by Jean Thiriart
Jean Thiriart challenges conventional ideas of nationalism, advocating a united and dynamic Europe, transcending past divisions and forging a collective destiny beyond the constraints of traditional national identities.
The following is excerpted from Jean Thiriart’s Europe: An Empire of 400 Million (Arktos, 2021).
We do not wish a Europe of nations dear to the ‘balkanisers’ of the extreme right, a sort of Harlequin cloak over cowardly clothes.
This Europe of nations is nothing but the momentary and precarious sum of rancours and weaknesses. We all know that the sum of weaknesses equals zero or virtually zero. The petty narrow nationalisms cancel one another, as algebraic values of opposite signs cancel each other. The petty ‘suppressed’ nationalisms derive in general a semblance of vigour only from the hatred of a neighbour or the memory of it. This is nonsense; it is a formal contradiction to hope to derive a positive force from ossified and distrustful particularisms.
For us the fatherland is a FUTURE in common much more than a past in common. The customary fatherland: Belgium, the fatherland of memory: Germany of 1964, the fatherland of one’s heritage: France, can suit only fatigued people possessed of conservative wishful thinking.
We wish for a fatherland of expansion and not a fatherland of veneration. Such will be our European fatherland.
Consequently, we condemn the narrow and mean nationalisms that maintain the divisions between citizens of the European nation. These nationalisms should be sublimated and serve as a springboard for the greater and finer conception of the great European nation. The love of the fatherland should grow with the love for Europe.
Faced with the Russian and American nationalisms one should create a European nationalism.
We despise the paralytic patriotism of cemeteries, the vain patriotism of the wearers of decorations and trinkets. We do not count merely on the spirits of Joan of Arc — or of Bismarck — to save Europe. We count solely on ourselves to do that. But we are aware of the value of tradition enriched by a lucid will directed towards the future.
Reduced to the state of the survival of the past, the fatherland is nothing more than a trifle. The only true fatherland is a fatherland that is in the process of becoming.
