December 2023
On 13 March 2023, historian and philsopher David Engels of the Institute of Western Affairs interviewed Victor Auba, Director of the Academia Christiana in France. It was the fourth in a series of ongoing interviews conducted under the banner of the title below, featuring European artists, philosophers, priests, intellectuals, activists and artisans who have decided not only to lament the “decline of the West,” but also to attempt to reverse it — by creating something new on a foundation of beauty, truth, and goodness. Our translation from the French, with added clarifications.
“Don't Just Criticise, Create!”
DAVID ENGELS: Dear Victor, you are director and co-founder of Academia Christiana, a rapidly growing Christian, patriotic and conservative association dedicated to the training of young adults. Can you detail for us the activities that you currently offer in the context of the Academia Christiana and the ideal that you are trying to pass on?
VICTOR AUBERT: Academia Christiana organised an annual summer university reserved for students and young workers, then over the years we have developed symposia and training sessions in several major cities in France. For three years, we have been organising festive days bringing together all generations around our culture (Oktoberfest, Saint John's fires [i.e., midsummer bonfires on John the Baptist’s feast day]). Academia Christiana could be described as a conservative “think tank”, a training institute and a network of initiatives. We offer courses in philosophy, history, and practical training as well as political reflection in the form of conferences or open forums. Today, more than 4,000 young people have gone through our training, we generally receive between 200 and 500 people
per event.
We try to live as rooted Catholics. This implies a certain intransigence towards individualistic hedonism promoted by contemporary society, but also the rejection of relativism. Concretely, we want to invite our participants to know their past and to love it, to lead a spiritual life, to found large families, to do meaningful work, to engage in cultural and political combat and to make their whole life bear witness to this ideal.
What exactly are the young people who enrol in your training looking for?
Our young listeners come to find conviviality, cohesion, and gateways to engagement. Nowadays, there is a great deal of content available online for training on philosophical-political and religious questions. The advantage of travelling to live a week of training, surrounded by 300 young people, is that something unique happens in these moments: a kind of fervour and effervescence which makes it possible to no longer feel isolated and which makes you want to get involved. We allow them to meet actors in cultural, political and associative life to help them move from words to action.
Unlike many other countries, the establishment of a true Christian and conservative counter-culture is already quite strongly developed in France. Do you have an explanation for this phenomenon?
This is a long story. Republican anticlericalism may have contributed more to the development of the conservative Catholic bloc than the Church itself. Since the French Revolution, a protest movement has been established. First there was the chouannerie and the wars of Vendée, then the struggle of the monarchist Catholics against the Republic in the 19th century. The condemnation of Action Française reinforced feeling of belonging to a persecuted minority and developed a collective conscience.
Then there was the Algerian war, the fight against communism, and then Vatican II and the Lefebvrist opposition. In France, therefore, there is a whole history of rebellion in the face of a secular and progressive ideology. This story is part of families and a social environment that includes schools, chapels (Fraternity of Saint Pius X, Saint Peter, Institute of Christ the King), pilgrimages (Notre Dame de Chrétienté), associations ( Scouting, March for life, SOS Chrétiens d'Orient, etc.), media (TV Libertés, Le Salon Beige), and companies (Le Puy du fou being the best known example). These are not closed sects, but rather a race of men and women who will remain rebellious out of loyalty against all odds.
A few months ago, you organised a summer conference in Paris under the title: “Reconquest or Secession”? Can you explain to readers your solution to this dilemma?
The opposition between these two concepts diminishes if they are defined correctly. If the reconquest consists in living in the big cities, investing in the big companies of the CAC 40 [stock market index], in sending our children to business schools, giving all our time to the big conservative parties, betting on a potential electoral victory, to accept a certain number of compromises in the face of the entertainment culture in order to pass on conservative ideas, then indeed, it is undoubtedly a great waste of energy.
If secession consists in hunkering down in the countryside in an isolated house, in divesting the cultural and political fields to live in small closed communities, in systematically rejecting technology and innovation in order to protect oneself from corruption, then it is also a dead end.
In my opinion, we must break with what can only waste our time and lead to disappointments, while maintaining a political objective in the noble sense of the term. Concretely, it is a question of aiming for an ideal of a coherent life, of making time for the spiritual life, of taking care of our families while being in the world. We must give priority to local political action, the development of our own businesses, cultural action, and try to radiate with our exemplarity.
Can you tell us a little more about your personal journey before becoming the founder of the Academia Christiana and the reasons and inspirations that led you to this initiative?
