Jews and Modernity

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    Jews and Modernity (by integral_tradition) 1. The “Jewish question” One of the most central statements Evola made with regard to the “Jewish question”
    Message 1 of 2 , Oct 19, 2014
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      Jews and Modernity

      (by integral_tradition)


      1. The “Jewish question”

      One of the most central statements Evola made with regard to the “Jewish question” was the necessity to treat it from a general standpoint. J. Evola emphasised that the ‘Jewish’ element, “cannot be … separated from the general type of civilisation that formerly spread throughout the whole Eastern Mediterranean area from Asia Minor to the borders of Arabia” (TAOTJP, 7f), the centre from which the ferment of decomposition above all spread. Evola describes it as “one of the main hotbeds of those forces that exercised an often unconscious, though negative influence during the last phases of the Western cycle of the Iron Age.” (RATMW, 243) This particular element is concerning - first and foremost, following the principle of the primacy of the spiritual domain - the “Semitic spirit” (TAOTJP,  8), the spirituality of Semitic civilisations. 

      “‘Jewishness’, before being sought in the blood, must first be sought in the spirit : ‘race’, here, is essentially a behaviour, a way of being and of thinking, which, in philosophical terms, can be said to be a ‘category’ of spirit. It is important to establish firmly in one’s mind this point in order to be able to identify a field of action of Judaism much vaster than the one that is defined by blood alone.” (Evola, Presentation of the Jewish Problem) In a similar manner the jewish author Otto Weininger defined Jewishness in his famous study “Sex and Character”, a work containing various insights but by no means free of severe confusions, as follows: „I mean neither a race nor a people nor a legally recognised creed. I think of it as a spiritual tendency, as a psychological constitution which is a possibility for all mankind, which only found its most grandiose realization in historical Jewry.“ “I do not refer to a nation or to a race, to a creed or to a scripture. When I speak of the Jew I mean neither an individual nor the whole body, but mankind in general, in so far as it has a share in the platonic idea of Judaism.“ (Sex and Character, Chapter 13) 

      Semitism in this sense of a particular attitude towards life and the sacred “can be identified even where, in a civilisation, there is no clear and direct ethnic connection with Semitic races and Jews”. (TAOTJP, page 16) Evola therefore stressed the necessity of going beyond the strictly racial aspect of anti-Semitism. (TAOTJP, page 37) In this context it is of crucial importance that in mere biological terms, Jewry (Israel) has never been a race, but an ethnical mixture of various elements. 

      According the principle of the primacy of the spiritual domain, the mixing of races and ethnic chaos does not constitute the cause, but rather the effect of a previous decline within the spiritual domain, which generally speaking holds true for Jews as for any other group. The fact that Jews have come to dominate the “West” is the result of a relatively recent period in history, being a necessary consequence of a profound deficiency on the spiritual level of the “Western nations” pursuant to the principle of the primacy of the spiritual sphere. The “Jews found a ground already undermined by processes of decomposition and involution, whose origins date back to very distant times, which are linked to a chain of very complex causes.” (Evola, Preface to the Protocols, ) 

      Evola stresses that the belief that the unity and the purity of blood (in the mere biological sense) constitute the foundation of life and the strength of a civilization” and that “ the mixing and the ensuing ‘poisoning’ of the blood” are the initial and primary cause of a civilization's decline is “is an illusion, which among other things, lowers the notion of civilization to a naturalistic and biological plane, since this is the plane on which race is thought of in our day and age. Race, blood, hereditary purity of blood: these are merely ‘material’ factors.” (Evola, RATMW, 56) In short, racial mixing is not to be seen as the cause, but as the result and a symptom of spiritual decline. The fact that the Jews have been a racial mix apparently from the very beginning originates in the lack of an original constitutive spirit. 

      “A civilization in the true, traditional sense of the word arises only when a supernatural and nonhuman force of a higher order — a force that corresponds to the 'pontifical' function, to the component of the rite, and to the principle of spirituality as the basis of a hierarchical differentiation of people — acts upon these factors. At the origin of every true civilization there lies a 'divine' event (every great civilization has its own myth concerning divine founders): thus, no human or naturalistic factor can fully account for it. The adulteration and decline oi' civilizations is caused by an event of the same order, though it acts in the opposite, degenerative sense. When a race has lost contact with the only thing that has and can provide stability, namely, with the world of 'Being'; and when in a race that which forms its most subtle yet most essential element has been lost, namely, the inner race and the race of the spirit — compared to which the race of the body and of the soul are only external manifestations and means of expression — then the collective organisms that a race has generated, no matter how great and powerful, are destined to descend into the world of contingency; they are at the mercy of what is irrational, becoming, and "historical," and of what is shaped "from below" and from the outside.”  (RATMW, 56)

      “The 'blood' or 'racial' factor plays a certain role not because it exists in the 'psyche' (in the brain and in the opinions of an individual), but in the deepest forces of life that various traditions experience and act upon as typical formative energies. The blood registers the effects of this action, yet it provides through heredity a material that is preformed and refined so that through several generations, realizations similar to the original ones may be prepared and developed in a natural and spontaneous way.” (RATMW, 57)

      From some statements one might conclude that Evola even goes so far as to maintain that the – generally destructive - mixing of blood alone does not necessarily lead to decline. This however may be the case only if there still exists a contact to the supreme reality, in this particular sense a “traditional” culture: “Both the higher castes and traditional aristocracies, as well as superior civilizations and races (those that enjoy the same status that the consecrated castes enjoy vis-a-vis the plebeian castes of the 'children of the Earth') cannot be explained by blood, but through the blood, by something that goes beyond blood and that has a metabiological character. When this 'something' is truly powerful, or when it constitutes the deeper and most stable nucleus of a traditional civilization, then that civilization can preserve and reaffirm itself — even when ethnical mixtures and alterations occur (no matter how destructive they may be)— by reacting on the heterogeneous elements, and shaping them, by reducing them slowly but gradually to their own type, or by regenerating itself into a new, vibrant unity. In historical times there are a number of cases of this: China, Greece, Rome, Islam. Only when a civilization's generating root 'from above' is no longer alive and its 'spiritual race' is worn out or broken does its decline set in, and this in tandem with its secularization and humanization.” (RATMW 58)

