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Grégoire Canlorbe

Grégoire Canlorbe

A conversation with Christine Lewicki, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Christine Lewicki, for The Postil Magazine

by Grégoire Canlorbe · Fév 1, 2022

Christine Lewicki is the founder of the company O Coaching Inc., based in Los Angeles, California. Author of the bestselling book I Quit Complaining (with more than 300,000 copies sold), Christine is also a certified leadership coach, speaker, and Mastermind group facilitator. As a global entrepreneur, her clients hail from the United States, Canada, Asia, and Europe. Several media outlets, alongside her respective clients and peers, have constantly commended her work at O’ Coaching. Christine takes part in a wide array of panels, radio programs, and television shows: she was interviewed on France Inter, Europe 1, RTL, RMC, Sud Radio, Radio Bleue, France 2 and Direct 8 and 6, and her articles have been diffused in the French press (Le Monde, Le Figaro, Elle, Marie Claire, Marie France, Top Santé, Psychologie Magazine, and many others). More on her website.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Your passion is to help “ordinary people” create “extraordinary lives.” You write so yourself, and I quote, “by cultivating modesty, we end up cultivating mediocrity.” What is the origin of our all too common psychological docility towards the limiting ideal of modesty, which hinders us from honing our talents and obtaining personal achievements? What rituals and concrete resolutions do you recommend to help us escape our comfort zone?

  Christine Lewicki: We very often impede ourselves from developing our unique personality and renounce what animates us deep down in our hearts because our parents and our respective societies have inculcated the importance of modesty. We are also ultimately taught to make ourselves small. We, therefore, gradually lose that connection that renders each and every one of us unique; and when there comes a time to finally disclose it—when we need to know who we truly are, when we want to know what we can bring to this world, we find ourselves distraught.

  What is often named a “comfort zone” is something I would rather label a “mediocrity zone,” because the “comfort” that is referred to here is the one felt when nurturing an exaggerated form of modesty. It may seem paradoxical, but despite the frustration and the anger resulting from a life of not reaching our high expectations, there is still something reassuring and satisfying in a humble and easy life, even if it is very often too bleak.

  I would say that the first thing that makes our “mediocrity zone” that comfortable is the reassuring feeling of being accepted by a group. Handling our lives often means distancing ourselves from a few people, which means asserting who we truly are rather than embracing the image others have formed about us. Moving forward in our projects, formulating our own ideas…. These increase the risk of being mocked, harassed, envied, or even excluded by others. Taking the lead in our life sometimes requires leaving behind the image others have of us, and thus, the comfort of social cohesion.

  What makes the mediocrity zone that appealing and captivating is that it is also easier to remain passive, to give our dreams up, to satisfy ourselves with what we already have, even if it does not fully make us happy or content. Maintaining control of our lives, achieving projects that we hold dear, inspiring cooperation and respect are all appealing things, but they demand courage and work. Oftentimes, we tend to avoid overthinking and changing anything in our barely satisfying lives.

  In addition, it is comfortable to be able to point the finger at the culprit and consider ourselves as victims of other people’s nastiness, lack of comprehension, or simply bad luck. This approach is comfortable because it erases our responsibility. By assuming at the outset that “it is always the other’s fault” if our dreams do not come true, if life is boring, if the unexpected is annoying, we likewise give up having more power in our own lives. We admit that we do not feel capable of turning around the established order in our existence and that is it easier and more tempting to wallow in the idea that “it is never our fault anyway.”

  To escape one’s comfort zone requires going through three concrete resolutions: first, accept to be more independent of the people around us; second, renounce the pleasure of living a passive and convenient life that does not necessitate effort and overcoming challenges; and finally, stop running away from responsibilities and blaming others for our misfortune. I frequently claim that brilliant and talented individuals were once mediocre and hesitant to change their habits. Going out of one’s comfort zone is never easy, but it is worth the trouble.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: In your book I Quit Complaining, which has been a bestseller in France, you describe complaining as a toxic habit, which impedes us from becoming the best version of ourselves. You invite your readers to get rid of this poisonous attitude—and to start by taking up the challenge of not complaining at all for 21 days in a row. Could you remind us of why you make the case that complaining is detrimental, psychologically and socially speaking? What are the forms of anger that help us acquire the actual power to inspire respect, foster cooperation, and unleash our potential?

Christine Lewicki: When we complain about the coffee machine that does not work, about the e-mail box that does not open, about a partner not answering phone calls, an employer lacking empathy or professionalism…. it first has a concrete physical consequence in that it consumes a lot of energy. At the end of the day, we go to bed exhausted and drained. In addition, this habit illustrates how we are on automatic pilot and allow the victim’s position to take control of our daily life. By adopting this systematic position, by reacting mechanically as a victim to everyday hazards, our cognitive mechanisms get directly affected.

  Steven Parton, the author of The Science of Happiness: Why complaining is literally killing you, explains on the website Psych Pedia that the habit of complaining alters our brain’s synapses and is even more damaging to our mental health than we think. Within our brain exist synapses, which are little zones in between two neurons or nerve cells assuring the transportation of information from one cell to the other. The space wherein these synapses are located is an empty space called the synaptic cleft. Every time we have a thought, a synapse sends a chemical product through the synaptic cleft towards another synapse, creating hence a “bridge” on which an electrical signal can pass while transporting the relevant information at stake.

  The problem—as explained by Parton—is that every time this electrical charge is launched, the synapses get closer together to reduce the distance the electrical load has to travel through. The brain creates its own circuit and changes physically to facilitate the sharing of electrical signals and help the thought’s activation. Therefore, having a thought makes it easier for the brain to channel another thought, which means that ultimately, our minor complaints enhance other complaints subconsciously. These synapses brought closer day after day make one an unpleasant and embittered individual, who is a slave to everyday hazards and always ready to point a finger at others due to his or her misfortunes.

As our complaints multiply, we bring closer the pair of synapses that represents them. When we are confronted with an ordinary frustration in our daily life and we must choose an appropriate reaction, the winning thought will be the one having the least distance to go through, the one who would have created the most quickly a bridge between the synapses. As a result, we are trapped into a spiral of negativity that we passively allow to control us and make us miss the potential richness of our own lives. We embody the role of the victim, which constantly spreads its control on our reactions to events.

There are, however, as you rightfully reminded, healthy forms of anger. It is possible to live and express anger without it becoming a complaint, without having to adopt the position of the victim. I would say that a healthy manifestation of anger can be identified thanks to two things. Anger must first come from a deliberate choice of letting oneself fully feel the emotion, the choice of letting it express itself inwardly, instead of trying to contain or ignore it. Once one unleashes and then decreases the anger and everything surrounding it— disappointment, confusion, hatred— once one has let the storm abate on its own, it is then possible to step back and avoid making bad decisions.

To live one’s anger in a healthy way is also being able to address others without conveying a victimizing discourse. It is being able to tell the other that “this is not what I want, and I would like it to change.” The main principle is to emphasize the “I” rather than the “You” in the discourse. “I disagree, and I would like it to be otherwise”: this is the way to inspire cooperation and incite the other to take our needs into account. This position is completely different from blaming the other: “You annoy me!”, “You did not understand anything,” “It is always the same thing with you,” “I’ve been asking that a hundred times!”.

By confining oneself to a discourse emphasizing the “you,” one keeps the victim’s position. Why? Because this approach does not allow us to think of ourselves as equal to the one we consider guilty. Instead of inciting cooperation, we let the other decide on whether to ignore our request or take it into account. The other party is not encouraged to respect us, and even worse, the solution of the problem is put in his or her hands. To take care of our quality of life starts by giving up our comfort zone and this humiliating position when interacting with other people. It starts by avoiding this mentality of victimhood and accusation. The challenge is certainly difficult. But sooner or later, if we hold on to it, our efforts will be rewarded.

  We have on average 60,000 thoughts on our minds every day. That corresponds to around 40 thoughts each minute. 95% of these thoughts are the same as the ones of yesterday or even the day before…. and 80% of those thoughts are, by and large, negative. However, scientific research also shows that positive thoughts work as efficiently in the opposite direction… which reveals that to stop complaining, celebrate our everyday life, assert our personality, and call for others’ respect is anything but pointless. In fact, this allows us to work our cerebral muscles, our synapses, and nurture them with germs of serenity, pride, and optimism that will allow the development of our mental and social well-being. The scientific phenomenon works both ways. By consciously doing an effort for three weeks, or 21 days, we can gradually readjust our brain and launch a virtuous circle.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: When it comes to our vitality at all levels, we all seem to go through phases of ebullition and numbness, including women. At the peak of their exuberance, women exhibit a conquering energy, a sense of control, and an insatiability that even Robert Palmer celebrated in his song “Hyperactive.” “She’s got a date for lunch in Singapore, holds stock in I.B.M. and hates Dior. Well, she puts her make up on at 6.00 a.m. She goes to work, gets home, then puts it on again. And it’s a mystery how wild that girl can be. She’s got so much energy. She’s such an expert at surprising me. She’s hyperactive when she starts to dance. She’s so attracted to a wild romance. And I’m persuaded by her argument. She’s hyperactive.” How do you think a keen understanding of the psychical cycles of women helps them     multiply the richness and magic of their everyday life?

  Christine Lewicki: It is true that sometimes, we wake up in the morning with the feeling that everything is possible, and we indeed accomplish a lot during this kind of day. While on the other hand, some days we stand on the other end of the spectrum: we are barely optimistic and see the glass half empty rather than half full. We even lack energy, ideas, and creativity to overcome the challenges we are beset with.

  It may be a hormonal cycle or just simply “the cycle of life,” but the reality of daily life is that we all, men and women, go through those ups and downs. And I think it is an illusion to assume that we can always be in excellent form. It is rather a strength to be able to accept having good and bad moments. When we hit rock bottom, I advise that we accept to embrace it fully: let anxiety, boredom, or frustration pass through, as I was saying a little earlier about anger.

  I also recommend taking care of our flame deep down inside and carefully avoiding it from being put out while going through a bad time. To achieve that, we need activities and rituals, daily meetings with ourselves, as I see it, to nourish this flame and revive our blaze even when we feel disappointed. It may be dance, yoga, outdoor walks, meditation but also krav maga, climbing, drawing, being passionate about manga, spending privileged moments with one’s cat…. one can think about a wide array of examples! It is up to each one of us to find the occupations that allow our inner light to shine every single day of our life, and not only during relatively positive moments.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: When it comes to the practice of meditation, it is sometimes said that a number of perverse effects are linked to an excess in indolence and passivity. For instance, Thomas Jefferson did not hesitate to warn one of his friends that his “love of repose [would] lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around [him], and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know is one of his four cardinal virtues.” Do you think that an excessive or clumsy practice of meditation may indeed lead to such a state of inner, psychological inertia?

