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Fascism Viewed from the Right
In this book, Julius Evola analyses the Fascist movement of Italy, which he himself had experienced first-hand, often as a vocal critic, throughout its entire history from 1922 until 1945. Discussing—and dismissing—the misuse of the term 'fascism' that has gained widespread acceptance, Evola asks readers not to allow the fact of Italy's defeat in the Second World War to distract us from making an objective analysis of the ideology of Fascism itself, since the defeat was the result of contingent circumstances and the personalities of those who led it, rather than flaws that were inherent in Fascism as an idea. Evola praises those aspects of Fascism which he believes to have been in accordance with the best traditions of European governance, in particular the Classical Roman tradition, while he remains critical of those aspects which ran contrary to this ideal, such as its socialist, proletarian and totalitarian tendencies, as well as what he saw as its petty moralism. Evola also distinguishes between the Fascism of the 'Twenty Years' between 1922 and Mussolini's overthrow in 1943, and the 'Second Fascism' of the Italian Social Republic, which he considered as much more problematic. He likewise criticises the Fascist racial doctrine for being based on false principles. Frequently quoting Mussolini's own words, Evola presents the core of the Fascist ideal, arguing that, for all its flaws, it remains superior to the political system which has since arisen to replace it. Julius Evola (1898-1974) was Italy's foremost traditionalist philosopher, as well as a metaphysician, social thinker and activist. Evola was an authority on the world's esoteric traditions and one of the greatest critics of modernity. He wrote extensively on the ancient civilisations of both East and West and the world of Tradition, and was also a critic of the political and spiritual movements of his own time from a traditional perspective.
130 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
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1111 people want to read
About the author
Julius Evola
211 books1,017 followersJulius Evola (19 May 1898 – 11 June 1974), born Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola, was an Italian philosopher and esoteric scholar. Born in Rome to a family of the Sicilian landed gentry, Evola was raised a strict Catholic. Despite this, his life was characterised by 'an anti-bourgeois approach' hostile to both 'the dominant tradition of the West—Christianity and Catholicism—and to contemporary civilization—the 'modern world' of democracy and materialism'.
By turns 'engineering student, artillery officer, Dadaist poet and painter, journalist, alpinist, scholar, linguist, Orientalist, and political commentator', he has been described as a 'rare example of universality in an age of specialization'. Yet behind it all lay a singular emphasis on, and pursuit of, a 'direct relationship to the Absolute'. For Evola, 'the center of all things was not man, but rather the Transcendent.' This metaphysical conviction can be seen to have determined both Evola's stance on socio-political issues, and his antipathetic attitude towards 'all professional, sentimental and family routines'.
The author of many books on esoteric, political and religious topics (including The Hermetic Tradition, The Doctrine of Awakening and Eros and the Mysteries of Love), his best-known work remains Revolt Against the Modern World, a trenchant critique of modern civilisation that has been described as 'the gateway to his thought'. Since his death, also in Rome, his writings have influenced right-wing, reactionary and conservative political thought not only in his native Italy, but throughout continental Europe and, increasingly, the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, he should not be considered primarily as a political thinker, but rather as an exponent of the wider Traditionalist School that encompasses the work of such individuals as René Guénon, Titus Burckhardt and Frithjof Schuon.
By turns 'engineering student, artillery officer, Dadaist poet and painter, journalist, alpinist, scholar, linguist, Orientalist, and political commentator', he has been described as a 'rare example of universality in an age of specialization'. Yet behind it all lay a singular emphasis on, and pursuit of, a 'direct relationship to the Absolute'. For Evola, 'the center of all things was not man, but rather the Transcendent.' This metaphysical conviction can be seen to have determined both Evola's stance on socio-political issues, and his antipathetic attitude towards 'all professional, sentimental and family routines'.
The author of many books on esoteric, political and religious topics (including The Hermetic Tradition, The Doctrine of Awakening and Eros and the Mysteries of Love), his best-known work remains Revolt Against the Modern World, a trenchant critique of modern civilisation that has been described as 'the gateway to his thought'. Since his death, also in Rome, his writings have influenced right-wing, reactionary and conservative political thought not only in his native Italy, but throughout continental Europe and, increasingly, the English-speaking world. Nevertheless, he should not be considered primarily as a political thinker, but rather as an exponent of the wider Traditionalist School that encompasses the work of such individuals as René Guénon, Titus Burckhardt and Frithjof Schuon.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 10, 2015
A must-read for anyone who opposes either fanatical right-wingism or a vacuous leftism. Evola's conception of a true right is well articulated. Unlike many critics of leftism he puts his cards on the table & states what he stands for as opposed to what he is against. Stuff on corporatism is particularly useful. Book has a good pace & is well written.
August 11, 2019
I confess I wanted to like this, and I did to an extent. While it is very academic and largely went over my head, there were some moments of clarity where I thought Evola made some interesting points. He goes a long way to discourage what has happened throughout the modern world: fascism has been wholly equated with Nazism, with all its rampant and despicable violence, racism and totalitarianism. While one can safely walk through a western university with a shirt reading "Communism just hasn't been done right yet", I'd like to see anyone make it down the street with a shirt that said the same thing about fascism.
It was refreshing to read a book that has the balls to be pro-fascism. And it's nothing like what most anti-fascists would want it to be. The writer - who lived through Italy in the 1940s and was personally acquainted with both Hitler and Mussolini though very disapproving of the former - provides a well-considered apologetic of sorts for the ideology of fascism, one that doesn't fall squarely into the far-right worldview as one might expect.
I read this with my wife, who, though conservative to today's standards, still considers herself a left-leaning centrist. Naturally she was not having this man's arguments at all. I however, being of conservative persuasion, was less impartial to many of the sentiments. Does that make me a fascist sympathiser? Hell no. I still don't exactly know what a real fascist is; this book kind of fails there. I do think, however, that people shouldn't be labelled as fascist just because they have right-wing views. Nor do I think fascist ideas should be as unconditionally suppressed as they are. As Thomas Jefferson once said, we should be willing "to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it".
Punching people in the face and throwing milkshakes ain't gonna convince anyone. If fascism is clearly despicable, people shouldn't be so hysterical at the idea that there might be some followers amongst us willing to have a conversation.
It was refreshing to read a book that has the balls to be pro-fascism. And it's nothing like what most anti-fascists would want it to be. The writer - who lived through Italy in the 1940s and was personally acquainted with both Hitler and Mussolini though very disapproving of the former - provides a well-considered apologetic of sorts for the ideology of fascism, one that doesn't fall squarely into the far-right worldview as one might expect.
I read this with my wife, who, though conservative to today's standards, still considers herself a left-leaning centrist. Naturally she was not having this man's arguments at all. I however, being of conservative persuasion, was less impartial to many of the sentiments. Does that make me a fascist sympathiser? Hell no. I still don't exactly know what a real fascist is; this book kind of fails there. I do think, however, that people shouldn't be labelled as fascist just because they have right-wing views. Nor do I think fascist ideas should be as unconditionally suppressed as they are. As Thomas Jefferson once said, we should be willing "to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it".
Punching people in the face and throwing milkshakes ain't gonna convince anyone. If fascism is clearly despicable, people shouldn't be so hysterical at the idea that there might be some followers amongst us willing to have a conversation.
April 14, 2016
Excellent critique of mass-minded totalitarian movements, in defense of the organic Traditionalist ethic.
April 6, 2023
Julius Evola…One of the most controversial philosophers of the 20th century.Radical traditionalist and one of the main ideologues of the western esotericism . Even though esoteric philosophy has been founded back in the ancient Greece, by Hellenized Syrian pamphleteer, Lucian of Samosata, esotericism as we know it today is mostly influenced by the teachings of Evola himself… Because this app limits the number of words I can use, I won’t be getting any deeper into his esoteric teachings, but stick only to his relations to the Mussolini’s regime. Although Evola later in his life referred to himself as a “superfascist” which is widely missinterpreted by today’s critics of his political and philosophical standpoints, the truth is he was very critcal of the Mussolini’s regime. After 1922. and the “infamous” March on Rome orchestrated by the Mussolini’s “PNF”, Evola’s view on the situation was that it could be somewhat useful for spreading his ideas, because the corporative fascism in it’s essence could be compatible with his traditionalist and esoteric philosophy. In the beginning, Mussolini was somewhat supportive of Evola’s ideas, and even some of his essays were published by regimes propaganda newsletters, but that so called collaboration was very short termed. The differences between their ideas were more than obvious and it didn’t take long for Mussolini to see Evola as a threat to his new totalitarian regime. Feelings were both sided, but the last straw on the camels back was Mussolini’s signing concordat with Vatican in 1929. The main reason being Evola’s attacks on Catholic church, and Christianity…After Evola finally parted ways with Italy, he was summoned by the Heinrich Himler himself to present his teachings to Schutzstaffel soliders, but that neither was a long term relationship due to Adolf Hitler’s concerns of Evola’s Mediterranean racial background.
