Which Book are you reading

[Desert Fox]

Just finished reading Evola's Notes on the Third Reich which is his post-war analysis/critique of German National Socialism.

Like his critique/analysis of Italian Fascism, instead of blindly praising or outright condemning National Socialism Evola disects and separates the merits from the shortcomings from the perspective of radical traditionalism. Meaning any aspect of National Socialism (and Fascism) which had residues of modernity were in opposition to the traditionalist Right of the pre-French Revolution and even the Enlightenment era, such as the populism of both Fascism and National Socialism.

But to be fair, both Fascism and National Socialism were up against two egalitarian ideologies (Marxism & Liberalism) and thus had to utilize similar means as their opponents. It was due to the need of the hour.

As Evola himself recognizes this difference between the traditionalist Conservative Right movement and that of Hitler's NSDAP:

"To allow themselves to be carried away by a mass movement that had to be politicised and
fanaticised with propaganda, setting every scruple aside, was contrary to their anti-demagogic mentality and seemed to them a ‘rather dirty’ affair. This is the source of their position of inferiority in front of Hitler, who, on the contrary, had understood the situation tied to the times."

Once they were in power however, they did undertake various measures to re-establish a hierarchical order within the state and society based on merit and military virtues (in the case of Italy which did not have a order akin to traditional Right, whereas in Germany there was still Prussianism which imbued tradition and military virtues within the state and society).

This book review is from Counter-Currents

Julius Evola
Notes on the Third Reich

Trans. E. Christian Kopff
London: Arktos, 2013

Evola wrote this short assessment of Hitlerian National Socialism as a follow up to Fascism Viewed from the Right. The basic thrust of the study is that National Socialism is significantly inferior to its Italian cousin from a traditionalist perspective, and this even though Germany presented a far more favorable setting for a “revolt against the modern world.”

• "Even after the military collapse and the revolution of 1918, and despite the social chaos, remnants survived with deep roots in that [pre-modern] hierarchical world, which was at times still feudal, focused on the values of the state and its authority that were part of the earlier tradition, in particular of Prussianism. This was the tradition because of which the Central Powers had appeared in the eyes of the western democracies as an ‘intolerable obscurantist residue.’ In fact, in central Europe the ideas of the French Revolution had never taken root as they had in the other European countries."

As in Italy, returning veterans played an essential role in maintaining older ideals: “the war was a test that, in the best of them, had provoked a process of purification and liberation.” Those who were able joined the Reichswehr, the official armed forces of the Weimar Republic, which were limited to 100,000 men under the Versailles Treaty.

• "Imbued by a rigorous sense of honor and discipline . . . [the Reichswehr] did not accept the new regime, and maintained the ideas, ideals and ethos of the previous tradition, which had shaped the officer corps. The Reichswehr did not consider itself as a simple military force at the disposition of a bourgeois parliamentary regime, but rather as the representative of a vision of life and also of a political idea."

Veterans unable either to fit back into civilian life or to find a place in the official army could join the Stahlhelm or any of a number of so-called Freikorps. The Stahlhelm was a veterans’ organization which served as the armed wing of the Deutschnationalen Volkspartei, the principal German nationalist party of the 1920s, protecting its meetings from disruption by leftist thugs. The Freikorps were unofficial anti-republican paramilitary units. In Berlin, Freikorps units played a critical role in subduing the proto-communist Spartacist uprising and later made an unsuccessful bid to overthrow the Republic (the Kapp Putsch of 1920).

The period of the Weimar Republic also witnessed the flourishing of a number of anti-liberal and anti-democratic intellectual currents now commonly grouped under the umbrella term “Conservative Revolution.” Some of its representatives, among the finest minds of their time, became enthusiastic admirers of Evola through his books Pagan Imperialism and Revolt Against the Modern World. Evola even got invited to address important conservative groups such as the Berliner Herrenklub.

Evola wrote of the men of the Conservative Revolution that “[t]o allow themselves to be carried away by a mass movement that had to be politicized and fanaticized with propaganda, settling every scruple aside, was contrary to their anti-demagogic mentality and seemed to them a ‘rather dirty’ affair.” So when National Socialism came to power they were quickly marginalized or silenced. Evola’s own activities in Germany were barely tolerated by the new regime; an SS report on his lectures described him as a utopian reactionary and recommended ignoring him and discouraging his influence.

