Some of the few photos of J. Evola that have reached us were taken by L.F.
Clauss himself, in 1940. According to a former acquaintance of ours `in the
know' who told us he heard it from a former SS member in the late 1990's, the
Italian author was fond of Mrs Clauss, and, since Mrs Clauss was a Jewess, it
did not take long before rumours were disapprovingly spread by distinguished
Aryans that J. Evola was - horresco referens - particularly fond of Jewesses.
The first reason we allow ourselves to start our critical review of `Evola's
Attitude Toward the Jews' by bringing out this innuendo is that a few hearsays
are also echoed as such in the preface of the American edition of `Gli uomini e
le rovine', the second reason being that this preface begins with the comment
that a certain Grimaldi's awkward characterisation of J. Evola as a "Jew lover"
"misses the mark by a long shot and merely reflects the anger of the attacker".
Admittedly, it is quite hard for `politically correct'genuine students of J.
Evola's work to deal with the Italian author's writings on Judaism and on Jews,
since "There are so many comments against the Jews in (it), ranging from simple
criticisms to truly painful ones, that there can be no doubt about his basic
attitude". These have to make sure they distance themselves completely, in an
ostentatiously critical, self-righteous, condemning manner, from such writings,
so as to convince, in carefully chosen words and phrases, both their readers and
their colleagues, as well as their pseudo-hierarchy, not to mention themselves,
which is far less difficult to achieve, that they are not guilty of the worst
possible crime against humanity since the end of the second world war :
anti-Semitism. Then, they have to make distinctions.
Before coming to these "distinctions", let us note that these numerous comments
by J. Evola, before being "against Jews", are about Jews, and, more generally,
about Semites as a whole.
"His writings never spoke out against orthodox religious Judaism. On the
contrary; as an example, he writes in his Tre aspetti del problema Ebraico
(Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem), Rome, 1936, p. 23: "There are elements
and symbols in the Old Testament that possess metaphysical and therefore
universal value." Or in (a footnote of) Revolt Against the Modern World (p.
281): "In contrast to orthodox Judaism, early Christianity can at most claim a
mystical character on the same line as the prophets. . . . And whenever a true
esotericism was subsequently created in the West, it was essentially found
outside of Christianity with the help of non-Christian currents, like the
Hebraic Kabbalah…"" For a start, the presence of a given element in a structure,
in a whole, as rightly emphasised by J. Evola in the anthology `Fenomenologia
della sovversione', does not say anything about the actual nature of this whole
; what is meaningful is the function it fills in this whole ; for example, a
solar symbol such as the originally Aryan swastika may be found in a wide range
of non Aryan, Asian, and lunar traditions of a syncretic nature such as Cao
Dai's of Vietnam and Falun Gong's of China. This essential point is best
understood when internalised into the paramount explanatory notion of `great
parody', that is to say, the "imitation and caricature of everything that is
truly traditional and spiritual", whose first beginnings, contrary to what was
assumed by the French author who introduced it into the analysis of the crisis
of the modern world, can be traced back to times of old. Besides, very few
sentences happen to be quoted in full by the preface author. Basically, J.
Evola's anti-Semitic writings are handled with a consummate sense of salami
slicing which distorts greatly the Italian author's thought. For example, a
restrictive clause was left out of the first aforementioned quote ; this
restrictive clause, a key one, is : "even though they were taken from somewhere
else (…)" ; so that, when restored, the sentence reads, "even though they were
taken from somewhere else, elements and symbols of metaphysical and, therefore,
universal value can be found in the Old Testament (`Three Aspects of the Jewish
Problem', Thompkins&Cariou, 2003, p. 14). It is a key clause, since it the
following statement : "If an accusation is to be made positively against the
Jews, it is that of having had no peculiar tradition, of owing to other people,
whether they be Semitic or non-Semitic, the positive as well as the negative
elements that they were able particularly to develop later on. Thus, if we
consider the oldest Jewish religion, or the ancient Philistine cult of Jehovah
(the Philistines, besides, seem to have been a non-Jewish group of conquerors),
we often find ourselves before forms with purer and greater features. (…). It
was a moment of crisis connected to the political collapse of the state of the
Jewish people that swept away these elements of a positive spirituality that are
most likely not derived from the Jewish people in themselves, but from the
Amorites, whose non-Semitic and Nordic origin is sometimes argued." (ibid,
p.12-13).
