The Student Room Group

Julius Evola: The Anti-Marx?

Recently I ordered several books by Julius Evola off of Amazon and have spent the last week or so reading his works voraciously. I have acquired the following: Revolt Against the Modern World, Men Among The Ruins, Ride the Tiger and Metaphysics of War. Currently I have finished the first two and am in the process of reading Ride the Tiger. I read up on Evola beforehand and have not been disappointed. Verbose and complicated he may be, once you get to understand his ideas, they make an awful lot of sense. I think that in away he is a more systematic, "scientific" (in the sense of solid historical analysis rather than speculation) version of Nietzsche (infamous for his hatred of philosophical "systems"). The doctrine of regression of the castes parallels Marxist historiography which preaches an unending progression from primitive communism to slave societies to feudalism to capitalism through to Marxist communism. This philosophy of "progress" is rooted entirely in a false and misguided materialistic framework, an inversion of Hegel's doctrine of the "world-spirit". Evola does away with the absurd belief that it is mechanical socio-economic processes alone that determine history. Instead he paints a picture of a constant *spiritual* regression and degeneration which is related to the highest, *spiritual* element of mankind, and not merely a superficial and materialistic one. Whereas ancient societies were marked by sacred kings mediating between heaven and earth, the passage of time brought about a regression and desacralisation which resulted in this order being displaced first by the usurpation of the priestly caste, then the usurpation of the warrior aristocracy, then the usurpation of the merchant caste or the bourgeoisie (the spiritual order which currently rules our world through the degenerate ideology of neoliberalism and democracy), leading inexorably (or so it would seem) to communism, or a society in which the slave caste has risen up and seized control of society. The Cold War was a fight between two spiritual world-views of the same coin - Marxism and liberal capitalism. The collapse of Marxist communism has filled the liberal capitalist world with hubris and has caused it to overreach itself in the arrogant belief that it marks the only true and worthy world-system. A levelling and a uniformity is being pushed onto every nation in order to bring it into conformity with the corrupt aristocracy of finance. The cycle of degeneracy can only be broken if heroic individuals with a warrior spirit band together and fight against the onslaught of modernity and its destructive impulses.

Evola should be considered the anti-Marx. He is the Karl Marx of the Right. Just as an entire historiography has been dedicated to the propagation of the teachings of Karl Marx in centres of higher learning worldwide, so an entire branch of historiography dedicated to the propagation of Evolan teachings should be brought into existence so as to disseminate the ideas of this truly radical thinker throughout what passes for the "free" world, so that those that can see through the decadence, the lies and the cowardice of this modern age will be equipped with the knowledge and the courage that they need so desperately to fight against this deceitful and corrupt universe that surrounds us. Evola is a thinker that should fill every young soul with excitement and the yearning to revolt against the demonic and disreputable forces which keep the Western world in chains. His books are among the most dangerous a youthful, free spirit can ever read. His books are, to put it one way, delightfully *evil*. In reading them, one gets a sense that one is breaking an unwritten law, and reading something illegal and forbidden, something which, if the powers of this world knew its true nature, would never permit anyone to read.
Just lol. If I am to depend on "heroic individuals" to live the good life, I'd rather shoot myself in the face. It has been tried over and over again since antiquity up to the present day. There are no such figures. People are extremely fallible and corrupt and I'd soon give power to a dog to rule over me than any man, no matter how "heroic" you and your friends thinks he is. He'll turn sour the more power he gets. Read Acton instead of complexed nobodies like Evola.

I'm amazed (perhaps I shouldn't) at how impervious fascists are to experience. Didn't you guys learn, based on the earlier part of the last century, how stupid it is to put one man in total control? stop polluting the public culture with your retarded ideas.
You misspelled "fascist nutter".
Power to the soviets!
Reply 4
Original post by anarchism101
You misspelled "fascist nutter".


