A great man died by his own hand a few days ago, and I've refrained from commenting because I didn't feel I knew enough about him to say anything worthwhile. But now I've come across three tributes to him that give us a balanced view of the man. First, from Roman Bernard:
Dominique Venner, a “French-speaking European,” as he liked to define himself, died yesterday, at the age of 78. Around 4:00 PM, he entered Notre-Dame-de-Paris cathedral, walked straight to the choir and left a letter on the altar. Then he shot himself in the mouth, with a 9 mm pistol. Venner was a renowned specialist of guns and hunting.
Soon came the first headlines, almost identical from one media outlet to another, including the “respectable conservative” press: “Death of a Far-Right historian.” At least they had the honesty of mentioning his trade. Venner was a renowned
historian.
Not only did liberals of all shades try to soil Dominique Venner's memory, but so did representatives of the clueless, “baptize them all” religious Right. The rector of Notre-Dame declared that “he was not a faithful of the cathedral,” as if the former church of the Knights Templar, now trampled by some 13 million yelling tourists in bermudas each year, was still a genuine place of worship, and not a “living history” museum. By saying that, the rector was possibly alluding to Venner's “Paganism.” If it were so, he would be mistaken, as Venner has always defended Europe as a whole. Commiting suicide in a church was not a last defiance to Christianity but a mark of deep respect.
(Read the rest HERE.)
And this, from Paul Gottfried:
As a college student I would buy copies of The New Yorker to sample the sparkling prose of James Thurber and S. J. Perelman and to appreciate the clever cartoons that graced each issue. Despite the magazine’s veering toward the trendy left thereafter, I could still find material in it worth reading well into the 1980s, such as John Updike’s elegantly phrased erotica or the occasional vignettes of interwar Hungary by John Lukacs. Then The New Yorker took a further slide into sheer madness, and the results are visible in
a libelous obit that came out last Wednesday by a certain Judith Thurman. Seething with rage syndrome, Thurman announced the “Final Solution” of my onetime correspondent and one of France’s most illustrious historians of the last century,
Dominique Venner (1935-2013).
On May 21, Venner, acting desperately in the face of events he could no longer control, committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Venner left behind a suicide note explaining his horror at the gay-marriage law that French President Francois Hollande had just pushed through the National Assembly. Venner further lamented the self-destruction of his country and of European civilization that he ascribed to gay marriage and to Western Europeans’ unwillingness to keep Muslims from resettling their countries.
“Venner, acting desperately in the face of events he could no longer control, committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.”
It continues to be disputed whether Venner was a believing Catholic, although the “Catholic traditionalists” in whose company Thurman places Venner admired his cultural stands and continue to hope that he’ll make it into heaven despite the mortal sin he committed by hastening his departure from this world.
Venner was also a hero to the neo-pagan European right, and since the 1960s he was active in laying and extending the foundations of the emphatically anti-Christian French new right, together with his frequent collaborator
Alain de Benoist. Venner had a clear record of standing defiantly in the face of the French Communist Party. Unlike the communists and other French leftists who supported the Algerian rebels, Venner fought gallantly and was decorated as a sergeant in the French forces in Algeria.
(Keep reading HERE.)
Finally, from Greg Johnson:
Suicide in the Cathedral:
The Death of Dominique Venner
Dominique Venner is too big for me to judge. Thus I am not going to criticize or second-guess his decision to end his life with a bullet at the altar of the Cathedral of Notre Dame on May 21, 2013.
But I have no qualms about judging the reactions of smaller men to his suicide.
1. Venner’s Suicide was not a Protest Against Gay Marriage
Venner made it clear in his
final blog post that he believed that the gay marriage protests were merely a distraction. Venner was opposed to gay marriage, but
without passion and without “homophobia.” He was, however, intrigued by the massive protests, as well as France’s
pervasive cynicism about the political establishment, phenomena that he judged to have
revolutionary potential. But he believed that this potential was being wasted on the issue of gay marriage when a much greater threat to France was looming unopposed: the replacement of the French people with non-white immigrants organized under the banner of Islam. Venner made it clear that his suicide was not a protest against gay marriage but an attempt to awaken people to the danger of demographic displacement.
The gay marriage statute, after all, is only a law. Laws can be changed. And this particular law clearly will be abolished, along with the rest of liberalism, when Sharia law is imposed by France’s rising Muslim majority. Sharia law, of course, is not forever either. But Sharia law will be imposed only by the demographic swamping of the French, which will lead to their genetic and cultural obliteration. And extinction is forever.
Of course the mainstream media wish to keep our people unaware of this very danger. So naturally they are reporting that Venner killed himself simply to protest gay marriage. Venner has even been described as a traditionalist Catholic, although a traditionalist Catholic would not commit suicide at all, much less at the altar of Notre Dame. Beyond that, Venner makes it clear in his final writings that he was an atheist and a cultural pagan.
But when people on the Right, who should be both sympathetic to Venner and skeptical of the press, repeat these false claims at face value, what is their excuse?
2. “One more bullet that will not be fired at the enemy.”
Many of Venner’s Right-wing critics fault him for killing himself rather than one of our enemies. But Venner was right, for two reasons. First, as I have
argued elsewhere, revolutionary violence today is premature and thus pointless. Second, if Venner had killed another individual, the primary focus would be on the victim, and Venner himself would simply be dismissed as another crazed, embittered Right-wing loser. By killing himself, he knew that he would still be vilified and mocked. But he also knew that it would be far more likely that at least some people would actually take his ideas seriously. Very few people have convictions they will die for, thus some people will want to learn what those convictions were.
3. Venner’s Career as Activist and Intellectual
Some of Venner’s Right-wing critics reproach him for killing himself, as opposed to engaging in political or metapolitical activism. But from 1956 to 1971, Dominique Venner was very much a political and metapolitical activist.
(Keep reading HERE.)
This picture of Hannelore and Damaris Romeike was used by Slate’s Sally Kohn to highlight the unbearable whiteness of the Romeikes.
