Perspective

Identity And Sovereignty – Two Inseparable Notions

In certain milieus, there is a tendency to contrast two notions about which everyone is talking today: identity and sovereignty. In the Front National, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen would have represented the first, in contrast to Florian Philippot, who defends the second before all. Does such an opposition seem legitimate to you?

Questioned a few months ago in the magazine Causeur, Marine Le Pen declared: “My project is intrinsically patriotic because it defends the sovereignty and identity of France at the same time. When we forget one of the two, we cheat.” Well, don’t cheat. Why must we see opposed ideas in identity and sovereignty, when they are complementary? Sovereignty without identity is only an empty shell, identity without sovereignty has every chance of turning into ectoplasm. So we must not separate them. Moreover, both are transcended in freedom. To be sovereign is to be free to determine one’s own politics. To conserve one’s social identity, for a people, is to be able to freely decide the conditions of social reproduction.

While identity is necessarily a fluid concept, is sovereignty easier to define?

Less than it seems. The “one and indivisible” sovereignty to which Jean Bodin laid claim to in “Les Six Livres de la République” (1576) doesn’t have very much to do with distributed sovereignty, based on subsidiarity and the principle of sufficient competence, which Althusius spoke of in 1603 in his “Politica methodice digesta”. Bodin’s way is eminently modern. It implies the nation-state and the disappearance of the distinction that was previously made between power (potestas) and authority or the dignity of power (auctoritas).

Bodinian sovereignty is dangerous as it makes the sovereign a being who cannot depend on anyone but himself (the individualist principle), it is blind to natural communities and suppresses any limit to despotism: anything that interferes with the decision of the prince is considered as an attack on his independence and absolute sovereignty. We thus lose sight of the final goal of politics, which is the common good.

Moreover, popular sovereignty is different from national sovereignty or state sovereignty. The first establishes the basis for the legitimacy of political power, while the latter ones refer to the field of action and the modes of action for this power. On the other hand, Jacques Sapir recently distinguished between social souverainisme, identitarian souverainisme, and the souverainisme of liberty, “which sees the guarantee of the people’s political liberty in national sovereignty.” Identitarian souverainisme, he observed, is not incompatible with the neoliberal order of things, while national and social souverainisme quite naturally rejects its tutelage.

One mustn’t forget, moreover, that a European sovereignty could very well exist, even if today it’s only a dream. The tragedy, from this point of view, is not that nation-states have lost whole segments of their sovereignty (political, economic, budgetary, financial, and military), but that it has been lost itself in the black hole of Brussels-based institutions without ever having reached a higher level.

Then what is to be said about identity, which today has become a claim and a slogan, but of which one can give the most different definitions?

Whether individual or collective, identity is never uni-dimensional. When we define ourselves by means of one or another of its facets, we only say that it is the dimension or distinctive trait that we believe to be the most important in order to express what we are. Such a way always contains an arbitrary part, even when it is based on facts that could be empirically verified.

Should an individual attach more importance to his national, linguistic, cultural, religious, sexual, or professional identity?

There is no automatic answer. For a people, identity is inseparable from the history that modeled its collective social experience. The identitarian claim or protest appears when this collective social experience seems threatened with dissolution or disappearance. Then, it acts to fight in order to perpetuate shared lifestyles and values. But one must not deceive oneself: identity is to be demonstrated, not just felt, otherwise we risk falling into fetishism and necrosis. For individuals as for peoples, it’s the capacity to create that which best expresses the perpetuation of personality. As Philippe Forget wrote, “a people doesn’t express its genius because it has an identity, but it shows an identity because its genius rouses it.”

Interviewer: Nicolas Gauthier

Source: http://www.bvoltaire.fr/identite-souverainete-deux-notions-indissociables/

Translated by Eugene Monsalvat

Charles Lyons
the authorCharles Lyons
Charles Lyons is the Chief Administrative Officer of Arktos Media.

13 Comments

  • The jew wants sovereignty over all of Europe and will obtain it by mass immigration.On the 24th of April 1999 the day Nato began bombing Yugoslavia ,Jewish American General Wesley Clark on CNN said this. “There is no place in Europe for ethnically pure states.That,s a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.” Country,s in the east of Europe see this and are making a stand.The enemy of the white race is and has always been the Filthy Jew the only thing the Jew fears is the truth about them .

    • Wherever there is subversive activity in a white country you will invariably find a Jew. I was just reading about how the leading feminist group in Sweden is telling people not to racialize sex crimes. Now who is this feminist leader saying this? Of course, it’s a Jewish cunt. No, we shouldn’t be worried about Negroes and Muslims raping white women, we should be worried about hiding the identity of the Third World scum doing it. Jews are such lying POS.

      • Jack you are 100% correct .Sweden is showing to the rest of the world what the jew can do to their homeland.Fight the filthy jew rats where ever you find them.

  • Have have Europeans lost their Identity? They lost first their Sovereignty and what makes you a and or in Sovereignty? The direct ownership of your people money and credit. We all must thank our upper class and the Catholic Church for selling our Sovereignty to our people satan …. its all about the money.

  • Western “fetishism and necrosis” in and of western society’s is observable and measurable. And depressing. Enjoyed the essay and the context it provides.

  • Understanding Jewry alone is the key to the comprehension of the inner,the real intention of social democracy.He who knows this race will raise the veil of false conceptions,and out of the mist and fog of empty social phrases there rises the grinning ,ugly face of Marxism.

    Adolph Hitler.

  • Identity for the Jews. Sovereignty for the Jews. You just STFU goyim. Your role is to be a slave. I am not sure why there is confusion. It was spelled out in a hunjdred different hoax documents.

  • certainly if you don’t believe in your people you wont maintain freedom. that’s not how its been working the last 400 years. stand together or suffer the semites

Leave a Reply