« Guénon lecteur de Nietzsche ».

C’est là la clé d’interprétation du roman Soumission de Michel Houellebecq, un livre qui s’inscrit dans la tradition du conte philosophique, un genre très en vogue à l’époque des Lumières, et que l’écrivain français réactualise efficacement per décrire le scénario de la décadence morale de l’Europe du XXIe siècle.

Dans la conception de Houellebecq, Nietzsche, le philosophe de la mort de Dieu, a ouvert la voie à Guénon, le penseur ésotérique converti à l’Islam ; ce thème est sous-tendu par le rappel constant à Huysmans, l’écrivain décadent trouble qui passa de la fréquentation du satanisme à la conversion au catholicisme. La réalité contemporaine semble être cohérente avec cette interprétation !

Évidemment, toutes les thématiques liées à l’immigration sont brûlantes et difficiles à manier, étant donné que la classe dirigeante occidentale réussit encore, incroyablement, à hypnotiser l’opinion publique avec des contes de fées antiracistes. Cependant, Houellebecq a déjà prouvé qu’il est un auteur qui n’a pas la langue dans sa poche et, cette fois encore, il parvient à provoquer de manière loin d’être banale.

Le roman n’est pas particulièrement captivant sur le plan narratif, car l’intrigue est très simple : son but essentiel est de dépeindre la mentalité actuelle des Occidentaux modernes. La description du milieu universitaire est particulièrement réussie ; alors qu’on devrait en attendre l’étincelle de la culture critique, il est devenu une fabrique de l’aplatissement et de l’homogénéisation : le résultat inévitable de décennies d’hégémonie de la culture de gauche qui a étouffé les intelligences libres. À travers des références et des citations littéraires, l’auteur décrit une société qui n’a plus rien en quoi croire, rien à espérer, rien pour quoi se battre. Dans ce vide désolant, caractérisé par les hypocrisies des socialistes, des libéraux et des nationalistes, le parti musulman s’enfonce comme une lame dans le beurre et s’empare facilement du pouvoir en s’alliant à la gauche qui, pour battre les nationalistes, est prête à vendre le plus précieux de ses « bijoux de famille » : le féminisme!

En effet, bien que le roman soit ancré dans le grand thème géopolitique des migrations de masse et de l’avancée islamique, le véritable objectif de Houellebecq est de parler des grandes mutations anthropologiques survenues dans les rapports entre les sexes. C’est précisément dans ces pages que l’auteur parvient à déployer un sarcasme qui rend certains passages mémorables. En fin de compte, le protagoniste lui-même, dont le seul intérêt réside dans les aventures sexuelles faciles et peu contraignantes, accepte la conversion à l’Islam dans la perspective d’avoir à son service un harem de concubines dociles et dévouées, ainsi que des ménagères laborieuses et diligentes.

Beaucoup se demandent si le futur décrit par Houellebecq est réaliste : il n’est certes pas impossible que l’Europe soit presque intégralement colonisée par des populations islamiques, au vu de la docilité dont les Européens ont fait preuve ces dernières années. On peut toutefois se demander si la culture occidentale, caractérisée par une richesse et une variété culturelle sans égale dans le monde, peut réellement être effacée en si peu de temps. De plus, dans les pages de Soumission, les allusions aux relations entre la France, l’Europe et le reste du monde sont rares. Les références à la question juive sont également plutôt évanescentes : une Europe islamisée serait peu rassurante pour le sionisme, et la disparition de l’État d’Israël ferait perdre aux démocraties occidentales modernes leur propre raison d’être…

En réalité, l’islamisation de la France dans le roman est décrite principalement à travers ses retombées sociales : retour du patriarcat, élimination du travail des femmes avec pour conséquence la disparition du chômage, institutions familiales plus stables instaurant une plus grande cohésion sociale, dont la conséquence est une baisse drastique de la criminalité. Plus que d’islamisation, on pourrait parler d’un programme politique de bon sens pour construire une société plus humaine ; mais ce n’est évidemment pas l’avis des foules subhumaines de l’Occident qui soutiennent les démocraties de marché. Et c’est peut-être précisément pour cela que le livre de Houellebecq fait si peur…

***

Michel Houellebecq, Soumission, Flammarion, 2015

“Guénon as a reader of Nietzsche.” This is the interpretive key to Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, a book that fits into the tradition of the conte philosophique—a genre highly fashionable during the Enlightenment, effectively updated by the French writer to describe the scenario of moral decadence in 21st-century Europe. In Houellebecq’s conception, Nietzsche, the philosopher of the “death of God,” paved the way for Guénon, the esoteric thinker who converted to Islam. This theme is underscored by constant references to Huysmans, the murky Decadent writer who moved from frequenting circles of Satanism to converting to Catholicism. Contemporary reality seems consistent with this interpretation!

