Which Book are you reading

[Valar.]

Tuesdays with Morrie
By
Mitch Albom

 

[dexter]

Saladin by John Man
The testament by John Grishman
HP and the prisoner of Azkaban by JKR

 

[Valar.]

When breath becomes air
By
Paul Kalanithi

 

[comfortably_numb]

Gas Wars - Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and co

The Polyester Prince by Hamish MacDonald

 

[Wolfhunter]

Fire and Fury.

 

[Valar.]

Broken Harbour
By
Tana French

 

[Wolfhunter]

Just started a new book: Make Your Bed: Small things that can change your life... and maybe the world by Admiral William H. McRaven. Amazing, amazing, amazing self help and discipline book!

 

[Solomon2]

Anyone read a good new Pakistani fiction book recently?

 

[Valar.]

A time to kill
By
John Grisham

 

[Valar.]

Unchi Urhaan
By
Qasim Ali Shah

 

[samv]

The Scourge of Poverty and Proselytism in Sri Lanka by Kalinga Seneviratne

"I spent a month going around the country talking to grassroots monks and Buddhist devotees both in Colombo and rural areas. Before that I was under the impression that Buddhism was stable in Sri Lanka as I haven’t lived there since 1975 though I visit the country regularly.... After having done field interviews I was aghast at the extent to which Buddhism was threatened in Sri Lanka; the new Christian evangelical groups have unlimited financial resources to bribe and coerce Buddhists into the Christian faith – and they seem extremely aggressive."

http://www.lotuscomm.org/images/pdf/2017/WBU_Report_A5Master.pdf

 

[Desert Fox]

Fascism Viewed from the Right, by Julius Evola​

This book review is of Evola's post war critique/analysis of Italian Fascism from 1922-1945 which Evola experienced first hand having been personally acquainted with many influential Fascists, including the Duce himself, Mussolini. Along with the aforementioned, in this book Evola also analyses the Left-'Right' political dichotomy in post-war Italy and compares it to the historically traditional Right, the 'true Right'.

What is meant by 'Right'​

Evola strongly disagrees with the modern definition of the 'Right' which he believes does not represent any positive content in itself but has strictly come to be defined as anything that is the antithesis of radical leftism in the form of Communism and other strains of Marxist revolutionary movements (pg.18).

Examples of this:

• Extreme individualism in opposition to extreme leftist collectivism
• Unrestrained Capitalism in opposition to leftist centralized economics

This is what Evola calls the "economic right." It is the product of the Liberal materialistic concept of society where the economy is the central point and everything serves the economy, no different from Marxism which also views history through materialistic lens as a relationship purely based on the means of production of the materialistic requirements of life (Marxist historical materialism).

"Between the true Right and the economic Right there is not only no common identity, but on the contrary, there is a clear antithesis" (pg.19)

The other aspect of the modern 'Right' which is in complete opposition to the traditional Right is the former's championing of Liberalism and Democracy which, as Evola rightfully points out, were considered as "currents of revolutionary subversion" under the true Right, not unlike Marxism and Communism (pg.18). Liberal democratic concept of 'one man one vote' (universal suffrage) are no different from Marxism's leveling of society to the lowest common denominator. This Evola believes is in stark contradiction to the aristocratic concept that defines the traditional Right.

The traditional Right is hierarchical and thus aristocratic and not egalitarian or democratic. Neither does it place economics as its focal point of reference.

Fascism: Where it stands within the Historical Context​

Evola does not consider Fascism as truly 'Right'-wing in the traditional sense (definitely not left-wing either, however), although he acknowledges that it's doctrine was on the correct path as far as it sought to readjust society towards the path of tradition. Prior to it there was no political movement in Italy that could be considered Rightist in the proper sense since modern Italy was unified as a nation "under the banner of ideologies that derive from the Revolution of the Third Estate and from the ‘immortal principles’ of 1789 (French Revolution)"(pg.19). Therefore Fascism, or at least certain aspects of it which were traditional, made it the closest thing to Evola's traditional Right within the context of modern Italy's history since it's inception in the Risorgimento (resurgence), or the unification.

