Death for a Dawn

The French intellectual Dominique Venner, who was born and died in Paris (1935–2013), is today a key reference for the European Identitarian right, which aims to replace conservatism with Identitarianism as the default position of the Right. Identitarians view conservatism as inadequate for confronting contemporary challenges, particularly demographic fears and threats to Europeans, due to its inoffensive, overly accommodating nature and adherence to liberal norms and values. In contrast, Identitarianism presents itself as radical, addressing the root causes of societal decline (the erosion of heritage, identity, and ethnic continuity) rather than settling for superficial reforms or accommodating decay as mainstream conservatives frequently do.A sociocultural European movement of intellectuals and activists that emerged at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Identitarianism prioritizes not only the recognition of the cultural and ethnic identity of Europe's autochthonous populations but also its inherent and ancestral distinction from nonnative and non-European cultures and peoples. Identitarian groups see themselves as locked not merely in an ordinary political battle but also in a civilizational and transcendental struggle in which the literal survival of European cultures and peoples is at stake. A mentality of group survival is at the heart of Identitarian activism which is focused not on purportedly “universal” bonds such as humanity—a modern abstraction erected and celebrated at the expense of national, ethnic, and racial distinctions—but aimed at the particular territorial, cultural, and ethnic traditions and heritages that constitute “traditional” Europe and its peoples. If what defines a liberal society is the promotion of individualism and individual freedom, Identitarians believe that, to save Europe, group interest must trump self-interest. Thus, tribal feelings of belonging and ethnic loyalty must be reborn and must constantly renew themselves to reverse what they perceive as Europe's tragic fall into submission and decadence.1This inquiry, set against the rise of Identitarianism, explores how vanguardism and vanguardist ideas shaped Dominique Venner's life and thought over time. It specifically examines Venner's vanguardist framework, which asserts that a select group, endowed with authentic knowledge, will overcome the forces of evil and decadence to reverse Europe's historical crisis and initiate a revitalized era.2 Furthermore, this article demonstrates Venner's vanguardism through his words, activism during his lifetime, and his enduring posthumous legacy.Dominique Venner's life falls into two distinct phases. The first period, spanning the 1950s to the mid-1960s, centered on militant activism and military engagement, marked by his participation in the Algerian War and radical nationalist causes. The second period, beginning in the 1970s and continuing until his death in 2013, focused on scholarly contemplation and historical writing, reflecting a deliberate withdrawal from political agitation. These phases highlight Venner's evolution from a combative nationalist to a reflective historian, shaping his legacy within the Identitarian Movement.During the first period (1950s–mid-1960s), Venner embodied the role of a soldier and activist. He volunteered at a young age for the Algerian War (1954–1962), serving as a paratrooper, and upon returning to France, became a political prisoner in 1961 for his involvement with an antigovernment dissident paramilitary group. This phase was characterized by intense street activism, including frequent confrontations with police and left-wing rivals. “I was savagely beaten several times by police officers, scalp split, ribs fractured, in the police van, hands tied behind my back with handcuffs,” he wrote in his diary. “It seemed to me to be part of the game. The risks of the job in a way. And it would have been humiliating, I would have demeaned myself, lowered myself, if I had complained. That would give them the police too much honor. Instead I chose to suffer with impatience and contempt and not to whine like a woman.”3In this activist phase, Venner also emerged as a nationalist entrepreneur, deeply engaged in militant publications and networks across France and Europe, while supporting nationalist politicians. As one of the founders and the director of the mid-1960s magazine and Euro-nationalist movement Europe-Action, he actively championed European nationalist causes. Although later he continued to be an active member of the radical right intellectual milieu—for example, contributing in the early years of the new-right think tank GRECE (Groupement de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne, “Research and Study Group for European Civilization”)—Venner gradually withdrew from political activism, and the 1970s mark the beginning of the second period of his life, when he retired from all political agitation and militancy.This second period (1970s–2013) saw Venner embrace a contemplative life, relocating to the countryside of Normandy, raising a family of five children, and dedicating himself to scholarship. He described himself as a “contemplative