Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby jingofever » Sun Mar 23, 2014 4:12 am

...Natasha, of Albert Lea, Minn., and her friend, Amy, of Woodville in St. Croix County, were returning from a trip to Walmart in Hudson with their friend, Megan Ungar-Kerns, 17, behind the wheel on Oct. 24, 2006. They were cruising east on Highway N in St. Croix County shortly before 8 p.m., when the 2005 Chevrolet Cobalt suddenly lost all power and steering. It hit a raised driveway and went airborne for nearly 40 feet before slamming into a telephone pole and two trees. The airbags never deployed. None of the girls were wearing seatbelts.

The steering wheel held Megan back. She was seriously injured but survived, however she had no memory of what happened in the moments before the accident. Amy had 38 injuries and died within five hours. Natasha went into a coma. Her family watched over her as she lay on life support and slowly deteriorated. She died Nov. 4.

Investigators noted the Chevy's ignition switch was in "accessory" position rather than "run." But how did that happen? And what did that mean?

Last month, the girls' families finally got the answer: The 2005 Cobalt became part of a worldwide General Motors recall of 1.6 million vehicles due to faulty ignition switches...

...In the wake of the recall, GM officials have admitted that the company knew about ignition switch problems for more than a decade...

...Barra has apologized that it took too long to issue the recall. GM is undertaking an internal investigation into why it took so long and what went wrong...


Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

In the above case C equals zero.
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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby American Dream » Sun Mar 23, 2014 8:18 am

Newly out:

http://visupview.blogspot.com/2014/03/f ... es_23.html

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Fight Club, Evola, and Secret Societies Part II

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Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the film Fight Club. At the onset I'd like to re-emphasize that this is a critique of the David Fincher film and not the Chuck Palahniuk novel. This author has read the novel, but not for a number of years (since at least the time Recluse was in middle school) and would not feel comfortable addressing the novel in depth. From what I vaguely recall, the Fincher film was superficially rather faithful to the Palahniuk novel, but I remember feeling that the tone of the two works was rather different. The lasting impression I have after all these years is that Fight Club the film struck me as being both more serious and nihilistic than the Palahniuk novel, which I found to be rather satirical. But it has been a while and I could definitely be wrong. But moving along.

In the first installment I noted the rather striking similarities between director David Fincher's interpretation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel and the philosophy of the Baron Julius Evola, an occultist and one of the chief fascist ideologues of the post-World War II era. The almost Manichean struggle the Fincher film depicts against the feminine and the cult of manhood Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) attempts to create is especially Evolan, as are the film's underlining criticism of consumerism and, by default, capitalism itself. Evola found capitalism and its chief pursuit, consumerism, to be an especially effeminate and materialistic aim, one of which that was incompatible with heroic virtues.

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Evola

At this point I would like to change directions, and note a rather striking aspect of Fight Club that I began to notice several years ago, and that is the rather curious similarities it shares with a certain theory revolving around the legendary Peasant's Revolt that erupted in England during the year 1381. While there were any number of peasant's revolts that broke out in Europe during the tail end of the Middle Ages, the scale and organization of the 1381 English revolt has long fascinated historians and left-leaning social commentators alike. But in recent years it has become of especial interest to conspiracy theorists after amateur historian John J. Robinson linked the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 to the Medieval Knights Templar (who were "officially" suppressed in the 1312) and Freemasonry, which did not in theory exist until some time after the Peasant's Revolt.
"... Due to a fortuitous set of circumstances having nothing to do with Freemasons, John J. Robinson stumbled upon compelling proof that the Freemasons had their origins with the Knights Templar, and that the Templar Order had survived in England and Scotland after the official destruction of the Knights by order of the Pope. The evidence begins with the famous Peasant Revolt of 1381, in which there was a general uprising in England against the Church and the King, which resulted in the destruction of property all over the kingdom and the murder of many high-ranking clerics and nobles.

"Robinson demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the attack was directed specifically against the Knights Hospitaler, the Templars' hated rivals since the days of their mutual origin in the desert sands of Palestine, and the inheritors of the Templars' assets when the Templars were suppressed by Papal decree. Robinson's book – Born in Blood – is a worthwhile addition to Masonic studies, even though it contains no footnotes or other academic impedimenta that would have elevated it to more lofty status among scholars; its connecting the Peasant Revolt with a 'Grand Society' operating in secret in the British Isles, a society convincingly identified with the Knights Templar, is alone worth the price of admission. Robinson also shows that Templar shrines were spared the attacks, which left thousands dead and many beheaded as the revolt wound its way directly to the Tower of London. The leader of the revolt was known only by the name Walter the Tyler, which is suggestive, since the 'tyler' is a Masonic office in the rituals of the temple. All this indicates that the Masonic society has its origins in the Knights Templar, as many historians have always insisted (albeit without the benefit of documentation)."

(Sinister Forces Book II, Peter Levenda, pg. 156)


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Fight Club does not of course feature any beheadings, but there are several other obvious parallels with the Peasant's Revolt as depicted by Robinson. The Peasant's Revolt was theoretically a spontaneous uprising of the masses that none known the less seems to have been directed by a secretive command structure, a possibility made highly probable by the remarkable degree of organization this supposedly spontaneous uprising displayed. Robinson suggests a secret society founded by the Knights Templar that at the time was referred to as the "Great Society." Regardless, the revolt would inflict terrible damage to the property of the leading establishments of British society at the time, namely the monarchy, the Church, and the Knights Hospitalers.

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Fight Club chronicles an "underground" revolt of the masses engineered by a secret society deriving from various fight clubs started across the nation. This secret society, under the auspices of "Project Mayhem", begins a low key terror campaign directed at the property of the ruling establishment of modern American society, namely multinational corporations. This revolt is touched off by "Tyler Durden" (Brad Pitt), the alternative personality of the nameless Narrator (played Edward Norton) whom some fans some time refer to as "Jack."

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This last part is quite interesting considering that the Peasant's Revolt was said to have been lead by a commoner known as Walter the Tyler, or sometimes simply Walt Tyler. This figure is easily one of the most mysterious aspects of the Peasant's Revolt.
"The first indication that Freemasonry might have been related to the rebellion was the name of the leader, Walter the Tyler. He exploded into English history with his mysterious uncontested appointment as the supreme commander of the Peasant's Rebellion on Friday, June 7, 1381, and left it as abruptly when his head was struck off eight days later on Saturday, June 15. Absolutely nothing is known of him before those eight days. That alone suggests that he was not using his real name. Historians have suggested that his name probably indicates that he was a roof tiler by trade, which, based on his obvious military experience and leadership abilities, is not very probable. But if he had indeed adopted a pseudonym, why what he called himself a 'Tyler'? Freemasons reading this will already see the point. The Tyler is the sentry, sergeant-at-arms, and enforcer of the Masonic Lodge. He screens visitors for credentials, secures the meeting place, and then stands guard outside the door with a drawn sword in his hand. If the Great Society was in any way connected with Freemasonry, 'Tyler' would have been the only proper Masonic title for the military leader who would wield a sword and enforce discipline..."

(Born in Blood, John J. Robinson, pg. 55)


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In the context of Fight Club, the Masonic association of the Tyler with a sentry is most striking given how the film depicts the transformation of the fight clubs into a secret society. The narrator, in his Tyler Durden personality, initially procures a large, dilapidated house in an isolated, industrial sector of the nameless city in which the film begins. When the decision is made to transform the fight clubs into a full fledged secret society, candidates are invited to the house. Upon arriving they must stand outside the front door upon the porch for a period of three days before they can enter. During this time frame both "Jack" and his Tyler alternate take turns verbally and physically mocking the candidate in order to dissuade them from advancing into the society. This is very much in keeping with the duties and symbolism associated the Masonic Tyler.
"... By keeping these things secret, the Mason protects the Secret Temple itself. In ritual practice, there is a man who stands outside the temple entrance, carrying a sword. He is known as the Tyler, and it is he who knocks on the door to admit the initiate. A lowly position, it would seem, but on a symbolic level, it is equivalent of the Guardian at a Threshold. A concept character familiar to so many mystical sects the world over, and one who makes an appearance in Mozart's Masonic opera The Magic Flute, the Guardian is an obstacle that must be passed in order to reach higher states of consciousness or spiritual enlightenment. In practical terms, the Tyler has an important job to do in keeping curiosity-seekers and other unqualified persons from disrupting the rituals. He must examine the credentials of anyone claiming to be Mason before he is permitted to enter..."

(The Secret Temple, Peter Levenda, pgs. 12-13)


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And this is indeed the role Tyler Durden performs initially in his secret society as well. Further reinforcing the Masonic allusions are the number of days --three --the candidate is made to wait outside Tyler's house before entrance. From there they begin their initiation, after having their heads shaved and being reborn as "space monkeys."

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But here the similarities end, for the initiation Tyler Durden performs for his candidates can hardly be said to be one concerning a higher state of consciousness or spiritual enlightenment, In point of fact, it is a process of total dehumanization more closely resembling cult indoctrination, the re-education camps of Communist China or even some of the behavior modification experiments of the Pentagon and the US Intelligence community during the mid-Twentieth century. Candidates are effectively stripped of their entire personalities, save for their first names. Consider the overlap between Tyler's re-education program and the brainwashing methods used by Communist China:
"... The aim of brainwashing is to retrieve enemies and transform rather than eliminate them – either to make them exponents Marxism and then send them back home, or to turn them into edifying examples. The process, to the extent that it can be recognized, has three principal aspects:

"1. The individual is cut off from everything, from his former social milieu, from news and information. This can be done only if he is placed in a prison cell or a camp. The individual is totally uprooted. The absence of news places this man who has been used to receiving information, in a vacuum, which is hard to endure after a certain time. Complementary methods are added to this: a certain privation of food and sleep to weaken his psychological resistance, to make him more susceptible to influences (though there is no intention of exhausting him), frequent isolation and solitude, which causes a certain anxiety, increased by the uncertainty of his fate and the lack of a definite sentence or punishment; also frequently incarceration in windowless cells with only electric light, with irregular hours for meals, sleep, interrogations, and so on, in order to destroy even his sense of time. The principal aim of these psychological methods is to destroy a man's habitual patterns, space, hours, milieu, and so on. A man must be deprived of his accustomed supports. Finally, this man lives in a situation of inferiority and humiliation, aimed not at destroying him but at reconstructing him.