The “first component of Nazism,” according to Evola, is its appeal to the national sentiment of the working masses. This by itself is enough to demonstrate its fundamental incompatibility with Evola’s own traditionalism. The pre-enlightenment regimes he admired were aristocratic and derived their authority from above rather than below—ultimately from the spiritual realm.

As explained in our review of Fascism Viewed From the Right, Evola asserted the primacy of politics and the state over nationhood, going so far as to assert that nations are the creation of the regimes which govern them. Evola applauded “the Prussian tradition of acting for the people, while holding it at a distance, but not through the people. . . . Prussia had been the creation of a dynasty that had the nobility, the army, and the higher bureaucracy for its backbone. The state, more than the land or ethnos, constituted the real foundation and unifying principle.”

For Hitler’s followers, however, “the Volk was understood as a kind of entity defined by a common stock whose identity would be maintained through the ages.” In Hitlerism, “the state was conceived as a secondary and instrumental reality, while the primary formative, moving and bearing force was supposed to be the Volk with the Führer as its representative and incarnation.” In Mein Kampf, Hitler had written: “We must distinguish with the greatest accuracy the state, which is the ‘vessel,’ from the race, which is the content. This vessel has a purpose only if it is holding and protecting the content. Otherwise it makes no sense.”

• "[T]he Third Reich presented itself in terms of a popular dictatorship, since power was in the hands of a single individual lacking any superior chrism [i.e., legitimation “from above”], drawing the principle of its ‘legitimacy’ uniquely from the Volk and its consensus. This is the essence of the so-called Führerprinzip. It was supposed to relate to a tradition from the times of the ancient Germani, with the chief and his followers united by a bond of fidelity."

This derivation is spurious, however. Anciently, such a bond was established only in an emergency or in view of definite military ends, like the office of dictator under the Roman Republic. Moreover, the ‘followers’ of old were the heads of various tribes, not the anonymous masses. Finally, even the temporary war-leaders of the ancient Germani recognized a hereditary king as above them in dignity.

Of the Enabling Act, which invested dictatorial powers in Hitler (supposedly limited to a period of four years), Evola has the following to say:

• Even without adhering to the fetish of the so-called rule of law of liberal inspiration, we ought to see this situation as excessive. It is not right to perpetuate and virtually institutionalize what can be legitimate only in particular temporary situations. The ethical bonds, which are necessarily indeterminate and elastic, between the responsibility held by one part (from on high), and the trust and fidelity by the other, cannot replace definite statements of law.

Among the most clearly anti-traditional aspects of National Socialism was Gleichschaltung, or “uniformization.” Under this policy, the organic, historically determined regions of Germany known as Länder were transformed into mere administrative divisions and rechristened with the spuriously antique-sounding name of Gaue. These subdivisions were headed by functionaries of the Reich’s central government, who were no longer representatives of the corresponding communities. The policy was justified in the name of national unity and efficiency in the pursuit of national goals, which in practice meant war-preparation. Evola himself favored a subsidiary or federalist form of state, believing that to allow decisions to be made at the lowest appropriate level was a sign of strength in a state.

Despite all these reservations, Evola writes that “it is very silly to think that this state could have existed only thanks to a regime of terror and oppression.”

• "Such a regime could not have produced the impulse for so many accomplishments. [N]or can it explain the virtues of the entire population and the armed forces, which required six years of ruthless war and the combined forces of almost the entire world to defeat the Third Reich militarily, and thanks to which Germany held firm almost to the last without a complaint or a rebellion."

The selfless dedication Germans displayed in the war even carried over to the postwar era and helps account for the astoundingly rapid recovery of the West German economy. This undoubtedly successful aspect of National Socialism Evola attributes to the concurrence of two factors. One is the Prussian tradition, involving “a love for discipline, the spirit of impersonal and eventually heroic dedication and fidelity,” which is “a factor essentially different from fanaticism.” Evola thus agrees to some extent with “those who have accused Hitler of having abused the intrinsic gifts of the German and used them to thrust Germany along a road that led to ruin.”

The other factor, however, Evola is only able to describe as “the fanaticism aroused by the arts and spells of a great wizard:”

• "Anyone who has heard Hess, Hitler’s lieutenant, shouting hysterically at the party’s convention at Nuremberg, ‘Germany is Hitler! Hitler is Germany!’ which was received by the frenetic screams of hundreds of thousands of people, must have got the impression of a real phenomenon of possession."