Naturally, all themes related to immigration are “incandescent” and difficult to handle, given that the Western ruling class still manages, incredibly, to hypnotize public opinion with anti-racist fairy tales. However, Houellebecq has already proven himself to be an author who doesn’t mince words, and once again, he manages to provoke in a way that is anything but cliché.

The Portrait of Western Decline

The novel is not particularly gripping in terms of narrative, as the plot is very simple; its essential purpose is to outline the current mindset of modern Westerners. Particularly successful is the description of the university environment—from which one would expect the spark of critical culture, but which has instead become a factory of flattening and homogenization. This is the inevitable result of decades of leftist cultural hegemony that has stifled free intelligence.

Through literary references and citations, the author describes a society that has:

• Nothing to believe in.
• Nothing to hope for.
• Nothing to fight for.

In this desolate void, characterized by the hypocrisies of socialists, liberals, and nationalists, the Muslim party cuts through like a knife through butter. It easily conquers power by allying with the Left, which, for the sake of defeating the nationalists, is willing to sell off the most precious of its “family jewels”: feminism.

Anthropological Mutations

In fact, although the novel is set against the grand geopolitical backdrop of mass migration and the Islamic advance, Houellebecq’s true objective is to discuss the profound anthropological mutations occurring in the relationships between the sexes. It is in these pages that the author unleashes a sarcasm that makes certain passages truly memorable. Ultimately, the protagonist himself—whose only interests are easy, low-commitment sexual flings—accepts conversion to Islam for the prospect of having a harem of docile, devoted concubines at his service, as well as industrious and diligent housewives.

A Realistic Future?

Many wonder if the future described by Houellebecq is realistic. It is certainly not impossible that Europe could be almost entirely colonized by Islamic populations, given the surrender Europeans have shown in recent years. However, one must wonder if Western culture—characterized by a cultural sophistication of a richness and variety unparalleled in the world—can truly be erased in such a short time.

Furthermore, in the pages of Submission, there are scant mentions of the relationships between France, Europe, and the rest of the world. References to the “Jewish question” are also quite evanescent: an Islamized Europe would be unsettling for Zionism, and the disappearance of the State of Israel would remove the very raison d’être of modern Western democracies.

Conclusion

Indeed, the Islamization of France in the novel is described primarily in its social implications:

1. The return of patriarchy.
2. The elimination of female labor (resulting in the disappearance of unemployment).
3. More stable family institutions establishing greater social cohesion, leading to a drastic drop in crime.

Rather than “Islamization,” one might speak of a common-sense political program to build a more human society; but evidently, this is not the case for the subhuman masses of the West who grant their consensus to market democracies. And perhaps that is precisely why Houellebecq’s book is so frightening.

***

Michel Houellebecq, Submission, Penguin Books, 2016

CENTRO RIEDUCAZIONE MASCHILE

racconto distopico

THE ARISTOTELIANS (NOT THE CATHOLICS) WERE AGAINST GALILEO

************

The story of Galileo Galilei is often recounted as a clash between science and religion. It is a compelling narrative, undoubtedly, but it is useless for understanding what actually happened.

If one carefully observes the 17th-century intellectual context, a very different reality emerges: the true conflict was not between Galileo and Catholicism (Galileo, after all, was a Catholic), but between two radically different ways of conceiving scientific research: Aristotelianism and modern physics, which had just been founded by Galileo himself.

On one hand, there was the new mathematical and experimental method that Galileo wanted to establish; on the other, the tradition of Aristotelian natural philosophy, which at the time was still dominant in universities and European learned culture. The university chairs of the Catholic world—among the continent’s primary cultural institutions—were inevitably occupied by illustrious Aristotelians. The result was that the epistemological conflict between the latter and Galileo was transformed, through a series of historical and political circumstances, into a clash between two irreconcilable visions of research and scientific/academic dissemination.

The Weight of Aristotle’s Legacy

It is not easy for us to grasp how heavy the legacy of Aristotle was in European culture. For nearly two thousand years, his philosophy had constituted the theoretical framework for the study of nature (and practically everything else subject to study). Medieval and Renaissance universities had organized their curricula around Aristotle, and thinkers like Thomas Aquinas had dedicated their lives to integrating Aristotelianism into Christian theology—partly to reclaim it from the hegemony of the Arab/Muslim world (which had inherited Aristotle by taking possession of the Eastern Roman Empire, i.e., the Greek world).

