Wednesday, July 23, 2025

New English translation of book by Tage Lindbom

Another book by the Swedish Traditionalist Tage Lindbom (discussed here and here) is now available in English. It is The Windmills of Sancho Panza, first published in Swedish in 1962.

To quote from the recent article on Lindbom by Gulnaz Sibgatullina and Benjamin R. Teitelbaum (here), the book

critiques the liberal notion of freedom, which he saw as individualistic liberation from history, hierarchy, spirituality, and community. He argued that modern liberalism creates an imbalance between freedom and equality, with the latter advancing through the growing power of the modern state, which becomes increasingly managerial and oppressive; he described this dynamic as spreading “like a grass fire.” Drawing on thinkers like Tocqueville while rejecting Rousseau, Lindbom framed his arguments in terms accessible to Western intellectuals.

Professionally and personally, [The Windmills of Sancho Panza] was many things for Lindbom: it catalyzed his intellectual departure from socialism and liberalism, it outed him in public as an ideological Other, and—while it ruined his connections with the mainstream—it helped introduce him to Sweden’s religious and political underground…

The book’s reception was polarizing. Gunnar Fredriksson’s review in Sweden’s leading evening paper Aftonbladet dismissed it with the blunt “Yuck, Lindbom” (1962). And it was while struggling to find a publisher for the book that an editor—perhaps recognizing the text’s intellectual tendencies better than Lindbom himself did—recommended that Lindbom explore the literature on Traditionalism. Indeed, without knowing of Guénon or citing Islam or Hinduism, Lindbom’s text presents a universe of criticism where globalization, centralization, secularization, progressivism, and social leveling co-occur and intermingle.

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