Evola approves, however, many of the economic policies of Hitler’s government, characterized neither by government ‘micromanagement’ of industry nor by the pursuit of private profit for its own sake:

• "It was a question of a national front where each stood at his post and had a fruitful and responsible liberty of initiative. . . . If the entrepreneur-capitalist was respected and his authority reinforced with a political and moral chrism, the Party opposed the simple financier-capitalist ‘of the Hebrew type,’ who was foreign to the productive process. This orientation can be ascribed to the credit of National Socialism."

Also to be admired was the government’s “defense of the peasant or small farmer.”

• "The Third Reich, although far from averse to industry, energetically undertook to prevent ‘the uprooting of the peasants’ (therefore, implicitly, their exodus to cities) and to protect the natural base of their existence, that is, their own property, not only against expropriation and economic speculation, but also against the breaking up of farmland and debt. At the center stood the concept of Erbhof, or an inalienable hereditary plot or farm which was transmitted to a single heir . . . to preserve through the generations ‘the inheritance of the stock in the hands of free peasants.’"

Evola also speaks approvingly of Nazi Germany’s programs of social assistance to the lower classes, although the “presumptuous rabble” which benefited from such policies was offensive to his carefully cultivated aristocratic snobbery.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler had written that “the National Socialist trade union is not a tool of the class struggle, but rather an organization for professional representation.” Once in power, he had all trade union headquarters occupied and many trade union leaders arrested. Free trade unions were replaced with a “national labor front” under party leadership. Evola enthusiastically approved these actions, regretting only that Germany did not formally institute a system of vocational representation such as existed in Fascist Italy. He claims that National Socialism’s model for Nazi corporatism was “the Medieval organic and corporatist structures, which various exponents of the national revolution reappraised and adopted as the foundation of a third way beyond degenerate capitalism and Marxism.” Without being an historian, I am forced to suspect this aspect of Nazi policy of being just another example of central control barely disguised beneath a spurious antique and “organic” sounding terminology.

Evola had no objections to racialism per se:

• "[A] certain balanced consciousness and dignity of ‘race’ can be considered as salutary, if we think where we have ended up in our days with the exaltation of the Negro and all the rest, the psychosis of anti-colonialism and ‘integrationist’ fanaticism, all which are phenomena occurring parallel to the decline of Europe and the West as a whole."

But Evola’s principal interest lay with the “race of the spirit.” He attests the example of the effete postwar Scandinavians, “lifeless, spiritually bastardized and deprived of the virtues that characterized them in other epochs.” Something more than Nordic blood is lacking when the sons of the Vikings freely elect a character like Olof Palme (a Social Democrat) to govern them.

National Socialism badly overemphasized the purely biological aspect of race. They spoke as if all the racial question required was the prevention of cross-breeding and the adoption of a few eugenic measures, and “lost virtues would reappear, the idea being that almost automatically, man would arise again as the creator of a higher culture.”

Concerning the massacres of Jews during the war, Evola says simply that “no justification or excuse can be accepted.”

Irredentist nationalism was Hitler’s idée fixe, preventing him from making full use of the political possibilities open to him, such as “playing on the atavistic anti-Russian sentiments of the Polish people in order to win them over as allies in Operation Barbarossa.

National Socialism also squandered a great deal of good will by its manner of administering conquered Soviet lands.

• "So it happened that, while at the very beginning the victorious Germans were welcomed with joy as liberators in different Russian areas, later the attitude of the population was bound to change when, instead of the hoped-for liberty, the commissars of the National Socialist Party, military commanders and unscrupulous exponents of the Reich’s industry and trade took the place of the Soviet authorities and gave the impression that one oppression had been replaced by another. Free governments set up at the beginning by Russians in territories conquered by the Wehrmacht were dissolved, and even patriotic anti-Communists were persecuted."

Thus, although he finds things of which to approve in National Socialism as well as in Italian Fascism, his final verdict is that “one must reject and resolutely condemn a system in which the tendencies we have just discussed were maintained.”
@Nilgiri @Psychic @AUSTERLITZ @vostok @Metanoia

 

[Path-Finder]

 

[mr.robot]

 

[dexter]

Recently bought this.
Has anyone read it here?