This does not mean that Christianity was subordinate to Aristotle’s philosophy, but the categories that provided access to understanding the world were (and had to be) Aristotelian. To criticize Aristotle did not simply mean attacking this or that scientific theory; it meant questioning the conceptual foundations upon which most of European university teaching was based. It meant questioning the entire European academic world.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Science

Aristotelian physics was a coherent system, if you will, but totally different from modern physics. Today we wouldn’t even call it “physics,” but rather a blend of philosophical speculation and profound observation of the world and the cosmos.

It was a qualitative science, not a mathematical one. Natural phenomena were explained through categories such as form, matter, cause, and end, and through qualities like heaviness and lightness. The movement of bodies was interpreted in light of the idea of “natural places”: heavy objects tended toward the center of the world, while light ones tended upward. Within this theoretical framework, it was believed that the speed of a falling body was proportional to its mass (which is absurd) and that movement always required a continuous cause to sustain it. It was a way of reasoning that privileged conceptual analysis and philosophical consistency over experimental and quantitative measurement.

The Role of Mathematics

Within this academic world steeped in Aristotelianism, mathematics occupied an ambiguous position. The Greek tradition had produced extraordinary mathematicians like Euclid, Pythagoras, and Archimedes, but natural philosophers believed that mathematics served only to describe abstract entities, not concrete physical reality. Physics, according to this perspective, was supposed to study real bodies and their qualities, while mathematics dealt with ideal figures and formal relations.

Even astronomy was often considered a mere calculation useful for predicting planetary positions, not an exact description of the structure of the cosmos. Even the great astronomical system developed by Ptolemy was seen more as a device intended to “save the appearances” (explain strange phenomena) rather than a true physical theory about the reality of the cosmos.

The Galilean Revolution

Without keeping all of this in mind, the radical nature of the Galilean revolution is incomprehensible. When Galileo asserts that the “book of nature” is written in mathematical language, he is not simply proposing a new theory. He is changing the rules of the game; he is revolutionizing science at its roots, overturning empirical and speculative knowledge at the same time.

For him, mathematics is no longer the abstract world of calculations; it is the very language of physics. And of the universe (for the first time with Galileo, we can speak of a “universe” precisely in the name of mathematics and a physics made of math: uni-verse, one, a single world where the same laws apply everywhere).

This transformation is clearly visible in his research on dynamics. By studying falling bodies and projectile motion, Galileo introduced a quantitative description of movement and showed that natural phenomena can be expressed through precise mathematical relationships.

The Thought Experiment

But Galileo did not stop at introducing equations. He also developed a new methodological tool: the experience or thought experiment (esperimento mentale).

Let’s take an example: he criticized the Aristotelian idea that heavier bodies fall faster (with a speed proportionally dependent on their mass). Galileo imagined two objects, one heavy and one light, and asked what would happen if they were tied together during the fall. If the Aristotelian theory were correct, the light body should slow down the heavy one; but at the same time, the overall system, being heavier, should fall faster than the heavy body alone. The theory thus generates an unacceptable contradiction. This type of reasoning demonstrates a new use of logic and scientific imagination: the scientist’s mind becomes a literal laboratory where experiments are conducted and ideal situations are explored to test the consistency of theories.

The Telescope and the Crisis of the Senses

The refinement of the telescope further strengthened this methodological revolution. When Galileo observed the lunar mountains, sunspots, and the moons of Jupiter, he demonstrated that the heavens were not a perfect and immutable realm, as described by Aristotelian cosmology. However, we must remember that optical instruments were then a new and imperfect technology. Many scholars distrusted the images produced by lenses, fearing they might distort reality. From their perspective, it was not entirely unreasonable to suspect that the telescope might generate illusions. The problem was not simply accepting or rejecting an empirical fact; it was deciding whether an artificial instrument could be considered a reliable extension of the senses.

The Epistemological Asymmetry

The conflict between Galileo and his adversaries took place on much deeper ground than a simple religious or astronomical dispute. It was a matter of establishing whether nature should be studied through qualitative categories and philosophical arguments, or through measurements, instruments, and mathematical models.

