The Iliade Institute is a French think-tank that continues the tradition of the New Right. We spoke to the Institute’s spokesperson, Bastien Frimas, about their activities, their ideas and also about the main problems facing France today. You can take a look at their website here.
As an institute that chose as its name the title of the great poem of antiquity, tell us how important do you think the influence of Homer and ancient Greece has been on European cultures and civilisation?
In his Republic, Plato said of Homer that he was »the educator of Greece«. And Greece itself taught Rome, which then taught Europe. Homer indeed is the root of our civilisation, for he perfectly told in his two epic poems an ideal yet very human worldview, the one of our Bronze age European ancestors.
Honor. Andreia, manly courage. Kalos kagathos, the good and beautiful. Fidelty to kin and respect of oaths. Arete, the pursuit of excellence in everything. Worship of gods and ancestors. Meden agan, nothing in excess. All of this was up until a few decades the core of the paedeia, the classical education of the aristocrat, of the true gentleman. This is what Homer is about.
Prominent French historian and identitarian author Dominique Venner believed that Homer was at the very source of European traditions and values. Do you agree with him?
Dominique Venner considered the Iliad and the Odyssey to be the sacred texts of our people. Homer is an evergreen source to which we can always go back. French novelist Sylvain Tesson beautifully said that »The Greeks tell us what we have not yet become«. Naming our Institute for the long European memory after the Iliad was not so much a choice than a matter of course.
What are your main activities? Do you organise events and gatherings?
The Institute focuses on education, reflexion and dissemination. The main and most important activity is the intellectual training of young Europeans. 350 people from various sociocultural backgrounds have already attended our courses teaching about philosophy, politics, European history and culture. The goal is to help them knowing who we are, why they should be proud of our civilization and how they can help it to survive. To give them tools to »ride the tiger«, to think and behave in the tradition of their ancestors while being fully active in the modern world, to be in this world but not from this world and, ultimately, to save bits of our European legacy in order to prepare a new European renaissance.
You also publish books. Tell us more about that. Which of your publications have been the most successful?
Then we have a think tank activity. On one hand it is a research center with academics or independant intellectuals working on specific topics ranging from genetics to folklore, law or geography. On the other hand, many of these works lead to the publication of books, around thirty for now. Most are small books designed to be easy to read and to assimilate. Our most successful ones are a political handbook on how to face public demonization, a trio of economical books about feudalism, capitalism and liberalism, and one dismantling the woke »white privilege« theory. One of our newest publications is about Tolkien and the European tradition, a powerful book which will likely be one of our best-seller. But the goal is not to make money out of it, we keep prices as low as possible. What matters is to spread our ideas.
Because last, we want our ideas to reach out to the public. Publishing books is, as I said, part of this, and we have several partners translating our books in various languages. We also hold an annual colloquium gathering more than a thousand people in the heart of Paris – the last two were about economy and politics, the next will be about anthropological decline – and conferences all around the country, we support art creation and expositions, we organize fundraising for identitarian projects and businesses, we have a website with regular publication of political or cultural content…
France is the home of the New Right which evolved from the think-tank GRECE, and became the »European New Right« today. Can you tell us did the works of various authors of the New Right influenced your Institute and do you cooperate with any of the authors of the New Right?
The New Right and its thinkers, some of whom are teaching our students, are the matrix of the Institut Iliade. We are an updated New Right, with the same observations when they are still relevant and with new analysis when needed as our societies are changing so quickly.
Are there also any differences between your institute and the New Right?
A notable difference, for example, is our relationship to Christianity. The New Right, radically anti-egalitarian and anti-universalist, nourished by Nietzsche, sometimes violently attacked Christianity. We are still anti-egalitarian, anti-universalist and Nietzsche remains a reference, but we no longer carry this anti-Christian discourse for two reasons: firstly, we give Christianity its rightful place in the history of our civilisation, with the reservation that we consider that it is the European soul that has expressed itself through the strongest, most beautiful and noble aspects of Christianity, and not Christianity per se which could single-handedly have given any people the Gothic cathedrals and medieval chivalry; Secondly, we see clearly, and they do too, that we are much closer to identitarian Christians or traditionalist Catholics than we are to any liberal. Spiritual antagonism is fading, especially among the younger generation, in favour of a common struggle for the preservation of our civilisation. Our close relation with the traditionnalist youth movement Academia Christiana embodies that.
You may know this idea from Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Gattopardo: »everything has to change for nothing to change«: our manifesto is both in direct line with the GRECE manifesto and a new, lucid, pragmatic vision of current challenges with actualized proposals to face our ennemies, to resist the decadence and surge again, true to who we are as Europeans.