July 10, 2022
I did not resonate so much with his political writing as much as I did with his more philosophical spiritually oriented ones. The last five pages of the books provides a good summary of the 115 pages that I read. So I would recommend just reading the end. I'll add it to this review with captions for convenience:
The nature of the true state
"The true state will then be oriented against both capitalism and Communism. At its centre will stand a principle of authority and a transcendent symbol of sovereignty. The most natural incarnation of such a symbol is the monarchy. The need to confer a chrism on this transcendence is of fundamental importance.
Monarchy is not incompatible with a ‘legal dictatorship’, more or less as it was in ancient Roman law.[215] The sovereign can confer exceptional unitary powers on a person of special stature and qualification, still on a legal basis, when there are special situations to overcome or exceptional tasks to confront."
The essential force which underlies all law
"We can accept the formula of ‘authoritarian constitutionalism’. It entails overcoming the fetish and mythology of the so-called ‘rule of law’. Law is not born from anything perfectly formed, nor with characteristics of eternal, immutable validity. At the origin of every law stands a relationship of force. This power that is at the origin of every law can intervene, suspending and modifying the current structures when the situation demands it, attesting with this action that there still exists in the political organism a will and a sovereignty, that it is not reduced to something abstract, mechanical and soulless."
The importance of a state
"The state is the primary element that precedes nation, people and ‘society’. The state — and with the state everything that is properlyconstituted as political order and political reality — is defined essentially on the basis of an idea, not by naturalistic and contractual factors.
Not a social contract,[216] but relations of loyalty and obedience, of free subordination and honour, are the bases of the true state, which does not acknowledge demagoguery and populism.
The true state is organic and unified without being ‘totalitarian’. The relations we are discussing allow for the possibility of a large margin of decentralisation. Liberty and partial autonomy stand in relation to loyalty and responsibility according to a precise reciprocity. When these relations are broken, the power that is concentrated at the centre, manifesting its own nature, will therefore intervene with a severity and harshness in proportion to the liberty that was conceded."
The true state is not democratic
"The true state does not acknowledge the system of parliamentary democracy and party rule (partitocrazia). It can admit only corporative representations that are differentiated and articulated through a Lower or Corporative House. Above that will stand an Upper House as an extraordinary tribunal to guarantee the pre-eminence of the political principal, and having higher goals which are not only material and short- term.
It will be necessary to take a resolute stance against the aberrant system of indiscriminate universal suffrage and ‘one man, one vote’ which now includes the female sex. The formula of ‘politicising the masses’ should be rejected. The majority of a healthy and ordered nation should not be
involved in politics. The Fascist trinity, ‘authority, order and justice’,[217] retains its unshaken validity for the true state."
Order, tradition, ethics and asceticism
"The political party, which is a necessary organ for a movement in a period of transition and struggle, should not be replaced by a ‘single party’ once power is conquered and the system is stabilised. Its quite different task will be to establish something like an Order, which will participate in the dignity and authority concentrated in the centre, and assume some of the functions that in earlier, traditional regimes belonged to the nobility as a political class in key positions of the state (for example in the army and the diplomatic corps). The premise of this class was a stricter ethic and a special lifestyle. This nucleus will also act as the guardian of the idea of the state, and will prevent the ‘caesarean’ isolation of whoever exercises the supreme authority."
Freedom of economic interests
"The sphere of politics and power should be, by its very nature and function, free from economic influences, influences by economic groups or special interests. It is appropriate to recall the statement of Sulla,[218] who said that his ambition was not to possess gold, but to hold power over those who possess it.
Rejection of capitalism, socialism, marxism and labour unions
"The corporative reform should take place within the concrete world of labour and production, that is, in the businesses, through a new, organic structuring of them and a decisive elimination of class spirit, class struggle, and the different mentalities that call themselves ‘capitalist’, proletarian or Marxist. The trade union movement must be rejected. It is the greatest tool of all the subversive movements of recent times, and is the real cancer of the democratic state. As in the Fascist conception, it will be the state’s task to act as referee, moderator and decider in the case of conflicts and disruptions. The objectivity and rigour of this higher court, which needs to be made concrete in adequate structures, will allow the abolition of the tool of the strike. The abuses of strikes, their use for blackmail and the other purposes for which they are used, which are more often political than social and economic, have become increasingly obvious and indefensible."
Spiritual hierarchicalism as opposed to egalitarianism and social justice
"The defence of the principle of true justice will entail denouncing what is today continually promoted as ‘social justice’, a justice that serves only the lowest classes of society (the so-called ‘working classes’) and works to the detriment of other classes, effectively leading to injustice. The true state will also be hierarchical, especially because it will be able to acknowledge and create respect for the hierarchy of true values, giving primacy to values of a higher order, not material or utilitarian ones, and admitting relevant, legitimate inequalities or differences of social positions, opportunities and dignity. The true state will reject as aberrant the formula of the state of labour, whether or not this state is presented as ‘national’."
Asceticism, Fascism, Responsibility, Italian Caste System
"The vital condition of every true state is a well-defined climate: the climate of the highest possible tension, but not of forced agitation. It will be desirable that everyone stay at his post, that he takes pleasure in an activity in conformity with his own nature and vocation, which is therefore free and desired for itself before considering utilitarian purposes and the unhealthy desire to live above one’s proper condition. If it is not possible to ask everyone to follow an ‘ascetic and military vision of life’, it will be possible to aim at a climate of concentrated intensity, of personal life, that will encourage people to prefer a greater margin of liberty, as opposed to comfort and prosperity paid for with the consequent limitation of liberty through the evitable economic and social influences. Autarchy, in the terms we have emphasised, is a valid Fascist formula. A course of virile, measured austerity is also valid and, finally, an internal discipline through which one develops a taste and an anti-bourgeois orientation of life, but no schoolmarmish and impertinent intrusion by what is public into the field of private life. Here, too, the principle should be liberty connected with equal responsibility and, in general, giving prominence to the principles of ‘great morality’ as opposed to the principles of conformist ‘little morality’."
Italian Dharma and natural Order. Self transcendence.
"In essence, the climate of the true state should be personalising, animating and free. An inner force should produce a potential orbiting of individuals, groups, partial unities and men of an Order around a centre. This orbiting is one of which we should acknowledge the ‘anagogic’ and integrative character. It is integrative also in relation to the fact, which is not at all paradoxical, that true personality is realised only if it is affected by references to what is more than personal. Ultimately on this plane, through the rise and life of the true state, ‘imponderables’ come into play, as though predestined, because no oppressive and direct initiative can create and maintain this kind of climate.
In the context of a similar state, and under the sign of a relevant conception of life, a people can develop and achieve a calm, an internal force and a stability which does not mean stasis or stagnation, but rather the equilibrium of a concentrated power that, when the call is made, can cause everyone to rise immediately to their feet and makes them capable of absolute commitment and irresistible action."
Ciao.
The nature of the true state
"The true state will then be oriented against both capitalism and Communism. At its centre will stand a principle of authority and a transcendent symbol of sovereignty. The most natural incarnation of such a symbol is the monarchy. The need to confer a chrism on this transcendence is of fundamental importance.
Monarchy is not incompatible with a ‘legal dictatorship’, more or less as it was in ancient Roman law.[215] The sovereign can confer exceptional unitary powers on a person of special stature and qualification, still on a legal basis, when there are special situations to overcome or exceptional tasks to confront."
The essential force which underlies all law
"We can accept the formula of ‘authoritarian constitutionalism’. It entails overcoming the fetish and mythology of the so-called ‘rule of law’. Law is not born from anything perfectly formed, nor with characteristics of eternal, immutable validity. At the origin of every law stands a relationship of force. This power that is at the origin of every law can intervene, suspending and modifying the current structures when the situation demands it, attesting with this action that there still exists in the political organism a will and a sovereignty, that it is not reduced to something abstract, mechanical and soulless."
The importance of a state
"The state is the primary element that precedes nation, people and ‘society’. The state — and with the state everything that is properlyconstituted as political order and political reality — is defined essentially on the basis of an idea, not by naturalistic and contractual factors.
Not a social contract,[216] but relations of loyalty and obedience, of free subordination and honour, are the bases of the true state, which does not acknowledge demagoguery and populism.
The true state is organic and unified without being ‘totalitarian’. The relations we are discussing allow for the possibility of a large margin of decentralisation. Liberty and partial autonomy stand in relation to loyalty and responsibility according to a precise reciprocity. When these relations are broken, the power that is concentrated at the centre, manifesting its own nature, will therefore intervene with a severity and harshness in proportion to the liberty that was conceded."
The true state is not democratic
"The true state does not acknowledge the system of parliamentary democracy and party rule (partitocrazia). It can admit only corporative representations that are differentiated and articulated through a Lower or Corporative House. Above that will stand an Upper House as an extraordinary tribunal to guarantee the pre-eminence of the political principal, and having higher goals which are not only material and short- term.
It will be necessary to take a resolute stance against the aberrant system of indiscriminate universal suffrage and ‘one man, one vote’ which now includes the female sex. The formula of ‘politicising the masses’ should be rejected. The majority of a healthy and ordered nation should not be
involved in politics. The Fascist trinity, ‘authority, order and justice’,[217] retains its unshaken validity for the true state."