"2. A man placed in the above circumstances is subjected to a bombardment of slogans by radio or by fellow-prisoners, who, though prisoners themselves, shower him with reproaches and slogans, because they already are on the road to their own reconstruction. There is an endless repetition of formulas, explanations, and simple stimuli. Of course, in the beginning all this merely evokes the subject's scorn and disbelief. After some time, however, erosion takes place; whether the subject likes it or not, he ends up knowing by heart certain formulas of the cataclysm repeated to him a thousand times; he ends up inhabited by the slogans, which still carry no conviction; he does not yield to some advertising slogan, for example, just because he knows it. But it must not be forgotten that the prisoner hears nothing else, and that the incessant repetition of the slogans also prevents any personal reflection or meditation. The noise of the slogan is present all the time. The result is an involuntary penetration and a certain intellectual weakening, added to the impossibility of leading a private intellectual life..."

(Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, Jacques Ellul, pgs. 311-312)


The second above described aspect of brainwashing is present throughout depictions of Tyler's indoctrination: Tyler himself uses a bullhorn to recite his anti-consumerist mantras to his disciples throughout the isolated house and surrounding property as they make their way through various stages of initiation. Older initiates are shown taking over these mantras and slogans as the progress in the ranks. Later candidate spending their three days on Tyler's porch are verbally attacked by early members rather than the Grand Master himself after a certain point.

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This effectively creates a state of total dehumanization in which candidates are stripped of all but their first names and reborn as mindless space monkeys to do the bidding of Project Mayhem. Eventually the narrator inadvertently provides a way for the space monkeys to regain the full identity with which they were born with: a "heroic" death in the name of Project Mayhem. How Evolan.

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Another curious Masonic allusion in the Fincher film appears about midway through when Project Mayhem has gone live. Tyler and several other space monkeys abduct a police official (?) who has begun to investigate incidents of vandalism committed by the group shortly after he has attended a keynote address at what appears to be a high society-type get together. He is dragged into a restroom at the gathering by Tyler and his minions, who are working as waiters there. The police official has a rubber band placed around his testicles and is told persuasively to "Do not fuck with us." The floor upon which this scene plays out is the infamous checkered squares frequently associated with Masonic lodges nowadays. These black and white squares have an interesting symbolism in Freemasonry and one rather appropriate to events unfolding in Fight Club at this point as well.
"In addition, the floor of the temple may be constructed or decorated in a checkerboard pattern of black and white squares, motif that is found on many Masonic documents, tracing boards, and other illustrations. The checkerboard pattern has a long and illustrious pedigree, calling to mind instantly the game of chess and its origins as a sacred game between the forces of light and darkness. Today, it might be interpreted as a grid, a group of cells called a matrix..."

(The Secret Temple, Peter Levenda, pg. 13)


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This association with a matrix is especially curious The Matrix came out in the same year (1999) as Fight Club and would influence modern conspiracy culture to a similar extent. This is also apt for the terror cells Tyler's fight clubs have developed into as well.

Whether or not this Masonic symbolism is intentional or not is highly debatable. Chuck Palahniuk has been rather coy about what inspired the original novel upon which the film was based, but has floated the Cacophony Society (of which he is a member) as a partial inspiration. Robinson's Born in Blood was released in 1990 and became a hit in certain alternative media circles not long afterwards. I've found nothing to indicate that Palahniuk had read Robinson's work, but it was certainly available and had generated a certain degree of word-of-mouth by the time Palahniuk began working on what would become Fight Club. I've also found nothing to indicate that David Fincher was aware of Robinson's book, but perhaps the use of checkerboard squares in the above mentioned scene was a sly reference to the curious overlap between the general plot line of Fight Club and Robinson's theory concerning the Peasant's Revolt.

Beyond the ample Masonic references, there are any number of other aspects concerning Fight Club that should have inspired way more conspiratorial interpretations than what appears to be online. The narrator and his Tyler Durden alter ego with their grandiose plans for their secret society and Project Mayhem are in many ways the fever dreams of the Project Monarch (which is almost certainly a hoax) proponents given life. Fight Club is one of the most high brow depictions of disassociative identity disorder ever put forth by Hollywood and yet this aspect is rarely addressed by the countless Hollywood-centric Monarch bloggers (*cough* Vigilant Citizen *cough*) despite the fact that a programmed patsy operating a terror organization designed to destabilize the nation has become something of a Holy Grail in such circles.

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In the wake of Fight Club the film the notion that behavioral modification techniques developed by the Pentagon and US Intelligence community had been used on individuals engaged in acts of violence and terrorism was given scholarly consideration by such works as David McGowan's Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder and Peter Levenda's Sinister Forces trilogy. Fight Club's depiction of such things is over he top enough to put it in the nonsense of the Monarch camp, but the timing of its release is curious. Such notions were also being explored by the Chris Carter-created/produced TV series Millennium (of which I've written much more on before here, here and here) around this same time. But I digress.

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Fight Club is also ripe for the "science" of "predictive programming". As with many of the more sophisticated notions of modern conspiracy culture, this premise seems to have been pioneered by the fanatical traditionalist Catholic and Holocaust denier (and likely fascist sympathizer) Michael A. Hoffman II. Hoffman alleges that this technique was incorporated into modern media by Aleister Crowley and his Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) initiates as part of their occult agenda.
"OTO initiates authorized mass market stories, especially science fiction, with subliminal, occult themes published in popular books and magazines. Among the most influential of these were Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, A.H. White's Rocket to the Morgue and the after mentioned Arthur C. Clarke's 'The Sentinel' and Childhood's End.

"Clarke had been a leading member of the British Interplanetary Society, a London-based group of elite thinkers, engineers, British secret service assets and 'sci-fi enthusiasts' who were 'devoted to laying the groundwork for the space age.' Their patron saint was the Fabian Socialist futurist/inevitabilist, H. G. Wells, who script, a.k.a. 'science-fiction novel,' First Men on the Moon gave the correct lift-off location for the first manned flight (Cape Canaveral) decades beforehand...

"By means of the newly burgeoning genre of science fiction, the OTO was able to shape the vision of America through predictive programming, which forecasts an 'inevitable future,' thereby influencing everything from the architecture of our cities to the design of our automobiles and conceptions of what constitutes 'progress and liberation' in the future...

"... Predictive programming works by means of the propagation of the illusion of an infallibly accurate vision of how the world is going to look in the future. This fraud has had a not inconsiderable impact on our reality. Aleister Crowley, in a statement to OTO initiates concerning one of his books, describes the underlying epistemology behind the glamour and enchantment which causes the occult con-game to become the weird reality we inhabit in America today:

"'In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth, and the Paths, of Spirits and Conjuration; the Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether they exist or not. By doing certain things certain results follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.'

"Here Crowley admits that the OTO is a vehicle for imposing an artificial reality based on nothing but lies and promoted by liars initiated into the art and science of illusion. Matters have gotten 'darker than you think' in the years since Crowley's death in 1947. In Jack Williamson's sci-fi tale Darker Than You Think, aliens conspire against humanity under the leadership of the 'Child of Night,' a Parsons character who is 'the result of a magical prodigious birth.'

(Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Michael A. Hoffman II, pgs. 205-206)


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Hoffman
Fight Club of course makes maple use of subliminal messages, letting the audience in on this technique early in the proceedings. Subliminals appear from the early moments of the film (in which quick flashes of Tyler Durden are used in scenes from the Narrator's life before he "materializes") to literally the final scene, which is a quick cut of a penis. This final image is in reference to Tyler's hobby of splicing phalluses into children's film, surely a "revelation of the method" worthy moment as conspiracy culture has long been obsessed with the notion that Disney films are used to expose young children to pornography (run downs of such notions can be viewed here and here, or upon any number of other conspiracy blogs across the web) as part of the "Illuminati Agenda."

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Then of course there are Fight Club's curious parallels to the 9/11 terror attacks. The ultimate objective of Project Mayhem is revealed to be a plot to blow up a series of banks in an unnamed, major American city so as to eliminate all debt. Besides the fact that one of the more iconical images from the film (namely the shot of the Narrator and Marla Singer [Helena Bonham Carter] with their backs to the camera, gazing out of the top floor of an office building as two skyscrapers collapse across the street from a series of explosions) eerily foreshadows the collapse the Twin Towers, there's the curious method Project Mayhem employs to bring down the buildings: controlled demolition. Conspiracy culture had of course are already developed a keen interest in controlled demolition at this point thanks to the Oklahoma City bombing, but such notions would go into overdrive in the wake of 9/11.

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Masonic allusions galore, subliminal messages, alternative personalities, secret societies, controlled demolition --this is surely a gold mind for conspiracy bloggers, and yet one that has rarely been tapped. This is in no small part due to the fact the Fight Club has had an enormous influence on post-9/11 conspiracy culture, especially within the patriot movement. Project Mayhem's defining event --the destruction of various financial institutions and the elimination of debt --is no doubt the fever dream of any number self-styled anarcho-capitalist/libertarian revolutionaries out there right now.

But Fight Club is ultimately a smarter film than the overwhelming majority of its audience, and wisely fades to black shortly after the buildings have been blown up. Otherwise the filmmakers would have had to depict the fall out of Tyler's actions, and they likely would not be especially romantic. Less than two years after the film's release 9/11 would put on full display the type of blatant power grabs made possible by major terror attacks, even those directed at major financial institutions.

Would Americans have woken up in Fight Club's aftermath with a glorious debt-free revolt against the banks in full sway, or would they have woken up to find their bank accounts and life savings frozen until further notice? And if the later scenario was the case, would such circumstances touch off a revolution or simply further entrench the powers that be? The funny thing about Tyler''s revolt is that, despite a few juvenile pranks against elites, his final plot for fomenting revolution would have almost surely caused far more suffering for average working stiffs than CEOs.

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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Sun Mar 23, 2014 1:01 pm

Interesting that Hoffman is (quite correctly) identified as a Fascist who is salty about being born too lower-class to be eligible for KoM, yet quotes Levenda with no caveats.

Perhaps he will have a field day with Levenda in some future series?

Anyways, an interesting second installment although I'm starting to think the author actually has not read any Evola, based on the curiously short shrift he is being given despite being named in the title of the series. The Masonic elements are strong in the bathroom scene -- especially the fake castration. However, initiation into the Space Monkeys is clearly drawn from a different fraternal organization with mind control tendencies: the US Army.
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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby American Dream » Sun Mar 23, 2014 1:47 pm

Here is more on Evola:

http://www.whomakesthenazis.com/2011/12 ... beast.html

Julius Evola: A Dangerous Beast

Alfio Bernabei reviews Social and Political Thought of Julius Evola
by Paul Furlong (Routledge, 2011). Published in Searchlight magazine, Nov 2011.