  Christine Lewicki: I have to admit that I have never heard of this before, according to which meditation would lead us to become “lifeless.” The reason why meditation is popular today is precisely that we have never been solicited so much. We are harassed, that is, on our phones and screens by e-mails, Facebook messages, tweets. We are stimulated by a lot of different things that demand our attention: the media, reality shows, the school our children attend; clients, friends, or family.

  In the numerical era, never has it been easier to ask restlessly for someone’s attention. We are being asked about everything on all sides, so much so that we do not know where our priorities stand anymore. We are like chicken whose heads have been chopped off. Meditation is what helps us reconnect with what serves as an inner compass. What we truly need today is to sort out all those requests, all the possibilities, and information surrounding us to know where to direct our attention to. Meditation affords us this opportunity to prioritize, which is paramount to our well-being and daily performance.

  The idea is not to meditate for the sake of meditating, but the contrary. It is not about going through “transcendental” spheres but instead coming back to the playground life. Meditation allows us to reconnect with our inner compass, and it thus gives us a sense of direction. It does not transform us into lifeless people, but on the contrary, helps us to be the architects of our respective lives.

Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Would you like to add anything?

Christine Lewicki: I have noticed that nowadays personal development is a fashionable subject: more and more people and companies have been interested in it. It is a wonderful opportunity to uplift humankind. More and more people peruse personal development books, attend lectures on the subject, or watch videos. Yet what I have also observed is that many of these people still feel frustrated or stuck because there is a first obstacle that they have not yet overcome: their position as victims in life.

  While we stay in that dynamic/attitude—pointing the finger at whom we find guilty and holding others accountable for our daily miseries, we cannot gain control of our lives. Once we will stop considering ourselves as victims, however, then we will be able to take advantage of the lessons inculcated in the books that we read, the videos we watch, and the lectures we attend… The doors will finally be open and our lives transformed.


  A slightly different version of this interview was initially published in French in the December 2016 edition of the printed magazine Agefi Magazine. A translation into English was initially done in January 2017, then the English text was revised and updated in January 2022. The English version was originally published in The Postil Magazine’s February 2022 issue.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Christine Lewicki, Grégoire Canlorbe, meditation, mindfulness, personal development, Quit complaining, Robert Palmer, Thomas Jefferson

A conversation with Abdelkrim Qissi, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Abdelkrim Qissi, for The Postil Magazine

by Grégoire Canlorbe · Déc 1, 2021

Abdelkrim Qissi is a Belgian-Moroccan actor and boxer. A close collaborator of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Qissi notably played the antagonists Attila and Khan in two cult Van Damme films—namely Lionheart and The Quest. He is the brother of Mohamed Qissi, actor of Tong Po in Kickboxer and Moustafa in Lionheart.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Could you start by telling us about your coming co-directed movie Lopak l’Envoûteur [Lopak the Enchanter], which will be released in next April?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: Originally, I was called upon to act in a scene from a movie whose story revolved around a cannibalistic killer. The script was largely non-existent and the shooting improvised. Abel Ernest Tembo, who was in charge of directing, proposed to me that I appear in a few more sequences; what I accepted on the condition that we rework the story thoroughly and give the film a script worthy of the name. Ernest immediately accepted. I went into production and we agreed to make the film together. The work of the image, camera, light and grading would be mainly his doing; developing a story, playing the lead role, directing the cast and writing the script mostly mine. During the Covid period, a story was born, a new film was born, only the title remained. Then, a year ago, we started shooting what was now a feature-length film, a shooting almost finished as I speak to you [November 9, 2021]. I would like to salute the work of Abel Ernest Tembo, a man excellent with the image.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: In Lopak trailer, the character you play, Molosse, evokes the bees in a furtive and mysterious mode. Could you satisfy our curiosity by telling us what is going on with those insects in the scenario?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: I cannot say too much about the plot of the film at the moment; but Molosse in the scenario feels invested with a mission, that of “healing” humanity, whom he considers corrupted by greed and whom he aspires to turn into bees devoted to the common good. To that end, he uses hypnosis and a serum that, annihilating consciousness, leaves only the subconscious and unconscious. He hopes to put thus an end to borders and to all that divides humanity; and change the Earth into a perfectly balanced hive where everyone in its alveolus perfectly knows its place, its mission, and selflessly works for the hive’s well-being, where no one encroaches on anyone and where everyone support everyone. In his quest, Molosse will be led to do things that will trigger a whole tumult around him—whether on his family’s side, or on the side of his old friends.

  As it stands, so, I prefer to avoid revealing too much about the film itself and its message; but to those young and not so young who have the desire to shoot their own feature films and who, nevertheless, are reluctant to run to fill out files, submit requests to commissions, receive financial aid, the work embodied in the film sends the following message. “Do not wait to be supported, taken seriously, introduced to big names; take your camera and shoot. Let the big names come to you as you build your own success.” To those young and not so young who have the desire to shoot their own film, who have the talent and the passion but are not particularly well known to the general public nor really involved in the right networks, I venture to hope that Lopak the Enchanter will prove that, whatever the means they originally have, the people they surround themselves with at the very beginning, it is possible for them to achieve their goal and make the film of their dreams happen.

Abdelkrim Qissi (on the right) and Grégoire Canlorbe (on the left)

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Alongside Mohamed Qissi and Kamel Krifa, you played in Lionheart (also known as Full Contact). How did the three of you end up on the set?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: Jean-Claude is a boy I have known since his childhood. I met him in a sports center where both (as well as my brother, Mohamed) came to train, where Jean-Claude practiced karate (with Claude Goetz); and for my part, boxing. I also met there, among others, Jean-Pierre Valère, who was kind enough to agree to appear briefly in Lopak. When they met, Jean-Claude and Mohamed became more than friends: inseparable, fusional, they were truly brothers. It was not uncommon for Jean-Claude to come to sleep at home.

  One fine day, sharing the same dream of breaking into the cinema, both left for America. After long years of sufferings and adventures, they made this dream come true by playing in Bloodsport, then Kickboxer. I cannot accurately relate the circumstances that led to my participation at the age of 29 in the filming of Full Contact. But briefly, they boil down to the fact that I was Mohamed’s brother (who had just played Tong Po in Kickboxer); and that he and Jean-Claude offered me and the producers that I take on the role of Attila. I was very happy with that offer and jumped at the chance. As for Kamel it is a friend that we encountered in Brussels, that is how he too found himself by our side on the set of Full Contact.

From the left to the right: Abdelkrim Qissi, Kamel Krifa, and Mohamed Qissi in their roles in Full Contact

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Lionheart’s final fight pits Leon Gaultier, character played by JCVD, against a brutal fighter who is nonetheless affectionate towards his cat. Leon, suffering from a broken rib, progressively lets himself dominated at first; then takes over in extremis over the character you play, Attila. How did the idea for such choreography come to the film crew? How was the filming, the application, of that idea?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: Contrary to the idea of ​​the white cat, which is an improvisation during the shooting, the idea that Leon takes the upper hand over Attila when everyone (including his trainer) thinks him to be losing is an idea of ​​the scenario. It was not elaborated when the choreography was being designed. Jean-Claude nevertheless participated in the writing of the screenplay; just as the choreographies of Lionheart are all his doing. Both ideas sound good to me—and constitutive of what makes the film’s aura more than thirty years after its release.

  The touching affection that Attila has for his pet, which he shows by taking advantage of Leon being momentarily on the ground to stroke his cat, contrasts with what is, besides, the brutality of the character. A contrast that the film emphasizes in its visual symbolism by making Attila all dressed in black whereas his cat, for his part, is entirely white. The cat in question, which, again, was not intended in the scenario (if I correctly remember), was the one of a member of the film crew. The inner strength that manifests itself in the character of Jean-Claude just after his trainer in person, Joshua, confesses to him that he does not trust him and that he himself has bet on Attila, that rage to defeat himself in order to triumph over his opponent and prove to Joshua that he made a “wrong bet” (a reply which is, besides, at the origin of one of the film’s titles), that desire coming from the depths of his heart which allows Leon to overcome the pain and to defeat Attila even though the latter, in plain view, was largely dominating him until then, offers the film one of its most beautiful scenes.

Attila (played by Abdelkrim Qissi) stroking his cat, in Lionheart

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You play Khan, Mongolian champion with whom the character of JCVD ​​fights at the end of The Quest. JCVD directed that film; but years before he had already served, unofficially, as an editor to Bloodsport. What makes the two films so different despite their partly similar plot? How did you work with JCVD ​​to come up with a final fight that be even more impressive than the one between JCVD ​​and Bolo Yeung [at the end of Bloodsport]?

Abdelkrim Qissi: A major difference between Bloodsport and The Quest is, it seems to me, that Jean-Claude had the opportunity to work with professional fighters in The Quest; while the tournament participants in Bloodsport were played by people who were a bit less pros in the field of martial art. Another major difference is that, in The Quest, Jean-Claude had matured since Bloodsport and was then at the peak of his physical and mental form. The exotic landscapes in The Quest, the richness of the animal cast (including the elephant and the horses), the beauty of the image (including the care given to the colors), all that contributes to what makes Jean-Claude’s film so different from Bloodsport released almost ten years before. However, I would regret that the human relations in The Quest were somewhat put in the background during the filming; I believe, because of a timing problem or a problem arisen in production.

