By Andrej Sekulović
Carlos Javier Blanco is a Spanish professor of philosophy, and author of several books, who focuses mostly on the thought of German philosopher Oswald Spengler. We talked with him about the decline of civilizations that Europe is currently facing, and about how to stops such a decline. We also talked about mass migrations, the political situation in Spain, and other interesting topics.
Could you please introduce your work and area of expertise to our readers, and tell us a bit about your activities?
I received my Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Oviedo (Principality of Asturias, Spain) in 1994, and in the early years of my teaching and research, I made contributions to the Theory of Categorical Closure in the so-called “Oviedo School” led by the Spanish philosopher (now deceased) Gustavo Bueno. From the Philosophy of Science and the Theory of Knowledge, my interests drifted towards the Philosophy of History, hence my abundant publications on Marx, Nietzsche, and Spengler. The sectarian atmosphere of Asturian “materialism” made me progressively disengage myself from that abstruse and “scientistic” way of doing philosophy and, on the contrary, I approached the study of some of the classics of German thought. Besides those already mentioned, I have written works on Kant, Schopenhauer… In any case, given the horrifying decadence of European civilization, the figure of Oswald Spengler became more and more important in my studies. In the last decade, I realized that Spengler is the leading philosopher of the twentieth century, and yet he is a cursed author. Tracing who had taken up his legacy and seriously studied him in recent times, I became aware of two main recent sources. One, those who had initially belonged to the so-called New Right, with a French (de Benoist, Faye) or Belgian (Steuckers) core, and, on the other hand, the work of Professor David Engels, also Belgian (rather German-Belgian), currently doing research in Poland.
On the other hand, the so-called “New Right”, if such a tendency still exists, I think, is only well aware of the links between Spengler and the German Conservative Revolution and the new identity and anti-decadent thought if we focus on the figure of Robert Steuckers.
Engels, in turn, is the president of the Oswald Spengler Society for the Study of Humanity and World History [https://www.oswaldspenglersociety.com/] and works hard for the recognition and study of the Spenglerian approach in this decadent 21st century. I am in close and friendship online contact with both authors, Steuckers, and Engels, and I have learned a lot from them.
The Spenglerian idea of history has been very useful for me to reinterpret the Hispanidad in a geopolitical key, the Reconquista (Reconquest) and the role of the Asturian Kingdom, the struggle of the Asturians and the Spanish to free themselves from the moors and not be absorbed by them, the maintenance of Catholic and Celto-Germanic identity in the face of the barbarians from the south.
You are also the administrator of the Spanish blog Spengleriana – Decadencia de Europa, please tell us a bit about this blog…
“Spengleriana” (Decadence of Europe, https://decadenciadeeuropa.blogspot.com/) is now approaching 200 posts, some of the considerable length, some very short. If I am not deceived by the blog itself, it started in January 2012 and has already exceeded 136,000 visits. Most of the articles are my own, although there are a few exceptions, including translations of articles or interviews that I considered important. I know that it is a blog consulted from the most diverse parts of the world, not only from the countries that make up the Hispanic world (given that Spanish is the main language used in the blog). It is also one of the few blogs devoted to a Spenglerian approach to History and the Present, although this should be said in a very general way, as this approach adopted by me can be qualified in many other ways: for some, too conservative, for others, too Marxist, or too nationalist… On the blog, I include many of my academic publications, although there are also essays written expressly for the blog or for friendly publications, where I am a regular contributor (La Tribuna del País Vasco, Tradición Viva, Geopolitica en Español, etc.).
Staying on the topic of your blog, even for a Non-Spanish speaker, it is obvious that it is influenced by German philosopher Oswald Spengler, and his idea of the Decline of The West. Why would you say is his philosophy still important in our times, and to what extend did his predictions about decline, and his views on rising and declining cultures, come true in your opinion?
Spengler was a “prophet” not by his divine gifts, but by the very virtue of his method. Spengler adopted a morphological method according to which the cycle of a culture, which ages into civilization, goes through necessary stages, and these can be foreseen generically. Just as in the biography of a man you can foresee that his old age will come after a certain time and that his old age will be this way or that way by knowing his habits of life, his vices, his personality, etc., and on the basis of analogies with other human beings who have gone through similar stages, etc. Europe, like all civilizations, will die, but it will die in a long time yet, and in this old age there is still room for an interval of “Caesarism” (on this Engels insists a lot), in analogy with the last chaotic stage of the Roman Republic, and of civil wars (in a “convergence of catastrophes” as predicted by G. Faye, in which there will be phases of “civil war”). Faye, in which there will be phases of “European Reconquest”, to save its identity in the midst of the invasion created by neo-liberalism, in analogy with the Reconquest initiated by the Asturian kings to rescue the Iberian Peninsula from Mohammedan domination.
