Fjordman – A Book Review

Long-time readers will remember Max Denken, who contributed a number of essays here several years ago. Mr. Denken retired from the scene to write books about our civilizational crisis. Fjordman has kindly reviewed the first one for Gates of Vienna/Snaphanen readers.

by Fjordman

‘Camp of the Sane and Camp of the Saints’ by Max Denken. It is not every day that you come across a book dedicated to the continued survival of an entire civilization. Yet the author Max Denken has written just such a text. He has previously written under the pen name Takuan Seiyo for dissident online publications such as Gates of Vienna, The Brussels Journal, The New English Review, Quarterly Review, Takimag and others. His well-written and carefully researched book about the future of European civilization is called The Camp of the Sane and The Camp of the Saints: Poland and the erosion of Western sanity, 2015—2020.

A Third World mass invasion of Europe, causing the downfall of Western civilization

The title is a reference to The Camp of the Saints (“Le Camp des Saints”), a novel from 1973 by the French author Jean Raspail. It predicted a Third World mass invasion of Europe, causing the downfall of Western civilization. This process was compressed in time so that what might take fifty years in real life took fifty days in the book. In addition, the bulk of illegal immigrants in the novel came from India. Today, while immigration to Europe comes from every corner of the planet, much of it comes from the Islamic world and Africa.

Apart from that, the novel was remarkably prescient in describing the dysfunctional mindset of the modern Western world. We have become so wedded to unsustainable humanitarian ideals that we are mentally incapable of defending our national existence. When faced with millions of people coming from the global South, we simply raise a white flag and say that they are welcome to colonize our countries. At least, that is what our leaders and mass media do. The EU and Pope Francis react to illegal mass migration in the Mediterranean in almost exactly the manner described in Raspail’s book decades earlier. Europe risks committing suicide because of abstract humanitarian ideals and a Globalist ideology of open borders.

Jean Raspail died in June 2020, shortly before he would have turned 95. He lived to see his native France and other Western countries being partly overrun by migrants. Max Denken completed The Camp of the Sane in the summer of 2020, just as the author of The Camp of the Saints died. Western cities were then engulfed in Black Lives Matter protests, attacks on statues and European monuments and sometimes violent riots. Western mass media presented U.S. President Trump as an extremely evil man, as they had been doing continuously for five years. Some Western media said more positive things about the Communist dictator Fidel Castro when he died in November 2016 than they said about Donald Trump when he won free elections that some month.

The Western world is deeply sick and heading for some form of collapse

Max Denken has Polish ancestry, has lived in California for many years and worked in other parts of the world. He considers the entire Western world to be deeply sick and heading for some form of collapse. This applies to North America as well as Western Europe. Against this crumbling Camp of the Saints, Denken pits what he terms The Camp of the Sane. Roughly speaking, this encompasses much of the eastern half of Europe, or at least the eastern quarter. Ironically, these are countries that were squeezed and bloodied between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War and endured generations of repressive Communist rule during the Cold War. Perhaps their recent historical experiences have provided these nations with a stronger resistance against ideological indoctrination.

Western Europe still has some brave political leaders such as Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini, but they may have emerged too late to save their countries from collapse. The Western world and what remains of its civilization are in freefall. Denken does not rule out the possibility that something sensible can be created in North America out of the disunited Multicultural mess that is present-day USA and Canada. However, he believes that the best future prospects for European civilization lie in Central and Eastern Europe.

The countries of Central and Eastern Europe no doubt believed that they had joined a sensible project for European cooperation and joint prosperity when they joined the EU. Some of them have come to realize that the increasingly repressive EU now resembles a cultural suicide pact. Money from the EU may seem tempting to nations that were left impoverished after decades of Communist rule. Yet these are silver coins laced with ideological poison. For 1400 years, the forces of Islam have been the collective enemy of the peoples of Europe. Now, the EU wants to force formerly independent European countries to take in Muslim immigrants.

The Hungarian general John Hunyadi fought bravely to defend Christian Europe against Ottoman Turkish aggression in the 15th century. The Polish King John III Sobieski fought alongside German and Austrian troops to repel Turkish Muslim invaders from the gates of Vienna in 1683. Some generations later, German and Austrian troops invaded Poland and wiped out more than six million Polish citizens: Three million Jews and at least three million Slavic Christians. Denken’s book deals with modern history from a mainly Polish perspective, with a particular emphasis on relations between Poland and Germany. The physical destruction and violence inflicted upon Poland by Nazi Germany and its accomplice the Soviet Union is described in detail.

Lebensraum for Nigerians, Somalis, Afghans, Arabs or Pakistanis in Europe

Some Poles now feel as if Germany has renewed its aggression towards Poland. This time not with tanks but with Muslim migrants. The Nazis led by Adolf Hitler wanted more Lebensraum (“living space”) for Germans and Austrians in Eastern Europe. This policy justified genocidal policies not just against Jews, but also against Slavic Christians. Why are the same Europeans now supposed to meekly accept more German-backed and EU-promoted Lebensraum for Nigerians, Somalis, Afghans, Arabs or Pakistanis in Europe? Despite their flaws, Germans and Austrians are Europeans who have shown themselves capable of maintaining a science-based industrial economy. This does not seem to be the case with Nigerians, Somalis or Afghans.