      In this state of complete detachment from any spiritual reality, the blood becomes the  decisive element: “When it comes to this point, the only forces that can be relied upon are those of the blood, which still carries atavistically within itself, Through race and instinct, the echo and the trace of the departed higher element that has been lost.” (RATMW 58)

      With regard to the Jews Evola explains in this context : “In ancient Judaism we find a very visible effort on the part of a priestly elite to dominate and coalesce a turbid, multiple, and turbulent ethnical substance by establishing the divine Law as the foundation of its "form," and by making it the surrogate of what in other people was the unity of the common fatherland and the common origins. From this formative action, which was connected to sacred and ritualistic values and preserved from the first redactions of the ancient Torah to the elaboration of the Talmud, the Jewish type arose as that of a spiritual rather than a physical race.” (RATMW, 242) Evola consequently describes the significance of the Jewish Law as follows: “To present the Jewish problem properly, so as to understand the true danger of Judaism, it is necessary to work on the premise that what is fundamental to Judaism is not so much race (in the strictly biological sense) as the Law. 'The Law' means the Old Testament, the Torah, but also, and especially, its further developments, the Mishnah, and, finally, the Talmud. It was rightly said that, as Adam, the Jew was shaped by the Law, and the Law, by its age-old influence throughout the generations, has awakened special instincts, a special way of feeling, of reacting, of behaving, has passed into the blood, and has continued to act on the Jew without his even being directly conscious of it or wanting it. It is an essence, an incoercible way of being, which has allowed Israel to preserve its unity, and its principle, Jewish Law, the Talmudic spirit, persists and acts today, fatally, whether in an atavistic and unconscious manner, or in an occult manner, or in some other more or less tortuous manner.” (Evola, Preface to the Protocols, )

      The importance of the law for Judaism is also stressed by Yuri Slezkine: „The Greeks and Romans championed the soil, the Fatherland. Subsequently, Greco-Romanized northern Europe championed the person of the chieftain, replacing the patriotism of antiquity with the vassalage and fidelity to princes of the Middle Ages. The Jews, however, championed only the law and abstract thought, as do the cosmopolitan republicans of our own age, who esteem above all neither homeland nor ruler, but law alone. “

      Evola points out that in many cases a civilisation declines even where crossbreeding cannot be alleged and the original race has remained substantially pure. “This is particularly visible among certain savage populations, caught in a fatal process of slow death, though ethnically they remained closed in upon themselves almost hermetically. There are examples which are closer: Stapel has reminded us that the Swedes and the Dutch, racially, are nowadays more or less what they were two centuries ago, and yet, now, there is no longer even a ghost of the heroic civilisation which was theirs at that time.”  (cf. Evola, The Problem of Decadence, ). He thus continues: “The material conquest appears to us as a spiritual 'retreat' when it comes to civilisations which were defeated and lost their autonomy. If in any case the spirit, conceived of as tradition requires, that is to say as the strongest of all forces, had in fact been present, it would not have lacked the means, more or less invisible, direct or indirect, to overcome any technical and material superiority. We must thus conclude that, wherever the West was able to inflict defeat, the traditional appearances hid a degeneration already in progress. The West would then appear as the civilisation in which an already general crisis assumed the most acute form, in which the decadence peculiar to 'modern thought', so to speak, 'became precipitated' and, getting organised, could sweep away more or less easily the other peoples, in which, even though they were at far less advanced stages of involution, tradition did not possess its original force any more, and, for this reason, they were able to be subjected from the outside to the force of events.” (The Problem of Decadence, )


      2. Modernity

      It has been pointed out frequently from very different sides that there exists a fundamental affinity and a significant connection between Judaism and the spirit of modernity. To name one of the most recent examples, the liberal Jewish-Russian-American scholar Yuri Slezkine starts his work "The Jewish Century" with an explicit declaration: “The Modern Age is the Jewish Age - and we are all, to varying degrees, Jews.” Slezkines central thesis is the equation of Jewishness with the quintessence of modernity. [By citing authors of modernity we do not want to insinuate that they enjoy a greater credibility, but prevent accusations of one-sidedness by showing that the statements and apprails made here are even shared by thinkers who regard themselves as representatives of modernity.] Modernity, Slezkine contends, means everyone becoming spiritually "Jewish". Yuri Slezkine's thesis is that not only have Jews adapted better than many other groups to living in the modern world, they have become the premiere symbol and standard of modern life everywhere. Basically the same observation was made by Julius Evola and other thinkers - from a completely different viewpoint - several decades earlier.

      Otto Weininger comes to the conclusion that Judaism equals the spirit of modern life and writes: "Jewish is the spirit of modernity, however one regards it." (“Jüdisch ist der Geist der Modernität, von wo man ihn betrachte.”) (Sex and Character, Chapter 13) In the (highly significant) context of the feminization of society and the simultaneous Jewish and female emancipation he illustrates the relation of Judaism and modernity: "Judaism, at the present day, has reached its highest point since the time of Herod. Judaism is the spirit of modern life. [...] It is the Jew and the woman who are the apostles of pairing to bring guilt on humanity. Our age is not only the most Jewish but the most feminine. It is a time when art is content with daubs and seeks its inspiration in the sports of animals; the time of a superficial anarchy, with no feeling for Justice and the State; a time of communistic ethics, of the most foolish of historical views, the materialistic interpretation of history; a time of capitalism and of Marxism." (Sex and Character, Chapter 13) “When it is fully recognized that Judaism is to be regarded rather as an idea in which other races have a share, than as the absolute property of a particular race, then the Judaic element in modern materialistic science will be better understood.” (Sex and Character, Chapter 13)

      As early as 1838 the German-Jewish poet and essayist Heinrich Heine remarked in an essay written after viewing a production of Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in London: “All Europe is catching up with the Jews. I say catching up because from the outset the Jews embodied the principle of modernity (‘das moderne Prinzip’) that is now visibly unfolding among the peoples of Europe.” (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/the-jewish-century-by-yuri-slezkine/)

