Matthew Rose, in an article (click here) in the March 2018 issue of First Things, discusses what he calls "the Anti-Christian Alt-Right." He identifies three key thinkers: Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola, and Alain de Benoist. The connection between Spengler and Evola is perhaps less certain than he suggests, but he is right that all three thinkers are key, and Evola and de Benoist, at least, were anti-Christian. And he is also right that they matter: "The alt-right is not stupid. It is deep. Its ideas are not ridiculous. They are serious."
A book on The Key Thinkers of the Radical Right, forthcoming from Oxford University Press and edited by Mark Sedgwick, covers Spengler, Evola, de Benoist, and thirteen more thinkers whose ideas are indeed serious, whether one likes them or not.
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4 comments:
One of the questions I always ask myself about "anti-Christian rightists" is, well, just how anti-Christian are they? An awful lot of these pseudo-Pagans turn out to be perfectly comfortably chumming around with right-wing Christians like David Duke & Co.
It shows how much our culture worships intelligence I guess. Evola may be "serious," but his ideas have clearly had a malign influence on the world.
What, exactly, is the relationship between Savitri Devi and Traditionalism? She believed some of the same things they do (e.g., that we are in a Kali Yuga, that Greek and Hindu traditions share a common origin, etc.) Yet her openly fascist and Nazi beliefs were way more extreme than anything Evola subscribed to. She does have a lot of devotees on the alt-right, many of whom no doubt also like Evola.
A related question concerns deep ecology. Do Traditionalists in general subscribe to this? Devi did.
Franco Freda is one possible link between Traditionalism and Savitri Devi. He helped popularize Evola and Guénon’s ideas in Italy during the 1960s, and later began publishing Devi’s writings as well.
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