Order, tradition, ethics and asceticism
"The political party, which is a necessary organ for a movement in a period of transition and struggle, should not be replaced by a ‘single party’ once power is conquered and the system is stabilised. Its quite different task will be to establish something like an Order, which will participate in the dignity and authority concentrated in the centre, and assume some of the functions that in earlier, traditional regimes belonged to the nobility as a political class in key positions of the state (for example in the army and the diplomatic corps). The premise of this class was a stricter ethic and a special lifestyle. This nucleus will also act as the guardian of the idea of the state, and will prevent the ‘caesarean’ isolation of whoever exercises the supreme authority."
Freedom of economic interests
"The sphere of politics and power should be, by its very nature and function, free from economic influences, influences by economic groups or special interests. It is appropriate to recall the statement of Sulla,[218] who said that his ambition was not to possess gold, but to hold power over those who possess it.
Rejection of capitalism, socialism, marxism and labour unions
"The corporative reform should take place within the concrete world of labour and production, that is, in the businesses, through a new, organic structuring of them and a decisive elimination of class spirit, class struggle, and the different mentalities that call themselves ‘capitalist’, proletarian or Marxist. The trade union movement must be rejected. It is the greatest tool of all the subversive movements of recent times, and is the real cancer of the democratic state. As in the Fascist conception, it will be the state’s task to act as referee, moderator and decider in the case of conflicts and disruptions. The objectivity and rigour of this higher court, which needs to be made concrete in adequate structures, will allow the abolition of the tool of the strike. The abuses of strikes, their use for blackmail and the other purposes for which they are used, which are more often political than social and economic, have become increasingly obvious and indefensible."
Spiritual hierarchicalism as opposed to egalitarianism and social justice
"The defence of the principle of true justice will entail denouncing what is today continually promoted as ‘social justice’, a justice that serves only the lowest classes of society (the so-called ‘working classes’) and works to the detriment of other classes, effectively leading to injustice. The true state will also be hierarchical, especially because it will be able to acknowledge and create respect for the hierarchy of true values, giving primacy to values of a higher order, not material or utilitarian ones, and admitting relevant, legitimate inequalities or differences of social positions, opportunities and dignity. The true state will reject as aberrant the formula of the state of labour, whether or not this state is presented as ‘national’."
Asceticism, Fascism, Responsibility, Italian Caste System
"The vital condition of every true state is a well-defined climate: the climate of the highest possible tension, but not of forced agitation. It will be desirable that everyone stay at his post, that he takes pleasure in an activity in conformity with his own nature and vocation, which is therefore free and desired for itself before considering utilitarian purposes and the unhealthy desire to live above one’s proper condition. If it is not possible to ask everyone to follow an ‘ascetic and military vision of life’, it will be possible to aim at a climate of concentrated intensity, of personal life, that will encourage people to prefer a greater margin of liberty, as opposed to comfort and prosperity paid for with the consequent limitation of liberty through the evitable economic and social influences. Autarchy, in the terms we have emphasised, is a valid Fascist formula. A course of virile, measured austerity is also valid and, finally, an internal discipline through which one develops a taste and an anti-bourgeois orientation of life, but no schoolmarmish and impertinent intrusion by what is public into the field of private life. Here, too, the principle should be liberty connected with equal responsibility and, in general, giving prominence to the principles of ‘great morality’ as opposed to the principles of conformist ‘little morality’."
Italian Dharma and natural Order. Self transcendence.
"In essence, the climate of the true state should be personalising, animating and free. An inner force should produce a potential orbiting of individuals, groups, partial unities and men of an Order around a centre. This orbiting is one of which we should acknowledge the ‘anagogic’ and integrative character. It is integrative also in relation to the fact, which is not at all paradoxical, that true personality is realised only if it is affected by references to what is more than personal. Ultimately on this plane, through the rise and life of the true state, ‘imponderables’ come into play, as though predestined, because no oppressive and direct initiative can create and maintain this kind of climate.
In the context of a similar state, and under the sign of a relevant conception of life, a people can develop and achieve a calm, an internal force and a stability which does not mean stasis or stagnation, but rather the equilibrium of a concentrated power that, when the call is made, can cause everyone to rise immediately to their feet and makes them capable of absolute commitment and irresistible action."
Ciao.
September 25, 2025
Julia Evola is an interesting case of perspective that believes that Fascism is not far right per se, but rather of separate case of third position ideology. To summarize his points, Julia Evola believes that Fascism co-opts True Right’s aesthetics with Left-Wing’s rhetorics to create a Caesarian state of sort that overthrows the current hierarchy and replace it with the “new elites”.
Evola disagrees with the core philosophy of Fascism unlike liberals and socialists that see Fascism as a kind of boogeyman.
Evola also talked about this which is still incredibly relevant to this date. Let me quote it,
“When, however, the legislation we are talking about has proposed not only to suppress certain outer manifestations (the Fascist salute, black shirts, Fascist hymns, etc.), but also to punish the ‘defence of Fascism’ as a crime, we have the juridical absurdity of fixing the punishment without first rigorously defining the terms of the crime — in our case: defining rigorously, above all, what we must understand by ‘Fascism’ and ‘Fascist’. But this absurdity derives from a factual impossibility. In fact, it will appear very clear to those who have followed us up to this point that those who would like to condemn or attack Fascism as a whole would find themselves compelled also to condemn ideas and principles that did not belong only to Fascism, but were important in other, earlier systems as well. In these terms, it would be necessary to define as more or less ‘Fascist’ the greater part of the states that history describes from distant ages, when they are based on a principle of authority and hierarchy and admit nothing similar to absolute democracy, liberalism or socialism.”
It’s hilarious just how much this shows what 21st century is all about. Condemning anything that’s slightly traditional and conservative as “fascist” while maintaining that only absolute progressivism is the way towards the future.
Evola disagrees with the core philosophy of Fascism unlike liberals and socialists that see Fascism as a kind of boogeyman.
Evola also talked about this which is still incredibly relevant to this date. Let me quote it,
“When, however, the legislation we are talking about has proposed not only to suppress certain outer manifestations (the Fascist salute, black shirts, Fascist hymns, etc.), but also to punish the ‘defence of Fascism’ as a crime, we have the juridical absurdity of fixing the punishment without first rigorously defining the terms of the crime — in our case: defining rigorously, above all, what we must understand by ‘Fascism’ and ‘Fascist’. But this absurdity derives from a factual impossibility. In fact, it will appear very clear to those who have followed us up to this point that those who would like to condemn or attack Fascism as a whole would find themselves compelled also to condemn ideas and principles that did not belong only to Fascism, but were important in other, earlier systems as well. In these terms, it would be necessary to define as more or less ‘Fascist’ the greater part of the states that history describes from distant ages, when they are based on a principle of authority and hierarchy and admit nothing similar to absolute democracy, liberalism or socialism.”
It’s hilarious just how much this shows what 21st century is all about. Condemning anything that’s slightly traditional and conservative as “fascist” while maintaining that only absolute progressivism is the way towards the future.
August 31, 2018
Since Evola was referenced by alt-right former Trump aide Bannon https://newrepublic.com/minutes/14056... I had to see for myself what Evola is all about. Why not find out from where the ultra RW draws its inspiration?
Evola is the exact antithesis of Americanism. He's against democracy, and explicitly references the USA as "the enemy." He's against so much of what makes America America such as the rule of law.
His vision of a new state would be one founded on the (feudal) system in effect in the Middle Ages, with the return of monarchy, aristocracy, and hierarchy. He rejects anti-colonialism, the principles of the French Revolution, and although the book under discussion doesn't deal with it, no doubt would reject Enlightenment advances too. In the present book, Evola explains why he's different from the Italian Fascists (Mussolini etc).. among other things he disagrees with, he is opposed to the state embracing labor or the working class.
This is an interesting book to read and gasp at - especially since someone as influential as Bannon praised the author. Evola is the antithesis of Americanism, democracy, the rule of law, and views America as "the enemy." That tells me all I need to know about Bannon - and Trump.
Here are the quotes.
From Kopff's Introduction
"...the Risorgimento was the expulsion of foreign and papal rule from Italy by an ... Italian peole who were led by great republican radicals like Garibaldi and Mazzini."
"The state's economic policy should aim at autarchy, supplying its own needs ... without depending on tree trade with other countries or finance finance capitalism."
"There was also a cultural side to Fascism."
"Italy had been united by the Piedmontese conquest of Papal Rome in 1870 and the Popes had never recognized the new regime."
"The Catholic Church accepts liberal democracy and even defends it as the only legitimate regime."
"Then...will there be a ...new brahmin caste to restore a Golden Age on the basis of their knowledge of Tradition."
From the book
"[The Triple Alliance of 1882, which consisted of Italy, Austria-Hungary and Germany]...had [it] developed in all its logical postulates, ...could have removed Italy from the orbit of the ideologies of French and revolutionary origin and oriented her in the direction of those that were, in good measure, preserved in the traditional states of Central Europe."
