My translation of an interview with Armin Mohler in Éléments 80 (1994). Of particular
interest to the history ideas must be his comments on the applicability of the category “conservative
revolution” to France. Mohler’s best known work is his history
of the Conservative Revolution in Germany, recently translated into English by
F. R. Devlin (2018), which began as a doctoral dissertation in 1949 supervised
by Karl Jaspers, and went through many editions over the years.
The French original is available at
And a PDF of this version at
Éléments
Some dispute the “revolutionary” character of the
Conservative Revolution and just see it as a contemporary kind of
counter-revolution. Others, more numerous, characterise it as an attempt to
overthrow modernity using its own weapons. In seeking to beat modernity on its
own ground, is the Conservative Revolution more efficient, or does it
paradoxically help to maintain what it seeks to supplant?
Armin Mohler
The Conservative Revolution is a counter-revolution in that
sense that it primarily attacks the liberal ideology which has totally
destroyed society. But it’s also revolutionary, because it doesn’t believe in
the possibility of restoring the past. At the same time, one mustn’t forget
that it has never been a mass movement, which was at once its greatest strength
and its greatest weakness. It’s furthermore, in effect, a critique of modernity
with the weapons of modernity, even of postmodernity (the “postmoderns” are
children—illegitimate, unpredictable but indubitable—of the Conservative
Revolution!). Every thesis Jünger develops in The Worker relies on this idea. So for my part, I stick to the
optimist interpretation: a modern critique of modernity is more efficient, even
if it carries risks. Heidegger said himself: Salvation comes from danger.
É.
Among the three main families of the Conservative
Revolution, might we say that the Völkischen
were those who most approximated the Nazi ideology?
A.M.
The Völkischen were
even further removed from politics than the Young Conservatives or the
national-revolutionaries. They were utopians who lived in the past, and
sometimes even in prehistory. A characteristic trait of most völkisch works is that they might just
as well have been written in 1890 as in 1930. The only strength of the Völkischen came from their using a language
not overly intellectual, that everyone might understand. Besides, it’s
difficult to speak of a “Nazi ideology” in the straightforward sense of the
term, because it quite simply hadn’t the time to take shape. What’s certain is
that Hitler detested the Völkischen,
because he considered them irredeemable. He had them penned in “reserves,”
where their activities went more or less unnoticed. I lived a few months in
Berlin during the Third Reich. I didn’t get the impression of living in a völkisch universe! The Nazi regime aimed
for efficiency above all. Post-War Germany, that of the “economic miracle,” was
rebuilt by the engineers, industrialists and technicians which it had trained.
É.
One question which is often asked is whether the great
political families which composed the Conservative Revolution are to be found
outside Germany. What about France, for instance?
A.M.
When I arrived in France, I thought I’d found a
politico-intellectual landscape utterly different from what I knew. Very
quickly I realised that the different was smaller than I’d thought. That
difference stems above all from the great continuum of French national history.
One might say that the French have too much nation state in their history,
while the Germans haven’t had enough! One must also take into account the
thorough impregnation of French society by feminine values. This explains, for
example, the success Jünger has had with you. Joseph Breitbach didn’t hesitate
to speak in this connection of an “erotic phenomenon”!
The principle classifications that I introduced in my work
on the Conservative Revolution are entirely applicable to France. The Young
Conservatives correspond to the traditional right, from Rivarol to Maurras, via
De Maistre, Bonald, Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Veuillot, Le Play, Gustave Thibon
and the majority of the writers of Action Française. As equivalent to the
national-revolutionaries we should first of all mention the national-Jacobins,
who might just as well include Boulanger, Déroulède and Clemenceau as Péguy,
Valois, Hugues Rebell, Gustave Hervé, Bernanos, Déat, Drieu La Rochelle, de
Gaulle and Malraux. As to the Völkischen,
which we often consider a purely “Germanic” type, I would include Gobineau and
Boulainvilliers, but also Toussenel, Drumont, and without a doubt Céline as
well. Saint-Yves d’Alveydre is a good example of a mix of völkisch ideology and religious esotericism. The artisans of the
“Celtic renaissance” inaugurated in the nineteenth century still come under the
same category, as well as “regional” authors like Frédéric Hoffet, Mistral, La
Varende or Giono. For his part, Robert Brasillach seems to me a good
representative of the bündisch
spirit. Naturally there should still be some supplementary categories to
create, to make room for the inheritors of Proudhon, the federalists, the
“nonconformists” of the ’30s. Finally, as I did in Germany for such men as Jünger,
Schmitt, Spengler and Thomas Mann, one must consider certain great authors
unclassifiable. I’m thinking especially of Sorel, Barrès or Montherlant.
É.
Kurt Sontheimer has written that under the Weimar Republic,
liberalism was the “scapegoat” (Prügelknabe)
of the right as of the left. While the principal enemy of Nazism was communism
(always associated with Jews), the enemy number one of the Conservative
Revolution was precisely represented by liberals. Contrary to many men of the
right, you yourself take liberalism to be the principal enemy. Of what, in a
few words, do you accuse liberals?
A.M.
Of being hypocrites. Liberals want us to approve of them
because they display “good intentions.” Besides, they are adepts of wishful
thinking: they believe that words are things, and that it suffices to declare
good intentions for them to become realities. Liberal homily is the price on
the door to society: what counts is that one harbour good intentions, after
which one might as well become a Mafioso.
É.
Let’s turn to your “nominalism.” You have always critiqued
“general ideas.” What is the basis of this critique?
A.M.
