5,876 words

Parts 1-4

Estonian version here, French version here, Polish version here, Spanish version here

In 1897, Robert Lewis Dabney prophesied the triumph of women’s suffrage based on his estimate of the history and character of the only force opposed to it, Northern conservatism:

This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader.

The political hegemony of the Left was and is based largely on the intellectual hegemony of Leftist ideas, chiefly freedom, equality, and progress. Today’s phony Right shares the Left’s basic worldview, but not their clarity of vision, singularity of purpose, and moral idealism. Rightists are merely tepid or retarded Leftists, who lag behind their brighter classmates. Yet the superior Leftists always bring them round in the end. In every battle between Left and Right, the Left can count on a fifth column inside every Rightist, namely his own deepest moral convictions. If one begins with Leftist premises, sooner or later, one will draw Leftist conclusions and put them into practice.

But politics is not merely a matter of intellectual influence and persuasion. It is not just about changing minds, but changing the world. And that requires organized, concerted, purposeful action. Thus politics is also about vectors of control, chains of command, leaders and followers.

Samuel Francis explained the leftward drift of contemporary politics in terms of leadership. On the Left, the leadership is always to the Left of its constituency, moving them toward ever more radical positions. Furthermore, on the Right, the leadership is also to the Left of its constituency. Thus politics moves steadily to the Left, because the Left’s radical vanguard extends its influence through the whole political spectrum and pulls it along behind.

The Right follows the Left, just as train cars follow the engine. The Leftist cars are at the front of the train and the Rightist cars at the rear, thus they reach the destination later, but in no sense do they have an independent course or motive power. There is just one engine, and the people in the engine determine the direction of the train. The people in charge of the various cars may wear uniforms and carry themselves with an air of authority. But they are just conductors and ticket punchers, along for the ride with the rest of us.

How has the Left attained such power? And can it be attained by the Right and used in reverse? The answers are to be found in the Traditionalist school of René Guénon and Julius Evola.

You can buy Julius Evola’s East & West here.

There is no question that technology, science, and medicine are making remarkable advances. But from a White Nationalist point of view, everything is getting worse politically, culturally, and racially. This is why so many White Nationalists are attracted to Traditionalism, which explains contemporary events in terms of the myth that history moves in cycles—beginning with a Golden Age then declining through Silver, Bronze, and Iron (or Dark) Ages, until a new Golden Age dawns.

But Guénon and Evola did not regard historical decline as a disembodied force. They thought it was produced by concrete, embodied groups of historical agents. Although human agency plays a large role in history, however, most human beings are not historical agents. They are the objects, not the subjects of history. Historical agency is the preserve of tiny elites, vanguards that extend lines of influence and control throughout the entire culture, pulling it ever deeper into decadence. The vast majority of mankind is merely along for the ride.

Guénon and Evola discuss these historical elites under the rubric of “occult war.” It is “occult” merely in the sense of “hidden.” In Evola’s words, it is “a battle that is waged imperceptibly by the forces of global subversion, with means and in circumstances ignored by current historiography.”[1] Evola also writes that the occult dimension of history “should not be diluted in the fog of abstract philosophical or sociological concepts, but rather should be thought of as a ‘backstage’ dimension where specific ‘intelligences’ are at work” (Men Among the Ruins, p. 236).

Evola does add, ominously, that these occult forces “cannot be reduced to what is merely human” (Men Among the Ruins, p. 235). But occult war is not necessarily connected with the occult in the usual sense of the word, i.e., mysticism and magic, although the two senses do overlap in such groups as the Freemasons.

How does occult warfare produce political and historical change? According to Evola:

The deeper causes of history . . . operate prevalently through what can be called “imponderable factors,” to use an image borrowed from natural science. These causes are responsible for almost undetectable ideological, social, and political changes, which eventually produce remarkable effects: they are like the first cracks in a layer of snow that eventually produce an avalanche. These causes almost never act in a direct manner, but instead bestow to some existing process an adequate direction that leads to the designated goal. (Men Among the Ruins, p. 237)

As Evola describes it, occult warfare is essentially identical to metapolitics.

