[by Mikhail Kostylev]
In "The Magnificent Seven" (a wonderful film that all Russians of my generation know, the Soviet censors having miraculously let it pass in the East), two cowboys enter a tavern to hire henchmen.
One of them suddenly exclaims:
“You see that man with all those scars? He’s the one we need!”
And the other answers:
- No, it is the one who made these scars that we need"
It's nicely said, very funny and perfectly logical: to defend an entire village against a horde of looters, it's better to take the winner than the loser.
But it is also, if we think about it a little, a reminder of a mistake that is too often made: Suffering is not proof of worth.
This does not mean that we should refuse to help people who are suffering, the losers and the downgraded.és – quite the contrary. The mistake is to believe that the experience of unhappiness is a quality in itself, physical or moral. The scarred cowboy may have lost dozens of fights and learned nothing from them. And suffered n Discrimination doesn't make you a better person.
But this is the limit that has been crossed in the West: the loser and the discriminated against are no longer people to be helped... but become models, before whom one must bow.
Et we will see that this is part of a perfectly cynical state strategy – and which will end in a mess, as it has every time it has been attempted.
The victim, this new hero.
In 2007, N. Sarkozy's decision to make Guy Môquet, executed by the Germans at the age of 17, an example for all high school students in the country, caused a lot of ink to flow.
Yet one question has almost never been raised: Guy Môquet's sacrifice obviously deserves respect, but why choose this one in particular among all those shot?
His action was limited to a few posters. The exploits of Jean Moulin, Tom Morel… would certainly have been more inspiring for the students. And if we absolutely had to tell them about someone their age, why not a fighter from Glières or Vercors? There was no shortage of names.
All the more so since the extreme left immediately cried out about political recovery (Môquet was a communist activist). N. Sarkozy's team knew that it was entering a minefield. Why then deliberately choose Guy Môquet?
I see only one answer: Guy Môquet has the advantage of being essentially a victim. He didn't hurt anyone : no German officers were shot, no trains were derailed…
And our era likes to celebrate victims. Not to honor them (which would be normal): to celebrate them, to show them as an example to others... like heroes in the past.
This is a general phenomenon. Not only have they almost disappeared from history books (on the dubious pretext of "studying civilizations instead" - how can we understand the Middle Ages without mentioning Saint-Louis?), but the hero even seems to have become… a counter-model.
A manual ofRecent civic education devotes a brief chapter to them [1] : “Being a hero, without prejudice” (sic!). The child is invited, not to admire them, but to note that they are boring and to deconstruct their " Stereotypes » (re-sic!). And we prefer anti-heroes, valued because « ?
complex " and " to combat prejudices" !
Here are the examples touted here: "the fragile child, the shy friend, the clumsy prince." Ironically, the "clumsy prince" is positive (helping to "fight against prejudice")... while the prince who fights skillfully on the previous page is negative (carrying a "stereotype").
If his house ever catches fire, we wish the author of this crap the intervention of completely "stereotypical" firefighters: strong arms, dedication and efficiency.
Deconstructing the ugly “prejudice” of heroism will then seem much less urgent to him…
We understand better why, when it comes to giving an example of resistance to high school students, they choose a courageous kid… but one who has done no harm to the enemy. To the point that the Vichy judges acquit him, and want to send him back to his parents. And if he ends up being shot, it is not for his actions, but as a hostage for an attack committed by others.
The hero-victim and the postmodern state
The new ideal hero is now the victim: the one who has sustained, not the one who has does.
The modern "victim-hero" does not seek to forgive (Christian doctrine), nor to get out of it by herself (liberal doctrine) nor to overthrow society to create a more just world (revolutionary doctrine).
No, his method is the " claim »: that is, to use the (ever-expanding) apparatus of the post-modern State to obtain compensation.
This claim requires having a the shipping label. In a world obsessed with certification and guarantee, what could be more normal?
So we are trans/bi/racialized/sexed… each label is given a special treatment that is constantly renegotiated. If activists are obsessed with the “ privilege ", it is not a coincidence: They betray a vision of society where each small group struggles to appropriate wealth that it did not create.
This myriad of minority groups lives in symbiosis with the post-modern state. Sometimes the State gives to one, sometimes to the other, depending on the strategy of the moment. This machine of political division is extremely effective: it allows it to continually consolidate its power by playing on rivalries between minorities.
This situation is economic nonsense (entire regions live on subsidies)…but a total political success for the StateIt allows the maintenance of a sprawling bureaucracy to be justified, through crazy taxes: in France, 2/3 of income is confiscated by the administration!
ELLE also allows it to keep "society" (in fact the majority ethnic group) under control : it is systematically devalued (shameful “heterosexual cisgender whites”), accused of all evils (racism, colonialism) and in their name, forced to finance minorities and to renounce its old cultural references judged to be bad because they are “dominant”.
When tosee him also "claims", that he does not even think about it : at a time when the most unlikely minority demands and obtains its preferential treatment, the mere mention of "anti-white racism" has made our hero-victims scream on all the channels. Let the Westerner remain in his role, paying for us! And let himself and his culture be devalued.
The "hero-victim" therefore has two functions: to carry the demands of minorities, and to encourage the majority to submit and to “educate” oneself to abandon one’s old values.
Pavel Morozov and other hero-victims
What are the characteristics of victim-heroes?
- We have already seen it, they are praised not for what they have done, but for what they have suffered.
Rokhaya Diallo is a media icon less for her militant struggles (what has she achieved?) than as a victim of "structural racism", like Daria Marx for "fatphobia" or Alice Coffin for "lesbophobia".
- Without surprise, These “negative” heroes advocate “negative” values: based on non-doing. We must no longer undertake: risk-taking and creative violence are taboo.
