← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Madrid burns
Thread ID: 8868 | Posts: 11 | Started: 2003-08-08
2003-08-08 17:03 | User Profile
American "Civilization"
The recently deceased John Dewey was applauded by the American press as the most representative figure of American civilisation. This is quite right. His theories are entirely representative of the vision of man and life which is the premise of Americanism and its 'democracy'.
The essence of such theories is this: that everyone can become what he wants to, within the limits of the technological means at his disposal. Equally, a person is not what he is from his true nature and there is no real difference between people, only differences in qualifications. According to this theory anyone can be anyone he wants to be if he knows how to train himself.
This is obviously the case with the 'self-made man'; in a society which has lost all sense of tradition the notion of personal aggrandisement will extend into every aspect of human existence, reinforcing the egalitarian doctrine of pure democracy. If the basis of such ideas is accepted, then all natural diversity has to be abandoned. Each person can presume to possess the potential of everyone else and the terms 'superior' and 'inferior' lose their meaning; every notion of distance and respect loses meaning; all life-styles are open to all. To all organic conceptions of life Americans oppose a mechanistic conception. In a society which has 'started from scratch', everything has the characteristic of being fabricated. In American society appearances are masks not faces. At the same time, proponents of the American way of life are hostile to personality.
The Americans' 'open-mindedness', which is sometimes cited in their favour, is the other side of their interior formlessness. The same goes for their 'individualism'. Individualism and personality are not the same: the one belongs to the formless world of quantity, the other to the world of quality and hierarchy. The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are. The American 'mind', puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardisation.
In a superior civilisation, as, for example, that of the Indo-Aryans, the being who is without a characteristic form or caste (in the original meaning of the word), not even that of servant or shudra, would emerge as a pariah. In this respect America is a society of pariahs. There is a role for pariahs. It is to be subjected to beings whose form and internal laws are precisely defined. Instead the modern pariahs seek to become dominant themselves and to exercise their dominion over all the world.
There is a popular notion about the United States that it is a 'young nation' with a 'great future before it'. Apparent American defects are then described as the 'faults of youth' or 'growing pains'. It is not difficult to see that the myth of 'progress' plays a large part in this judgement. According to the idea that everything new is good, America has a privileged role to play among civilised nations. In the First World War the United States intervened in the role of 'the civilised world' par excellence. The 'most evolved' nation had not only a right but a duty to interfere in the destinies of other peoples.
The structure of history is, however, cyclical not evolutionary. It is far from being the case that the most recent civilisations are necessarily 'superior'. They may be, in fact, senile and decadent. There is a necessary correspondence between the most advanced stages of a historical cycle and the most primitive. America is the final stage of modern Europe. Guenon called the United States 'the far West', in the novel sense that the United States represents the reductio ad absurdum of the negative and the most senile aspects of Western civilisation. What in Europe exist in diluted form are magnified and concentrated in the United States whereby they are revealed as the symptoms of disintegration and cultural and human regression. The American mentality can only be interpreted as an example of regression, which shows itself in the mental atrophy towards all higher interests and incomprehension of higher sensibility. The American mind has limited horizons, one conscribed to e! veryth ing which is immediate and simplistic, with the inevitable consequence that everything is made banal, basic and levelled down until it is deprived of all spiritual life. Life itself in American terms is entirely mechanistic. The sense of 'I' in America belongs entirely to the physical level of existence. The typical American neither has spiritual dilemmas nor complications: he is a 'natural' joiner and conformist.
The primitive American mind can only superficially be compared to a young mind. The American mind is a feature of the regressive society to which I have already referred.
American Morality
The much-vaunted sex appeal of American women is drawn from films, reviews and pin-ups, and is in large print fictitious. A recent medical survey in the United States showed that 75 per cent of young American women are without strong sexual feeling and instead of satisfying their libido they seek pleasure narcissistically in exhibitionism, vanity and the cult of fitness and health in a sterile sense. American girls have 'no hang-ups about sex'; they are 'easy going' for the man who sees the whole sexual process as something in isolation thereby making it uninteresting and matter-of-fact, which, at such a level, it is meant to be. Thus, after she has been taken to the cinema or a dance, it is something like American good manners for the girl to let herself be kissed - this doesn't mean anything. American women are characteristically frigid and materialistic. The man who 'has his way' with an American girl is under a material obligation to her. The woman has granted a materia! l favour. In cases of divorce American law overwhelmingly favours the woman. American women will divorce readily enough when they see a better bargain. It is frequently the case in America that a woman will be married to one man but already 'engaged' to a future husband, the man she plans to marry after a profitable divorce.