historian,” though not a professional academic. His third wife, Clotilde, 36 years his junior, who shared the last dozen years of his life with him, described him as a “thinker of history.”4 In this role, Venner authored nearly fifty books on topics ranging from European and American history (including wars, revolutions, and the Civil War) to biographies, to politics, nationalism, and European identity, to spirituality and tradition, to enigmas and political crimes, to even hunting and hunting weapons, in which he was an expert. Several of these works, such as his 1981 History of the Red Army, won accolades, including an award from the Académie Française, and many were translated into other European languages. Additionally, Venner founded and managed history magazines, including Enquête sur l'Histoire (1991–1999) and La Nouvelle Revue d'Histoire (2002–2017).Venner's shift from activism to scholarship mirrored Ernst Jünger's concept of The Forest Passage (1951), which describes the “internal exile” dissident thinkers undertake to live freely in an oppressive sociopolitical environment. Venner's friend, nationalist militant and historian Philippe Conrad, noted in a book-tribute that “entering the forest”—i.e., embracing a life of detachment and resistance—“allowed Venner to escape the hazards and disappointments of militant action, because he found in his encounters with the past and in the reflections that they inspired in him the means to join a continuity exceeding the limits of individuality alone.”5 Jünger's themes of world-weariness and outsiderhood, expressed in The Forest Passage and his post-apocalyptic novel Eumeswil (1977), resonated deeply with Venner. On his eighty-eighth birthday, Jünger wrote of “a sorrow that Hölderlin attributes to Hyperion: the feeling of being a stranger in one's own Fatherland,”6 a sentiment that permeated Venner's outlook during this contemplative phase.“What struck me about Venner was his reserve,” recalled journalist Claude Chollet upon meeting him,7 an observation reflecting Venner's widely noted aloofness and “rather cold character.” This guarded nature was both innate and deliberately cultivated, as Venner eschewed pleasure-seeking for ascetic self-discipline, earning descriptions of his “Prussian” demeanor from his inner circle. His wife viewed this sternness as embodying an “aristocratic ideal, you don't show your emotions.”8 This disposition aligned with Venner's philosophy of resilience against a hostile world. In his diary, while preparing his autobiography Le Coeur rebelle (Rebel Heart), he wrote in a dialogue with his younger self, “I had never imagined that there were other, much more vicious and perilous ways of living dangerously: being different, not bending to the herd, not content to seek pleasure, happiness, comfort, amusement (‘my dear friend, I hope you had fun’). Unless my weird idea of happiness is bound up with permanent confrontation.”9 Venner's ethos of rebellion against a degraded modern world defined his purpose, encapsulated in his oft-quoted maxim: to be a rebel “is to make yourself your own law. To find in yourself what counts,”10 even “in defiance of the herd, if necessary.”11Throughout his life, Dominique Venner was, in terms of strategy and method for achieving what he called a European “rebirth,” a Leninist. “I was a very attentive and very early reader of Lenin, who taught me enormously,” he noted in a TV documentary.12 In the early days of his political activism, Venner expressed his grief that, unlike the Left, the Right had no relevant guides for action. As a result, he set out to write the Right's equivalent of Lenin's What Is to Be Done? (1902), the famous pamphlet in which the Russian leader argued that the revolution would not arise spontaneously and proclaimed the need for a vanguard party to guide the masses. Venner wrote For a Positive Critique in the summer of 1962 while incarcerated in the Parisian La Santé Prison, and published it anonymously at the time.In For a Positive Critique, Venner wrote, “The works of Marx are immense, unreadable, and obscure.” Thus, A Lenin was needed to extract a clear doctrine and to transform this enormous hotchpotch into an effective weapon of political war. Nationalism has its own collective Marx, just as obscure and unsuitable as Engels’ partner was for Russia in 1903. It is imperative that we create our own Lenin.13In this short book (originally twenty-three typewritten sheets), Venner, in typical Leninist manner, makes the success of the nationalist camp dependent on two things: (1) a new revolutionary doctrine, and (2) a new revolutionary consciousness. Venner writes that this revolutionary consciousness is not spontaneous—it can only arise through education and the formation of a revolutionary elite, or, in his words, “a young and revolutionary elite, infused with a new conception of the world.” In particular, the section “A Living Order” has special relevance, for here he characterizes the “revolutionary elite” as a “lucid minority” upon which “the community and the future of civilization will rest” and ‘“a vocational political elite, endowed with an iron will that serves a historical mission.” In a word: a vanguard.He