Abdelkrim Qissi as Khan, Mongolian champion, in The Quest

  Jean-Claude is an excellent choreographer and, on Full Contact like on The Quest, trusted himself for the design of the fights; also, on Full Contact like on The Quest, he adapted the choreography for the final fight to my martial style, to what I’m best able to do in an arena. Whether it is the confrontation between Attila and Leon Gaultier in Full Contact or the one between Khan and Christopher Dubois in The Quest, of which the fight at the end of Lionheart was ultimately the prelude, no stand-in nor any special effect nor any stunt carried out by someone else were required. Shooting the choreography was for Jean-Claude and me an easy, joyful, and quick exercise. If I remember correctly, on the set of The Quest, Jean-Claude and I worked only nine hours—three times three hours over three days—developing our choreography from Jean-Claude’s general idea. A German steadicamer on the set of The Quest said of Jean-Claude and I that we were “like the fingers of the hand” given how we knew each other, understood each other, and had blind confidence in each other in the choreography’s execution; given how our moves, with meticulous precision, were easy for us and resembled a ballet; given how our blows espoused each other without ever hurting nor touching each other.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You traveled to Israel for the filming of The Order, by Sheldon Lettich (who years before had directed and co-written Lionheart). What do you remember from your stay in the holy land?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: I had great times with Sheldon; he’s a very nice guy, just like Peter MacDonald. I believe that Jean-Claude, by offering me a sort of cameo in The Order, intended to make a nice eyewink to my previous performances in the roles of Attila and Khan, two characters united into one in “the Big Arab” whom I briefly interpret in The Order. Regarding Jerusalem, what struck me about that city is the conjunction of holiness and violence that reigns within it, the spectacle of both beauty and injustice that it offers. All the more as our subconscious associates Jerusalem with the battles and bloodshed of which it has been the theatre throughout history.

  The little Palestinian people is a brilliant people who has gone through very hard times over the centuries. Does the Israeli government really have a stake in peace—given that Israel would then no longer be in a position to continue its nibbling on territories? Do Fatah, in power in the West Bank, and Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip, really have a stake in the war’s ending–given that the financial rent they derive from the military conflict would itself cease on that occasion? For the Palestinian Authority, wouldn’t stopping the attacks, reprisals, and rocket fires be the best weapon against Israel—given that it would deprive Israel of any justification for its settlement policy and force nations in the whole world to take the side of the Palestinians against the Israelis? Being not in the know, I do not want to make any assertion; but only to raise a number of questions that, in my opinion, are worth asking. Let me add that a religious government, as is the case of Hamas, is, in my eyes, a foolish and disastrous thing; since such a government could never represent the entire population, some individuals being firmly religious, others not or even not at all. It is much wiser for a government to refrain from imposing any dogma or rite regarding religion; and to recognize in everyone the freedom to practice or not some spirituality and the freedom to practice it in the way that suits him personally. Such would be one of the pillars of my policy if I were to find myself at the head of the Palestinian Authority; but being not a man of power, I no more aspire to occupy such a position than I would be able to hoist myself into it.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: With regard to the Koran, do you believe that it should be taken literally—or that it contains an allegorical meaning that should be deciphered with the help of ancillary knowledge?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: First of all, please know that I am in no way claiming that what I am telling you is the truth; it is only my conception of the truth. I am submitting it to you in the framework of an exchange, not of a debate. I don’t just deny myself the status of teacher, preacher or preacher; I see it as an incompatibility with well-understood spirituality, which is a personal, intimate affair. What I understand about the Quran is that a huge gulf exists between the word interpreted and taught by men and the WORD drawn directly from the source (the Book itself). Allah, I understand him as the source of all that exists; so that God is both present in His creation and located upstream from it. It is impossible to love God without loving His creation which prolongs it: impossible to love Allah, he who is in the trees, if the wood is cut without moderation; impossible to love him, He who is in the human, if one hurts one’s neighbor. The words of the Koran (which it is customary to recite in singing it) are not only made to rock, cuddle, the ears of the devotee. That is the lowest, most superficial, level of listening there is, the furthest from what is attentive listening to what the Koran seeks to communicate to us and make us understand.

Abdelkrim Qissi (on the right) as The Big Arab and Jean-Claude Van Damme (on the left) as Rudy Cafmeyer in The Order

  I didn’t learn Arabic at school; I learned it late, when I applied myself to reading a comparative edition of the Koran including the original text in Arabic and a French translation. The main words of the Book, what I call the catchwords, resonate differently from anything I have been taught. Often they are not even translated. Here are some examples of those words: Allah, Islam, Muslim, Koran, Jihad. Those words have very precise and deep meanings, characteristics and specificities. I’m not going to teach you what they mean, because that is research unique to each of us. What I can say and repeat is that there is a huge gulf between what you have been taught and what the Quran can teach you. Many counterfeiters have seized the content to use it for their own ends. Such is what created the innumerable religions, themselves divided into different sects, schools and currents of thought. To conclude my answer: from my reading, I do not see any contradiction in the Book, I do not see any violence. I perceive only love for God in it and that goes without saying, for His creation as well.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Tell us about your meetings with Roger Moore (on the set of The Quest) and Charlton Heston (on the set of The Order). What is your favorite James Bond?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: The shootings of The Quest and The Order were effectively the occasion of magnificent encounters: Pjetër Malota (who played the Spanish fighter in The Quest), Takis Triggelis (who played the French fighter), Cesar Carneiro (who played the Brazilian fighter), Stefanos Miltsanakis (who played the Greek fighter—and who passed away two years ago, God rest his soul!), Janet Gunn (who played the journalist), Roger Moore (God rest his soul!), and many others. The four and a half months that The Quest team spent in Thailand allowed me to closely interact with Roger Moore to the point where he became a friend; as well as his wife, with whom I have had long discussions around spirituality, being myself sick of spirituality as you must have noticed. Moore was an extraordinary man; of unparalleled kindness, simplicity, and humanism, he warmly encouraged me, as well as the youth in general. Unlike Roger Moore on the set of The Quest, Charlton Heston remained somewhat aloof, withdrawn, on the set of The Order; and had a very small role, so he didn’t stay long on the spot. Being then of a very advanced age already, I think he was a little tired. He nevertheless gave me the impression of a respectful and respectable gentleman, of great kindness.

Mongolian champion (played by Abdelkrim Qissi) having just defeated, killed, Siamese champion (played by Jen Sung), in the Quest

  As for my opinion on the evolution of the James Bond, it seems to me futile to want to compare them given how the historical contexts, perceptions of the character, filmic means, are each time different. It would be like pretending to compare Mohamed Ali, Mike Tyson, and Joe Louis! Roger Moore in James Bond evoked Simon Templar, alias “the Saint,” and Lord Brett Sinclair, the sidekick of Tony Curtis’ Daniel Wilde in The Pretenders. Moore played a gallant, charming, light Bond, devoid of the slightest hint of violence, not less than strong and talented. Sean Connery and Roger Moore are the only James Bond that we can almost classify in the same category: by the finesse, the tact, which they have in common and that is ultimately lacking in the others (all the more as the more recent episodes put the action forward). Some say Daniel Craig is the best James Bond, I don’t agree. Pierce Brosnan, for example, was not bad at all, as well as a Timothy Dalton already in a more violent register as would be, nearly twenty years later, Daniel Craig.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Who from Tong Po or Chong Li [antagonist in Bloodsport] would win if they fought with each other? Same question for Attila and Khan

  Abdelkrim Qissi: Regarding Tong Po versus Chong Li: if we talk about the actors, I think that my brother, a professional boxer, would win against Bolo Yeung, who, to my knowledge, is an accomplished actor without really being an experienced martial artist or boxer. Now, if we talk about the characters, it seems to me that, by comparing the performances of Tong Po and Chong Li in their respective films, the former is clearly more dangerous, more gifted, more powerful, in Kickboxer than the latter is in Bloodsport; so that, if they were to come face to face, Tong Po would win hands-down over Chong Li. Regarding Khan versus Attila, it seems to me that the former’s power (including mental) in The Quest is without comparison with that of the latter in Full Contact; and that the Mongol would be the big winner in a hypothetical confrontation with Attila.

Abdelkrim Qissi as Attila, Khan, and The Big Arab

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Would you like to add something?

  Abdelkrim Qissi: We talked about thriller and action movie; but I must confess that my personal preference as a spectator goes to contemplative, spiritual films. So I haven’t seen most of Jean-Claude’s films (including Legionnaire, of which one spoke highly to me of the introductory boxing sequence). There are certainly thrillers and action films with a contemplative, spiritual dimension, and that I particularly appreciate for that. Among other examples, Gladiator, by Ridley Scott; or Heat, by Michael Mann.


That conversation was originally published in The Postil Magazine’s December 2021 issue

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Abdelkrim Qissi, Full Contact, Grégoire Canlorbe, Islam, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, James Bond, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kamel Krifa, Lionheart, Michel Qissi, Mohamed Qissi, Roger Moore, The Order, The Quest

A conversation with Anne Marie Waters, for Gatestone Institute

A conversation with Anne Marie Waters, for Gatestone Institute

by Grégoire Canlorbe · Nov 16, 2021

Anne Marie Dorothy Waters is a politician and activist in the United Kingdom. She founded and leads the party For Britain. [The views here expressed are not to be confused with those of the Gatestone Institute nor with those of Canlorbe.]

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Please tell us about the political party you founded and are currently leading, For Britain. What are its ambitions—and its strategy?

  Anne Marie Waters: Our ambitions are large (always think big!) We want to build a mass movement of the millions who have been sidelined and excluded from public life in the UK.  This is a movement for those who are not far right or racist but want to end this mass immigration that threatens our culture and identity, those who know and understand that Black Lives Matter are a neo-communist group intent on violently dismantling our society, those who can see that Islam is not peaceful and has brought horrors (including the gang rape of young girls and terror attacks) to our shores, and those who know that our government lies to us time and again. We live in a UK where free speech is a thing of the past, our media is merely a mouthpiece of government dictats, and where decent people are demonized and smeared for holding informed opinions. We are in a Britain that resembles the communist Soviet Union; fear, censorship, excessive government control.

  There are millions of British people who know this, even if they don’t yet verbalise it.  Those people are entirely unrepresented; For Britain will give them that representation.

  I believe we are on the precipice of great change. I intend to be at the forefront of bringing about that great change. We don’t want to ‘Build Back Better’ as the globalists keep demanding, we want to Bring Back Britain.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: How do you judge the British establishment’s attitude towards the alleged demographic, cultural Islamization?

  Anne Marie Waters: The British establishment is very enthusiastic about our Islamisation!  There are different reasons, depending on the person. For example, our Members of Parliament are either entirely ignorant of Islam and genuinely believe to object to its teachings is “racist” (such people are simply too unintelligent to understand). Others know what the truth is but are too focused on not rocking the boat, or risking attack by the media, that they stay silent. Others hate our society so much that they see Islam as a better option. None of these people should be serving in the British Parliament.

  The issue of course is mass migration. The political and media elite are entirely wedded to the global project of bringing down nation-states. This cannot be done without mass migration. If the British public was informed about the horrors of Islam, they may object to mass migration (almost all of which is Muslim) and that would be a fly in the ointment for the globalists. So the truth of Islam is hidden and those who speak it absolutely vilified in public. People therefore stay silent and the quiet death of Western civilization continues apace.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Could you expand on your point that Islam is incompatible with democracy? Do you think the same of Christianity?