Beside the New Right authors, which other philosophers, authors, historical figures or poets influenced the Iliade Institute the most?
Our inspirations are numerous. As Europeans we are heirs, »dwarves sitting on the shoulders of giants« as said French medieval philosopher Bernard de Chartres. Aristotle, Machiavel, Nietzsche, Evola, the Conservative Revolution thinkers, Heidegger, Carl Schmitt and Julien Freund, Dumézil are only just a few of the references we talk about during our courses.
I can also tell you who our students chose as tutelary and inspirationnal figures for their graduating classes: Dominique Venner, Don Juan of Austria, Ernst Jünger, Patrick Pearse, Athena, Marcus Aurelius, Leonidas, King Arthur, Jean Raspail, Dante Alighieri, Tolkien, Homer, Leonardo da Vinci and Frédéric Mistral. They all belong to our common European culture and each represent a particular aspect of it.
Among this list, I have to pay Dominique Venner a particular tribute for the Institute was founded following his last wishes. He asked a few of his close friends to create an identitarian »academy« for the European youth, to pass on our Weltanschauung, our traditions, our civilisational legacy and our political vision to a new generation, allowing for the rise of an identitarian activist aristocracy able to preserve, defend and share this endangered idea of who we are.
In the last presidental elections we saw the rise of Marine Le Pen, as well as the relative success of Éric Zemmour and his new-founded Reconquest party. How do you view such righ-wing politicians as Zemmour and Le Pen, and do you believe that they would be able to enact any crucial changes, if they would have won? Do you believe Le Pen has a chance of winning in the future?
The Institut Iliade is not affiliated with any political party and sees with a benevolent eye all of those who wish to protect our identity and limit or reverse migration trends. They could change many things indeed, first on a national level because our institutions give a tremendous power to our elected President – who can bypass the Parliament and even, with a referendum, the Constitutional court – but second at the European level because France still is a major player in the UE although a declining one. A change in France could hopefully greatly contribute to a change in Europe.
I cannot tell you if Marine Le Pen can win the next presidential election. If she was to be facing Emmanuel Macron again I’d say yes, maybe. But it won’t be for Macron is limited by our Constitution to two consecutive terms. It will therefore be depending on who she will be facing, of who will succeed Macron as the main liberal candidate. And that is absolutely unpredictable at the moment.
Mass migrations are a big problem for France. What is the current situation in this regard?
and how do you believe this problem should be dealt with most effectively? Two years back retired French generals published a public letter in which they predicted a civil war if situation will not change. Do you believe such civil war as a consequence of mass migrations is possiblle in the near future?
Two years ago, retired French generals published a public letter warning that France could be at risk of civil war if the situation did not change. Do you believe that France could really experience a civil war in the near future?
The current situation is dire. Ethnic statistics are forbidden by law but we still have some figures thanks to the immigration background data. At least 8.6 million people living in France, 13% of the population, are non-European immigrants or their children. We’d need to add to this the grandchildren, especially since non-Europeans have a much higher birthrate, but there is no clear data about that. In some areas, you’d have a hard time to find any ethnic European. Most of them also are »no-go zones«.
It is a fact that multiracial societies are multiconflictual ones. Violence tends to gets racially motivated. If there is a war, it would not really be a »civil« war because there already are several people, several societies on our soil. It would be closer to a race war. We already see the beginnings of it, with street violence or terrorism targeting both symbols of France – the police, churches or even firefighters – or simply Whites. Europeans are targets of assaults, murders, rapes, or »free« violence for fun because they’re Whites.
We can avoid such a war. We need to. The Institut Iliade is not promoting a war but rather advocating for the only solution to prevent it: a cultural renaissance of our civilization to stop our decadence and the spiritual void it creates, the sanctuarization of Europe as our homeland, the ban of Islam as uncompatible with our way of life, a right to preserve our identity and the mass remigration of unassimilated people of non-European descent, which means most of them.
Some public survey showed in the recent past that around 60% of the French are worried because of the Great Replacement. Would you say that this is a realistic estimate?
It is more than realistic, it’s likely underappreciated as there already are millions of non-Europeans with a French citizenship. With such a question, »X% of the French« no longer means anything: to get the real figure, you would have to ask ethnic Europeans only. If only the French people of European descent were asked this question, the result would be even higher than 60%.