"Our" American Media
Americanisation in Europe is widespread and evident. In Italy it is a phenomenon which is rapidly developing in these post-war years and is considered by most people, if not enthusiastically, at least as something natural. Some time ago I wrote that of the two great dangers confronting Europe - Americanism and Communism - the first is the more insidious. Communism cannot be a danger other than in the brutal and catastrophic form of a direct seizure of power by communists. On the other hand Americanisation gains ground by a process of gradual infiltration, effecting modifications of mentalities and customs which seem inoffensive in themselves but which end in a fundamental perversion and degradation against which it is impossible to fight other than within oneself.
It is precisely with respect to such internal opposition that most Italians seem weak. Forgetting their own cultural inheritance they readily turn to the United States as something akin to the parent guide of the world. Whoever wants to be modern has to measure himself according to the American standard. It is pitiable to witness a European country so debase itself. Veneration for America has nothing to do with a cultured interest in the way other people live. On the contrary, servility towards the United States leads one to think that there is no other way of life worth considering on the same level as the American one.
Our radio service is Americanised. Without any criterion of superior and inferior it just follows the fashionable themes of the moment and markets what is considered 'acceptable' - acceptable, that is, to the most Americanised section of the public, which is to say the most degenerate. The rest of us are dragged along in its wake. Even the style of presentation on radio has become Americanised. "Who, after listening to an American radio programme, can suppress a shudder when he considers that the only way of escaping communism is by becoming Americanised?" Those are not the words of an outsider but of an American sociologist, James Burnham, professor at the University of Princeton. Such a judgement from an American should make Italian radio programmers blush for shame.
The consequence of the 'do your own thing' democracy is the intoxication of the greater part of the population which is not capable of discriminating for itself, which, when not guided by a power and an ideal, all too easily loses sense of its own identity.
The Industrial Order in America
In his classic study of capitalism Werner Sombart summarised the late capitalist phase in the adage Fiat producto, pareat homo. In its extreme form capitalism is a system in which a man's value is estimated solely in terms of the production of merchandise and the invention of the means of production. Socialist doctrines grew out of a reaction to the lack of human consideration in this system.
A new phase has begun in the United States where there has been an upsurge of interest in so-called labor relations. In appearance it would seem to signify an improvement: in reality this is a deleterious phenomenon. The entrepreneurs and employers have come to realise the importance of the 'human factor' in a productive economy, and that it is a mistake to ignore the individual involved in industry: his motives, his feelings, his working day life. Thus, a whole school of study of human relations in industry has grown up, based on behaviourism. Studies like Human Relations in Industry by B. Gardner and G. Moore have supplied a minute analysis of the behaviour of employees and their motivations with the precise aim of defining the best means to obviate all factors that can hinder the maximisation of production. Some studies certainly don't come from the shop floor but from the management, abetted by specialists from various colleges. The sociological investigations go as far! as analysing the employee's social ambience. This kind of study has a practical purpose: the ma intenance of the psychological contentment of the employee is as important as the physical. In cases in which a worker is tied to a monotonous job which doesn't demand a great deal of concentration, the studies will draw attention to the 'danger' that his mind may tend to wander in a way that may eventually reflect badly on his attitude towards the job.
The private lives of employees are not forgotten - hence the increase in so-called personnel counselling. Specialists are called in to dispel anxiety, psychological disturbances and non-adaptation 'complexes', even to the point of giving advice in relation to the most personal matters. A frankly psycho-analytic technique and one much used is to make the subject 'talk freely' and put the results obtainable by this 'catharsis' into relief.
None of this is concerned with the spiritual betterment of human beings or any real human problems, such as a European would understand them in this "age of economics". On the other side of the Iron Curtain man is treated as a beast of burden and his obedience is maintained by terror and famine. In the United States man is also seen as just a factor of labour and consumption, and no aspect of his interior life is neglected and every factor of his existence is drawn to the same end. In the 'Land of the Free', through every medium, man is told he has reached a degree of happiness hitherto undreamed of. He forgets who he is, where he came from, and basks in the present.
American "Democracy" in Industry
There is a significant and growing discrepancy in the United States between the shibboleths of the prevailing political ideology and the effective economic structures of the nation. A large part of studies of the subject is played by the 'morphology of business'. Studies corroborate the impression that American business is a long way from the type of organisation which corresponds to the democratic ideal of U.S. propaganda. American businesses have a 'pyramid' structure. They constitute at the top an articulate hierarchy. The big businesses are run in the same way as government ministries and are organised along similar lines. They have co-ordinating and controlling bodies which separate the business leaders from the mass of employees. Rather than becoming more flexible in a social sense the "managerial elite" (Burnham) is becoming more autocratic than ever - something not unrelated to American foreign policy.
