Alba Rosa: Ten Traditionalist Essays about the Crisis in the Modern West

by Alexander Wolfheze

Alba Rosa is dedicated to the self-surpassing re-birth of the Western peoples — and to the cause of their nationalist-identitarian avant garde.Alba Rosa gives a Traditionalist analysis of the deepening Crisis of the Modern West under the aegis of the increasingly totalitarian ideology of Culture Nihilism. This ideology — defined by historico-materialist myopia, militant secularism, socio-cultural deconstruction and collective narcissism — is being implemented ever more rapidly by the globalist hostile elite of the West. During this final stage of the Cultural Nihilist onslaught, characterized by wholesale ethnic replacement and total social deconstruction, Western civilization is approaching its historical ‘event horizon’. Alba Rosa exposes the psycho-historical dynamics of Cultural Nihilism and puts the approaching ‘hellstorm’ of the Postmodern West into a Traditionalist cultural-historical perspective. At the same time, it sketches the looming spectre of the historical Nemesis of the Cultural Nihilist hostile the Archaeofuturist Revolution.

320 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Zo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful, hopeful and humane exploration of the crisis of the West. Explores issues of interest to the contemporary "new right" such as immigration, cultural self-hatred (oikophobia), and feminism, from a cultural perspective. Wolfheze is an erudite and penetrating author who critically examines the deeply flawed logic and (im)morality of the global elites, and exposes both for what they are: the greatest threat the west has ever encountered.

Be aware the language is at times quite dense, and readers unfamiliar with traditionalism as a formal school and thought will have a learning curve, and is in some chapters a little too esoteric. But, in truth the book is also an excellent introduction to these topics and was in the main a straightforward and inspirational read.

[Monty Milne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is a reference to the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance movement. The author sees himself as part of the resistance to the contemporary set of beliefs held by the Establishment in the West, which he calls “Cultural Nihilism.” He explores its reach, and its dangers, and gives his views on the answer: “Archaeo-futurism”. Wolfheze is a thinker of the alt-right, and one does not have to share any of his opinions to find them of interest, not least because of the distinctively Dutch spin he gives to them.

Potential readers should be aware that there are sections of the book which are dense and difficult. The author loves to stick in as many phrases as he can in French, Latin, Greek, German, Hebrew, Dutch, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Elvish. (OK I made the last couple up, but you get the picture). I’m not quite sure what to make of this. All these phrases are helpfully translated in the Glossary at the end of the book. Sometimes they are apt and illuminating, but in general I feel this is overdone, and it seems a bit like showing off, which is of course anathema to the English reactionary tradition (which is essentially anti intellectual).

The author’s Dutchness is for me his most interesting feature. He talks of the importance of earthing culture in its religious and historical context, which for the Dutch is Radical Protestantism. According to Wolfheze, there are features of this which made Dutch culture particularly susceptible to cultural nihilism. I am inclined to agree, but this seems to me because Radical Protestantism is innately antithetical to a reactionary-traditionalist world view. It seems to me that this is a circle which Wolfheze cannot square. And anyway, what about Dutch Catholics? There have always been significant numbers of them.

There is something wonderful about the Dutch National Anthem – a stirring hymn extolling William the Silent – which manages to be simultaneously protestant-rebellious and reactionary-loyalist (I’m thinking of the bit when the arch-rebel William protests he has always been respectful to his Spanish Habsburg overlords). Maybe the Dutch right still has this endearing but slightly schizophrenic tendency.

It is the differences with other alt-right thinkers, rather than the similarities, which I find most intriguing. For Wolfheze, the problem for Europe is not Islam, but secularism. And Identitarianism, rather than the enemy, is our friend (the right sort of Identity, of course, not the “woke” varieties). Sometimes the writing soars to great rhetorical heights, such as one section where he goes on an extended riff imagining the final fate of the Mona Lisa – perhaps vandalised to destruction by Daesh, or taken away by a Chinese tycoon to be exhibited in his Wunderkammer of extinct civilisations, or maybe even sunk in the Seine by the last curator of the Louvre who feels a fit of shame at the failure of the West. And there are phrases which stick in the mind:

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

So, overall, I found this a stimulating book – perhaps especially when I didn’t agree with it. In one respect, though, Wolfheze is too diffident: the Dutch are more important to the world, both in the past and now, than he perhaps gives them credit for. It is true that the entirety of the Netherlands could fit into North Dakota more than four times over. But, compared to the land of Erasmus and Rembrandt, what has North Dakota ever done for us?