      In the same sense the Jew Karl Marx stated: “The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as (to the extent that) the Christians have become Jews.” (“Die Juden haben sich insoweit emanzipiert, als die Christen zu Juden geworden sind. ”, Karl Marx, On The Jewish Question, Chapter II)

      In his study ‘Radici ebraiche del moderno’ (Jewish roots of modernity, Milano 1990, here cited from the German edition 'Die Jüdischen Wurzeln der Moderne' 1995) the Italian author Sergio Quinzio comes to very similar results by summarizing the historical process of the last 2000 years as “Judaizing the world”. According to Quinzio Jewish thought differs from the Platonic way of thinking by being "dynamic, diverse, not reducible to a system" (p.14). It knows no "teacher", no dogma, no "eternal truths" (p 24) that are independent from time and circumstances. In the vast rabbinic literature one can find "for almost every statement ... a counter-statement". (p 94) Inconsistency is the basis of modern dialectical thinking (cf.. Section "Hermeneutics and Dialectics', p 93 ff.) which dismisses the logical principles of identity, freedom from contradiction and from of the excluded middle. Subjectivism, relativism and tolerance thus gain importance. Even "the Jewish sacred is not above time," it "is, so to speak fluent and agile", it "fits into history, it has a history" (p 24) and is "essentially material" (p 26). The material, earthly, physical comes to the fore, even in the food and cleaning instructions. The sacred is profaned, the profane sanctified (cf. p 24). "The barrier that separates the sacred from the profane in other religions" is "pulled down" (p 27), it disappears. This disappearance dissolves the hierarchical social order, equality becomes a commandment. Differences in dignity, national origin, sex, race, religion lose their meaning, discrimination is prohibited. Due to its inconsistency Jewish thought is deeply "restless". "That is why the Jewish way of being has always been ambulating, the wandering of a nomad", marked by the "the indomitable inclination to break down borders, to break through given patterns, dissolve solid certainties and limitations" (page 15). "The figure of the modern intellectual being critically engaged with society is a Jewish figure" (p 15). Critical thinking, critical rationalism in modernity raise to a method with a claim to exclusivity. "The basic, still determining revolution of the transition from ancient to modernity is the Jewish revolution, which has brought us from cosmic sacrality to the profanity of history" (p.15). The Judaization of the world most clearly shows in the present, which has produced as a consequence of modernity "radical lack of context, uncertainty and disruption" (p 16).

      At this point, the idea of “modernity” has to be defined from a general viewpoint. From a “traditional” perspective, as stressed by Guenon, Evola and many other authors, modernity is to be seen in its principle as occlusion and loss of “Tradition” and the consequential chaos and inversion of the spiritual order. Evola states that “the modern world and the traditional world may be regarded as two universal types and two a priori categories of civilization.” (Evola, RATMW). “On one hand, there are the traditional civilisations, diverse in form, but identical in their principle; these are civilisations in which spiritual and supra-individual forces and values are the axis and the supreme point of reference of the hierarchic organisation, of the  setting up and the justification of all subordinated reality. On the other hand, there is modern civilisation, antitradition, pure construction made of human, terrestrial, individualist or collectivist factors, complete development of all that life entirely separated from 'supra-life' is capable of. We  owe to René Guénon a classical presentation and a concluding justification of this fundamental view with respect to the morphology of civilisation. On this view, the meaning of history is a decadence, for history shows us a disappearance of previous civilisations of 'traditional' type and the more and more precise and general advent of a new common civilisation of 'modern' type.”  (Evola, The Problem of Decadence) Modernity can be seen as the state of ultimate decay of civilisation within the “doctrine of the four ages”(cf. RATMW, 177). 

      At this point we touch the problem of decadence (problema della decadenza), which Evola leads to the conclusion: “The revolutionary (the German version of this Article in Deutsches Volkstum, Heft 11, 1938 put here ‚European‘ instead of ‘revolutionary’) has started by killing in himself hierarchy, mutilating himself of these possibilities to which corresponded the inner foundation of the order, which he has then brought down also externally. Without a preliminary inner destruction, no revolution, in the sense of antihierarchic and antitraditional subversion is possible. […] When the Catholic myth refers the fall of the 'primordial man' and the 'revolt of angels' to free will, it basically relates to the same explanatory principle. It is about the terrible power, inherent in man, to use freedom in the sense of a spiritual destruction, to reject everything that can secure him a supranatural dignity. This decision is a metaphysical one, of which the whole current which has been snaking through history, in the various forms of appearance of the antitraditional, revolutionary, individualist, humanistic, secular and, finally, 'modern' spirit is only the manifestation and, so to speak, the phenomenology. This decision is the sole active and determining cause in the mystery of decadence, of the destruction of tradition.” (Evola, The Problem of Decadence, ).

      These observations, namely that firstly there exists a genuine and deep-rooted affinity and relatedness of Judaism and the essence of modernity and secondly that the essence of modernity is constituted by ignorance or outright rejection of the higher transcendent order and thus has to be regarded as infernal or “satanic” (under the premise that the transcendent being (god) and its refusal (devil) are perceived as personal figures) or – from a different perspective – as anti-traditional and chaotic has led many – whether conscious of the underlying connections or not - to the conclusion that the Jew in general functions as the agent of the universal decline, of Anti-Tradition and revolution. 


      3. Anti-spirit

      This raises the question for the reason of the inclination of Judaism to the anti-traditional principle, to its manifestations in culture, society, politics and any other field of public and private life and subversion, that is destruction of every surviving trace of true order and superior civilization.

