Counter-Currents
Notre Dame des Fascistes, Part III: Excursus on Evola
James J. O'Meara
3,927 words
All this anti-Masonry and TradCath stuff; there was something familiar with all this, until at some point I exclaimed again, “You’ve seen these films before, haven’t you, my man!” It’s Baron Evola’s doppelganger!
Although to be honest, it may have been Will herself who clued me in. She’s well-read enough to cite Evola himself about two-thirds of the way in, on the subject of a United States of Europe, which, having “a communal spiritual identity and sense of direction,” would conduct a “revolt against the modern world in favor of what is nobler, higher, more truly human.”
She may have just picked up the quote from somewhere, as she gives a page number but no source for the essay (“United Europe: The Spiritual Prerequisite”); but those familiar with Evola’s work and life may note many points of similarity here with the trajectory of Evola’s career, especially if we include Stein as well. If Stein and Faÿ are “unlikely collaborators,” what can one make of Evola’s trajectory from Dada poet to Catholic Traditionalist?
Apart from his initial involvement with the avant-garde (Dada poetry and Futurist painting), Evola has admitted that his earliest influences were Oscar Wilde and Otto Weininger, [1] a homosexual and a homosexual Jew — Stein was both. Weininger, moreover, provided Stein with her decisive self-conception as a “genius” — a concept that Will notes enabled Stein to escape an identification with her Jewishness since the “genius” is beyond all “types” — in turn, the latter concept, I think, might be usefully compared with Evola’s next avatar, the philosophy of the Absolute Individual, while even Evola’s turn from this Idealist philosophy to Guenon’s idea of Tradition parallels Stein’s view of Pétain as an avatar of her own genius. [2]
Stein dies shortly after the war, but with the addition of Faÿ, we can continue to follow Evola’s trajectory. Both men (and Stein) sought to influence their respective native lands from the perspective of Fascism, and both wound up actually working for Germany instead: both members of the Gestapo, tasked with exploiting the captured “archives” of various secret societies. [3] Both were tried after the war, Faÿ for collaboration, Evola in 1951 on charges of “glorifying fascism” and of having “attempted to reconstitute the dissolved Fascist Party.” Faÿ was convicted, underwent “national degradation” (loss of voting and other civil rights) and served several years in prison, [4] eventually escaping to exile in Switzerland; Evola successfully defended himself, but, having been crippled during the war, spent the rest of his life in his Rome apartment. [5] Both men spent their last years seeking to create a new cadre of Right-wing youth, during which period Evola seems to have concealed his contempt for Christianity and Catholicism in particular, and continued the conspiratorial view of Masonry shared with Faÿ.
You can buy James O’Meara’s book The Eldritch Evola here.
The criticism directed at Evola (and by extension the other Traditionalists) by Piero Fenili applies here to Faÿ (and to a lesser extent Stein):
For all their nostalgia for authoritarian regimes and theocracies, they enjoyed a freedom of thought and expression that would never have been permitted had they been born into one. One of the pillars of such freedoms in modern times has been Freemasonry. Beside its philanthropic side, there is a spiritual and initiatic side to the craft of which Evola [if not Faÿ] was well aware. With its heritage from Rosicrucianism and its kinship with spiritual alchemy and the Grail quest, Freemasonry could have been a natural ally of his transcendent interests. [6] Instead he [like Faÿ] blamed it as the perpetrator of revolutions and a mainspring of the democratic subversion. In the end, Evola’s greatest error may have been not being true to himself, for his personal equation was written from the start on the page of liberalism. [7]
Fenili insists that “the most important part of Evola’s creative oeuvre consist[s] of the [earlier] works of esoteric, orientalist and philosophic character,” which include The Doctrine of Awakening, The Hermetic Tradition, The Yoga of Power, and Magic: Rituals and Practical Techniques for the Magus, [8] rather than the later, explicitly “Traditionalist” or “fascist” writings, which result from a “wrong choice of traditions,” in effect a betrayal of the true Western or Roman Tradition. [9]
As we’ve seen, this was Faÿ’s trajectory as well, from a nuanced view of Freemasonry, compatible with his personal equation, to paranoiac rejection, accompanied by a seemingly hypocritical embrace of “tradition.” What Evola lacked was his own Stein, who, “while she was alive, saved Faÿ from extremism in his thinking and writing. . . by [providing] countervailing tendencies toward democratic, liberal, and ‘enlightened’ ways of thinking.”