  Anne Marie Waters: The incompatibility is easily observable. Europe has a long history of defying authority and demanding rights for citizens. The Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and beyond; all part of Europe’s story, and a history we are built upon as a continent.  Now we have opened our borders to medieval beliefs and behaviours.  “Death for blasphemy”, “death to apostates”, stonings, beheadings… In the Muslim world, the last 500 years of European history hasn’t happened.

  We are a society of science, and reason, and evidence, and just as we achieve that, we open to the door to medievalism and are catapulted back in time. Secularism and free speech, equal rights between the sexes, the protection of children, all of this is being sacrificed for Islam.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Do you recognize yourself in Enoch Powell’s so-called “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which he predicted (in 1968) that mass immigration would be like “watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre”?

  Anne Marie Waters: Absolutely. In his worst nightmares, Powell could not have predicted what was to come. He was speaking about 10,000s of migrants, what we have now is 100,000s per year. Most of these people are coming here illegally and this is simply allowed to take place while we watch. What is even harder to take is how these illegal immigrants are elevated above the native population. There are 1,000s of homeless British people in the UK, and yet illegal immigrants are housed in hotels until permanent accommodation is provided to them. No such relief or help is available to homeless Britons. Now that we are about to receive a massive influx of Afghans (who already responsible for grotesque crimes all over Europe), there are plans in place to give them homes, medical care, training and employment, and even free university attendance. Britons must pay £1,000s per year to attend university. It is a profound injustice.

  White Britons are legally excluded from applying for certain jobs, while white children are actively taught that they are racists and colonisers and oppressors. We hear endless propaganda about racial discrimination and disadvantage faced by non-white people in Britain, when the truth is that the only people who face this discrimination are white people.

  Powell was right, but he vastly underestimated the pace and scale of the destruction of our country.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. It has been twenty years since the 11 September attacks happened. What do you think should be done to prevail once and for all in the war declared against the West?

  Anne Marie Waters: We must stop the immigration first and foremost. We cannot deal with these problems while the borders are still open. Then we must begin the process of deporting those who came here illegally. We must scrap the Human Rights Act in order to prevent non-Britons taking precedence over Britons. The rights of terrorists and rapists are considered more important than the safety of the British public. This needs new laws to prevent activist judges allowing criminals to stay in our country.

  We must scrap all ‘hate speech’ laws and allow our citizens to speak freely. We must enact laws that prevent the press smearing political candidates as ‘fascists’ for daring to tell the truth.

  We must close all sharia councils, ban the burka, prosecute and deport those who engage in honour violence, FGM, or child marriage. We must ban halal. It is also absolutely essential that all of those who express support for jihad, who support terrorists, or who want sharia law, and who are not British citizens, are deported from our country. We owe them nothing.

  These steps are just the beginning but if we were to take them, we would be in a completely different place. The world would no longer see Britain as a soft touch or a hub of jihad.

  The truth is however that we will only take these steps if we change those who govern us. That is the first and most important thing we must do. Our current politicians will never do what is needed, therefore we must replace those politicians with people who will.

For Britain will.


That conversation was initially published on Gatestone Institute, in November 2021

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Anne Marie Waters, Britain, Enoch Powell, Grégoire Canlorbe, Islam, Islamization

A conversation with Mohamed Qissi, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Mohamed Qissi, for The Postil Magazine

by Grégoire Canlorbe · Oct 1, 2021

Mohamed Qissi, known as Michel Qissi, is a Belgian-Moroccan actor, director, screenwriter, stuntman, and martial choreographer. He is notably known for having played alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport, Kickboxer, and Lionheart; and choreographed the fights in Kickboxer, where he plays cult villain Tong Po.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: From Mohamed, your first name was changed into Michel; then became Mohamed again. How come?

  Mohamed Qissi: When I was little, and I helped Jean-Claude in his mother’s flower shop in Brussels, Avenue Buyl, his mother, whom I called mamie, and his father whom I called papi, both called me Michel. Jean-Claude, with whom we got to know each other when we were young, also called me that way; and when we both went to America in 1982, he continued to call me Michel. Today, it’s been twenty years since I returned to Morocco and took the first name of my origins, the one my parents gave me and that everyone continues to attribute to me here.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You were a choreographer on Kickboxer. Please tell us about that experience. What does distinguish dance choreography from fight choreography?

  Mohamed Qissi: I indeed took care of the choreography and of the casting of the fighters in Kickboxer, what was an extraordinary experience. The fact that Jean-Claude and I had trained together for years and years, since we were little, was of a huge help to us in our fight at the end of the film. There is dance in this fight, a visual beauty of the moves, which is why it looks so good on screen.

  Dance and fight choreographies are nonetheless completely different things. I wouldn’t be able to choreograph a dance scene; but a fight choreography where the movements are of impeccable fluidity, elegance, where a kind of dance is played, a warlike-style dance, is something that is possible for me. The risk of injury is much greater in combat choreography than it is in dance choreography. The actors recruited for fight scenes don’t just have to know how to act; they have to know how to fight, what is not something you learn in six months. They must be experienced fighters, who know how to control themselves, control their strength, and resist fatigue.

Kickboxer fanart by Stevan Aleksić ART

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Is Tong Po an entirely bad character? Or does he keep a part of light in him like Darth Vader?

  Mohamed Qissi: The utter nastiness of Tong Po is plainly evident in the film. It impressed the spectators. As for Tong Po’s past and why he has become such an evil being, devoid of any light, the film remains a mystery. While it is true that some are born with a mental disorder, we are never born wicked. We are all angels when we come to the world. An unhappy childhood, marked by mistreatment and sexual abuse, is one of the things that can explain why some take a fatal path while growing up. At the moment, I am being offered the launching of an opus that would explore Tong Po’s youth, the education he received, the life’s challenges that he encountered and which rendered him the brutal and cruel being that the Sloane brothers have to face in Kickboxer…

Mohamed Qissi as Tong Po in Kickboxer and Kickboxer 2: The Road Back

  Grégoire Canlorbe: What do you think of Dave Bautista as Tong Po in Kickboxer: Vengeance, remake of the original Kickboxer movie?

  Mohamed Qissi: It is an honor for me that Dave Bautista, someone who enormously matters in the cinema world, whom we have seen playing in important films like Blade Runner 2049, took over the character of Tong Po whom I was the first to bring to life. An honor and a pleasure.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Would you say that the “American dream” that you lived is still possible for a young person in Morocco today?

  Mohamed Qissi: Everything is possible in life, whether you are a Moroccan or someone from another country. Everything is possible provided that you are passionate, patient, and persevering; and that you work hard, get up early every morning, and enter those places where your passion brings you. If you are passionate about cinema, go where the cinema is. Whatever is the environment in which your passion finds itself, you will meet good and bad people there; go to the right people, those who will help you. With advances in communication, contacting the right person is easier today than it was in the 1980s.

Grégoire Canlorbe (in the middle) with the Qissi brothers

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. In the end, what message do you want to convey?

Mohamed Qissi: My message to everyone, especially young people, is the following. On the one hand, respect your body, stay away from all bad drugs. The good drug is sport; the bad one is stuff like cigarettes, alcohol, or cocaine. On the other hand, respect your parents whoever they are; listen to and respect their advice—especially when it comes from wise people.


That conversation was initially published in The Postil Magazine’s October 2021 issue

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Grégoire Canlorbe, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kickboxer, Michel Qissi, Mohamed Qissi, Tong Po

A conversation with Helmuth Nyborg, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Helmuth Nyborg, for The Postil Magazine

by Grégoire Canlorbe · Oct 1, 2021

Helmuth Sørensen Nyborg is a Danish psychologist and author. A former professor of developmental psychology at Aarhus University, Denmark and Olympic canoeist, his main research topics include the connection between hormones and intelligence, the inheritance of intelligence, and the relationship between sex and intelligence.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: How did you move from Olympic canyoning to academic career? Which of those two activities was the most physically, mentally demanding?

  Helmuth Nyborg: The change was easy. Preparation for the 1960-Olympiad in Rome took five years in advance with three hours training from 6-9 am. and again from 6-9 pm.– before dinner was an option – year-round. Such a program taxes social, family, and metabolic, and intellectual life considerably. So, as I shared a room in the Olympic village with gold medalist Erik Hansen, with whom and two others I won the bronze medal, I simply told him that my career in kayak ended at 3:08 pm. when we passed the goal line. He found it hard to believe, but I kept my promise and entered the academic halls instead.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You are currently working on a thermodynamic approach to the biocultural evolution of intelligence. How do you sum up your theory as it stands?

  Helmuth Nyborg: Actually, already back in 1994 I wrote a book on Hormones, Sex, and Society: The Science of Physicology, where I argued that science would advance by skipping much abstract philosophical thinking about Man’s nature and instead turn to the study of Molecular Man in a Molecular World. The jump from there to thermodynamics is short. Currently I am trying to quantify 275.000 years of prehistoric competition between individuals in the struggle for capturing and transducing available energy (Wm-2), survival, and procreation, in a retrospective, pseudo experimental design, that is, to redefine classic Darwinian thinking along the lines suggested back in the 18th century by the two famous physicists Ludwig Boltzmann and Alfred Lotka.

Helmuth Nyborg (on the right) and Grégoire Canlorbe

  Grégoire Canlorbe: When it comes to intelligence, what does imply the second law of thermodynamics? (Namely, that the entropy of an isolated system like is allegedly the universe is necessarily increasing) Do you believe the universe’s average intelligence is necessarily decreasing?

  Helmuth Nyborg: The second law of thermodynamic is about isolated systems and is therefore not of great use for understanding the way humans work, because they are open systems. We therefore need to call upon a fourth thermodynamic model for open non-equilibrium systems. It is easy to understand why global intelligence has been declining steadily since 1850: Low IQ people become more numerous and have more surviving children than high IQ people.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: A line of criticism occasionally heard against the coevolution idea (i.e., the idea that gene and culture are influencing each other in their mutual evolution) is that cultural patterns in a population are indeed influencing genes in said population—but that genes do not have the slightest influence on cultural patterns in turn. Thus any population subject to the influence of a certain culture is allegedly led to becoming biologically adapted to said culture at the end of a few generations: that is how, for instance, the Berber, Afghan ethnicities, and various populations who were conquered by the Islamic Arabs allegedly ended up becoming culturally Arabized—and biologically adapted to the Arabic culture. What is your take on such claims?

