tradition/history/politics
Writing for a cause
Full article with sources found here:
www.academia.edu/119142445/The_Brittle_Axis_Nietzsche_and_Evola_s_Influence_on_Fascism?source=swp_share In the present day, fascism and nazism as descriptors have become nearly interchangeable. Whether it be to lambast one of the many rising right-wing populist politicians springing up around Europe, or found within genuine histories of the mid-20th century, National Socialism and fascism have become nearly synonymous; however, the two movements were deeply disjointed and nuanced in their core philosophies when the exoteric similarities are brushed aside. All dictators are not Fascists – though many media outlets are keen to forget the distinguishing features – nor are all nationalist regimes; fascism is a movement tied to countless intellectuals and thinkers – hence why it presented such a pertinent danger to its contemporary world order. Mere politics could not have provided moral justification for the Italian gas campaign against the Ethiopians, nor could it have led to an entire nation becoming so distracted with the murder of Jews that it neglects its own war effort as was the case with Germany. Given to every Wehrmacht soldier was not a bible, nor a military manual, but a copy of the posthumously compiled Will To Power – a book that synthesized the most malleable components of Nietzschian philosophy for the Nazi regime's purposes. Giovanni Gentile, Alfred Baeumler, Julius Evola, and the Ur group all sprung from this fertile field of reactionary ideology infused with Hellenic classical ideals, all of whom fancied themselves “lookouts at the top of the mountain posted between today and tomorrow” – in fitting with a Platonic view of philosophies objective. These “firstlings and premature births of the next century” to whom the “shadows of European change became apparent” sincerely believed that the rise of alternative states – from Gibraltar to Hanover – would spell out a new golden age for European man. Political realities proved a daunting challenge for the patchwork group of esotericists, occultists, and philosophers: namely, race. The entire Nazi German Ethos had been predicated on the purity of the Aryan man and Nordic blood; myths rooted in paganism and obscure Greek writings recounting the mystical land of Hyperboria provided the nucleus of this alternative order and fed on the romantic revival of traditional German heritage. Italy on the other hand derived its spiritual core from Rome, an empire undeniably sustained by its profoundly cosmopolitan nature. Bridging this rift was attempting to unify the spirit of the Germanic tribes with the empire of Rome – ultimately destined for another Teuterborg forest. Nietzsche as the Cornerstone: It is necessary to clarify that neither movement was truly unified in a singular philosophical doctrine, rather, their very newness and foundation in the fundamental rejection of the old way opened the floodgates for fringe ideologies and intellectual figures to rise to prominence. Just as many concepts relating to fascism, the – albeit horrified – founding father was Nietzsche, who had embodied and coined the idea that it was, “philosophies mission to guarantee life’s future on earth by destroying old values and replacing them with new ones that have more promise to execute philosophies mission” (in this case, philosophies mission refers to the idea championed by both Hegel and Kant of the unification of man through the systematic rejection of antiquated forces, of which both Marxism and Fascism find their roots). Before Julius Evola and the contemporary attempts to unify the two seemingly irreconcilable national identities, their Nietzschian core must be understood. Nietzsche wished to tear down the tenets of Christian Europe to build anew, for in his period he found himself on the precipice of a new age with novel and potentially disastrous technological abilities; his muse came not in the form of Christ nor pure Science, but Greece. When analyzed esoterically, Nietzsche argues for an unapologetically Hellenic worldview shaped by the right of the aristocracy of the sword rather than adopting egalitarianism like many of his day. His analysis of concepts of aesthetic beauty which are inexorably linked to philosophical ability is one of his most pioneering concepts, where he attributes the rise of pre-Socratic and Socratic philosophy to the physical health and vitality of Athenian youths. The concept displayed here is heavily pertinent, considering the neoclassicism that characterized both national socialist and fascist art and architecture. Physical beauty and vitality were exalted above the virtues of the spirit and the warrior was once the ethos of civilization – evidenced in each rippling muscle fiber found on the sculptures produced by Arno Breker. The