The “dilemma of Vichy” is the dilemma between the “peace” that Stein sought, or the richness of ancestral traditions that James and Eliot found lacking in America, and the freedom, artistic and otherwise, that each sought for himself [10] — as well as with Faÿ, insofar as his homosexuality would make him an outsider in traditional society or Catholicism. It’s the “paradox” of “reactionary modernism,” and Mann’s archeofuturist nostalgia for the — possible mythical — aristocratic society, which would be authoritarian yet protect liberty from the bourgeoise. [11] In an article toward the end of his life, Evola seems to have recognized this:
In England there still survives this healthy and basically apolitical aspect of liberalism not as a politico-social ideology but as the demand that the individual, irrespective of the particular form of political regime, should enjoy a maximum of liberty, that the sphere of his personal and private life should be respected and that no extraneous and collective power should interfere with it. In principle, this is an acceptable and positive aspect of liberalism, which should be distinguished from democracy. For in democracy the social and collectivizing pressure predominates over that of individual liberty. [12]
Both Evola and Faÿ should have quit while they were ahead; a point we’ll come back to.
* * *
Will’s book is a smidgeon over 200 pages, ignoring the endnotes, [13] but seems a lot longer, being what a reviewer calls a “puffed-up and repetitive” version of an earlier journal article. One often has the sense, “Haven’t I read this already?” — and not in the good, “I’ve seen these films before” sense. I found this discouraging.
I also tend to avoid reading “how could they be fascists” books like this, with their cookie-cutter rhetoric, [14] their vertiginously un-self-aware propaganda against “propaganda,” and the easy resort to the ludicrous Frankfurt/Sontag notion of the masses engaged in a sadomasochistic relationship with the Leader (They always accuse you of what they are doing. And say, isn’t it time to cancel such “sex-negative notions anyway)? [15]
Another tedious feature is the expected use of the “point and sputter” technique: “scare quotes” and invidious vocabulary whenever “bad guys” are under discussion. [16] Fascists have “ideals” not ideals; use “logic” rather than logic; a coalition is a “motley crew”; vigorous support is “rabid,” to be influenced is to “parrot,” etc. But what else could be expected when “one of the points of this book” is:
To show how deeply fascist and profascist politics divided and severed human beings from one another, creating invidious, dehumanizing racial, national and religious distinctions that would eventually result in the “death world” of World War II.
After all, you couldn’t say that about communism, right? [17]
As is usual when writing about an all-purpose boogeyman, the nature of the evil undergoes metamorphosis as required; take the French response to defeat, for example:
Chapter Four: “It is believed that close to forty million French people — the entire population of France — supported Philippe Pétain and his Vichy regime in the summer of 1940. . . . He was widely regarded as a hero. . . . The will to believe in his leadership was palpable in all corners of the population.”
Chapter Five: “In the first weeks of June 1940, as Parisians packed their precious belongings, joining long barely moving lines of refugees heading south and west and away from the city, desperation filled the air. [18] In an empty Paris, only a few remained behind. . . .”
Well, which is it? Desperation or a New Hope?
And (if Hemingway can begin sentences with a conjunction so can I) a low point is reached when Will or her editor tries to create a Hailgate moment by cropping a photo of Stein enjoying a trip to Hitler’s captured lair with a group of enthusiastic GI’s, so as to give the impression of Stein leading them in a Roman salute. [19]
Nevertheless, I would recommend this to Counter-Currents readers, for its surprising account of the political dimension of a somewhat forgotten American modernist, [20] its equally surprising account of a really forgotten French historian of America, and its dissection of the conflicting groups that jockeyed for influence and control during the German occupation.
And finally, for its contemporary relevance. A commenter at Counter-Currents recently complained about “book reviews of texts no one care about.” So let me tease out some of the contemporary relevance of all this.
The “answer” to the “question” [21] of why Stein, Faÿ, or anyone would support fascism is, to use one of Stein’s favorite words, simple. [22]
The “answer” is that 1. Fascism is the normal response of normal people to social chaos, and 2. Some artists, including Eliot W. Lewis, Pound, and — surprisingly — Gertrude Stein — are normal people. As a Christopher Chantrill put it a while back:
You can buy James O’Meara’s book Green Nazis in Space! here.