He wasn't a fascist. Read his actual books, not his biased Wikipedia page, or that god-awful NYT article on him.
Reply 5
Here is what Evola thought of people like Trump:

Taken from Men Among The Ruins (1953[2002]), Chapter 5: Bonapartism-Machiavellianism-Elitism:

Otto Weininger described the figure of the great politician as one who is a despot and at the same time a worshiper of the people, or simultaneously a pimp and a whore, which is something people instinctively perceive. Though it is certainly wrong to apply such a view to every type of political leader, it nevertheless captures the essence of Bonapartism. What occurs here is an inversion of polarity: the leader has a value only by relating to the collective group, to the masses, establishing with them-namely, with the lower end of society-an essential relationship, This is why, despite all, or should I say, precisely because of it, we are still within the boundaries of "democracy". While the traditional view of sovereignty and authority is characterised by the distance from the people, and the feeling of distance induces in the feriors a sense of veneration, a natural respect and disposition to obedience and loyalty toward the leaders, in the phenomenon I am describing the opposite is true: what we find instead is the abolition of, and even an intolerance for, any distance. The Bonapartist leader is and cares to be regarded as a "son of the people", even when the reality is different. He ignores the traditional principle acording to which the wider the base is, the higher the pinnacle should be. He is enslaved to the complex of "popularity": thus, he attends all those rallies from which he may derive the feeling, illusory though it may be, that the people follow and approve him. In this case, it is the superior that needs the inferior, instead of the other way around. Of course, there is a counterpart to this: at least during the phase when he rises to power, the prestige of the Bonapartist leader depends on the fact that the masses perceive him to be close to them or as "one of us". In a similar situation the "anagogic" power (i.e., drawing upward), which is the essence and the reason for existence in every true hierarchical system, is excluded a priori. So what we are left with is what Weininger described with a crude expression: mutual prostitution. (pp.157-158)

Picture Trump's endless rallies and the herd-like call-and-repeat sloganeering demagoguery ("Build that wall!":wink: that goes on at those sordid occasions. That said, what could one except from a shallow bourgeois populist oligarch who is, quite literally, a showman?

...Thus, there is a substantial difference between the adhesion on which a political system of a warrior, heroic or feudal type is based (the foundation of which is both sacred and spiritual) and the adhesion found in movements led by a tribune of the people, a dictator or a "Bonapartist" leader. In the latter case, which I regard as negative, the leader appeals to the lowest and almost pre-personal levels of human beings, flatters them, manipulates them, and makes sure that any higher sensibility is stifled by them. This is also a reason that the leader presents himself in a democratic manner as a "son of the people", and not as the embodiment of a higher humanity and the bearer of a higher principle. Thus, this phenomenon has a regressive character, insofar as the values of the personality are concerned. The single individual in these collective movements or systems is restricted not such much in this or that exterior freedom (which is, after all, of little consequence) but rather in the inner freedom--the ability to free himself from his lowest instincts, which, as I have said, the general climate tends to foster, elevate and flatter.

We should also note the relevant difference that exists whenever an acknowledgment is obtained and a certain prestige is acquired through promising or demanding. In the lowest, modern forms of democracy, we exclusively find the first: the prestige of the leaders is consolidated not so much on the basis of a high ideal tension (as was the case in the early forms of Bonapartism, which had a partially revolutionary and partially military character), but rather on the basis of "social" or "economic" promises, of factors and myths appealing to the purely physical aspect of the demos. This happens not only with the Marxist leaders in "left-wing totalitarianism"; various solutions of the "social question", materialistically considered, are one of the fundamental ingredients in the modern techniques employed by popular leaders in general, which is something that suffices to qualify the level and moral stature of leaders. (p.159).

Consider the above quote when Trump mentions "Make America Great Again" and "Bring back our jerrrrrrrrrrrbs".

...Now, in the modern forms of Bonapartism--except those connected to dictatorial totalitarianism--we may detect a mixture of the Machiavellian notion of the "prince" and the notion of the demagogue who is the son of democracy, insofar as an inverted mysticism conferring on the leader a "charismatic" character here has its counterpart a perfected technique. This technique is unscrupulous and sometimes even demonic, considering the means it employs to establish power and to control the irrational forces of the masses: it amounts to "absolute politics", which ignores the potential value of man as free personality. The Machiavellian leaders themselves ignore that respect for oneself and for one's dignity that is the requirement for any aristocratic superiority. (p.161)
Original post by Juan Perón
He wasn't a fascist.


