Guest post
In addition to the recent post about Mohammed Omar and the 'Ivan Aguéli Study Group,' it is worth noting that there exist several interesting connections between Omar and the people around him, and groups connected to the Swedish right. These connections have caused a lot of internal discussion among Traditionalists and Swedish nationalists about Islam and its potential as a threat or ally--a debate that originates in an international discussion on the Right spurred by the publication of Guillaume Faye's controversial La Nouvelle question juive (The New Jewish question), which proposes an alliance with Israel against Islam.
The Swedish right has in several steps approached and adopted Traditionalist and New Right ideas, with the blogging collective www.motpol.nu being the prime example, with several self-proclaimed 'Traditionalist' bloggers.In 2009 Mohamed Omar interviewed the Swedish Right Wing, Traditionalist and New Right blogger 'Oskorei' (see here).1½ years later, in December 2010, Oskorei in turn interviewed Omar on Motpol (here). Recently, in January 2011, an extremist and anti-traditionalist but radical nationalist blog/newspaper, Nationell.nu accused the people behind Motpol of being 'Traditionalist' and 'pro-Muslim', and a 'danger to Swedish nationalism' (here).
In late February 2011 Omar planned to attend a New Right/Identitarian gathering in Sweden (www.identitet.org), although he did not show up. He notified his friends on facebook of the meeting (due to it having traditionalist/'anti-zionist' speakers), which in turn spawned a lengthy (87 posts and counting) debate on a nationalist forum (here) where the relationship between Traditionalism, Islam and Swedish nationalism is discussed and put into question.
Finally it is worth noting that Lars Adelskogh, a former speaker in the Aguéli Study Group, is also a collaborator with Omar on an Islamic Publishing house, islamiskaforlaget.se. Adelskog has several ties to the Swedish Right Wing scene. Besides having translated Guénon's The Reign of Quantity, Adelskogh has also written the book En tom säck kan inte stå: myten om "förintelsen i gaskamrarna" i Auschwitz (An empty sack can not stand: The myth of the "gas chamber Holocaust" at Auschwitz), a revisionist book that questions the scope of the Holocaust. This book was published in 2002 by Nordiska Förlaget. He has also translated Kevin MacDonald's The Culture of Critique (as Kritikkulturen: en evolutionär analys av judiskt engagemang i 1900-talets intellektuella och politiska rörelser), which is considered a key text in the contemporary Right Wing scene, and likewise published on Nordiska Förlaget.
Swedish nationalists have in previous year been observed at pro-Palestinian Al Quds demonstrations, but it is probably still too early to evaluate the exact extent and potential future developments of Islamic and New Right relations in Sweden.
Jacob Christiansen Senholt, Aarhus University
A Blog for the study of Traditionalism and the Traditionalists
moderated by Mark Sedgwick
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Simone Weil?
An anymous comment (which I post undedited) runs as follows:
Simone Weil was progressive and she too spoke of a need for roots. Dont know whether she fits into Traditionalism or not. But some elements of her work would be highly compatible with traditionalism.
"What makes an impression first is the distinction drawn by Weil between rights and obligations. Weil did not dispute the significance of rights, but she put them, it might be said, in their place. She viewed rights as 'subordinate and relative' to obligations: the exercise of a right did not depend on the demands of the individual possessing them, but on the recognition by others of their obligations....
...Weil insists that a progressive concerned with the promotion of just order must be able to speak about more than economic advancement, the expansion of rights, or the pursuit of individual happiness through restless scientific advance. Weil believed that progressives need to speak, too, to the need for 'roots,' understood as a basic—even spiritual—need. They should be able to speak of love of country, not only of submission to the State. Their language should be that of obligation, not only of rights, informed by morality even before it appeals to law...." (from book review by Bob Bauer on More Soft Money Hard Law website)
Book review: "This is one of those books which ought to be studied by the young before their lesiure has been lost and their capacity for thought destroyed; books the effect of which, we can only hope, will become apparent in the attitude of mind of another generation." T. S. Elliot
More here
http://www.ou.edu/cas/psc/bookweil.htm
Simone Weil was progressive and she too spoke of a need for roots. Dont know whether she fits into Traditionalism or not. But some elements of her work would be highly compatible with traditionalism.
"What makes an impression first is the distinction drawn by Weil between rights and obligations. Weil did not dispute the significance of rights, but she put them, it might be said, in their place. She viewed rights as 'subordinate and relative' to obligations: the exercise of a right did not depend on the demands of the individual possessing them, but on the recognition by others of their obligations....
...Weil insists that a progressive concerned with the promotion of just order must be able to speak about more than economic advancement, the expansion of rights, or the pursuit of individual happiness through restless scientific advance. Weil believed that progressives need to speak, too, to the need for 'roots,' understood as a basic—even spiritual—need. They should be able to speak of love of country, not only of submission to the State. Their language should be that of obligation, not only of rights, informed by morality even before it appeals to law...." (from book review by Bob Bauer on More Soft Money Hard Law website)
Book review: "This is one of those books which ought to be studied by the young before their lesiure has been lost and their capacity for thought destroyed; books the effect of which, we can only hope, will become apparent in the attitude of mind of another generation." T. S. Elliot
More here
http://www.ou.edu/cas/psc/bookweil.htm
Hellenic Eurasian movement opens website
The Hellenic Eurasian movement now has a blog (at http://eurasiagr.blogspot.com/) with translations of Dugin.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Traditionalism and Dugin, in Russian
There is a new article in Russian on Dugin by Andreas Umland and Anton Shekhovtsov, "Philosophia Perennis и «неоевразийство»: роль интегрального традиционализма в утопических построениях Александра Дугина" (Philosophia Perennis and 'Neo-Eurasianism:' The Role of Integral Traditionalism in the Utopian Constructions of Aleksandr Dugin), in Форум новейшей восточноевропейской истории и культуры - Русское издание 2 (2010), available at http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/ZIMOS/forum/inhaltruss14.html. This is a translation of Anton Shekhovtsov and Andreas Umland, "Is Aleksandr Dugin a Traditionalist? 'Neo-Eurasianism' and Perennial Philosophy" The Russian Review 68 (October 2009), pp. 662–78, discussed in a previous post.
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