 

[Zarvan]

 

[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)

View attachment 469901

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​

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​

To continue from the above. This is another excellent review from Counter-Currents, on the Italian traditionalist philosopher Julius Evola's Fascism Viewed from the Right:

Fascism As Anti-Modernism
Julius Evola’s Fascism Viewed From The Right

F. Roger Devlin

Evola’s reckoning with Italian Fascism is among his later works, first published in 1964, and reprinted with additional notes in 1970. This is the first English translation, produced for Arktos by classicist E. Christian Kopff.

The author begins with an account of what he means by the “right.” He points out that economic liberalism and procedural (as opposed to “social”) democracy were originally, and remain at heart, anti-traditional and subversive movements. In the time and place Evola was writing, as in the US today, partisans of these ideas had to devote most of their effort protecting their ideologies from the more recently dominant project of revolutionizing society from above, with the result that, for practical purposes, they find themselves counted among the forces of order. But, while it may be excusable to speak of a de facto “right” that includes classical liberalism and populism, such nomenclature also opens the way to a theoretical confusion which Evola is at pains to avoid. For him, the right “ought to be defined in terms of forces and traditions that acted formatively on a group of nations . . . before the advent of the Third Estate and the world of the masses, and before bourgeois and industrial culture.”

Such a definition involves special difficulties in an Italian context, the author believes, since “Italy was unified as a nation above all under the banner of ideologies that derive from the Revolution of the Third Estate and the ‘immortal principles’ of 1789.” The result was “a land of parliamentary democracy and a domesticated monarchy,” strongly influenced by Freemasonry, in which revolutionary movements flourished. It was this Italy which intervened in the Great War in 1915 on behalf of global democracy and against the Central powers where, in Evola’s view, a more authentic right (along with its social basis) survived. But the results for Italy itself were contrary to the intentions of the Italian interventionists:

• Existentially . . . interventionism had its own autonomously revolutionary significance, and the war was an occasion for the awakening of forces that were intolerant of bourgeois Italy, forces like the veterans’ movement that nourished Fascism. By rejecting a return to “normalcy” in this climate, these forces changed poles ideologically and oriented themselves towards the Right, towards the ideal of the hierarchical state and the “military nation.”"

In other words, the men who made the Fascist revolution had been forcibly torn from the pursuit of the bourgeois values of comfort and security by the war; and having experienced a life of self-overcoming, risk, sacrifice, courage and honor, they were unable to fit quietly back into the world they had left. Politically, they were looking for “a superior animating and formative idea that could have made of [the state] something more than a mere structure of public administration”—something Evola calls a “myth.” But they did not have entirely clear ideas; as Mussolini himself observed, “in Fascism, the deed has preceded doctrine.” Moreover, they had to reckon with the continuing influence of the preceding liberal democratic regime, as well as make practical compromises with the Catholic Church. Hence the need for a critique from the point of view of a philosophically consistent anti-modernism.

Mussolini characterized Fascism as a doctrine of “authority, order and justice,” a “categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy, plutocracy, Freemasonry, to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1789.” As Evola remarks, “Fascism’s message should be considered, from the point of view of the Right, absolutely positive. We find ourselves right in the orbit of healthy, traditional political thought.”

Part of what Evola so strongly approved in Fascism was its doctrine of the state, “recognized” in his words, “as possessing pre-eminence in respect to people and nation, that is, the dignity of a single superior power through which the nation acquires a real self-awareness, possesses a form and a will, and participates in a supernatural order.”

In Mussolini’s phrasing:

• "Without the state there is no nation. There are merely human aggregations subject to all the disintegrations which history may inflict upon them. . . . The nation does not beget the state. . . . On the contrary, the nation is created by the state, which gives the people . . . will, and thereby an effective existence."

Such a doctrine might be especially attractive to an Italian, given both the ancient and modern histories of the peninsula. Italy was first unified by the city-state of Rome, having previously consisted of a congeries of tribes speaking sometimes wholly unrelated languages. Today, the Italian nation is among the most genetically diverse in Europe (even disregarding recent immigration). The unification of the country in the 19th century was a scheme carried out by intellectuals and politicians, not the democratic expression of a pre-existing Volk.

At the opposite extreme, one might consider the history of the Boer nation of South Africa, descended from only about 3,000 families, and always surrounded by quite alien peoples. At various times, the Boers have formed nation-states (the Boer Republics of the 19th century), have ruled imperially without confounding itself with those it ruled (the National Party period, 1948–94), and have been subsumed into larger states ruled by more or less hostile nations (the British following the Boer War and the blacks today). Would a Boer be likely to think of his people as the creation of a political regime?

