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Here's a subject on which philosophers and other scholars might actually be useful: the philosophy of Julius Evola, the uses to which it has been put, what it means that one of Trump's most important advisers has a strong, sympathetic interest in him and "traditionalism"? Links to resources welcome as well.
I don't know much about the philosophy of Evola, but I do have a guess about what it might mean. Evola is a figure often revered by people today describing themselves as defenders of "Neoreaction" or the "Dark Enlightenment" or the "alt-right." For example, here is a "Dark Enlightenment" reading list that includes three works by Evola (under the subsection title "Reactionary Thought").
http://freenortherner.com/dark-enlightenment-reading-list/
And here is a conservative blog post describing Evola as the "darling of the Dark Enlightenment" (the post rejects the Dark Enlightenment on the grounds that it's fascist).
So my guess is that it means that the Trump advisor in question is fairly plugged into Neoreaction/Dark Enlightenment/alti-right thinking. Or it at least raises the probability that this is so.
In haste, I know Evola is a recurrent point of reference for Italian neofascists — not the cleaned up parliamentary version but the actual activist skinheads (e.g. the Casa Pound group). He's some sort of racist, anti-egalitarian and anti-modernity thinker with an odd eastern spiritualist twist. Never read him directly, mind.
A name often mentioned in connection with Putin is Ivan Ilyin, e.g.:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2015-09-20/putins-philosopher
You may be interested in Mark Sedgwick's 'Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century'. It is not, as its name might suggest, in any way sensationalist: rather, it is a useful review of the ideas, milieus, connections, etc., of the likes of Guénon, and, to a lesser extent, Evola (i.e. so-called 'traditionalism' tout court).
'Mussolini's Intellectuals: Fascist Social and Political Thought' by A. James Gregor, himself a somewhat reactionary Cold War figure, might also be of use.
What one must keep in mind, I suppose, is that there are anti-parliamentary far-rightists who are not fascists. This is not to say, however, that such people are any less deplorable than your common or garden Hitlerite. What's terrible is, in any case, no matter just how it presents itself, terrible.
My .02
I read two books by Evola around four or five years ago (I used to teach philosophy at a junior college, obviously my reading of Evola was personal and not related to any teaching). One was a critique of Nazi Germany ("Notes on the Third Reich"). I thought that book was ok in that it approached a well-plowed field from an idiosyncratic perspective that is hard to find elsewhere and I recall finding a few points here and there rather insightful and somewhat (to my eyes) original along with a certain personal perspective that at the very least is historically interesting (Evola was a contemporary who spent time in Germany and was engaged with Nazi media/scholars to a certain extent).
The other book I read from him was called "Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for Aristocrats of the Soul". I labored through it, though I think I might have quit about 3/4 of the way through. The book was terribly repetitive (I can't remember how many chapters started with the same tired theme, I felt cognitively bludgeoned) and the constant references to Nietzsche were exhausting. After reading much of the book, I had a hard time understanding how the author was doing anything more than just a selective (and not accurate or emotionally sophisticated) reading of certain aspects of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. And yet, Evola constantly stressed the fact that while Nietzsche was correct on many points, he was lacking that "transcendental" element in his philosophy (Evola evokes "Tradition" as his grounding). Evola does not really explicate his concept of "Tradition" well as I recall, it was sort of a groping negative theology (oh it's not this, oh it's not that) with no clear result. I found the entire work a somewhat exhausting waste of time, and I confess to being extremely puzzled why this person has such a strong reputation in right-wing "philosophical" circles (and as someone who is very eccentric and not as intellectually disciplined, I consider myself a far more sympathetic reader than the average philosopher or historian/scholar).
As someone with a fair bit of contact with "Millennials" (I myself am older, but through teaching large intro classes in the past have become "friends" on social media with a great number of former students who are in their 20's) I have been able to observe a great deal of "alt-right" discussion on the internet. Knowing some of the participants personally, I have been able to engage some in one-on-one discussion at length (I consider myself a "leftist" with no particular political home in the USA). These young people are in many cases quite intelligent, but they have become incredibly skeptical of traditional narratives in part (I believe) due to the many cases of poor instruction they received in secondary schools and schools of higher education. This hostile skepticism of professional academia generally (and it may also be caused by intelligent but lazy/immature young people who feel entitled to a certain intellectual status but cannot or will not do the work necessary to become professional academics), combined with a sort of emotional rebellion against the schoolmarmish aspects of "political correctness" fed by a constant stream of distorted information from right-wing online sources is causing them to develop extremely malignant worldviews that nevertheless can have a great deal of internal consistency and are generally immune to critique from more "normal" perspectives. It is disturbing to watch.
Rather than talking about Evola—I don't know that much about him—I want to say something about Traditionalism. I began my career in philosophy in Iran within the Traditionalist school. I am not a Traditionalist though. Here is my semi-insider view.