But after World War I the politicians made a hash of things. In Germany they failed to match spending with revenue (a real problem for all social-democratic regimes) and put the nation through a ruinous inflation. In Britain they tried to return the pound to its pre-war parity with a ruinous deflation. In the US the politicians and placemen at the new Federal Reserve Board mucked up their first stock market crash by not acting as the lender of last resort, and thus precipitated the Great Depression. Great going, guys!
So the average person was looking for someone to get them out of this mess. I suspect this urge is embedded deeply in the human consciousness: when your patch of land is threatened by an existential peril your little tribe unites around a strong leader that can mobilize the tribe in a fight for survival. That is all that is needed to explain interwar fascism.
And further:
That is what has happened in post crash America and so the lower middle class is looking for a leader to Make America Great Again. This has nothing to do with authoritarian personalities, but a natural and instinctive human response to things going wrong. When you are stuck in a jam, you look for a leader to get you out of the jam.
What the saga of Stein and Faÿ says is that the response should be simple as well; it could be as simple as this:
Selling Whitopia to whites shouldn’t be that hard, but it is turning out to be far harder than it needs to be. We must reassure folks that life will be very similar to the life we all know except without the people who hate us and want us dead. The laws will remain stable during a period of transition, and after an interval, we will open them up to modification through a fair and just process. Christianity will be respected again while non-Christians will be free of vexation for not practicing the majority religion. In other words, the new nation will be what we thought America was, only much much better.
And the thing is, if you need an ideology to do this, we don’t need a new one, or a foreign one (or one that’s both: looking at you, NazBol Satanists). In line with Faÿ’s own (but rather Nietzschean or Spenglerian) idea that “reading the messages of history” is needed to produce a history we can use today, the Dissident Right could learn a thing or two from this Frenchman’s fascination with America.
Faÿ would have done better for himself, and for France, if he had stuck with his original (however personally motivated) view of America, rather than wandering off back into the quarrels and obsessions of French Right-wing traditionalism. As Americans ourselves, we have no excuse for following him. [23]
Rather than using the current crisis as an excuse to promote their weird, un-American ideological hobby horses — “Traditionalism,” sedevacantist Catholicism, Austrian freemarketism, etc. — while taking morose delectation in the “Judeo-Masonic Enlightenment project” of America getting its comeuppance, I suggest they set their sights a little lower than a “revolt against the modern world,” and concentrate on a re-imagining of the real, true American tradition. [24]
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Notes
[1] The Path of Cinnabar: An Intellectual Autobiography; translated by Sergio Knipe (London: Arktos Media, 2009): pp. 19-25 (Dada and Futurism); p. 8 (Wilde) and Weininger, p. 8 and throughout.
[2] “Stein saw someone who seemed to embody the imaginative and subjective reach of the high modernist writer or artist, but with real-world, transformative power.” Evola: “My theory of the Absolute Individual underwent a ‘mutation’: a shift that might appear paradoxical. . . . The process I now envisaged was a descent of the Absolute Individual from its solitary, abstract and rarefied heights to the concreteness of historical reality, [finding] a perceptible form, almost an embodiment, [in those] individuals who acted as the axis and absolute legislators of their civilizations.” Cinnabar, pp. 97-98. Faÿ played along; when writing for Je Suis Partout, “Stein’s ‘greatness’ is portrayed as that of a fascist leader, and her ‘triumph ‘is like that of a Mussolini.”
[3] The Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) was the chief intelligence and security service for the SS; its Amt VII was a library of occult and esoteric research. Evola was officially involved with the RSHA by the end of the war, but what exactly he was doing is shrouded in mystery.
. . . Historian Richard Drake says that while he was in Vienna, “Evola performed vital liaison services for the SS as Nazi Germany sought to recruit a European army for the defense of the Continent against the Soviet Union and the United States.” According to his own account, Evola spent his time living incognito while doing “intellectual” research. But what kind of research? While Evola was in Vienna, the SD supplied him with a series of arcane texts plundered from private libraries and rare book collections. The SD bureau that provided him with these documents was Amt VII, an obscure branch that served as an RSHA research library. With this precious archive, Evola closely studied masonic rituals and translated certain “esoteric texts” for a book called Historie Secrete des Societes Secretes. It never appeared because Evola claimed that all his documents were lost during the Russian bombardment.
Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day, pgs. 319-320. We recall Faÿ’s founding membership in the SSS: Service des Societes Secretes. The recently translated work of Gianfranco de Turris: Julius Evola: The Philosopher and Magician in War: 1943–1945 (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2020) would seem to provide more detail, but I haven’t been able to consult it yet; see Collin Cleary’s review here.
[4] Will notes that by the time they got around to Faÿ, tempers had subsided, so although Faÿ’s doxing as arguably more serious than the actions of his friend and fellow prisoner, Robert Brasillach (editor of Je Suis Partout), Faÿ himself escaped the death penalty. “It is Brasillach’s fate mainly to be remembered for being the only collaborateur sentenced to death (by firing squad) for ‘intellectual crimes.’” — Margot Metroland, “Robert Brasillach & Notre avant-guerre: Remembering Robert Brasillach, March 31, 1909–February 6, 1945.”
[5] Cinnabar, 185-87. While Faÿ could not claim to have never joined the Fascist party, he would have agreed with Evola’s ”Autodifensa”: his ideas “belong to the heritage of the hierarchical, aristocratic, and traditional conception of the State, a conception having a universal character and maintained in Europe up to the French Revolution. . . . In the same spirit as a Metternich, a Bismarck, or the great Catholic philosophers of the principle of authority, De Maistre and Donoso Cortes, I reject all that which derives, directly or indirectly, from the French Revolution and which, in my opinion, has as its extreme consequence bolshevism; to which I counterpose the ‘world of Tradition.’”
[6] Will notes, regarding Faÿ’s main anti-Masonic treatise, Revolution and Freemasonry, 1680–1800 (1935), that “one of the ironies of the book is that it proceeds through a form of dialectical argumentation not unlike that practiced by the early free-thinking Masons themselves.”
[7] Piero Fenili, “Gli errori di Julius Evola. III – L’allontamento dalla Tradizione degli antichi Padri,” Ignis n.s. 3 (1992), at page 50; see Jocelyn Godwin, “Politica Romana Pro and Contra Evola,” in Arthur Versluis, Lee Irwin, and Melinda Phillips (eds.), Esotericism, Religion, and Politics (Minneapolis, MI: New Cultures Press 2012). I want to thank Peter D. Bredon for calling Godwin’s account to my attention. Will suggests that Faÿ’s “personal equation” was his need to obfuscate his homosexuality, as a consequence of which he perceived Masonic enlightenment and secrecy as both threats, defined by “possibility and prohibition.” We have seen, in Martel’s book, how such maneuvers led the followers of French Personalist philosopher Maritain to corrupt the Catholic Church itself.
[8] After the fall of Rome, when Evola fled the Allied authorities, “the one thing he took with him was a suitcase containing the materials that would eventually become the three-volume Introduction to Magic.” — Collin Cleary, op. cit.
[9] Fenili points out that of the four protagonists who were left at the end of the Western Empire in 476, only the Roman Senate and the Eastern Empire had authentic Roman roots. The other two players were the Church, whose origin was in the Near East, and the Germanic peoples of the north, and it was with these enemies of Romanity that Evola chose to align himself; as did Faÿ.
[10] “We had installed electric radiators in the studio, we were as our finnish [sic] servant would say getting modern. She finds it difficult to understand why we are not more modern. Gertrude Stein says that if you are way ahead with your head you naturally are old fashioned and regular in your daily life. And Picasso adds, do you suppose Michel Angelo would have been grateful for a gift of a piece of renaissance furniture, no he wanted a greek coin.” – Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
[11] Stein: “[In Italy under Mussolini] they do let you work and live in the country and be peaceful . . . and nobody thinks you can live and be quiet under communism, nor under constitutional government as made today.”
[12] “The Two Faces of Liberalism,” in Il Borghese, October 10, 1968; quoted from Godwin, op. cit., pp. 50-51; not to be confused with John Gray’s Two Faces of Liberalism (New Press, 2002).
[13] The e-book, produced by Columbia University Press, randomly switches between popup footnotes and links to endnotes, something I wasn’t even aware could be done, even by accident. And for this quality they want to charge over $20!
[14] The poor proof-reading in the section on wartime Paris suggests that the staff at the publisher skimmed it as more boilerplate.
[15] “To invoke Susan Sontag: Stein appears ‘fixated’ or ‘fascinated’ by Pétain, mesmerized and rendered passive by an almost masochistic desire for the figure of the authoritarian dictator.”