Evola is highly critical of the post-war view of Fascism which he believes is more the result of irrationality and propaganda rather than any intellectual honesty and objectivity. Having lived under Fascism and experienced it first hand, he confronts both those who idolize it's positive aspects while ignoring some of its negative aspects (from the traditional perspective) and those who only seek to emphasize its problematic aspects, which Evola argues were more the result of historical contingencies rather than the doctrine itself, "In regard to it (Fascism), the attitude taken by most people has an emotional and irrational character, instead of a critical and intellectual one."(pg.24)

"In the case we are now discussing, mythologizing has naturally had as its counterpart idealizing, that is, emphasizing only the positive sides of the Fascist regime, while intentionally or unconsciously ignoring the negative sides. The same procedure is practiced in the opposite direction by the anti-national forces for a mythologizing having instead as its counterpart systematic denigration, the construction of a myth of Fascism in which only the most problematic sides are tendentiously emphasized so as to discredit all of it or to make people hate it."(pg.24)

Evola's Analyses/Critique of Fascism​

NOTE: For the sake of keeping this review short i will only highlight one of each of the positive and the not-so-positive aspects of Italian Fascism from the point of view of Evola's traditional Right. It should also be understood that Fascism, from Evola's point-of-view, was correct in it's doctrine and principles in recognizing the problems of its time and in confronting those problems.


The Positive:

1) The State:
During the period that followed the First World War, Italy like all major European countries was faced with internal social turmoil. A weak Liberal Democratic government, with its parliamentary politics, failed to cope with the growing crises, among which Left-wing agitation of the disenchanted masses was a prominent one. The monarchy was more of a symbolic type. The state had no backbone to address the major problems. It only served as a administrative structure at most.

Fascism, therefore, sought to address this problem with it's conception of the state which Mussolini would go on to (partially) implement with success during the Fascism of the 21 years (1922-1943).

"...[T]he merit of Fascism was, above all, to have revived in Italy the idea of the state and to have created the basis for an active government, by affirming the pure principle of authority and political sovereignty"(pg.30).

"‘We stand for a new principle in [today’s] world, we stand for sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy, plutocracy, Freemasonry, to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1789’"(pg.31, here Evola quoted Mussolini)

"‘The people is the body of the state and the state is the spirit of the people’ (1934, Mussolini), if adequately interpreted, brings us back to the Classical idea of a dynamic and creative relationship between ‘form’ and ‘matter’ (body). The state is the ‘form’ conceived as an organizing and animating force, according to the interpretation given to ‘matter’ and ‘form’ in traditional philosophy, starting with Aristotle" (pg.32).

Fascism, like other similar movements in Europe at the time, was mostly a veterans movement made up of men who returned from the battlefields of Europe to a country that, despite being on the winning side, was undergoing internal instability.

"The fundamental significance that Fascism gradually assumed as it defined itself and triumphed is, from our point of view, that of a reaction, stemming from the forces of the returning veterans and nationalists, in response to a crisis that was essentially a crisis of the very idea of the state, of authority and of centralised power in Italy."(pg.30)

Roman Fasces: symbol of unity, discipline and authority.
The bundle of sticks represent strength through unity, while
the axe represents the authority of the state.
Image Source​

The Not-So-Positive:

1) The One-Party State
After having assumed power in Italy with the consent of the Italian King, Fascism consolidated it's power and the National Fascist Party became the sole party by law in Italy in 1928 (pg.57). This, Evola argues, was a problem, not because the other parties were disqualified, but rather because the Fascist party remained exactly that, a party, even after having consolidated power in Italy and returning things to normalcy.

"Yesterday’s Fascist Party of Italy, insofar as it gave itself a permanent institutional character, for that reason represented a kind of state within the state, with its own militia, federal police, Grand Council and all the rest, to the prejudice of a truly organic and monolithic system."(pg.57)

On the contrary, Evola argues, the party should have integrated itself within the state rather than functioning alongside it as an almost parallel institution.

"By its very nature, a revolutionary movement of the Right after a first phase ought to aim at re-establishing normality and unity on a new level through adequate processes of integration."(pg.57)

Evola accurately points out that the concept of a "party" is in fact a democratic concept since in a parliamentary setup different party's are representing different competing interests seeking to attain a larger piece of the pie often to the detriment of the collective interests of the nation as a whole.