cult of aesthetics was key to the rejection of the present tenets of Europe, for physicality was regarded as the antithesis to the Semitic and life-rejecting philosophy of Christianity. Nietzsche – infamously dubbed the ‘anti-christ’ – regarded Christianity as a means for the herd to abstract and distort the natural truth of ‘might is right’ to protect the herd: “The Genealogy of Morals claimed that morality was an invention of the weak (especially the Jews, and then the Christians) to weaken the strong. The sheep convinced the wolf to act like a sheep. This is unnatural, argues Nietzsche, and seeing morality's unnatural origin in resentment at inferiority will free us from its power over us”. The concept of Christianity’s Semitic roots – said to be almost gnostic in their indifference toward raw physical strength – would later be exploited to horrific extents and be used to directly support both antisemitism and the efforts to curtail the influence of the catholic church. Nietzsche additionally had – as evidenced by Costin Alamariu’s dissertation The Problem of Tyranny and Philosophy in the Thought of Plato and Nietzsche – viewed tyranny as the natural antidote to a declining aristocracy, hence the brutal actions of the new European dictators could be justified using a novel interpretation of Platonic teachings. In the words of Peter Kreeft: “Beyond Good and Evil is Nietzsche's alternative morality, or ‘new morality.’ ‘Master morality’ is totally different from ‘slave morality,’ he says. Whatever a master commands becomes good from the mere fact that the master commands it. The weak sheep have a morality of obedience and conformity. Masters have a natural right to do whatever they please, for since there is no God, everything is permissible”. Just as Socrates was executed for his subversion of the Athenian democratic convention – a charge masked by the now famous story of his impiety that led to his execution – so too could Nietzsche be seen as the intellectual soil in which the amoral philosophy of Callicles was made manifest through Hitler and Mussolini. Italian Fascism and Julius Evola: However, the foundation rooted within broad neo-classical and Nietzschian ideals is where the definite philosophical unification ended and the tenuous foundations of the relationship put themselves on full display. Many similarities did exist: Italy was experiencing economic woes and dejected veterans returning from a hard-fought but ultimately fruitless war; Italy was in search of spazio vitale for its people and once more raise the standard of imperial Rome; Italian fascism was predicated on a simultaneous respect for tradition and path towards militarism and modernization; however, race proved the great ravine that would seem daunting to even the most dogged traveler. Though Nietzsche himself was deeply critical of a biological racial view – subscribing to a ‘race of the spirit’ as will be seen radicalized by Julius Evola in the following paragraphs – Hitler’s rebranding of fascism was inseparable from virulent racism and Nordicism; Nietzsche's concept of the ubermensch was racialized through the aforementioned brutal censoring and selectively quoting campaign. Such a highly racialized ideology did not find fertile fields in the markedly mixed-breed Italian soil. Besides the mountaineers of Sud-Tirol, few resembled the Germanic master race of the north, but more importantly, even fewer were sympathetic to any racial ideology that extended beyond late 19th-century justifications for the conquest of Africa. This is evidenced by Italy’s enthusiasm in flattening Ethiopia, but hesitation in dogmatically following Hitlerian anti-semitism. The roots of Italian fascism were based in the endemic poverty of Italy and the corruption that had taken hold within the political and military establishment. Just as many other European nations at the time, Italians came to see that their key to respectability and prosperity lay in the stripping of resources from colonial holdings; therefore, when given the essential ‘left-overs’ of the Berlin conference and cheated out of any advantageous colonial gains in the Balkans following the First World War, the powder keg of Italian discontent was ignited. However, few Italians desired a racial cleansing of their conquered territories, for most of their non-African colonial aims were efforts to reunite – albeit unwillingly on the part of the conquered territories – the ethnically Italian peoples of Dalmatia, Malta, Albania, and Corsica. The quintessentially Mediterranean ideology of Fascist Italy for much of its rule even rejected antisemitism, claiming that Jews were an integral member of a shared Mediterranean identity rather than a parasitic Semitic outsider. The respect for the Mediterranean and Semitic additionally made any attempt to quell the power of catholicism