[16] A recent example: “Speaking of the words used to form narratives, this open letter features yet another of the alimentary verbs SJWs love, love, love — i.e. J. K. Rowling ‘spouted transphobic and transmisogynist rhetoric.’ Whenever you see verbs such as spouted, belched, regurgitated, etc., used to describe speech or ideas, you can be pretty sure the writer has frothed while penning them.”
[17] The “death world” — she doesn’t give a source for it to be a quote, but surely those aren’t scare quotes? — reminded me of George Steiner’s brief Editor’s Preface for his “Roots of the Right” series. Steiner wrote that “reliable estimates put at about seventy million the figure of those dead through war, revolution, and famine in Europe and Russia between 1914 and 1945.” It is clear from the context that the author was loosely tallying the total number of victims of both Communism and Nazism. But his series was not about Communism, nor did Steiner so much as mention the word Communist or the name of a single Communist in his preface. Instead, everything was Fascism, Nazism, the Falange, Gobineau, de Maistre, Maurras, Primo de Rivera, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. Steiner deliberately and falsely conveyed the impression to his readers that the 70 million dead were murdered solely by the Right with its “often lunatic and nakedly barbaric” vision. Steiner continued, “The most ‘radical’ attack — ’radical’ in that it demands a total revaluation of man’s place in society and of the status of the different races in the general scheme of power and human dignity — has come from the Right.” And because the political and philosophical program of the Right “has come so near to destroying our civilization and is so still alive, it must be studied.” Hence the supposed desperate need for this series of what Steiner called “black books,” which were literally bound in black; the series was subtitled “Readings in Fascist, Racist and Elitist Ideology,” the whole presentation of course making it irresistible to those with a taste for what would later be supplied by the likes of Adam Parfrey. The helpful but absurd inclusion of Max Stirner (“Mussolini read him!”) only confirmed the impression that this Cambridge don had no idea of what he was talking about.
[18] I’ve seen this movie too!
[19] This is on a half-title page, and the full photo is also included later, where it is clear that another GI in front (cropped out) is pointing to something in the distance and Stein and others are doing likewise, while others in the back (also cropped out) are doing nothing, since pointing in the back, unlike saluting, would be, um, pointless.
[20] “Stein’s own ‘modernist’ novels, memoirs, lectures, and plays — once celebrated as stylishly avant-garde — have not aged well. Today she is remembered almost as much for who she was as for what she wrote.” Mark Weber, op. cit.
[21] “What is the answer?” she asked, and when no answer came she laughed and said: “Then, what is the question?” Stein’s last words, according to Elizabeth Sprigge, Gertrude Stein, Her Life and Work, p. 265 (1957). “What is the answer? . . . In that case . . . what is the question?” is the version in What Is Remembered (1963) by Alice B. Toklas, p. 173, though these are not specifically labeled Stein’s last words.
[22] Stein describes Petain’s actions as “really wonderful so simple so natural so complete and extraordinary.” Wars I Have Seen, p. 68; quoted in Will, p. 116.
[23] Remarkably, the Zman seems to have, I suppose unconsciously, described our current situation in a way that echoes our verdict on the errors of Evola and Faÿ: “The Biden camp suddenly wheeling around on the police issue is a good example of why the Left usually wins. Despite their rhetoric, and they very well may believe the conspiracy theories they spout, they act as if they are riding the tiger. They move and adjust to stay on the back of whatever is happening. The Right, in contrast, acts as if they are sure some secret cabal is at the center of events, manipulating everyone like a master chess player controlling the board.
[24] On the related North American Literary or Spiritual Tradition, see Peter D. Bredon’s “The Native American Nietzsche: Camille Paglia, Frontier Philosopher.”
8 comments
The Evola essay cited is this one: https://evolaasheis.wordpress.com/2016/04/14/spiritual-and-structural-presuppositions-of-the-european-union/
” I suggest they set their sights a little lower than a “revolt against the modern world,” and concentrate on a re-imagining of the real, true American tradition”
It would be much more dignified instead to accept the reality of the situation, and work from there.
Two thoughts: 1: Evola is in his absolute life-long coherence in thought and action beyond criticism. He has lived out his personal equation to the fullest. Evola has never ever written anything to support “totalitarianism” of any form. He adhered to his aristocratic conception of freedom and personal liberty for all his life. He did qualify “liberty” and it would be instructive to actually read his “Yoga of power” and “doctrine of awakening” to find the esoteric basis for his later politics.