Also, when the French answer to »do we have too many immigrants?« or »is islam a menace?«, questions which have regularly been asked for decades now in surveys, the figure is always between 60 to 70%. It is particularly telling that even with the ongoing population replacement this figure remains stable. It means, since the share of Whites is decreasing in our population, that a growing number of us including among liberal voters is acknowledging the existential threat mass migration is to our ethnocultural identity.
Has identitarian metapolitical activism also successfully contributed to the fact that the French are aware of the great replacement?
The fact that most French are aware of the Great Replacement is merely the consequence of the replacement itself. It is such that you just have to live in or visit any middle-sized city to witness it with your naked eyes. What identitarian political and metapolical activism achieved is something else, something bigger: it is altogether creating and popularizing words to express this feel – such as the »Great Replacement« expression itself which spread in the whole West – and thus to think about it, legitimizing the public expression of distress on this issue and bringing answers such as the civilizational preference idea, the need to defend our identity or the remigration project: when presidential candidate Eric Zemmour proposed the creation of a Remigration minister, 66% of the French approved. That is already a success. Now we need to implement it.
What are the main consequences of Cultural Marxism and the so-called Gender Theory? Are such theories taught in Frencs school as a part of regular curicullum?
Postmodernism has pervaded all of our society. »Gender« ideology is indeed taught in our schools, to the point that our Education minister ordered teachers to respect the »chosen pronouns« of pupils. Man-hating feminism, white privilege and woke activism, ethnomasochism, islamic history instead of French one… Our children are being indoctrinated into hating their heritage, hating their ancestors, hating themselves.
This is just the latest consequence of liberalism, for which the perfect consumer must be »freed« of all »determinisms«: communities like nation and family, traditions, social codes like the classic French courtoisie, and of course identity. Only then will he be fit to follow his desires and mindlessly roam as an indinstinguishable unit in the free market, looking for his best individual interest without any regards for the common good since there won’t be any »common« left.
This is actually Renaud Camus’ Great Replacement idea: when all goods and especially everyone are seen as standardized, everything including whole people become disposable and interchangeable. This liberal mindset allows mass immigration policies for individuals are not seen as persons with identities but as mere neutral consumers. France is not there yet, but our political leaders surely take us in this way.
Going back to your publications for the end, if I am not mistaken you are the orgiginal publishers of the book »Tolkien, Europe and Tradition«, by Armand Berger, which was recently translated in English and published by Arktos. Could you tell us what is the main importance of J.R.R. Tolkien on the identitarian and traditionalist tought?
Berger’s book is destined to a great success. Although one of our newest it is selling very well and has already been translated in English indeed but also in German and Italian, and other publishers already reached out to us for more translations. It is just another example showing how all European conservatives, identitarians and traditionalists acknowledge the significance of Tolkien and his work, the profound influence he had.
Drawing inspiration from classic European myths, heroes, values, the whole European folklore in the best meaning of this word, he created a new tale of who we are, a new European epic comparable, in my opinion, to Homer’s poems, to the Eneid, to the Kalevala, to the Arthurian and Germanic-Nordic legends. Tolkien is a genius who managed to reconnect millions of people to their deep, hidden, thoroughly European psyche and representations, even if they don’t realize it. He is a modern aoidos who sang the eternal poem of our people, one made of honour, of virtu, of duty, of nature and glory, of simplicity and great deeds, of what is good and beautiful, of what is done not because if can succeed but because it is the right thing to do. As he wrote, »The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.«
How do you view the latest abomination, The Rings of Power series, which seems to purposely twist Tolkiens legacy?
The Amazon series is nothing but a crime. As Tolkien also wrote, the shadow cannot create but only corrupt. Europeans are not allowed to have any »safe space«, to have anything we could preserve from this totalitarian globohomo diversity endeavour. Our imagination, our myths are being deliberately colonised; nothing should be our own anymore. This Great Erasure is only the cultural aspect of the ethnic Great Replacement. We have to fight back and give them nothing.
Thank you for the interview! Do you have any last words for our readers?
Thank you for reaching out to us. To your readers: even if Western Europe may seem lost, do not grieve for, as Hölderlin said, »where danger grows, so does that which saves«: we needed a wake-up call, and the bigger the peril to overcome the stronger we will come back.
Also, stay strong and proud of your Slovenian and European identity. We need strongholds to show the French, the Germans, the Swedes and all of the other invaded countries how much better ethnically preserved societies are. In a few years, we will be looking up to you as motivational examples of who we need become again.
Last, we are preparing a course in English encapsulating the most important of our tenets and the essence of our woldview, opened to all young Europeans. Follow us, keep an eye open and be ready for the next European renaissance will need everyone of us.
TRADICIJA PROTI TIRANIJI 