This is the end of yet another American illusion. America: the 'land of opportunity', where every possibility is there for the person who can grasp it, a land where anyone can rise from rags to riches. At first there was the 'open frontier' for all to ride out across. That closed and the new 'open frontier' was the sky, the limitless potential of industry and commerce. As Gardner, Moore and many others have shown, this too is no longer limitless, and the opportunities are thinning out. Given the ever increasing specialisation of labour in the productive process and the increasing emphasis on 'qualifications', what used to seem obvious to Americans - that their children would 'go further' than they would - is for many people no longer obvious at all. Thus it is that in the so-called political democracy of the United States, the force and the power in the land, that is to say the industry and the economy, are becoming ever more self-evidently undemocratic. The problem then is! : should reality be made to fit ideology or vice-versa? Until recently the overwhelming demand has been for the former course of action; the cry goes out for a return to the 'real America' of unfettered enterprise and the individual free of central government control. Nevertheless, there are also those who would prefer to limit democracy in order to adapt political theory to commercial reality. If the mask of American 'democracy' were thereby removed, it would become clear to what extent 'democracy' in America (and elsewhere) is only the instrument of an oligarchy which pursues a method of 'indirect action', assuring the possibility of abuse and deception on a large scale of those many who accept a hierarchical system because they think it is justly such. This dilemma of 'democracy' in the United States may one day give place to some interesting developments.
Julius Evola's article "Civilta" Americana (American "Civilization") was first published in 1945, and reprinted in 1983 by the Julius Evola Foundation in Rome.
2003-08-08 18:32 | User Profile
Evola is a difficult topic. He was certainly a very bright observer, and much of what he says -in this article and elsewhere- is true. Still, it should be noted that there is some dangerous poison hidden in his essays; notably I would venture to say that he was anti-Meritocratic, anti-Republican, and anti-Christian. The accusations made against Evola of a Satanist ideological background are not entirely unfounded, imo.
To wit:
... all life-styles are open to all.
If this is not true in principle, then we are talking about opposition against not just egalitarianism, but against meritocracy as well.
The structure of history is, however, cyclical not evolutionary.
Which is a clever way of saying that Christianity is untrue. Because if it is true, then it is final, and then history is not cyclical.
2003-08-08 19:55 | User Profile
As I am not heavily inspired by Evola and I disagree with much of what he has to say I am far from an ideal defender of his position. Yet I do feel it a good idea to respond the comments of PL who is someone that I often finding interesting and even agreeable on occasion.
Evola was a radical Traditionalist with a very strong interest in mysticism. He was clearly rejected Christianity as he had his own form of spiritualism he promoted which is not to say that anti-Christian. An anti-Christian is not someone that refutes Christianity but rather someone that actively works to suppress/destroy Christianity which Evola never did or advocate as he believed in religious freedom. That he had a cyclical view of history simply means that he has something common with a long standing tendency within Western thought. Dr. Sunic has written much on the matter so I would refer those interested in such matters to him. As for Satanism it seems to me that a Satanist is one that worships Satan which Evola clearly did not do and in fact he dismissed Crowley as a Semitic voice of modernistic nihilism. The term Satanist instead is like the term "nazi" a general purpose smear designed to evoke a Pavlovian reaction of hatred and fear. Taking a small fragment of a single sentence of a prolific and nuanced philosopher as suggestive of a defining aspect of his outlook is at best folly.
As for Meritocracy it is true that he held an elitist world view focused upon the primal vitalism of traditional aristocracy along the lines of Ortega, Spengler, Mosca, Gentile, Pareto and others which is to say that he rejected what Americans call classical liberalism, Republicanism and social egalitarianism in favour of a heroic ideal placing societal interests over atomistic individualism. Such a view is not the same as anti-Meritocracy which is clear to those that have read Men Among the Ruins and Revolt Against the Modern World. He clearly does reject the grubby and anti-social nature of modern America as does pretty much everyone in National Revolutionary circles in Europa for well over a hundred years but doing so is not synonymous with rejecting individualism in total or the notion that merit within individuals should be recognized. In fact, his endorsement of the heroic champions extraordinary individuals provided they apply their efforts to resist what views as the manifestations of decay and the destruction of his perception of Tradition.
2003-08-08 20:51 | User Profile
*Originally posted by triskelion@Aug 8 2003, 13:55 * ** As I am not heavily inspired by Evola and I disagree with much of what he has to say I am far from an ideal defender of his position. Yet I do feel it a good idea to respond the comments of PL who is someone that I often finding interesting and even agreeable on occasion.