"...the concept of a true Right, what we mean by the Right, ought to be defined in terms of forces and traditions that acted formatively on a group of nations, and sometimes also on super-national unifications, before the French Revolution, before the advent of the Third Estate and the world of the masses, and before bourgeois and industrial culture, with all its consequences and its games, which consist of actions and concordant reactions that have led to the contemporary chaos and to all that threatens to destroy the little that still remains of European culture and European prestige."
"'World history is the word's tribunal', an expression that was coined by Schiller and later used by Hegel. [Editor's note]"
"...Fascism...is...a reaction, stemming from the forces of the returning veterans and nationalists, in response to a crisis that was essentially a crisis of the very idea of the state, of authority and of centralized power in Italy."
"By rejecting a return to 'normalcy' ...these forces changed poles ideologically and oriented themselves towards the Right, towards the ideal of the hierarchical state and the 'military nation.'"
"[Mussolini:] 'We stand for a new principle in [today's] world, we stand for sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy, plutocracy, Freemasonry, to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1798'..."
"...a profound crisis is inevitable at the point when prosperity and comfort will finally become boring."
"The principle of a central authority that cannot be controverted becomes 'sclerotic' and degenerate when it is affirmed though a system that controls everything, regiments everything and intervenes in everything according to the noted [Fascist] formula, 'Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.'"
"...prejudices united to irresponsibility are an obstacle to recognizing a point whose importance can never be emphasize energetically enough, that is, that the natural, frightening increase in the general population is on e of the most basic factors in the crisis and social instability of modern times."
"A peole and a nation will just float away or be reduced to a malleable mass in the hands of demagogues knowledgeable in the art of acting on a pre-personal and most primitive strata of human beings."
"There exists...the possibility within the individual for 'self-transcending', escaping from himself by subordinating his own bonds and more immediate interests, in a direction that is not ascending, but rather descending. This is what happens in 'mass states,' in collectivizing ans demagogic movements with an excitable and sub-rational foundation, which can also give to the individual the illusory, momentary sensation of an exalted intense life, likewise conditioned by sensation, by a regression, and by a reduction of personality and true liberty."
"[Mussolini:]'...Fascism saw the 'dangers of the bourgeois spirit,' and despised the stagnation of a vapid existence.'"
"Its antithesis is the climate of the so-called 'culture of affluence' or 'consumer culture,' with its spiritually suffocating activity that creates multiple forms of 'protests.'"
"[Editor's note:] Evola...uses the term [corporative], as did the Fascists themselves, to describe a type of society in which its citizens are organized into groups based on the function they perform for the body of the entire society itself, such as agriculture, the military, or administration."
"On the one hand, it was necessary to eliminate the proletarian and Marxist influences on the worker, and on the other to destroy the purely 'capitalist' mentality of the entrepreneur."
"[Editor's note:] The Verona Manifesto was issued by the government of the Italian Social Republic in November 1943, being its only major statement of policy. It was strongly socialist and pro-labor in orientation."
"...the so-called Verona Manifesto...was an attack on parasitic capitalism."
"With its sovereignty and authority realized in a system of adequate social structures, even the monstrous development of capitalism in the direction of unfettered productivity can be limited, with the ultimate end of restoring the economy, and everything that is economic, to the subordinate position in which it becomes only a means to an end, and a circumscribed dominion within a much vaster hierarchy of values and interests. To complete these considerations, it is possible to specify this ultimate end in regard to its content, and say that, from our point of view, the essential thing would be to reach an equilibrium, a stability, and put a stop to unlimited change."
"Mussolini therefore did nothing more than follow what was already traditional before the rise of the democratic ideology, with its principle of the so-called 'self-determination of peoples,' which was proclaimed by Whites, and then boomeranged against them, provoking the emergence, demands and uprising of colored peoples, until the Europeans themselves became infected with the psychosis of anti-colonialism."
"On the one hand, today there subsists only concealed forms of economic colonialism, that is, the influence upon the 'underdeveloped' colored peoples who have finally become independent by means of foreign capital and industry (this is the so-called 'second colonialism,' in which America and Russia are the principal rivals)."
"[Mussolini]...should have asserted the ancient Roman maxim that a true leader does not want to be the boss of slaves, but to have at his side free men who follow him -- to correct the mental dispositions that almost fatally tend to prevail, through human weakness, in anyone who holds power, and which encourage sycophancy."
"In regard to the...qualities of discipline, order, military capacity, love for authority and seriousness presented by the people of Central Europe, especially with reference to the Prussian ideal, [Mussolini]...had to notice that these were closer to what belonged also to the ancient Roman character in its best or primitive period, while they were far from those that had come to prevail in the substance of the Latin peoples, and therefore also of the Italian peole, its its individualist, undisciplined, careless and petit bourgeois aspects, given the penchant of Italy for tourists, mandolins, gondoliers, museums, ruins, 'O Sole Mio,' and so on, despite a background of humble, hardworking folk who are loyal to their old customs."
"However paradoxical it could seem, democratic 'freedom of opinion' should entail the admission of the legitimacy of professing and defending even anti-democratic ideas, if it is not to create a regime of bullying and tyranny..."
"...we need to ask ourselves what groups or men today would have the courage to take up and defend these positive elements that we have isolated in Fascism without compromise, while also clearly emphasizing the monarchical, aristocratic and hierarchical idea, or that which we have elaborated by separating out the negative and sufficiently integrating the positive tasks that needed to be faced under Fascism."
"The clear stance against every form of democracy and socialism is the first characteristic of the state of which we spoke. It will put an end to the stupid infatuation, cowardice and hypocrisy of those who today chatter of 'democracy,' who proclaim democracy, who exalt democracy. Democracy is only a regressive, crepuscular phenomenon. The true state will then be oriented against both capitalism and Communism. At its center will stand a principle of authority and a transcendent symbol of sovereignty. The most natural incarnation of such as symbol is the monarchy."
"We can accept the formula of 'authoritarian constitutionalism.' It entails overcoming the fetish and mythology of the so-called 'rule of law.'"
"[Editor's note:] In ancient Rome, the Senate had the ability to appoint a dictator in an emergency situation involving a war within the state itself. The dictator was invested with absolute political and military power, including over the Senate itself. The position only continued until the crisis had passed."
"The true state does not acknowledge the system of parliamentary democracy and party rule..."
"It will be necessary to take a resolute stance against the aberrant system of indiscriminate universal suffrage and 'one man, one vote' which now includes the female sex."
"...a new, organic structuring of [businesses]... and a decision elimination of class spirit, class struggle, and the different mentalities that call themselves 'capitalist,' proletarian or Marxist. The trade union movement must be rejected."
"The defense of the principle of true justice will entail denouncing what is today continually promoted as 'social justice,' a justice that serves only the lowest classes of society (the so-called 'working classes') and works to the detriment of other classes effectively leading to injustice. The true state will.. be hierarchical..."
"...the climate of the true state should be...integrative ...in relation to the fact, which is not at all paradoxical, that true personality is realized only if it is affected by reference to what is more than personal."
"If a people cannot or does not want to acknowledge the value that we have called 'traditional,' and which define a true Right, it deserves to be left to itself. At most, we can point out to it the illusions and suggestions of which it has been or is the victim, which are due to a general action which has often been systematically organized, and to regressive processes. If not even this leads to a sensible result, this people will suffer the fate that it has created, by making use of its 'liberty.'"
Evola is the exact antithesis of Americanism. He's against democracy, and explicitly references the USA as "the enemy." He's against so much of what makes America America such as the rule of law.
His vision of a new state would be one founded on the (feudal) system in effect in the Middle Ages, with the return of monarchy, aristocracy, and hierarchy. He rejects anti-colonialism, the principles of the French Revolution, and although the book under discussion doesn't deal with it, no doubt would reject Enlightenment advances too. In the present book, Evola explains why he's different from the Italian Fascists (Mussolini etc).. among other things he disagrees with, he is opposed to the state embracing labor or the working class.
This is an interesting book to read and gasp at - especially since someone as influential as Bannon praised the author. Evola is the antithesis of Americanism, democracy, the rule of law, and views America as "the enemy." That tells me all I need to know about Bannon - and Trump.
Here are the quotes.
From Kopff's Introduction
"...the Risorgimento was the expulsion of foreign and papal rule from Italy by an ... Italian peole who were led by great republican radicals like Garibaldi and Mazzini."
"The state's economic policy should aim at autarchy, supplying its own needs ... without depending on tree trade with other countries or finance finance capitalism."
"There was also a cultural side to Fascism."
"Italy had been united by the Piedmontese conquest of Papal Rome in 1870 and the Popes had never recognized the new regime."
"The Catholic Church accepts liberal democracy and even defends it as the only legitimate regime."
"Then...will there be a ...new brahmin caste to restore a Golden Age on the basis of their knowledge of Tradition."
From the book
"[The Triple Alliance of 1882, which consisted of Italy, Austria-Hungary and Germany]...had [it] developed in all its logical postulates, ...could have removed Italy from the orbit of the ideologies of French and revolutionary origin and oriented her in the direction of those that were, in good measure, preserved in the traditional states of Central Europe."
