Renaud Camus - La Grande Déculturation

"Culture is the culture of the dead, of one's parents, grand-parents, forebears, ancestors, of the people, of the nation, and even of that which is now unmentionable - all the more so since it has been agreed upon that it does not exist - of one's race. 

The banishment of the latter term is significant. Through it, dragged along in its fall and proscription, everything that pertains to lineage and heritage is targeted as well; and culture, as a consequence, is also affected." 

"Hyper-democracy cannot tolerate hierarchy, but culture is pure hierarchy. Dogmatic anti-racism rejects the idea of origins, but culture is nothing more than a groping towards the origin, and it is through this constantly disappointed quest - necessarily disappointed, since the origin is always higher, always upstream - that it attains the universal. Culture cannot exist under the hyper-democratic, dogmatically anti-racist regime, and as a matter of fact, we see it disappearing right before our eyes."

"Anti-racism assists hyper-democracy by entirely blocking, or at least making very difficult, the transmission of values, codes, rites and works of art that could - rightly or wrongly - be accused of belonging to a formerly or still dominant caste, class or ethnic group, to the point that it becomes a civic, democratic, anti-racist obligation to oppose that transmission (if only by not letting oneself be taught the things it claims to teach us)."

- Excerpts from  Renaud Camus, "La Grande Déculturation", Fayard (2008), currently unavailable in English translation.