Evola was a radical Traditionalist with a very strong interest in mysticism. He was clearly rejected Christianity as he had his own form of spiritualism he promoted which is not to say that anti-Christian. An anti-Christian is not someone that refutes Christianity but rather someone that actively works to suppress/destroy Christianity which Evola never did or advocate as he believed in religious freedom. That he had a cyclical view of history simply means that he has something common with a long standing tendency within Western thought. Dr. Sunic has written much on the matter so I would refer those interested in such matters to him. As for Satanism it seems to me that a Satanist is one that worships Satan which Evola clearly did not do and in fact he dismissed Crowley as a Semitic voice of modernistic nihilism. The term Satanist instead is like the term "nazi" a general purpose smear designed to evoke a Pavlovian reaction of hatred and fear. Taking a small fragment of a single sentence of a prolific and nuanced philosopher as suggestive of a defining aspect of his outlook is at best folly.
As for Meritocracy it is true that he held an elitist world view focused upon the primal vitalism of traditional aristocracy along the lines of Ortega, Spengler, Mosca, Gentile, Pareto and others which is to say that he rejected what Americans call classical liberalism, Republicanism and social egalitarianism in favour of a heroic ideal placing societal interests over atomistic individualism. Such a view is not the same as anti-Meritocracy which is clear to those that have read Men Among the Ruins and Revolt Against the Modern World. He clearly does reject the grubby and anti-social nature of modern America as does pretty much everyone in National Revolutionary circles in Europa for well over a hundred years but doing so is not synonymous with rejecting individualism in total or the notion that merit within individuals should be recognized. In fact, his endorsement of the heroic champions extraordinary individuals provided they apply their efforts to resist what views as the manifestations of decay and the destruction of his perception of Tradition. **
As I said: I do not think JE was stupid, or a bad observer, and I do not even disagree with everything he says. But:
Rejecting Christianity is anti-Christian. Especially if done in a public, consistent and even propagandistic fashion. Letôs not split hairs here. :rolleyes:
Perhaps you have misunderstood me as implying that everybody who rejects Christianity is Evil. I understand there are moral Pagans, though I think modern Paganism is an artificial cult, because we do not really know exactly what the ancient Celts or Germans believed. We have to rely on very little evidence as to their believes and worship. There is the Edda, there is Tacitus, sure, but itôs like a puzzle from which many parts are missing, so I believe a serious reconstruction of Paganism, even if one wanted to do so, is impossible. Itôs a dead religion which cannot really be revived.
However that may be, I reject the notion(s) that Evola was a moralist Pagan, or a Conservative of any sort, or meritocratic in any way. I deny even the term "Traditionalist", because that would imply the "Tradition" he talked about has ever existed! As you are well-versed in the respective literature, you will be aware that what he had in mind was not a historic tradition we know anything about, such as Medieval Europe or even Rome. What he was talking about was the mystic so-called "Great Tradition" of which there is no proof that it has ever been. In short, I believe he made it up.
As to Meritocracy: A caste society -which he advocated- rests on birthright alone, and can, by definition, not be meritocratic. Again, letôs be clear and unambiguous, and not split hairs. More I do not demand.
The term Satanism is used by Catholics, and I suppose most other Christians, in the sense of worshipping a spiritual force opposed to God. It was widely believed, not just after the war, but also in Fascist Italy, that this definition does cover Evola. It is just possible, that he was only a harmless, if scurrilous occultist, but this was not even believed by the SS -who kept him under close surveillance!-, nor by postwar Italy, where he closely escaped being pronounced guilty of being the mind behind the Bologna bombing -the bloodiest terrorist attack in half a century. I will not even go into the stories about rituals in open sarcophagi and such. I concede that he may have been a particularly unlucky individual about whom everybody just happened to believe the most outrageous stories, but, in Evolaôs case, I honestly donôt think so.
2003-08-08 22:07 | User Profile
Hello PL and thank you for your input,
I again must state that I am not a supporter of Evola but you are badly misrepresenting his positions for the most part.
The matter of his being anti-Christian is baseless as he simply presented what he believed to be a superior belief system that was at odds with Christianity. He did not call for the destruction/oppression of Christianity and did in fact support freedom of religious expression for all (excepting jews) so the matter is not one of splitting hairs but noteing that it rests upon a head if you will.
With respect to paganism it depends upon if one is referring to the banalities of new age or wiccan freaks or if one refers to folkish Heathendom. In point of fact, a great many texts exists, I've mentioned some several times before in other threads, which give great insight into the original religions of Europa and a great more has been learned by archeology so a reasonablly clear picture can be gained by those willing to invest the effort. Of course no one that practices anything remotely similar to anything I would call genuine Heathenry is seeking to replicate religious practices of a bygone era any more then those that profess Christianity now are seeking to emulate with exactitude the theology and rituals of a given first century sect. Instead, all religions have core beliefs and consequences that arise from them that evolve over time. They remain relevant to believers to the extent that their prime tenants remain pre-eminent or seen as doing so by practioners. In any case, I am not going to debate such matters as spirituality is for me a private matter but also a supra-rational one in which fruitful exchanges are very nearly impossible so please for forgive and respect my wish not to enter into a debate on the matter.