"...the concept of a true Right, what we mean by the Right, ought to be defined in terms of forces and traditions that acted formatively on a group of nations, and sometimes also on super-national unifications, before the French Revolution, before the advent of the Third Estate and the world of the masses, and before bourgeois and industrial culture, with all its consequences and its games, which consist of actions and concordant reactions that have led to the contemporary chaos and to all that threatens to destroy the little that still remains of European culture and European prestige."
"'World history is the word's tribunal', an expression that was coined by Schiller and later used by Hegel. [Editor's note]"
"...Fascism...is...a reaction, stemming from the forces of the returning veterans and nationalists, in response to a crisis that was essentially a crisis of the very idea of the state, of authority and of centralized power in Italy."
"By rejecting a return to 'normalcy' ...these forces changed poles ideologically and oriented themselves towards the Right, towards the ideal of the hierarchical state and the 'military nation.'"
"[Mussolini:] 'We stand for a new principle in [today's] world, we stand for sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy, plutocracy, Freemasonry, to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1798'..."
"...a profound crisis is inevitable at the point when prosperity and comfort will finally become boring."
"The principle of a central authority that cannot be controverted becomes 'sclerotic' and degenerate when it is affirmed though a system that controls everything, regiments everything and intervenes in everything according to the noted [Fascist] formula, 'Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.'"
"...prejudices united to irresponsibility are an obstacle to recognizing a point whose importance can never be emphasize energetically enough, that is, that the natural, frightening increase in the general population is on e of the most basic factors in the crisis and social instability of modern times."
"A peole and a nation will just float away or be reduced to a malleable mass in the hands of demagogues knowledgeable in the art of acting on a pre-personal and most primitive strata of human beings."
"There exists...the possibility within the individual for 'self-transcending', escaping from himself by subordinating his own bonds and more immediate interests, in a direction that is not ascending, but rather descending. This is what happens in 'mass states,' in collectivizing ans demagogic movements with an excitable and sub-rational foundation, which can also give to the individual the illusory, momentary sensation of an exalted intense life, likewise conditioned by sensation, by a regression, and by a reduction of personality and true liberty."
"[Mussolini:]'...Fascism saw the 'dangers of the bourgeois spirit,' and despised the stagnation of a vapid existence.'"
"Its antithesis is the climate of the so-called 'culture of affluence' or 'consumer culture,' with its spiritually suffocating activity that creates multiple forms of 'protests.'"
"[Editor's note:] Evola...uses the term [corporative], as did the Fascists themselves, to describe a type of society in which its citizens are organized into groups based on the function they perform for the body of the entire society itself, such as agriculture, the military, or administration."
"On the one hand, it was necessary to eliminate the proletarian and Marxist influences on the worker, and on the other to destroy the purely 'capitalist' mentality of the entrepreneur."
"[Editor's note:] The Verona Manifesto was issued by the government of the Italian Social Republic in November 1943, being its only major statement of policy. It was strongly socialist and pro-labor in orientation."
"...the so-called Verona Manifesto...was an attack on parasitic capitalism."
"With its sovereignty and authority realized in a system of adequate social structures, even the monstrous development of capitalism in the direction of unfettered productivity can be limited, with the ultimate end of restoring the economy, and everything that is economic, to the subordinate position in which it becomes only a means to an end, and a circumscribed dominion within a much vaster hierarchy of values and interests. To complete these considerations, it is possible to specify this ultimate end in regard to its content, and say that, from our point of view, the essential thing would be to reach an equilibrium, a stability, and put a stop to unlimited change."
"Mussolini therefore did nothing more than follow what was already traditional before the rise of the democratic ideology, with its principle of the so-called 'self-determination of peoples,' which was proclaimed by Whites, and then boomeranged against them, provoking the emergence, demands and uprising of colored peoples, until the Europeans themselves became infected with the psychosis of anti-colonialism."
"On the one hand, today there subsists only concealed forms of economic colonialism, that is, the influence upon the 'underdeveloped' colored peoples who have finally become independent by means of foreign capital and industry (this is the so-called 'second colonialism,' in which America and Russia are the principal rivals)."
"[Mussolini]...should have asserted the ancient Roman maxim that a true leader does not want to be the boss of slaves, but to have at his side free men who follow him -- to correct the mental dispositions that almost fatally tend to prevail, through human weakness, in anyone who holds power, and which encourage sycophancy."
"In regard to the...qualities of discipline, order, military capacity, love for authority and seriousness presented by the people of Central Europe, especially with reference to the Prussian ideal, [Mussolini]...had to notice that these were closer to what belonged also to the ancient Roman character in its best or primitive period, while they were far from those that had come to prevail in the substance of the Latin peoples, and therefore also of the Italian peole, its its individualist, undisciplined, careless and petit bourgeois aspects, given the penchant of Italy for tourists, mandolins, gondoliers, museums, ruins, 'O Sole Mio,' and so on, despite a background of humble, hardworking folk who are loyal to their old customs."
"However paradoxical it could seem, democratic 'freedom of opinion' should entail the admission of the legitimacy of professing and defending even anti-democratic ideas, if it is not to create a regime of bullying and tyranny..."
"...we need to ask ourselves what groups or men today would have the courage to take up and defend these positive elements that we have isolated in Fascism without compromise, while also clearly emphasizing the monarchical, aristocratic and hierarchical idea, or that which we have elaborated by separating out the negative and sufficiently integrating the positive tasks that needed to be faced under Fascism."
"The clear stance against every form of democracy and socialism is the first characteristic of the state of which we spoke. It will put an end to the stupid infatuation, cowardice and hypocrisy of those who today chatter of 'democracy,' who proclaim democracy, who exalt democracy. Democracy is only a regressive, crepuscular phenomenon. The true state will then be oriented against both capitalism and Communism. At its center will stand a principle of authority and a transcendent symbol of sovereignty. The most natural incarnation of such as symbol is the monarchy."
"We can accept the formula of 'authoritarian constitutionalism.' It entails overcoming the fetish and mythology of the so-called 'rule of law.'"
"[Editor's note:] In ancient Rome, the Senate had the ability to appoint a dictator in an emergency situation involving a war within the state itself. The dictator was invested with absolute political and military power, including over the Senate itself. The position only continued until the crisis had passed."
"The true state does not acknowledge the system of parliamentary democracy and party rule..."
"It will be necessary to take a resolute stance against the aberrant system of indiscriminate universal suffrage and 'one man, one vote' which now includes the female sex."
"...a new, organic structuring of [businesses]... and a decision elimination of class spirit, class struggle, and the different mentalities that call themselves 'capitalist,' proletarian or Marxist. The trade union movement must be rejected."
"The defense of the principle of true justice will entail denouncing what is today continually promoted as 'social justice,' a justice that serves only the lowest classes of society (the so-called 'working classes') and works to the detriment of other classes effectively leading to injustice. The true state will.. be hierarchical..."
"...the climate of the true state should be...integrative ...in relation to the fact, which is not at all paradoxical, that true personality is realized only if it is affected by reference to what is more than personal."
"If a people cannot or does not want to acknowledge the value that we have called 'traditional,' and which define a true Right, it deserves to be left to itself. At most, we can point out to it the illusions and suggestions of which it has been or is the victim, which are due to a general action which has often been systematically organized, and to regressive processes. If not even this leads to a sensible result, this people will suffer the fate that it has created, by making use of its 'liberty.'"
February 23, 2020
The general premise of this book is that, although there were some undoubtedly fascistic elements to the Italian regimes of the Twenty Years (1922-1943) and the Republican Fascist Party (1943-1945), there were several faults that mean it cannot be said fascist Italy was truly fascist, namely: the pervading democratic aspect in the regimes; the cult of personality surrounding Mussolini; the centralised bureaucracy; the fanaticism of certain proponents; and, the introduction of biological racism. In this regard it is a critique of Italian fascism, but only insofar as Evola criticises the ways in which it failed to realise itself as true, doctrinal fascism - what Evola earlier termed, when he defended himself at trial, in 1951, charged with promoting the revival of the Fascist Party and defending fascism, as ‘superfascism’.
He, quite correctly, notes that under a regime, such as the liberal democracy of modern Italy which proclaims ‘liberty’ as being principal, and where there is legislation to punish the “defence of fascism” as a crime, there is a duty - even if one, themself, is not a fascist - to first rigorously define the terms of the crime (that is, what is understood by ‘fascist’ and ‘fascism’) in order to protect the liberty of individuals and obviate the potential for state tyranny. In fact, I was surprised to learn that Evola’s fascism, at least in theory, places a large emphasis on upholding the liberty of the individual and rejecting totalitarianism. Yet, for an individual who claims that fascism is not about totalitarianism this book addresses all the points in which Mussolini‘s form of fascism did not go far enough in completely rejecting liberal democracy and instilling a form of fascism with total political control. Therefore, the idea that the complete dominance of fascism can be limited to the political sphere is surely either a pipe dream or, more likely, a furtive attempt to conceal the true, totalitarian nature of fascism.