      From its very beginning, Judaism was not a self-contained tradition or a religion, but a mixture and a conglomerate of very different elements und influences from different traditions. Even though the Hebraic religion and its holy scriptures are not completely void of spiritual and metaphysical elements, those seem to be of non-Hebraic (Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian etc.) origin. The scarce elements of a jewish spiritual Tradition, in particular the Kabbalah (which term actually has the meaning “tradition”), which reflects doctrines of non-jewish origin, have always been looked upon with suspicion by Talmudic orthodoxy, which lies at the center of actual Judaism. It has also been pointed out that Judaism is only marginally concerned with the destiny of man after death and even does not have any clear conception of after-life. Apparently there has never existed a genuine jewish tradition. In the same way as the Jewish 'race' is a product of the crossbreeding between the degenerate offspring of various bloods, the Jewish religion can be considered as a syncretic mix of the teachings of many different religious doctrines, which range from the Egyptian cult to Babylonia myths and Zoroastrianism to the cults derived from it, all conceived of from the purely moral and increasingly materialistic perspective. 

      On various occasions Julius Evola stressed the fundamental peculiarity of Semitic spirituality, in particular in contrast to the Aryan spirit, and asserted that this opposition of the Semitic and the Aryan spirit lies at the root of the Jewish problem. Semitic spirituality is characterized by its “lunar” element. Like the moon, lacking any own genuine light, it brightens only as it reflects and absorbs a light that it outside from it. (cf. Evola, TAOTJP) Lunar spirituality is also characterized by a profound distance between the creator and the creature, between God and man, thus requiring priests as mediators. This particular dualism comprises an essential difference between man and God entailing a mere passive faith. (In particular in Christianity there also exists a fundamental distinction between the secular and the spiritual authority based on the Gospels sayings “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Mat 22:21) and “My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36)) This distance often leads to an attitude towards the sacred characterized by devout and imploring servility negating the synthesis of spirituality and virility. One might add that Semitic Gods are, like the moon, subject to change and even complete occlusion, so to speak “suffering” and “death”. What characterises Semitic spirituality in general is the destruction of the traditional (Aryan) synthesis of spirituality and virility. (TAOTJP, 10)

      At a certain point in history the Jews by and large seem to have abandoned even lunar spirituality and turned towards a completely anti-spiritual materialized creed hostile to any true spirituality. There are various indications that this change had its first externally visible prelude with the conquest of the ancient Kingdom of Judah (c. 598 BCE), the destruction of the First Temple (c. 586 BCE) and the expulsion of the population. In this context Evola explains: “For Judaism, as in the case of other civilizations, the time frame between the seventh and the sixth century B.C. was characterized by upheaval.” (RATMW , 242) This universal crisis in the 6th century BC - impairing the scarce elements of a positive spirituality in Judaism - in turn led to the political collapse of the state of the Jewish people. Evola thus explains that within the Jewish history two periods need to be distinguished that definitely became differentiated from each other in the historical moment of crisis or climacteric which took place in the time from the 8th to the 6th century BC almost simultaneously in the greatest ancient civilizations. (TAOTJP, page 12; Prior to Evola Rene Guenon suggested a similar explanation.) Within this crisis, according to Evola, jewish religiosity has assumed inferior prophetic forms. Since all traditional elements in Judaism were of foreign origin this transformation was easily possible. 

      There are certain indications that another major collapse took place with the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE), the dispersion of the jewish people into diaspora following the Bar Kokhba revolt and the consequent upheaval of Jewish social and legal norms. It is highly significant that in all likelihood in this period the codification of the Talmud took place. The loss of the temple and of the priests as an actually functioning estate certainly has been of highest relevance for this people’s previously sacerdotal spirituality.. It is not by accident that all this occurred almost simultaneously and it is also significant that in this period Christianity emerged, which according to its own claim constitutes the successor of Judaism, which is actually true in many aspects and in particular in representing lunar spirituality with its particular dualism between body and soul. In Calvinism and Protestantism this lunar spirituality became even more pronounced. (In this context it also has to be considered that with the disappearance and darkening of a genuine solar spirituality in the West following the decline of the great pagan Empires, in particular the Imperium Romanum, no actively shining light remained for the spiritual illumination of a passive lunar object)

      Semitic lunar (feminine) spirituality seems to have turned into Jewish anti-spirit, when it revolted by denying its inferiority to solar (virile) spirit and refused subordination to it. This revolt unbalanced the entire order and eventually brought about its breakdown. Eventually ignorance and rejection of any transcendent higher order became constitutive for the ultimately anti-spiritual nature of Talmudic Judaism. In this sense the Jewish “spirit” actually constitutes 'anti-tradition' (anti-spirit).

      The insight that the Talmudic-Judaic creed is essentially non-spiritual or even anti-spiritual is not new. The German philosopher Kant, who called the Jews the “Vampires of society” illustrated that Judaism is actually not a “religion” in the classical meaning, but just an association of men under a mere political statute lacking any transcendent dimension. In fact, all of Judaism's "commands are of the kind which even a political state can uphold and lay down as coercive laws, since they deal only with external actions" For Kant, Judaism greatly depends on a materialist world; it is a religion that utilizes people for its own benefits, depriving them of freedom and “enlightenment”. Thus Kant asserted: “Furthermore, since no religion can be conceived of which involves no belief in a future life, Judaism, which, when taken in its purity is seen to lack this belief, is not a religious faith at all.” (Kant, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Division Two) “Judaism fell so far short of constituting an era suited to the requirements of the church universal, or of setting up this universal church itself during its time, as actually to exclude from its communion the entire human race, on the ground that it was a special people chosen by God for Himself – [an exclusiveness] which showed enmity toward all other peoples and which, therefore, evoked the enmity of all.” Thus he comes to the notorious conclusion: “The euthanasia of Judaism is the pure moral religion.” (Kant, Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason)

      Otto Weininger, who saw the Jewish religion as “belief in nothing” explained: “Need I refer to the meaningless formality and the repetitions of Jewish prayer? Need I remind readers that the Jewish religion is a mere historical tradition, a memorial of such incidents as the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, with the consequent thanks of cowards to their Saviour; and that it is no guide to the meaning and conduct of life? The Jew is truly irreligious and furthest of mankind from faith. There is no relation between the Jew himself and the universe; he has none of the heroism of faith, just as he has none of the disaster of absolute unbelief.” (Sex and Character, Chapter 13) “Jewish monotheism has no relation to a true belief in God. […] Why is it that the Jewish slave of Jehovah should become so readily a materialist or a freethinker? It is merely the alternative phase to slavery; arrogance about what is not understood is the other side of the slavish intelligence.” (Sex and Character, Chapter 13) 