  Helmuth Nyborg: The whole idea of biocultural coevolution assumes that cultural aspects can be measured and quantified as accurate as the biological aspects. This is not the case, and this makes, in my opinion, the whole idea of biocultural coevolution untenable, as previously argued in Nyborg (1994).

  As said above, we better entirely circumvent stubborn problems based on how more or less abstract culture works, for example by trying to retrospectively define and quantify the prehistoric circumstance under which different peoples around the world have evolved, which polygene adaptation they were forced to make in order to survive and prosper and which left surprisingly lasting polygene traces reflected in existing global differences in traditional behavior, which even the naked eye can see so readily today. The recent failing attempts to make Afghanistan democratic illustrate the point well in blood, violence, tradition, and despair.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: An early investigator of the evolution of intelligence, Hippolyte Taine expressed himself as follows in 1867. ““The man-plant,” says Alfieri, “is in no country born more vigorous than in Italy”; and never, in Italy, was it so vigorous as from 1300 to 1500, from the contemporaries of Dante down to those of Michael Angelo, Cæsar Borgia, Julius II., and Macchiavelli. The first distinguishing mark of a man of those times is the integrity of his mental instrument. Nowadays, after three hundred years of service, ours has lost somewhat of its temper, sharpness, and suppleness (…) It is just the opposite with those impulsive spirits of new blood and of a new race [that were the Italians of the Late Middle Ages and of the Renaissance].” Do you sense that analysis is grounded at a thermodynamical level?

  Helmuth Nyborg: The mathematician and physicist, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) said in 1883 something to the effect that: If you cannot measure a phenomenon and express it in numbers, you don’t know what you are talking about. You may be at the beginning of knowledge but have certainly not advanced to the state of science, whatever the matter may be.

  This problem is not only Taine’s but has been with us since dawn. People think of a phenomenon, say “impulsive spirit” or “motivation”, then they reify it and ascribe it causal value. Suddenly they have an explanation. Why did I do it? Well, I was motivated. They don’t see that this is a circular explanation: How do you know you were motivated? Well, I did it.

  This kind of muddled thinking was common in the past and is still widespread today. One current widespread form is Social Constructivism, exemplified by, say, unsubstantiable theories of “systemic racism” or, “glass ceiling” in “Gender research” (where Gender is loosely what you feel; a lived cultural proxy for real, measurable, biological sex differences).

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Please feel free to add anything else.

  Helmuth Nyborg: It worries me to think that the political scientist Charles Murray (2003) has a valid point, when he concluded that Western thinking has been decaying since 1850. This most likely has to do with declining global and local average IQ.

  In that connection it hurts to watch the numerally quantifiable left-oriented political activist overtake of many modern universities and media, with their associated unprofessional “Cancel Culture”, “Critical Race Studies” and politically motived data-poor gender and LGBTQ+++ activist reports.

  It is terrifying to realize that so many weak academic administrators today carelessly allow left-oriented student hooligans to attack and have sacked serious researchers they have a political distaste for, instead of furiously defending free speech and independent research in the Academy.

  It is saddening to see that so many modern universities seem to have completely forgotten the Humboldtian ideals of a free University, and instead have allowed their organization to degrade into mindless mass-producing institutions, where political correctness all too easily overturns rational science and IQ research(ers) are tabooed.

  All this bode well neither for the future of European democracy nor the sustainability of enlightened societies.

O Tempera. O Mores.


That conversation was initially published in The Postil Magazine‘s October 2021 issue

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: coevolution gene-culture, dysgenic fertility, Grégoire Canlorbe, Helmuth Nyborg, Hippolyte Taine, Italian Renaissance, Lord Kelvin, Olympic canyoning, second law of thermodynamics

A conversation with Kenya Kura, for The Postil Magazine

A conversation with Kenya Kura, for The Postil Magazine

by Grégoire Canlorbe · Sep 1, 2021

  Kenya Kura is currently an associate professor at Gifu Shotoku Gakuen University in Gifu prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the University of Tokyo (B.A. in Law) and obtained Ph.D. in Economics from University of California, San Diego in 1995. His original papers regarding the following conversation are “Why Do Northeast Asians Win So Few Nobel Prizes?” (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.2466/04.17.CP.4.15) and “Japanese north–south gradient in IQ predicts differences in stature, skin color, income, and homicide rate” (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289613000949).

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Could you start by reminding us of your main findings about IQ differences?

  Kenya Kura: My first motivation about IQ study, basically, came from the simple fact that some IQ researchers, way back, like Richard Lynn and Arthur Jensen among others, reported that East Asians are higher in their IQ. And I was just wondering if it was true or not, and then, I went into the field of whether or not there is some kind of gradient of intelligence among Japanese prefectures. And so far, what I have found is very much in line with other findings that the Northern Japanese are somewhat more intelligent than the Southern residents on these islands. About the gradient amount Japanese people, what I have found is not at all unique: in Northern Japan IQ tends to be probably about three points higher than the average Japanese. And in the Southern Island of Okinawa, for example, it is like seven points lower than the average. And pretty much, it varies. Sort of stylized pattern that I figured out for many times and very consistently. That’s pretty much it. Also, I’ve been probably more interested in the psychological differences between the East Asians and the Europeans than most of the European Psychologists.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Do you have something to say about the dysgenic patterns (i.e., the factors of genetic decline at the level of things like fertility gaps) in contemporary Japan—compared with the West?

  Kenya Kura: Actually, Richard Lynn has been asking me for probably more than a decade, probably 15 years or so, if I can get some kind of evidence about this genetic effect in Japan. But unfortunately, I haven’t got a very solid dataset on the negative correlations—the so-called the famous dysgenic trend found almost everywhere in the world that more intelligent women tend to have fewer children. But, having said that, it’s very, very obvious that in Japan, this genetic effect is going on as much as in Western society. For example, Tokyo has the lowest fertility rate. And where most intelligent men and women tend to migrate when they are going to college or when they get a job and stuff like that. So, it’s apparent that most intelligent people are gathering in the biggest city areas like Tokyo, and Tokyo has the lowest fertility rate. So, it gives us some kind of evidence but, unfortunately, this is not a really solid analysis. I also figured out that the more educated you are, the fewer children you have. This is a very much stylized or prominent sort of phenomenon also found in Japan. So, I’m sure of this genetic effect.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Is it true that the taboo about genetic differences in intelligence is far less prevalent in Japan (and the other East-Asian countries) as it is in the West?

  Kenya Kura: I have been working on this subject matter for at least 20 years, and I got the impression that the real taboo of this kind of research is pretty much the same as in Western society. But there is one very big difference: in Western culture you can always pursue your scientific theme or scientific field and prove you are right. And it’s a very Western idea: individuals have a right to speak up and try to prove they are right, but Asian culture doesn’t have that. So, the problem is that Japanese scholars are scholars in some sense, including myself, but, actually, most of them are just mimicking or repeating what Western people are doing. So, there aren’t many people actually trying to show or present their own thesis, their own theory, so to speak. So in that sense, if Western society or Western Science Society says A is right, B is wrong, in the Japanese society, it is pretty much subordinate to the whole attitude.

  So, I would say that mainstream Japanese scholars tend to just follow the mainstream Western culture. Personally, as for this sensitive scientific field, I really don’t have any friend working on this matter. People, including myself, are afraid to be regarded as a very strange, cranky person who is saying: “look, in group data, we are so different that there isn’t much we can do to, for example, alleviate poverty in the third world or in developing countries.” If you say that, then people think, “What?” Even though you might be right—many people think you might be right—but it is not part of our culture to speak up, that’s why I don’t expect anything to come out of the Asian scientific society to have an influence on the Western science society.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: While any evolutionary psychologist agrees, in principle, that human individuals are not tabula rasa genetically, most of them nonetheless refuse to admit that it applies to groups as well, i.e., that human groups exhibit as much specific genetic characteristics as do human individuals. In other words, all agree that a human individual (whoever he is) is endowed with a specific individual genome that contributes to shaping his psychological identity; but only a minority agrees that a human society (whatever it is) is also endowed with a specific collective genome that contributes to shaping its cultural identity. How do you account for that duality?

  Kenya Kura: For this sort of question, I have pretty much the same opinion as other IQ researchers of this kind. Basically, as you said, many people agree about the genetic differences between individuals whereas, when it comes to group differences, they try to negate the existence of genetic differences. So, yes, there is a dichotomy, here. But I understand this idea because their point of view—because everybody wants to be a nice person. Right? So, if you are seeking for truth only as a scientist, that is fine. But we are not some sort of abstract existence without any physical reality because everybody around you feels awkward probably if you say: yeah, but, you know, group difference makes a lot of sense. And most of the sort of talk that inequality existing in this world is probably explained by genetic differences, as Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen said, makes all the people around you feel very, very awkward or strange about your political sort of personality or your political view, itself. I can say only probably this much. So, many people are just politically persuaded not to mention—not only that—not to recognize, trying to make a lot of effort not to recognize the difference and try to negate the fact. That’s my understanding.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: It seems the Indo-European cultural pattern that is the tripartite hierarchy of society for the benefit of a warlike, sacerdotal aristocracy with a heroic ethos (i.e., the ethos of self-singularizing and self-immortalizing oneself through military exploits accomplished in contempt for material subsistence) has been present or paralleled in traditional Japan. Do you suspect an Indo-European influence in Japan?

  Kenya Kura: Oh, I have sort of an idea. It’s not very much proven, but Japanese society or Japanese people are basically a hybrid, about 30 percent of the original so-called Jomons before the Chinese or Koreans came, about two thousand years ago. And this Korean or, I would say, Chinese genetic factor constitutes about 70 percent. So 70 percent of Chinese plus 30 percent of indigenous Japanese people is the basic genetic mix of current Japanese people. And this kind of huge 70 percent explains the East Asian characteristics. Basically, it gives us looks like mine, right? Probably, any European can notice that Japanese, Korean, Chinese typically have different face characteristics. And although, as I said, Japanese people have 70 percent of retaining this genetic tendency, the 30 percent remains in our genetic structure. And I suspect that this natural 30 percent gives us more of a war prone personality than the Chinese or the Koreans. So, that’s why we put a lot of war emphasis, like the Samurais’ theory, as you might know: more martial arts, real battle and war, and really domination, all over Japan. That’s my understanding.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: The traditional Japanese have been highly creative and sophisticated in the martial-arts field—to the point of surpassing the Westerners from that angle. Yet only the traditional Westerners have come to transpose to the field of science the art of fighting, i.e., to transpose to science the spirit of competition, innovation, and assertiveness associated with physical combat. How do you make sense of it?

