What happened to Evola in Vienna? What were his relations with the
higher echelons of National Socialism? And what with those of
Fascism? These are three of the main historical-bibliographical
problems not yet resolved within the burgeoning field of Evolian
Studies. In fact, they may never be completely resolved, since it
would be naive to imagine that, even if they are still intact, the
archives of the Ahnenerbe and its Italian equivalent, from which
Evolians gain most of their information on these subjects, would be
altogether decisive and definitive on these matters.
Some have sought to "fill in the gaps" by means of embroidery, in the
tradition of sensational journalism, describing Evola, for example,
as the "éminence grise of Mussolini", while others beat around the
bush in a conventional manner, attempting to exorcise their own
senses of guilt by trying more or less to apologise, from a merely
moral point of view, for Evola's so-called "compromises" with Fascism
and National Socialism. We may add that this shows some temerity,
because Evola not only never apologised - why apologise when one has
not made any mistake? - but once stated that, if anyone needed
excuses, it was the others, the representatives of counter-initiation
and their gynaeco-democratic lackeys, whose lessons a differentiated
man does not need.
Marco Rossi, however, proceeds in a different manner. In the appendix
to the latest edition of 'L'Arco e la Clava', he has tackled these
three problems head-on, asking the real questions which need to be
asked, in such a clear, precise and straightforward way that it seems
to us that he has summed them up and that the reader interested in
going further along these lines should focus on these points of
reference, to which we have added a few important important
additional observations:
In the first place, we must examine the well-known occurrence in
Vienna, after which Evola spent the rest of his life paralysed. Was
this the result of a bombing raid, and of his 'aristocratic' refusal
to take refuge in an air raid shelter, as what we might call 'the
official version' has it? Or was it the result of a failed operation
of theurgy, as certain unverifiable accounts claim? This divergence
of explanations indicates a certain divergence between conceptions of
Evolian esotericism: the study of cultures, on the one hand, and an
initiatory itinerary containing even the most daring experiments, on
the other.
In the second place, there is the problem of his relations with the
SS. Right-wing historiography, on one hand, underlines the hostility
of the SS towards Evola's thinking ; but, on the other hand, regards
it as possible that he collaborated with the SD, the security service
of the Black Order. This is what Christophe Boutin affirms in a text
which is generally laudatory: "Politique et Tradition : Julius Evola
dans le siècle 1898/1974", authoritatively reviewed in 'Diorama
letterario' by Piero di Vona, who describes it as "rich, serious, and
quite well documented, (with, as its) specific object the formation
of Evola's political ideas, seen as a reflection of the general world-
view peculiar to Traditional thought". According to Boutin, Evola was
indeed a collaborator of the intelligence service of the SD. This
collaboration comprised services: (1) as a lecturer ; (2) as the
examiner of Masonic documents in Wien ; (3) as an informer to the SD.
For di Vona "it only remains to suppose that the information passed
on by Evola concerned circles and characters within Fascism, if
indeed what Boutin tells us corresponds to the truth".
However, the judgment of the SS upon his lectures, which were
organised primarily by the Herrenklub, but with the participation of
officials of the Ahnenerbe (the Institute for Research into Aryan
Ancestry), is, according to the latter, negative. In a 1938 report to
Himmler, they state : "Evola's doctrine is neither National Socialist
nor Fascist. With these two conceptions he has in common certain
values, which, however, are considerably altered in his formulation.
What most especially separates his view from the vision of the world
of National Socialism is its radical carelessness as to the real
history of the past of our people, in favour of a fanciful and
abstract spiritualistic utopia. In his lectures, nevertheless, he
does affirm the historical right of the Nordic race to world
leadership. His relations with Spann have been clarified, we may add.
Evola appears to have seen Spann as a potential ally and to have
taken opportunities to get nearer to him, irrespective of what
political future Spann might in fact have."