Metapolitics deals with the underlying causes and conditions of political change. Metapolitics operates on two levels: intellectual and organizational. Metapolitical ideas include moral systems, religions, collective identities (tribal, national, racial), and assumptions about what is politically possible. Metapolitical organizations propagate metapolitical ideas, bridging the gap between theory and practice. Examples of metapolitical movements include the European New Right and the North American New Right.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s New Right vs. Old Right here

Small metapolitical changes can lead to vast political transformations over time. For instance, the values articulated in the Sermon on the Mount eventually overthrew the whole ancient world. But since metapolitical causes are often remote from political effects, and since metapolitical causes are often abstract and esoteric ideas entertained by only a few, metapolitics is invisible to most people, who focus only on the concrete and immediate. Metapolitics is, therefore, “occult” in the literal sense of the word, i.e., “hidden.” But it is often hidden in plain view and need take no special precautions to conceal itself from the public eye.

The concept of occult warfare is the Traditionalist contribution to what is generally derided as “conspiracy theories,” including both history and speculation regarding “secret societies.” This truly is hazardous territory.

Not a day goes by when my colleagues and I do not conspire together to advance the agenda of the North American New Right. And not a day goes by when our enemies do not conspire to advance their agenda. Yet if you raise the topic of conspiracy, most people are trained to roll their eyes. They do this because they are told that it is what smart people do. Many of them also have direct experience of preposterous conspiracy theories advanced by fevered, aggressive kooks. There is no question that most conspiracy theories are cranky and false, many of them ridiculously so. But what better way to conceal real conspiracies from serious, sober inquiry than promulgating fake ones that taint any discussion of conspiracy with an air of madness?

Evola, however, is “careful to prevent valid insights from generating into fantasies and superstitions,” including a paranoid tendency “to see an occult background everywhere and at all costs” (Men Among the Ruins, p. 238). He treats all assumptions about occult warfare as mere “working hypotheses” put forth to integrate and explain empirical data. He claims that when a phenomenon cannot be entirely explained by known causes, one is entitled to conclude that unknown causes exist and to speculate about their nature.

I would like to add that some of these unknown causes might merely be random factors, since there is no reason to assume that all historical events are the product of conscious intentions (open or occult). Accidents do happen in history. But when one observes human affairs moving steadily in one direction, one is entitled to conclude that this is no accident and that conscious design is at work. And if the conscious designs of the obvious agents do not suffice to explain historical trends, then we are entitled to posit hidden agents and designs at work.

Among the testimonies that Evola considers are Benjamin Disraeli’s claims that, “The world is governed by people entirely different from the ones imagine by those who are unable to see behind the scenes,” and:

The public does not realize that in all the conflicts within nations and in the conflicts between nations there are, besides the people apparently responsible for them, hidden agitators who with their selfish plans make these conflicts unavoidable. . . . Everything that happens in the confused evolution of peoples is secretly prepared in order to ensure the dominion of certain people: it is these people, known and unknown, that we must find behind every public event. (Men Among the Ruins, pp. 238–39)

Evola also treats the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as evidence of occult warfare. Evola recognizes that the Protocols are not actual protocols but rather a literary presentation of a secret agenda for world domination. But in his view, the veracity of the Protocols cannot be proved or disproved by tracing their origins. Instead, their truth is proven by their correspondence to actual events. Thus, “The value of the document as a working hypothesis is undeniable: it presents the various aspect of global subversion (among them, some aspects that were destined to be outlined and accomplished only many years after the publication of the Protocols) in terms of a whole, in which they find their sufficient reason and logical combination” (Men Among the Ruins, p. 240).

Guénon and Evola believe that the occult war is carried on by secret initiatic societies. Just as Tradition is propagated through initiatic societies, the Counter-Tradition is propagated through counter-initiatic societies, which are profane images of genuine initiatic orders teaching inverted doctrines that promote decadence and decline.

The secret initiatic society is the ideal vehicle for both Tradition and Counter-Tradition, for three basic reasons.