  Kenya Kura: It’s a very good point—an interesting point for me, too. My understanding about it is that, for example, French people seem to like judo a lot. I have heard that it’s very popular. So, for example, judo, or we have a similar sort of art that is huge called kendo. But that kind of martial art, as you said, has been very sophisticated in this country, and also in China, to some degree, maybe even more so. But that gives me an idea of science itself because science itself is equally into any kind of sort of natural—not only natural reality, but also the analytical view for every kind of phenomenon. So, for example, we don’t have social science, and we just import it from the West. It’s the same. I mean, natural science was imported from the West. And when it comes to science, it’s also based on logic—a heavy dose of logic and mathematics, usually. None of the Asians were interested in mathematics, at least not as much as Western people had been. So, when it comes, for example, to geometry, even the ancient Greeks were very much interested in it. The Chinese people never developed the equivalent of that kind of logic. And it’s also true that mathematics has been developed almost exclusively in Northern Europe within the last five hundred years. And Chinese people, although they were in higher numbers than White Europeans, they didn’t develop anything. Neither did the Japanese or the Koreans.

  So, the problem is that East Asians tend to neglect the importance of logic. They don’t see that much. They just talk more emotionally, trying to sympathize with each other, and probably about political rubbish, more than Western people, but they don’t discuss things logically, nor try to express their understanding and make experiments to determine if something is true or not. Scientific inquiry is very much unique to Europeans. That’s my understanding. So, although it seems like East Asians are very quick to learn things—the Chinese are probably the quickest to learn anything—but they’ve never created anything. That’s my idea. So, they don’t have the scientific mentality, a sort of inquiry or sufficient curiosity to make science out of sophisticated martial arts.

  It may be true that the “traditional Japanese have been highly creative and sophisticated in the martial-arts field—to the point of surpassing the Westerners from that angle.” But I guess nowadays even judo or any kind of martial arts is more developed or more sophisticated, a lot more sophisticated, in European countries. The Japanese or Chinese created the original martial arts. But their emphasis—especially the Japanese, they put too much emphasis on their psychic rather than physical power. So, when you look at any kind of manga or anime, the theme is always the same: the rather small and weak main character has got some kind of psychic power and a special skill to beat up the bigger and stronger enemy. And it’s pretty much like “the force” in the Star Wars movies. But in the case of Japan, it’s a lot more emphasized. So, they tend to sort of think less about physical power and more about the psychic personality kind of thing. That’s the sort of phenomenon that we have, which shows some lack of analytical ability from my point of view.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: A common belief is that the Japanese people is both indifferent to the culture of Western peoples—and genetically homogenous to the point of containing no genius. Yet contemporary Japan is displaying a variety of geniuses in videogames (like Shigeru Miyamoto), music (like Koji Kondo), etc., and is quite opened to the Western world culturally. Videogames like Zelda and Resident Evil are highly influenced by the West: the Western heroic fantasy in the case of the former; and George Romero’s movies in the case of the latter. Some Japanese actors (or movie directors) enjoy worldwide fame, like Hiroyuki Sanada who is portraying Scorpion in the new Mortal Kombat movie.

  Kenya Kura: About the sort of personality and the intelligence mixture of the geniuses, I guess—Dr. Templeton and Edward Dutton—I’m sure that you talked with him—Edward Dutton wrote a very good book about why genius exists and what kind of mixture of personality and intelligence we need to make a real genius. And I do agree basically with Edward Dutton’s idea that we don’t have the sort of nice mixture of intelligence and, at the same time, a sort of very strong mindset to stand out from other people. The Japanese tend to be among others too much. So, they can’t really speak up and have a different kind of worldview from other people. As I said, Japanese scholars tend to rather avoid discussion or serious conflict of some point of view against other scholars so, that’s why there is no progress or no need to prove what you’re saying is true or not. That is a problem.

  Okay, so, this is just a part of answering your question. And the other thing is—oh, but I’ve been talking about science—in order to be a scientist, you have to basically propose some kind of thesis and at least show some evidence that your thesis is right or proved in pieces. But when it comes to fine arts or Manga, Anime or literature or movies or games, you don’t really have to argue against other people. You just create what you feel is beautiful or great—whatever. So, because Japanese culture basically avoids discussions or arguments against each other, they are more inclined to create something like visual arts. That’s why I believe Japanese manga or anime have been very popular also among Europeans. Probably including yourself, right? I’m sure you’ve played or traded video games from Japan.

  You talked about Hiroyuki Sanada. He’s one of the most famous action movie stars, like Tom Cruise type. So, I understand what you wrote, here. And the other thing is—it’s pretty much the same. In the Edo period, about 300 years ago, there was fine arts called ukiyo-e. These paintings and printings were sold to the public. And the French impressionists in the 19th century were, as far as I know, very attracted to those ukiyo-e and they got some inspirations from them and how to draw the lighting or nature itself. So, I do believe that Japanese people are probably genetically talented to some degree. I would dare to say they’re talented in visual arts. But it does not mean that they are talented in science. These activities are totally different, which gives me a very interesting sort of contrast.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: In intergroup competition, the Empire of Japan was highly successful militarily—until 1945’s nuclear bombing, obviously. How do you account for that performance?

  Kenya Kura: A German soldier was a very effective soldier, even compared with Americans or Swedes. So, I believe it’s very similar in the case of Japan. The Japanese tend to be tightly connected to each other, which gives them a very high advantage in military activity. That’s why they first tried to really dominate the whole of Asia, and, eventually, they had a war against the US in order to sort of get the whole Chinese continent. And, of course, Japan was defeated. But Japan is not so much endowed with natural resources like oil or coal, or whatever. In some sense, we’re very strong in military actions, it’s true. So, it’s very similar to the story that the Chinese are probably more inclined to study and learn original things like Confucius or the old stuff in order to show how intelligent they are, whereas the Japanese tend to be more war prone, more warmongers. They think more seriously and put more emphasis on military actions than the Chinese or Koreans. So, that’s why Japan, in the last century, first invaded Korea, and then, moved into the Chinese continent and defeated Chinese army. That’s just how I understand it. It’s very similar to German history.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Democracy is commonly thought to allow for an “open society” in which every opinion can be discussed—and in which ideological conflict can be settled through exclusively peaceful, electoral means, without the slightest drop of blood. Does the democratic regime in Japan since 1947 corroborate that vision?

  Kenya Kura: You’re right. Exactly. You are French, so you have a serious understanding of how people can revolt against the ruling class because of the French Revolution, which is the most famous revolution in human history. So you have a serious understanding about the existence of conflict and that the product of this conflict may be fruitful, good for all human beings. But, unfortunately, Asia does not have that sort of culture that if you say something true and then, have a serious conflict of opinions about it, it may turn out to have a fruitful result. That’s very Western to me.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Would you like to add a few words?

Kenya Kura: I’ve probably said pretty much everything in a scattered manner, but let me emphasize one thing: usually, for any kind of European person, the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese look very similar or the same, but genetically, we are probably somewhat different, much as, for example, Slavic language people and the Germanic language group. So there might be some kind of microdifference of this kind which may, especially in the future, explain the dynamics of History. That is what I want to know and try to understand.


That conversation was initially published in The Postil Magazine‘s September 2021 issue

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: aristocratic-warlike ethos, Grégoire Canlorbe, Japan, Kenya Kura, Richard Lynn, samurai ethics, Tatu Vanhanen

A conversation with Drew Fraser, for American Renaissance

A conversation with Drew Fraser, for American Renaissance

by Grégoire Canlorbe · Juil 17, 2021

A Canadian-born academic, Andrew William Fraser was an associate professor in the Department of Public Law at Macquarie University in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He is best-known for his book The WASP Question. [The views here expressed are not to be confused with those of American Renaissance nor with those of Canlorbe.]

  Grégoire Canlorbe: A striking contemporary trait in the WASP people is what may be called extra-ethnic individualism, i.e., the propensity to assess foreigners (including those non-white) as self-determined, free “individuals” who can transition fluidly from an ethnic group to another one—and to welcome them on one’s territory and to provide them with national citizenship. Is extra-ethnic individualism an acquired, “cultural” trait—or is such feature one biologically anchored?

  Drew Fraser: There is no radical break between biology and culture. Racial differences generally are, in large part, biologically or genetically grounded. But culture, too, is more than a social construct; it, too, has a substantial biological component. Deeply entrenched cultural differences between racial groups may be reflected in their respective genomes. The culture of any given racial group is never static; it changes and develops, sometimes in tandem with genetic changes.

  One example of the interaction between biology and culture was the emergence of lactose tolerance among peoples who gave up a hunter-gatherer way of life to engage in animal husbandry. The concept of bioculture presupposes the co-evolution of biology and culture.

  But any such co-evolution is a long process occurring within stable gene pools over millennia. Negroes have been in America for a little over four centuries without assimilating into the dominant white culture, much less undergoing genetic changes as a consequence. Paradoxically, American Negro culture, having been released from the disciplinary matrix formerly imposed by slavery and Jim Crow, is becoming steadily more remote from WASP bioculture. Contemporary black Americans dependent on public welfare are reverting to the fast-life strategies (e.g., low investing parenting of many children) associated with their sub-Saharan African ancestors.

  WASP biocultures are generally characterized by predispositions towards individualism, exogamy, and small nuclear families. As a consequence, WASPs display a relative lack of ethnocentrism. Kevin MacDonald explains these biocultural traits as an evolutionary adaptation to the rigors of life in cold, ecologically adverse climates. Natural selection worked there to favor the reproductive success of individuals capable of sustaining “non-kinship-based forms of reciprocity.”

  The Anglo-Saxon Männerbünde who invaded and settled in England were bound together originally more by covenant than kinship. The prominent place accorded to oath-taking and covenants in early England was associated with the growth of the individualism later manifested in the development of the English common law of contract, private property and eventually impersonal corporate forms of business enterprise. All of these legal norms required sustained co-operation between and among strangers.

  The distinctive culture that emerged from the interaction between the genotype of the English people and their environment can be understood as what Richard Dawkins calls an extended phenotype. Like the spider’s web or the beaver’s dam, the extended phenotype of WASP bioculture creates a feedback loop between genes and environment. If the WASP bioculture creates a “society of strangers,” its most characteristic extended phenotype is perhaps the modern nation-state. WASPs can be said to have invented the nation-state as the primary institutional expression of their collective identity.

