When street artist Banksy’s pictures mysteriously appeared on the West Bank “partition wall” in 2005, they drew the world’s attention to the barrier in ways that dozens of protests and op-ed pieces could not.
Proposed in 1992 by former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, the concrete and razor-wire wall was originally planned to follow the 350-kilometer Green Line (the 1949 armistice line from the Arab-Israeli war). Currently, the barrier runs over 600 kilometers as it winds to encapsulate Israeli settlements in the West Bank. For the Israelis, the wall represents increased security from terrorist attacks, as well as a way to consolidate the legitimacy of settlements. For the Palestinians, the wall symbolizes apartheid and economic oppression, separating thousands of West Bank residents from their workplaces, their schools, and their former farmlands. To the rest of the world, the wall represents a geopolitical impasse in the heart of the Middle East.
The Classical & Modern Habits of Mind
Mitchell Kalpakgian
Mitchell Kalpakgian, a Contributing Editor of the NOR, is an Adjunct Professor of English at St. Anselm College and Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, New Hampshire. He is author of The Marvelous in Fielding’s Novels (University of America Press), The Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature (Neumann Press), and An Armenian Family Reunion (Neumann Press).
In The Battle of the Books (1710), Jonathan Swift depicts a clash between the Ancients and the Moderns in the arena of a library where armies hurl tomes as missiles of destruction to annihilate their enemies. Ancients such as Aristotle, Homer, and Virgil clash with such Moderns as Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes in this mock-epic battle in the King’s Library.
Local rooting & Technological rooting: two necessities for the same political Activism
In his work « Internet : séisme dans la culture » , Marc le Glatin unfolds the idea that the technological revolution that started at the end of the XX century is anthropological by nature. Thus, even despite our lack of hindsight, we can conclude, according to him, that ; “one could see it as a period, in humanity’s history, that is similar to the Neolithic era, when populations became sedentary, domesticating animals and plants”, engendering new manners of living together and communicating. It is true that the development of Internet networks has profoundly influenced the evolution of social relations and has opened up new possibilities of gathering information. Today, it is easy to circumvent the traditional transmission circuits imposed by big media and political leaders. For example: software that bypasses the use of normal TV channels by allowing the visualisation of its programs – via podcasting – free of mainstream advertisements, to the announcers’ dismay….. Or the broadcast on a large scale of cultural productions (music, literature, etc.) listed on the Internet, which raises alarm among economic powers that cling to their privileges and profits.
Beyond calling into question a global merchandising process, it is the whole mind-conditioning mechanism that can be bypassed by those that master the new technologies. One who has not integrated these elements into his/her militant logic has already lost the fight .
The Internet is like a gigantic notice board that everyone can consult and write on. The development of Web 2.0 resulted in a change of status for the web surfer. From being a simple information browser, one can become an integral part of the Net. Using various interconnecting platforms, the militant can easily be heard by publishing documents, videos and photos on blogs, interactive sites and alternative encyclopaedias. Therefore, a gramscist approach applied in the world of new technology, which led Jean-Yves Le Gallou - the President of the Fondation Polémia- to suggest the concept of ‘technological gramscism’.
The political struggle encompasses multiple and complementary forms. It would be as much a mistake to turn one’s back on this new technology in order to confine oneself to traditional activism as hoping to make things change only by our presence on the Internet.
On the contrary! The street and electronic networks should be felt as our political duties. While mastering new methods of action and alternative information structures, it is imperative that we remain on the ground, walk our towns and villages in order to be close to our people. Thus, priority is to take root locally. But taking root “technologically” must be emphasised as well because it is also on the web that we should call for Tradition”, our feet planted firmly in the ground but our hands in computer programming.
In the everlasting struggle for the defence of our civilisation, we have to associate - with a salutary enthusiasm – the peasants and the webmasters, the cathedrals and the rockets, the worker’s picks and the web surfer’s mouse. We shall be the Hoplites of the 21st century, fighting in the street as well as with our computers. Our present time offers to us a large choice of weapons, some of which forged by the very people we are fighting. Let us exploit the possibilities provided by the globalisation in order to engage in guerrilla warfare against it.