The Aristotelians, who demanded solid proof from Galileo, had never felt obliged to mathematically prove Aristotle’s own theses because, within their epistemological framework, mathematics was not a criterion for physical truth. When Galileo introduced mathematics as the foundation of physics, he implicitly demanded that all theories about nature be judged and grounded according to a new standard. This gave rise to an asymmetry that modern historians should find surprising: the Aristotelians demanded mathematical demonstrations from Galileo that they had never required of their own master.

The Paradox of the Tides

In this scenario, the question of heliocentrism takes on a particular significance. The system proposed by Copernicus represented a challenge to traditional cosmology, but in the early 17th century, a definitive proof of the Earth’s motion did not yet exist. Galileo was convinced he had found such proof in his explanation of the tides.

He believed the ebb and flow of the tides were caused by the combination of the Earth’s two movements: its daily rotation and its annual revolution around the Sun. In this theory, the oceans behaved like water in a vessel being accelerated and decelerated. The explanation was elegant, but incorrect. Today we know that tides are primarily due to the gravitational pull of the Moon and, to a lesser extent, the Sun, and that a complete quantitative theory would only become possible with Newtonian dynamics. The historical paradox is that Galileo was right about heliocentrism but wrong about his primary proof, while Kepler had correctly intuited the Moon’s role in the tides.

Academia vs. Innovation

The facts show how reductive it is to view the disputes over heliocentrism as a simple opposition between science and religion. Many men of the Church were scientists or mathematicians, and the Church itself was by no means hostile to scientific research or the theories of Copernicus, Galileo, or Kepler.

The problem was that the cultural institutions of the time, including universities and Catholic scientific academies, were deeply dominated by and steeped in Aristotelian philosophy. Consequently, the methodological conflict between Galileo and the Aristotelians found a powerful (and partly involuntary) political amplifier in the institutional structure of the Church. It was not Catholicism as such that clashed with Galileo, but an Aristotelian academic culture that, at the time, frequently overlapped with ecclesiastical authority.

The Legacy of the Revolution

History would prove how radical—and genius—the paradigm shift introduced by Galileo truly was. Within decades, Kepler’s laws and Newton’s gravitational theory would definitively transform physics into a mathematical science. What appeared to most in the early 1600s as a daring innovation became the very foundation of modern science.

The true significance of the Galilean revolution lies not in his support for heliocentrism, but in his inauguration of a new way of questioning nature: measuring, mathematizing, experimenting, and, when necessary, imagining experiments that the mind can conduct even before they reach the laboratory. He understood that there is an actual correspondence between our mental experiences and the laws of the universe—an astonishing miracle that alone suggests Galileo was far closer to the essence of Christianity than all the Aristotelians combined.

Seen from this perspective, the Galileo affair is no longer the story of a man of science fighting religion. It is the story of an epochal cataclysm in Western culture: the historical moment where mathematics and experimental physics merged to become the language through which humanity seeks to understand the workings of what we can finally call the Universe.

The drama arose from the fact that this revolution occurred while the great cultural institutions were still saturated with the old Aristotelian paradigm. And the Aristotelians did not want to lose face—nor their jobs. Within that tension between two ways of understanding the world lies the true heart of the story of the greatest scientist of all time: Galileo Galilei.

LUCA COSTA

text translated from Italian into English by Google Gemini – 2026

---

Magister ab Kaos

VISIONES APOCALYPSIS

(english version)

One of the most interesting aspects of the contemporary ideological debate is the relationship between feminist thought and religions. Feminism, which serves as the state ideology in Western democracies, presents clear points of friction with traditionally defined religious morality.

Sheila Jeffreys’ essay, Man’s Dominion: The Rise of Religion and the Eclipse of Women’s Rights, is dedicated to this theme. The author teaches political science at the University of Melbourne and is one of the most authoritative voices in global feminism; reading her book allows us to get a sense of “what’s cooking”…

Jeffreys traces several key points of the issue in recent history. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the conviction had formed that religions had entered a phase of irremediable decline, and leftist ideologies utilized traditional laicist and anti-clerical arguments in their publications. During that period, feminists achieved their most brilliant successes across almost the entire Western world: divorce and abortion. The propaganda campaigns for feminist demands were marked by a frontal collision with Christian Churches, from which the latter emerged practically disintegrated.

Starting in the 1990s, things began to change: the massive arrival of migrants from Muslim countries in the West forced authorities to recognize lifestyles—and sometimes grant them legal standing—that would be considered inadmissible for citizens of Western nations.

