Dominique Venner: The Reasons for a Voluntary Death

DOMINIQUE VENNER (April 16, 1935 at Paris – MAY 21, 2013 at Paris)

On May 21, 2013, Dominique Venner shot himself to death at the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Mr. Venner (born April 16, 1935), a historian and essayist, was the editor of La Nouvelle Revue d’Histoire [New Review of History] at the time of his death. He was protesting the decline of France due to mass Muslim immigration and the general decadence of French society.

The title of Mr. Venner’s suicide letter was “Declaration of Dominique Venner: The Reasons for a Voluntary Death.” His note stated in part (emphasis added):

“I am healthy in body and mind, and I am filled with love for my wife and children. I love life and expect nothing beyond, if not the perpetuation of my race and my mind. However, in the evening of my life, facing immense dangers to my French and European homeland, I feel the duty to act as long as I still have strength. I believe it is necessary to sacrifice myself to break the lethargy that plagues us. I give up what life remains in me in order to protest and to found. I chose a highly symbolic place, the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, which I respect and admire: she was built by the genius of my ancestors on the site of cults still more ancient, recalling our immemorial origins.”

“While many men are slaves of their lives, my gesture embodies an ethic of will. I give myself over to death to awaken slumbering consciences. I rebel against fate. I protect against poisons of the soul and the desires of invasive individuals to destroy the anchors of our identity, including the family, the intimate basis of our multi-millenial civilization. While I defend the identity of all peoples in their homes, I also rebel against the crime of the replacement of our people.”

Marine de Pen, leader of the National Front, stated after Mr. Venner’s death: “All respect for Dominique Venner, whose final gesture, eminently political, was to try to awaken the people of France.

Guillaume Faye, a French journalist and writer, stated:

“The news came as a shock. Immediately the voluntary death of the Japanese nationalist, Mishima, came to mind. . . . Dominique Venner’s suicide in the choir of Notre Dame will be a landmark. It is not destined to be an ‘event’ swallowed up by our current events, like the defeat of a sports team. A myth will be created, in the form of an example, around this voluntary death. But it will take some time. Venner did not kill anyone but himself. He did not detonate a suicide vest. He interrupted his life and put his plunge into death in service of a message. He followed precisely in the footsteps of Yukio Mishima.”

Michel Geoffroy, a frequent contributor to the French website Polemia.com, stated in his post:

“There are suicides ever day for all sorts of reasons, many of them sordid. . . . However, we know that Dominique Venner’s suicide had a completely different meaning. First, it was an aristocratic suicide in protest against a decadent world, against a civilization that has abandoned itself, against the destruction of an identity. Dominique Venner has tragically reintroduced suicide into politics. It is a death that the System uses every means to cover up because it leaves a blot on the artificial paradise the System is building for us. But above all, this death forces us all to reflect on our own lives, and that is what the System hates the most. . . . Dominique Venner’s act shows to any who may not yet realize it that the struggle against the System — its acts and its presences — is a struggle unto death. Because the System wants our death. Because it sees people not as ends but as obstacles. It seeks to destroy every identity, every culture in order to reduce humanity to its least common denominator. It despises ‘the French exception,’ which it may some day eradicate completely. As the law on homosexual marriage tells us, nothing is sacred in its eyes. Everything must disappear into that great void of the world market. . . . In an act of courage, reflection, and conviction, Dominique Venner has chosen to die so that our people may awake and retake their destiny in their own hands.”

Jean-Yves Le Gallou, a former Front National deputy to the European Parliament and the editor of Polemia.com, stated in his website:

“For him, the Indians, the Arabs, the Chinese, and the Japanese all have religions based on identity, whereas the Europeans have a universal religion. This was an advantage when Europe was the mistress of the world, but this advantage becomes a handicap when Europe is in retreat, suffering from plagues of repentance and guilt: ‘Other religions, even Islam . . . and Judaism, but also Hinduism, Shinto, and Confucianism are merely religions in the Christian or lay sense of the world, that to say a personal relationship with God; they are identities, laws, and communities.’ In Dominique Venner’s view, that was what Christianity could not entirely provide because it has a universal vocation. Whence the necessity for Europeans to rediscover their rich identitarian memory: ‘Because we do not have a religion of identity on which to anchor ourselves, we have a shared memory of our own since the time of Homer, the font of all the values upon which to reestablish our future renaissance.’ Dominique Venner’s death . . . was a call to waken a people, by a man who gave his life for his convictions. The death of Dominique Venner is not an end but a beginning.

Mr. Venner was a prolific writer.  He wrote over 50 books about history including the history of weapons and hunting.  His works included his autobiography, Le Coeur Rebelle [The Rebel Heart], 30,000 ans d’identite [History and Traditions of Europeans: 30,000 Years of Identity], Le Siecle de 1914 [The Century of 1914] and Le choc de l’Histoire [The Clash of History], Histoire du terrorisme [HIstory of Terrorism] and Histoire critique de la Resistance [Critical History of the Resistance]. Mr. Venner also wrote Histoire de l’Armee rouge [History of the Red Army], which in 1981 was awarded the Prix Broquette-Gonin d’histoire by the Academie Francaise [the French Academy]. His last book, Un samourai d’Occident: Le breviaire des insoumis [An Occidental Samurai: The Breviary of the Unsubjugated] was published in 2013 shortly after his death.

