book is that "America is only as strong as Europe is weak." Meaning, insofar as Europe cedes autonomy in charting its own course in the modern world, it strengthens the unilateralist American hegemon in its goings "to and fro through the earth."

The philosophical wrong turn for European affairs was made much earlier though, with the rise of Cartesianism and the revival of the old gnostic distinction between natural and mental reality. Descartes' hyper-emphasis on mental phenomena and his denigration of the natural world placed Europe in the grip of ideologies that favor abstractionism and materialism over the a priori claims of the family, ethnos and simple biology.

A key term of the New Right is "bioculture," an important recognition that genetic characteristics of an ethnos shapes its culture and cements its members together through a powerful genetic bond, similar to the kind between parent and child. Myth, language and a common tradition further cement the bond between the members of an ethny.

Today, much of the West is riddled by social ills (isolation, purposelessness, despair, lack of confidence) whose origins can be traced to abstract, universalistic ideologies. These have been a solvent in destroying the mythos of European tradition. Offered in its place are purely materialistic and hedonistic activities conducted in a private sphere. The private pursuit of happiness has destroyed the larger language of meaning and the telos once shared by the ethnic groups of Europe. Public discourse is largely concerned with preserving the integrity of the tiny impenetrable bubbles. No grand narratives are offered to inspire European peoples to the kinds of achievements they made in the past. Instead, life is about the market place and the accumulation of creature comforts.

O'Meara furnishes a particularly dense chapter on the nature of time according to Heidegger. No review here can do it full justice, but I will point out that the Christian view of the temporal as a rising straight line pointed toward a final future end is the object of much criticism by New Rightists. The problem however is that the time models of "pagan" Europe - at least in my opinion -- are far, far worse.

Consider that Julius Evola, much loved by New Right thinkers, was partial to a highly fatalistic theory of cycles. The Kali Yuga (Age of Iron) has visible signs which can be easily recognized by a man of wisdom, yet there is nothing he can do to stop its unfolding, save descend into a world of private hermeticism ("riding the tiger"). The Hindu cosmology explains the universe as an unending repetition of the same forms. This motif is uniquely pagan and it's not clear how reviving a theory of cycles with a European flavor can overcome the inevitable stasis, stagnation and decay described by Evola. Aware of this, New Rightists try to salvage the possibility of a time view that keeps the present vital without letting it become a stopping point.

The last chapter is one of the best. O'Meara shares some sharp criticisms of European traditionalism, particularly its expression of anti-American feeling. New Rightists fail to see that America is not wholly Puritan in its parts; the Old South of Richard Weaver and the Agrarians represents a vestige and perhaps future seed of European rebirth in the New World. (Tomislav Sunic is especially adept at recognizing the European character of some American conservative strains even if other traditionalists are more myopic.)

The Christian faith is also a target of New Rightist criticism, but as the author notes, this too is unfair since it fails to recognize that however Semitic in origin, the faith long ago became imbued with the spiritual values of Western men. Wotan cannot be revived and offered to the modern European, but he echoes in the spirituality of medieval militant orders.

This is a fine read and a definite contribution to any thinking man's library.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Introduction to the New Right, April 13, 2009

By 

Brian Rathert - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe (Paperback)

I've read both this book and Tomislav Sunic's book, "Against Democracy and Equality". Although the intentions of both books are the same; to provide the reader with an overview of, and insight into, the European New Right (and in so doing, also gain insight into the nature of the political movements in the United States as well).

Unlike another reviewer of this book here, I do not think it necessary to read Sunic's book first. In fact, I would strongly recommend against this, as I found Sunic's book to be almost unreadable. He's an intelligent man, I'm sure, but I found the language in Sunic's "Against Democracy..." to be so needlessly elevated and abstruse as to make reading an exercise in mental torture.

O'Meara's book, by comparison, is very readable. To be sure one needs to be a literate person to read this book. But frankly anyone expressing an interest in understanding the New Right is already revealing a degree of intellectual capacity and inquisitiveness that should make the reading of "New Culture, New Right" not only possible, but at times a pleasure.

I gave the book only four stars because I am not a promoter of "grade inflation" - whether for students or books. It's an excellent book - and I recommend it without reservation, but I'll reserve five stars for books that are truly exceptional.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars But For A Few Personal Pet Peeves, February 16, 2011

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Sussex Pond Pudding (Somewhere in the desert, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: New Culture, New Right: Anti-Liberalism in Postmodern Europe (Paperback)

First let me say that you should buy this book, read it, digest it and then donate it to a library or casually leave it on the coffee table at the home of your dearest delusional Republocrat friend. This is a truly exceptional book in that it brilliantly outlines the general thrust of arguments coming out of a very important current in contemporary European Right Wing thought. That it is not the only important current of contemporary European Right Wing thought you wouldn't know without scouring the footnotes, however. This is one very minor problem with the book. O'Meara's title does imply a more general study.

I have a few slightly larger problems with the work too. His views of Americans are skewed by what I can only describe as intense emotions. He seems to really not like us, even beyond intellectual considerations. So much that he can not, for example, come up with more than a handful of intellectuals that he deems worthy of civilized culture. This is simply absurd, as any cultured fellow ought to know (having debated the value of adding a list of American cultural contributors I have decided to skip it in the interest of brevity and out of my faith in the intellect of those who are probably reading this review). Similarly he suggests that Americans have rarely created great art. He mentions that we have not created a composer of the likes of Haydn, for example. I say to Mr. O'Meara, how could we? Why would we? Or even more to the point how would you know? He uses Europe (even centuries old Europe) as the standard for all things, something which it can not be and which contradicts the ideas of Benoist! Comments like these, including an absurd handful of references to the artistic bankrupcy of jazz, suggest to me that the author is out of his depth. Aesthetics has always been a challenge to philosophers and cultural commentators but, to be frank, Mr. O'Meara comes off sounding quite uncultured and uninformed in these areas. There are also a few references to "homosexuals" without any qualification or explanation. The word simply appears in lists of things he believes debase culture. I assure you that the percentage of culture that the author so passionately, justifiably and correctly defends that was created by homosexuals would make him squirm in his seat...or, ideally, suggest to him that a reevaluation of this particularly bizarre Judaic notion is in order. I'm sure the last person on Earth that Mr. O'Meara wants to come off sounding like is Sarah Pailin yet he treads dangerously close at times. In the context of the rest of this fascinating, persuasive, perceptive and worldly work these Fox News-type items are especially jarring.