First, both Tradition and subversion are based upon bodies of eternal principles that must be propagated over time through a process of initiation, i.e., the communication of doctrines from teacher to student in a hierarchical course of study, in which lower degrees lay the foundations for higher ones.

This, of course, describes any educational process, even the most trivial. But only an organization whose teachings evoke the utmost piety, and whose process of initiation evokes the utmost solemnity, can hope to persist through the ages. Thus the foundation of its doctrine must be eternal truths—persistence in time being the consequence of pursuing eternal truths and living in accordance with them.

Second, both Tradition and subversion are not merely matters of theory. They also involve action: actions that embrace the globe, span the ages, and determine the destinies of nations, civilizations, and races; plans of action that unfold over generations, centuries, even millennia. No organization can hope to motivate generations to toil in the pursuit of aims that will never come to fruition in their lifetimes unless it can mobilize the highest form of impersonal idealism. But the highest form of idealism is only evoked by the highest good, which again requires a foundation in eternal truths.

Third, an organization that perpetuates itself over millennia and acts on a global scale, for good or evil, is bound to make enemies. Thus to persist, it must be secret. Secrecy also serves another purpose, allowing initiates to penetrate and influence, for good or evil, other organizations that would resist them if their competing loyalties were known. A third purpose of secrecy is that it allows an organization to survive changes of regimes, even the fall of whole civilizations. For a secret society may penetrate all of the institutions of a given society, but it should also depend on none of them. Its substance should lie within itself, ultimately grounded in its orientation to the eternal, the most substantial thing of all.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s From Plato to Postmodernism here

Archimedes claimed that he needed only two things to move the world: a lever and a place to stand. The place to stand cannot move, but it allows one to move other things. To move the world, one must have a place to stand outside the world. To move all of history, one needs a place to stand outside history: a secret society that does not move with history, because its foundations are above history and above politics, in a doctrine that does not change because it is based on the eternal.

If one is to move history, rather than be moved by it, one must be an unmoving axis around which all other things revolve. One must be like Aristotle’s god, the Unmoved Mover, who does not move because he is complete and self-contained (substance itself), but who sets the rest of the world in motion, because all things seek to imitate his aloof self-sufficiency. One must be like the Taoist Sage Emperor, who acts without acting, simply by incarnating the unchanging principle of order around which all other beings arrange themselves.

One can hypothesize the presence of an initiatic Traditional body at work wherever one finds a social order that persists over a long period of time: ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China, Japan, Rome, Byzantium, the Catholic Church, and the Old Regimes of Europe.

One can hypothesize the presence of an initiatic Counter-Traditional body at work wherever a steady trend toward disorder persists. In the case of the rise of modernity, many different groups and interests were united in working to overthrow the old order: Protestants, neo-pagans, natural scientists, rationalist and empiricist philosophers, capitalists, and political liberals were among the first wave. Subsequent waves included Jews, socialists, anarchists, and Communists. But since the Second World War, the Jewish element of subversion has become hegemonic.

If an initiatic secret society grounded in the eternal is the place where one stands, what is the lever? What are the means by which one moves history? The short answer is: by any means necessary. If the metaphysical foundations and practical aims of a secret order are as fixed and unchanging as Being itself, the means by which it seeks to influence and direct history should be as manifold and shifting as the historical flux. Absolute dogmatism about foundations and aims can be wedded to absolute pragmatism about means. Truth and order may employ lies and chaos. Good may be pursued by any means, including evil ones, provided that they really are means. If the ends do not justify the means, nothing will. All of these techniques, however, fall under two basic headings: the spreading of ideas and the infiltration and subversion of institutions.

In Men Among the Ruins, Evola develops a number of René Guénon’s ideas on the tools of occult warfare (pp. 244–51).

First, the promulgation of materialistic and positivistic prejudices about historical causation blinds the intelligent to the occult dimension of history.

Second, to prevent those who reject materialism from finding the truth, false spiritual or idealist conceptions of history (e.g., Hegel, Bergson) are promulgated.