Until Mr. Venner’s death, little of his work had been translated into English aside from a few snippets and quotes.  In 2015, a 160-page volume of Mr. Venner’s work was published in English.  Dominique Venner, The Shock of History: Religion, Memory, Identity (Arktos Media 2015).  An excellent review of the book was written by Jared Taylor for American Renaissance.  Mr. Taylor set forth a short, partial biography of Mr. Venner’s life:

“Dominique Venner was born in 1935 and joined the French army the first day he became eligible: his 18th birthday. He served as a paratrooper, fighting the Algerian insurgency. In 1956, after three years of combat, he returned to France, where he was active in nationalist politics.  That same year, he helped raid and ransack the headquarters of the French Communist Part to protest the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising.  Later, Venner took part in the attempted coup against the French government when Charles de Gaulle — in Venner’s view — betrayed France by supporting independence of Algeria.  Venner was imprisoned for 18 months as a ‘political undesirable,’ but his experiences gave him rare insights.  . . .  After his release in 1962, Venner began his career as an intellectual.  He worked with the main figures of the French New Right until 1971, from which time he devoted himself to history. He wrote about the traditions of Europe, the French resistance during the occupation, the Russian civil war of 1981 to 1921, the Confederacy’s struggle for independence, and many other subjects.”

Source: Jared Taylor, Frenchman, European, White Man (American Renaissance — Dec. 11, 2015).

There is also a good review of The Shock of History in a blog titled The Iron Legion: Strength and Tradition.  The article concluded about the book: “Venner manages to weave together the rare combination of an accurate appraisal of our current problems and a way out of the darkness.  Above all it is a message of optimism and faith that Europe will prevail.”

DOMINIQUE VENNER, THE SHOCK OF HISTORY: RELIGION, MEMORY, IDENTITY (ARKTOS MEDIA 2015)

Just hours before his death Mr. Venner wrote an article condemning same-sex marriage. A BBC obituary stated:

“In the final entry in his blog, dated the day of his death, he wrote about the failure of peaceful mass protests to prevent the passage of the marriage law and talked of “new, spectacular and symbolic gestures to wake up the sleep walkers and shake the anaesthetized consciousness. . . . In his final blog post, he quoted an Algerian blogger predicting Islamist would rule France within 15 years, overturning the new law on same-sex marriage.” (Obituary: Dominique Venner — May 21, 2013.)

On May 26, 2013 — just days after Mr. Venner’s death — a large number of persons protested in Paris against France’s new same-sex marriage law. “Police put the turn-out at 150,000,” reported The Independent on May 26, 2013. “The organisers claimed 1,000,000. Other organisers estimated over 400,000 . . . .” (France: Huge gay marriage protest turns violent in Paris.)

Before the May 26 protest there had been other protests in France. A protest on Jan. 13, 2013 was reported by CNN: “Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Paris on Sunday decrying the French president’s [Francois Hollande’s] plan to legalize same-sex marriages and adoptions.” (Protesters rally against same-sex marriage in France — Jan. 15, 2013.)

Mr. Venner’s final published words concluded:

“It is here and now that our destiny is played out until the last second. And this final second is as important as the rest of a lifetime. That is why you must be yourself until the last moment. It is by deciding, truly willing one’s destiny, that one conquers nothingness. And there is no escape from this requirement, because we only have this life, in which it is our duty to be fully ourselves — or to be nothing.”

“Just maybe, there is something we can learn from the spirit of his deed, if not from the deed itself,” wrote political theorist Marjorie Jeffrey. “It certainly seems clear that Venner did not mean for men of the West to follow his example and commit mass suicide; he meant for it to shake them out of their malaise. It was a cri-du-coeur [cry from the heart] against the modern age.” (Suicide at Notre Dame a Warning to the West — June 18, 2013.)

The Institute ILIADE was established in Mr. Venner’s memory.  One person wrote: “The Institute ILIADE basically promotes a worldview that is in total contradiction to the deadly presence and and an attitude of intransigence against the zeitgeist, and this with all available means (viral communication, books, press, education, organizations of events and cultural activities, construction and operation of networks.”

The institute’s purpose is to train young Europeans to “take pride in their origins, their roots — in a word, their identity — to forestall their exist from history and their ‘great replacement’ in the lands of their ancestors by people unlike themselves.”  The institute presents a series of intensive courses to reinforce the European identities of young men and women between the ages of 20 and 35.  About 20 to 30 young men and women take the training for the purpose of serving in the ranks of the French nationalist/identitarian movement.

THE FIRST SYMPOSIUM ABOUT THE WORK AND IDEAS OF DOMINIQUE VENNER WAS HELD ON MAY 17, 2014 IN PARIS