In fact, within Islamic communities living in the West, the condition of women has not undergone assimilation into that of Western women; rather, it has remained substantially tied to the customs of their places of origin. The Left, which governs almost undisturbed throughout the Western world, imposing the feminist agenda through gender quotas, has found itself managing the relationship with immigrant communities (largely Muslim) and having to choose between indulgence toward these populations and the demands of female emancipation. De facto, two parallel societies have been created: that of the natives, where males are in a state of legal minority, and that of the immigrants, where patriarchy has not even been scratched.

Since the reproduction rate of immigrant populations is overwhelming compared to that of native Western populations, it is easy to predict that within one or two generations, feminism will end up end up on the ash heap of history…

Jeffreys also laments the difficulty of monitoring the condition of women within families and communities, implying that, in the name of female emancipation, she would like to tear the right to privacy to shreds…

Jeffreys herself reports with alarm that criticizing the condition of women in Islam is labeled as racism even within universities. Thus, we frequently see the staid and pompous academic culture of progressive tyrannies becoming a victim of its own anti-discrimination ideology!

Also disturbing the dreams of feminists are cultural currents and congregations within the Christian world that hold a conception of women that appears unacceptable to them. And it doesn’t end there: even within the Jewish religion, there are sects that assign social and family roles to women that “neo-suffragettes” consider retrograde.

A large part of the book is dedicated to an aspect shared by Islam and specific currents of North American religious landscape: polygamy. This, apparently, is the bitterest pill for feminist thinkers. Polygamy is considered intrinsically harmful to women; specifically, the idea of a male having a harem at his disposal to satisfy his sexual desires is a true nightmare for Jeffreys. In the United States and Canada, polygamy among Mormons—officially abandoned in 1890—is de facto practiced in some communities, and in recent years there have been court rulings declaring such situations legitimate.

It should be noted that Jeffreys only considers monotheistic religions, even though all other religions represent the majority of humankind—especially considering that practiced Christianity is now a minority. Obviously, this focus on monotheism stems from the fact that the Biblical conception of God has decisively shaped Western history, but it is a surprising attitude, to say the least, for someone who claims daily to want to put Western culture… on trial! The fact that the West was pagan before it was Christian is not even taken into consideration.

However, the feminist point of view is in evident embarrassment when forced to take a stance on religion. Let’s summarize the terms of the issue:

• Judaism: Orthodox Jews maintain a rigid distinction of gender roles and sometimes, in certain sects, practice polygamy or even concubinage, following the example of the patriarch Abraham joining with the slave Hagar.
• Christianity: Although in the past Christian morality decisively opposed feminism and “homosexualism,” today—after having disastrously lost those battles—Christian Churches have predominantly moved to the opposing camp. However, substantial pockets of dissent remain in the Christian world, and the theme of Mormon polygamy is seen by feminists as a “loose cannon.”
• Islam: It is traditionally the most “masculinist” religion; it regularly permits polygamy and the use of the veil to cover the female face.

Furthermore, all religions have traditionally condemned abortion and homosexuality, albeit with different nuances.

Jeffreys’ conclusion is that a vigorous secularist offensive against all religions is needed, as she believes religions have regained strength as a smokescreen for lost “male privileges” (to get an idea of what these “male privileges” are, a reading of Warren Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power is recommended).

The question is: can leftist ideologies afford such a strategy?

It is well known what Judaism signifies for the Left; the Muslim masses in Europe, funded by a flood of petrodollars, bring millions of votes to progressives; Christian Churches are now reduced to the role of a breeding ground for the progressive political class. Moreover, even from a conceptual point of view, the God of the Bible is nothing more than the “feminine and whining” mentality that generates the ideology of victimhood.

In short, an attack on the “Religions of the Book” means, for feminists, biting the hand that feeds them!

Not only that: Jeffreys also complains that the most influential atheist and agnostic intellectuals in the current cultural landscape have the flaw of… being male!!!

These are issues that are not easily solved for feminist thinkers firmly ensconced in Western universities and institutions.

Reading books of this kind is particularly disturbing and leaves a bad taste in the mouth because it shows the level of ideological paranoia established by politically correct authoritarianism. But the good news lies in the macroscopic contradictions generated by the system itself—contradictions upon which opponents of the globalist regime can work fruitfully to build an alternative and instill hope in a new world.

***

Sheila Jeffreys, Man’s Dominion: the Rise of Religion and the Eclipse of Women’s Rights, Routledge 2011, p.232

Democrazia Post Vitale

Racconto ucronico ambientato nell’anno 2023

Gaia Dulcis Dea

La Preghiera per la Madre Verde

Racconto Ecosofico