      Weininger further argued that since the Jew believes in “nothing” he gravitates towards Communism, anarchism, materialism, empiricism, and atheism, and continued: "Judaism in science, in the widest interpretation of it, is the endeavour to remove all transcendentalism. The Aryan feels that the effort to grasp everything, and to refer everything to some system of deductions, really robs things of their true meaning; for him, what cannot be discovered is what gives the world its significance. The Jew has no fear of these hidden and secret elements, for he has no consciousness of their presence. He tries to take a view of the world as flat and commonplace as possible, and to refuse to see all the secret and spiritual meanings of things. His view is nonphilosophical rather than anti-philosophical." (Sex and Character, Chapter 13)

      The jewish Talmudic “religion” is not orientated towards transcendence, but is directed to earthly issues. The Jew Karl Marx stated: “Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What, in itself, was the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism. The monotheism of the Jew, therefore, is in reality the polytheism of the many needs, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory an object of divine law. Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society, and as such appears in pure form as soon as civil society has fully given birth to the political state. The god of practical need and self-interest is money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it. The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange.” (Karl Marx, On The Jewish Question) Consequently, Marx saw Jews "simultaneously as real-life agents of egoistic capitalism and as metaphors for the whole of sinful society." 

      With regard to the Jewish anti-spirit Evola writes: “There are ancient traditions according to which Typhon, a demon opposed to the solar God, was the father of the Hebrews; various Gnostic authors considered the Hebrew god as one of Typhon's creatures. These are references to a demonic spirit characterized by a constant restlessness, by an obscure contamination, and by a latent revolt of the inferior elements; when this substance returned to a free state and when it separated itself from the "Law," that is, from the tradition that had formed it, all these factors acted upon the Jewish substratum in a more dramatic and decisive way than in other people.” (RATMW, page 243, cf. Evola, TAOTJP, page 17; It is highly significant that this passage is not included in the new German edition of Arun-Verlag.)

      The denial and refusal of "God" (the transcendent being perceived as a personal entity) is associated in Semitic mythology with the figure of Lucifer, to whom the phrase "non serviam" ("I will not serve"), expressing his refusal to serve God in the heavenly kingdom and who thus becomes Satan, is attributed. Consequently, also insurgency against the legitimate order and revolution can be seen as "satanic in their essence", as stressed by the catholic thinker Joseph de Maistre. (From a traditional, in particular non-Christian viewpoint, it has to be emphasized that the anti-traditional principle primarily is not regarded as “evil” in a merely moral sense, but seen as a force of distraction from the metaphysical order, as its occlusion, leading to the inversion of the supernatural order by asserting a primacy of matter or of the ego  instead of the primacy spirit and the transcendence. Modernity, in a traditional perspective, constitutes the effect of the forces of “darkness” and “chaos”. In this particular sense, the anti-traditional forces can be considered as “demonic” and chaotic.) As generally known, even Christianity, which in turn, at least partly, derives from Judaism thus constituting a form of Semitic spirituality has traditionally accused the Jews of deicide. According to the gospel Jesus addressed the Jews with the words: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” (John 8:44, King James Version)

      From the dismissive attitude of modernity towards the metaphysical order stems the focus on the worldly sphere of becoming and of matter (materialism), on human reason and rationality (rationalism, positivism). The manifestations of this anti-spirit are modern movements like rationalism, internationalism, liberalism, Socialism, Communism, and so forth. Yuri Slezkine thus openly declares that Marxism and Freudianism are essentially jewish in their origins.


      4. Anti-race

      The racial quality of the Jewish People is – just as in any other nation - not the cause, but the result of its spiritual constitution. On a merely biological level the Jews are not a self-contained race and not a people in the conventional sense, but a mixture of very different stocks and racial influences. Jews are originally a racial mix, as Evola stresses: "Ethnically, and originally, very different bloods have flowed into the Jewish people ; the Old Testament itself speaks of many tribes and races contained in this people" (Evola, Presentation of the Jewish Problem, ). It is not by coincidence that Judaism originated in the region, where the three continents of the old world - Europe, Asia and Africa - and its three main races - White, Yellow and Black - adjoin. In diaspora the jewish people, already from the earliest times a composition of most diverging racial elements, underwent further commingling. "Modern race research has come to admit, in it, the presence of elements even of Aryan or non-Semitic origins, as seems to be the case in particular for the Pharisees." (Evola, Presentation of the Jewish Problem, ). In this respect, the relevant literature has to be recalled, including the historic facts and some of the results shown in Shlomo Sands study “The Invention of the Jewish People”. (The extent of the Khazaric influence is widely discussed and there are important indications that the Eastern European Ashkenazic Jewry originates to a very large extent in this Mongolic-Turkish people, as pointed out by some jewish authors like Arthur Koestler, Abraham Poliak and Shlomo Sand.) Presumably it was the German author Arno Schickedanz who, along such lines, coined the term 'Gegenrasse' (anti-race) in his study “Das Judentum – eine Gegenrasse“. For him Jewry is the opposite of the 'ideal of constant race', thus an  anti-race. He concludes: “Judaism is parasitism.”