I believe that Evola’s notion of ‘fascism’ is nothing more than idealistic and that this is shown by his repeated reference to ‘contingency’, which he uses to refer to extra-doctrinal consequences of fascism due to the particular disposition of flawed men or to exterior unforeseeable conditions (such as war), inter alia. At one point he states, ‘[t]he intrinsic value of an idea and the system should be judged in itself without all that enters into the world of contingency’ - whilst I agree that we should have a clear conception of an idea before we critique it, this is clearly a carte blanche to excuse fascism from any criticism. For example, he posits that fascism stands against both the unfettered capitalism of the West and the communism of the East but then uses Italy’s alignment with Germany and Japan (after the Tripartite Pact of 1940) to suggest that the war served as an impediment to the formulation of a true fascist state.
This exculpation of the reality of fascism continues throughout. In the last chapter he states that he had attempted ‘a critical judgement on the structures and meaning of fascism from a point of view this is different from either a confused and one-sided exaltation or an a priori denigration’ and I suppose it is, if you consider it a critique of fascist Italy under Mussolini. However, there is no actual critique of fascism itself, only blind acceptance of it as a valid and transcendent set of values. Evola is often labelled a racist but he does not believe that fascism is inherently racist because at the level of the general populace there is no discrimination. Doctrinal fascism, unaffected by contingency, only requires that the ruling class of the Italian fascist state be Aryo-Roman in character not biology. Likewise, any doctrinally fascist nation - wherever it exists in the world, according to Evola - must link its ‘form’ (the state) and ‘matter’ (the people) through ethics that are pre-eminently characteristic of a previous, greater tradition and, so, I do not think it can be said - at least based off of this work - that Evola is racist. In fact, throughout he rejects the racism of Nazi Germany and calls anti-Semitism ‘vulgar’.
In truth, I feel somewhat obliged to give this a bolstered rating as this was the only work I could find that even admitted there were benefits to fascism, which clearly there are. Indeed, all we need to do is look at Brexit to see the self-evident deficiency of the rule of the masses within (parliamentary) democracy; it took 3 years to carry out the will of the people and it was nearly thwarted by the minority. Nevertheless, despite the numerous shortcomings in both his belief system and this piece of work, Evola is a first-rate political commentator and both contemporary and historical social critic, with an unrivalled prescience in predicting the way socio-political conditions would lead to a resurgence of nationalism and the true, traditionalist right wing, if not fascism. He is also an individual willing to accept the positives in ideologies outside of his own, wherever they may appear, which not many people do.
I would have liked to give this three stars, despite the lack of objective critique of fascist legitimacy, because it is certainly an interesting book and clears up many misconceptions that I had surrounding fascist doctrine. Moreover, it is a book filled with historical detail and eye-opening socio-political commentary. Although, one of the stronger criticisms I can level against this critique is that any social movement that went against traditionalism he simply dismissed as the product of revolutionary and subversive leftist social movements, and he never considers the doxastic voluntarism of the individual. However, I cannot give it more than two stars as this is an exceptionally hard to book to read. It is full of scholarly insight but the grammar is absolutely appalling, with some sentences being half a page long.
He, quite correctly, notes that under a regime, such as the liberal democracy of modern Italy which proclaims ‘liberty’ as being principal, and where there is legislation to punish the “defence of fascism” as a crime, there is a duty - even if one, themself, is not a fascist - to first rigorously define the terms of the crime (that is, what is understood by ‘fascist’ and ‘fascism’) in order to protect the liberty of individuals and obviate the potential for state tyranny. In fact, I was surprised to learn that Evola’s fascism, at least in theory, places a large emphasis on upholding the liberty of the individual and rejecting totalitarianism. Yet, for an individual who claims that fascism is not about totalitarianism this book addresses all the points in which Mussolini‘s form of fascism did not go far enough in completely rejecting liberal democracy and instilling a form of fascism with total political control. Therefore, the idea that the complete dominance of fascism can be limited to the political sphere is surely either a pipe dream or, more likely, a furtive attempt to conceal the true, totalitarian nature of fascism.
I believe that Evola’s notion of ‘fascism’ is nothing more than idealistic and that this is shown by his repeated reference to ‘contingency’, which he uses to refer to extra-doctrinal consequences of fascism due to the particular disposition of flawed men or to exterior unforeseeable conditions (such as war), inter alia. At one point he states, ‘[t]he intrinsic value of an idea and the system should be judged in itself without all that enters into the world of contingency’ - whilst I agree that we should have a clear conception of an idea before we critique it, this is clearly a carte blanche to excuse fascism from any criticism. For example, he posits that fascism stands against both the unfettered capitalism of the West and the communism of the East but then uses Italy’s alignment with Germany and Japan (after the Tripartite Pact of 1940) to suggest that the war served as an impediment to the formulation of a true fascist state.
This exculpation of the reality of fascism continues throughout. In the last chapter he states that he had attempted ‘a critical judgement on the structures and meaning of fascism from a point of view this is different from either a confused and one-sided exaltation or an a priori denigration’ and I suppose it is, if you consider it a critique of fascist Italy under Mussolini. However, there is no actual critique of fascism itself, only blind acceptance of it as a valid and transcendent set of values. Evola is often labelled a racist but he does not believe that fascism is inherently racist because at the level of the general populace there is no discrimination. Doctrinal fascism, unaffected by contingency, only requires that the ruling class of the Italian fascist state be Aryo-Roman in character not biology. Likewise, any doctrinally fascist nation - wherever it exists in the world, according to Evola - must link its ‘form’ (the state) and ‘matter’ (the people) through ethics that are pre-eminently characteristic of a previous, greater tradition and, so, I do not think it can be said - at least based off of this work - that Evola is racist. In fact, throughout he rejects the racism of Nazi Germany and calls anti-Semitism ‘vulgar’.
In truth, I feel somewhat obliged to give this a bolstered rating as this was the only work I could find that even admitted there were benefits to fascism, which clearly there are. Indeed, all we need to do is look at Brexit to see the self-evident deficiency of the rule of the masses within (parliamentary) democracy; it took 3 years to carry out the will of the people and it was nearly thwarted by the minority. Nevertheless, despite the numerous shortcomings in both his belief system and this piece of work, Evola is a first-rate political commentator and both contemporary and historical social critic, with an unrivalled prescience in predicting the way socio-political conditions would lead to a resurgence of nationalism and the true, traditionalist right wing, if not fascism. He is also an individual willing to accept the positives in ideologies outside of his own, wherever they may appear, which not many people do.
I would have liked to give this three stars, despite the lack of objective critique of fascist legitimacy, because it is certainly an interesting book and clears up many misconceptions that I had surrounding fascist doctrine. Moreover, it is a book filled with historical detail and eye-opening socio-political commentary. Although, one of the stronger criticisms I can level against this critique is that any social movement that went against traditionalism he simply dismissed as the product of revolutionary and subversive leftist social movements, and he never considers the doxastic voluntarism of the individual. However, I cannot give it more than two stars as this is an exceptionally hard to book to read. It is full of scholarly insight but the grammar is absolutely appalling, with some sentences being half a page long.
January 3, 2024
Vi har läst Fascism Viewed From the Right av Julius Evola, utgiven av det utmärkta Londonbaserade förlaget Arktos. I denna förhållandevis korta bok synar Evola Fascismen i Italien under de "Tjugo åren", alltså 1922-1943 (perioden mellan Mussolinis marsch mot Rom och när han slutligen lämnade in sin avskedsansökan).
Som titeln antyder utgör denna bok en kritik och analys från höger men inte vilken höger som helst utan vad Evola kallar den sanna högern alltså den Traditionalistiska högern. Utan att bli för långrandiga vill vi redogöra för några av de centrala koncepten för den Traditionalistiska högern. Denna höger vill ha en stat som är anti-demokratisk, anti-egalitär där differentierade män med full värdighet tar sin naturliga plats i den legitima hierarkin och uppfyller sin funktion med stolthet. Vidare är auktoritet, ordning, rättvisa, heder och lojalitet – i en transcendental och sakral kontext – viktiga koncept.
Evola kritiserar fascismen för att vara oorganisk, för totalitär (alltså att inte tillåta vissa zoner där en viss grad av autonomi är tillåtet), för att sakna den transcendentala kontexten som möjliggör en ideal "hög spänning" (som på ett naturligt sätt leder folk vidare från hedonism och materiellt välmående till nya konceptuella horisonter). Evola anser att det Fascistiska experimentet i huvudsak misslyckades på grund av Italienarnas interna svaghet, eller som han själv uttrycker saken:
"...we need to ask ourselves up to what point the negative side presented by Fascism, or which existed behind Fascism’s ideological façade and revealed itself at the moment when Fascism was tested, should be referred, essentially, to the human factor. We shall not be afraid to turn the thesis of a certain anti-Fascism on its head in order to affirm that it was not Fascism that negatively affected the Italian people, the ‘Italian race’, but vice versa. It was this people, this ‘race’ that negatively affected Fascism, that is, the Fascist experiment, insofar as Italy could not furnish a sufficient number of men who could rise to the challenge of certain high demands and symbols, men who were healthy elements and able to promote the development of the positive potential that could have been contained in the Fascist system. This deficiency must also be taken into consideration in regard to really free men who could have worked, not outside Fascism or against it, but inside it. There was a lack of men who were capable of saying clearly and fearlessly to Mussolini what needed to be said, to make him understand what it was important that he understand, instead of indulging himin wishful thinking in accordance with his desires."