When I made his acquaintance in 1948, Carl Schmitt often
told me: “Every word is an answer. Every answer comes from a question. Every
question comes from a situation.” To declare a theory in abstraction from the
situations in which we find ourselves it so speak in a vacuum. It’s in this
sense that there are no pure ideas and that it’s impossible, once the situation
has changed, to stick to a discourse reflecting the preceding situation. A
great many men of the right, unfortunately, haven’t managed to grasp this. To
acknowledge it, I think one must be a little anarchic! Today, nonetheless, many
of the disillusioned from right and left have renounced the struggle for
abstract ideas and begun to recognise that the answers to prescribe vary
according to the situation. Take immigration for example. To be for or against
immigration in itself makes no sense. It’s only once one knows whether there
are 40,000, 400,000 or 4,000,000 immigrants in Germany that on can settle on an
adequate position. The answer, to put it another way, depends on the realities
of the moment. All my “nominalism” follows from this attitude: I don’t want to
refer to general ideas, but to respond to problems which arise concretely.
É.
You are not only an historian of the Conservative Revolution
but also the author of many works dedicated to the Vergangenheitsbewältigung, that is, to the way in which the Germans
have been charged with “overcoming” their past. Did this controversy find
itself a new relevance after the fall of the Berlin Wall?
A.M.
Vergangenheitsbewältigung
is a farce today. It’s a motif one employs to delegitimise certain
opinions, suppress debate and entrench political taboo, which has come to
replace sexual taboo. Germans have been compelled for decades to perform this
exercise, in order to perpetuate the effect of the “re-education” imposed after
1945 by the Allies. We have thus foisted guilt on a whole generation. After the
downfall of communism, the Vergangenheitsbewältigung
motif has indeed returned to relevance. But my position hasn’t changed. With
Golo Mann I am even one of the few men of the right who have declared in favour
of a general amnesty for former leaders of the German Democratic Republic. Some
say it’s unjust because there are (undeniable) crimes which will never be
punished. My response is that to resume the inexorable grind of prosecutions
and trials would lead to a still greater injustice: the casting of suspicion on
a whole part of a people by other part of the same people. Moreover, at the
present moment a great many of the main Stasi chiefs are already back to
business!
É.
Might one say that since 1989, Germany has entered a new
period of its history?
A.M.
Certainly. The reunification has been the starting-point of
a great “turn.” Germans suddenly discovered that they’d been living under a
cloche for forty years, and they still haven’t returned! They now enjoy a
recovered unity, that is, a greater liberty; but they don’t yet know what to
make of it. It’s partly a generational problem. The post-War generation has
shown itself to be politically irresponsible. It was a generation of spoilt
children, brought up by parents exhausted by the trials they’d known and who
couldn’t dedicate to them the time they ought. At once guilt-ridden and
apolitical, these youths quickly forgot the sacrifice of their mothers who, in
the East, were violated en masse by
the Russians while, in the West, they had to whore themselves to American
soldiers to allow their family to eat. But now there appears a new generation,
that of the sons and daughters of post-War children. This generation is
wilfully cynical. It mocks everything it’s been taught. It mocks, sometimes
even in cruel terms, the guilty feelings its parents had long interiorised.
When this generation replaces the previous, there will be a new Germany.
É.
For the moment, there’s very little political debate in
Germany. Extremists of right and left square up with more brutality than ever.
Where does this violence come from?
A.M.
There has always been violence in German political life,
quite simply because Germans take seriously, perhaps too seriously, what they
believe to be true. There are also the effects of an education more moral than
political, which serve as alibi and good conscience.
É.
Last May–June, the educational programming of Norddeutscher
Rundfunk presented a series of three shows on the Conservative Revolution.
Might one say that the Conservative Revolution is still relevant?
A.M.
And how! Not long ago, some were saying: The Conservative
Revolution, it’s a story for grandfathers. But the very same who said that were
referring themselves to liberalism and to Marxism, that is, to the ideologies
of their great-grandfathers! The truth is that the Conservative Revolution has
always remained a source of inspiration for neoconservatives (les néoconservateurs), in just the same
way that the culture of Weimar has never ceased to speak to the post-War left.
Today, even if the more serious work is done abroad, the Conservative
Revolution is the object of permanent rediscovery. Friedbert Pflüger very
recently published, with Econ, a book called Deutschland driftet: Die Konservative Revolution entdeckt ihre Kinder.
A journal like Junge Freiheit, which
is the first weekly of its kind to reach such a large audience (it has a
circulation of more than 100,000), is in many respects part of a direct
continuation of the Conservative Revolution. Indeed, there are today in Germany
two types of person on the left: on the one hand, the idiots that proliferate
acts of violence under the cover of “antifa vigilance” and, on the other,
serious, intelligent people who target the Conservative Revolution because they
know it represents for them a real threat. And conversely, there are on the
right more and more people who understand that the Conservative Revolution is
more than ever the way to be a modern conservative.
É.
What sentiments might have moved the author of The Conservative Revolution in Germany,
seeing Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand go to visit Ernst Jünger together?
A.M.
Amusement, first of all, given the surprise that Germans on
the left, and sometimes even on the right, displayed at such a “scandal.”
Germans discovered at that moment that a good many Frenchmen, beginning with
your head of state, saw in Jünger the greatest living German author, which they
were themselves still rarely able to admit! I have in fact a certain respect
for Kohl. I like his direct, peasant side. At the moment of reunification, he
carried himself like a real statesman. If he’d died after the fall of the Wall,
one might have regarded him as the father of the fatherland! Mitterand is
different. He has an undeniable talent, but he lacks historic stature. The
first time he made a visit to Jünger, I said to this last: “Now no-one can do
anything against you! You must address your people!” Jünger only answered me:
“Leave me in peace.”
É.
What is the term, do you think, that best describes you?
A.M.
Anarchist of the right.
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