As discussed in previous posts, Evola is a pin-up boy for legions of neo-folk, martial-industrial, etc., bands. I'd go so far as to say that mention of his name is used as a dog-whistle call between groups to indicate their interest in fascist ideas. This is transparent to those who know something about Evola, but may fool those who have been led to believe that he was a 'spiritual', 'mystical' writer, or a 'philosopher' - AS


ImageA NAZI-FASCIST RACIST propagandist who after the fall of Mussolini and Hitler wondered whether sufficient men of sufficient quality still remained "on their feet" to carry out his grand design of more refined and successful dictatorships is not an easy subject to tackle, especially when the man in question, Julius Evola, sought to minimise the genocide almost to the point of negation and failed to acknowledge the responsibilities of both regimes. No wonder if he has been described by one of his critics as "so unclean a racist that it is repugnant to touch him with the fingers", and no surprise if his"Nazi delirium" is said to have inspired extreme right-wing militants and terrorists who in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s planted bombs in banks, trains and stations, killing and maiming dozens of people in the so called Italian "years of lead".

Paul Furlong recognises all this. He knows he is dealing with a dangerous beast. Wearing thick gloves he insists, however, that Evola needs to be studied because "the position of the anti­ modern intellectual may not appear comfortable, but the species exists and has its own survival mechanism". Some of the language may appear at times far too kind to his subject, but however wrapped in complex metaphysics this is ultimately the dissection of a mind capable of inspiring murderous acts in the tradition of those behind the Holy Inquisition, 9/11 or Utoja island.

Fantasy and falsification are embedded even in Evola's name. Beware of vainglorious Italians who think of themselves as descendants of the Roman Empire and feel the need to Latinise their identity to evoke Emperors' crowns and laurels. Already pompously called Giulio Cesare - Julius Caesar- when he was born in 1898 in Rome into a family of minor Sicilian aristocracy, he was to change the too plebeian "G" into "J", a letter foreign to the Italian alphabet, to mime himself into some tradition of the Imperium Romanum.

As a young man he was too distracted by the Dadaist movement, experimentation with drugs, magic practices and the esoteric in general, to take any notice of Mussolini's terrorist gangs rampaging up and down the country killing hundreds of people prior to the 1922 March on Rome. But as soon as the dictator ditched democracy, abolished parties, trade unions and a free press, and began to incarcerate and murder dissidents, Evola was quick to support the authoritarian experiment and eager to provide his intellectual contributions. He developed a lifelong interest in tyranny and how to perfect it through a minestrone of ideas that included alchemy, superstition, the occult, initiatory rituals, the sacred as inherited from mythologies, combining tradition with nationalism in search of the "absolute", by which he meant the primordial force that renews itself through the heroic deeds of men belonging to an elite, members of a superior race in a superior order, a hierarchy of the spirit.

Between 1927 and 1929 he sought to imbue Mussolini with a sense of the sacred through magic techniques. He engaged devotees to generate a spiritual force to put the uncouth dictator with peasant blood onto a transcendental level. How Mussolini reacted to such attempts to spiritualise fascism is not known. He was probably more interested in preparing the path to attain his imperial ambitions, hence the conquest of Abyssinia and Ethiopia presented as a kind of duty by a superior race descended from the Romans to rule over inferior people for their own good. Racist justification was needed and Evola obliged enthusiastically. Racism became his speciality. There was race of the body, race of the soul and race of the spirit. Needless to say, he was anti-semitic and anti­ black, as well as a misogynist who relegated women to the role of procreating machines.

After the Second World War he was charged alongside others engaged in terrorist activities with the crime of promoting the revival of the Fascist Party in breach of the new Italian Constitution. He may have perfected this idea after meeting Corneliu Codreanu in 1936, the Romanian founder of the Legions of the Archangel Michael whose Iron Guards carried out assassinations of politicians thought to be corrupt Developed further, as Furlong explains, this concept implies that "the spiritual value of an act is determined by the interior disposition of the actor and the integrity of his commitment to the perfection of the act itself". This is precisely the argument that one finds throughout history, all the way to the Twin Towers and Utoja Island.

That Evola was sometimes critical of fascism made him more valuable to the regime than other contemporaries, such as the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, Mussolini's Minister for Education. When intellectuals enslave themselves completely within the dominant culture they simply turn into part of the mechanism for the reinforcement of established values and fail to provide the permissible dissenting voice, the oxygen that is vital in the process of the maintenance of power. The fact that Evola was not content enough with fascism or Nazism and believed that such regimes were only the first rough step on the ladder to some elevated, more spiritual form of governance, was perfectly acceptable, in fact, functional. He wasn't saying stop, this is enough. He was saying the opposite: continue to push ahead and refine your means because there is an optimum level to be found, a level of absolute tyranny reaching all the way to some spiritual dimension that humans have no right to challenge.

As an enemy of democracy and a believer in the cast system, he was so steeped in legends inspired by the rigid order of spiritual paganism as to believe in history as a cycle likely to resurrect in some form Hesiod's Golden Age and a return to the Age of the demigods (Achilles and suchlike). He so fancied himself as an inspirational figure that he choreographed his own death in that fashion. He is said to have asked his friends to lift him out of bed so that he could die "on his feet", like a mythic warrior, looking through his window over the Gianicolo district of Rome at the place where the Temple of Janus once stood -Janus being the two-faced God of time looking simultaneously at the past and at the future. As well as implying that unrepentant nazi-fascists can "ride the tiger" through time (an expression he was fond of) he was seeking to evoke the fascination for "the quest", the magic pointer (he had once written about the Holy Grail), while reconfirming his support for the right-wing terrorists who were at the time seeking to destabilise the country. Evola is now gaining followers in the United States, Britain, and especially in Russia where some right-wingers with political influence dream of a coming Russian Imperium, with Moscow romantically associated with the notion of a "Third Rome". His ashes, construed as a beacon, were scattered on top of Monte Rosa, Italy's magic peak said to emit a pink glow.

Furlong states unequivocally that "Evola's failure to speak clearly on the Holocaust; still less to acknowledge the responsibilities of regimes with which he was associated is a fatal lapse, enough to destroy his authority"and equally recognises that "the deliberate refusal to condemn those who use one's work to promote violence is not significantly different from condoning violence". This association could have been made clearer by placing Evola's thought development more closely in touch with the historical context of the events he must have witnessed and condoned. We find no mention of the repression that followed the dictatorship after 1926, no word of the Abyssinian war that butchered hundreds of thousands of people and was one of the preludes to the Second World War and there is silence on the Spanish Civil War in which the Italian fascists took part with the Nazis, all episodes that would have provided plenty of evidence to Evola of the bloodshed meted out by both regimes in their thirst for power. And if after the Second World War the "strategy of tension" involved some of Evola's disciples, could it be that in spite of his anti-Americanism he was the maitre a penser of the gladiators in the Stay Behind secret network set up to strike a deadly blow at democracy?

The danger now is that Evola's ideas, still evidently capable of influencing Nazi­ fascists longing for absolutist solutions, may filter more widely into the current wave of historical revisionism, turning him into an acceptable figure in the Italian intellectual landscape of generations to come. It is shocking, to give but one example, to find one of the most popular contemporary writers, Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah, publicly listing Evola among his favourite intellectuals. "As a writer", he stated "I formed myself on well known authors in the traditional and conservative culture, Ernst Junger, Ezra Pound, Louis-Ferdinand Gline, Carl Schmitt. I don't even dream of denying it. I must add that I often read even Julius Evola ..."

One hopes that Furlong's important study will soon be translated into Italian so that more people can be better informed on what Evola stood for. Some adjustments are needed. Mussolini set up the Social Republic with Nazi support from September 1943, not 1944. And I can't help thinking that in citing the terrorist massacres perpetrated by some of Evola's admirers, the number of victims should be mentioned: 17 people died and 88 were wounded, for instance, in the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan in 1969. Real blood helps to put things into perspective.

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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby American Dream » Sun Mar 23, 2014 3:53 pm

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Julius Evola, also known as Baron Giulio Cesare Evola, (May 19, 1898–June 11, 1974) was an Italian philosopher, esotericist, occultist, author, artist, poet, political activist, soldier and most significantly described as a Radical Traditionalist. Evola is primarily known for his involvement in Italian Fascist politics until the movement was defeated in World War II; since the war, his works have inspired a succession of New Right and neo-fascist groups in Italy and beyond.[1][2][3]

His theories were often mixed in with his occult writings, with themes such as Hermeticism, the metaphysics of sex, Tantra, Buddhism, Taoism, mountaineering, the Holy Grail, the essence and history of civilizations, decadence and various philosophic and religious Traditions from the East and the West. He considered himself a representative and upholder of "Tradition" in an age of spiritual oblivion and organized deviancy. Evola's core trilogy of works are commonly regarded to be Revolt Against the Modern World, Men Among the Ruins and Ride the Tiger.

Evola attempted to influence both Italian Fascism and National Socialism from the late 1920s through the collapse of the Italian Fascist regime in 1943, although only with a brief period of success in 1942. After the regime's collapse, Evola fled to Nazi-ruled Germany. He opposed the Salò Republic, and worked with the SS Ahnenerbe on research on Freemasonry. In the post-war period, he returned to Italy where his writings enjoyed popularity among some on the far right, especially young neo-fascist groups. Many Radical Traditionalist, Nouvelle Droite, Conservative Revolutionary, Aryanist, and Third Positionist groups and intellectuals have been influenced by Evola to various degrees. According to one scholar, "Evola’s thought can be considered one of the most radically and consistently antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century

Entry into esotericism

Around 1920, his interests led him into spiritual, transcendental and "supra-rational" studies. He began reading various esoteric texts and gradually delved deeper into the occult, alchemy, magic, and Oriental studies, particularly Tibetan Lamaism and Vajrayanist tantric yoga.

In 1927, along with other Italian esotericists, he founded the Gruppo di Ur. The group's aim was to provide a "soul" to the burgeoning Fascist movement of the time through the revival of an ancient Roman Paganism.[6]

Involvement with Fascism

In the late 1920s, Evola expressed his support for a Radical Fascist revolution to sweep modern Judeo-Christianity out of Italy and replace it with a "Pagan Imperialism" (à la Ancient Rome).[7] He was one of a number of fascist ideologues who opposed Mussolini's Lateran Accords with the Roman Catholic Church and rejected the Fascist party's nationalism and its focus on mass movement mob politics; he hoped to influence the regime toward his own variation on fascist racial theories and his "Tradionalist" philosophy. Early in 1930, Evola launched Torre, a bi-weekly review, to voice his conservative-revolutionarism and denounce the demagogic tendencies of official fascism; government censors suppressed the journal and engaged in character assassination against its staff (for a time, Evola retained a bodyguard of like-minded radical fascists) until it died out in June of that year. From 1934 to 1943, he edited the cultural page of Roberto Farinacci's journal Regime Fascista.

