Since 1947, the French army fought to defend overseas territories, was victorious in the field, and forced into successive capitulations by the group of political and economic forces that constitute the régime. It was necessary to wait until the month of April 1961, fourteen years, for a tiny number of cadres to discern their true enemies. An enemy who was not so much in the field, under the guise of a Viet or of a fellagha, but rather in France itself, in the boards of directors, the banks, the editorial offices, the assemblies, and the ministerial offices. This hostile sentiment was against a mythical decadent Metropolitan France rather than the reality of the régime. This limited realisation was short-lived.I find nothing to disagree with. To offer Lenin as an example of a successful revolutionary is not reflecting poorly on Venner. I think, his big thought, that a national revolution could succeed, possibly starting with France and OAS in the early 1960, possibly enveloping the rest of Europe, and no longer can succeed due to the immersion into the universal leftwing intellectual environment today, -- is correct and goes a long way in explaining his despair. Why was all that desperate struggle necessary? Why, look at France today: a nation of tired cheeseaters incapable to support their 30 hour workweek, wine lunches and two-month vacations other than at the cost of erasing their national and religious identity. What kind of "freedom" or "living together peacefully" is that? Glory, duty, service have consequences both in their presence and in their absence. Now we have absence, and nations die.[...]
France and Europe must accomplish their nationalist revolution in order to survive. Superficial changes will not strike what is evil. Nothing will be done until the germs of the régime are extirpated to the last root. For this, it is necessary to destroy its political organisation, overthrow its idols and its dogmas, eliminate its official and secret masters, show the people how much it had been deceived, exploited, soiled. Then, reconstruction. Not on paper constructions, but on a young and revolutionary élite, imbued with a new conception of the world. Can the action that must impose this revolution be conceived without the direction of a revolutionary doctrine? Certainly not. How can you oppose an adversary that is armed with a well-tested dialectic, rich with long experience, powerfully organised, without ideology, without method?
[...]
The editor of France-Observateur, the functionary of the SFIO, the communist, all have the same ideology in common: Marxism. Their doctrinal reference is therefore the same, their conception of the world is similar. The words they use have the same meaning. They belong to the same family. Despite their profound divisions in action, they all concurrently impose the same ideology.
[...]
The ethic of honour is opposed to the slave morality of liberal or Marxist materialism. It affirms that life is a battle. It exalts the value of sacrifice. It believes in the power of the will over events. It bases the relationship between men of the same community on loyalty and solidarity. It confers on work an importance independent of profit. It recovers the sense of the true dignity of mankind, not granted but conquered by permanent effort. It develops in the European man the consciousness of his responsibilities in relation to the humanity of which he is the natural organiser.
If they're dying now, it's at least in part because of the orgy of violence back then unleashed by people Venner admired. Nobody there wants to go back to those days.
Which brings me back to my original point: how to include the things he claimed he believed in -- duty, honor, service -- without tearing the world apart in wasteful conflicts that give those values a bad name.
You need some enemy to set such a "national revolution" into motion. That might be a foreign invader or an internal totalitarian enemy or a state of chaos. To look for some "Leninist" revolution of the right in a peaceful and wealthy country is just to stir up unnecessary trouble.
If Venner's complaint was that France or Europe was too fat, lazy, cowardly, and comfortable, I'd say, just wait. Such a condition probably isn't likely to last too long. Better do what you can to keep things from falling apart totally than to push the country into the abyss.