"Saying ‘party’, on the other hand, means saying part, and the concept of party implies that of a multiplicity, through which the sole party would be the part that wants to become the whole, in other words, the faction that eliminates all the others without, for all that, changing its nature and elevating itself to a higher level, precisely because it continues to consider itself as a party."(pg.57)




I will conclude this review with the following word's of Evola:

"[T]he eventual value of Fascism as doctrine is as little prejudiced by the results of a lost war as it would be proven or confirmed by a war that, instead, was won. The two planes of principle and historical contingency are absolutely distinct."(pg.25)

@Nilgiri @Psychic @Nefer @vostok @AUSTERLITZ​

 

[Nilgiri]

Evola strongly disagrees with the modern definition of the 'Right' which he believes does not represent any positive content in itself but has strictly come to be defined as anything that is the antithesis of radical leftism in the form of Communism and other strains of Marxist revolutionary movements (pg.18).

Examples of this:

• Extreme individualism in opposition to extreme leftist collectivism
• Unrestrained Capitalism in opposition to leftist centralized economics

So very spot on!!! The conclusion by Evola is also quite good, that Fascism (of that era) in a sense became what it set out to destroy...i.e the "party" aspect of it in politics....that the Fascists didn't truly believe in their cause and goals to go all the way in setting up a fully virtuous, morality, merit guided nation state....that needs proof of morals, virtue and merit before you have a say in exercising individual political power (rather than automatically given for free, and thus turns into literal politically sanctioned theft to give for free in return). A real pity that Mosley's conception of it didn't get a chance to be implemented.

BTW buddy this is quite a good read, it is of course more idealist-oriented, but theoretically there is a lot of correlation to Evola I find, in that if you make the govt (in today's world) smaller + focused (and in line with what govts were supposed to do originally), you limit how much leftist populist degradation can infect a country. There is also added pressure on the people to not forego their natural responsibilities in such a limited govt system, so there is less dependency on leftism overall too:

https://www.heritage.org/political-...overnment-how-government-shapes-the-character

I'll be posting the full article on the US politics thread.

 

[Desert Fox]

So very spot on!!! The conclusion by Evola is also quite good, that Fascism (of that era) in a sense became what it set out to destroy...i.e the "party" aspect of it in politics....that the Fascists didn't truly believe in their cause and goals to go all the way in setting up a fully virtuous, morality, merit guided nation state....that needs proof of morals, virtue and merit before you have a say in exercising individual political power (rather than automatically given for free, and thus turns into literal politically sanctioned theft to give for free in return).

Indeed. In many aspects Fascism achieved what it intended to do, like replacing the parliamentary (Democratic) representative system with a Corporative representative system based on merit, imbuing military virtues like discipline, dedication, obedience and sacrifice in everyday life, applying autarchy in the economic field (to an extent due to limited resources), the ideal of the state as the 'spirit of the people'.

Of course, there were shortcomings on the part of the regime where the Fascist party did not progress beyond the party phase, certain totalitarian tendencies were indicated, and things were said and done which contradicted it's very doctrine like membership to the party being open to all citizens. But these were all deviations from Fascism's doctrine

"Where fascism presented a ‘totalitarian’ character, we should think of this as a deviation from its deepest and most valid demands."(Evola)

"We should call ourselves Fascist in relation to what was positive in Fascism, but not Fascist in relation to what was not positive in Fascism."(Evola)

Unfortunately I didn't have the time to include all of Evola's points on Fascism due to time constraints.

A real pity that Mosley's conception of it didn't get a chance to be implemented

I have dabbled in some of his writings. Will have to look more into it because based on what I can remember his conception of Fascism was a uniquely Anglo one tweaked here and there. His concept of corporatism was different from the one witnessed in Italy.

BTW buddy this is quite a good read, it is of course more idealist-oriented, but theoretically there is a lot of correlation to Evola I find, in that if you make the govt (in today's world) smaller + focused (and in line with what govts were supposed to do originally), you limit how much leftist populist degradation can infect a country. There is also added pressure on the people to not forego their natural responsibilities in such a limited govt system, so there is less dependency on leftism overall too:

Indeed. In fact Evola's view is the same based on what I have read in this book and his other book on Germany which I'm reading now.

https://www.heritage.org/political-...overnment-how-government-shapes-the-character

I'll be posting the full article on the US politics thread

Will give it a read when I get than chance. Thanks for the link.

 

[Taygibay]

Currently, a rare booklet by Jules Michelet,
"father" of modern French historians, Paulo
Coelho's La Espia in Spanish to compare with
French version read as my Portuguese is lacking,
Soumission by Houellebecq as I finally have time
for puny stuff and a Michael Connelly law thriller.

Re-reading Chaos by James Glück too, for bedtime.

Great dreams all, Tay.