With respect to Evola I don't subscribe to his notions of Traditionalism for the same reason you do. However, he built up a moralism that was internally consistent with his vision so I feel it reasonable to say "he was moral" as I would also say the same of any other internally consistent belief system I don't subscribe to. I wish to emphasis again that my statements are not a defense of his belief system but merely an attempt by me to not have him be misrepresented.
With respect to Meritocracy he most definitely did not advocate a birth rights alone caste system so I suggest that you read Men Among the Ruins and his various essays on epic heroism as a means of transcendence to correct your misunderstandings.
I feel the need to once again point out that Evola saw Satanism as an agent of Semitic destruction and he objected to it vigorously so labeling him as such is simply factually wrong. In point of fact he was tolerated by the Mussolini government but viewed with general suspicion not because of his mysticism but because he felt that the regime betrayed the heroic idealism of Maleparte and the "ethical syndicalism" Androtti and together they published extensive, detailed criticisms of the Fascist regime in various journals and newspapers. The SS monitord him because they knew he was critical of the direction taken by the Axis during the late '30s and saw them as excessively materialistic avoiding his notions of transcendence. Yet we should note that his publishing was never restricted in either nation.
He was persecuted after the war because the hard left falsely branded him a "nazi" while overlooking his criticisms of the NSDAP regime. These things are not very hard to find out as you could pick up a copy of Revolt Against the Modern World and read the heavily documented introduction detailing his political opponents and what their criticisms of him were. In fact, his enemies of the time had no firmer knowledge abou about what he actually wrote, or didn't care if they did, as does the silly crap written about him by the SPLC and ADL.
2003-08-08 23:05 | User Profile
*Originally posted by triskelion@Aug 8 2003, 16:07 * ** Hello PL and thank you for your input,
I again must state that I am not a supporter of Evola but you are badly misrepresenting his positions for the most part.
The matter of his being anti-Christian is baseless as he simply presented what he believed to be a superior belief system that was at odds with Christianity. He did not call for the destruction/oppression of Christianity and did in fact support freedom of religious expression for all (excepting jews) so the matter is not one of splitting hairs but noteing that it rests upon a head if you will.
With respect to paganism it depends upon if one is referring to the banalities of new age or wiccan freaks or if one refers to folkish Heathendom. In point of fact, a great many texts exists, I've mentioned some several times before in other threads, which give great insight into the original religions of Europa and a great more has been learned by archeology so a reasonablly clear picture can be gained by those willing to invest the effort. Of course no one that practices anything remotely similar to anything I would call genuine Heathenry is seeking to replicate religious practices of a bygone era any more then those that profess Christianity now are seeking to emulate with exactitude the theology and rituals of a given first century sect. Instead, all religions have core beliefs and consequences that arise from them that evolve over time. They remain relevant to believers to the extent that their prime tenants remain pre-eminent or seen as doing so by practioners. In any case, I am not going to debate such matters as spirituality is for me a private matter but also a supra-rational one in which fruitful exchanges are very nearly impossible so please for forgive and respect my wish not to enter into a debate on the matter.
With respect to Evola I don't subscribe to his notions of Traditionalism for the same reason you do. However, he built up a moralism that was internally consistent with his vision so I feel it reasonable to say "he was moral" as I would also say the same of any other internally consistent belief system I don't subscribe to. I wish to emphasis again that my statements are not a defense of his belief system but merely an attempt by me to not have him be misrepresented.
With respect to Meritocracy he most definitely did not advocate a birth rights alone caste system so I suggest that you read Men Among the Ruins and his various essays on epic heroism as a means of transcendence to correct your misunderstandings.
I feel the need to once again point out that Evola saw Satanism as an agent of Semitic destruction and he objected to it vigorously so labeling him as such is simply factually wrong. In point of fact he was tolerated by the Mussolini government but viewed with general suspicion not because of his mysticism but because he felt that the regime betrayed the heroic idealism of Maleparte and the "ethical syndicalism" Androtti and together they published extensive, detailed criticisms of the Fascist regime in various journals and newspapers. The SS monitord him because they knew he was critical of the direction taken by the Axis during the late '30s and saw them as excessively materialistic avoiding his notions of transcendence. Yet we should note that his publishing was never restricted in either nation.
He was persecuted after the war because the hard left falsely branded him a "nazi" while overlooking his criticisms of the NSDAP regime. These things are not very hard to find out as you could pick up a copy of Revolt Against the Modern World and read the heavily documented introduction detailing his political opponents and what their criticisms of him were. In fact, his enemies of the time had no firmer knowledge abou about what he actually wrote, or didn't care if they did, as does the silly crap written about him by the SPLC and ADL. **
Hello Triskelion again!
There is much in your post I can agree with, but it doesnôt devaluate my critique of Evola.