Third, when the effects of subversion begin to show up on the material plane and provoke a reaction in the name of ideals drawn from the traditional past, the agents of subversion promulgate counterfeit or distorted versions of these ideas, so that “reaction is contained, deviated, or even led in the opposite direction” (Men Among the Ruins, p. 245).

Fourth, since “the basis of the order to be destroyed consist[s] in the supernatural element—that is, in the spirit—conceived not as a philosophical abstraction or as an element of faith, but as a superior reality, as a reference point for the integration of everything that is human” (Men Among the Ruins, p. 245), all genuine spiritual longings must be channeled into inverted forms of spirituality directed toward the aims of the Counter-Tradition.

Fifth, to weaken, derail, and destroy any genuine opposition that might remain, the enemy encourages them to attack those who share the same principles and to adopt the principles of their enemies. An example of the first tactic is promotes infighting among the resistance: “thus, they attempt in every possible way to cause any higher idea to give in to the tyranny of individual interests or proselytizing, prideful, and power-hungry tendencies” (Men Among the Ruins, p. 247). An example of the second tactic is to encourage the opposition to embrace the principles of the enemy in order to gain momentary rhetorical or political advantages. A good contemporary example is the tendency of White Nationalists to appeal to forms of moral universalism that undermine all nationalism simply to score cheap points against Zionism.[2] Evola stresses that “unconditioned loyalty to an idea”—as opposed to the egotism that leads to infighting or the pragmatism that leads one to adopt the enemy’s idea—“is the only possible protection from occult war” (Men Among the Ruins, p. 247).

Sixth, if the forces of subversion are in danger of being unmasked and punished, they will deflect public anger onto scapegoats. Evola actually suggests that the Protocols might be an attempt to make Freemasons and Jews into scapegoats for a much deeper conspiracy (Men Among the Ruins, p. 248). Evola would probably not entertain such thoughts today, since the specifically Jewish nature of the ruling powers was not so apparent in 1953 when Men Among the Ruins was first published.

Seventh, when subversion progresses far enough to provoke a reaction, this reaction can be diverted from the pursuit of a healthy new society based on eternal truths toward a return to an older form of society in which the sickness is merely not so advanced. In America today, this is manifested in reactionary nostalgia for the 1980s or the 1950s or the 19th century or the Founding Era. Of course, if we could return to the 1950s, our descendants would be coping with the same problems 60 years later.

Eighth, all principles or institutions may be undermined if people confuse them with their representatives. All representatives are inevitably imperfect, but when these imperfections come to light, the agents of subversion argue that it is the institution or principle that must be replaced, not their fallible representatives.

Ninth, Evola claims that one of the principal tools of subversion is to infiltrate Traditional organizations and replace their leadership, in order to destroy the organization outright or to use it to further the ends of subversion. Evola claims that Freemasonry was originally a vehicle of genuine Tradition, but it was infiltrated and taken over by partisans of the Counter-Tradition (Men Among the Ruins, pp. 250–51).

If the dominant current of decline is, to one extent or another, actually created, sustained, and guided by occult warfare, is it possible to use the same means to reverse decline? No—and yes.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s White Identity Politics here.

Traditionalists do not think it is possible to replace decline with “progress,” i.e., progress toward the realization of Golden Age ideals, since they believe that decline is the dominant current of time. One declines from the Golden Age; one does not progress toward it. But at the end of the Dark Age, a new Golden Age will dawn, so although one cannot progress toward a Golden Age, one can decline toward it; one can slide into it. Thus, from this perspective, further decline can actually be seen as a kind of progress, for things cannot get better until decline has run its course.

