Guardians of Heritage: The Iliade Institute’s Call to Action

A book recommendation

This is a book about Europe, but it relates heavily to our situation here in the United States or wherever you are in the world. The struggle for our freedoms and our national heritage is a global struggle.

Guardians of Heritage: The Iliade Institute’s Call to Action is about how to recover what we’ve lost without descending into a debilitating nostalgia about that loss that makes us impotent or drives us into a solitude that results in inaction and fear.

The book begins thus:

Europe is experiencing the most serious crisis in its history. It is an existential crisis in the strictest sense: not just a questioning of the meaning of existence, but a threat to the very possibility of its continued existence both physically and culturally.¹

This is what I have been feeling here in the States with the invasion on the southern border and the rejection of the morals I was raised with and that our nation was founded upon. Not only rejection of these foundational moral and ethical pillars, but the celebration of their destruction.

An abortion bus outside the DNC convention? The merriment of transitioning young boys and girls to the opposite sex? Treating illegals better than your own citizens? Taking people to court who believe the election was stolen? Throwing your political opponents in jail? Naked men parading in front of young children? Drag shows in libraries? Attempting to murder President Trump?

The authors cite two main problems:

Firstly—and most immediately visible—is the Great Replacement: a change of people that has no precedent in the history of our continent.²

Secondly, there is the Great Erasure, which is the necessary condition for the Great Replacement: a generalised offensive to destroy everything that underpins our culture. This is the essential problem.³

Our traditional American culture is being attacked (I’m good at stating the obvious!). Obviously, America, like Trump, is not perfect, but there is a culture in America that is being lost: optimism, hard work, innovation, a “can do” attitude, hope for a better future, family, country and faith.

Those of us still living in this way help keep America a thriving country. The more of us who live this way, who, if needed, find their way back to our national roots, the better our chances of defeating the Globalists, or as this book also calls them, the Universalists, that is, those who see the world ideally devoid of all unique cultures except the bankrupt and immoral culture of Globalism.

Many social pathologies are attributable to the dissolution of the family, as reflected in cases of juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, and psychological illness.⁴

In Europe, the polarity between masculinity and femininity is traditionally understood in terms not of opposition, but of complementarity: although the two sexes are seen as different, these differences are viewed as a source of mutual enrichment.⁵

Why is this so hard for the left to grasp? It’s not. Ultimately, most have been brainwashed via gender politics being used to destroy our way of life. It’s intentional. They don’t want to grasp it. They want something different.

We would be nothing—or very little—if deprived of our biological, familial, political, and civilisational roots: we would be uprooted, interchangeable beings, enthralled by advertising propaganda and social networks, and fit merely for consumption in an increasingly vulgar world. In view of this, our primary battle is clear: we must reject anything that undermines our sense of identity.⁶

The whole progressive movement is bent on removing our American identity, European identity, French identity, English identity, etc., etc. That is one of the things I appreciate about Trump, he emphasizes that for Americans….America should be first, for the French, France should be first, for Germans, Germany should be first. I hate that the current world Globalist movement is attempting to remove national pride and culture.

I hear the French are rude. Excellent! I hear the English eat crappy food. Great! I hear Americans are boisterous. Wonderful!

But the Globalists don’t want any of that. They want one, homogenous, boring, unhealthy populace. They even want to tell us what to eat. All of us. Fake meat and real bugs. Even this is a destruction of culture and tradition. For my part I want turkey, dressing and mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving and hamburgers, steak, hot dogs and beer on the fourth of July.

If you’re from a different country, let’s kid and ridicule one another about our different tastes in food and drink while we hoist a beer (cold or warm) or a glass of wine in a toast to the destruction of the Globalists’ plans for bottled bug juice.

Of course, today’s European Union is nothing of this sort: rather, it is a centralising, administrative project to erase all concrete differences in the name of an abstract ideal—one that does not dare to explicitly claim any identity that is specific to European civilisation.⁷

The globalists, the EU, the WHO, the WEF and many others simply want the people of the world to eventually identify as slaves.

What is most powerful is not what is most flamboyantly displayed, but what is most charged with meaning.⁸

This is my problem with modern art…it doesn’t mean anything…except maybe that it doesn’t mean anything.

In support of our identity, it is incumbent upon us to produce a new form of art: one that is capable of catching the eye or the ear of today’s ‘everyman’, and of drawing him upwards, away from purely mechanical, commercial, or degrading cultural ‘products’ into which he otherwise might stray.⁹

I love that. That’s the art I want to see today.

Finally, whereas previous eras have bestowed upon us a wealth of objects and monuments that we continue to admire, the only legacy of our consumer society will be piles of rubbish.¹⁰

There’s this guy on X who calls himself Culture Critic. Quite often he contrasts the architecture our current cultures have produced against the backdrop of what was produced in past times and in many cases not even that long ago. The buildings and structures torn down in the last hundred years is depressing…and that’s the point…slaves shouldn’t be happy, nor should they have architecture that is inspiring and uplifting.

For example, a cherished piece of our architectural heritage is not only worth its price per square metre; it also reflects the soul of a community, and as such, should not be left to the whims of property developers.¹¹

Our challenge lies not in rejecting prosperity, but in redirecting wealth towards ends that benefit us collectively.¹²

Makes me think of the cathedrals in Europe.

This body of ethics is expressed through a number of principles: the harmonious balance of body and mind, loyalty to ancestors, courage, and the quest for beauty. In concrete terms, it is reflected in a thousand everyday decisions: courteous language and gestures, an upright posture, avoidance of slovenly attire, faithfulness to one’s word, independence of judgement in one’s resisting of all indoctrination, rejection of sheep-like behaviours, the refusal to be entranced by entertainment or consumption, and so on.¹³

And here I sit in an old pair of sweats…feeling…a little guilty about it.

There is a lot more in this book. I was a little disappointed that it did not acknowledge the contributions of Christianity more than it did.  They don’t denigrate Christianity and they do acknowledge it in brief, but it is the long history of Europe that takes precedence, harkening back to the writings of Homer and how the culture progressed from its very beginnings.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. It is not only a call to action, but a kind of blueprint to move forward in the times we now find ourselves in.

Here are some of the concluding thoughts from the book:

At present, we are all asked to carry on our shoulders an enormous responsibility. It is time now to show that we are able to meet this challenge.¹⁴

It is for us to affirm our identity in every moment of our daily lives; to return to form at a time of great formlessness, deformity, and uniformity; and to restore a world of beauty in the face of so much ugliness.¹⁵

…while we should make use of the virtual world, our battle is in the real world. And that is infinitely more demanding.¹⁶

Every day, even in the smallest of decisions, we need to demonstrate a ‘civilisational consciousness’: to raise high our heritage, but without caricature, and to cede nothing to a system that wants to bring us to ruin.¹⁷

At a time when the most basic elements of our identity are under threat, almost every decision becomes a political one: what we consume, what we have our children read, what exposure they have to screens and media propaganda, and so on.¹⁸

Let us be ever more courageous: our personal lives, our trivial pleasures, and our petty qualms count for little given the magnitude of what is at stake—the very survival of our civilisation.¹⁹

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Notes

1. Iliade Institute. Guardians of Heritage: The Iliade Institute’s Call to Action. Arktos Media Ltd., 2024. Kindle edition. p. 4.

2. p. 4

3. p. 4

4. p. 14

5. p. 18

6. pp. 24-25

7. p. 30

8. p. 34

9. p. 34

10. p. 36

11. p. 36

12. p. 36

13. p. 40

14. p. 51

15. p. 51

16. p. 51

17. p. 52

18. p. 52

19. p. 52