In fact, I did read Men among the Ruins, and my view on Evola is mostly based on that book.
I agree with the factual part of the introduction, though I find some of what the intro tried to debunk more plausible than did the author of the introduction. But even the author of the intro doesnôt explicitly say that there was no possible connection at all -in fact or at least in spirit- between Evola and the Bologna bombing, so itôs not exactly true that him being somewhat infamous was only due to his WWII history. I concur that he wasnôt a Nazi in the strict sense.
Now you say:
However, he built up a moralism that was internally consistent with his vision so I feel it reasonable to say "he was moral" as I would also say the same of any other internally consistent belief system I don't subscribe to.
Your saying would imply that everybody with internally consistent opinions is moral. I urge you to reconsider! :) [Because that would mean the Zionists are moral, Raina is moral, and Jack the Ripper, if he happened to hold internally consistent opinions, was moral.]
Evola described and advocated so-called Spiritual Warfare. This he had, interestingly, in common with Leo Strauß, the philosopher of the Neocons, who was also a Spiritual Warfare proponent. You might say Strauß was on the other side, but I am not so sure, as both loved to throw around dark hints about the Great TraditionTM, and both seemed to utterly despise common people. I am inclined to say they would have gotten along well.
Now as to Spiritual Warfare: This consists, in part, in putting forward contradictory opinions. This is to put the Un-initiated off-track, because it seems impossible to decide about which of the two sides of the contra-diction the author is actually serious. Evola did put forward the notion of a caste system, which does logically exclude meritocracy as we understand it. I would have to be Initiated :P to know if he was serious about it, but it is safer to assume he was. (As you can imagine, I find the whole spiritual warfare thing obnoxious, regardless if used by the Zionists or Evola. But there we are back at space 1- the question what is moral. Iôd say the entire occultist scheme is not, regardless if dressed up Jewish, Islamic or Pagan.)
Finally, should it really be sufficient to make Evola perfectly swell to Christians that he did not openly advocate abolishing our religion entirely? :jest: Not even the Zionists do always openly advocate that. But sometimes one has to take a hint. :lol:
2003-08-09 01:57 | User Profile
Madrid burns,
Great Post. A great article.
American "Civilisation" (JULIUS EVOLA) I posted on May 19 2003 [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?showtopic=7958&hl=]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...wtopic=7958&hl=[/url]
Julius Evola in Perspective by Guido Stucco The Occidental Quarterly [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?showtopic=4914&hl=]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...wtopic=4914&hl=[/url]
Original Dissent Forum Search Engine Julius Evola [url=http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php?act=Search&CODE=show&searchid=d76d391b38713f5a45f32bb0bb6086c4&search_in=posts&result_type=topics&highlite=julius+and+evola]http://forum.originaldissent.com/index.php...ulius+and+evola[/url]
JULIUS EVOLA: A RADICAL TRADITIONALIST [url=http://english.pravda.ru/columnists/2002/05/11/28502.html]http://english.pravda.ru/columnists/2002/0...5/11/28502.html[/url]
2003-08-09 06:05 | User Profile
Hello PL, I hope things are well with you this early hour.
With respect to your views of Evola it seems that you have projected on to him quite a bit which is alright as we all do that often unconsciously (I used to do that with A.J. Nocke till an old chum set me right) so please take no offense at the suggest that one can't really make much sense of Evola without reading a large portion of his works and you have drasticly misinterpreted him.
The matter of the Bologna bombing is something that I am rather up on as knew Masimino Morsello (one of the chaps that stood trail) fairly well and I also have spoken with Roberto Fiore ( the other defendant) and can tell you that given Evola died several years before the bombing (ââ¬Ë75 if memory serves) he obviously had no direct involvement and that Morsello and Fiore are both ardent Catholics (as is the ITP in general) and they would never be caught dead in the company of anyone even remotely associated with Evola. They were proven innocent by the way but Mosello was exiled for other, thought based crimes. The only way that the ideas of Evola have anything to do with any sort of political violence is that professional "anti-racist" types have noted that some third positionist sorts like his philosophy so they attribute "right wing terrorism" to his influence.
With respect to his moralism I was not clear as it should have been stated in terms of internal validity. Certainly I would never suggest that all internally consistent moral paradigms are equally valid in an external sense. That would be absurd in the extreme. Of course, a great deal of philosophical constructs are not internally valid including most strains of Zionism and the demented ramblings of Raina although I have no idea about the particular form of dementia pushed any serial murderer so I won't comment.
With respect to the notion of Occult Warfare I am not the best person to defend and describe it as I don't buy into the notion. However, I hate to be blunt but you're rather off base. Basically, it has nothing to with putting forward contrary opinions but rather it means gaining an understanding of Modernity and it's own internal contradictions as a means of forcing a change within the cycling of history. To say that his notions have something in common with Leo Strauß makes about as much sense as saying that Mao and Chesterton are two sides of the same coin because they both objected to capitalism. You mention a similarity without meaning.