But this is no argument for quietism, for inaction, for just waiting for an impersonal historical destiny to do our work for us. For, as we have seen, historical destiny is not impersonal. It works through concrete individuals and groups who have a place to stand and a lever to move the human world. In The Crisis of the Modern World,[3] Guénon writes:

. . . the characteristic features of this epoch are in actual fact those which the traditional doctrines have from all time indicated for the cyclic period to which it corresponds [namely the Dark Age or Kali Yuga]. . . . what is anomaly and disorder from a certain point of view is nevertheless a necessary element of a vaster order and an inevitable consequence of the laws which govern the development of all manifestation. However, let it be said at once, this is no reason for consenting to submit passively to the disorder and obscurity which seem momentarily to triumph, for, were it so, we should have nothing better to do than keep silence [which Guénon did not do]; on the contrary, it is a reason for striving to the utmost to prepare the way out of this “dark age,” for there are many signs that its end is already near, if not imminent. (Crisis, p. 9)

Guénon does not merely claim that we ought to resist the Dark Age, but that resistance already exists. He offers a metaphysical argument for this claim:

This [resistance] also is part of the appointed order of things, for equilibrium is the result of the simultaneous action of two contrary tendencies; if one or the other could cease to act entirely, equilibrium would never be restored, and the world itself would disappear; but this supposition has no possibility of realization, for the two terms of an opposition have no meaning apart from one another, and whatever the appearances, one may be sure, that all partial and transitory disequilibriums contribute in the end toward realizing the total equilibrium. (Crisis, p. 9)

Guénon’s point is that all realities are comprised of opposed forces in equilibrium. Today, Dark Age currents are dominant. But that does not mean that Golden Age counter-currents are entirely absent, for if they were absent, the world would collapse into total chaos, rather than display the evil and inverted order that exists today. (If chaos reigned, one would expect the good guys to win once in a while.) Thus a Golden Age counter-current must exist and exert a countervailing influence to the Dark Age, but in a hidden and recessive manner. Furthermore, as with the forces of subversion, this Golden Age counter-current does not exist merely as a disembodied tendency. It is the work of concrete individuals and groups.

In the final chapter of The Crisis of the Modern World, Guénon further discusses this counter-current. He claims that, “the modern world would cease to exist at once if men understood what it really is, since its existence, like that of ignorance and all that implies limitation, is purely negative: it exits only through negation of the traditional and superhuman truth” (Crisis, p. 157).

Such truth cannot be understood by the vast majority, but this is not necessary, since “it would be enough if there were a numerically small but powerfully established elect to guide the masses, who would obey their suggestions without suspecting their existence or having any idea of their means of action . . .” (Crisis, p. 157). Clearly, this elect must operate at least in part through dissimulation, as do the initiates of the Counter-Tradition.

Guénon discusses how such a Traditionalist elect might work to end the Kali Yuga. First, he emphasizes that there cannot be any absolute discontinuity between the Kali Yuga and the coming Golden Age, meaning that they exist within the same causal nexus, so that things we do now will affect the Golden Age to come. A Traditionalist elect with the knowledge and the power to end the Kali Yuga, “could so prepare the change that it would take place in the most favorable conditions possible, and the disturbances that must inevitably accompany it would in this way be reduced to a minimum.” But, even if that proved impossible, the Traditionalist elect could perform “another yet more important task, that of helping to preserve the elements which must survive from the present world to be used in building up the one to follow” (Crisis, p. 158).

Along the way, Guénon drops a bombshell in question form: “is it still possible for this elect to be effectively established in the West?” (Crisis, p. 157)—implying that the elect does not exist in the West. He goes on to explain that such Traditionalist elites do, however, still exist in the East, safeguarding the “ark” of Tradition (Crisis, p. 159). He also speculates on how a Western elect might be reconstituted, either by finding and reviving a living remnant of Tradition in the West, which Guénon thinks unlikely, or by Westerners becoming initiates of Eastern masters. The latter path was, for instance, taken by Savitri Devi, probably under Guénon’s influence:

I embraced Hinduism because it was the only religion in the world that is compatible with National Socialism. And the dream of my life is to integrate Hitlerism into the old Aryan tradition, to show that it is really a resurgence of the original Tradition. It’s not Indian, not European, but Indo-European. It comes from back to those days when the Aryans were one people near the North Pole. The Hyperborean Tradition.[4]

I do not know if a Traditionalist elect has emerged in the West since 1927, when Guénon published The Crisis of the Modern World, but if Guénon is right, we can rest assured that Eastern masters (a kind of League of Shadows, perhaps) are waging the occult war on our behalf, otherwise the Dark Age—which is not chaos but a kind of negative order—would have given way to complete chaos long ago.