To summarise, or rather, to paraphrase, since they are crystal clear and any
glossing would be an insult to our readers' intelligence, these considerations,
1. A tradition existed in the form of Judaism ; 2. Its content was most likely
not intrinsically Jewish ; 3. Once secularised, it degenerated into a ferment of
decomposition on all planes, whether spiritual or intellectual, social or
economic. Only when these points have been firmly established in strict
accordance with the views of J. Evola on Judaism may these be criticised, if
need be and where appropriate ; as a rule, before any criticism of a given work
can be taken seriously, it must be based on sound grounds, on a clear
understanding of this work. For example, J. Evola could be legitimately
criticised for having stated in `Three Aspects of the Jewish Problem' that the
spiritual collapse of the Jews was brought about by "the political collapse of
the state of the Jewish people", when, in various other writings (see, for
instance : http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id13.html), political decay was
diagnosed by him as an immediate consequence, and not as a cause, of spiritual
decadence.
Between 1932 and September 1941, Julius Evola published forty articles or so on
the Jewish problem in various Italian papers, of which thirty-one, all signed
`Arthos', appeared in La Vita Italiana, and were compiled in 1992 by the Italian
publisher, Il Cinabro, into an anthology. It is divided into four sections,
namely `L'Azione distruttrice' (`The Destructive Action'), `Guerra occulta e
`Protocolli'' (`Occult War and the `Protocols''), `L'Intervento nella Storia'
(`The Intervention in History'), `L'Antisemitismo' (`Anti-Semitism'). The title
for the anthology is borrowed from a set of three articles published by J. Evola
in La Vita Italiana in 1936 on the subject of the destructive action of Judaism
: `Il `Genio' d'Israele' (`Israel's `Genius''), at the very beginning of which
the organic nature of the study of Judaism which he was about to carry out in a
long series of articles, "whose systematic coherence will certainly not escape
the attentive readers of La Vita Italiana", is made clear. Three-quarters of
these articles, which, for most of them, stand as essays on their own, examine
the Jewish problem on the cultural and scientific level in the broadest sense,
while the remaining quarter looks into it, either on the spiritual and religious
plane, or on the economic, social and political plane. It is therefore
tendentious to state that "Evola's attacks are more often directed against the
Jews as symbol of the rule of economic-materialistic individualism and the
hegemony of money. In other words: in the Jews he is fighting materialism", and
that "These are the same accusations that Martin Luther brought up, and which
Karl Marx presented in his tract Zur Judenfrage (Concerning the Jewish
Question), published 1844 in the Deutsche französische Jahrbücher in Paris".
Marx's anti-Semitic arguments are strictly of the economic order, while Luther's
are of the religious and economic order. The Jewish question was looked into "in
a totalising way" by J. Evola.