An identity activist is made of tradition and modernity. Learning to adjust our European unconscious, our values and our roots to both the street and new electronic means shall allow our identity to perpetuate itself, live and face the future.
France : a debate beetween the Identitarians and National-Republicans
Following the recent dispute between supporters of a national-republican line (including Alain Soral’s Egalité et Réconciliation – E&R) and « Identitarians » (Les Identitaires – ID) about the concepts of Nation and Identity, we suggested them to have a debate. Six questions were prepared by the main proponents of both trends. Egalité et Réconciliation and Les Identitaires accepted to answer them and to engage into a firm but courteous discussion. This is the dialogue between them.
ID – 1) The Front National (FN) has popularised the slogan « France and the French first », but today, isn’t the point « France or the French first »? Isn’t there a divorce between the “French” nation and the “French” People?
E&R: This is a very apt question. We think this is more a question for the « Identitarians » than for the national-republicans. In fact the French People, in its national definition, has changed, because of mass immigration after a botched decolonisation process and because of the commercial logic that was accepted, and sometimes even encouraged by our leaders. If, leaving History aside – that of France (the Antilles have been French for about four hundred years), you give an ethnic definition (or rather a racial definition since France is originally an artificial clustering of ethnic groups, contrary to Germany or Japan) of the French people, you logically question the national scope to adopt a “White Europe”, or even a “White West” scope. This approach obviously leads to Atlanticism and to the so-called civilization clash wanted or rather invented by Washington. This is not only an abandonment of the concept of France as a free and sovereign Nation State, but, we think, of French civilization too. This civilization – obviously I’m not referring to the would-be civilization of « Human Rights » – has built up along centuries while getting over the ethnic, then racial cleavages, and was only made possible by the enormous and steady will of edification and greatness that allowed this « miraculous synthesis » which France is or still was recently. The French people brought down to its white racial component in a « Europe » we cannot but a trading entity under the US, would surely return to its original reality, i.e. a sum of non-French ethnic groups, even indeed anti-French. That is why the White Project which lies behind different more or less efficiently marketed names will not only lead to the end of France but also to the end of the French people and civilization. For us patriots, for all those who first feel French and consider the author of « The Three Musketeers » as a French genius and not a nigger, the choice is easy. In other words the racialist French Right today has, for dialectic reasons, the choice between nation and racialism. In the same way and in parallel, progressive internationalists have a choice today between (globalist) internationalism and progressiveness. If there is today a divorce between the French nation and its people with its miscellaneous components, it is because it does not work efficiently any more, mainly because it gave up most of its missions and prerogatives. So they have to be restored. (Lire la suite…)
The Reconquest of Cool
From Adbusters #76, MAR-APR 2008
From its roots in Africa through to the youth cultures of the present day, cool has always been an attitude of resistance to subjugation, an expression of rebellion and a posture of defiance.
During the ’60s, in the midst of one of the biggest cultural revolutions of our time, corporations discovered that cool could be incredibly profitable. While young people spontaneously took to the streets and organized festivals and anti-war protests, corporations started raiding their counterculture for eye-catching signifiers and stylistic expressions to incorporate into their marketing campaigns.
Thus began a two-step dance of authentic cool and fake, commercialized cool. As Thomas Frank explains in his 1997 book, The Conquest of Cool, bit by bit cool “became central to the way capitalism understood itself and explained itself to the public.” In one of the most stunning cultural coups d’état ever, ad agency gurus figured out “how to construct cultural machines that transform alienation and despair into consent.”
Banksy Bombs
Mitchell Kalpakgian, a Contributing Editor of the NOR, is an Adjunct Professor of English at St. Anselm College and Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, New Hampshire. He is author of The Marvelous in Fielding’s Novels (University of America Press), The Mysteries of Life in Children’s Literature (Neumann Press), and An Armenian Family Reunion (Neumann Press). 
The Reconquest of Cool