Book review: Be Abyssal

FVD’s Renaissance Institute published a review of a new book by philospher Sid Lukkassen, called Be Abyssal. FVD International is delighted to publish this translation. No other political party in Europe has such a formidable intellectual output as FVD.

By Edgard Frederix

In his book Be Abyssal, Dr. Sid Lukkassen delivers a merciless analysis of the fact that the elite’s holier-than-thou attacks pull us down into a Dantesque abyss, where our identities, independence and strength are forever lost to darkness. At its conclusion, however, Lukkassen does not leave us in a state of despondency but challenges us with an unabashed call to action.

It’s a beautiful book. That’s why I'm here to let you know why you should, in fact, read it.

Nihilism

Lukkassen backs up his premises with ideas from great thinkers such as Kierkegaard and Nietzsche – the hard-hitting philosopher – who realized that when religion can no longer provide morality and meaning to life, man must develop new values from within himself. To do this, he has to reinvent himself. This is certainly not an easy task. But if mankind fails to do so, it will fall into nihilism and slave morality.

Lukkassen shows how prophetic Nietzsche was. After all, modern left-wing thinking is brimming with nihilism in its rejection of objective truth, morality and values. It is also based on a slave morality, which goes completely against the higher achievements of one’s own culture. Slave morality tries to replace it with an external victim culture in which so-called minorities are exploited as a means to undermine the dominant culture. The constant focus on misery and proclaiming marginal lifestyles as superior, is part of the same doctrine.

Hypocritical elites

The leftist elite finds no fault in sinning against its own principles. On the one hand, they denounce the dominant position of the Western, white, male heterosexual elite – in other words, their own, because the vast majority of elitist moral busybodies belong to these detested categories. On the other hand, they refuse to act in accordance with their personal ideals and thus to step aside and hand over their position to members of the minority groups.

They see the hypocritical betrayal of their own culture as purification. In repudiating their own heritage, they believe themselves to reach a moral high ground that allows them to retain their position of power as enlightened and good people. Convenient, isn’t it? It’s the average Joe who is being targeted – who else? The average white citizen without power and privilege is accused of systematic abuse of his privileges. He is therefore expected to step back.

Such an illogical narrative can attain credibility only with the support of a widespread power structure. This power structure consists of the traditional media, technocratic system administrators, subsidised social organizations, academia and global big business that can sweep its tax avoidance and unfair competition under the rug through virtue signalling. At a price, they buy modern indulgences in the form of gender-neutral toilets, advertisements with actors of colour, diversity training for their staff and some solar panels in a photogenic corner of their company premises.

With the help of modern technology – which allows more and more control over the civilian population – these components together form a synergy. This is embedded in Kafkaesque structures that are only navigable for the initiated and that increasingly meet the criteria of a deep state. Thus, this many-headed monster can wield power over citizens beyond any form of electoral control.

A way back

The author seems to wallow in pessimism when he admits that the battle seems to have already been lost. Citizens’ defences have been bludgeoned to breaking point, and they themselves have been demonised with slogans like: “Privileged racist white cisgender!” But does this author take it lying down? Not a chance! Lukkassen resolves to resist and to clamber out of the hellhole of a centrally controlled economy and culture. We can find a way back to freedom, but only if we make a united effort to do so.

Are we not welcome in the organisations that were supposedly created to serve us? No? Then we must simply ignore the virtue-signalling mob’s power structures. Lukkassen calls for structures of our own to be created, which he calls the ‘Pillar of New Realism’. This is the collective expression of a real and sincere desire for a new renaissance. This in turn will usher in a creative redefinition of our culture, fuelled by internal strength. Away from the hegemony of virtue-signallers: with an individually defined value pattern that is not determined by the number of ticks on the externally imposed politically correct value scale.

Ever further left

Such a renaissance will not just materialise out of thin air. This is precisely why Lukkassen has formulated an accurate critique of the average citizen and the classical conservative politician. After all, they get no further than pointing out the abuses and a half-hearted personal defense against the attacks of Cultural Marxism. Due to the never-ending dialectical dynamics, any compromise between left-wing and right-wing positions corrupts to produce a new standard, a new thesis. The Left will automatically counter this with a new antithesis. This interplay moves the standard further to the Left, after which the cycle is repeated.