There is no “vast Right-wing conspiracy,” but perhaps there should be. I am sure that by now some of you are thinking, “Let’s start a Traditionalist secret society of our own and wage occult war against the modern world! That which is falling should also be pushed.” Secret societies are staples of the Anglo-American political imagination, so it is no surprise that the idea recurs regularly among White Nationalists.

To cite just two examples of many: when I met Wilmot Robertson on March 3, 2001, his one piece of advice for advancing our cause in North America was to create some sort of secret society. On May 17, 1955, in a private letter, Anthony M. Ludovici also recommended the creation of such a society, despite his bad experiences with the English Mistery and the English Array in the 1930s.[5]

I think, however, that creating secret societies is a needless distraction for White Nationalists, for several reasons.

First, if Guénon is right, such a secret order already exists. But they don’t have a P.O. Box or a Facebook page. You can’t join them by sending in a check. They have to come to you. So the only thing you can do is focus on making yourself worthy of being chosen by such an elite group. That way, you hedge your bets. If such a society really does exist, you might well be asked to join, and if Guénon and Evola are just having us on, you have still made yourself worthy of such an elite, and that’s the most important thing in the end.

Second, I have heard of many secret societies, which means that they have not remained secret. And once the existence of such a group is known, it can only add to one of the greatest problems with the White Nationalist subculture: lack of trust, including outright paranoia.

This climate is exploited and exacerbated by our enemies, but they are not the sole cause of it. I think that White Nationalists have a strong innate predisposition to paranoia. Ethnocentrism, like most psychological traits, tends to be distributed on a bell curve. It stands to reason that White Nationalists would tend to be more ethnocentric than average, which is my experience. High ethnocentrism, however, seems to be correlated with an inability to trust fellow whites as well.

There is a simple explanation for this: with whites, low ethnocentrism is the norm, so when a white manifests high ethnocentrism, he is likely to be met with disapproval from other whites, which will tend to alienate him from his people. (For Jews, high ethnocentrism is the norm. Thus when a Jew acts ethnocentrically, other Jews are likely to approve of it, which reinforces both ethnocentrism and a sense of belonging to the Jewish community.)

But the ability to trust strangers—which involves being willing to take a certain amount of risk—is one of the conditions for the rise of large-scale, complex social institutions. Otherwise, you are only able to cooperate with the small number of people whom you know. Since highly ethnocentric whites tend not to trust their fellows, this makes them less capable of forming effective organizations and movements. The enemy, apparently, understands this, thus they do everything they can to stoke discord and paranoia. Talk of secret societies simply adds suspicion and resentment to an already poisoned atmosphere.

(Personally, I am predisposed to low levels of ethnocentrism and high levels of trust toward strangers. I arrived at my nationalist convictions not by instinct, but by much thought and experience, and although my willingness to trust strangers has allowed me to expand and create organizations, I have been repeatedly burned by crooks, cranks, and crazies.)

Third, despite every precaution, secret societies can be subverted. All hierarchical organizations are vulnerable to subversion at the top, which allows a few well-placed conspirators to put vast numbers of people to work in good faith promoting evil ends. This is particularly true of secret societies, in which rank and file members often do not even know the identity of their leaders, much less their true loyalties and agendas.

Furthermore, although secret societies may be difficult to subvert, the very secrecy that protects them makes them high-value targets for subversion. Sometimes the best way to keep your secrets is not to make a great show of concealing them, lest you attract prying eyes. This is why secret societies deny that they are secret. (The standard Masonic boilerplate is to claim they are merely “discreet.”) Thus if you want to keep your identity and involvement in White Nationalism secret, never join a secret society. Because, chances are, the enemy already joined it long ago. “Open conspiracies” entail no such risks and cannot be so easily subverted.