He wasn't a fascist in about the same sense that Mikhail Bakunin wasn't a communist. Critical of the capital-F movements of the day, and generally didn't use the term to describe himself, but still regarded self-identifying fascists as by far his closest ideological allies and worthy of admiration, and whose views would be regarded, to all except those with a specific interest in the area, as not essentially distinguishable from fascism.
Reply 7
Original post by anarchism101
He wasn't a fascist in about the same sense that Mikhail Bakunin wasn't a communist. Critical of the capital-F movements of the day, and generally didn't use the term to describe himself, but still regarded self-identifying fascists as by far his closest ideological allies and worthy of admiration, and whose views would be regarded, to all except those with a specific interest in the area, as not essentially distinguishable from fascism.


The fact that he is regarded as something doesn't mean he is that thing. This seems to me like some sort of argumentum ad populum.
Original post by Juan Perón
The fact that he is regarded as something doesn't mean he is that thing. This seems to me like some sort of argumentum ad populum.


Evola himself conceded in his trial in 1951 that he could be considered a fascist, just not a Fascist (i.e. a follower of Mussolini's Fascist regime). This was a line of reasoning that got him acquitted, as he was only being prosecuted for the latter.

Evola is widely referred to as a major thinker in fascist circles in scholarship of the topic, he was a considerable (if critical) admirer of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, was involved in (and inspired) the post-war Italian fascist movements like Ordine Nuovo and MSI.

You're doing the equivalent of arguing that a colour that many people believe to be black is in fact just a very very very dark grey, and that this makes it completely different.
Original post by anarchism101
Evola himself conceded in his trial in 1951 that he could be considered a fascist, just not a Fascist (i.e. a follower of Mussolini's Fascist regime). This was a line of reasoning that got him acquitted, as he was only being prosecuted for the latter.

Evola is widely referred to as a major thinker in fascist circles in scholarship of the topic, he was a considerable (if critical) admirer of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, was involved in (and inspired) the post-war Italian fascist movements like Ordine Nuovo and MSI.

You're doing the equivalent of arguing that a colour that many people believe to be black is in fact just a very very very dark grey, and that this makes it completely different.
Evola was essentially an elitist : he thought of himself as part of a high-flying, spiritual elite ; therefore, he despised mass movements - in fact, he despised masses altogether. Therefore, he could not be entirely at ease with movements such as Fascism and Nazism

however, to all practical effects, he was a fascist

best
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by anarchism101
Evola himself conceded in his trial in 1951 that he could be considered a fascist, just not a Fascist (i.e. a follower of Mussolini's Fascist regime). This was a line of reasoning that got him acquitted, as he was only being prosecuted for the latter.


"Considered". He didn't concede that he was. In fact I remember him calling himself a "super-fascist", in that he critiqued fascism from the right. His aim was to reverse the legacy of 1789, with which fascism, for all its rhetoric, had compromised with in some regards (for example, the emphasis on the masses and on the participation of the entire nation in politics).

Original post by anarchism101
Evola is widely referred to as a major thinker in fascist circles in scholarship of the topic, he was a considerable (if critical) admirer of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, was involved in (and inspired) the post-war Italian fascist movements like Ordine Nuovo and MSI.


Again. The fact that he admired elements of fascism and fascists does not mean he was.

Original post by anarchism101
You're doing the equivalent of arguing that a colour that many people believe to be black is in fact just a very very very dark grey, and that this makes it completely different.


Evola's beliefs are made very clear in his works, and they are quite distinct from fascism. In fact Mussolini shut down his magazine, La Torre, for his criticisms of fascism, and the Nazis, Himmler in particular, disapproved of him, considering him a "Roman reactionary".
Original post by anarchism101
He wasn't a fascist in about the same sense that Mikhail Bakunin wasn't a communist.


He was a better communist than a lot of actual communists :indiff:
Original post by ChaoticButterfly
He was a better communist than a lot of actual communists :indiff:


I like how he predicted the totalitarian states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in God and the State.
(edited 6 years ago)

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