Dominique Venner´s View of Tradition and the Identitarian Struggle

This text was originaly translated into French, and included in a book Dominique Venner – À l’aube de nos destins, which was published in 2023 to mark in the 10th anniversary of Venner´s departure from this world.

France may be known among the leftist academia and within the current liberal establishment as one of the birthplaces of the modern liberal democracies that evolved from the famous bourgeois French Revolution, and as the home of leading Enlightenment figures. However, among the European identitarian circles, France is known as the birthplace of the New Right, which appeared in the late 1960s, followed by the birth of the Identitarian movement a few decades later, which soon spread like wildfire all across Europe and challenged the status quo. The ideas that came from the French authors and philosophers of the New Right soon evolved into a European New Right, which influenced various Identitarian movements, and in certain terms manifested itself in such groups. Undoubtedly, one of the most influential figures, both in nationalist street-oriented movements that encompass some subcultural elements, as well as in rightist intellectual think-tanks, is Dominique Venner. His ideas and perspectives remain solid guidelines for Identitarians all over Europe, from being discussed and written about, to being praised in the songs of right-wing rock bands.

He was an author who wrote for all Europeans. He explained to us the roots of our common tradition and identity that we all share, regardless of the language we speak or the part of the old continent we come from. In this regard, Dominique Venner was and remains a big inspiration to me, and to the project which I started as a website in 2017, and has since evolved into a small Slovenian Identitarian group of like-minded individuals. The project in question is called Tradicija proti tiraniji, or Tradition Against Tyranny. For the sake of clarity, I should explain that the idea for the name itself came to me a few years before I first read anything by Venner, and it was not directly influenced by him, although by the time the project was realised, I was already familiar with his work. But regardless of that fact, Venner´s notion of tradition as something not from the past but »that which does not pass«, or in other words, a certain manifestation of our racial soul and yearning that always reappears in different shapes throughout history, is a notion that I wholeheartedly embrace as the best definition of the true meaning of the term »tradition«. As Venner himself taught us, such notion offers us a better understanding of who we are, and of our ethnocultural identity, by looking to the distant past and studying the ancient myths of Europeans, where certain elements will always reappear in both Germanic, Slavic or Ancient Greek and Roman myths and tales, and of course by trying to learn as much as posiblle from the history and experiences of our peoples.

Not only is Venner leading us back to our cultural and spiritual roots, but his view of tradition also presents us with true »role models« for the European youth in this age of cultural decay and materialism. Venner saw the poems of Homer as the purest forms of our common European tradition, of our essence. In my opinion, seeking influence or comfort in those ancient poems and tales is especially important for those who are engaged in the identitarian cultural struggle. What better motivation to keep us going, despite the sometimes overwhelming hostilities that we face from the current establishment and their armies of leftist reporters and NGOs, than remembering the bravery of the ancient heroes who stood firm and kept fighting against all odds? When some of us are feeling discouraged, we should remember the notion of the »tragic courage of the inescapable destiny«, the stoic Hector, or Ulysses and his troubled journey home. Our struggle against the faceless globalist machine is in many ways our own journey home, home to ourselves, to the way of life worthy of our ancestors.

Another point that I would like to make when talking about Venner´s perspectives on tradition is that, as he said, our tradition goes all the way back to Homer, and even further to the mist-shrouded beginnings of the history of Indo-Europeans or »Boreans«, as he liked to call them. Further, he writes in his »Handbook for Dissidents« that our civilisation, established by the Ancient Greeks, has survived until this day regardless of the various upheavals it faced. Thus, we share our civilisation and our tradition with all those Europeans who came before us, even if that tradition took different guises in different periods. The striving for excellence, the values of courage and loyalty, the sense of belonging to a certain people; those parts of our tradition always remained. This brings to mind a part of the story, written by another great wordsmith, who, similary to Homer, showed us the essence of how to live a »good life«through his works. The author in question is the great fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien. In The Two Towers, the second part of The Lord of the Rings, while they are resting on the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, Sam speaks to Frodo about the great, but often dark and tragic tales of the history of Middle-earth. He talks about heroes such as Beren, who never turned away from their quests. At some moment, he realises that those great tales never really ended, and that he and Frodo have found themselves in the same long tale as the heroes and champions of ages past. But just as Frodo and Sam were a part of the same tale as Beren from the First age, we are also a part of the same civilisation, and in a way of the same tale, as the great heroes of our past were. And that is a very encouraging thought for all Identitarians today, who are carrying the torch of our tradition and civilisation, and are involved in a great struggle, in which the existence of our civilisation and the survival of our tradition and people will be decided.

Lastly, I would like to touch on some of Venner´s views that can be specifically relatable to the perspective of the Slovenian Identitarians. Venner wrote about Europe being divided between the communist East and the liberal West after WW2. At that time, Slovenia was a part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until 1991, when our country gained independence in a brief, ten-day-long war. At that point, our nation was eager to become part of the liberal democratic West. But today many people are disappointed, as instead of living in some utopian liberal democratic community, we can notice growing pressure from the current leadership of EU in Brussels, which is trying to censor unpopular ideas and thoughts, just like the communists did in Yugoslavia, and is enforcing a multicultural society upon European nations. Venner taught us to learn from history. He also wrote about the »shock of history«, a term that represents the events that can turn everything upside down. It seems that today´s liberal establishment of the EU is ignoring the lessons of Yugoslavia, where a socialist »multicultural« experiment to create a singular Yugoslavian socialistic nation from similar but still different nations ended in a bloody ethnic conflict, which was a sort of a »shock of history« for that part of Europe. After decades of stories about »brotherhood and unity«, this brotherly love manifested into a bloody carnage. European nations, being united by common Borean heritage, could prosper and live side by side in a united Europe, as Dominique Venner envisioned in his »For a Positive Critique«. Cooperation for a common goal of European survival and renaissance is of the utmost importance. But it has to come organically, it must be based on common roots, on our common tradition. If such unity is enforced in the name of false liberal or communist ideologies and accompanied by invasion of racially foreign third-world migrants, it can end in a war much bloodier than the Balkan war that was a product of historical grievances and communist enforcement of multiculturalism that instead of uniting similar nations on the grounds of their similarities while respecting their diversity, wanted to erase their identity in the name of egalitarianism.