We Rebuilt Notre Dame: Time to Rebuild Our Civilization

The reconstruction work on Notre Dame in Paris has been completed, and the church reopened. The reopening was attended by First Lady Jill Biden, and President-elect Trump, but not, for some reason, President Biden.

The exterior and interior reconstruction is done and the results are stunningly beautiful. The work combined modern techniques and ancient European craftsmen skills to rebuild what is, effectively, one of the most well-known symbols of French culture, European civilization, and the Catholic faith which originated in Europe.

It is beyond doubt that our civilization is still capable of incredible feats of feats of engineering and beauty even in our currently hobbled and increasingly unstable state.

I can still recall the day Notre Dame burned in 2019.

I spent hours watching the livestream, the videos of native French Catholics praying along the Quai de Montebello. It truly felt like the heart was being torn from an already injured and crippled Europe and that Western civilization was not only metaphorically burning but now physically burning before our eyes. I know several other nationalists, patriots, and right-wingers who felt this same way. I also believe that the public, and by public I mean the entirety of the Western world’s native population, felt they had been spiritually damaged by the destruction of one of our greatest and most beautiful achievements.

I can also clearly recall how many Muslims on social media jubilantly celebrated the destruction of Notre Dame. Not only did the Islamic State rejoice in the destruction of the ancient Cathedral, but many ‘normal’ Muslims in the West took to social media to celebrate the destruction one of France’s most precious national symbols. Even official Muslim organizations, such as the Crescent International, founded by the founder of the Muslim Institute in London, intimated that the West deserved the destruction of Notre Dame because we did not care about the terrible fate of Muslim mosques such as al-Aqsa in Jerusalem (which also suffered a tiny fire at around the same time as the burning of the cathedral.) [Notre Dame and al-Aqsa: Contrasting Responses—Islamic heritage is not considered worthy for posterity, by Yusuf Dhia-Allah, Sha’ban 25, 1440(I.E. April 30, 2019)]. The piece virulently attacked the French for wanting to restore the Cathedral while simultaneously banning Muslim garments like the hijab and burka.

Immigrant hatred for the Western world and its people was not only constrained to Notre Dame and Europe, though. In Canada as many as 85 churches have been put to the torch since May of 2021, according to the Catholic Civil Rights League of Canada. Coptic, Anglican, and Evangelical churches have also been consistent targets.

These churches were burned in response to supposed mass graves at the sites of Canadian residential schools where First Nations children were once forcibly educated. No bodies have ever been exhumed from these supposed mass graves and the most that even the investigators themselves have admitted is that there are anomalies. Many Indigenous groups are very adamant that there is no need to dig to finish these investigations.

As a result of these inconclusive accusations dozens of Christian churches have been burned across Canada. I take the position that they were burned not simply for being Christian places of worship but because, to the diverse arsonists who put them to the torch, they represent that foundational European culture that Canadians have constructed their country around.

Non-Canadian immigrants in the country such as Harsha Walia, the former and then director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, was supporting of the church burnings. Worse yet, she was supported in these beliefs by the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, an organization of First Nations leaders which works closely with the provincial government.

Western culture, beliefs, faith, and traditions are attacked, sometimes in the most literal sense, by people and groups who have no place within our civilization and countries. If we can rebuild something as ancient and beautiful as Notre Dame, motivated by nothing but our attachment to it as a marker of our civilization, I have to believe that we can also begin to rebuild Western civilization itself.

The first step in that reconstruction is to find it within ourselves to say that we love our cultures, our countries, and our civilizations. That we do indeed think they are the best of the best when it comes to cultures and we want to preserve them for our descendants. With that must come the assertion that decades of demographic change can to a large degree be undone by humane policies of repatriation that work with friendly countries who also want their citizens back, a topic that White Papers has covered many times over this past year.

Confidence, remigration, and cultural continuity are the three most important aspects of preserving the West against further damage and destruction. Once we have mastered those necessities we can begin to rebuild this civilization.