The following excerpts are from an article entitled :
Monotheism vs. Polytheism
by
Alain de Benoist
Introduction and translation by
Tomislav Sunic
Monotheism vs. Polytheism
From the introduction
Two thousand years of Judeo-Christianity have not obscured the fact that pagan thought has not yet disappeared, even though it has often been blurred, stifled, or persecuted by monotheistic religions and their secular offshoots. Undoubtedly, many would admit that in the realm of ethics all men and women of the world are the children of Abraham. Indeed, even the bolder ones who somewhat self-righteously claim to have rejected the Christian or Jewish theologies, and who claim to have replaced them with "secular humanism," frequently ignore that their self-styled secular beliefs are firmly grounded in Judeo-Christian ethics. Abraham and Moses may be dethroned today, but their moral edicts and spiritual ordinances are much alive. The global and disenchanted world, accompanied by the litany of human rights, ecumenical society, and the rule of law—are these not principles that can be traced directly to the Judeo-Christian messianism that resurfaces today in its secular version under the elegant garb of modern "progressive" ideologies?
From the main article:
It is a serious error to assume that totalitarianism manifests its real character only when it employs crushing coercion. Historical experience has demonstrated—and continues to demonstrate—that there can exist a "clean" totalitarianism, which, in a "soft" manner, yields the same consequences as the classic kinds of totalitarianism. "Happy robots" of 1984 or of Brave New World have no more enviable conditions than prisoners of the camps. In essence, totalitarianism did not originate with Saint-Just, Stalin, Hegel, or Fichte. Rather, as Michel Maffesoli says, totalitarianism emerges "when a subtle form of plural, polytheistic, and contradictory totality, that is inherent in organic interdependency" is superseded by a monotheistic one. Totalitarianism grows out of a desire to establish social and human unity by reducing the diversity of individuals and peoples to a single model. In this sense, he argues, it is legitimate to speak of a "polytheist social arena, referring to multiple and complementary gods" versus a "monotheistic political arena founded on the illusion of unity." Once the polytheism of values "disappears, we face totalitarianism." Pagan thought, on the other hand, which fundamentally remains attached to rootedness and to the place, and which is a preferential center of the crystallization of human identity, rejects all religious and philosophical forms of universalism.
Alain de Benoist is editor of Nouvelle Ecole, an academic journal published in Paris. Tomislav Sunic serves in the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.