However the question of priority may be decided, the goal of Fascism was to make use of the state to raise the nation above material interests and values, defining the political, as Evola writes,

• "in terms of “transcendence.” Here the question arises of the “heroic” or military content, of service as honor and loyalty. . . . We are dealing with a certain ideal high tension that brings us not only beyond hedonistic values (those of simple material well-being) but also eudaimonistic ones (including spiritual well-being). It is a question of how to confront a certain impulse of “self-transcendence” that can be repressed and silenced, but never completely eliminated [without] degrading people into a bovine state."

Within the framework of strictly modern, liberal and post-liberal thought, there is simply no place for concepts like honor and loyalty. An illustrative anecdote: the Dutch philosopher Andreas Kinneging was preparing to write on the subject of loyalty; doing a Lexis search to learn whether anyone else was writing about the subject, he was surprised to find that “dozens of books and articles are published each year discussing loyalty.” But further examination revealed that all this outpouring of reflection belonged to the field of marketing; it was concerned with what is called “brand loyalty,” viz., the tendency of consumers to buy a particular brand of toothpaste because they have done so in the past. This, of course, is not a species of loyalty properly so called: no one is prepared to throw aside personal considerations and make sacrifices for the company which manufactures his toothpaste. But furthermore, such “loyalty” must be seen within the framework of market thought as a negative phenomenon, a slight irrationality standing in the way of perfect market efficiency. This is how far we have sunk.

As Evola notes, when the natural human impulse of self-transcendence is denied or suppressed long enough, it re-emerges in unhealthy and destructive forms:

• "The early signs of this crisis are already apparent. They consist of all those forms of blind, anarchic and destructive revolts embraced by a youth that, precisely in the most prosperous nations, notices the absurdity and senselessness of an existence that is socialized, rationalized, materialistic, and dominated by the so-called consumer culture."

Perhaps the Red Brigades of the Italian ’70s were unconsciously in search of something like Fascism.

Evola was not a believer in the “separation of Church and State.” He points out that “there has always existed a certain liturgy or mystique of power and sovereignty that was an integral part of [the traditional state] system.” The kings of early Rome and Athens carried out religious functions, so that even after the adoption of republican constitutions a ceremonial office of “king” had to be maintained in order to perform those functions. In Evola’s view, the trouble began when Christ enjoined the rendering unto Caesar of what was Caesar’s, which “desecrat[es] and reduc[es] to the material all that is politics, power and authority.” The Catholic Church, therefore, remained an anomaly within the Fascist system, a standing rebuke to Mussolini’s attempt to resolve the tension between politics and spirituality (or, in the words of his opponents, to “deify the state”).

Attributing a sacral or transcendent dimension to the state is not the same thing as “totalitarianism,” which Evola rejects as much as any liberal, although for different reasons. He approves the formulation of a German theorist that the state should be omnia potens, not omnia faciens. The regulation of private behavior, including historical Fascism’s Comstockian campaigns, he sees as beneath the state’s proper dignity. Evola refers also “to what in chemistry is called catalytic action and in the Far East has the designation, which is only apparently paradoxical, of ‘acting without acting,’ or acting by means of spiritual influence, not with extrinsic and invasive measures.” This is sometimes expressed by the contrast between power and authority. Evola is also careful to note that the postwar “Italian democratic state has show that it can be, under ‘social’ pretexts, much more invasive into private life and capable of expanding state power than the regime that preceded it.”

Yet Evola has little interest in the “negative freedom” of liberalism, a mere freedom from external hindrance. This is because he accepts the teaching of Plato that a man can be a slave to his own desires. Such a man will not even know what to do with his own (external) freedom, writes the author, “given the lack of direction and absurdity of modern society.”

• "In truth, personality and liberty can be conceived only on the basis of the individual’s freeing himself, to a certain degree, from the naturalistic, biological and primitively individualist bonds that characterize the pre-state and pre-political forms in a purely social, utilitarian and contractual sense. Then it is possible to conceive that the true state, the state characterized by the ‘transcendence’ of the political level that we have discussed, furnishes a propitious environment for the development of personality and true liberty in the sense of virtus, according to the classical understanding. With its climate of high tensions, it issues a continual appeal to the individual to carry himself beyond himself, beyond simple vegetative life."