Mussolini read Evola's Sintesi di dottrina della razza in August 1941, and was impressed enough to personally meet with Evola and offer him his praise. Evola later recounted that Mussolini had found in his work a uniquely Roman form of fascist racism distinct from that found in Nazi Germany. With Mussolini's backing, Evola launched the journal Sangue e Spirito. While not always in agreement with German racial theorists, Evola traveled to Germany in February 1942 and obtained support for German collaboration on Sangue e Spirito from leading Nazi race theorists.[8]

Evola supported Fascism for his own ends, but was rebuked by the regime because his ends were not always theirs. When World War II broke out, he volunteered for military service in order to fight the Communists on the Russian front; he was rejected because he had too many detractors in the bureaucracy (Hansen 2002). Italian Fascism went into decline when, during the midst of the War, Mussolini was deposed and imprisoned. Evola, although not a member of the Fascist Party, and despite his apparent problems with the Fascist regime, was one of the first people to greet Mussolini when the latter was broken out of prison by Nazi commandos in 1943.

After the Italian surrender to the Allied forces in September 8, 1943, Evola moved to Germany, where he spent the remainder of World War II, also working as a researcher on Freemasonry for the SS Ahnenerbe in Vienna.

It was Evola's custom to walk around the city during bombing raids in order to better 'ponder his destiny'. During one such Soviet raid, in March or April 1945, a shell fragment damaged his spinal cord and he became paralyzed from the waist down, remaining so throughout his life (Stucco 1992, xiii).

Evola and the SS

"But in spite of all these negative aspects, there was something in National Socialism that attracted Evola: the concept of a state ruled by an Order, which he felt was embodied by the SS. 'We are inclined to the opinion that we can see the nucleus of an Order in the higher sense of tradition in the 'Black Corps,' he wrote in Vita Italiana (August 15, 1938). Again in Vita Italiana (August 1941, 'Per una profonda alleanza italo-germanica' [For a Deep Italian-Germanic Alliance]) he writes: 'Beyond the confines of the party and of any political-administrative structure, an elite in the form of a new 'Order'—that is, a kind of ascetic-military organization that is held together by the principles of 'loyalty' and 'honor,' must form the basis of the new state.' As mentioned, Evola held the SS, which Himmler strove to design according to the model of the Teutonic Order, to be this elite.

The castles of the SS Order, with their 'initiations,' the emphasis on transcending the purely human element, the prerequisite of physical valor, as well as the ethical requirements (loyalty, discipline, defiance of death, willingness to sacrifice, unselfishness), strengthened Evola in his conviction. He also was of the opinion that the ethics of the SS were borrowed from the Jesuits" (Dr. H. T. Hansen in "Julius Evola's Political Endeavors" introduction to "Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist" p. 61-22).

Post-World War II

After World War II, Evola continued his work in esotericism. He wrote a number of books and articles on sexual magic and various other esoteric studies, including The Yoga of Power: Tantra, Shakti, and the Secret Way (1949), Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex (1958), Meditations on the Peaks: Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest (1974), The Path of Enlightenment According to the Mithraic Mysteries (1977). He also wrote his two explicitly political books Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (1953), Ride the Tiger: A Survival Manual for the Aristocrats of the Soul (1961), and his autobiography Il Cammino del Cinabro (1963).

In the post-war years, Evola's writings were held in high esteem by members of the Neo-fascist movement in Italy, and because of this, he was put on trial from June through November 1951 on the charge of attempting to revive Fascism in Italy. He was acquitted because he could prove that he was never a member of the Fascist party, and that all accusations were made without evidence to prove that his writings glorified Fascism (Evola - "Autodifesa/Self-Defence" in appendix to Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist 1953).



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Evola
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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby semper occultus » Mon Mar 24, 2014 5:50 am

Wombaticus Rex » 23 Mar 2014 17:01 wrote:Interesting that Hoffman is (quite correctly) identified as a Fascist who is salty about being born too lower-class to be eligible for KoM, yet quotes Levenda with no caveats.

Perhaps he will have a field day with Levenda in some future series?



......is Levenda suspect....was his sojourn in Colonia Dignidad a cover-story.... :shock: or are we talking the Simon business...?
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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Mon Mar 24, 2014 6:06 am

Yeah, just the Simon business / intimate personal connection with the circles he discusses.

I definitely value Levenda's writing and huge swaths of his research have checked out when I sourced 'em.
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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby semper occultus » Mon Mar 24, 2014 7:47 am

......maybe Myatt's "Simon" & Levenda runs the ONA....? :whisper:
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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby American Dream » Mon Mar 24, 2014 5:38 pm

I imagine that Recluse, the author of the VISUP blog will have much more on Evola in further installments but more context now could be useful:

Julius Evola

Politics
There are contradictory views among scholars as to Evola's political categorization and his possible relationship with fascism and neofascism. He has been described as a "fascist intellectual,"[13] a "radical traditionalist,"[14] "antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular,”[15] and as having been "the leading philosopher of Europe's neofascist movement."[15] Gregor writes that, "Evola opposed literally every feature of Fascism."[16] A key difference between Evola's Traditionalism and Italian Fascism is Evols'a rejection of nationalism, which he viewed as a conception of the modern West and not of a Traditional hierarchical social arrangement. Heinrich Himmler's SS kept a dossier on him, and in dossier document AR-126 described him as a "reactionary Roman," with a secret goal of "an insurrection of the old aristocracy against the modern world," and recommended that the SS "stop his effectiveness in Germany" and provide no support to him.[17] When he met with "esoteric Hitlerist" Miguel Serrano, Evola denied that he was a fascist or Hitlerist, but rather saw Metternich as a conservative ideal. Serrano himself was critical of Evola and saw him as an "old-style traditionalist."[18] Evola's first published political work was an anti-fascist piece in 1925, and he wrote a second in 1928.[19] Evola called Italy's fascist movement a "laughable revolution," based on empty sentiment and materialistic concerns.

He opposed the futurism that Italian fascism was aligned with, along with the "plebeian" nature of the movement.[20] In Revolt Against the Modern World, Evola clearly cites Monarchism as his preferred form of government, given that a Monarch would hold spiritual principles above the State and enforce a hierarchy of warriors, priests, merchants and scholars which he viewed as universal in traditional societies. Although he never formally aligned himself with such school, one can see strong similarities between Evola's thought and the Conservative Revolutionary movement in Germany, such as a traditionalist worldview rejecting a purely biological concept of race and the 'self'

Evola held that politics, like everything else in life, should look upward and beyond the self. Evola's main argument against modern "demagogic" politics is its inverted materialistic focus and mentality, stemming from an inverted order of castes. According to Evola, in modernity, due to what he calls the regression of the castes, the once-preeminent warrior caste (crystallized in the medieval military religious orders and ethical chivalry and its warrior code) has been downgraded into the figures of the mere democratic soldier and mercenary, who are servants of the artificial, soulless needs of the now-dominant mercantile and industrial interests. As Evola states, "Opposite to the 'soldier' was the type of the warrior and the member of the feudal aristocracy; the caste to which this type belonged was the central nucleus in a corresponding social organization. This caste was not at the service of the bourgeois class but rather ruled over it, since the class that was protected depended on those who had the right to bear arms"[21]

On the meaning of his anti-middle-class stance, Evola stated:
We are "anti-bourgeois" not in the descending sense of subversive collectivists but in the sense of opposing the dominance of the lower manifestations of the modern bourgeois spirit (effeminate materialism, commercialism, gangsterism, etc.). The bourgeois tendency has its inevitable role in society, but must not be absolutized; rather, the bourgeoisie must be purified, contained, its values given their space but subordinated to superior values. We are anti-bourgeois because the bourgeois type, while ranking above the proletarian, yet stands inferior to the soldierly-heroic and spiritual-priestly orders. The bourgeois type, compared to the sacral-warrior, only represents a lesser degree of progressive manhood (unedited Italian edition of Men Among the Ruins).


Evola attempted to influence Italy's fascist movement in the conservative-revolutionary direction he believed it should go — the direction of radical Traditionalism; i.e. away from the exoteric modern Christian Church, the bourgeoisie, and the masses.[citation needed] His efforts to influence the regime were a failure, and he believed that by not following his advice, Mussolini's party failed to fulfill its function.[citation needed] He would maintain the view that a revolutionary movement, similar to Fascism but in harmony with "Tradition", was necessary for the return to a higher form of civilization.

In the decade immediately following the war, Evola wrote two books which fall loosely into the categories "asceticism of action" and "asceticism of contemplation" in their prescriptions for political action.[citation needed]

In Men Among the Ruins, Evola described a Traditionalist attitude — possibly leading to a reactionary revolution — like what he had hoped Fascism could have been with the right leaders. This attitude is a sort of asceticism of action calling for political action to reform current society in a conservative-revolutionary / radical Traditional direction. But he also felt that the acceleration of modernity following World War II's outcome and thus, the elimination of any truly opposing forces, made any such revolution rather impossible, unless the 'unforeseeable' imposes a radical change of circumstances.

In Ride the Tiger, he prescribed a so-to-speak apolitical asceticism of contemplation in which a man is advised to act in the modern world, while remaining intellectually and spiritually detached from and above it. He had come to hold this view after coming to the conclusion that, in his view, the modern world was so decadent that a return to a "traditional" civilization was impossible. Evola argued that in order to survive in the modern world an enlightened or "differentiated man" should "ride the tiger". As a man, by holding onto the tiger's back, may survive the confrontation once the animal ends exhausted, so too might a man, by letting the world take him on its inexorable path, be able to turn the destructive forces around him into a kind of inner liberation.

Race

A number of Evola's articles and books deal explicitly with the subject of race.

A.J. Gregor comments: "In the [German translation of Imperialismo pagano], Evola considered principled anti-Semitism one of the essentials of a salvific 'racial rebirth' in the modern world. Not only did Evola make a point of identifying Karl Marx, one of the architects of the modern world of materialism, inferiority, pretended equality, and cultural decay, as a Jew--but he spoke of a Jewish capitalistic yoke that obstructed every effort at racial regeneration" (Mussolini's Intellectuals, pps. 200-201).

In Revolt Against the Modern World, he said that he considered himself to be a critic of the "racist worldview" by which he meant the theories of mainstream Nazis and others of his contemporaries. However, he wrote an introduction to an Italian language version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious antisemitic document, long proven to be a Tsarist fabrication,[22] that alleges a Jewish conspiracy to run the world through control of the media and finance, and replace the traditional social order with one based on mass manipulation.