laughable, for such movements which had already proved futile in Germany would never take hold in the papal heartland of the Italian peninsula. Ever emulating Rome, Italy saw its mantle as the unifier of Italic peoples of the Mediterranean – most of which would be considered subhuman by the ideologues within the National Socialist ranks. The alliance between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany was deeply ideologically disconnected, yet it was safe due to its practicality in the short term. The two totalitarian poles of Europe split the continent in half geographically, and their proximity allowed joint operations and coordinated efforts to be possible – a situation that especially aided in the Balkan campaigns of the Second World War. The efficacy of this combined war machine was put on full display in Spain, where nationalist forces under Francisco Franco – whom received air support, naval aid, weaponry, and manpower from both Germany and Italy – proved triumphant over soviet funded socialists along with other disparate leftist groups. However, with events across Europe swinging in the favor of the absolutist states during the 1930s, a burning question came to dominate relations: what would a hegemonic German state mean for Italy? Much had changed since Mussolini’s initial snubbing of the fringe and uncouth Hitler in the early years of his rise; now, Mussolini was the begrudging foot-soldier to the true daemon of European reactionism. As Germany’s position as the primary power in the relationship became apparent, heads began to butt: “Mussolini and Hitler were often rivals, and tensions over Austria and other points of Italian-German contention left relations between the two dictators particularly strained during the early years of Nazi rule”. However, one man would attempt to straddle the tenuous physical and ideological border between the two demagogic dictatorial states and attempt to unify the Mediterranean and the Nordic using a plethora of esoteric doctrines stretching from the mystical and the oriental to the historical and magical. Julius Evola – known to his followers as ‘Baron Evola’ – was certainly not the expected candidate for the job of philosophically unifying the dictatorial states of Europe. Born to a telegraph operator, he enjoyed a relatively comfortable upbringing in Sicily and eventually went on to university to study as an engineer. However, he would never finish his degree, and his life would take a dramatic spiral toward the fringe of academia and art. His service in the First World War as an Italian artillery officer etched its mark into him – though similarly to Hiter, he regarded the event as positively formative to his future militaristic character – and his involvement with the Dadaist art movement of 1920s Italy brought him into contact with a new wave of radical artists and philosophers. Through these circles, he encountered the work of Rene Guénon, the father of the perennialist school. Evola began as a long-distance disciple of Guénon, sharing many exchanges of letters with the Frenchman-turned-Sufi monk, yet soon the two found themselves at a crossroads; Guénon had taken the path of a total rejection of politics and modernity, yet Evola was young, vital, hungry, and in his eyes, he came to see his former master as belonging to a fundamentally irreconcilable spiritual caste. Evola, in his correspondence with Guénon, began to be chided for his seemingly contradictory actions of persuading Mussolini to abandon and persecute the Catholic Church, in Guénon’s words: “The ‘Mediator’, according to all traditions, is the ‘Universal Man’, which is also the Christ; whatever the name by which he is called changes nothing, and I do not see what difficulty there can be in regard to this”. Evola fancied himself a modern knight or Kshatriya, and his holy war was against the pillars of modern Europe, which he found chiefly rooted in Catholicism – hence he had no time for the ‘lunar spiritualism’ of Guénon’s strand of traditionalist philosophy. His founding of the Ur Group was the ultimate symbol of the assertion of his divergence from Guénon and the establishment of a unique philosophy that would blur the line between politics and religious mysticism. Later in Evola’s life, he would renege on his commitment to politics – an act of ‘masking’ such as Plato’s masking of his tyrannical sentiments in the Gorgias – famously advocating for apolitical spiritualism, yet his early career was undeniably that of considerable political importance. Fascism in many regards represented an upheaval of society; elements that once found themselves on the periphery now saw themselves sewn among fertile ground to become leading strains of thought. This had occurred in Nazi Germany with Himmler installing Karl Willigut – another former soldier turned occultist – as