The true state has an “anagogic” or upward-leading function, and culminates in an elite. Evola contrasts this “reign of quality” with the modern “reign of quantity” which instead valorizes the “. . . demographic overflow of the dispossessed and pariahs flooding over the lands of the rich with no other right but their poverty and procreative incontinence.” (Remember, he wrote these words no later than 1970!)

I finished Fascism Viewed from the Right with a sense that the Left is probably correct—given its ignorance of premodern thought and tradition—in characterizing what it opposes as “fascism.” Italy’s interwar experiment was an (admittedly very imperfect) attempt to turn the world rightside-up again. As such, it remains instructive today.

https://www.counter-currents.com/20...m-julius-evola-fascism-viewed-from-the-right/

​

@Psychic @Nilgiri @Metanoia @LeGenD @Saif al-Arab

 

[Nilgiri]

Yet Evola has little interest in the “negative freedom” of liberalism, a mere freedom from external hindrance. This is because he accepts the teaching of Plato that a man can be a slave to his own desires. Such a man will not even know what to do with his own (external) freedom, writes the author, “given the lack of direction and absurdity of modern society.”

Yah its why essentially Plato went for philosophical argument of "forms", i.e a definition of every concept that will always be the absolute reality (both timeless and unchanging)...but which is beyond the reach of the created concept's perception....and that this "forms" set also includes everything that does not exist/yet to exist, and thus is quite unbounded.

Hence this dissonance always existing ...naturally creates an environment where a man is bounded and thus slaved to some notion(s) in the existence around him.

This is somewhat different to Plato's student Aristotle, who did not name this absolute reference per se, but rather argued the absolute itself sets the process rather than a static perceptible goal, and we should only be concerned with that which exists or can be perceived and thus argued/debated (like say the human soul which Aristotle simply says is the difference between a living and non-living body).

Nevertheless it really boils down to how you visualise infinity...when you give it a static symbolic representation say ∞, you are acting much like Plato did. When you refuse to do so, its more like Aristotle. This in essence expands to the choice to have form vs formless worship/reverence for the absolute (God essentially) when it comes to religion...but again majority of humankind is somewhat slaved again to attacking the manifested difference than realising the greater concept is the same....and the far greater threat is those that want to do away with absolutes for convenience or some other deference to a bounded perception.

Both Plato and Aristotle are very key to defeating the pure relativists/nilhists (that leads to materialist based atheism, leftism, socialism and all related scales of that). Evola was very attuned to this.

@Centaur @Psychic @Skies

 

[Desert Fox]

Yah its why essentially Plato went for philosophical argument of "forms", i.e a definition of every concept that will always be the absolute reality (both timeless and unchanging)...but which is beyond the reach of the created concept's perception....and that this "forms" set also includes everything that does not exist/yet to exist, and thus is quite unbounded.

Hence this dissonance always existing ...naturally creates an environment where a man is bounded and thus slaved to some notion(s) in the existence around him.

This is somewhat different to Plato's student Aristotle, who did not name this absolute reference per se, but rather argued the absolute itself sets the process rather than a static perceptible goal, and we should only be concerned with that which exists or can be perceived and thus argued/debated (like say the human soul which Aristotle simply says is the difference between a living and non-living body).

Nevertheless it really boils down to how you visualise infinity...when you give it a static symbolic representation say ∞, you are acting much like Plato did. When you refuse to do so, its more like Aristotle. This in essence expands to the choice to have form vs formless worship/reverence for the absolute (God essentially) when it comes to religion...but again majority of humankind is somewhat slaved again to attacking the manifested difference than realising the greater concept is the same....and the far greater threat is those that want to do away with absolutes for convenience or some other deference to a bounded perception.

Both Plato and Aristotle are very key to defeating the pure relativists/nilhists (that leads to materialist based atheism, leftism, socialism and all related scales of that). Evola was very attuned to this.

@Centaur @Psychic @Skies

Interesting. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I never gave either Plato or Aristotle a read despite knowing that these are two big names in philosophy and a must read. Will definitely dig into their work further.

Can you please refer me to the exact works of either philosopher where I can further read more into what you have mentioned?

 

[Nilgiri]

Interesting. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I never gave either Plato or Aristotle a read despite knowing that these are two big names in philosophy and a must read. Will definitely dig into their work further.