In Central Europe, the so-called Visegrád Group consists of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, all of which are members of the EU as well as of NATO. They have repeatedly resisted calls from EU authorities in Brussels to accept Muslim immigrants. Arguably the most eloquent political leader from this group is the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. He defends his nation and Europe against Islamic aggression, and resists ideological infiltration by the left-wing billionaire George Soros. Predictably, this defiance has triggered repeated attacks against Hungary from the European Union (EU) and from Western mass media. Similar relentless attacks are waged against Poland, the largest member of this Camp of the Sane.

European are viewed as the ultimate evil

Western Globalists and Multicultural “progressives” consider Central Europeans to be retarded and outdated because they believe there are only two biological sexes, not 24 “genders.” Furthermore, they don’t think that mathematics was created to oppress Africans, that Maoris developed modern physics or that the Maya invented space travel. Finally, and worst of all, they don’t feel guilty for being born white or wanting to preserve their national heritage and European culture. By the ruling elites in the USA and Western Europe, Europeans wanting to remain European are viewed as the ultimate evil. They must be broken at all costs.

The Camp of the Sane stretches from the Baltic countries via Central Europe to Slovenia on the Adriatic coast, and further on to the nations bordering the Black Sea. Russia has its own problems, which include a large Muslim minority. Nevertheless, it would be wise to treat Russia with less hostility than is sometimes the case today from Western authorities. The main threats to the Camp of the Sane are the subversive cultural Marxism of the EU and the USA, renewed Islamic aggression, migration from the unsustainable population explosion of Africa and the global South, and finally infiltration and economic warfare from China.

In the coming century there is only one struggle that matters for all Europeans

To strengthen itself, this region must tighten its inner bonds and forget old quarrels, such as those between the Hungarians and the Slovaks, or the Czechs and the Poles. Forgetting old enmities means also drawing in the Serbian, Ukrainian and Belarussian peoples, and eventually the Russians to some extent. The old mutual antagonisms of the Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants must stop; these quarrels are too silly in the 21st century. In the coming century there is only one struggle that matters for all European-origin peoples: The struggle to maintain and develop a shared European civilization. Leaving Russia out, the healthiest region in Europe, saved from the Western brain disease by the deep permafrost of the Iron Curtain, is now south of Austria and east of Germany.

Page 390-391: “It’s the 150 million Eastern-European Christian people in the eastern quarter of the European continent. This ‘Camp of the Sane’ currently comprises 11 countries arrayed in a long arc from north to south: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria. When Belarus, Serbia, and Ukraine have drifted away from the Soviet influence still emanating from the Kremlin and from corrupt Communist culture, and Macedonia modernizes and catches up economically, 15 countries sharing much in common may be in this bloc. In the current Camp of the Sane, Poland is the largest and strongest country, most monocultural, most Catholic, and as nationalistic as any. It’s the pillar of the Camp of the Sane. For that reason, Poland is for the West’s ruling circle and its many millions of zombified ‘progressive’ supporters a red cloth of defiance, an obstructionist boulder on the road to the blessed New World Order. So is Hungary — the most eloquent voice among the Sane. Both are an anachronism that sullies the postmodern, post-Christian nirvana; an ugly callus on the pristine dead body of Europe animated by the puppeteers from Brussels. And that is why both have to be destroyed.”

In Denken’s view, Poland plays a crucial role in this struggle. Page 475: “The fate of Poland will determine whether the Camp of the Sane lives or, with its main strut broken, dies. And the fate of the Camp of the Sane will determine whether Western Civilization itself lives or dies. If Poland and its Hungarian soulmate succeed, and tow in their wake the rest of the Crescent of Sanity, the entire bloc could cohere into a new Europe, from which healing for the rest of the continent might emanate after its inevitable smashing by the pitiless crowbar of events. At the least, the Camp of the Sane could provide a refuge for ultimately millions of Western Europeans fleeing by 2035 and for decades beyond their no-longer-recognizable lands. If the Sane fail, it’s lights out after a glorious 2,500-year run for the greatest civilization the world has ever known, with but one other slim possibility for survival — if the US-Canada landmass splits into Equitania and Freedomia, and its peoples are wise enough to do so without civil wars.”

Years of research

Max Denken is extremely well-read and has put years of research into his book. He quotes Eastern philosophy, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as well as Western dissident authors such as Jean Raspail and Guillaume Faye. The Camp of the Sane and The Camp of the Saints has been self-published. The book is so politically incorrect, and the current censorship of the Western world so pervasive, that the author did not even bother trying to find a mainstream publisher for it. To order copies of it, you can send an email to: info@campsane.com.

For a complete archive of Fjordman’s writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.

Se Jean Raspail: “Le Camp des Saints” (1973)