Evola was indifferent as to whether the document was authentic or not. He classified it as a 'myth'.[23] In 1937, a year after the publication of Giovanni Preziosi's Italian edition in 1936, when it was claimed to be a fiction, Evola wrote as follows:
“ Whether or not the controversial Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion are false or authentic does not affect the symptomatic value of the document in question, that is, the fact, that many of the things that have occurred in modern times, having taken place after their publication, effectively agree with the plans assumed in that document, perhaps more than a superficial observer might believe.[24] ”


In short, he was unconcerned that could be a forgery, because that did not alter what he believed was the essential truth enciphered in the document.

In his introduction to the 1938 Italian edition of the Protocols, Evola wrote that the tract had "the value of a spiritual tonic," that Jews "destroy every surviving trace of true order and superior civilization," and that, "above all, in these decisive hours of western history, [the Protocols tract] cannot be ignored or dismissed without seriously undermining the front of those fighting in the name of the spirit, of tradition, of true civilization."
For Evola this text represented a manipulation by occult powers trying to hide behind the Jewish and Freemasonic historical drive toward a merchant society soon to be replaced by the chaos of "mass society" which could eventually turn against both.[25]

Evola accused Jews, as well as what he termed the "semitic spirit,"[26] of having a corrosive effect on the "Nordic" race (a race that was, in Evola's mythology, analogous to the Nazi's "Aryans"). Evola argued that not only Jews, but even non-Jews "Judaicized in their souls" must be combated by a "coherent, complete, impartial" anti-Semitism given the means to "identify and combat the Jewish mentality."[27] Evola supported the Nazi anti-Semitic view that there was a hidden form of Jewish power and influence in the modern world; he thought this Jewish power was a symptom of the "modern" world's lack of true aristocratic leadership.[25] Evola further held that Jewish people denigrated lofty "Aryan" ideals (of faith, loyalty, courage, devotion, and constancy) through a "corrosive irony" that ascribed every human activity to economic or sexual motives (à la Marx and Freud) (Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International, p. 309). In a 1938 article Evola accused Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Cesare Lombroso of being "proponents of Jewish materialistic culture in the nineteenth century;[28] two years later, in an essay entitled "Jews and Mathematics," Evola characterized Judaism as the antithesis of "Aryan civilization," and broadly attacked a range of what he considered examples of Jewish influences, from Pythagoreanism to mathematics.[28] The article was illustrated with pictures of notable Jews interspersed with classic anti-Semitic representations.[28]

In The Metaphysics of Sex (Inner Traditions, 1st US edition 1983, pps. 9-10), Evola discoursed on his philosophy of de-evolutionary spiritual racism: "Our starting point will be not the modern theory of evolution but the traditional doctrine of involution. We do not believe the man is derived from the ape by evolution. We believe that the ape is derived from man by involution. We agree with Joseph De Maistre that savage peoples are not primitive peoples, in the sense of original peoples, but rather the degenerating remains of more ancient races that have disappeared. We concur with the various researchers (Kohlbrugge, Marconi, Dacque, Westenhofer, and Adloff) who have rebelled against the evolutionary dogma, asserting that animal species evince the degeneration of primordial man's potential. These unfulfilled or deviant potentials manifest as by-products of the true evolutionary process that man has led since the beginning."

Evola believed that a race of "Nordic" people, anciently emanating from Golden Age Arctic Hyperborea, originally semi-immaterial and "soft-boned", had played a crucial founding role in Atlantis and the high cultures both of the East and West. In Evola's eyes, half-remembered, cryptic memories of a "more-than-human race" once existing in a "northern paradise" constitute the patrimony of the traditions of many diverse peoples. In this occult belief, Evola was additionally influenced by Arctic Home in the Vedas by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, which posited the polar North as the original home of the white Ur-Aryan tribes before their later separation into Western (Hellenic, Roman, Celtic, Germanic) and Eastern (Iranian, Indo-Aryan) divisions.

According to Joscelyn Godwin's research: "the basic outlines of Evola's prehistory resemble those of Theosophy, with Lemurian, Atlantean, and Aryan root-races succeeding each other, and a pole-shift marking the transition from one epoch to another" (Arktos, p. 60). Evola's dualism between the Northern Light and the Southern Light, and also the capture of the Atlanteans by the latter, is also found in the writings of Theosophy's co-founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky:
“ The Atlanteans [gravitated] toward the Southern Pole, the pit, cosmically and terrestrially -- whence breathe the hot passions blown into hurricanes by the cosmic Elementals, whose abode it is."[29] ”

“ Every beneficent (astral and cosmic) action comes from the North; every lethal influence from the South Pole. They are much connected with and influence right and left hand magic."[30] ”


Victor A. Shnirelman, a cultural anthropologist and ethnographer, has noted that cosmological racial ideas also appear in the Neo-Theosophical writings of H. P. Blavatsky's one-time disciple Alice Bailey. Shnirelman wrote that in Bailey's teachings, "Jews were depicted as the 'human product of the former Solar system,' linked with 'World Evil'"; he identified "similar ideas" in the works of Bailey and Evola.[31]

According to Evola, the hierarchy of races is really a hierarchy of embodied spiritualities; the spirit, rather than ethnic substance, determines culture; but at the same time race is the biological "memory" of a certain spiritual orientation. In order to describe what he called the lower, telluric, Negroid races, he frequently made use of the term "Southern" whereas to him higher races were "Northern." "North" and "South" are indicated as having simultaneously metaphysical, geographical and anthropological meanings:
“ Especially during the period of the long icy winter, it was natural that in the northern races the experience of the Sun, of Light, and of Fire itself should have acted in a spiritually liberating sense. Hence natures which were Uranian-solar, Olympian or filled with celestial fire would have developed much more from the sacral symbolism of these races than from others. Moreover, the rigor of the climate, the sterility of the soil, the necessity for hunting, and finally the need to emigrate across unknown seas and continents would naturally have molded those who preserved that spiritual experience of the Sun, of the luminous sky, and of fire into the temperament of warriors, of conquerors, of navigators, so as to favor that synthesis between spirituality and virility of which characteristic traces are preserved in the Aryan races (Revolt, p. 208). ”


Evola quotes the Confucian Chung Yung (10.4) to reinforce his point:
“ To teach with kindly benevolence, not to lose one's temper and avenge the unreasonableness of others, that is the virile energy of the South that is followed by the well-bred man. To sleep on a heap of arms and untanned skins, to die unflinching and as if dying were not enough, that is the virile energy of the North that is followed by the brave man. ”


According to Evola, the more recent Northern, White and Indo-European peoples (despite racial mixing) implicitly preserved more of the primordial Arctic Hyperborean blood-memory and are objectively spiritually superior to the archaic, matter-obsessed degenerate remnants of the races of the South. Evola (Revolt, p. 245) sees the sign of the Hyperborean Tradition and its antagonism with the forces of Antitradition in the Indian mythology surrounding the Vedic divinity Indra (cf. Thor), who is "fair of cheek" (Rig Veda, I.9.3) and with his "fair-complexioned friends" (I.100.18) annihilates the lawless black Dasyu, "giving protection to the Aryan color" (III.34.9), blowing to nothingness "the swarthy skin which Indra hates" (IX.73.5).

On the "demonic" nature of the lower negroid races and their degenerating remnants, Evola relies on an old Aryo-Zoroastrian tradition that teaches negroids belonged to the dark side owing to their alleged origin in the union between a demon and a wicked witch: "Zohak, during his reign, let loose a dev (demon) on a young woman, and let loose a young man on a parik (witch). They performed coition with [the sight] of the apparition; the negro came into being through that [novel] kind of coition" (Bundahishn, XIVB).

Flowering forth in the Greek, pre-Celtic, Indo-Aryan, Aryo-Persian, Armenic, Roman, Germanic, Tiwanaku, Teotihuacán, early Chinese, Aztec-Nahua, Inca and first Egyptian dynasties' representatives, with more or less ethnic but great spiritual purity, the "Northern Light" was considerably lost to the Atlantean offshoot which defiled itself through spiritual integration into the spiritual lunar sphere of the world of the "Mother" or "Earth" of the "Southern Light" and further miscegenation with bestial, dark Lemurian stocks. Revolt Against the Modern World presents world-history to be the saga of dualistic conflict between the "Northern Light" and the "Southern Light": on one side stand the Uranian, patriarchal stocks of purer Hyperborean lineage, climatically harshly conditioned and heroic-minded celebrators of the winter solstice (cf. Rene Guenon: "The starting-point given to the year that one can call normal, as being in direct conformity with primordial tradition, is the winter solstice", Traditional Forms and Cosmic Cycles, p. 24); on the other stand the chthonic and titanized inferior races and the spiritually/ethnically bastardized heirs of the fallen Atlantean civilization captured by the "Southern Light" and its sacerdotal and naturalistic-pantheist religion of promiscuous vegetal and animal fertility.

Evola cites Plato's description of the fall of Atlantis by Atlantean miscegenation with humankind (Critias, 110c; 120d-e; 121a-b) and the biblical myth of the benei elohim, the Sons of God catastrophically mixing with the "daughters of men" (Genesis 6: 4-13) as support for his esoteric, Aryanist anthropogenesis. Evola interprets archeological findings of semi-human hominid fossils as not purely primordial but evidence of the mismating of the celestial boreal race with inferior animalistic breeds as well, and most often, as remnants of degenerating, bestialized races in their final involutionary stages preceding extinction.

Just as Evola affirmed the natural hierarchy between different individuals of the same race, so he affirmed a natural rank ordering of the different human races. As the best-preserved remnants of the primordial celestial Hyperboreans, Evola affirmed the white race in its different branches as the creator of the greatest planetary civilizations:
"We have to remember that behind the various caprices of modern historical theories, and as a more profound and primordial reality, there stands the unity of blood and spirit of the white races who created the greatest civilizations both of the East and West, the Iranian and Hindu as well as the ancient Greek and Roman and the Germanic" (The Doctrine of Awakening, p. 14).


In fact, Evola publicly celebrated Italian Fascism as a means to ensure and restore in a modern decadent world white supremacy:
"And if Fascist Italy, among the various Western nations is the one which first wished for a reaction against the degeneration of the materialist, democratic and capitalist civilisation, against the League of Nations ideology, there are grounds for thinking, without even any scintilla of chauvinistic infatuation, that Italy will be on the front line among the forces which will guide the future world and will restore the supremacy of the white race" ("Il Problema della supremazia della razza bianca" [The Problem of the Supremacy of the White Race], Lo Stato, 1936).


