Suicide of the Radical Right​

The choices we face in confronting this dangerous moment are as much spiritual as political. Understanding them will require us to broaden our social imagination, expand our historical horizons, and venture beyond the well-guarded boundaries of public life. In doing this, we will find that we have crucial things to learn from a body of controversial ideas to which Dominique Venner gave voice. I say this not to valorize his action or to grant him the posthumous benediction he wished for. Venner’s suicide was the self-destructive apotheosis of his dark vision of identity politics. But the ideals that shaped his mind, and which stir the passions of many, repay serious study. They can help us see and repair the defects in the political traditions that we dearly value. And they can help us understand and renew the Christian tradition to which they are directly opposed.