an official high-ranking member of the SS; however, Evola was disappointed with the low tolerance of Italians to these radical new avenues of thought. In his 1932 book Pagan Imperialism, he attempted to found a new and quintessentially Roman doctrine for Italians to unite around – one free of the pesky moralism of the Catholic church. In direct emulation of Nietzschian sentiment around Christian doctrine: “In the Semitisation of the Greco-Roman and then the Nordic world, attributable to a large extent to Christianity, we have in fact the revolt of the lower strata of those races, by whose domination the Nordic-Aryans had obtained their splendid civilizations. The spirit of Israel, which had already created the collective sense of ‘sin’ and ‘expiation’, and which emerged mainly in the so-called "prophets" after the defeat and enslavement of the "chosen people", buying the residues of the aristocratic spirit of the Pharisees, re-evoked the lower forces of Aegean-Pelasgian tellurism which the Achaean stocks had subdued”. Evola presented Mussolini with an alternative to his current balance of Catholicism and Hellenism, namely, the possibility of an anti-clerical rebranding of Fascism. However Mussolini, whom famously admired many of his works, outright rejected the proposals made toward him by Pagan Imperialism; the publishing additionally left Evola labeled as satanic by the Vatican-backed right-wing Catholic journal Revue Internationale des Sociétés Secrètes in its article, Un Sataniste Italien: Julius Evola. Evola however arose from this abject failure, battered yet unbeaten, and his contributions to the goal of unifying the two nations would come primarily in the form of his racial doctrine. Because of the overly compromising nature of Italian Fascism – which he witnessed in the poor reception to Pagan Imperialism – he sought solace in Nazi Germany. Just as with Italian Fascism, Evola despised the plebian aspects of Nazism and the overtly biological nature of Nazi racism, however, he found his home among the more radical and well-established groups of the German ‘Conservative Revolution’. Much of his 1934 magnum opus, Revolt Against The Modern World, became focused on a new hybrid ideology of race, one which would unite the two states and allow him to mold his new world order he dubbed ‘the world of tradition’. In the aforementioned book, he wrote: “Blood and ethnic purity are factors that are valued in traditional civilizations too; their value, however, never justifies the employment, in the case of human beings, of the same criteria employed to ascertain the presence of ‘pure blood’ in a dog or in a horse—as is the case in some modern racist ideologies”. Essentially, he foresaw the unification of Italy and Germany into a system resembling the Holy Roman Empire – which for him represented the last genuine appearance of ‘the world of tradition’ in Europe. He attributed the success of that Empire of old to a neo-pagan interpretation of Chivalry, stating: “Chivalry was like a "race of the spirit" in which the purity of blood played an important role as well; the Northern-Aryan element present in it was purified until it reached a universal type and ideal in terms that corresponded to what the civis romanus had originally been in the world”. As early as 1934, Evola began his work of creating a Third Reich that was not purely German, but rather, one that was based on the unification of the Roman and Germanic spiritual forces – just as was the case for the Second Reich. As the 1930s progressed, Evola’s tether to Germany became more and more concrete, and his increasing closeness with the high-ranking officials of the Nazi Party became more established. During 1937-38, he gave a lecture tour through Germany; at the time, he came to the view that Nazi Germany, though imperfect, was more fertile for his militaristic dreams of a pan-European imperium than his own homeland. With his newfound popularity in Nazi Germany– breaking from his former position which marched in lock step with official Fascist policy – he began his tangible effort of realizing his dreams of a unified imperium based on a shared racial ideology. In the words of Peter Staudenmair: “His April 1942 lectures on race in Hamburg and Berlin, depicting a shared Aryan heritage that bound Italians and Germans together, received particular praise” with respect to the nazi press, which soon took a keen interest in the enigmatic Sicilian. His lectures had their intended effect of galvanizing enough support for him to receive an official position in 1941– albeit acting through his associate, Luchini – within the ‘race office’ of the Ministry of Popular Culture of Mussolini’s regime. Once more according to the Staudenmaier study: “The group around Evola seized the chance to shape formal policy. Among their most important initiatives was