Hotbed of a reverse cultural revolution
More than 50 years after ‘May
68,’ the left-wing revolutionaries of that time have achieved their goal: in
every Western society, cultural Marxism shapes both individual morals and
social values, history is rewritten from its vantage point, and politics is
shaped according to its specifications. In short, cultural Marxism dominates
all aspects of public and private life. Criticism of this doctrine of faith is
not at all welcome, either in the private sphere or in the public sphere,
because it’s common knowledge that ideology doesn’t sit well with reality.
But how could layers of mildew settle on Western societies and
smother any resistance to victorious cultural Marxism?
It was the method. May
‘68 was not a one-off revolution, not a crashing collapse followed by the
takeover of power by another group. No, May ‘68 was a creeping revolution that
actually began many years earlier: The foundation was laid by the modern
theology of the 1940s and 1950s, which challenged the Christian tradition. The
Second Vatican Council institutionalized the destruction of the foundation (in
many churches in the truest sense of the word) and thus destroyed immunity
against the contemporary doctrines of salvation through socialism, boundless
individualism and libertinage. Thus, after May ‘68, an unholy alliance of
left-wing utopianism and a Christian sense of mission came about. Both groups,
the socialist missionaries and the secularized clergymen, began their march
through the institutions with the aim of interrupting the transmission of
knowledge, culture and religion and creating a new, happy, just, progressive
humanity on the basis of the human being as raw material: Since then, in
religious education and catechism teaching in school people bake or have ‘group
experiences;’ in history and in politics classes, as well as in the media, all
problems are reduced to ‘social justice’ versus profit. Since
then, anyone who lacks anything that someone else has is the ‘victim’ and
‘good,’ while the other who has something that someone lacks is a ‘perpetrator’
and ‘evil.’
Today, this rather simple, moralizing world view dominates world
politics, everyday social coexistence and the debate on bioethical questions.
It has led Western societies to where they are today. The over-65s are mostly
conscious or unconscious cultural revolutionaries who have found their fortune
in wealth and meaningless consumption, the under-45s are mostly cultural,
historical, religious and philosophical illiterates without orientation.
Western societies are therefore at a dead end. The only way out is to turn
back, that is, a cultural counterrevolution aimed at returning to the cultural,
historical, philosophical and religious roots of Western civilization.
Marion Maréchal, who is
only 28 years old, recognized this necessity (she had the name ‘Le Pen’ of her
aunt Marine added as a trademark when she entered political life and then
discarded it after her return to civil life). She herself attended school with
the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit, a school congregation of the Society
of Saint Pius X, which in France runs several schools that are not recognized
by the state but are famous for their high standards. The
Dominican Sisters were the only people in Marion's childhood who were willing
to accept the granddaughter of the publicly outlawed Jean-Marie Le Pen into
their school. There Marion encountered the works of the great philosophers of
antiquity and the West, who had long since disappeared from the curricula of
state schools and Catholic schools run under state control. It is therefore not
without a certain irony that it was precisely the refusal of the
tolerance-oriented state and semi-state schools to accept Marion that led them
to form her brilliant mind in the classical way, so that today she is in a
position to formulate a self-contained, logical and structured alternative to
the cultural Marxist order of the present.
While still a member of parliament, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen
expressed the need to create a right-wing counterweight to the elite state
schools in which the establishment members of tomorrow will be formed in the
spirit of cultural Marxism, “because civilizing values cannot be transmitted
through elections.” One year after her voluntary withdrawal from the Assemblée
Nationale, the time had come: on 22 June, Marion Maréchal invited interested
parties to the inauguration of the Institut de Sciences Sociales, Économiques
et Politiques (ISSEP) in Lyon, where the new university, not recognized by the
state, is now competing with the established state Institutes d'études
politiques (IEP) and Sciences Po Lyon. In contrast to state schools, in which
open borders, globalisation and profit are propagated as ends in themselves,
the ISSEP's four mottos are ‘excellence,’ ‘ethics in the exercise of
professional responsibility,’ ‘rootedness in cultural identity’ and ‘commitment
to the service of others and one's own country.’ This conservative
orientation is underlined in the opening press release: It is the aim of the
private university to “train versatile, cultivated leaders for business and
politics who put their ambition at the service of projects that serve the
common good of society.”
Excluded from the inauguration of the ISSEP were the
representatives of the extreme left-wing media ‘Rue89 Lyon’ and ‘Libération.’
Marion Maréchal accuses ‘Libération’ of the headline of May 31, which read:
“Maréchal, la revoilà,” (Maréchal or the Marshal is back), a pun with the title
of a Vichy regime hymn of praise to Marshal Philippe Pétain in the 1940s. “I've
been hearing this stupid joke since kindergarten. It gets on my nerves. That's
why I'm taking revenge now,” Maréchal admitted frankly while having a drink
with the journalists present.