Othmar Spann was an Austrian thinker who united integralist
Catholicism with an animist vitalism. This point "clarified", the
report continues as follows: "The ultimate secret appeal that Evola
may have found in his theories and programmes could be described as
a "rebellion of the ancient nobility" against the world of today. He
is a reactionary Roman. On the whole, his character is marked by an
aristocratic feudality of an antique style. National Socialism has no
reason to put itself at the disposal of Baron Evola. His political
programmes as regards a Roman-Germanic empire are utopian. Therefore,
we propose the following measures:
(1) not to provide any concrete support to Evola's current efforts to
create the foundation for a secret supranational Order and for a
related review ;
(2) to neutralise his public activity in Germany after this series of
lectures, but without resorting to any 'special measures' ;
(3) to prevent him from exerting any further pressures upon the
leaders and officials either of the Party or of the state ;
(4) to have his propagandist activity in the neighbouring countries
watched."
This document (...) invites the following reflections. Evola,
critical of the populist aspects of National Socialism and Fascism,
saw in the SS an 'Order' closer to his conceptions, on account of
their elitist character. However, the report indicates that the
latter developed a critical attitude towards his "reactionary"
aristocratism, which they felt did not take into account what they
called "the real history of the past of our people". Nevertheless,
there may have been different positions in Germany, if Evola was in a
position to exercise "pressures on the leaders and officials" of
institutions as impermeable as those of the National Socialist state.
In any case, the philosopher, far from being a theoretician only,
laboured to build tools for an activity which, in the broad sense,
can be defined as 'political'. And, after his journey in Germany, he
wrote an essay on the SS, in which we can read:
"We owe to Heinrich Himmler the spiritual formation of the SS, the
specification of their tasks, and the establishment of the principles
and laws which must be applied to them. The basic idea is that of the
creation of a new elite, a new nobility. Considerations derived from
the biological-racist, ethical, and spiritual orders direct its
formation and organisation. Its main purpose is to restore the
contact between the ancient traditions and the most highly self-
conscious elite of the renewed Germany. The methods of scientism and
of rationalism are attacked, all naturalistic interpretations of the
ancient religions are rejected, and pathways towards a higher
knowledge, which leads back to the original Indo-Germanic
spirituality in general, and to its solar traditions, are recognised
in mythic and symbolic forms. We are inclined to see in the Black
Order, in the men of the Victory Rune, the Lighting-Flash Rune, and
the Death's-Head, which symbolises their vow of faithfulness unto
death, the germ of an Order in the superior, traditional sense, and
therefore a spiritual solidarity which could become supra-national :
we imagine a unity able to include experienced units from various
nations, all gifted with the same spirit, all referring to the great,
heroic, metaphysical visions of Aryan and Nordic spirituality, and
together constituting the front which will be necessary to us if,
today and in the near future, the decisive struggle against the tide
of obscure forces linked to the symbols of the various internationals
is to be undertaken."(Evola's 'The 'SS', Guard and 'Order' of the
Revolution under the Sign of the Swastika', in Giovanni Preziosi's
magazine Vita Italia, the major organ of Italian anti-Semitism,
December 1938)
Di Vona, in the aforementioned article, synthesises Boutin's analysis
of Evola's idea of the SS as follows: "Evola here commits his biggest
mistake of evaluation: he confuses the SS with a traditional order,
and traditional structures with the caricatures of them which Nazism
exhibited. For Boutin, this movement represented a typical case of
inversion of symbols".
It may be surmised that this "mistake" is at the root of the
collaboration between Evola and the SS. Himmler's writings appear in
the "Diorama Filosofico : Problems of Spirituality and Fascist
Ethics", as presented by Evola in 'Regime fascista', alongside
writings by personalities of European right-wing culture from Guénon
to Paul Valéry.
Mention of this column leads us to the third of the historical-
biographical problems we are discussing here: the philosopher who
criticised the populist aspects of Fascism nevertheless received
editorial space precisely in the reviews of the two leaders of
populist Fascism : first, Leandro Arpinati, in his 'Vita Nova' of
Bologna, and then, Farinacci, who, after his split with Bottai
and 'Critica fascista', put at his disposal 'Regime fascista' in
Cremona.
It would be interesting to know more about the origins of this
apparently paradoxical collaboration. Among other things, the
Dantesque title, 'Vita Nova', a strange choice for the increasingly
anarchistic Arpinati, relates to the tenuously esoteric
interpretation of Dante with which parties from Reghini to di Giorgio
tried to influence Fascism.
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