      In diaspora the jewish people - already from the earliest times a composition of most diverging racial elements - underwent further commingling. In several respects the diaspora played a decisive role for the development of the jewish people and their impact on the Western world. “The Diaspora, or the scattering of the Jewish people, corresponded to the by-products of the spiritual dissolution of a cycle that did not have a "heroic" restoration and in which some sort of inner fracture promoted processes of an anti-traditional character.” (RATMW, 243) In exile and diaspora the dynamics of materializing of the jewish spirituality subsequently intensified in a self-reinforcing “vicious circle”: The materialised characteristic of Jewish spirituality aggravated during the experience of the own foreignness entailing the necessity of hostile discrimination towards other peoples. It is not by coincidence that the (Babylonian) Talmud originates in the Babylonian exile. Diaspora, which itself already constitutes a consequence of a spiritual fall, was able to exert a destructive influence on the spiritually drained and exposed Jewry. In consequence, their diffusion among the European peoples made it possible for the Jews to effectively exert an anti-traditional influence. In this particular position of diaspora, the inherent nomadic spirit of this scattered and stateless people came to a further outbreak and the Jews became what has rightly been called by Theodor Mommsen the “effective ferment of decomposition”, at the same time the first victims and the first agents of modernization. With the emancipation of the jewish minorities in Western countries this dynamic once more dramatically intensified. Thus it was in diaspora that the anti-traditional effect could fully unfold. As Evola explains this dynamics: “Just as the germinal force of a seed manifests itself only when it breaks and its elements go into the surrounding matter, Judaism can have stated to manifest universally its destructive and ethically subversive influence only after the political fall of the state of the ‘chosen people’ and their dispersion thoughout the world.”  (TAOFJP 21) In this sense, diaspora constitutes the realisation of the Jewish spirit.


      5. Conclusion

      The inclination of Judaism to modernity and revolution has been repeatedly exposed. The insight into the deep-rooted affinity between Judaism and modernity can contribute to the understanding of the tremendous success of the jewish minority in modern secularized and materialistic Western societies which lead to its cultural and economical and subsequently even universal political predominance.

      In this sense one could say that the dominant role the Jews play in the modern world is a result of the course or the “meaning of history”, the “principles” that underlie the historical process according to traditional doctrine, namely involution and regression (as opposed to evolution and progress). The real cause of the decline of civilizations can never be found in the outer world, nor can it ever be explained by purely historical and human factors. In the present Iron Age (“Kali-Yuga”), the anti-spiritual age, the anti-spiritual forces, including - most notably - Judaism are in their element and will be most successful. Since the Jews are anti-spiritual people, they are the people of modernity. What the Jews can be accused of is their role of vanguard of “modernity” (understood as “anti-tradition”), being its first victims, thereupon its most important agents, its most efficient instruments and consequently its biggest beneficiaries. It is not the Jews or Judaism/Semitism that changed the course of history, but it is this universal decay that allowed them to prevail. 



    • evola_as_he_is
      Our answer, for the first part, is based on our Afterword to the second edition of ‘Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem ». The fact that this publication
      Message 2 of 2 , Oct 20, 2014
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        Our answer, for the first part, is based on our Afterword to the second edition of ‘Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem ». The fact that this publication has been a raging succes compells us to publish here what should already been known to most members of this list.

         

        Just as Julius Evola examines the Jewish question historically and doctrinally, so does the review of “Three Aspects”. Historically, the key issue is that of the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 587 B.C.E., and the aim is to identify whether or not, as argued, it brought about a Jewish collapse on the spiritual plane; moreover, the Jewish religion in its ritualistic and scriptural aspects, the Jewish monarchy, and the Jewish conception of the king, as well as of the Messiah, are compared, as they are in the essay, in their pre-exilic and their post-exilic states. Doctrinal premises are examined in the second part. Only the main points were dealt with, as concisely as possible, for reasons of space.

         

        Let us make it clear straight away that, while two general periods need to be distinguished in ancient Jewish history, the destruction of the Second Temple marking the end of the first and the beginning of the second, the “collapse” is far more of the political than of the spiritual order. Paraphrasing Evola, you note that « From its very beginning, Judaism was not a self-contained tradition or a religion, but a mixture and a conglomerate of very different elements und influences from different traditions. Even though the Hebraic religion and its holy scriptures are not completely void of spiritual and metaphysical elements, those seem to be of non-Hebraic (Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian etc.) origin. The scarce elements of a jewish spiritual Tradition, in particular the Kabbalah (which term actually has the meaning “tradition”), which reflects doctrines of non-jewish origin, have always been looked upon with suspicion by Talmudic orthodoxy, which lies at the center of actual Judaism.” We went further. We wondered whether “the ‘formalism’ of the rites in that religion was more than likely to have had the same anti-sentimental, active, determinative spirit that, as stated, was the characteristic of the primordial and even Roman, virile, Aryan ritual” (TAOTJP, p.7) ; we wondered, and we inquired. Our conclusion, based on authoritative historical works, is that even in the purified, Yahwistic form of the tradition in the Old Testament, the forms and ideas associated with the monarchy, which were originally adopted in the court ceremonial of David and Solomon, were influenced by oriental conceptions ; for example, the extatic element was prominent. It is also important to see that, if there is almost nothing in the Jewish scriptures in their oldest parts that cannot be found in the myths, the poems and the hymns of the ancient literature of Mesopotamia, of Egypt and of the land of Canaan, well, under the influence of Yahwism and the nomadic tradition, many of the forms that were borrowed acquired a modified or new content: these were transferred from the cosmological to the historical and the moral plane This fundamental point is overlooked by most historians, including historians of religions, while Evola was aware, as showed by a statement of his which we cannot find again, of this ‘law of transfer’, without however always applying it in his analysis.

        The close examination of the issue of Messianism in the broadest sense of the term is key to unferstanding that the Jewish mentality was not affected in its core by the collapse, that, rather than a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, there was a continuity, a continuous oscillation between two, opposed in some respects, complementary in others, states of mind, and, here, we quoted extensively Mowinckel. To be sure, “Once the military fortunes of Israel declined, defeat came to be understood as a punishment for ‘sins’ committed, and thus an expectation developed that after a dutiful expiation Jehovah would once again assist his people and restore their power. But since this did not happen, the prophetic expectations degenerated into an apocalyptic, Messianic myth, and in the fantastic eschatological vision of a Savior who will redeem Israel; this marked the beginning of a process of disintegration.” However, a disparity always existed in Israel, in pre-exilic as well as in post-exilic times, between Yahweh’s promise and the historical realities of sorrows and of ills, a disparity from which the figure of the Messiah would arise. “Originally, the future hope is two-fold: it is a hope of restoration, essentially this-worldly, national, and political in character, but with important religious elements and a tendency to give a mythical, other-worldly colouring to the divine miracle which will bring it to pass. From the standpoint of everyday reality in national and political life, it is the ideal kings of David’s line who will again govern Yahweh’s people, but from the religious point of view, Yahweh is king of the restored kingdom. From the former standpoint, the Messiah is an active figure, endowed with all the superhuman features of the ideal of kingship of the historical kings of the period after the disruption, without however being a supernatural being who comes from above. From the latter standpoint, in proportion as the main emphasis is laid on the religious aspect of the future hope, the kingly rule of Yahweh, there is little room for the Messianic king, in whom earthly and human features predominate; and the Messiah is then portrayed as a passive figure, down to the notion of the “suffering Messiah”, adopted in later Judaism with the figure of the Servant of the Lord (Deutero-Isaiah).” Thus there persisted an unresolved tension, a gulf between the political, national, and this-worldly elements and the transcendental, other-worldly elements, between which the Jews oscillated according to historical conditions.