Can you please refer me to the exact works of either philosopher where I can further read more into what you have mentioned?

Plato's symposium and republic is where to start...(the former just to get how Plato's style is and see if its to your tastes). But he mentions and expands upon in various other works like Phaedo and Phaedrus...collectively known (along with some others) as the "dialogues".

As for Aristotle, unfortunately most of his works are scattered and broken up (his dialogues in the format of Plato are all lost for example). But Aristotle at least compiles a lot of his works into the subject matter (physics, politics, metaphysics etc)....so you can pick and choose. I would approach it after Plato...because Aristotle is lot harder to read sometimes.

There are probably good resources in the internet that analyse/summarise/present....though I haven't looked for them.

 

[Desert Fox]

Book review: Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger

View attachment 441951​

Great book. Starts off a bit slow however gains momentum two chapters in and finally reaches a very intense climax near the ending, including the famous Ludendorf Offensive.

The author, Junger, starts off the war enlisting as a private. As the book progresses you begin to pickup from the authors narration the progression and development of the war from static trench warfare to the early introduction of tanks and mechanized warfare. Poison gas use has been extensively mentioned and this weapon was also used for the first time during this war.

During the initial German preparations for the British offensive at Somme the author makes a keen note of this evolution of warfare and the changes it brought on the equipment of the soldiers when he first encounters a German soldier wearing a Stahlhelm (steel helmet) during the battle of the Somme:

"He was the first German soldier I saw in a steel helmet, and he straightaway struck me as the denizen of a new and far harsher world."

The steel helmet was a new thing at the time. The German army's traditional helmet for quite some time had been made from hardened leather so it is understandable why the sight of the steel helmet in conjunction with the other modern weapons and equipment triggered such sentiment.

Even so it was not uncommon to see modern equipment being used side-by-side with the old.

View attachment 441919
A German cavalryman wearing a gas mask armed with a lance reminiscent of medieval times. ​

The author makes extensive use of vivid language to tap into the readers imagination. Like in this particular instance when he and his company are awaiting a British attack in their trench under the enemy's intense preliminary artillery bombardment:

"Soon we were completely wrapped in smoke and dust, but most of the shells came down just behind or just in front of our trench... As the storm raged around us, I walked up and down my sector. The men had fixed bayonets. They stood stony and motionless, rifle in hand, on the front edge of the dip, gazing into the field. Now and then, by light of a flare, I saw steel helmet by steel helmet, blade by glinting blade, and I was overcome by a feeling of invulnerability. We might be crushed, but surely we could not be conquered."

I found the highlighted part especially moving. Here were men surrounded by barren wasteland, united in mind and soul for a common purpose, staring down into the abyss of no-man's-land, ready to take on everything the enemy was about to unleash, and determined to give it their all come what may.

Also, the part about "steel helmet by steel helmet, blade by glinting blade" invokes an imagery of medieval armies.

Among the passages about war were also scattered numerous amusing and comicals ones. This one in particular is my personal favorite wherein the author (by now promoted to the rank of lieutenant) and his men, after having been relieved from the frontline after an intense ecounter with the British, are stationed in a nearby French village for temporary recuperation:

"In Flers, I found my designated quarters had been occupied by several staff sergeant-majors, who, claiming they had to guard the room on behalf of a certain Baron von X, refused to make room, but hadn't reckoned on the short temper of an irritated and tired front-line officer. I had my men knock the door down, and, following a short scuffle in front of the peactime occupants of the house, who had hurried along in their nightgowns to see what the matter was, the gentlemen, or gentlemen's gentlemen, were sent flying down the stairs. Knigge (one of his men) was sufficiently gracious to throw their boots out after them."

Also, just as an interesting side note, the author mentions in the above passage "peacetime occupants of the house". This was in reference to the civilians who were the inhabitants and owners of the house but with whom the German troops were quartered. It was not unusual for armies to quarter their troops within the dwellings of local populations.

At one point in the book Jungers company becomes embroiled in an encounter with British Indian troops:

"In the tall grass we discovered a line of dead and three wounded who threw themselves at our feet and begged us for mercy. They seemed to be convinced that we would massacre them. In answer to my question 'Quelle nation?' one replied: 'Pauvre Rajput!'"

"... Their outfit was the First Hariana Lancers, a good regiment, I'm told."