2: The resume that the author takes at the end is still valid – and Evolian: Ride the tiger. Make of the situation the most that you can according to your worldview and values and try to communicate in a way that you can be heard.
In the US that would be the traditions of liberty and so on. “Deep America”, as the Evolian Alexander Dugin called it.
Dear Mister O’Meara,
At the moment time doesn’t permit me to fully respond to Part 3 of your book review which I should sincerely desire to do at a later date. First thank you for this, so far your three part book review of Doctoress Barbara Wills’ work on Gertrude Stein and Bernard Faÿ But I must correct you on some very serious errors and what is none other than slipshod historical research on two points regarding the Perennial Philosopher Baron Julius Evola. For now only one major error: He was never a member of the Gestapo! Or of the Schuztstaffel for that matter! And what Professor Richard Drake astoundingly has written that Baron Evola was recruited to form a European Army for the defence of Europe against the American and Soviets is hogwash inexactness of the documented historical facts. God only knows where this pseudo-historical garbage comes from. I suggest you read Doctor Gianfranco de Turris’s monumental work either in the original Italian which fourth edition with more information has yet to be published, “Julius Evola Filosofo In Guerra 1943-1945” or the fourth edition’s first appearance, although designated third edition, in the excellent English language translation by Mister Eric Dennis Antonius Galati given the title “Julius Evola Philosopher And Magician In War 1943-1945”. God Bless, Aristo Boho
Thank you for your comment. I have by now obtained de Turris’ book, which is indeed monumental and so I have not gotten far into it yet. Of course, Collin Cleary has already reviewed it here.
It has been said that contrary to reputation, the Reich was a chaotic mess, and the German love of titles and bureaucracy makes things difficult for this Anglo’s comprehension. Fay denied being in the Gestapo during his trial, but Gestapo records themselves confirm his identity as Trusted Frenchman #1, conferred almost immediately on occupation of Paris.
As for Evola: Wikipedia says that the SD was “the first Nazi intelligence organization to be established [1931] and was considered a sister organization with the Gestapo (formed in 1933) through integration of SS members and operational procedures.” The full name was Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS (Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS). Whether someone worked for the SS, Gestapo or SD matters only for their paycheck. Obviously Evola didn’t arrest or shoot anyone! (de Turris addresses these rumors) nor, as Will points out, did Fay actually order anyone he exposed to be killed, though they were. Fay worked for the Gestapo, Evola worked with SD Amt VII (ideological research) and the Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Office, what today would be considered ancient astronaut theories). But for some reason, “circles in the SS” (de Turris) were interested in Freemasonry, and knew who to ask to look into it: figuratively, they walked down the hall to Fay and Evola’s cubicle at SD HQ, where all three organizations worked together.
Yes, I was incorrect to put both Fay and Evola in the Gestapo, but it hardly matters when the knock comes to your door; as I’ve said before, when you sweep away all the titles and uniforms, it’s just squareheads down for the big Boche gangbang.
Dear Mister O’Meara, I suggest you read-study well Doctor Gianfranco de Turris’ essay before making any fulfilling true criticism of Baron Julius Evola. You seem to be rather I must say superficial about the situation Baron Evola found himself in. If anything he wasn’t in it for the money and he certainly took his research seriously. He was an Italian in a country that the hypocritical Allies demanded an unconditional surrender. At the same time if he had not been an Italian he would’ve have been sent away to a camp given his opposite esoteric and exoteric views from the Schuztstaffel, as you shall learn upon reading the entire text.
Now, the Sicherheitsdienst had a great interest in Freemasonry for two reasons: first it was very much into magic and the occult, both of which Baron Evola was an expert on, and he wrote of the dangers of the Practice of Magic as we now know from his “Autobiografia Spirituale” / “Spiritual Autobiography”. which will be published eventually in English and translated by Mister Eric Dennis Antonius Galati. The second great interest of the German Secret Service in Freemasonry is the belief it was one of the main forces behind every subversive revolutionary movement. By the way, unfortunately many historical footnotes were not included in the book: this translator is quite the scholar and for the English language reader Mister Galati did a great deal of detailed work to have those from the Anglo-Saxon world know just who was who and other important historical events. It has been reported that while the editorial board of the Vermont publisher, Inner Traditions & Bear Company, greatly appreciated his dedication beyond the scope of the average translator, and his excellent usage of language, which was minimally interfered with by the editor, it felt it would be too much for their readers. A consequence of deliberate dumbing down. It reminds one of a Hollywood studio with an authentic film director.