While characterizing race as something hereditary and biological, Evola also claimed that race was not simply and linearly defined by mere skin color and the various other hereditary factors. In other words, in addition to predominantly "Aryan" or, more broadly, "Northern" biology, the initial necessary precondition for further racial differentiation, one must prove oneself spiritually "Aryan". The fact that in India the term Arya was the synonym of dwija, "twice-born" or "regenerated" supports this point. To him higher race implied something akin to supra-human, spiritual caste. Evola wrote, "the supernatural element was the foundation of the idea of a traditional patriciate and of legitimate royalty."

In 'Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist,' Thomas Sheehan points out that "Evola prided himself on developing a theory of races that went beyond the merely biological to the spiritual. What constitutes a superior race for Evola is the spiritual orientation of a given stock, the subsumption of the requisite biological material (and that did mean the Aryan races) under a qualitatively elevating form, namely reference to the realm of the spirit. But in fact all that Evola's theory does is to promote biological-ethnic racism a step higher. There are enough references in his works to the 'inferior, non-European races,' to the 'power of inferior strata and races,' to disgusting 'Negro syncopations' in jazz, to 'Jewish psychoanalysis'--and enough adulation of the Aryans—for us to divine that Evola's 'spiritual' racism may have had something other than disinterested Apollonian origins."

In Mussolini's Intellectuals, A. James Gregor discusses Evola's racism as follows: "[In the German rendering of Imperialismo pagano], Evola argues that it is out of the creativity of an 'ur-Aryan' and 'solar-Nordic' blood that world culture emerges. Conversely, culture decline is a function of the feckless mixture of Aryan, with lesser 'animalistic,' blood ... According to Imperialismo pagano, the 'natural' and endogamous caste system of antiquity that sustained the 'purity' of the culture-creating 'Hyperborean-Nordics' slowly disintegrated over time under the corrosive influence of Semitic religion and the 'Semitic spirit'.

While Evola was clear about the relative insignificance of the physical attributes of race, he did acknowledge that the 'original Hyperboreans,' which he was critically concerned, were probably 'dolichocephalic, tall and slender, blond and blue-eyed' (Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza, p. 67).

Evola held that the physical mixture of races, particularly between Aryans and races that were 'alien' (i.e., non-Aryan), was always hazardous — but mixture between 'related' races might produce hybrid vigor. Given his generous notion of what constituted an Aryan race (Evola was convinced of the Hyperborean origins of most Europeans, the indigenous peoples of North and South America, as well as those of the Indian subcontinent), those candidate races Evola considered to be truly 'alien' were never explicitly catalogued—except in terms of Semites and the deeply pigmented peoples of sub-Saharan Africa (see Evola, 'Psicologia criminale ebraica,' Difesa della Razza 2, no. 18, pp. 32–35; Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza, pp. 74, 237). What seemed eminently clear, for all the qualifiers, was that all the material races Evola identified as capable of serving as hosts for the extrabiological and supernatural spiritual elements were purportedly biological descendents of the 'Aryan-Nordics' of Hyperborea.

In the golden age, the celestial race was spiritual—only gradually, over time, taking on material properties ... As a necessary consequence of miscegenation, there was a continual and irreversible decline of the celestials in ancient times (Evola identifies the Jews as providing a 'ferment of decomposition, dissolution and corruption' in antiquity; see Evola, Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza p. 160; Rivolta contro il mondo moderno, p. 314), a tenuous revival under the Romans, and another by the Nordic-Germans during the course of the Holy Roman Empire—but by the time of the Renaissance, with its humanism, rationalism, universalism and its gradual submission to the theses of the equality of all humans, humankind had entered the kali-yuga, the terminal age of 'obscurity,' the end of this current race cycle. For Evola, given the fateful path traversed by history, there remained only one course for contemporary humanity: an attempt at reconstitution of the primordial celestial race, amid the debris of previous race cycles, employing the racial remnants of the Hyperboreans.

For Evola, spiritual forces shaped races for their own inscrutable purposes. The notion that mutations, governed from 'on high,' might be the source of raciation was a relatively common conviction among German esoterics (See Pauwels and Bergier, The Morning of the Magicians, pp. 400–5). Geneticists, Evola argued, failed to provide a compelling account of how mutations occur. He maintained, as a consequence, that 'the cause is to be found elsewhere, in the actions of a superbiological element not reducible to the determinism of the physical transmission of genetic materials.' The true cause of hereditary variation was to be found 'rather by starting from another point of view that affords one an entirely different set of laws' than those of empirical science.

Given this supposition, Evola proceeded to argue that Fascism or National Socialism—with their heroism, their sacrificial and ascetic ethic, their authoritarian and hierarchical order, together with their appeal to myth and ritual—provided an environment compatible with the 'spirit' of the celestials. That might be enough to prompt a cosmic, if gradual, reemergence of the celestial race. In such circumstances, the formative spiritual principle that, in the ultimate analysis, governs the transcendent 'superhistory' of humankind might literally reconstitute the individuals of the primordial creative race of Hyperborea. Evola sought to show that such an outcome would not be essentially determined by biology, but by the cosmic spirit—that its formative influence could transform individuals into persons accommodating a properly corresponding soul and spirit—to render them once again 'pure.'"

The eminent scholar of Fascism, Renzo De Felice, maintained that while Evola's spiritual, neo-idealist racial theories were wrong, they had a notable intellectual ancestry, and Evola defended them in an honorable way: "Evola for his part completely refused any racial theorizing of a purely biological kind, which went so far as to draw to himself the attacks and sarcasms of a Landra, for example. This does not mean that the 'spiritual' theory of race is acceptable, but it had at least the merit of not totally failing to see certain values, to refuse the German aberrations and the ones modeled after them and to try to keep racism on a plane of cultural problems worthy of the name" (Storia degli Ebrei Italiani sotto il Fascismo, or The History of Italian Jews under Fascism [Milan, 1977]; 465).

Christophe Boutin, in his major work on Evola, Politique et Tradition: Julius Evola dans le siècle, 1898-1974 (Paris, 1992), discusses Evola's views on racism and Negroes (Boutin, pp. 197–200). Boutin mentions that in Evola's 1968 collection of essays, L’Arco e la clava (Milan, 1968, revised 1971), there is a chapter on "America Negrizzata," in which Evola criticizes the "Telluric" Negroid influence on popular American culture, while acknowledging that there has been little actual miscegenation. Evola also argues against American racial integration in this chapter. The unadulterated 1972 Italian edition of Men Among the Ruins ends with an appendix entitled "Appendix on the Myths of our Time," of which number 4 is "Taboos of our Times" (Gli uomini e le rovine, Rome, 1953, revised 1967, with the new appendix, 1972). In this section Evola argues that modern irrational taboos forbid an honest, frank discussion on the working classes and Negroes. Evola notices that the mere word 'Negro' had connotations of offensiveness in the left-wing atmosphere of the era: "la tabuizzazione che porta fino ad evitare l'uso della designazione 'negro,' per le sue implicazioni 'offensive'" (ibid., p. 276). Evola opines that a true Rightist movement will not compromise with this sort of moralistic development. (The Inner Traditions English translation suppressed Evola's appendix, ironically bearing out Evola's thoughts on the "taboos of our times.")


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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby ShinShinKid » Fri Apr 04, 2014 10:07 pm

Well played, God. Well played".
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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby Jerky » Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:42 am

Whoa now. Has Levenda been outed as a fascist recently and I missed the news?

Wombaticus Rex » 23 Mar 2014 17:01 wrote:Interesting that Hoffman is (quite correctly) identified as a Fascist who is salty about being born too lower-class to be eligible for KoM, yet quotes Levenda with no caveats.

Perhaps he will have a field day with Levenda in some future series?

Anyways, an interesting second installment although I'm starting to think the author actually has not read any Evola, based on the curiously short shrift he is being given despite being named in the title of the series. The Masonic elements are strong in the bathroom scene -- especially the fake castration. However, initiation into the Space Monkeys is clearly drawn from a different fraternal organization with mind control tendencies: the US Army.
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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby Jerky » Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:52 am

Caught the clarification upstream. Never mind.

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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby American Dream » Thu May 15, 2014 11:29 am

From Gary Lachman's Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen (Quest Books 2008):

One very important follower of Evola's ideas also believed in the necessity of political violence. In Ordeal by Labyrinth, a series of interviews with the writer Claude-Henri Rocquet, the historian of religion Mircea Eliade remarked that he became "politically aware" during his time in India, where he witnessed the same repression that angered people like the theosophist and Indian Home Rule advocate Annie Besant. Eliade remarked that "One day I heard an extremist talking and I had to admit he was right. I understood perfectly well that there had to be some violent protestors too."[1] India, however, isn't the only country in which Eliade's name is associated with political violence. In his homeland of Romania, there were links between the two that, as many of his detractors believe, Eliade did his best to obscure. Although the Eliade that most readers know is the tolerant, multicultural scholar of the world's religions, in a younger guise, Eliade was a fiercely nationalist writer, motivated by the same intolerant views that informed Schwaller de Lubicz and Eliade's Traditionalist mentor, Evola. In an article written in 1937, "Hungarians in Bucharest," the thirty-year old Eliade complains that over the recent Christmas holidays, three Hungarian plays were staged in his nation's capital. But this wasn't all. In the film Dracula's Daughter-an admirable sequel to the Bela Lugosi classic-some of the characters call for a Hungarian Transylvania. "I would have loved to hear the audience jeer for the entire duration of the movie," Eliade wrote. "I would have loved to see a group of students tear the film to pieces and trash the equipment."[2] Like many Romanians at the time, Eliade resented what he saw as Hungarian incursions into his nation, much as the British Nationalist Party is troubled by the "economic migration" of Eastern Europeans into Britain today, made possible by the European Union. Eliade made his strident remarks in print, in a national newspaper, at a time when in Germany many "patriots"-and not only students-were doing precisely the kind of thing he yearned to do, not solely to film projectors and movie screens but to people, mostly Jews, the universally unwanted guest.

That Eliade, like Schwaller de Lubicz, might want to forget such an injudicious past -- and might want others to also -- is understandable. Yet the kind of esoteric politics that Evola linked to Traditionalist thought remained a part of Eliade's sensibilities. In the same series of interviews, speaking of the political power of cultural activities like literature and art -- he calls them "political weapons" -- Eliade echoes Schwaller de Lubicz's and Guénon's calls for an elite. "It is no longer the politicians who stand at the concrete center of history," he told his interviewer, " but the great minds, the ‘intellectual elites.'" Eliade had in mind a small number of "great minds," five or six, but, exaggerated or not, "those 'five' or 'six' are inordinately important."[3] Although Eliade would speak critically of Guénon, and would never publicly voice his debt to Evola, his Traditionalist roots show through the camouflage of half a century.