continues: The selection and the education, from youth, of this elite, will be one of the primary preoccupations of the new society. Their training will invigorate of and to intellectual will not only by to but also to will a living one constantly over but in Thus, the of will be by that of and of this idea of a Order” is not new in in the and it the idea of a elite” that will Europe more the can find these ideas in the works of and This idea was for by Identitarian with his for a new revolutionary a new this is the of revolutionary in his legacy of Venner's guide for has was translated in many in the Philippe one of the founders of the Identitarian movement in France in the first of the twenty-first century, in the of wrote, of reflections are relevant for who to out political with a revolutionary saw as and As he wrote in a diary, from is the the against the On he or one with is not to To that of the to be an to be It can be argued that Venner's in the second part of his life as a “contemplative was a that was and a revolution that was not just intellectual but for Venner's historical the idea of the of Europeans, who what they and have into “I hope that a new will from in the of a to our authentic he Venner's and and the of European the only out of its decadence and submission to to to to the of Europe's peoples in ancestral the only to Europe's and in the one of Venner's is viewed within the for In the of a Venner, hunting first and a of with our and with the It was an of As Venner wrote in his La or weapons, through I to my the the the of the Venner's on nature and the are part and of his of and the idea of a and nature of or that the modern world. of and the new must be and from it you will and as with Venner thought that need to with past and historical Venner the of and have into a of or life into cultural and ethnic it will be to them and make a European Venner's a for European tradition, which for him is all a of a and and is its Venner's role is to the of that has been and in modern In The of from he of an that, being is very It is the of times the reference to this of is in an as a of that is by a select For Venner, to with the observation that the history of European civilization is an behind which a history up of is the of these are here two for the of Venner the Europe in a and at the a and a in this the role of the vanguard Venner his with one of the of the of a of In other words, that a particular individual or a group a in history and a to the that the of the here is the idea that will set you and will the for a new the Identitarian who authored a of Jünger Ernst A European the as his role his life, and Venner as living of the survival of a in He this would Europe's Jünger was an not by but by his and in an of his magazine Nouvelle Revue Venner wrote, Living of inner and authentic through the a of an of which the was the Ernst Jünger was an of this in our of History as not In one of his he noted that what the was “the hope of one's while in the is a that the the very with as a like in the who on these are to them what they who see the are The are who are the or in with the Venner called these to the his hope for not in the but in the of the (the as he wrote in The of itself first and by the of a which is of all authentic founded not on but on and a for That will an revolution of ideas and The idea of a the European also at the heart of Venner's his political Le of the The of the which has been published in during the the of this Venner the and the for ascetic and minority” to an over the Venner this with the “The would by in the of of of the the very of of the Venner wrote that in to into a and the of European and were this of a be with and These Venner's on the of 2013, the a in his and himself at the of in That he several who were of his had his death for two at a the he them of them him to the Venner I my on the that will be the And it will only be one not both I like this to be as of As his later would “I believe it is to to the that I what is of my life to and to Venner wrote many are of my an of I give over to death to I rebel 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political In the of of the politics, set up cultural or write and into more hostile in the actively the enduring of Dominique Venner's which to many In the Paris a of the French of the the Venner's it and the in the of the of and the this as In a the Paris the it and and the to to the The to Venner's his to his through and the of the collective identity and to Venner's These Venner's as a to the of the The published a the as “the of the by the two were in the in founded in and the in founded in the to European its and education and the formation of new to a future aligned with these to and Venner's role in and vanguardist ideas and is This is both in his life and as as in his Venner the role of a he a and the of the the for its and how to with it and overcome and this he the of as as own of the role they in the he also the role of a this was both early on in his more combative political and also by what he saw as the and of the of European history and its only the his of his role as a 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