  The problem is that Anglo-Saxon states, like Frankenstein’s monster, have escaped control of, by, and for the people who created them. WASP bioculture emerged within a high-trust society of strangers within which the state was expected to act as trustee for the interests of society as a whole. Today, those Anglo-Saxon nation-states have been absorbed into a more or less autonomous and self-perpetuating, globalist system of governance.

  WASPs are now vulnerable to the machinations of transnational corporate welfare states determined to open up every formerly Anglo-Saxon country to an unending flood of mass immigration. Predominantly non-white immigrants come from low-trust societies predisposed to elevate kinship and tribal loyalties above impersonal norms of fairness and justice.  Individual WASPs are ill-prepared to compete with racial strangers co-operating with each other to advance their collective interests.

  Clearly, the survival of WASP biocultures depends upon the successful adaptation to these altered circumstances.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: What is your take on Samuel Huntington’s classification of contemporary civilizations—and on his claim that the XXI century’s struggles will be neither economically nor racially motivated, but instead “civilizational” clashes? Did Huntington have a satisfying, perspicacious understanding of WASP civilizational model?

  Drew Fraser: Huntington contended that clashes between civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace but, at the same time, looked to an international order based on civilizations as the best safeguard against war. He probably overestimated the unity, cohesion, and cultural continuity of the major civilizations. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the case of Western civilization.

  The United States, according to Huntington, is the core state of Western civilization. He believed that the United States possesses a core “Anglo-Protestant culture.” Recognizing that mass immigration represented a serious threat to the survival of that core culture, Huntington held to the vain hope that new immigrants could and would assimilate into the host culture.

  His analysis rested, as well, upon the presupposition that the core Anglo-Protestant culture established in the British North American colonies has survived intact down to the present day. In fact, the character of the American people was altogether different in the colonial and early republican periods. Sociologist David Riesman described the dominant character-type of those days as “inner-directed.” Knowing the difference between right and wrong, early Americans were “rugged individualists,” possessing a sort of inbuilt psychic gyroscope that enabled them to stay on course, whatever the obstacles.

  Nowadays, most Americans (especially those in the managerial-professional elites) display an “other-directed’ character of the sort essential to success in corporate, governmental, and academic bureaucracies. According to Robert Jackall, the moral ethos prevalent in managerial circles is “most notable for its lack of fixedness.” The other-directed character requires, not an internal gyroscope, but a sort of radar able to pick up minute shifts in the fluctuating relationships with significant others in a mass-mediated social order.

  The rootless cosmopolitanism of an other-directed corporate culture is driven by an “essential, pervasive, and thoroughgoing pragmatism.” In modern multiracial mass societies, the early republican constitution of liberty was replaced by a corporatist constitution of control promoting the enhanced growth and vitality of an increasingly plutocratic globalist system.

  Amidst the ruins of their ancestral bioculture, WASPs throughout the Anglosphere have been abandoned by Woke corporate welfare states which no longer even pretend to represent them. WASPs are now de facto, if not yet de jure, a stateless people. Only by falling back upon their ancestral racial and ethnic identity will ordinary WASPs find the spiritual strength to turn the tables on cosmopolitan elites.  It is those faithless elites, not other civilizations that pose the greatest existential threat to the Anglo-Saxon peoples.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: In your most recent article, you enjoin “virtuous WASPs” to “challenge the corrupt globalist plutocracy misgoverning the Anglosphere.” Who are exactly those plutocrats—and how should they be fought?

  Drew Fraser: The modern Anglo-American business corporation is a product of the managerial revolution. For more than a century now, ownership of the business corporation has been separated from control. Shareholders are no longer responsible for the governance of the corporate system. Complex systems of corporate finance have created interlocking structures of corporate control concentrating power in the hands of an irresponsible plutocratic oligarchy.

  That plutocracy is made up of people from a wide range of ethnicities. Throughout the Anglosphere, Jews play prominent roles in finance, media, academia, the law, and politics. Other ethnic groups have found niches of their own, such as the Indians involved in Silicon Valley. While no one ethnic group dominates the globalist plutocracy numerically—even WASPs can still be found within its ranks—there is little doubt that what E. Michael Jones calls “the Jewish revolutionary spirit” provides what amounts to its guiding ideology.

  WASPs are largely responsible for the invention of both the nation-state and the modern business corporation. I believe WASPs have an ethnoreligious duty, therefore, to clean up the mess that they and others have made of their biocultures and its extended phenotypes (or Lebenswelt as a German might put it, more poetically). Having become a stateless people, the WASP diaspora ought to re-model itself to some degree on the experience of the other, once-stateless, diaspora which became our chief ethnic rival; namely, the Jews.

  In other words, like the Jews, WASPs should be more than the ethnomasochistic people-in-itself that they are at present; they can and should become instead an ethnocentric people-for-itself.  The one essential lesson they must learn from the Jews is that it is morally permissible, indeed obligatory, to ask of every public policy, corporate institution, and religious practice one simple question; namely, “Is it good for the WASPs?”

  WASPs need to regenerate the ethnoreligious spirit of the early medieval Angelcynn church.  In the time of Alfred the Great (849-899), the church provided the embryonic English people with the first intimation that they, too, could become, a “holy nation” destined to do God’s work in healing a wounded world. The most important task of a resurrected Angelcynn church and its ancillary educational institutions will be to prepare WASPs to play a leading role in the reconstitution of a responsible ruling class.

  Just how one major aspect of such a program might be accomplished is the subject of my forthcoming book on the republican reformation of corporate governance. It is to be published shortly by Arktos Media. It is entitled: Reinventing Aristocracy in the Age of Woke Capital: How Honourable WASP Elites Could Rescue Our Civilization from Bad Governance by Irresponsible Corporate Plutocrats.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You addressed the “German Church Struggle” in the 1930s—and how the victory of the side most famously represented by Karl Barth would encourage the cosmopolitan character of Christianity in the whole West. What alternative is there to the deracinated universalism of mainstream Christianity?

  Drew Fraser: The story of the conflict within German Protestant churches between supporters and opponents of the National Socialist regime is known as the Kirchenkampf.  Mainstream historical writing on the church struggle typically rests upon one unshakeable premise; namely, that, even before the war, the National Socialists, generally, and Adolf Hitler, in particular, were culpably criminal and irredeemably evil.

  Karl Barth played a leading role in organizing ecclesiastical opposition to Hitler’s regime and its German Christian supporters. At the end of the war, Barth emerged as the clear victor over his völkische rivals in the Protestant churches. By the 1960s, he was a world renowned religious thinker, even appearing on the cover of Time magazine. He gave an enormous boost to cosmopolitan Christianity by rejecting any Volkskirche by denying that either nations or nationality were any part of the divinely-ordained order of creation.

  Barth refused to acknowledge that the Church can “be regarded as a human production.” He insisted that the Church does not owe its existence to this world; rather its being is “secured, unthreatened, and incontestable only from above, only from God, not from below, not from the side of its human members.”

  By contrast, the ideal of the Volkskirche rejected by Barth and his ecclesiastical allies held that “in the national determination of man we have an order of creation no less than in the relationship of man and woman and parents and children.” But mainstream Christians in every erstwhile Anglo-Saxon country now regard their own peoples as merely historical constructs whose purely contingent national identity cannot be identified as a command of God or a presupposition of the divine order of things.

  Barth’s complete ideological triumph has effectively licensed the virtual extinction of Christian nationhood throughout the Western world.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: When it comes to the Anglican Church in Australia—how do you assess the extent of its fall compared to Western Christianity’s other sub-movements?

  Drew Fraser:  The Anglican Church of Australia, especially in its Sydney Diocese, regards itself as Christian first, evangelical second, and Anglican in a distant third place.  In his 2012 Presidential Address, the then-Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen lent his fulsome support to the transformation of Sydney into a multiracial global city. He celebrated the fact that between 2006 and 2011 over 300,000 migrants arrived in Sydney from over 216 countries.  He was not at all concerned that China and India now dominate the countries of origin.

  Just this year, the Sydney Diocese elected as its new Archbishop a Buddhist adult convert to Christianity whose Sri Lankan parents migrated to Australia when he was a young child.  Clearly, Sydney Anglicans have no interest in the survival of a national church nurturing and preserving the ethnoreligious identity of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants whose ancestors founded the Church of England in Australia.

  This represents a sharp departure from the hopes invested in the Broad-Church movement in the nineteenth-century Church of England.  1 John 5:6-8 tells us that the Trinitarian character of a holy people is found in the “three who bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree as one.”  At least one Anglican theologian, Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), located the Spirit, the water, and the blood in the tripartite spiritual constitution of every national church.

  Maurice defended the Trinitarian unity of family, church, and nation. Unfortunately, the Anglican Church of Australia and elsewhere has rejected such a traditionalist theology. Instead, WASPs in the Australian Church have embraced the secular cult of human equality with all the enthusiasm their middle-class English souls can muster.

  Anglo-Australian Anglicans have missed altogether the theological point and purpose of Australian nationhood. Indeed, the Church has joined forces with the State to siphon off the Spirit and the water from the blood-faith of its Angelcynn forbears. The amorphous mass of individualistic WASP Anglicans must be satisfied with the thin gruel offered them by a “public theology” engaged in the competitive (indeed pathological) display of out-group altruism which characterizes evangelical mission in a post-Christian world.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You suggest holding theology as the “queen of the racial sciences”—and race as a trinitarian phenomenon paralleling the trinitarian deity. Thus you envision “race-as-biology,” “race-as-ethnicity,” and “race-as-theology” are the three constitutive elements of race—especially in the white man. Please tell us more about it.

  Drew Fraser: There are three dimensions to racial and ethnic identity. The first, race-as-biology, promises to shed light on the relationship between blood and behaviour as manifested in measurable group differences such as average intelligence, temperament, and reproductive strategies.

  By contrast, race-as-ethnicity deals with the myths and symbols which move men to collective action. As Hannah Arendt observed, to act, “in the most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin…to set something in motion.” The actor is someone who starts something new. Applied to the birth of an ethno-nation, her insights suggest that action promotes the process of ethnogenesis in two stages: (1) the beginning made by a charismatic leader; and (2) the subsequent construction of a novel collective identity by his followers.

  No wonder, then, that the imagined community of Christians appeared in late antiquity “in the guise of a miracle.” Not even the most devout Jews longing for the messianic restoration of national Israel expected what actually came to pass. Against all the odds, Christians—this new race of men—were moved by the Spirit to accomplish their divinely-appointed mission.