CLOSET TRADITIONALIST

In the late 1920s and early '30s, Eliade was a "distant follower" of Evola's and Reghini's UR group; exactly how he made contact with them is unclear, but Eliade became acquainted with Guénon's work through Reghini, as had Evola.[4] Eliade carried on an extensive correspondence with Evola-Evola even sent him copies of his books during Eliade's time in India-and although there is little direct trace of Evola's influence in Eliade's oeuvre, in his early years he was clearly a follower of his thought.[5] In 1930, Eliade published an essay in which he spoke of Evola as a great thinker; in the same essay he also praised the work of other racist philosophers, like Arthur de Gobineau, Huston Stuart Chamberlain, and the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. Eliade was so taken with Evola's ideas-and so eager to avoid a public declaration of that interest-that in 1941, at the age of thirty-four, he started writing a novel in which Evola features as a character, an occultist named Tuliu, a close approximation of Evola's own first name, who espouses an esoteric faith which he calls "traditional metaphysics." Tuliu lives in a small scholar's dwelling where the bookcases are filled with "the complete works of René Guénon and J. Evola" as well as "complete collections of Ur, Krur [the name of another Evolian journal] and Études Traditionelles." Tuliu recommends Guénon and Evola to his friends, but a haphazard pile of books by Blavatsky, Steiner, Papus, and Annie Besant suggests the lack of importance these thinkers have for him. In the journal Eliade kept while writing the novel, he remarks that he must devote a special chapter to Tuliu's "philosophy," "lest the reader believe he is a case of a simple scatter-brained 'occultist.'" "Actually," he continues, "his theories are not completely foreign to mine," and Eliade remarks that he will use Tuliu to "say, for various reasons about which there is not room to dwell here, things I have never had the courage to confess publicly." "Only occasionally," he goes on, "have I admitted to a few friends my ‘traditionalist' beliefs (to use René Guénon's term)."[6] Given remarks like these, it isn't difficult to see Eliade as a kind of "closet Traditionalist."

Why in his own journal Eliade didn't have room to "to dwell" on his reasons for never publicly "confessing" to his adherence to Traditionalist beliefs is unclear, unless we recognize that he didn't want a record-even a private one-of his own admission to a kind of intellectual cowardice. What Evola himself thought of this is unknown-the novel was never finished and the journals came to light only years later -- although he did once ask Eliade about his reticence to refer to him in any of his books. Eliade replied that he wrote for a general audience, not for "initiates."[7] As in the case of Jung, Eliade seems to have to taken steps to see that his interest in questionable occult matters didn't hamper his having a respectable career.

Eliade met his secret mentor in 1937. Following his visit to Vienna, where he lectured at the Nazi Kulturbund, Evola carried on to Hungary and Romania. Here he met Eliade, and his Romanian disciple introduced him to Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, leader at the time of a far-Right Christian "chivalrous" society, the Legion of the Archangel Michael, later known as the Iron Guard. It's his association with this spiritual elite, and his "fellow traveling," or worse, with Romanian fascism, that, as his detractors claim, Eliade tried to keep hidden.

Much of the responsibility for Eliade's "outing" is credited to the research of his Romanian student, collaborator, and later literary executor, Ioan Culianu. Like Eliade, Culianu was a brilliant historian of religion, magic, and the occult and was himself thought to display remarkable powers of prediction and fortune-telling. Culianu was also an outspoken public critic of both the Ceaucescu regime, and that of Ion IIiescu, which followed the downfall of Romanian communism. In 1991, Culianu's body was found in the bathroom of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, where Eliade taught until his death in 1986. He had been shot once in the back of the head, execution- style. Culianu's murderer or murderers were never caught. Although Chicago police initially thought Culianu's death might be the work of some occult group unhappy with his research, the most plausible explanation is that it was the work of Romanian nationalists, unhappy with his criticisms of political developments in his homeland. It's also possible that a revived Iron Guard, unhappy with Culianu's research into Eliade's past, retaliated and used his murder as a warning for other Romanian expatriates.[8]

Some of Eliade's "secret," however, was already known to many at the university and to the academic community in general, although it wasn't until his last years that the full details of his other life became widely available. In 1969, Gershom Scholem made it known that Israel could not welcome Eliade, who, like Scholem, was one of the "star" lecturers at the Eranos conferences; the reason was Eliade's past. In 2000, the novelist Saul Bellow published a book, Ravelstein, a thinly disguised account of the last days of his friend the philosopher Allan Bloom, who died in 1992, from complications arising from AIDS. Bloom, a student of Leo Strauss, came to nationwide prominence in the late 1980s when his book The Closing of the American Mind, criticizing the decline of university education under the rule of leftist professors, became a surprise bestseller. Like Eliade and Bellow, Bloom taught at the University of Chicago, and in the novel Eliade appears as the "Romanian nationalist" Radu Grielescu, who wants to mitigate his anti-Semitic past by making friends and being seen with Bloom/Ravelstein, a Jew. Bellow, no stranger to esotericism -- his novel Humboldt's Gift is heavily influenced by Rudolf Steiner, and he once carried on a kind of "correspondence course" in anthroposophy with the philosopher Owen Barfield -- makes no bones about Grielescu's "secret." "The man was a Hitlerite," Bellow writes, who likened the presence of Jews in Romania to a case of social syphilis, a reference to an article written by Eliade in 1937 in which he spoke of Romania being "conquered by Jews and torn to pieces by foreigners."[9] Even Eliade's countrymen, like the playwright Eugene Ionescu, criticized Eliade for creating a "stupid, dreadful, reactionary Romania."[10]



THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL

The Legion of the Archangel Michael was established in Romania in 1927 by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Codreanu had studied law at the University of Iasi, on the Russian/Romanian border, where he became involved in anti-Semitic and anti-communist activities. In 1923 a plan to murder several Jewish bankers and politicians was aborted when Codreanu was arrested, although he did later murder the police prefect of Iasi, a crime for which he was acquitted. This murder became the prototype for later political assassinations associated with the Legion, whose philosophy embraced a kind of death fanaticism that included martyrdom, communication with the dead, and a contempt for the body --all aspects, incidentally, of the shamanism Eliade would later become associated with. Before forming the Legion, Codreanu had been a follower of Alexandru C. Cuza, a political economist at the University of Bucharest who had founded a League of National Christian Defense. Cuza's violent anti-Semitism was seen as insufficient by Codreanu, who looked to the movement to bring about the "moral rejuvenation" of Romania, which would nonetheless include its "purification" of Jews, Hungarians, and other undesirables -- an early twentieth century version of ethnic cleansing. This would come about through the creation of a "new man," a version of the "regeneration" we have encountered throughout this book. In this sense the Legion was as much a spiritual and religious movement as it was a political one. Its ideology was based on a fundamentalist form of Orthodox Christianity, and it took its name from the icon of the Archangel Michael. If Mussolini's Fascism had the state as its center, and Hitler's Nazism had race, for Codreanu and his followers, Christ, paradoxically, was the heart of their vicious and intolerant creed.

Like much else in Eliade's "hidden" past, the exact nature of his relationship with the Legion is still unclear. Detractors argue that he was a "card-carrying" member and enthusiast, while supporters claim his dallying with the Legion was a regrettable youthful faux pas, and that he left before the violence associated with the later Iron Guard appeared.[11] Yet Eliade's newspaper articles praising Codreanu's elite clearly and publicly linked him to it. As with Evola's association with Fascism, the fact that he may never have literally joined the Legion seems overshadowed by his clear sympathies with it.

Most English-speaking readers are unaware that in his early career, Eliade was a kind of all round public intellectual and that his first essay into Romanian nationalist politics was a series of articles he wrote under the heading "Spiritual Itinerary." In these he focused on political ideals favored by the far Right. Like Evola, Eliade rejected liberalism, democracy, and modernization; he also praised Mussolini, an early sign of the admiration for "strong" leaders that he would also have for Spain's Franco and Portugal's Salazar, something he shared with Jung. Eliade approved of an ethnic nationalist state founded on the Orthodox Church; for all his interest in Oriental and "primitive" (read "primordial") religions, Eliade remained a lifelong devotee of Orthodox Christianity. The Legion of the Archangel Michael was a kind of vanguard for an Orthodox revolution which Eliade hoped for in Romania. Eliade's celebration of the Legion suggests that his Traditionalism followed Evola's emphasis on the Kshatriya, warrior, caste rather than Guénon's more Brahmin version.

According to some accounts, Eliade was introduced into the Legion in 1935 by his friend and fellow writer Emil Cioran.[12] By 1937, the year he introduced the Legion's leader to his mentor, Evola, Eliade was recognized as one of its leading propagandists, a position acquired through his enthusiastic newspaper articles. Its aims were impressive. The Legion, he believed, would spark a Christian revolution aimed at creating a new Romania, and its leader, Codreanu, would reconcile Romania with God. The Legion's victory was part of Romania's destiny, Eliade declared, and, as mentioned, it would "bring forth a new type of man" and the "triumph of the Christian spirit in Europe."[13] Like Evola and Guénon, Eliade believed in a geographical "supreme spiritual center," a "repository of primordial tradition," a kind of Romanian Agartha or Shambhala, which in his case was located in Dacia, the Roman province from which Romanians claim they have descended. Part of the Legion's mission was to cleanse this "primordial" "sacred space" of unwanted intruders. Linked to this was the cult of Zalmoxis, a Dacian deity at the center of a monotheistic "death and resurrection" religion like Christianity, with which it could easily be assimilated. Disturbingly, notwithstanding its esoteric and occult overtones, much of Eliade's rhetoric about the Legion of the Archangel Michael has surprising echoes with similar ideals advocated by the current American Christian Right.

Along with Cioran, who professed an admiration for Hitler (and who, unlike Eliade and Heidegger, later publicly repented of it), other figures close to Eliade were involved with the Legion, most significantly his philosophy professor, Nae Ionescu, with whom Eliade and Evola lunched after their meeting with Codreanu. Like Eliade and Cioran, Ionescu was part of the influential Criterion group of new Romanian intellectuals, and Ionescu's curious philosophy, which he called "Trairism"-a blend of existentialism, Romanian nationalism, and Christian mysticism-also advocated a regime aimed at "purifying" Romania of foreign elements. While many were inspired by Eliade's "legionary spirit," others were less enthused and saw his polemics as "mystical, dense and stifling," promoting "noxious practical consequences" which boiled down to "the elimination of Jews through acts of physical repression and persecution."[14]

One reader of Eliade's articles was Romania's King Carol II, who, alarmed at the Legion's growing power, took control of it in 1938, arresting Condreanu and other members, including Eliade. Codreanu and his twelve closest supporters were strangled in their cells -- an event that brought Evola to tears -- and Eliade spent some weeks in prison but was eventually released. King Carol II then handed control of the Legion over to Horia Sima, a Nazi sympathizer, who transformed it into the notorious Iron Guard, a "chivalrous" order whose atrocities rivaled those of the SS, and who the Allies would recognize as the Romanian Nazi Party.