European civilization is in decline, disarmed, powerless in a multi-polar context that is highly dangerous for its nations and peoples. The elites who claim to rule in the name of the European ethnos are sold out, corrupt elites who are willing to do anything to maintain their privileges and remain the well-paid watchdogs of an enslaved mass. Spengler portrayed very well the process of conversion of a once healthy, strong, and well-organized community into a docile mass of impotent, hive-dwelling, soulless, mentally colonized, sterile, family-less, and childless slaves, ready to sell themselves even more in order to continue consuming their drugs and not to work on the fields or wield a gun. We already have this ochlocratic Europe in our sights. And they will eat us raw, they will devour us alive. The prediction will come true unless there is a Caesarist interregnum or a reaction in the form of a “Reconquista”.
What are the main characteristics of a declining culture, and how can we as Europeans fight against this decline? Is it possible to overcome it, or is such a decline inevitable?
The decline can be delayed. A counter-hegemony can be created. National-popular movements can be created. It will never be stopped by conservatism, which is in itself cowardly and accommodating. Nor will the “progressive” style of thinking, which is the main agent of decline. It is ridiculous to read the “conservative” press and difficult to take seriously its warnings about Chinese or Venezuelan “communism” or Russian “authoritarianism”. European national-popular movements can be neither left-wing nor right-wing. They should be movements in favor of national-popular sovereignty, which fight from each nation against Anglo-Saxon neoliberal domination and show the emerging empires (Russia, China) that there are still rebellious peoples here. Then, they can show that Europe is not synonymous with neoliberal bureaucratic elites installed in Brussels, but that Europe is indigenous peoples who have the right to decide on their own territories and destinies. We are a long way from this, but a “battle for Culture” a struggle of ideas must precede the real battle. There are signs of such a struggle in all countries, but the counter-media, editorial, intellectual, etc. effort is still titanic.
Besides Spengler, you also concentrate on other philosophers and ideas in your work. Tell us which other philosophers are relevant in our times, and which had the biggest impact on you?
To the “conservatives” it causes allergy and indigestion, but before I had read decisive authors like Costanzo Preve or Diego Fusaro, my study of Marx’s work had already led me to the conclusion that the most genuine Marx, the Aristotelian and communitarian, the idealist thinker of organic Totality, had nothing to do with the Marx of the Marxists or with all this postmodern degenerate left, which forgets all about labor, about the productive aspect of social life and is instead obsessed with what the writer Juan Manuel de Prada calls “codpiece rights” (the right to sexual aberration, gender self-determination, and unlimited hedonic enjoyment).
It would cause “progressives” to collapse if I were to mention Thomas Aquinas, the master of Order. And yet, nothing could be more revolutionary than classical and scholastic thought. For a new Order, such as that which the Church spread, with the help of the knights, for a thousand years, there is nothing better than to draw inspiration from the Summa of Theology. A new Summa must be written for the next millennium.
Are there any contemporary authors from Spain, or more broadly from Europe or the West, that you would recommend to our readers interested in the ideas and views that we are discussing?
One man who instilled in me a love of philosophy was Don Gustavo Bueno, a Spanish philosopher who died in 2016, with an extensive, very “baroque” and often unnecessarily technical oeuvre. It is necessary to study him directly, without the filter of any of his disciples, the vast majority of whom are idiots, whether they lean towards Marxism or conservatism.
I have recently discovered Marcelo Gullo’s (Argentine thinker) political theories on “Founding Insubordination”, a new way of understanding Hispanidad (although they could be extended to other geopolitical entities), very fertile ideas against neoliberalism and (Anglo-Saxon) neocolonialism based on the cultural resistance and economic protectionism of nations, and on the union of these ethnically or culturally related nations against the subordinating empire. Gullo’s problem is that he wants to present European Spaniards and American Spaniards with a false exclusionary disjunction: either Hispanidad (which includes mestizaje –race mixtures- in the Americas) or Germanismo (Nordicism), confusing the ethnic (Celto-Germanic) roots of Northern Spain with the submission of the current Kingdom of Spain to a corrupt and clumsy European Union, led by a denatured Germany. But Gullo could be widely read in Europe with great profit.
The two active European authors I recommend most highly are Belgian: Steuckers and Engels. Both challenge us to a spiritual renaissance as Europeans.
I am very fond of and have also collaborated with, the Marxist philosopher Diego Fusaro. His motto, something like “right-wing values” (Tradition, Family) and “left-wing ideas” (Social Justice, Decent Work and the abolition of capitalism) sums up, for me, the real Marx, not the one of the progressives or the residual communists or Stalinists. It also sums up the Renaissance that should come to us before we succumb.