  Race-as-theology helps us to understand how Spirit and blood mingled with the life-giving power of water to sustain the first, embryonic Christian communities. Since then, Christian nationhood has been nourished by the continuing interplay of Spirit, water, and blood. But disorder or dysfunction in one or more of those elements has led many nations to defeat and destruction.

  Even the most atheistic practitioners of race-as-biology concede that a shared religious faith is likely to enhance the inclusive fitness of any race or nation. Conversely, the essentially trinitarian character of Christian nationhood is subverted when the unitarian logic of biology suppresses the theological dimension of racial or ethnic identity.

  But a one-dimensional obsession with race-as-theology is no less productive of disastrous consequences. The now-dominant unitarian theology of cosmopolitan Christianity asserts that there is only one race, the human race. The denial by “anti-racists” of the fixed, intractable, biological character of the observable differences between various population groups provides ideological cover for the deliberate displacement of white European populations in favour of non-white immigrants.

  Differences between Negroes, white Europeans, and Orientals are part of the divinely-ordered nature of things. Race is a theological not just a biological or cultural phenomenon.  Those who refuse to recognize the theological significance of race do so at their peril.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Could you remind us of your case for a “patriotic king” in Australia, a wording you openly borrow from a book by Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751)?

  Drew Fraser:  Royalty plays a central role in the bible story. Jesus the Christ traced his descent to King David. As the very model of an English David, Alfred the Great established a Christian kingdom in England. The hereditary monarch of the British dominions once served as trustee-in-chief for his realm. The religious significance of the monarchy was given formal recognition when Henry VIII, his heirs, and successors were declared to be Supreme Governors of the Church of England. The Royal Supremacy played a significant role in the rise of the Broad-Church movement in the nineteenth-century Church of England.  Nowadays, it has since become little more than a hollow simulacrum of the putative royal authority vested in a shapeshifting Crown. As in secular matters, the reigning monarch exercises the Royal Supremacy as a rubber stamp for any government of the United Kingdom commanding a majority in the House of Commons.

  A major objective of a future network of Angelcynn churches throughout the Anglosphere should be the rescue of the captive Crown in right of the Royal Supremacy from corrupt politicians with no demonstrable interest in the spiritual welfare of Anglo-Saxons “at home” or in the diaspora. Once Royal Supremacy over the Church of England has been insulated from political control, it should be extended to every reformed Angelcynn Church, not just in the United Kingdom, but throughout the British dominions as well.  In time, it may become possible for the Crown to charter Angelcynn churches, even in what remains of the American republic.

  In the eighteenth century, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, appalled by the blatant corruption of the ruling Whig oligarchy, hoped that the idea of a Patriot King would re-awaken the English nation from its spiritual slumbers. The appearance of such a patriot prince would have been a miracle indeed. In our own time, it is doubly hard to imagine a British prince daring to stand against a government determined to maintain its control over the royal prerogative in ecclesiastical affairs. But, as Bolingbroke wrote, those who pray for such a deliverance must not neglect such means as are in their power “to keep the cause of reason, of virtue, and of liberty alive.” The blessing of a patriot prince might indeed “be withheld from us” but to “deserve at least that it be granted to us, let us prepare to receive it, to improve it, and to co-operate with it.”

  Bolingbroke knew that were a patriot prince to campaign in defence of the monarchy, he would be subject to a raging torrent of criticism and abuse. Yet when a good prince is seen “to suffer with the people, and in some measure for them…many advantages would accrue to him.” For one thing, the cause of the British peoples generally “and his own cause would be made the same by their common enemies.”

  What is the nature of that cause? In short, acting as the Supreme Governor of an Angelcynn communion extending throughout the Anglosphere, a patriot prince will call forth a spirit of resistance to both managerial statism and the abstract universalism of globalist plutocracy. He will do everything in his power to civilize those wild and immoral forces. But the appearance of a Patriot King is not inevitable. Indeed, only a people whose lost liberties are restored to memory will recognize his coming as an opportunity to reshape their allegedly preordained future.

  Anglo-Saxon republicans may yet be compelled to call upon God to save the King. As things stand now, the ritual absence of the monarch from everyday life is but one more sign that we are no longer a serious people. Forswearing the faith of our fathers, we surrender our bodies to the state and our souls to the degenerate society of the spectacle. It would be a sign of spiritual and moral progress were we to wish that a Patriot King will come to save us.

  In effect, the idea of a Patriot King would serve as a Sorelian myth, inspiring WASPs to act in opposition to an irresponsible and corrupt plutocratic system demanding automatic obedience and mindless conformity. For the radical French syndicalist Georges Sorel (1847-1922), men cannot be galvanized into action through discourse or considered analysis. According to historian Irving Louis Horowitz, Sorel viewed action as “the outcome of an appeal to imagination and intuition, which dramatizes the consequences of an act rather than [offering] a reasoned prediction of those consequences.”

  An ethnoreligious appeal to the idea of a Patriot King will nourish WASPs around the world “on the strength of kinship and community feeling; on the ability to act as a collective unit.” To act as a whole, as a united people, WASPs will need to focus on a single unifying element. As a Sorelian myth, the pragmatic value of the idea of a Patriot King will not depend upon its “objectively primary content as such, but simply the quality of making men cohere in a common endeavour.”

  Remember, though: a king is, indeed, like unto God; he cannot save those who will not save themselves. Those who pray for the miraculous appearance of a Patriot King must make themselves worthy of such a blessing. The resurrection of the Angelcynn church will be but the first step in the salvation of the WASPs. Much else will need to be done if virtuous WASPs are to create and secure “little republics” of their own on the fiercely-contested terrain of a transnational civil society.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: You studied the “theological significance of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70.” What would be the political, “theological significance” of the reconstruction of the Jerusalem temple—and of the reestablishment of the priestly caste attached to its service?

  Drew Fraser: Mainstream Christianity rests upon some version of a futurist eschatology. That is to say, the most Christians, Catholics and Protestants alike, believe that the Bible reveals the salvation history and destiny of humanity from the creation of planet earth in Genesis until the end of the world at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Belief in the prophesied end of the world takes several forms. Most Christians are “amillennialists” who take no firm position of when or how the Second Coming will take place. “Post-millennialists,” by contrast, believe that Christ will return only after the kingdom of God has established its dominion to the ends of the earth.

  Christian Zionists (aka “dispensationalists”) believe that the reconstruction of the Jerusalem Temple will inaugurate the Millennial (thousand-year) reign of Jesus Christ here on earth in preparation for the Last Judgement. On this view, the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948 was in partial fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation to all Christians.

  Not all Christians, however, accept the deeply-entrenched (though competing) ecclesiastical traditions grounded in a futurist eschatology. Preterists (from the Latin praeter meaning “past”) hold that the Bible story effectively comes to an end with the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. Their reading of the bible story suggests that those who look forward to the return of Jesus Christ at the end of the world are misinterpreting the Bible in accordance with presuppositions grounded in a false hermeneutic. Futurist eschatology, preterists say, is simply unbiblical.

  Preterists hold to a covenantal eschatology grounded in a Hebrew hermeneutic according to which the bible story has to do with the rise and fall of Old Covenant Israel. They insist that the clear text of Scripture shows that all of the biblical prophesies of a new heaven and a new earth, not just those in Revelations, were fulfilled in AD 70. In August of that year, Christ came (the Parousia or Second Coming) to oversee the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the physical centre of the old heaven and old earth occupied by God’s first people. In Revelation, we see the Old Covenant world of Israel sinking into lakes of fire, while the New Covenant enters into history to create a new heaven and new earth. The Jerusalem Temple makes its exit in a spectacular cataclysm. The new creation becomes incarnate in the church, the ecclesiastical Body of Christ, which by AD 70 has been carried to the ends of the known world. There the bible story ends.

  The Old Covenant bound the holy nation of Israel to God; the New Covenant extended the grace of God to every nation (ethnos) of the oikumene. The leaves of the tree of life in the New Jerusalem were to serve for “the healing of nations.” Old Israel was no more. On Judgement Day, Christ sentenced the stiff-necked synagogue of Satan to spiritual death. Only a righteous remnant was left to carry the holy seed of Israel unto the nations. For almost two thousand years, every Christian nation adjured Jews within their realm to recognize their Redeemer, thus ending their age-old rebellion against God. In sharp contrast to the Jews, Anglo-Saxons eagerly entered into the new covenant world.

  A preterist biblical hermeneutic is clearly opposed to Christian Zionist dispensationalism.  The reconstruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the modern Israeli state cannot be justified theologically within the framework of covenant eschatology. (It would, of course, signal a blasphemous desire to reverse the divine judgement on Old Covenant Israel.)

  On a positive note, preterism provides a warrant for an Angelcynn ethnonational church aiming to raise up WASPs as a holy nation in their own right. Such a warrant was clearly exercised when the early Christian church recognized a biocultural affinity between the covenantal language of the Bible itself and the prominent place occupied by covenants in tribal social structures of Old England.

  Conversely, once Anglo-Saxon churches downplayed the importance of blood covenants to the spiritual life of both family and nation, the ancestral attachment of Anglo-Saxon Protestants to the Body of Christ began to fade away. The civil religion of the modern Anglican church, focused as it is on personal salvation, refuses to recognize itself as the spiritual home of the large, partly-inbred extended family that constitutes the Anglo-Saxon ethny. No such bloodless faith will ever give birth to a holy nation in the eyes of God.

  Contemporary WASPs drawing upon the wisdom enshrined in Holy Scripture will recognize that their own ethnonation, no less than ancient Israel, must ground itself in a divinely-ordained covenant between the dead, the living, and the unborn. The living members of a godly nation will see themselves as the trustees of the family blood, rights, property, name, and position for their lifetime. They have an inheritance from the past to be developed and preserved for the future. Along with its warrant for nationhood and a storehouse of wisdom for all ages, the biblical fate of Old Covenant Israel stands as a clear warning to any nation breaching its covenantal obligations to God and man.

  Grégoire Canlorbe: Thank you for your time. Please, feel free to add anything else.

Drew Fraser: Thanks for the opportunity to do this. I found your questions quite stimulating.


That interview was initially published in American Renaissance, in July 2021

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: alt-right, coevolution gene-culture, Drew Fraser, German Church Struggle, Grégoire Canlorbe, Hannah Arendt, Henry St. John 1st Viscount Bolingbroke, Karl Barth, Race and theology, Samuel Huntington, Temple at Jerusalem, WASP

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