Fourth, although people can usually accomplish more by cooperating than by going it alone, a higher than average number of White Nationalists, particularly our most original thinkers and committed doers, are not “organization men” but people who accomplish more working alone or in informal, non-hierarchical networks rather than in structured, hierarchical organizations. Such people tend to chafe against the fraternal chumminess, cliques, pecking orders, and secret handshakes that come with all hierarchical groups, even those devoted to the most exalted aims. Organizations, by their very nature, create interpersonal drama, which individualistic types despise. Sometimes the quickest way to destroy cooperation among a group of White Nationalists is to propose that they agree on something as simple as a name.

Since we need to mobilize all the talent we can, we must give the square pegs the freedom they need to work and create. So what good is an elite organization whose structure and ethos are incompatible with the personality profiles of many of the best people in our cause? We need to accept the fact that today’s White Nationalist movement might work best on the model of a Montessori school, not a Hitler Youth rally.

Fifth, it is possible to learn and apply the most essential principles and techniques of occult warfare without duplicating their organizational matrix. One can access Traditional wisdom outside an initiatic organizational framework. Indeed, most people who call themselves Traditionalists today have not undergone a process of initiation in some sort of secret order. Instead, we largely work alone, reading the increasingly abundant and easily accessible corpus of Traditionalist literature (no secrets these!). Then we try to apply the insights we glean to our lives. And if we really believe that these ideas can change the world, then we should not keep them secret but spread them as widely as possible to encourage others in our cause to adopt them as well.

The North American New Right adopts three basic principles of occult warfare. First, we lay our foundations in the eternal, because only such foundations can evoke the highest impersonal idealism and the utmost seriousness, and maintain them over generations of struggle. Second, our foundations and aims—a White Republic or Republics in North America—are fixed and non-negotiable, in order to provide a firm place for us to stand while we rearrange the rest of the world to suit us. Third, the lever by which we will move the world is the pursuit of intellectual and cultural hegemony.

From the fixed center of our doctrine and aims, we send out lines of influence in all directions, deconstructing the hegemonic anti-white ideas and constructing our counter-hegemony in the form of pro-white outlooks tailored to all existing white ethnic and interest groups, propagated through all possible media. Our aim is a pluralistic society in which all shades of opinion, realms of culture, and political options are compatible with white survival and flourishing—a society in which white degradation, dispossession, and extinction are off the menu.

The Protocols are a literary presentation of the guiding intelligence of an alien race, a race that believes itself destined for world domination, which it pursues through occult warfare against European man and all the other peoples of the world. They promised themselves the world, and they are delivering on it. It is evil, of course, but even an evil destiny mobilizes and empowers a people. To survive, one must aim at more than mere survival. To secure one’s future, one must envision what it will be like. Other things being equal, peoples who lack a sense of destiny tend to become the playthings of peoples who have them.

Whites desperately need to recapture our sense of an exalted, cosmic destiny. We are the people who care for the welfare of the world, for the preservation of what is true, beautiful, and good. We must secure biological and cultural diversity. We must lay the foundations for the outward, cosmic expansion and upward evolution of our race. And, since as far as we know, mankind is the only intelligent race in the universe, our evolution can be viewed as the evolution of the cosmos as a whole.

We must also evolve the guiding intelligence necessary to fulfill this destiny. It is worth exploring whether such an intelligence needs to be embodied in a hierarchical occult order, or if it can inhere in a decentralized, resilient metapolitical network.

Counter-Currents, December 10–13, 2012

* * *

Like all journals of dissident ideas, Counter-Currents depends on the support of readers like you. Help us compete with the censors of the Left and the violent accelerationists of the Right with a donation today. (The easiest way to help is with an e-check donation. All you need is your checkbook.)

For other ways to donate, click here.

Notes

[1] Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist, trans. Guido Stucco, ed. Michael Moynihan (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2002), p. 235.

[2] See Greg Johnson, “White Nationalism and Jewish Nationalism.”

[3] René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, trans. Arthur Osborne (Ghent, N.Y.: Sophia Perennis et Universalis, 1996).

[4] Savitri Devi, And Time Rolls On: The Savitri Devi Interviews, ed. R. G. Fowler (Atlanta: Black Sun Publications, 2006), p. 117.

[5] http://www.anthonymludovici.com/antisemi.htm