Born in 1989 in Paris, I was raised in a very slightly left-wing middle class family, I attended secular and republican schools until high school. Like many aby boomers, my parents, born into Catholic families, abandoned the Faith or practice upon entering adulthood. During trips to Asia and Africa, as a young boy, I was fascinated by the religious fervour of these peoples. To do as the Hindus do, at ten I asked for baptism at the church in my neighbourhood, because I was French. Faced with multiculturalism and anti-racist propaganda at school, my knee-jerk reaction to the left took place at the age of twelve. One thing leading to another, notably thanks to scouting, I discovered the traditional liturgy, then conservative thought through journals and movements. After three years of seminary, I then resumed studying philosophy, which is where the idea of Academia Christiana was born. We were a few friends who wanted to pass on an intellectual heritage that we had appropriated during personal research. We wanted to ensure that as many people as possible could benefit from it and that this transmission was aimed primarily at young people.
Academia Christiana has not only made friends, as one can easily imagine. Can you tell us a bit about the opposition you have faced in the past?
As soon as we reached a certain level of visibility, the trouble started. Far left sites began describing us in unflattering terms. The mainstream media quickly attached injurious labels to us without worrying about the content of our training or even our publications. Public service television produced an infamous report trying to portray us as some sort of sect or militia. The schools that housed us were accused of complicity with ghastly far-right, fundamentalist, nazi Catholics. Almost no one dared to rent premises to us to organise our training.
Within Christian circles, our free-speech and openness to the New Right frightened some clerics and some sad minds. We have been accused of complacency with regard to neo-paganism or Marxism. Our style may have shocked the older generations, and the success of our training unfortunately stirs up some jealousies. The French like to segment their commitments: on the one hand there is pure politics, on the other the spiritual life and works of charity. Perhaps promoting political commitment while assuming our faith may have shocked. We are actually trying to stay true to the legacy that previous generations have passed on to us, trying to dust it off and make it accessible to totally uprooted young people.
Academia Christiana is expanding rapidly – can you tell us a little more about your plans for the future and your fears?
We have a real treasure: our intellectual, cultural, spiritual European and Christian heritage. On the one hand, we must appropriate it, transmit it and above all live it. Our goal is to radiate this ideal so that it becomes a true counter-culture animated by the passion of youth. In the long term we would like all Christian activists to form small communities, grouped around schools, parishes or abbeys, which radiate and attract to them the French who aspire to find their roots.
We are currently looking to buy an estate to develop our training and our cultural events: rediscovery of local traditions, craft trades, banquets, seminars, sports training courses, summer school, expositions…. This place would be a kind of Catholic and identity showcase where everyone could come to recharge their batteries and train. While waiting to buy such a property we are developing training in different cities in France, a collection in a publishing house, video broadcasts for YouTube, two major summer schools in the North and South of France.
We would also like to export Academia Christiana to Europe by offering young people who share our vision of the world to help them reproduce something similar in their country, then maintain our links through regular exchanges and collaborations.
I am aware that the economic situation will deteriorate, that the risk of a world war cannot be ruled out, and I see every day that my country is affected by a terrible anthropological decline: addiction to screens, obesity, wokism ... The weight of Afro-Turkish-Muslim immigration is also extremely worrying. In parallel with all this, I note that what we have managed to create so far, in particular thanks to the friendly and community dimension of Academia Christiana, an excellent way to resist this dissolving pressure. The joy of sharing the same ideal with comrades is an exceptional fuel. In the end I fear more our lack of perseverance and courage more than the blows of the enemy. I am convinced that if we fight our whole life with faith and enthusiasm, it will bear fruit for the future.
The motto of this series of interviews is: Ne pas seulement critiquer, mais aussi créer! (Don’t just criticise, but also create!) - can you identify with this motto, and if so how?
This could be the motto of Academia Christiana ! Unfortunately, I have found that there are many embittered people in conservative circles, because their unnuanced pessimism has bruised them. By dint of watching our world collapsing on a daily basis we end up going crazy. When criticism becomes obsessive it often leads to reciprocal ostracism, because the neighbour's criticism does not go far enough or not sufficiently in the right direction. In addition, the critical position is very comfortable, it allows you not to get wet while disassociating yourself from malfunctions. It’s all really pathetic. Blissful optimism doesn't suit me either, of course, but when you get your hands dirty, you immediately look at the world differently. The smallest victories restore meaning and hope to everyday life. Old grudges are no longer relevant when you have to build together what everyone has looked forward to for a long time. There will always be grumpy and disgruntled people, but we must ignore them as much as possible and build, while singing, the new world, on the ruins of modernity.