What is so difficult for what you call your Anglo’s comprehension about the German love for titles and uniforms? This is European; do you think it doesn’t exist in England? Or even in the New World, whether English or Spanish? And so you refer to the Germans as squareheads and allude to a great Boche gangbang. It seems you can not accept an objective outlook on the history before your eyes as long as it doesn’t enter your framework of it. The Germans weren’t inept or stupid nor were the Allies. Yet, if you are looking for a gangbang as you sarcastically call it, let us look at historical reality at the Allies: American prison camps after the war in Germany of about two million German children, starving and prey to pederasts and pedophiles, and the French deliberately having the North African Negroes rape hundreds and hundreds of Italian women while your Anglo-Saxon world did not give a damn.
As for Wikipedia, here is an essay by by Mister Gary Null on how inexact and mendacious that paradigm of false information is. After all we mustn’t allow for the human mind to function! His recorded show underneath is most valuable; take what is positive from it: after the Nutrition part, politics. https://prn.fm/gary-null-show-walking-away-wikipedia-08-17-20/ And so Mister O’Meara, strive to be a scholar but do not give in to subjective whims and superficial opinions outside of full knowledge of the topic that you want to relate to others. And remember true scholarship calls for one to know the language of the subject under investigation. God Bless, Aristo Boho
Thank you again for your comment. According to my kindle, no less that 40% of de Turris’ book is footnotes, historical illustrations and an appendix of Evola’s contemporary journalism; it hardly seems to have been “dumbed down.” I continue to read it with interest and recommend it to all.
Would I be correct in assuming English is not your first language? Nothing wrong with that, of course. But since you bring up the idea of being familiar with “the language under discussion,” may I suggest that you are not qualified to discuss the Anglo Saxon attitude to uniforms? In point of fact, I discuss this very issue in “Reflections on Sartorial Fascism,” (reprinted in Green Nazis in Space). Mosley’s movement was doomed from the moment he adopted Mussolini’s black shirts, which made them an object of constant mockery (Wodehouse, who was so apolitical he wound up broadcasting for the Nazis while in occupied France, dubbed Roderick Spode’s fictional counterpart The Black Shorts). Ditto for the American Silver Shirts, as well as the various neo-Nazi LARPers today. It’s bad optics, as they say. In the article I actually deplore this, as you do, but it is a fact and needs to be considered if one wants to get to first base with an Anglo American audience.
As an example: one of the “intelligence community” (SD?) was promoting the Russia hoax at a Congressional hearing, and took umbrage at not being addressed as “Colonel”; he was rightly schooled by the Congressman: military officers when off duty and testifying to Congress are addressed as “Mr.” no matter what their rank outside.
This is reflected in the SS question. Your two reasons for the SS (or as de Turris says, “certain circles of the SS”) interest in Freemasonry neatly divide btw the esoteric (Amt VII or the Ahnenerbe) and political subversion (SS). Evola (and you?) had an integral view, encompassing both, but the impression Evola makes in English depends on which you want to emphasize: was he Indiana Jones (yah!) or Himmler (boo!)? Uniform, or no uniform?
And this is also the spectrum the Italian Fenili presents as well, as discussed: Good Evola (magic, emphasis on the individual, compatible with the Anglosphere and the Roman tradition) and Bad Evola (Freemasonic conspiracies and Catholic throne and altar).
Wikipedia is an easy source to tap for names and dates (and military ranks). I am well aware of its limits and dangers. In a forthcoming review, I briefly mention how Neville Goddard’s entry disappeared, only for a newly written one to recently appear, including a quote from and citation of an article where my “enthusiastic review” of his “At Your Command” is given as evidence of it being “a little guide for fascists.”
And as for another kind of “true scholarship,” as a long-time listener to Pacifica Radio (are you?), I find using Gary Null as an authority for denigrating Wikipedia to be highly amusing; perhaps a little “whimsical.”
