Jean-Paul Demoule Quotes

There is a degree of coherence when, in the context of the Indo-European question, such robust biological racism is associated with a thesis that is both Euro-centrist and migrationist; this is in contrast to Broca’s “entrenched” anti-linguistic autochtonism. In the opinion of Clémence Royer, “a race that is powerful enough to overrun all of Europe and all of western Asia cannot have had its origins in a Pamirian valley; mountain peoples are peoples who have retreated and defend themselves; they are never conquering peoples.” Yet “the blond European race, as a whole, appears to have always been a race of travelers, a race that is essentially war-like and conquering.” “In the end, these high plateaus of Asia can be discounted; once we wanted to believe that these plateaus were the birthplace of everything but all they have ever given rise to are avalanches.”

The idea of a single, localized, original Homeland (Urheimat) which was the cradle of the original People is just one of the possible hypotheses that might account for the similarities between the Indo-European languages.

...The currently irresolvable contradictions that mar the many attempts made to reconcile the linguistic and archaeological evidence (and indeed biological anthropological evidence) for the “arrival of the Aryans in India” do not mean that the supposed “original Indo-European People” emerged in India (this would pose the same problems, but in reverse), nor do they mean that “invisible migrations” did not exist in the past. It simply means that, in the current state of knowledge, none of the hypotheses forwarded can be seriously demonstrated. Given the stakes involved, extreme caution needs to be exercised when attempting to solve this issue.

There is in fact no evidence for the gradual progression of an entire material culture from the shores of the Black Sea to those of the Atlantic or the Ganges—unless, of course, we drastically force the data.

The model of diffusion of “archaeological cultures,” each corresponding to a given “people,” is both naturalist and directly inspired by the nation states of the nineteenth century; it does not correspond to numerous situations provided, for example, by the ethnology of other continents or by the history and archaeology of protohistoric peoples of Early Medieval Europe.

...Just as the cultures of the steppes have various historical origins and not solely Pontic, similarly, the BMAC has predecessors which are archaeologically visible in the material culture, both within its home area and further west, when the Neolithic way of life was being established. It is therefore very difficult to assign it a steppic origin. Incidentally, this is confirmed by biological anthropology, with all its limitations, which shows the permanency of physical characteristics within the BMAC and the very limited extent of mixing with steppic populations.57

But, crucially, it is proofs of a southward migration toward India and Iran that are lacking. At the start of the second millennium, a powerful and prosperous proto-urban civilization known as the “Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex” (BMAC; also known as the Oxus civilization) flourished in the southern oases of Central Asia. Excavations carried out over the past thirty years have revealed hundreds of sites, the most notable of which, if we ignore the older excavations at Namazga and Altyn Depe, are Gonur Depe (sometimes interpreted as a capital), Togolok, Kelleli, Taip, Djarkutan, Dashly Depe, and Sapalli Depe.51 This is a true urban civilization, with mud-brick fortifications, temples, and palaces, founded on a prosperous agricultural economy (which involved the use of irrigation) and control over networks of neighboring villages. The graves of the elite contain high-value bronze and copper objects. Indeed, the region is rich in precious mineral resources: gold, copper, lead, silver, tin, turquoise, and lapis-lazuli. Craftsmanship was highly developed, and most of the pottery is wheel-thrown. The existence of seals attests to the degree of economic complexity, as do long-distance exchanges of luxury goods. The BMAC is therefore truly part of this urban belt of semi-arid South West Asia—stretching from Mesopotamia, through Iran (with the Elam and Jiroft cultures) to the Indus civilization in the east—which prospered during the second half of the third millennium and the early second millennium BCE. The objects exchanged also attest to contacts between the inhabitants of these cities and members of the vast Andronovo steppic culture situated immediately to the north.

This controversial scholar, the first translator of Darwin and by extension the first promoter of “social Darwinism” in France, stated in her preface to the Origine des espèces that the most courageous “races” had overcome the others since “man, having become the stronger, could impose himself on the mate that pleased him most; and hence woman, who had nothing to do but please and submit, became more and more beautiful, in accordance with man’s ideal, man who himself became even stronger, having only to fight, command, and protect.” Thus we see the “reckless and blind” error of Christianity and democracy which scorned natural selection: “while all care, all devotions of love and pity are considered to be owed to the deposed and degenerate representatives of the species, there is nothing to encourage the development of the emerging force or to propagate merit, talent and virtue.”