It would be fair to say that in the West universities and the educational institutions, in general, were taken over by the liberal left, which can be seen in many cases of removing classical European or Western courses from the curriculum in some countries, and so on. The official academic circles stigmatize everything that is not in line with “political correctness”. Tell us how is the situation in Spain regarding this, and what are your thoughts on this matter?
Spain is perhaps today the country most hit by the virus of “political correctness”. The University and the rest of the education system is today a gigantic inquisitorial machine. People are brainwashed. In my own hometown, Gijón, the largest city in the Principality of Asturias, the origin of the Reconquest, people laugh at Don Pelayo (initiator of the Reconquest and first King of Spain). Once, when I handed in my book on the Reconquest (“La Luz del Norte”) in a library, the employee told me that this character did not exist. The correct (leftist) thing now is to say that the Moors did not invade Europe, that the Second Republic was a wonderful democracy, that the Spanish Conquest was a genocide, that the Transition from Francoism to Bourbonism was “exemplary”… All this is brainwashed.
Spain is one of the Mediterranean countries which were overwhelmed with mass migrations since the start of the migration crisis in 2015. A large part of migrants traveling to Europe across the Mediterranean ends up in Spain. How has this affected your society and what are in your opinion the main problems that mass migrations represent for Spain and Europe?
They hide from us that the Sultan of Morocco is silently invading Spain, that he has the Spanish government under blackmail, and also that there is a plan to take over the Canary Islands, Ceuta, Melilla, and a good part of Andalusia. They hide from us that there is a project to create a “Greater Morocco” that includes the former Spanish province of Sahara, plus Mauritania, part of Algeria, Mali, and Spain (and therefore Europe). The mafias bring in people from all over Africa, as well as surpluses from Morocco itself, who will have to be supported with Spanish public funds, which have already been severely depleted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The studies and upkeep of thousands of Africans, including Moroccans, will be paid for by the Spanish state, a state in ruins – in debt, mortally wounded by the pandemic, as it depended on monoculture tourism – and which no longer has the resources for its own population. In this sense, rather than saying that there is “mass emigration” or a “silent invasion”, I would rather say that Spain is becoming a colony of Morocco, a territory blackmailed by the “human bomb” and forced to sacrifice itself to another threatening state. On the other hand, there are many agents – native or not – in the service of the Maghrebi kinglet, who promote the idea of the “splendor of al-Andalus”, the “Spain of the three cultures (Moors, Jews, and Christians)” and the “Arab heritage of Spain”, as well as numerous Trojan horses to the idea of a European and Christian Spain, introduced, especially among the left-wing parties. Nobody reacts to this situation. Spain is centrifuging, breaking up, while allowing to be invaded and culturally colonized. But if Spain falls, the whole of Europe falls.
Can you give us a brief overview of the current political situation in Spain?
It is absolute madness, the triumph of stupidity. After having the separatist terrorists defeated by the police, the national government praises them and recognizes them as political subjects. Having been able to economically asphyxiate the Generalitat of Catalonia, due to its disloyalty towards the Nation, it continues to recognize its autonomy of action, an action always aimed at the centrifugation of Spain. A government in a minority, legislating without consensus in an unequivocal direction: to create division, social fracture. A century and a half of civil wars have not been enough for them, they want more and more civil war. And they provoke terror in the middle and working classes with their post-modern agenda: euthanasia, genitalia “codpiece” rights, and support for aberrant and degenerate minorities… pure social engineering. A state ruled by a pseudo-left that seeks to crush the really productive classes of society, to the detriment of parasites. And a cowardly or maniacal right-wing, which lacks interest in and preparation for the “cultural struggle”, a war so essential at this time.
What do you believe awaits Europe in the future, and what awaits the West and the World, after the turbulent year of 2020?
Many identity movements will emerge, very diverse, because Europe already has all the ancestral ethnic diversity it needs, and these national-popular movements will make many mistakes and will be subject to generic criminalization. But in the end, they will line up in every country and town and city against the advocates of Europe’s suicide. The people “who have nothing to lose” will take to the streets, as has always been the case. Restoration of Order will be necessary, and the great solution to Order will have to be centralized, for Europe will not survive unless it acts as a single body, however differently the situation may be experienced in one country or another. The European Union will prove, at the same time, more and more treacherous, false, and ineffective, the enemy of the peoples it claims to have united. And yet there will have to come to a unity of Europeans, just as the Chinese, the Russians and, I hope, the Spanish-Americans are already united (a task in which there is much to be done). If the U.S.A. melts down, this need not necessarily happen in the European Union: we are very old peoples, with ancestral common funds, and a kind of instinct can come to our defense. That instinct, or a God, is what can save us.