FASCIST DIPLOMAT

After his arrest, Eliade refused to sign a declaration of dissociation with the Legion; he later argued that doing so would only put him on its "hit list" were they to return to power. But his association with fascism didn't end there. Through the help of his student Michel Vâslan, who had joined a separate Traditionalist group led by Vasile Lovinescu and would later become a follower of Guénon, Eliade was given a post as a cultural attaché to the United Kingdom; he was later transferred to Paris, and then to Portugal, which was then under the dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, for whom Eliade had high regard. For the next several years Eliade functioned as a cultural envoy for Romania, which in 1940 formed a pro-Nazi government under the new king, Michael I. Until the end of World War II and its coming under Soviet rule, Romania had a succession of fascist governments, including the short-lived National Legionary State, which had the vicious Iron Guard in near complete control. In 1941, after a failed and bloody Legionary Rebellion, when the Iron Guard made a bid for absolute control, Romania came under the fascist dictatorship of Ion Antonescu. That same year, Romania officially joined the Axis powers. At that point Eliade became the cultural attaché of one fascist dictatorship, in league with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, while residing in the capital of another, Salazar's. Part of his job was to distribute propaganda supporting Antonescu's totalitarian regime.

If this wasn't enough to give Eliade's apologists headaches, and his detractors an excuse for righteous indignation, in Paris after World War II Eliade started an anti-communist journal called The Morning Star (its Romanian title, Luceafârul, suggests the connection with Lucifer more clearly.) This was funded by Nicolae Malaxa, a Romanian industrialist and financier of the Iron Guard who had been a corporate partner of the high-ranking Nazi Hermann Goering; at one point Malaxa and Goering collaborated on a scheme to seize the assets of a Jewish businessman, and during the war Malaxa had put his considerable industrial empire behind the Nazi effort. (Curiously, although a known Nazi, Malaxa was later allowed into the United States, with the support of the government and the help of a young Richard Nixon.)[15] Eliade was also known to have high regard for Alain de Benoist, founder of the French New Right, who is a professed pagan, highly influenced by Julius Evola, and also for the Nazi jurist and political theorist Carl Schmitt, whose ideas, along with those of Leo Strauss and Eric Vogelin, inform some aspects of American conservatism today.



THE POLITICS OF MYTH

In The Politics of Myth, Robert Ellwood argues that Eliade later repented of his youthful fascist sympathies and embraced a more tolerant, "modern" vision of religion and society. Yet as he was in his thirties by the time he was a diplomat, how "youthful" Eliade sympathies were is debatable, and Eliade never made a public recantation of his controversial activities. Scholars have combed Eliade's later, more well-known work for its Traditionalist sources and for traces of his political philosophy, finding in his widely regarded academic works elements of his early "legionary spirit." That Evolian ideas might inform some of Eliade's later works doesn't necessarily detract from their value. Some critics, however, have taken the "hard" view that in the work that made him famous, Eliade peddled a Traditionalist ethos under the guise of "objective" scholarship.

Yet it isn't difficult to see that although much more open to modern ideas, Eliade's later vision is still one of the primacy of the past, of what we can call "ontological roots," as a look at the book that made his reputation in the English-speaking world, The Myth of the Eternal Return, makes clear. Eliade's "eternal return" isn't Nietzsche's notion of an eternal repetition of events but a vision of myth and ritual as a means of re-enacting the original, "primordial" acts that give life its sacred character. For Eliade, "archaic" or "traditional" man had no interest in history, in the ceaseless flow of becoming, only in being, which he entered into by returning to the mythical "first time." History for traditional man existed in what Eliade calls "profane time," a time devoid of meaning, escape from which was granted only by entering "mythic time," the once-and-once-only of the original, primary rites. Indeed, Eliade speaks of the "terror of history," "primordial man's" fear of being swallowed by the relentless flow of meaningless events, and we recall Guénon's lack of interest in the last two thousand years (Evola, too, showed a haughty disdain for "becoming"). Eliade is interested not in a past associated with history but in a past embraced by myth, and an ungenerous view might suggest that Eliade's later philosophy provides a justification for his own lack of interest in his own historical past. As his critic Adriana Berger writes, for Eliade "the past is not valid because it represents history but because it represents origins."[16] This fascination with origins, with beginnings, is linked to the search for Aryan -- or in Eliade's case, Dacian -- roots. It's at the bottom of most racist ideologies, including that of Eliade's mentor, Evola. In essence, it's a kind of snobbery. It argues that where you come from is more important than what kind of person you are or what you make of yourself. Among aristocrats, nobility, and "old money," the self-made man (or woman) is always a kind of upstart and not really "one of us." Sadly, for much of Western history, the Jew has been cast as the perennial upstart, but others have played this role as well.

Although as Ellwood argues, the vision of the past embraced by Eliade (and by Jung and many others) is really a romanticized modern vision of what this mythic time was like -- if it ever existed -- it still functions as a powerful attractant for those unhappy with modernity. The vision of a "homogenous, largely rural, and 'rooted' society'" with a "hierarchical superstructure," possessing a "religious or mystical tendency able to express its unity ritually and experientially,"[17] is in many ways attractive, given our own "atomistic" world of "rootless cosmopolitanism," and the idea that such a "sacred" society existed sometime in the immemorial past is seductive. But the idea of the past as preferable to the present isn't new. Indeed, the urge to return to some great good time seems as old as humanity itself: ever since Adam and Eve we've been trying to get back to the garden. And the notion that the future will be better than the past -- the essence of modernity -- is, quite rightly, only a relatively recent idea.

As the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski points out, the essence of conservatism is the belief that there are some things worth conserving[18], the recognition that "in some of its aspects, however secondary, the past was better than the present"[19] and that the relentless flow of the "terror of history" in an uncertain progress may not always be desirable. Many of us, myself included, dizzied by the unending stream of technological advance and social change, may agree with this. Yet while the attraction of origins is great, there is something to be said for what the neo-Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch called the "not-yet," the possibilities and potentials that lie ahead, the promise of the new. To be sure, the "not-yet" view of history has problems of its own; witness the wreckage left by the many attempts to, in Eric Vogelin's phrase, "immanentize the eschaton," to violently wrench history in order to bring about the millennium. Strangely, forces in far-Right politics in the United States of recent years seem to combine the worst elements of the two opposing views: a return to some better time in the past and an imminent apocalypse that will bring about a new age.



----



FOOTNOTES:

1. Mircea Eliade and Claude-Henri Rocquet, Ordeal by Labyrinth (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 55.

2. Marta Petreu, An Infamous Past (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005), p. 72.

3. Eliade and Rocquet, Ordeal by Labyrinth, pp. 80-82.

4. Sedgwick, Against the Modern World, p. 109.

5. An indication of the regard Eliade had for Evola is seen in his diary entry on hearing of Evola's death. "Today I learn of the death of Julius Evola. . . . Memories surge up in me, those of my years at university, the books we had discovered together, the letters I received from him in Calcutta.

. . ." Mircea Eliade, Journal III (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 161.

6. Liviu Borda_, "The Secret of Dr. Eliade" in The International Eliade, ed. Bryan Rennie (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007), pp. 101-30. See also Natale Spineto, "Mircea Eliade and ‘Traditional Thought,'" pp. 131-47, in the same volume.

7. Sedgwick, Against the Modern World, p. 111.

8. See Ted Anton's Eros, Magic, and the Murder of Professor Culianu (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1996).

31. "Final Report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania," http://www.inshr-ev.ro/pdf/Final_Report.pdf.

10. Petreu, Infamous Past, p. 55.

11. On the side of the detractors, the most forceful is Adriana Berger, for whom Eliade is "one of the most influential intellectuals of his generation and an active Fascist ideologue." See "Mircea Eliade: Romanian Fascism and the History of Religions in the United States" in Tainted

Greatness: Anti-Semitism and Cultural Heroes, ed. Nancy A. Harrowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), p. 51. On the supporters' side there is Bryan Rennie, editor of several books dedicated to Eliade's work. For Rennie, "Eliade's rightist leanings may be seen as lamentable, but they have not been proven culpable." See Reconstructing Eliade (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), p. 161.

12. Petreu, Infamous Past, p. 60.

13. Sedgwick, Against the Modern World, p. 114.

14. Petreu, Infamous Past, p. 61; Adriana Berger, "Mircea Eliade," p. 60.

15. Berger, "Mircea Eliade," pp. 64-65.

16. Ibid., p. 57.

17. Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth: A Study of C. G. Jung, Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), p. 29.

18. This applies to areas other than politics. In this sense, anyone interested in "saving the planet" is a conservative.

19. Leszek Kolakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 5.
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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby American Dream » Sun Dec 06, 2015 9:22 pm

Inside Virginia’s Creepy White-Power Wolf Cult

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... -cult.html

Jack Donovan, who’s written extensively about the glory of Wolves of Vinland (and who recently lectured at the white supremacist National Policy Institute conference in D.C.) figures prominently in the group. He sat with the Waggeners for the interview where they espoused the importance of keeping your tribesmen from looking weak.

Donovan recently discussed his interesting views about masculinity on Chuck Woolery’s podcast—yes, THAT Chuck Woolery, the former host of Wheel of Fortune and Love Connection your grandparents loved. Woolery is a bit of a conservative Twitter star, to the extent that’s a thing that exists, and has a loyal Twitter following of more than 120,000 people. His advertising agency didn’t respond to a request for comment on his decision to use his star power to promote a guy who beheads chickens and hangs out with a church-burner.

Perhaps more curiously, Donovan recently palled around with Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk. Donovan posted a picture on Instagram about three months ago of the two men in a cheery embrace.

“So ‘Fight Club’ author Chuck Palahniuk stopped by my office today to talk about masculinity and choke me out,” Donovan wrote. “#fightclub #wolvesofvinland #operationwerewolf #opww #masculinity”

In another Instagram post, Donovan thanked Palahniuk for sending him copies of his new comic book.

“These will be a great break on the flight to D.C. this week for #NPI,” Donovan wrote, referring to the annual white supremacist gathering at the National Press Club.
"If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."
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Re: Fight Club, Evola and Secret Societies

Postby slomo » Sun Dec 06, 2015 9:40 pm

Three AD copypastas since I've been gone a few hours. Methinks someone is getting just a little perturbed... :angelwings:
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