Vi gillade den här boken men vi inser att den är skriven för en väldigt nischad och liten grupp läsare. Med det sagt så rekommenderar vi den till er som intresserade av den Traditionalistiska högern och nyfikna på hur en representant av den såg på den Italienska Fascismen.
Som titeln antyder utgör denna bok en kritik och analys från höger men inte vilken höger som helst utan vad Evola kallar den sanna högern alltså den Traditionalistiska högern. Utan att bli för långrandiga vill vi redogöra för några av de centrala koncepten för den Traditionalistiska högern. Denna höger vill ha en stat som är anti-demokratisk, anti-egalitär där differentierade män med full värdighet tar sin naturliga plats i den legitima hierarkin och uppfyller sin funktion med stolthet. Vidare är auktoritet, ordning, rättvisa, heder och lojalitet – i en transcendental och sakral kontext – viktiga koncept.
Evola kritiserar fascismen för att vara oorganisk, för totalitär (alltså att inte tillåta vissa zoner där en viss grad av autonomi är tillåtet), för att sakna den transcendentala kontexten som möjliggör en ideal "hög spänning" (som på ett naturligt sätt leder folk vidare från hedonism och materiellt välmående till nya konceptuella horisonter). Evola anser att det Fascistiska experimentet i huvudsak misslyckades på grund av Italienarnas interna svaghet, eller som han själv uttrycker saken:
"...we need to ask ourselves up to what point the negative side presented by Fascism, or which existed behind Fascism’s ideological façade and revealed itself at the moment when Fascism was tested, should be referred, essentially, to the human factor. We shall not be afraid to turn the thesis of a certain anti-Fascism on its head in order to affirm that it was not Fascism that negatively affected the Italian people, the ‘Italian race’, but vice versa. It was this people, this ‘race’ that negatively affected Fascism, that is, the Fascist experiment, insofar as Italy could not furnish a sufficient number of men who could rise to the challenge of certain high demands and symbols, men who were healthy elements and able to promote the development of the positive potential that could have been contained in the Fascist system. This deficiency must also be taken into consideration in regard to really free men who could have worked, not outside Fascism or against it, but inside it. There was a lack of men who were capable of saying clearly and fearlessly to Mussolini what needed to be said, to make him understand what it was important that he understand, instead of indulging himin wishful thinking in accordance with his desires."
Vi gillade den här boken men vi inser att den är skriven för en väldigt nischad och liten grupp läsare. Med det sagt så rekommenderar vi den till er som intresserade av den Traditionalistiska högern och nyfikna på hur en representant av den såg på den Italienska Fascismen.
October 27, 2023
In an earnest attempt to engage with ideological adversaries and gain a deeper understanding of their perspective, I embarked on the task of reading "Fascism Viewed from the Right" by Julius Evola. As a committed Marxist, my intention was to approach the text with a "steelman" perspective, in order to grasp the most compelling arguments of an opposing ideology. However, upon close examination, I find that Evola's portrayal of fascism falls short of addressing the fundamental concerns and critiques put forth by Marxism.
Evola's argument that the ideal version of fascism is rooted in idealism rather than material conditions reflects a glaring disconnect from the socioeconomic realities that shape societies. While he attempts to emphasize the importance of metaphysical concepts, such as hierarchy and spiritualism, as guiding principles for governance, this perspective overlooks the essential role of material conditions in shaping human experiences. Marxism asserts that the material base of society, including factors like class struggle and economic relations, plays a pivotal role in determining social structures.
Evola's emphasis on the preservation of tradition as a defining characteristic of fascism fails to address the inherent contradictions that arise from such an approach. While tradition can offer cultural continuity, it can also perpetuate oppressive power dynamics and hinder societal progress. Marxist analysis acknowledges the dialectical nature of tradition, recognizing that it can both serve as a source of identity and become a tool of control. Evola's uncritical celebration of tradition ignores the potential for its misuse by entrenched elites to maintain their dominance.
Evola's advocacy for hierarchical organization within society aligns with a deeply elitist worldview, where a select few hold power and influence over the masses. The Marxist critique of capitalism underscores how hierarchical structures inherently lead to the concentration of wealth and power, perpetuating inequality and exploitation. Evola's idealization of hierarchy disregards the systemic injustices inherent in such a setup.
The notion of cultural homogeneity upheld by Evola overlooks the richness of diversity and the potential for cross-cultural exchange. Marxism champions the idea that diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds should be celebrated and protected, but not in a way that reinforces rigid boundaries or promotes exclusionary nationalism. Evola's vision of cultural unity neglects the reality that diverse societies can thrive through collaboration and solidarity, without resorting to the suppression of difference.
Throughout "Fascism Viewed from the Right," Evola's failure to engage in a thorough structural analysis of the economic and social systems undermines the credibility of his arguments.
Evola's argument that the ideal version of fascism is rooted in idealism rather than material conditions reflects a glaring disconnect from the socioeconomic realities that shape societies. While he attempts to emphasize the importance of metaphysical concepts, such as hierarchy and spiritualism, as guiding principles for governance, this perspective overlooks the essential role of material conditions in shaping human experiences. Marxism asserts that the material base of society, including factors like class struggle and economic relations, plays a pivotal role in determining social structures.
Evola's emphasis on the preservation of tradition as a defining characteristic of fascism fails to address the inherent contradictions that arise from such an approach. While tradition can offer cultural continuity, it can also perpetuate oppressive power dynamics and hinder societal progress. Marxist analysis acknowledges the dialectical nature of tradition, recognizing that it can both serve as a source of identity and become a tool of control. Evola's uncritical celebration of tradition ignores the potential for its misuse by entrenched elites to maintain their dominance.
Evola's advocacy for hierarchical organization within society aligns with a deeply elitist worldview, where a select few hold power and influence over the masses. The Marxist critique of capitalism underscores how hierarchical structures inherently lead to the concentration of wealth and power, perpetuating inequality and exploitation. Evola's idealization of hierarchy disregards the systemic injustices inherent in such a setup.
The notion of cultural homogeneity upheld by Evola overlooks the richness of diversity and the potential for cross-cultural exchange. Marxism champions the idea that diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds should be celebrated and protected, but not in a way that reinforces rigid boundaries or promotes exclusionary nationalism. Evola's vision of cultural unity neglects the reality that diverse societies can thrive through collaboration and solidarity, without resorting to the suppression of difference.
Throughout "Fascism Viewed from the Right," Evola's failure to engage in a thorough structural analysis of the economic and social systems undermines the credibility of his arguments.
July 18, 2022
Supongo que cometí el error de haber leído este libro después de revisar "Notes on the Third Reich" y "A traditionalist confronts fascism"porque el texto me pareció aburrido a ratos y en otros momentos sumamente repetitivo.
Evola hizo un estudio de las ideas y tesis del fascismo italiano, más allá de las contingencias históricas; aquél fue el objetivo de su trabajo. Es claro que tal vez ahora, donde hay investigaciones ya más "objetivas" sobre el fascismo, el propósito de Evola resulté un asunto de perogrullo pero recuérdese que antes los análisis marxistas eran los que predominaban y por tanto el fascismo era una reacción contra el espíritu proletario y un fenómeno propio del capitalismo en retirada. Era claro que era casi imposible salir de esta apabullante opinión y de los clichés izquierdistas. La labor de Evola bajo esta apreciación del marco temporal en que apareció, resulta encomiable. Para colmo se atrevió a criticar el fascismo desde la Derecha, lo cual chocaría a un izquierdista promedio, que estima que todo aquéllo que no comulga con él es fascismo, neto derechismo.
El enfoque de Evola es aristocrático, monarquista y tradicionalista. Desmenuzó el fascismo y su trayectoria histórica y política mientras atacó los elementos plebeyos, socializantes e idealistas de aquél: la idea del partido único no como factor de estabilidad sino de desequilibrio político, la no eliminación de la retórica de la lucha de clases, el papel cesarista del Duce, entre otros factores son objeto de la lupa inquisitiva del pensador italiano.
Sus análisis no gustarán más que nada a personas de mentalidad fascistoide porque las coloca en esos sitios donde sus ideas se vuelven indiscernibles de las bolcheviques. La gente de izquierda francamente no querrá ensuciarse con un libro que para colmo las sumerge más en el fenómeno que más detestan.
Califico bajo el libro no porque no sea valioso o diga estupideces sino porque lo leí en un orden, que tristemente sí afectó el resultado. Aquí sí los factores dañaron el producto.
Evola hizo un estudio de las ideas y tesis del fascismo italiano, más allá de las contingencias históricas; aquél fue el objetivo de su trabajo. Es claro que tal vez ahora, donde hay investigaciones ya más "objetivas" sobre el fascismo, el propósito de Evola resulté un asunto de perogrullo pero recuérdese que antes los análisis marxistas eran los que predominaban y por tanto el fascismo era una reacción contra el espíritu proletario y un fenómeno propio del capitalismo en retirada. Era claro que era casi imposible salir de esta apabullante opinión y de los clichés izquierdistas. La labor de Evola bajo esta apreciación del marco temporal en que apareció, resulta encomiable. Para colmo se atrevió a criticar el fascismo desde la Derecha, lo cual chocaría a un izquierdista promedio, que estima que todo aquéllo que no comulga con él es fascismo, neto derechismo.