         

        Another originary pattern was never forgotten either. The king, as the son of Yahweh, the God of all the earth (Exod. 19:5), “has a rightful claim to dominion over the whole world… the universal dominion over the peoples… as goal and as promise was implicit in the election of the king as Yahweh’s Anointed and deputy on earth.” The concept of Messiah may have undergone significant changes in the course of Jewish history, the Messianic task has remained the same: world-dominion, unless the Adamic Covenant, the “Covenant between the parts”, the Deueronomy, etc., are forgeries concocted by the Tsarist police.

         

        Objectively, two periods do “need to be distinguished” in Jewish history, yet this distinction is one of degree and not of nature, so much so that the notion that “It is not the original Jewish Messianic idea but its corruption and materialisation which constitutes the real point of reference of the subversive forces which aim to destroy our civilisation, once and for all, and to exert a Satanic domination over all other forces at work on earth” (Transformazioni del ‘Regnum’, La Vita Italiana, 1937) can be misleading. It would be more accurate to state that it is not the former Jewish Messianic idea, but its further corruption and its further materialisation, which is the real point of reference for the subversive forces: indeed, the earlier Jewish Messianic idea already testified to a materialist conception of Messianism, and materialism means corruption. Basically, the intimate connection between the Jewish Messianic idea and the thirst for earthly riches and goods right from the beginning, and not just from Mosaic times, came to be recognised by the Italian author in later writings.

         

        Turning to the doctrinal aspect of the question, the main two points that are raised against contemporary anti-Semites is the uselessness “to refer to race in the narrow sense in order to speak about a universal Semitism”, and the danger of scapegoating the Jew.

         

        The first point is emphasised on the spiritual plane, where it is contended that “Semitism as a typical attitude towards the spiritual world… can be defined in the abstract and can be identified even where, in a civilisation, there is no clear and direct ethnic connection with Semitic races and Jews.” On the cultural and on the socio-economic planes, it is strongly argued that Jewish traits can also be found in “the nations that have remained the least affected by Jewish infiltration.” In the scientific domain, it is carefully phrased that “one can still speak of a disintegrating Jewish spirit expressing itself through rationalism and calculation… but only by using the word ‘Jewish’ in an analogical sense, without making any literal reference to race. The premises are however wrong. Generally speaking, a connection dating back to at least Antiquity has been found between Semitic races and some white European peoples, due either to racial admixture, and not only in the ‘Mediterranean race’, or to a race change. Interbreeding explains partly why “an ‘Aryan’ have, for example, a Jewish soul or inner race, or vice versa.” (however, “this will not result in the aryanisation of the former”, ‘Scienza, razza e scientismo’, La Vita Italiana, decembre 1942). These incorrect premises lead to some flaws in the analysis of two of the main characteristics of the Jewish people: internationalism and rationalism. The distinction, systematically drawn by the Italian author, between ‘internationalism’ and ‘universalism’, turns out to be problematic, to begin with. Since this issue has no place here, let us move on to the second point, that is, the “extremist” tendency to scapegoat the Jew and, concomitantly, to make the Jewish action “consonant with a pre-established plan”. Evola contends that “In the concrete process of the development of modern civilisation, the Jews can be considered as a force operating in concert with others in the building of the rationalistic, scientistic and mechanistic ‘civilised’ modern decay, but not as its sole distinct cause”, the “others” being Semitic forces as a whole, and, in the last analysis, the whole net of forces at work in non- and anti-Aryan races. The “scapegoat tactic” argument, as developed in ‘Men among the Ruins’, is not as overwhelmingly convincing as it may seem at first sight: if, indeed, the Jews were instrumentalised by the “hidden forces of worldwide subversion”, there would be every reason for the latter to direct and focus the attention of their adversaries to elements which only in part, or only subordinately, can be considered as being responsible for their evildoing, that is, to confirm the Jews in their “traditional role” as usual suspects, as scapegoats. Far from it. No effort is spared in an obscene and grotesque manner by the Jewish-owned media to distract people’s attention from anything related in one way or another to the Jews to elements that are instrumental in the crisis of the so-called Western world.

         

