The rascal by Maurice Bardèche
Prophetic words from the distant sixties
The other day I bought an old used book on eBay that had intrigued me. As soon as I received it, I opened it randomly to browse, and I immediately read these words which literally leave me stunned, given their relevance and how they fit perfectly with the dynamics we are experiencing in this period. It comes naturally to think that, beyond the apparent evolutions, the world continues and has continued to "work" according to the same mechanisms, there is no other explanation. The players change, but the game is always the same.
"This fluid, amorphous, borderless moral universe finds no source of inspiration and strength except in the hatred inspired in it by health and energy. Intellectual fanaticism awakens these inert beings, divided between ecstasy and terror. It is the their drug, it restores them like the waters of baptism, it unites them like in a mass, it gives them back something human.
These same indecisive spirits, so cautious in their judgments, so tolerant, are implacable when it comes to their adversaries, that is to say the race of men whose nature and even existence they abhor. Everyone deserves indulgence, except the profoundly immoral and depraved being who does not feel like them.
He is an antisocial, a lunatic and we regret seeing him at large. He has escaped the vaccination of the "collective conscience": he wonders what treatment could be applied to him to finally dissolve his irreducibility. This irreducible being may have an irreproachable private life, his character may be, in certain respects, estimable, nevertheless he is a scoundrel, or rather he is the scoundrel.
Hatred against the scoundrel is obligatory. It is part of the modern "ideal beauty", it constitutes its rib, the spinal trunk, around which everything is ordered. You have all the rights, except that of being the scoundrel. The indulgence, the understanding with which one is lavish for all crimes and all vices are absolutely proscribed, not with regard to the acts, but simply with regard to the simple existence of the scoundrel.
The gregarious young thinker is generally outraged by the death penalty, he hopes for it to be abolished: except in politics where he thinks it is applied too rarely.
The scoundrel, once discovered, should be killed, suppressed with a sting, or at least locked up in a mental hospital and subjected to a triple daily shower.
The scoundrel is, of course, he who does not accept in its consequences the reign of progress over the world and especially the kingship of the gregarious man, but who demonstrates in his conduct, with a bad reflection, with a simple gesture, that courage, energy and pride are not completely unknown feelings to him."
The book in question is SPARTA AND THE SOUTHERS by Maurice Bardèche, published in France in 1969 and translated into Italy in 1970 by Il Borghese editions with the title "Fascism '70".
I have the impression that history has told us some lies and has nicely teased us, painting us a slightly distorted idea of freedom.
It is a dense, sarcastic, caustic book that leaves no one indifferent, cannot help but provoke discussion, and cannot give rise to an avalanche of thoughts and reflections, an avalanche of questions with difficult answers. It definitely comes out of the ordinary.
To each then and his considerations.