Marion Maréchal is not only the founder of the ISSEP, but also
the general manager of the university. She replies to the accusation that some
of the teaching staff are linked to the old Front National by saying that there
is indeed some overlap, but that she does not see any problem in this, since
the university is open to anyone who feels they belong to the world of
right-wing ideas. Members of the Republicans, the Christian Democrats and other
right-wing movements such as Debout la France (DLF) are also involved in
setting up the institution. The ISSEP is a “meeting place of intelligence.”
The list of academics involved in setting up the ISSEP reads
like a ‘who's who’ of the French and Western right: Patrick Libbrecht, an
entrepreneur, is the Honorary President. In the past he’s spoken at conferences
of the Audace (audacity) civil society movement, where the traditional wing of
the Rassemblement National (RN, formerly FN) meets the right wing of the
Republicans (LR). He will be assisted by scientific directors Patrick Louis, a
professor of economics and geopolitics at the University of Lyon III and
general secretary of Philippe de Villiers' traditionalist Mouvement pour la
France, and Jacques de Guillebon, a Catholic-traditionalist intellectual who,
among other things, publishes the new monthly ‘L'Incorrect.’ The titles of the
last three issues clearly show where it’s coming from: “Leaving 68 Behind,”
“100 Percent Conservative” and “Allegedly Guilty” (in relation to the Western
male). Other members of the Council of Science and Humanities are the royalist
musicologist Yves-Marie Adeline de Boisbrunet, Guillaume Drago, a professor of
law at the University of Panthéon Assas in Paris who speaks out against
‘marriage for all,’ the Catholic philosopher Thibaud Collin, who teaches in the
Classes préparatoires (the very selective, two-year preparatory courses for the
selection procedures of the Grandes écoles, the French elite universities) at
the very elitist Catholic Collège Stanislas in Paris and is among others a
member of the editorial board of “L'Incorrect,” the geostrategist Pascal
Gauchon, editor of the magazine “Conflits” and until 1981 head of the
neo-fascist splinter party Parti des Forces Nouvelles, the Russian military
historian Oleg Sokolov, Raheem Kassam, UKIP member, advisor to Nigel Farage and
head of Breitbart London, the American paleoconservative and “eigentümlich
frei” author Paul Gottfried, who taught at the University of Pennsylvania, as
well as other right-wing academics from France and abroad. According to Marion
Maréchal, more than 120 lecturers have already expressed an interest in
teaching at the ISSEP.
Who does the new private
university appeal to? Marion Maréchal is clearly targeting France's
conservative youth. The ISSEP should be the ground on which “all currents of the
right can be found and realised.” It’s not only grades that are decisive for
achieving university enrolment, but above all the personality of the candidate:
Speaking to broadcaster RMC, Maréchal said: “We are trying to attract
individuals whose curiosity and critical spirit, coupled with judgment, have a
certain vision, which the current political and economic elite is so much
lacking.” Despite tuition fees of 5,500 euros for the first year of the
Master's program, which begins in September, there is great interest in the
right-wing university. Already at the time of the official announcement, more
than 60 people had pre-registered for the 25 to 30 places of the Master's
program and more than 160 for the part-time program, for which tuition fees of
1,990 euros have to be paid. The private educational institution is financed
exclusively by tuition fees and donations from private individuals and
companies, that must, however, be 100% French. Donations from abroad are
rejected on principle.
The contents taught at the ISSEP are a mixture of the programs
of business schools, political science and general education. The final touches
are put on the curriculum over the summer months. Marion Maréchal refuses to
accept the accusation that the ISSEP is a political project. “This school is
not linked to any party, nor is it dependent on any party. It wasn’t created to
win elections. It’s a personal project and I forbid myself to use this school
for political purposes. If there is something political about this school, then
it is politics in the noble sense: to serve the community.”
Although
the lack of state recognition remains a certain shortcoming, Marion Maréchal is sure that students
enrol at her university not so much because of an academic title, but because
of the content. To make the ISSEP even more attractive, there will be a
partnership with other European educational institutions. To this end, Marion
Maréchal will visit an Italian institution near Rome this year. She is also in
contact with universities or academies in Ireland and Bavaria. Marion Maréchal
will take exclusive care of the development of the ISSEP until February 2019,
then she will set off for new shores and the university will have to take care
of itself.
Translated from eigentümlich frei, where the original article was published on 6th October 2018.
Translated from eigentümlich frei, where the original article was published on 6th October 2018.
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