The
Journal for the Study of Radicalism has just published a special issue (Spring 2014, vol. 8, no. 1) on the
New Right that contains two articles that deal with contemporary manifestations of Traditionalism.
"The Nouvelle Droite and 'Tradition,'"
by
Stéphane François, is devoted to an examination of the
relationship between Traditionalism and the New Right, or rather to French New-Right Traditionalism--François sees "a
Traditionalist current" as "a distinctive tendency
within the ND [Nouvelle Droite, New Right]." He agrees with my earlier conclusion that
Alain de Benoist
cannot be considered a Traditionalist, a conclusion that de Benoist
himself welcomes in a response ("Alain de Benoist Answers Tamir Bar-On") printed at the end of the special issue. François then stresses the
influence of
Evola and other Traditionalists on the New Right,
especially with regard to the critique of modernity and the embrace of
an Indo-European pagan alternative to Christianity, blamed for inspiring
egalitarian secular utopias. Guénon's writing on Hinduism contributes
to the New Right conception of Indo-European paganism, he thinks, but Evola in
particular is enlisted to this end.
François also
discusses what he calls "Nordic Traditionalism," a little known
phenomenon that he says draws on Guénon's regard for a supposed original
Hyperborean tradition. François mentions only one contemporary name in this connection, that of Paul-Georges Sansonetti. Sansonetti
is the author of a number of books not discussed by François, the most
striking of which is
Hergé et l'énigme du pôle, which--according
to its blurb--provides the key to decoding the secrets of the North Pole
as Supreme Center as found in Hergé's
Tintin books... It is not entirely
clear how seriously this should be taken.
"A Conversation with
John Morgan" by
Arthur Versluis, takes discussion of Traditionalism and the New Right across the Atlantic. Morgan is the editor-in-chief of
Arktos, an important English-language publisher for Traditionalist and New Right books, from
Evola to
de Benoist and
Dugin. Unlike de Benoist, Morgan acknowledges an important debt to Traditionalism.
As well as talking about this and about his own encounters with
Sufism and
Hinduism, Morgan discusses the origins, nature and mission of Arktos, and the general New Right "scene" (my term, not his) in America. He also explains how he sees the New
Right as differing from the fascism that its critics seek to identify
it with: the New Right does not favor a powerful
state, and is not interested only in the material. The New Right is not
radical, he says, in the sense of wanting revolution, but he "could even
conceive of these ideas entering the mainstream political and cultural
process eventually, such as has been happening recently with the
identitarian movement in many Western European countries, which has been
catching on among the youth with great success."
Two other articles mention Evola. The lead article, "The French New Right Neither Right, nor Left?"
by
Tamir Bar-On, merely mentions him in passing as an inspiration of the New Right, an inspiration that is examined in somewhat more depth in the second article, "The New Right and Metapolitics in France and Italy," by
Massimiliano Capra Casadio.
The work of Yuriy Mamleyev, the underground author from the circle of alternative intellectuals that Alexander Dugin joined, has until recently not been available in English, though some short stories were translated in 1980 and published as The Sky Above Hell and Other Stories.