If you want to understand the concept it would be best to read the short article "The Secret of Degeneration" which is floating about the net and the book "Ride the Tiger" deals with the matter in great detail while "Revolt" and "Ruins" really don't get down to the crux of the matter.
All which brings back the matter of Christianity. In point of fact Evola was very much in favour of what he saw as the Traditional components of Christianity which you can read about in his great little book "The Mystery of the Grail which you can get for around 8USD from any good book store. He does oppose what he views as Modernity within Christianity (as well Islam and Eastern religions) while viewing Jewry strictly as a force of "spiritual destruction".
As for Meritocracy you have gotten a radical misreading. Evola saw his mission as finding men who could be initiated into a real warrior aristocracy along the lines of the Hindu kshatriya, to carry out a Bismarck style Revolution from above," what Joseph de Maistre called not a counterrevolution, but the opposite of a revolution. This was not a mass movement, nor did it depend on the support of the masses, by their nature incapable of great accomplishments. The modern world needs a true elite to rescue it from its involution into materialism, egalitarianism and its obsession with the economy and to restore a healthy regime of order, hierarchy and spiritual creativity. When that elite is educated and initiated, then (and only then) a true state can be created and the Dark Age, a Kali Yuga or Gotterdammerung if you will, coming to an end.
The final cycle of man -- the cycle of recorded history -- is the death cycle, or Kali Yuga. It is the time when the spiritual force of destruction -- the force that opposes the essentially creative nature of the best race -- becomes dominant, and the order of the world collapses. This collapses itself contains a cycle represented by the systematic decay of the casts. First the world-emperor, than the religious caste, than the warriors, than the merchants, than the workers each rule and fall, and then there is Ragna Rokkr, the world is consumed by fire, and the world is reborn.
The notion of Castes and elites are taken from Mythic example. The agents of destruction attempt to propel the death cycle forward. First, they replaced the Emperor (or Pharoah, or equivalent) with the priests. As Savitri Devi has argued, for instance, a good example of this is the destruction of the religion of the Pharoah Akhnaton and its replacement with the religion of Tutankhamon. Then they replaced the priestly caste with the warrior caste, as occurred in Europe first during the collapse of Rome, and then during the destruction of German sun-worship by Charlemagne and the Crusaders.
The replacement of the aristocratic warrior caste with the merchant caste was the business of the late 15th century through the early 20th, when the last pro forma holdouts of monarchy were overturned. Ironically, the Guelph Ghibelline crisis between the Emperor and the Pope -- what Evola saw as the last real attempt to revive a real pagan imperium -- led to the Protestant Reformation and the assertion of the essentially mercantile brand of Christianity against the brand of Christianity that had accompanied the destruction of the old priests. Those movements which assisted in overturning the aristocracy -- the French Revolution in particular, but also the Communist Revolution in Russia and others -- in the name of democracy, Republic or Soviet -- were movements of the destructive forces.
The metaphysical reasons for the cycle of destruction are more complex than we can dicuss in detail here, however there is no "blame" assigned to the creative peoples -- the broad masses -- who bring about these revolutions. The Emperor loses his sacred character through personal ineptitude -- such as in Akhnaton's loss of Syria -- and thus the priests do what they think best for the world, and replace the inept Emperor. However, the priests are not competent to replace the Emperor, and do not realize it, and thus the world shifts forward. Then the ineptitude of the priests becomes evident after time, and the warriors usurp the priests. The warriors bring war, they are usurped by the merchants, the merchants bring greed, the people usurp them, the people cannot rule, and the world is driven forward into final annihilation. All those who would seek to live outside the proper bounds of their caste ( a spiritual term defined by one's epic example of the heroic Mythic) and who seek to deny their inner nature are agents of destruction.
The matter is covered best in his "Heidnischer Imperialismus" published in Germany in 1933 and the essay "Die arische Lehre von Kampf und Sieg. Which covers the matter of the a God of Order. The Emperors of old were the avatars of this God. When the Empires fell, he became hidden -- a Secret Emperor or Hidden King. But he is He-Who-Comes-Back. He comes back during the Dark Age to let his people know that he has not forgotten them, and there are those who march with him to their deaths, and their souls are gathered in Valhalla, where they await resurrection in the new Golden Age of man. He comes back before his final coming for the purpose of reminding men not to forsake him; he does not come back to conquer until the end.
2003-08-09 16:04 | User Profile
Trisk, we may agree more than you think.
I am in more or less complete agreement with the second half of your post describing much of what was put forth by Evola. The only difference is that I donôt buy it. Essentially I view Evola as someone putting forward complex fairy tales with not much to back them up except "because I say so".
