Throughout history, radical and militant social movements hold onto an ideal goal, or Utopia to attract, galvanise, and mobilise followers. These Utopias are made to reverberate with something inherent to human nature: Hope.

It is easy to raise expectations for an ideal society; idealism plays a role even in not so ideal authoritarian Utopias. Guillaume Faye’s Eurosiberia, a concept he introduced in his book Archeofuturism in 1998, is an example of a fascist Utopia, a political confederation to preserve his vision of an ideal society. Eurosiberia eyes the landmass from Ireland to Russia where Faye wanted to build his ‘identitarian’ empire to unite White European people. Faye wanted his Utopia to become the world’s first ‘hyper-power’, an ethnocentric, inegalitarian, aristocratic, imperial confederation — the ‘destined space’ of the native Europeans.

This empire is said to be an autarky (a self-sustained economy). It is an enemy of the United States and the Muslim world, although, it will be an ally of China and India. It would cooperate with the rest of the world under one condition: ‘everyone stays in their own lands’. Eurosiberia is an attempt to redraw geography based on ethnonationalism, or nations carved out for single ethnic groups in the guise of preserving their tradition and identity.

The concept of Eurosiberia suggests that ethno-cultures tend to corrupt if they live side by side; therefore, different ethnicities need to be separated geographically. It is a modern version of a tribal landmass, which would be guarded against other tribes.

Faye and his contemporaries such as Pierre Vial were enthusiastic advocates of the idea of ‘one land, one people’. Vial even established the Terre et Peuple (Land and People) movement in France in 1995. Faye wanted to end ‘ethnopluralist cohabitation’. However, Eurosiberia is not an original concept; it is a mix and match of existing fascist ideologies, ranging from ethno-nationalist ideas such as blood and soil, ethnos, and even the myth of Aryan-Hyperboreans. They already served the rise of the Third Reich.

Nazi Germany advanced the idea of ‘Blood and Soil’ (Blut und Boden), seeking an ethno-nation united in a historical land. Early German ethno-nationalists of the Volkisch movement were behind this idea of linking biology with a land. Similar ideas such as Ethnos and ethnosociology are nothing new as these were at the heart of national socialism.

The Third Reich aimed for a racially exclusive society (Volksgemeinschaft) in a living space (Lebensraum). Faye copies Nazis to write: ‘The notion of people, like that of blood or identity, is incomprehensible without a notion of ‘land’ (terre)’. The idea of Blood and Soil is intrinsically linked to the esoteric ideas orchestrated by the Thule Society, connecting the origin of the Aryan race to mythical Hyperboreans. Thule Society was instrumental in the formation of the Nazi Party. It comes as no surprise that early Volkisch and Nazi myths are being revived again by the alt-right-linked Arktos media.

Ideas always form within and against a particular context. What, in the context of Faye’s vision of an ethnostate, gets traction in the current alt-right discourse as they contemplate geographically separating ethnicities?

Today’s post-industrial societies brought the world together by advancements of communication and transportation. These have provided the context and means to revive a divisive discourse. The inclinations for division and tribalisation find new grounds against increasing global interactions. It is easy to build a case against cultural decay in a context of heightened interactions that raised intercultural awareness.

The digital space, which is at the heart of global interactions, also leaves room open to propagate division as the Internet becomes the best means to reach as many people as possible with relative ease. The radical right can assertively revive their old mantra about cultural corruption caused by modernity, especially against the reality of today’s world. At least, they can sound credible in the context of increasing cross-cultural adaptations.

Nightmare in Eurosiberia

With a seeking for traditional decadence and an ethno-racial state, what type of ethnonational federation did Faye envision in Eurosiberia? Faye was an anti-modernist, a traditionalist; in his own words, ‘modernity is backward-looking’. Why does Faye loathe modernity? Because, modernity comes with ‘humanitarian and egalitarian values’. Faye cannot take the risk of equality; his is a Hobbesian world, where ethnos engage in tribal battles against each other in a planet of scarce resources.

Faye’s anti-modernity is a façade to cover up his loathing for democratic values. Soon he reveals his avant-garde against modernity, which is ‘biopolitics and technoscience’. Like a shining entrance of a decadent grand empire, opening up only to reveal a horrifying abyss, Faye’s Eurosiberia has a chilling secret. Eurosiberia is an ethnocracy, a homogeneous ethnic federation, which practices ‘biopolitics’, a policy to preserve and improve the biological quality of its inhabitants.

It uses technoscience to achieve this goal. His technoscience aims to improve humans (genetic engineering) and use biogenetics to multiply the racial pool of people. As Faye clearly explains, ‘you can’t do techno-science with humanitarian values’. He blames the ‘weak spirit of humanitarianism’ and does not shy away from acknowledging that biopolitics and technoscience combined amount to eugenics. According to Faye, ‘eugenics is the improvement of people’s genetic quality’.

This nightmare was crystallised in a vision of the future laid out in a chapter in his 1998 book Archeofuturism, explaining the life of Dimitri, a top diplomat of Eurosiberia. The year is 2073, and Dimitri travels in a ‘planetary train’ across the vast Eurosiberian empire. Dimitri is a ‘bionic’ man, and he has ‘biotronic chips’ implanted under his scalp; he needs only one-hour sleep. He is also fitted with an ‘ultra-performing heart and a liver’, and diseases of these organs are things of the past.

Grudgingly, Faye also envisions that America is, by then, an agricultural economy, never recovered from the Great Catastrophe that occurred before the rise of the Eurosiberian empire in 2030. What a vision! It cannot be more evident than this. The so-called ethnostate Faye wanted is nothing more than an ethnic nightmare that would strip the very humanity out of its inhabitants.