the establishment of a series of antisemitic institutes in cities across Italy. The ‘Centers for the Study of the Jewish Problem’ published a journal titled Il Problema Ebraico (‘The Jewish Problem’)”. After the abject failure of Pagan Imperialism, his new sway over official party doctrine was exactly the political success he had envisioned when he first broke from Guénon; invigorated by success, he went on to publish a synthesis of racial doctrine, which was read and praised by Mussolini himself. It seemed that his goal of “erecting a united Aryan front between the two axis powers,” was within reach at long last. However, the intellectual disunity innate to Fascism which allowed for his seismic rise was to be the very foundation of his undoing. Despite the image of a state of absolute order and omnipotence portrayed by the Nazi party through their massive rallies at Nuremberg, the reality was starkly different. Different groups within the SS had differing opinions of the Sicilian ‘Baron’, not to mention the polarizing effect he instilled in his own nation. Providing validity to his positive reception among the Nazi elite, “A January 1938 SS evaluation remarked on his ‘astonishing knowledge of Aryan matters’” as well as his aforementioned amiable relationship with Heinrich Himmler given the two men’s kinship over the esoteric streams of Fascist thought. Additionally, the relations cultivated with the pinnacles of totalitarian power are undeniable; both Hitler and Mussolini read his work and spoke with him personally – all three met at Hitler’s ‘Wolf Lair’ to discuss the details of the Italian Social Republic puppet state – so most would conclude that his philosophical influence was gargantuan. However, the nature of the two states resembled more of a large game of ‘king of the hill’ as opposed to any ordered ‘divine civilization’ – with different factions and individuals soaring to the heights of power mere moments after the depths of decline and vice versa. Intellectuals, Bureaucrats, and military officials found themselves embroiled in a ceaseless battle, fighting tooth and nail, to attain one of their respective demagogue's ears for a fraction of time. While some within the SS praised him, others lambasted him, as was the case with the dossier document number AR-126 report: “The ultimate and secret goal of Evola's theories and projects is most likely an insurrection of the old aristocracy against the modern world, which is foreign to the idea of nobility [...] His overall character is marked by the feudal aristocracy of old. His learnedness tends toward the dilettante and pseudoscientific. Hence it follows that National Socialism sees nothing to be gained by putting itself at the disposal of Baron Evola. His political plans for a Roman-Germanic Imperium are utopian in character and moreover likely to give rise to ideological entanglements [...] It is therefore suggested: [...] To stop his public effectiveness in Germany, after this lecture series, without deploying any special measures [...] To have his propagandistic activity in neighboring countries carefully observed”. The report was laid on Himmler's desk, and in response, Himmler affirmed the analysis by his staff: Evola was dangerous, and such ‘ideological entanglements’ of unifying the two Fascist nations were not to be desired. Evola throughout the rest of the war would spend considerable time pried away from his Roman homeland, for as Fascism began to plummet in popularity, so did tolerance for the esoteric philosopher with dreams of a new age of Feudalism. Italians, now with German soldiers quartered in their towns, had finally snapped; what had begun as a movement most supported for economic alleviation had turned Italy into exactly what it had sought to avoid: a servile state. Now an exiled wanderer, Evola found himself in Vienna in 1945 – the former seat of his much-idolized Holy Roman Empire. Just as he dubbed one of his most widely read books, he was truly a man standing among the ruins of a civilization that was never to come to fruition. Ever keen to draw a historical parallel, in his eyes he truly came to represent Maximilian I, the last knight who became unhorsed and ended an era of esoteric revival and health, opening the gates to the Kali Yuga; however not by the tip of a lance in Evola’s case, but by a soviet bomb while ‘pondering his existence’ in the streets during one of the relentless raids carried out against the ancient and gleaming city. After receiving treatment, he returned to Italy to stand trial; the warrior – whom so resented the sedate intellectuals of his day and so enjoyed meditating on philosophy while climbing the titanic peaks of the Alps – was now paralyzed from the waist down, so no cruel nor unusual punishment could be devised capable of heightening the spiritual suffering he certainly