The shortest answer to his teachings would be "who has died and given you the right to decide what the proper future of Mankind has got to be?" In short, he is assuming the Purple, in a philosophical sense, without the Legions (rational reasons) to back him up. :rolleyes:
Be that as it may, I disagree with one part of your post:
With respect to the notion of Occult Warfare I am not the best person to defend and describe it as I don't buy into the notion. However, I hate to be blunt but you're rather off base. Basically, it has nothing to with putting forward contrary opinions but rather it means gaining an understanding of Modernity and it's own internal contradictions as a means of forcing a change within the cycling of history. To say that his notions have something in common with Leo Strauß makes about as much sense as saying that Mao and Chesterton are two sides of the same coin because they both objected to capitalism. You mention a similarity without meaning.
Occult or Spiritual Warfare, in the sense I was using the term, is a means, a method, not an end. I am reasonably positive Evola agrees. A method can be used by either side, regardless of ends specific. One may however disapprove of the method as such in a moral sense, like one would disapprove of the use of poison gas.
I do buy into the notion, insofar as I agree with both Evola and Strauß that Occult Warfare exists. It is (crudely spoken) similar in kind to what secret services call Black Propaganda. I have no reason to believe that Evola and Strauß are incomparable insofar as they both used it. Describing Occult Warfare is awkward insofar as one doesnôt want to put bad ideas into peoples`heads, so I am reluctant with such a description. However, in the case of Strauß and Evola, the damage is already done. One part of the method certainly consists in putting meanings (not necessarily identical with the truth, but identical with what the author really wants to convey) into texts that have another meaning -and perhaps another purpose- superficially. I do not suggest that most or all texts are written like this, just that where the author himself hints at it, we disregard the hint at our peril.
2003-08-09 16:08 | User Profile
*Originally posted by wintermute@Aug 8 2003, 19:23 * ** You avoid Hellenic paganism, for which a extraordianry range of texts is available. **
I did not avoid it, the idea simply didnôt cross my mind.
Yes, in the sense of our discussion, Graeco-Roman Paganism could be revived, but why should anybody want to do so? :D
You do not really believe in Nymphs in trees and such? Be honest! :lol:
2003-08-09 21:38 | User Profile
Hello WM and cheers for the post. I think that "Inner Traditions" has published Ride The Tiger in English something like 6 months back.
Hello PL, it has been quite a demanding evening so I flagging a bit. I suppose that Evola wrote lots of very interesting things ("The Mystery of the Grail", Men Among the Ruins" were good but I liked ""Heidnischer Imperialismus" the best) but in the end I am not very interested in mysticism nor the Occult and I think his notions of the "3 spiritual races" is silly so I have much to reject of what the good count wrote. I will say that he has an excellent grasp of history and his critique of Modernity is excellent although more limited then his devotees claim.
His notion of Tradition is far to encompassing to be meaningful although Oliver's talk of Civilization continuity is quite good. To me, it seems that no universal or grand Tradition exists but that rather it makes more sense to speak of Occidental, Arabic, Chinese etc. Traditions that folkish dispositions of a race whose internal dynamics (to put it in dialectic terms) provide the basis for decay as well as Restoration. The basis of my understandings is hardly original I regret to say as it stem from thoughts expressed by Jón Ãâgmundarson (founder of the Nordic Imperium School) who debated such matters with Evola via a series of letters during the ââ¬Ë50s and ââ¬Ë60s which were unfortunately published in small quantities in Italy an here and now are very hard to obtain.
While I think your comments on Strauß are far removed from the reality of Evola's thoughts it seems that your perception is coloured by your objection to his notions which is easy enough to do and I am guilty of doing so often enough. Your claim of him putting meaning where it is not smacks of post modern deconstruction which certainly fits Strauß (without whom the banalities of Roarty would not have been possible) however.
As for his notions of elites I am far more inclined towards Mosca & Pareto. His notions of a Kshatriya style warrior caste certainly appeals to me greatly and don't dismiss the possibility of such a thing happening but it hardly seems the basis for genuine cultural warfare. It strikes me as bit to much like the directionless vitalism and boundless faith in progress which was the critical flaw of Fascism. Certainly I reject egalitarianism and fully believe that class have purposes and that society is as much harmed by the attempt to deny that reality via collectivism as it is by the child's tale of "upward mobility" and economic progress accompanied by societal destruction. Neither is substitution for genuine interest articulation via Corporatism/Syndicalism/Guildism done within the context of societal interests being elevated above enveloping statism or capitol. In short, I see to much Romanticism and mysticism and too little utilitarianism in Evola's material to make his gestalt the basis of resistance to the forces of degeneration loosened upon out nations.