It is a slowly eroding line of defence of a population that steps back in resignation until it is exhausted: disarmed by the enemy from within (and even then the attack will not stop, considering leftist ideology is embedded in a never-ending process of transitioning into a supposed utopia).

Lukkassen attempts to apply this Hegelian dialectic himself, in which opposing values lead to a higher synthesis. On the one hand there is the thesis: the citizen who, because of his nostalgic urge to conserve, has to defend himself against the attacks of the antithesis, the woke Left, which, despite its current success, is itself saddled with a self-destructive ideology. Woke ideology relapses into ever escalating purity spirals until the wolf eats its own cubs. The weaknesses of both sides must lead to a synthesis: a new human being constructively redefining himself based on his inner values, personality and realistic ambitions. 

This task falls to citizens who are tired of their hard-earned tax money being wasted on an ‘inclusive’ agenda set up by the cultural elites to buy themselves voters, against the interests of the tax-paying middle class. Promoting mass immigration, which undermines our social fabric and resilience, is a striking example of this.

Lukkassen warns that the deconstruction of the ‘vertical standards’ that connect and elevate people will have dire consequences. His words echo Burke’s thesis that the ‘little platoons of civil society’ are the essential building blocks of society. Should they be removed, humanity would be left at the mercy of the government.

Irredeemable democracy

The left-wing top-down obsession with control renders populations dependent, destroys entrepreneurial spirits and eventually degenerates into hopeless clientilism. When the ‘handout parties’ are guaranteed to win the elections – as is already clearly the case in Wallonia – and the one-sidedness of the media landscape makes any open debate impossible, according to Lukkassen, it is legitimate to declare a democracy as lost and to proceed to a revolutionary intervention (in Belgium, this automatically means a federal emancipation of the Flemish community within the Belgian state).

The Left will never accept the remedies of the Right – even if its ideology repeatedly leads to catastrophes. The Right can adjust its policies if necessary because it thinks in teleological terms, where practical consequences matter. The Left, on the other hand, thinks deontologically, which means only intentions matter. It allows itself to be guided by sentimental moralism and exaggerated indignation which obscure tough reality. With its institutional position of power, the Left can keep the middle class in a moral stranglehold, undermine its identity and erode its economic power through globalisation. Thus, any resistance to that many-headed monster becomes a hopeless struggle.

A new pillar

Time, then – as in Ayn Rand's mythical novel Atlas Shrugged – to create a societal pillar of our own. After all, the virtue-signalling elite only wants to rule with you if you adhere to woke ideology. Only in absolute submission to that dogma is one allowed a seat at their table. But if you constantly have to feel ashamed and admit guilt, what else could you do except resist that leftist worldview? And you do this by setting up an alternative. In doing so, citizens have the advantage that those who create, shape reality more than those who merely comment on it. 

This act of forging a new path is why we must cherish the underappreciated workers. Such as construction workers, mechanics and other men of action, and embrace the class struggle together. The working class is well aware that the cultural Marxists almost always act against their interests. The practical classes have long been loath to have anything to do with leftists. Right-wing intellectuals should take better note of the fact that exactly this population group is their most powerful ally.

Lukkassen wants us to harness the anger of the population – which no longer tolerates the middle finger they are given by our parliamentary system – to smash the false idols with Nietzsche’s hammer, and make system-wide changes. That population will be respectfully welcomed within the New Pillar: a community of its own that offers an individual way of life that our mutated representative bodies can no longer allow. In order to walk that path with confidence, it is not enough to cling to the past. That is not productive. A strong, renewed confidence in the future is required. The inert, nostalgic Right must give way to an action-oriented, realistic Right.

Dare to create

When the Notre-Dame in Paris burned down, we mourned what was lost. But we must transcend the idea that what disappears leaves a permanent void. If we do not believe that we can erect new buildings with the same power and beauty as the Notre-Dame and produce new composers of Bach’s calibre, then we have already lost. We must honour our heritage but also create a new realism that allows the growth of a self-confidently creative consciousness.

This book culminates in a call for an exodus from a culture ruled by virtue-signalling. First, we must smash to pieces the imaginary boundaries we have allowed to be imposed upon us. It will allow us to leave the oppressive Dantesque underground and to create a social order that gives every opportunity to personal freedom and growth.

Lukkassen does not make the same mistake as his opponents in defining how this should be done in practical terms. What he does do, is explicitly invite us to shape this renaissance together. And in that call lies the greatest value of Be Abyssal.