experienced in this condition. On trial – a modern ‘Trial of Socrates’ in the eyes of his followers – he famously denied the charge of Fascism, rather, he proclaimed himself as a ‘Super-Fascista’ – placing himself above the plebian, disorganized, modern, and worldly aspects of Fascism that had deprived him of realizing his utopian dream of the ‘world of tradition’. Conclusion: The Third Reich ended twelve years after first emerging into the world, yet crucially never adopted Evola’s views of Romanism, feudalism, and traditionalism; the age of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens began in 405 under the leadership of Critias – a man who would become infamous for his representation of purest tyranny – and ended in 404 BCE, with the subsequent execution of Socrates in 399 BCE. Costin Alamariu bluntly described Critias – at least in the eyes of the Greek world – as follows: “Critias, Socrates’ student, was the Hitler of the ancient Greek world. He and his friends established a regime based on atheistic biologism so to speak; on ‘Sparta radicalized,’ a eugenic antinomian dictatorship". Just as in classical Greece, the spiral into dictatorship created an indelible mark on philosophy, namely, if philosophy should adopt a markedly pre-socratic identity (non-political), Socratic identity (overly political), or post Socratic identity (covertly political) in order to further its goals and install Plato’s ‘philosopher king. The shift from Socratic political affiliations to post-Socratic ‘hidden’ political allegories is best demonstrated by an excerpt from an Athenian court case decades after the infamous execution of Socrates: “Socrates the sophist who you executed for being the teacher of Critias and Alcibiades who tried to put down the Democracy”. Philosophy, as can be seen from the quotation, had shed its previous state of being entirely divorced from politics, now, “Philosophers and tyrants were both perceived by the cities of the time as kindred criminal spirits” – hence why Socrates was executed despite his posthumous portrayal as a harmless questioner of traditional Nomos. As has been hinted throughout the analysis of Evola, he in many ways represented the attempt at philosophy to once more become a primary force in overtly political matters. Rather than merely providing the foundations of dictatorial ideology – such as Nietzsche, who now possesses plausible deniability – Evola was actively involved and attempted to shape official doctrine and policy, albeit unsuccessfully. While Nietzsche may have resembled Socrates in his identity as a ‘teacher of tyranny’, Evola was the young student, Plato. To save himself, he was forced to divorce himself from the sins of his teacher, and abstract his teachings to the point of utter allegory, making any untrained reader completely unaware of the true sentiments behind his work. Plato wrote the Gorgias as a means to protect himself, and if read as Nietzsche did, it can be seen as an older, more mature Plato speaking to his younger self – who is embodied by the character of Callicles – who violently proclaims his tyrannical sentiments with little true political and practical maturity. Following the war, Evola did the same. Through his books Fascism Viewed From the Right and Notes on the Third Reich, Evola created a fundamental distance between himself and the political institutions he had once been so keen to involve himself in; just as reflected in his admission of being a ‘super fascista’, he abstracted his true political leanings to the point of pure speculation and mysticism, which can be seen as a carefully constructed veil. Plato urged his followers to rise in the ranks of society, to hide their views, and influence from the shadows. Evola has done the same. Steve Bannon has admitted to being an avid reader of Evola; Alexandr Dugin, described as ‘Putin’s Brain’ is an intellectual scholar of the Sicilian philosopher; youth around the world have begun buying copies of his work, directly marketed towards them through titles such as A Handbook For Right-Wing Youth. Evola has rightly been described as the most prominent figure contributing towards the rise of the Italian radical right following the collapse of the Fascist regime, and his urge to operate in the shadows outlined in his book Ride The Tiger has been taken to heart by many leading figures of the modern populist right. Philosophy is far from harmless, just as it is far from apolitical, and as Plato and Nietzsche discovered before him, Evola following the war found the greatest impact of philosophy’s political teachings was within allegory and abstraction – hidden from untrained prying eyes. The full article with images and citations is available on Academia.com, I encourage you to search it up for a more academic view.
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