The great Traditionalists that we were talking about were René Guénon, Frithjof Schuon, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Guénon is considered to be the founder of Traditionalism as we know it today (according to Traditionalists, however, he simply rediscovered the great Perennial Philosophy, the core of Traditionalism). Guénon was a hermit. He converted to Islam, moved to Egypt and tried to stay away from the modern world as much as possible. Schuon (who also converted to Islam) and Evola were those who propagate Guénon’s views and Traditionalism around the world. Evola, for instance, translated Guénon’s most famous book The Crisis of the Modern World to Italian.
Nowadays, the main figure of Traditionalism is Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a philosopher and a professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. He is the only Muslim and Iranian to whom a volume of Library of Living Philosophers is devoted (vol. 28, 2001).
There are several things in Traditionalist school that make it very non-Trumpian! Some examples:
•The main figures of the school are Muslim.
•Traditionalists believe that all old religions in the world (from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shintoism to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have a common core—which is what they call Perennial Philosophy. Therefore, they are religiously very tolerant.
•They usually don’t like engagement in politics. Especially they don't like religion to be engaged in politics. Although Nasr is one of the greatest Islamic scholars in the world and has published a lot about Islam, he and his reading of Islam are usually despised by Islamic regime in Iran because his Islam is apolitical. (Evola, however, is different. According to Mark Sedgwick in his great book “Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century” Evola is the one who developed political Traditionalism.)
Looking at the Italian scene, I've never got the impression that Evola was a serious influence on any of the main post- or neo-Fascist parties; they cite him as an intellectual influence, but it's mostly just lip service. I believe a neo-fascist group once approached him in the hope of getting his blessing (he died in 1974), but were rebuffed.
The esotericism is key, I think. Like Strauss, his appeal is 'aristocratic' in form as well as content: the point is to be one of the elect – one of the tiny group of people who Get It. And if at the end of the day there is no It to get – just the elect, telling everyone else they haven't Got It yet (oh it's not this, oh it's not that) – well, so much the better. (Wouldn't it be awful, to be admitted to the inner circle and realise that you actually didn't get it?)
The Mark Sedgwick book referenced by Mousa M can be found on-line here: http://www.conspiracyschool.com/sites/default/files/resources/Sedwick_Against_the_Modern_World.pdf
Roger Griffin, a noted scholar of fascism, on Evola and the Italian neo-fasist right, here:
https://gopherproxy.meulie.net/maistre.uni.cx/0/Julius_Evola/Roger%20Griffin%20-%20Revolts%20against%20the%20Modern%20World.txt
Choice quote:
"…the heart of all his writings is probably The Revolt Against the Modern World,[15] published in 1933, and reissued with significant revisions to reach the second reprint of the fifth edition by 1980. In it, with seemingly compendious scholarship, Evola establishes the typology of two fundamentally opposed forms of society: the
'modern', essentially secular and based on the 'inferior realm of becoming', represents an onslaught on the original type based on the 'superior invisible realm of being', the only one with any substantial reality. This latter is called 'Traditional', a key term for the understanding of contemporary neo-fascist thought.
(Evola only hypostatises the nominal form 'Tradition' but to avoid confusion I will do so also when using the adjectival form). A Traditional society is one in which the individual is an organic part of a hierarchical state governed by a caste of warrior-priests, custodians of supra-temporal, metaphysical truths, and headed in their turn by a monarch. Such a state, echoes of which Evola sees in the hierarchical social systems, myths and legends past of various civilisations, cultivates life as an
essentially initiatic experience from which the degenerative forces of secularism, egalitarianism and individualism are kept at bay by ritual and the iron rule of law and caste…"
"These young people are in many cases quite intelligent, but they have become incredibly skeptical of traditional narratives in part (I believe) due to the many cases of poor instruction they received in secondary schools and schools of higher education. This hostile skepticism of professional academia generally (and it may also be caused by intelligent but lazy/immature young people who feel entitled to a certain intellectual status but cannot or will not do the work necessary to become professional academics), combined with a sort of emotional rebellion against the schoolmarmish aspects of "political correctness" fed by a constant stream of distorted information from right-wing online sources is causing them to develop extremely malignant worldviews that nevertheless can have a great deal of internal consistency and are generally immune to critique from more "normal" perspectives. It is disturbing to watch."
I want to second this observation, and to make a suggestion. Once the initial shock and outrage dies down, people who are genuinely interested in shaping whatever comes of the next few years need to be willing to engage with those Mark S talks about here. They are not stupid, they are constructing a counter-narrative that most educated liberals will find morally repugnant, and I think we've passed the point where their 'movement' will be quashed by ignoring them.
Finally, something in response to Mousa M's helpful reminder that some of the core tenets of Traditionalism make it seem out of step with Trumpism. I suspect that we'll see some Trumpists (Trumpeters?) begin to say and do things that make the possibility of sympathy here much more likely. Not that everyone who voted for Trump will come around to seeing a Perennial Philosophy at the core of traditional Islam and traditional Christianity (say), but I suspect that among the educated right-wing-fed millennials Mark S talks about there will develop a growing sympathy for the sorts of things that have led some people to think of the Abrahamic traditions as having more in common with one another than any of them do with contemporary leftist politics. I don't know what influence that would have on Trump and his policies, but I won't be surprised if the next couple years see some on the right move in that direction.
