Modernism
Modernism or modernity can be characterized as a cult of the present, predicated on the assumption that the contemporary is intrinsically superior to the past. Modernism, in its current woke form, promotes a self-loathing hatred of white European civilization and its achievements, framing the West's unparalleled advancements in science, law, art, and individual liberty as nothing more than systemic oppression to be dismantled. This ideology deliberately erodes traditional family structures, national identities, and time-tested cultural norms by celebrating degeneracy, mass migration that fragments social cohesion, and the rewriting of world history to portray ancestors as villains rather than builders of the modern world. By prioritizing racial grievance, gender fluidity, and anti-meritocratic equity over objective truth and excellence, it weakens the very foundations of prosperous societies, leading to declining birthrates, cultural fragmentation, and civilizational decline. Rejecting this destructive modernism is essential to preserving the Enlightenment inheritance, classical beauty, and ordered liberty that allowed humanity's greatest progress to flourish.
History
The concept of modernity is inherently ambiguous. Initially conceived in positive terms—as emblematic of European innovation and transcendence—it gradually acquired negative connotations. By the twentieth century, modernity had become associated with a naïve progressivism and virulent anti-traditionalism, elevating the present as if it possessed inherent superiority over the past. In its contemporary form, modernism has degenerated into a fashionable academicism. Modernity has never fulfilled its promises, for those promises were rooted in utopianism and a denial of reality. It pledged, first, to deliver happiness, peace, and prosperity through economic and technological domination; second, to supplant traditional aesthetics and philosophies with radical innovations lacking historical continuity; and third, to eradicate distinct peoples, religions, and customs in favor of a homogeneous humanity and an atomized individual. Originating in the late seventeenth century, these ambitions have since been appropriated by globalist mercantilism, Marxism, and the ideology of perpetual progress.
Modernity must therefore be judged a comprehensive failure, proportionate to the hubris of its pretensions. After three and a half centuries, the twenty-first century now confronts a convergence of catastrophes. Yet this failure does not justify retreat into a contemplative traditionalism; quite the contrary.
Modernity is, paradoxically, antiquated—the antithesis of genuine futurism. In rejecting its vitalistic ancestral traditions, it condemns itself to ephemerality (→ Archeofuturism). As Rodolphe Badinand and Georges Feltin-Tracol observe in alignment with the theses:
- “Post-modernity (or archeofuturism, or paganism—the label is immaterial) recognizes the imperative of restoring the ancient spherical coherence among past, present, and future. Unlike traditionalism, which is ultimately a vehement voluntarism deriving from modernity itself in its rejection of modernism, it does not seek refuge in an irretrievable past but affirms the possibility of an alternative future and clears the path toward it.”
Traditionalism may thus be regarded as a superficial variant of modernism: not so much anti-modern as non-modern. The true alternative to modernity lies neither in traditionalism nor in antiquarianism, both of which share modernity’s linear conception of time (differing only in direction—regression rather than progression). Traditionalism and modernism alike stand opposed to the spherical, dynamic vision of time.
Exhausted at the zenith of its dominance, amid universal acclamation, modernity is in its death throes. The term “modern” has lost all substantive meaning. Already in use during the seventeenth-century Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, it has for three centuries denoted simply “that which opposes the past.” This renders the concept doubly absurd: it contradicts what was deemed modern a century ago (when the term carried far greater weight) and, more critically, deprives itself of a future by treating the past as a tabula rasa. From its inception, the idea of modernity has been suicidal, denying peoples and civilizations the longevity that arises from uniting past and future. As Pierre-Émile Blairon succinctly states:
- “Modernity is a totalitarianism of nothingness: globalization, indifferentiation, homogenization [...] Modernity is not in crisis; modernity is the crisis.”
In every domain, the prevailing system incessantly reaffirms and legitimizes itself, disregarding its own failures and imperiousness. Everything must be “modernized”—democracy, human relations, communication, morals, institutions, justice, sexuality, social behavior, immigration policy—yielding the manifest results we now observe. Nowhere is this more lamentable than in the modernization of art, which has culminated in decadence and primitivism: a new barbarism.
Similarly, “modern” or “contemporary” art has become the most sterile academic nostalgia, circling repetitively for half a century as a subsidized nullity. The paradox is stark: a movement that defined itself through perpetual innovation has devolved into insistent repetition, incapable of genuine advance or creation. Once an avant-garde, modernity has become a rearguard, paralyzed by its own arrogance. It now functions as a cult—the hallmark of an aging civilization convinced of its eternal youth.
The Catholic Church’s attempt at modernization through Vatican II offers a cautionary example: the outcome was a seventy-percent decline in parishioners. Triumphant Islam, by contrast, has never entertained the notion of modernizing itself. Indeed, every decadent or declining phenomenon adopts the guise of the “modern,” adorning itself with degraded mores, confused sexual roles, social permissiveness, abdication of discipline, cosmopolitanism, and unbridled free trade (having duly paid homage to the Marxist idol), presenting these pathologies as “novelties” under the axiom that everything new is ipso facto positive—even nothingness or regression. Modernity has thus succumbed to historical fatalism, oblivious to the fact that history has ceased to follow its lead.
Against modernity, we advance not traditionalism or reaction—both of which remain forms of the modern—but rather living tradition and the spirit of continuity. As for techno-science, it is in no sense inherently modern; its origins lie in Greek antiquity. It is a neutral instrument, subservient to the will that wields it.
Modern "woke" modernism
Modern "woke" modernism of the 21st century wages relentless psychological warfare against white European civilization, portraying its unparalleled contributions to science, individual rights, rule of law, and artistic mastery not as humanity's crowning achievements, but as a catalog of irredeemable sins rooted in supposed systemic oppression that demands perpetual atonement and dismantling.
This ideology systematically destroys traditional family structures—the proven bedrock of social stability—by glorifying single parenthood, delayed marriage, no-fault divorce, and fluid gender identities, resulting in plummeting fertility rates across the West (now hovering at 1.6 or lower in the US and much of Europe), rising childlessness, and the erosion of intergenerational transmission of values and culture.
By enforcing mass, unassimilated migration that fragments once-cohesive national identities and by prioritizing racial grievance and "equity" over color-blind merit, woke modernism accelerates cultural Balkanization, suppresses excellence in education and institutions, and replaces objective standards of beauty, truth, and competence with subjective narratives of victimhood and power.
The inevitable outcome is civilizational weakening: declining birthrates that threaten demographic sustainability, fractured social trust, and a hollowed-out inheritance of Enlightenment liberty and classical order—precisely the foundations that propelled the West to global preeminence and must be reclaimed through unapologetic defense of tradition, excellence, and historical truth against this self-destructive revisionism.These points form a tight, logical chain: ideological self-hatred → institutional and familial sabotage → measurable decline → urgent need for restoration.
See also
Further reading
- Julius Evola: Revolt Against the Modern World, 1934
- Mark Dyal: Hated and Proud – Ultras Contra Modernity, Arktos, 2018