We will therefore be advocated for the Nonviolence (obviously), in education, the non-pedagogical intervention (the student must "build his knowledge alone", otherwise you "impose your values" on him). The lack of commitment also: neglecting "one's traditional responsibilities as a child, parent and spouse" is seen as a " evolution » positive[2]. Sexuality is praised when it is fluid, any stated preference is referred to as “ rigid " and " sclerotic »: in short, everything that is hard, assumed and determined must be banned.
Much of this is advocated in the name of "tolerance." (essentially passive value, “to tolerate” is not “to form a society”). The rest is in the name of environmental protection.t [3] : isecology deep (do not modify Nature) anti-speciesism (do not touch animals), child-free (not to have children)…
And yes, Western society is the first in all of History to consider births as a bad thing… on principle. And even though it is depopulating! We make people feel guilty with little diagrams (false by the way)[4] , showing that every baby is an environmental disaster in its own right:
The much-maligned "repentance" is also a negative value. A more enterprising society would try to form a common project with its former colonies to build something together: all that is asked of the Westerner is to lie down crying and let his pockets be emptied.
- When they say they want "equality" – it is not equality of rights (which has been achieved for a long time, by the way) it is to lower everyone to a minimum level.
Feminists accuse men of being self-confident and domineering, when they have no right to be. The logical thing to do would be to train yourself to be one too. No! It is the man who must give up his virility deemed "toxic" and become a woman like the others.
Is the baccalaureate a social marker? The poor and minorities are less likely to have it than the "bourgeois"? Let's not help the former to have it by allowing them to work more (through specialized boarding schools or split classes for example)
Instead, let's drastically lower the level of the baccalaureate! And of school in general. It's not a question of means (these absurd decisions cost a lot), but rather political will.
Better yet, let's prohibit the recalcitrant from trying to educate their children anyway, by eliminating homeschooling and private schools. [5] – and we claim the mad pedagogist of Saint Fargeau, who saw children as a “raw material” to be forcibly locked up in barracks to “mass produce” citizens who are equal and subject to the State[6].
Finally, the hero-victim is an anti-Antigone ("Anti-Gone", one might say): he no longer defends society against the State, but the power of the post-modern State to shape society as it pleases.
We will rent for example the “courage” of the trans person who “dares” to change sex – because society finds this practice repulsive and mutilating, while the State subsidises it.
The idea that certain sectors of society escape the omnipotence of the State even becomes incongruous. The State being the source of all social progress, the fact that it cannot stick its nose in everything is felt as a desire to perpetuate an injustice. We are starting to break medical confidentiality (2019), confessional confidentiality (2021) and soon professional secrecy of lawyers... all in the name of unassailable causes, of course.
The archetype of the hero-victim is also Pavel Morozov, the Soviet hero-snitch.. Pavel Morozov has no qualities of his own, nothing that distinguishes him: his only "glory" is to have denounced his own parents and paid for it with his life. His legend was created (almost from scratch) to educate Russian children to reject any family solidarity, considered "reactionary".
The planned failure of hero-victims
And this resemblance is no accident: when he created the legend of Pavel Morozov (1932), the Soviet state was engaged in the same policy as Western elites today.
The state The Soviet Union wanted to break the cohesion of the old Russian society, which formed the framework of the country, to make the population malleable. The whole of Russian culture (religion, architecture, etc.) was devalued, and defending it was called "great-power chauvinism" (великодержавный шовинизм) … as "white supremacy" today. In turn, minorities were systematically advantaged.
Of course, once the majority society was subdued, the Soviet state turned against the minorities… but that’s another story – which should give our activist friends food for thought, by the way.
And this little game resumed after the advent of Khrushchev. To the point that by 1989, the "dominant" Russians were the poorest ethnic group in the entire USSR... and routinely looked down upon by the Georgians, Armenians and Chechens who were doing much better.
We know how sick Russian society was: alcoholism, widespread laziness, etc. When the Wall fell, it recovered much less quickly than the old national minorities. Seventy years of repression intended to create a "new man" had broken the moral springs of the population.
If the States Westerners are also engaging in ongoing rehabilitation, knowingly: they think they have nothing to fear. The infrastructure is in place, the accumulated wealth is colossal, the enemies are far away.
And if everything goes downhill, it doesn't matter : we deal with economic problems by printing money, and demographic problems by opening the doors to immigration.
But Western elites are wrong: These are short-term solutions that only make the situation worse. Inflating the numbers is not growth, and you can't transplant entire populations without side effects. Not to mention that both amount to exporting the crisis to poorer countries – which won't tolerate being the turkeys for long.
Our elites forget that a civilization is never complete: It is the result of a continuous effort of daily heroism. It is based on the work of people (police, firefighters, military, teachers) who make efforts unrelated to the content of their pay slip: perhaps not necessarily out of idealism (that's a big word), but at least out of principle. If we denigrate them, society will eventually collapse - as the USSR collapsed, when the Russian people, who bore the brunt of social efforts, the toll of wars and repressions, could no longer hold out.
For now, they are still in the stage of denial... and resentment towards those who refuse this path.
As children, "The Magnificent Seven" also appealed to us as an image of the West: a place where man, through his positive qualities, his courage and his skill, can fight against unjust forces and defend the community he has built.
An idealized image, no doubt, but one that contrasted with the hypocrisy and cowardice that the Soviet state imposed on Russian society. Today, it is in the West that we are trying to condemn heroism as a "prejudice" contrary to the "values of democratic societies" (the civics manual admits this without shame). And it is the same kind of "hero-victims", of "Anti-Gones" in the service of the State who are charged with this work.