One thing that was evident in this election cycle is how inadequate are some of the concepts we're using to mark off historically important political and social divisions. Going forward, I suspect we'll see more evidence that we need to rethink the boundaries of some of these ideas, and of the practices that go along with them. And that's to say again that people interested in these developments need to be willing to engage with the 'other side' if we're to have any hope of getting ourselves into a position where we can think clearly about what's going on and what to do about it.
Concerning your related post above discussing Bannon and his positive regard for Eurasianism: I've been writing about and translating Aleksandr Dugin for the past few years. He's the 'Eurasianist' mentioned approvingly in the speech by Bannon that you've cited. Here's a short post I made in 2014 that gives some context:
http://www.jehsmith.com/1/2014/11/aleksandr-dugins-eurasianism.html
The fact that we now have a regime in the US that supports this ideology means, I believe, that the US effectively collapsed on November 8.
Evola's understanding of Zen is pretty klunky although it's a cut above Jungianism or Schloss Wewelsburg-style political mysticism. He seems to be sort of a hybrid of Joseph de Maistre and Yukio Mishima. At least he acknowledges how Zen's radical antinomianism got diluted in the journey westward. But he's not especially subtle nor, one suspects, is Bannon. In Bannon's case you also sense an underlying sadism for which the Eurasianist stuff is a decorous cover (hardly a rare phenomenon). B's probably of larger interest psychologically than intellectually.
Coincidentally, Mark Sedgwick has a very brief but interesting post up on Traditionalism and Trumpism: http://traditionalistblog.blogspot.com/2016/11/traditionalism-in-trump-era-mainstream.html. This squashes some of the speculation and draws a strong line between Traditionalism and the Alt-Right.
Reviewing this, I don't think it actually "draws a strong line between Traditionalism and the Alt-Right" but suggests possible overlap.
I have only read a little Evola. I would have read more but his book on monarchy–I forget what it's called–is either badly written or translated. He takes the strange view that the king is the high priest of the nation and all of his subjects are sort of related to the divinity through him. This isn't even divine right theory but something older or at least stranger. Aztec perhaps? I doubt even the fascists took this guy seriously. I find Bannon's quotation of him troubling. But maybe he doesn't know Evola well. If he does, that would be a problem.
After our discussion on Julius Evola on your blog, I began surfing http://www.juliusevola.com/ and from one of the external links on this website, I came to know a publisher—apparently based in Sweden—called Arktos (http://arktos.com/), devoted to publishing the “writings of the European “New Right” school of political thought.” On Arkton’s website, there is a video from NPI celebration of Trump’s victory in D.C. (
The talk is given by Iranian-American philosopher Jason Reza Jorjani who got his PhD from SUNY Stony Brook and currently teaches at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Watch the video and you see clearly that he is and an Aryan supremacist.
Iranians have had a serious identity crisis for a long time:
Hamid Dabashi has written sensitively on the tendency to lurch from one persona to another and then back again.
Talk of "monarchy" reminded me of another monotheistic religion some of whose adherents also dumped their democratic heritage in favor of a monarchic outlook, whatever that means (a "mathematical genius" born in Missouri, no less):
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/77378/girls-at-war?all=1
I wonder if the title of this website is related to the hollow world myth that has the Nazi's hiding on the inside of the earth's crust? https://www.amazon.com/Arktos-Joscelyn-Godwin/dp/0932813356
I do not believe that Jason Reza Jorjani is a "Neo-Nazi". In fact, I believe that remark is libelous and should be removed from the Leiter Report. I have come to know Jorjani well over the past two years. In fact, I have conducted nine, half-hour interviews with him on the following topics:
The Persian Influence on Western Civilization
Philosophy and Psychical Research
The Spectral Revolution
Technological Apocalypse
The Philosophers of Atlantis
The PK Man and Mercurial Hermeneutics
Understanding Zarathustra
Zarathustra’s Indo-European Legacy
Zarathustra and the Iranian Renaissance
Jorjani and I do not agree about many political issues. But, I can say from my in-depth conversations with him that he upholds humanistic values. And, while it certainly is true that he has appeared at the NPI forum in the presence of others who might fairly be called racists and white supremacists, I have found nothing in Jorjani's own writings or public statements that is consistent with their positions. If one listens carefully to his statement at the NPI gathering, it is clear that he encourages a dialog between competing opinions. To me, this makes good sense. The alt-right is on the ascendance. They are not going away. Jorjani is endeavoring to engage with them as a philosopher. Frankly, I think he has made a big mistake in appearing at the NPI Forum at all. People are all too quick to misunderstand his call for a dialog among competing ideas as an endorsement of positions that he, himself, does not support.
I simply ask, in the name of academic freedom, that Jorjani be judged on his own writings and public statements and not the opinions of others.
Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD
BL COMMENT: He is being judged on the basis of his public statements and writings. His appearance at a forum for NeoNazis, one featured in the New York Times, makes this a matter of significant public interest.
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