        At this point, one may object : what about the persecutions the Jews suffered throughout the Middle-Ages? First, Jews were not yet in power. Second, the Church ‘scapegoated’ the Jews for purely religious reasons: as Christ-killers, infidels, non-christians, etc. In 1478, 12,000 Marannos were executed by the Inquisition, while it was business as usual for the diplomats and the financiers who worked for the Spanish monarchs. “In 1484 King Ferdinand invited him [Rabbi Don Isaac ben Judah Abravanel  ] to be the collector of royal revenues, even though it was illegal for a Jew to hold such a high position AND the Spanish Inquisition was in full swing.” (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Abravanel.html) How about Inquisition? Well, it seems to have been an intra-Jewish business, since there are strong evidence that Torquemada was a Jew. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 expelled the Jews, at least those who refused to accept Christianity. ‘Scapegoated’ has been put in quotation marks above, because the Jews, over the course of centuries, would often turn to the pope for aid and protection, which the pontiff would grant them. For example, in 1493, not all Jews fled to muslim countries after they, or at least some of them, had been driven out of Spain. Some, encamped at the gates of Rome, were welcome by the head of Christianity (‘The Jews of Europe After the Black Death’, p. 23). More than one pope, while putting the Talmud on trial, left the privileges granted to Jews undisturbed. Far from the sensationalist tone of many historical studies on the relations between the papacy and the Jews,  Kenneth R. Stow, quoting a careful study of papal policy in the last centuries before the Renaissance, reminds us of their realities : “’papal policy rested on a delicate weave of checks and balances designed to insure, on the one hand, that the Jews fulfilled in their daily lives the emblematic and subservient role first ordained for them by Paul ... and, on the other hand, that Christian society protected the rightful privileges of the Jews it was obliged to harbor in its midst.’ He [the author of the study] does not note that the "rightful privileges" included usury and spoliation, and does not explain how a "subservient role" can be more than a farce for financiers whose money bags and mortgages make them the real masters of the society on which they live.” (‘Popes, Church, and Jews in the Middle Ages: Confrontation and Response’, p. 108 ; additonally, he shows “that, contrary to what now heart-broken Catholics believe, the Jewish capture of their Church is nothing new or recent”). When Philip IV took the decision to expell Jews from France, the people were furious with him: he had deprived them from the only source of household borrowing.

         

        Evola states that “It is the law that has given shape and unity to the Jewish people, not a race in the strict sense of the word.” (‘Presentation of the Jewish Problem’). Leaving aside that the Jews are not a race, it is equally reasonable to support an opposite view, the view that it was the Jewish blood that gave shape to the Law. After all, the former crystallised prior to the latter. Now, it is unilateral to say that the Law “has continued to act on the Jew without his even being directly conscious of it or wanting it.” Here, the expertise provided by the Italian author is second to none, since “For a real presentation of the Jewish question, it is necessary to distinguish, in the whole Jewish reality, three elements or aspects. Let us identify them straight away : there is, firstly, the more or less modernised or bourgeoisified Jew of a faceless middle-class (*) ; in the second place, there is the Jew as cultural agent, the Jew as writer, artist, ideologist, sociologist, scientist and so forth ; in the third place, there is the Jew as creature of the Jewish law, and as CONSCIOUS instrument of the Jewish law.” (“Presentation of the Jewish Problem” – the emphsis is ours)

         

        As to the view, expressed by Evola, that “racial mixing is not to be seen as the cause, but as the result and a symptom of spiritual decline”, it leads us to what may be the thorniest problem of all: that of decadence. Before seeing how Evola treats it, let us clarify the statement that “the – generally destructive - mixing of blood alone does not necessarily lead to decline”, a statement which is not exactly Evola’s. Blood mixing is systematically destructive, unless it occurs between two racially related ethnies within the same race – compatibilities as well as incompatibilities are listed in ‘Sintesi di dottrina della razza’.What is questionable is the claim that to think that“ the mixing and the ensuing ‘poisoning’ of the blood are the initial and primary cause of a civilization's decline is is an illusion, which among other things, lowers the notion of civilization to a naturalistic and biological plane”. What is meant is that blood mixing occurs as a result of a suprabiological factor ; this is crystal clear to everyone. “It is about the terrible power, inherent in man, to use freedom in the sense of a spiritual destruction, to reject everything that can secure him a supranatural dignity... This decision is the sole active and determining cause in the mystery of decadence, of the destruction of tradition.”

         

        The question then arises : but what on earth or in the heavens can cause him to use, to start using his freedom destructively? The internal cause can be discarded. Otherwise, we would have to think that spirit is self-destructive. Is it conceivable? To try and explain decadence by an external cause is not more satisfactory. This would amount to assume that what is complete can be affected by what is incomplete. Is this more conceivable?

         

        Even those who, like us, think that blood mixing is at the very root of decline are faced with the same dilemma, it being understood that, to us like to Evola, race, he writes in ‘Sintesi’, is a profound force manifesting itself in the realm of the body (race of the body) as in the realm of the spirit (race of the interior, race of the spirit)” (other statements of his, which you quoted, are not consistent with the view he expressed in this book and even elsewhere on blood ; for instance, that which “cannot be explained by blood, but through the blood, by something that goes beyond blood and that has a metabiological character”, Evola calls it precisely the race of the spirit) ; by blood mixing we mean not just the biological transmission from one generation to another of incompatible genetic factors that determine individual characteristicstics, but also the mixing of incompatible elements of the psychic and, possibly (‘possibly’, because elements of that kind do not seem to be present in more than one case), of the spiritual order which occurs prior to actual procreation.

         

        From a polygenist perspective, the main question is apparently : what could have caused a tall blond-haired and blue-eyed Aryan to expose himself to miscegenetion? Needless to say, we do not have the answer. What we have is the certainty that, as the “fair sex” would point out, now that they have been given a voice, men tend to be self-centered, egotistic, forgetting that Aryans were not all men. By a tall blond-haired and blue-eyed Aryan, there stood the tall blond-haired and blue-eyed Aryan woman. This obvious fact must be remembered in this context. Let us bear in mind that Evola insighfully observed in ‘Sintesi’ that, with respect to White men, White women represent the anti-race. This has become obscenely obvious in recent times.

         

        We can now reformulate the aforementionned question as follows : what could have caused the tall blond-haired and blue-eyed Aryan woman to expose herself to miscegenetion?

         

        (as to the claim that “— even when ethnical mixtures and alterations occur (no matter how destructive they may be)— by reacting on the heterogeneous elements, and shaping them, by reducing them slowly but gradually to their own type, or by regenerating itself into a new, vibrant unity. In historical times there are a number of cases of this: China, Greece, Rome, Islam”, is it yours or Evola’s?)

         

        (*) It could well be argued that the Jew did not adopt the outlook of a faceless middle-class, but that, on the contrary, his sybaritic (de “petit jouisseur”) lifestyle has ended up trickling on the European middle-class, among which he has lived.

         

        (on a totallly different note, we have nothing to do with https://www.facebook.com/pages/Thompkins-and-Cariou-Publishing-COLLAPSOR-RECORDS-OPNLere-Des-Temps-France-Haunted-Showers/1378958242337710)

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