El enfoque de Evola es aristocrático, monarquista y tradicionalista. Desmenuzó el fascismo y su trayectoria histórica y política mientras atacó los elementos plebeyos, socializantes e idealistas de aquél: la idea del partido único no como factor de estabilidad sino de desequilibrio político, la no eliminación de la retórica de la lucha de clases, el papel cesarista del Duce, entre otros factores son objeto de la lupa inquisitiva del pensador italiano.
Sus análisis no gustarán más que nada a personas de mentalidad fascistoide porque las coloca en esos sitios donde sus ideas se vuelven indiscernibles de las bolcheviques. La gente de izquierda francamente no querrá ensuciarse con un libro que para colmo las sumerge más en el fenómeno que más detestan.
Califico bajo el libro no porque no sea valioso o diga estupideces sino porque lo leí en un orden, que tristemente sí afectó el resultado. Aquí sí los factores dañaron el producto.
February 10, 2025
An interesting delve into a worldview as seen from the eyes of a man who could encapsulate it the most. Evola, living side by side with both Fascist Italians & National Socialist Germans, displays both admiration & judgement for the the Fascist worldview as it was exacted in the 1920's, but soon began to lose patience with Mussolini & his demeanour of being the puppet of more powerful, warring nations during the Second World War.
Evola writes eloquently & puts the ideas of Fascism in their rawest form, pushing the reader to really contemplate & digest the true beauties of the TRUE Fascist worldview: Pride in ones nation, progressivism, militarism, security, cultural enhancement & the revival of Evropean philosophy & theology in the form of Paganism.
There aren't enough words to describe the depth of Evola, but no matter your interest, from economics to metaphysics, he will deliver, inspire & hopefully, teach a most fruitful & divinely inspired message.
Evola writes eloquently & puts the ideas of Fascism in their rawest form, pushing the reader to really contemplate & digest the true beauties of the TRUE Fascist worldview: Pride in ones nation, progressivism, militarism, security, cultural enhancement & the revival of Evropean philosophy & theology in the form of Paganism.
There aren't enough words to describe the depth of Evola, but no matter your interest, from economics to metaphysics, he will deliver, inspire & hopefully, teach a most fruitful & divinely inspired message.
April 6, 2021
A serious look at fascism, in the sense that Evola tries to discern a coherent doctrine of fascism, the existence of which is often denied as a truism. Fascinating and worth a read for that alone.
At the end there was an intereresting argument regarding the partisan nature of so called "anti-fascist" laws: if they would be coherent, according to Evola, they would have to criminalize communism as well since it shares those features of fascism regarded most problematic by liberal democracies. This tied in on to a wider argument regarding the lack of any "genuine (political) Right" post-WWII. Those so called are conservative liberals from the viewpoint of Evola.
At the end there was an intereresting argument regarding the partisan nature of so called "anti-fascist" laws: if they would be coherent, according to Evola, they would have to criminalize communism as well since it shares those features of fascism regarded most problematic by liberal democracies. This tied in on to a wider argument regarding the lack of any "genuine (political) Right" post-WWII. Those so called are conservative liberals from the viewpoint of Evola.
October 9, 2023
Great book about fascism
I am not a right-wing person at all, but I think Evola's far right perspective on fascism is essential for truly understanding the topic, because he gives a well-reasoned critique of the movement as someone who was actually there at the time and involved with the upper echelons of the party, but still an outsider to the movement. Read the introduction first so you know what you're getting into, and enjoy a well put together book of substantial, intelligent discussion
I am not a right-wing person at all, but I think Evola's far right perspective on fascism is essential for truly understanding the topic, because he gives a well-reasoned critique of the movement as someone who was actually there at the time and involved with the upper echelons of the party, but still an outsider to the movement. Read the introduction first so you know what you're getting into, and enjoy a well put together book of substantial, intelligent discussion
September 4, 2024
A unique attempt to explore fascism beyond the typical leftist platitudes. Evola argues that, despite fascism’s claims of aristocratic heritage, it’s really a populist ideology that cleverly merges the socialist desires of the urban working class with the shallow values of the petty bourgeoisie. I highly recommend this book to anyone who’s actually interested in gaining a deeper understanding of fascism.
January 27, 2019
There are some interesting thoughts in there, but the author connecting and mixing up spiritual traditionalism with historical traditionalism turns this book into the confessions of a man who was longing to live in Middle-Earth. Would like to read Evola’s spiritual books though.
April 10, 2021
A dryer read compared to some of Julius Evola's others works on the subject of Third Position ideology but nonetheless a concise collection of criticisms against Fascism from someone on the traditional right.
May 29, 2022
One moment it was like Mussolini was low key a commie, and then the next minute, it was like, now let's not take it that far. Not sure what he really wanted to say. But interesting in that he actually was pretty close to both Hitler and Mussolini.
April 29, 2025
As a fascist myself I like the fact this book brought up the fact about progressive elements of fascism for
It’s time, I don’t like that it’s supposed to be a criticizing of it, im not a traditionalist so I don’t agree with that
It’s time, I don’t like that it’s supposed to be a criticizing of it, im not a traditionalist so I don’t agree with that
October 8, 2024
The reality of today is that, while one group considers Fascism as a simple 'parenthesis' and aberration in our more recent history, others resemble people who have been born today and believe that nothing has existed before yesterday. Both these attitudes are inadequate, and we must energetically oppose anyone who claims that the choice must be between Fascism or anti-Fascism in an attempt to exhaust every political possibility and discussion.
The liberal elites of the post-war age have almost completely succeeded in eliminating all political discussion and replacing it with an inane, meaningless dispute of fascist versus anti-fascist drivel. In this political simulacra of the Democratic regimes, the mainstream Right has happily adopted the position of the outer party, gleefully cucking out to the liberal/socialist elites and mercilessly in-fighting to pledge its allegiance to the anti-fascist, revolutionary depravity of the political class, because their highest honor is a claim to "respectability".
On the other hand, there's those on the Right who - rightfully - become repulsed by the den of morons that comprise the western "conservative" sphere. However, quite a large majority of these people just turn into lazy contrarians who adopt some confused third positionist views and mindlessly embrace the fascist or national-socialist labels without any serious thought on political philosophy as most of their worldview is informed by internet memes.
If the Right wants to move beyond its lame, nihilistic stasis, it needs to evolve beyond fascism. It needs to embrace the genuine counter-revolutionary components of the interwar third positionist movement of the 20th century but also, it should not hesitate to discard it's weak and outright stupid elements. And to do so, it would actually need to get acquainted with the fascist enigma.
This work right here is the place to start with that. Here, Evola offers us a solid and clear view and critique of the classical Italian fascism, analyzing the good, the bad and the plain stupid. And not only is this work written by a genuine counter-revolutionary, but it's written by someone who was very much influential in fascist circles at the peak of the movement and was personally acquainted with leading figures in both fascist Italy and nazi Germany.
The liberal elites of the post-war age have almost completely succeeded in eliminating all political discussion and replacing it with an inane, meaningless dispute of fascist versus anti-fascist drivel. In this political simulacra of the Democratic regimes, the mainstream Right has happily adopted the position of the outer party, gleefully cucking out to the liberal/socialist elites and mercilessly in-fighting to pledge its allegiance to the anti-fascist, revolutionary depravity of the political class, because their highest honor is a claim to "respectability".
On the other hand, there's those on the Right who - rightfully - become repulsed by the den of morons that comprise the western "conservative" sphere. However, quite a large majority of these people just turn into lazy contrarians who adopt some confused third positionist views and mindlessly embrace the fascist or national-socialist labels without any serious thought on political philosophy as most of their worldview is informed by internet memes.
If the Right wants to move beyond its lame, nihilistic stasis, it needs to evolve beyond fascism. It needs to embrace the genuine counter-revolutionary components of the interwar third positionist movement of the 20th century but also, it should not hesitate to discard it's weak and outright stupid elements. And to do so, it would actually need to get acquainted with the fascist enigma.
This work right here is the place to start with that. Here, Evola offers us a solid and clear view and critique of the classical Italian fascism, analyzing the good, the bad and the plain stupid. And not only is this work written by a genuine counter-revolutionary, but it's written by someone who was very much influential in fascist circles at the peak of the movement and was personally acquainted with leading figures in both fascist Italy and nazi Germany.
June 28, 2017
A very good explanation of perhaps the most abused political term of contemporary politics. Fascism was more than authoritarianism, and Evola makes a relatively good explanation of what it was and could have been, had it not been for "external events".
February 4, 2023
A very detailed book.
I liked the fact that it was very thorough with its details and provided a structure of information that leads me to want to hang on to the end. I recommend it to someone who loves history and wants a challenge.
I liked the fact that it was very thorough with its details and provided a structure of information that leads me to want to hang on to the end. I recommend it to someone who loves history and wants a challenge.
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