White culture — from ashes to fire
„Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.“ This quote has been assigned to various people, the Jewish composer Gustav Mahler being one of them. Most people with a right-wing or traditionalist background will be familiar with it. But what does it mean? Have we ever reflected on it in-depth? I can honestly say that until recently, I have not.
When I was a child, my grandfather used to take me on hikes and try to discuss relatively in-depth topics (for a child) with me. At one point, during a walk through the black forest, he asked me whether it bothered me that I would likely never have any original ideas, as all essential thoughts had already been explored by philosophers and other thinkers throughout history.
Looking back, for most of my life I would have answered his question in the affirmative. Like many others, I enjoy being the first to understand a concept and the smugness it affords over others. When thinking about doing something, I often obsessed over the question whether it had already been done by others or whether I was the first to do it. More often than not, this mindset leads to cognitive lethargy. XY already did it, so why even bother? Got an idea for a short story, a business, a drawing, a joke among friends? Well, someone else already did something similar. We have to face the choice of potentially repeating the thoughts and actions of others, or instead deferring to our predecessors and try to live vicariously through their experiences.
I believe this question is heavily related to our exploration of ashes and fire. It is easy to admire the cultural achievements of bygone days, to marvel at the gems of our ancestors. But this is essentially a consumptive state. Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants, we are merely gasping at their size, wondering how we could ever hope to reach the top and contribute our own link to this ancestral chain. Truly, the thought of creating something on par to monumental works such as Iliad and Odyssey, Wagner‘s Ring Cycle or Goethe‘s Faust appears daunting. And yet, all of these works are connected to famous predecessors and descendents. The Homeric epics inspired Vergil‘s Aeneid, Wagner drew heavily on European folk tales and Eddic verses, while Goethe‘s Faust creatively rehashes a century-old German legend, the so-called „Fauststoff“. Clearly, they did not limit themselves to consumption, to a mere worship of ashes. They enriched and helped to shape the cultural discourse, kindling the fire through creative additions, twists and transformations. Without their contributions, how many of us would be familiar with these subjects today?
Goethe expressed a similar thought in the Book of Suleika (Suleika Nameh, West-östlicher Divan) — that one could lose everything if he were to remain static („Alles könne man verlieren / Wenn man bliebe was man ist.“). These verses, originally coined to reflect human personality apply just as well to culture and tradition at large. Without a continuous rekindling of the fire, we are certain to lose it and be left with nothing but ashes.
One could argue that in our post-WW2 societies this flame has already been lost through generations of alienation, suppression and reverse indoctrination. This manifests in a variety of phenomena. First, certain traditions and customs are simply lost, cast to the wayside of history. This has been the case with various European folk tales and traditions. Second, existing traditions are replaced through commodified consumer culture, the most striking examples of which can be observed in the recent flood of superhero movies, young adult literature and deracinated types of music such as mumblerap. Third, existing culture is co-opted by dominant mainstream culture and its fundamental tenets, subsequently being fed back to intellectuals and socio-economic elites.
In many ways, this third option can be considered the most deceptive and hence most dangerous alternative. When a cultural flame dies down, the ashes are collected by myopic intellectuals who are content to analyze its minute details, but fundamentally lack the ability to rekindle its flame. Instead, progressive cultural agents will harness the artefacts remaining social prestige in order to set up their own warped versions in line with the mainstream narrative. Personally, I consider contemporary Bayreuth productions of the Ring Cycle to be a particularly unsettling example of this. Seeing Wotan and Siegfried prance around in garish costumes from popular culture, with a run-down caravan serving as Mime‘s forge and a Kebab shop signifying the Gibichung‘s grand hall underlines the dangers of abandoning cultural development to mainstream institutions and scholars.
No matter how pristine and perfect a cultural artefact may seem to us in the moment, the show must go on. If we do not take control of our culture, both our heritage and its future, others will. Mere complaints about kebab shops and black vikings will not suffice to carry European culture into the new millennium.
Fortunately, the rekindling has already started. Groups like the White Art Collective are taking important steps towards building a cultural avantgarde by revitalizing old themes and establishing new cultural formats. And one can tell the difference. Sure, that 50-year-old ring cycle recording still sounds amazing. But it has lost some of its vitality. You will have a distinctly different experience engaging with a track that has been published yesterday, by someone you can trust to be on your side. Someone you could reach out to, if you so desired. Someone you can support directly. While Wagner would likely have shared many of our convictions, he has passed on, his legacy being hawked over by a cabal of kosher-certified functionaries and critics. We will not build a movement of Neo-Wagnerites to regain control of our destiny. As a famous painter once put it, there will be precious few new epics being written on the virtues of people limiting themselves to larping around in the supposed pelts of their ancestors.
I owe my thanks to the artists of the White Art Collective for saving me from that fate. You made me abandon my (immature) resolution to trust no artist currently residing above ground.
Thank you for the great work you are doing — may it continue for a long time.