Which components of the reconstructed Indo-European proto-culture can be used as evidence of a steppic location?... two arguments are generally singled out by the proponents of the steppic theory: the case of the horse and that of the chariot. The domesticated horse, on the one hand, and the chariot on the other, are supposedly well-attested in the shared vocabulary and are particularly valorized in the earliest Indo-European mythologies, where the sacrifice of a horse is the ultimate royal sacrifice... The most common root for the horse is certainly found in a significant number of Indo-European languages... Its absence in Slavic is all the more surprising since the historical “cradle” of the Slavs is often said to be located in the North Pontic Steppes, or close by, precisely where the earliest domestication of the horse is reputed to have occurred.

In the postwar years, British anthropologist Roger Pearson founded the Northern League for North European Friendship, which brought together former Nazis, like raciologist Hans Günther (who at the time was writing under a pseudonym); former SS member Arthur Ehrhardt; Franz Altheim, one time collaborator of Himmler within the Ahnenerbe (after the war he held a professorship at Halle in East Germany and then in West Berlin); and various neo-Nazis and neo-fascists such as Colin Jordan, Alastair Harper, and John Tyndall in Great Britain. In 1960, Pearson established the Mankind Quarterly journal, the mouthpiece of “scientific racism,” in collaboration with Robert Gayre and, most notably, with Nazi geneticist Ottmar von Verschuer, Mengele’s former superior.

In his “Que sais-je?” on the Indo-Europeans, which is a follow-on to a first volume almost entirely devoted to Indo-European linguistics, Jean Haudry describes an ideal proto Indo-European society, which for the most part belongs to the realm of fantasy as becomes more and more obvious as the book progresses.

At least one thing is sure: the collapse of both these urban civilizations (i.e., those of the BMAC and the Indus) was not caused by attacks by Andronovan barbarians from the steppes. In fact, it was the result of the slow breakdown of centralized authoritarian power, which did not leave behind a wasteland but rather gave way to more modest, village-type settlements. There are no traces of Andronovan objects south of the BMAC, and the same is true in the Hindu Kush mountain passes that lead to India. As we have seen, there are no traces either in the Indus Valley. But since the current languages spoken in Northern India indeed belong to the Indo-European group, there is only one solution left to save the invasionist model, or at least the concept of an “arrival of the Indo-Iranians”: invisible migrations.

A closer reading of the issues of Nouvelle École and Éléments both reinforces and refines this impression. For example, in each issue, the section headed “Éphémérides” singles out important historical dates and rarely misses an occasion to evoke the atrocities committed by the Allied forces during the Second World War. The iconography employed highlights the work of artists affiliated with the Nazi regime, such as the sculptor Arno Breker, the painter Wilhelm Petersen, and the illustrator and lithographer Georg Sluyterman van Langeweyde.19 One of the illustrations used in Vue de droite is particularly telling in this regard: from the pen of Georg Sluyterman van Langeweyde, it represents a proud medieval knight armed with a lance and originally graced the cover of the August 1940 edition of Germanien, the journal of the SS Ahnenerbe’s “cultural” institute; Alain de Benoist is happy to simply invert the image from left to right and—a tiny detail—replace the swastika on the knight’s shield with a two-headed eagle. Other illustrations are lifted directly from Germanien to embellish the pages of Nouvelle École and the official magazine of the GRECE.

While no one would dream of questioning the resemblances between the various so-called Indo-European languages, the centrifugal arborescent model in its current forms cannot be considered as validated due to the numerous contradictions that it contains. Furthermore, abuses, both past and present, of this model should incite us to the utmost rigor. We must therefore turn toward much more complex and multidisciplinary models concerning historical phenomena that span millennia if we are to meaningfully explore the multiplicity of problems that make up the “Indo-European question.”

In 1973, Pearson, through the intermediary of the Institute for the Study of Man, founded the Journal of Indo-European Studies, which would rapidly become a leading reference in the field. The editorial committee was comprised of four members: Roger Pearson himself, archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, Finnish linguist Raimo Anttila, and Belgian Indo-Europeanist Edgar Polomé. Incidentally, Polomé, Pearson and Gimbutas were also part of the patronage committee of Nouvelle École. Assuredly, the scientific standing of these three scholars is indisputable, as is that of most of the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, which initially numbered thirty-six members. However, in their midst we once again encounter Franz Altheim, Himmler’s collaborator, who was also on the patronage committee of Nouvelle École; indeed several other members, such as Mircea Eliade, Scott Littleton, and Rüdiger Schmitt, belonged to both committees, and it is not always possible to ascertain if these scientists were fully aware of the nature of the journal.