As for superficiality, I must say that neither you nor any other commentator has addressed the real issues brought up here. The testy, knee-jerk defensiveness of you and others when Evola is mentioned is what makes him a cult figure rather than a part of “true scholarship.” Rather than pettifogging concerns about the number of footnotes, or whether Evola would look sexier in a Hugo Boss uniform than Indy’s jodhpurs, why not, like Fenili, take Evola seriously and address the issue: why do Fay and Stein (the subject of the book), and Evola, move from an attractive conservative position, open to their kind of individuality, and consistent with the real Western tradition, to an unnecessarily totalitarian worldview that would never have tolerated them in practice (as indeed the SS officially deplored Evola, however useful he might have been for their Masonic inquiries). What, as Fenili asks, were the errors of Evola (and Fay and Stein)?
Dear Mister O’Meara, Thank you likewise for your further reply to me. I do not have a kindle but the actual book and what is more, I’m in touch with the Italian ambient including Doctor Gianfranco de Turris.
1. When I spoke of deliberate dumbing down I am referring to the nevertheless excellent publisher, Inner Traditions & Bear Company, informing the translator Mister Eric Dennis Antonius Galati, that the footnotes had to have much historical information reduced and removed, notwithstanding its value for the English language reader, for not many persons know of Contemporary Italian History, which is what makes Professor Richard Drake of The University of Montana ever so valuable. For some reason Italian contemporary history is not favoured in American universities. So when I compose dumbing down I’m referring to the decision made as to what would be according to the publisher, too much for its readers, who instead would have found the complete footnotes of the greatest interest. They’ve been deprived of knowledge of historical importance to the milieu of the time in the book. Many of the historical footnotes by Doctor de Turris were also trimmed. It’s a fact that foremost in America, and similar in Australia, Canada and New Zealand , culture and information is kept to a minimum control as opposed to let us say France and Italy. One is not to go too broad or deep; it all must be kept simple and on the veneer. A very very strange decision on the part of Inner Traditions & Bear Company, still a publishing house of the greatest cultural and intellectual importance.
2. You’re incorrect that English is not my first language. It is, and I know other languages as well. With all due respect, you may not say I’m not qualified to speak of the Anglo-Saxon attitude to uniforms. Balderdash! I am of the Anglo-Saxon world! And one family branch was with the British military, and we are monarchists as well. What you have to say is a highly eccentric and subjective distortion of what Anglo Saxons think of uniforms. This is absurd! And I know that later in life Sir Oswald Mosley thought his British Union of Fascists uniforms were an error. I disagree with him.
2. If you are reviewing the book by Professoress Barbara Wills, and cross-referring to that of Doctor de Turris, why do you impose your opinions, feelings and interpretations of what you erroneously believe we of the Anglo Saxon world think of uniforms, as well as other nationalities and cultures? And your prejudiced and puerile description of Germans as squareheads and speaking of a Boche gang-bang is the language of the treacherous destruction and injuries of the Left? Ideological moralization and editorializing absurdly about the subject matter on your part doesn’t contribute to the purpose of writing a book review. In the end it comes off as a vulgar desecration of whatever is positive about what you have to say, and is an insincere presentation of the biographical-historical books you claim to be informing us of. It comes down to being no different than the establishment culture that must character assassinate that which does not fit their controlled agenda.
3. Your Anglo’s comprehension has nothing to do with the rest of us in the Anglo-Saxon world, especially when it was of patriotic-traditional values. And from whence does this come from with regard to the essay by Professoress Wills? I am terribly sorry but its scatter brained incoherent logic. I most certainly haven’t any problem with my beloved English language. Stay with the topic at hand objectively and do not involve yourself and your own feelings.
4. To compare Sir Oswald’s Blackshirts and the Silver Shirts of Mister William Dudley Pelley to Neo-Nazi LARPERS is ridiculous and an insult. In fact I am sorry to say you have a distorted view of everything, and I am astounded at the stupidity you write in the paragraphs that mention Sir Oswald, Indiana Jones or Himmler and this third rate Italian Fenili, who doesn’t know what the bloody hell he is talking about! He cannot compare to the likes of a de Turris or serious thinkers. No authentic understanding of Baron Evola at all.
5. There isn’t any knee jerking on my part nor am I pettifogging concerns. You have got to be one of the most, truly, moronic pseudo-intellectuals I have ever encountered. I was informed that Counter-Currents Publishing was a politically traditional web site instead with the likes of you it’s an infantile cesspool of distorted information.
6. My reference to Mister Gary Null is spot on! I do not agree with everything he states, but he and others of greater knowledge have revealed the dangers to veracity of Wikipedia. God Bless, Aristo Boho
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