The books critics accuse it's author of glorifying war however this is not true. In fact Junger recognizes war for it's brutality but he also shows the other side of war; the comradery between men, respect for ones gallant enemy, the patriotic fervor, loyalty to ones blood and soil and the everlasting brotherhood forged in the heat of the battlefield between men who hitherto were strangers to one another, often from different social backgrounds but who nevertheless became one in spirit fighting for the same Fatherland. A brotherhood that would last a lifetime.

As Junger states in the book:

"We had come from lecture halls, school desks and factory workbenches... we had bonded together into one large and enthusiastic group... We shared a yearning for danger, for the experience of the extraordinary. We were enraptured by war. We thought of it as manly, as action..."

Of course, the same critics who accuse Junger of glorifying war are the usual suspects who have no qualms in praising movies like Inglorious Bastards with it's sadistic torture scenes and who refer to WWII as the "good" war.

Junger himself sustains a critical wound from a British rifle bullet during a failed German counteroffensive near the end of the war and spends the last few months of the war in hospital. He would end the war as a captain. For his recognition as a brave soldier and leader he received numerous medals including the highest medal of merit of imperial Germany, the Pour le Mérite

View attachment 441950
Junger the decorated stormtrooper​

It is during the interwar period that he would write his now reknown memoirs.

But that wasn't the end for Junger. He would resume his military career as a captain in the Wehrmacht during WW2.

View attachment 441948
Captin Junger in WW2​

Overall I would say this book was a very enjoyable read and I would recommend it to anyone who is into military history and the personal accounts of those who experienced war.

@Nilgiri @The Sandman @Psychic @Vergennes @Gomig-21 @Hamartia Antidote @vostok @flamer84 @Joe Shearer
@AUSTERLITZ

Thought this tribute would go well with Ernst Jungers Storm of Steel (great book!). Just came across it on YouTube.

@Nilgiri @Psychic @Königstiger @Metanoia

 

[Nilgiri]

Thought this tribute would go well with Ernst Jungers Storm of Steel (great book!). Just came across it on YouTube.

@Nilgiri @Psychic @Königstiger @Metanoia

I watched the pilot episode of this series, it looks promising. There are some commie infiltrators in this scene (at least from what was implied in the pilot) btw hah....I wont spoil (who) in case you watch the series....I have to see how it all plays out...looking good so far (the premise*)....the visual style + pace overall is very Fritz Lang + Hitchcock (pilot episode had a chase scene very eerie reminiscent of the movie Vertigo).

*Babylon Berlin co-writer Henk Handloegten commented, "One of the main reasons to make Babylon Berlin was to show how all these Nazis did not just fall from the sky. They were human beings who reacted to German society’s changes and made their decisions accordingly."

@django @Gomig-21 @Zibago @Michael Corleone you all might want to try out this series at some point (it is R rating - so heads up, but not super crazy level of it etc)

 

[django]

I watched the pilot episode of this series, it looks promising. There are some commie infiltrators in this scene (at least from what was implied in the pilot) btw hah....I wont spoil (who) in case you watch the series....I have to see how it all plays out...looking good so far (the premise*)....the visual style + pace overall is very Fritz Lang + Hitchcock (pilot episode had a chase scene very eerie reminiscent of the movie Vertigo).

*Babylon Berlin co-writer Henk Handloegten commented, "One of the main reasons to make Babylon Berlin was to show how all these Nazis did not just fall from the sky. They were human beings who reacted to German society’s changes and made their decisions accordingly."

@django @Gomig-21 @Zibago @Michael Corleone you all might want to try out this series at some point (it is R rating - so heads up, but not super crazy level of it etc)

If you can find a link to Chilean crime drama fugitives, do so, a fine series indeed.kudos bhai

 

[DESERT FIGHTER]

Labour laws:

Industrial relations act
Workmens compensation act
Companys profit
Old age benefits
Wages act
Social sec

and alot more.

sounds "sexy" doesnt it?

 

[H!TchHiker]

Labour laws:

Industrial relations act
Workmens compensation act
Companys profit
Old age benefits
Wages act
Social sec

and alot more.

sounds "sexy" doesnt it?

Yes, but Company Ordinance 1984, along with 2017 act and Tax Ordinance 2017 is more sexier..

 

[Nilgiri]

If you can find a link to Chilean crime drama fugitives, do so, a fine series indeed.kudos bhai

Yup its on my to watch list, got it all ready to watch (since you suggested it while back), just need the time hah.