Even if J. Evola had only envisaged he Jewish problem from an economic
perspective, it would still be incorrect to affirm that "The fact that in doing
so he again brings up all the well-known prejudices and generalizations shows
that he too was dependent on the preeminent Zeitgeist". As a matter of fact,
"These accusations" had already been made by a huge number of people throughout
the ages, including the citizens of the German town of Hirschau, who, in the
Renaissance, "opposed allowing Jews to live there because Jews were seen as
aggressive competitors who ultimately dominate the people they live among : "If
only a few Jewish families settle here, all small shops, tanneries, hardware
stores, and so on, which, as things stand, provide their proprietors with
nothing but the scantiest of livelihoods, will in no time at all be superseded
and completely crushed by these [Jews] such that at least twelve local families
will be reduced to beggary, and our poor relief fund, already in utter
extremity, will be fully exhausted within one year. The Jews come into
possession in the shortest possible time of all cash money by getting involved
in every business; they rapidly become the only possessors of money, and their
Christian neighbors become their debtors." (in
http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/UnderstandJI-1.htm) `Antisemitism Through the
Ages' (Almog, S., Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988) ; `History and Hate: The
Dimensions of Anti-Semitism' (Berger, D., Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1997) ; `Antisemitism : A Reference Handbook' (Chanes, J. A., Santa
Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004) ; `Antisemitism : A Historical Encyclopedia of
Prejudice and Persecution' (Levy, R.S., Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005),
countless books, essays, and articles examine the relations between Jews and
non-Jews and analyse the origins and the development of intellectual and
cultural anti-Semitic ideas and beliefs in Europe from Roman times to the
present ; whether or not it was the Enlightenment that made possible the growth
of non religious anti-Semitism, the fact remains that anti-Semitic attitudes
were prevalent among French and Russian intellectual circles as early as in the
XVIIIth century, while, drawing its inspiration from German romanticism, and,
particularly, from the Jew Johann Gottfried Herder's concept of Volk,
anti-Semitic literature, in which the Jew became the incarnation of selfish and
atomistic individualism and of resistance to the national, ethnic, and ethical
state, flourished in the first half of the XIXth century in Germany. As
summarised by B. Lazare (`Antisemitism : Its History and Causes', 1894), "If
this hostility, this repugnance had been shown towards the Jews at one time or
in one country only, it would be easy to account for the local causes of this
sentiment. But this race has been the object of hatred with all the nations
amidst whom it ever settled".
What is particularly misleading in this preface is the following paragraph, in
which a truncated quote from an article by J. Evola ("Scienza, razza e
scientismo" [Science, Race, and Scientism], in Vita Italiana, XXX, no. 357,
December 1942, pp. 556–563; there, he writes verbatim: "For example, can an
`Aryan' have a Jewish soul or inner race and vice versa? Yes, it is possible…"),
is used to support the empty claim that "Since Evola set supreme importance on
the spiritual attitude, a Jew could of course also espouse Aryan" thought."
There is no contradiction between the views expressed by the Italian author in
`Scienza, razza e scientismo' and the considerations developed on the same
subject in an essay on the Aryan nature published two years before in `Il
Corriere Padano' : "One is born "Aryan", one does not become so : NASCITUR, NON
FIT. (...) To be Aryan is a quality of race and of caste. It is transmitted from
father to son. Nothing can replace it : just as the privilege which, until
recently, aristocratic blood had among us." To understand why there is no
contradiction whatsoever between these two writings, it is important to know
that the article from which the aforementioned truncated quote is taken is a
right of reply willingly granted by G. Preziosi, La Vita Italiana's editor, to
J. Evola, whose racial doctrine had been met by harsh criticism from G. Landra,
a major proponent of scientist and biological racism, in `La Difesa della
Razza'. More precisely, it is taken from a footnote to the following paragraph
of the article : "A few more words should be said, J. Evola writes at the end of
the article, about the problem of selection. The problem of selection in its
higher aspects is obviously closely linked to the inner race, or the expression
of inner race. Once biology and similar disciplines have defined a given area,
the boundaries of which cannot be crossed (4), it does not mean that, within
these boundaries, everything is in order and that race manifests the same purity
and nobility, even where pathological processes and hereditary taints can be
ruled out. Hence the problem of inner or interracial selections, a problem
which, as far as active and political racism is concerned, is at least as
important as the protection from crossbreeding, or rather is the necessary
counterpart of this racism, since what is true here is also true of diseases :
it is only when steps are taken to strengthen the body and to erase
predispositions that the risk of infection is greatly reduced."
This is the footnote : "Exceptions do not alter the rule, and, in this field,
they can be explained scientifically, with reference to the Mendelian laws of
inheritance. Can an "Aryan" have, for example, a Jewish soul or inner race, or
vice versa ? Yes, it is possible, and this does not contradict anything, or
destroy the principle that the biological element must be used as the first
criterion of discrimination. Here, a difficulty would arise only if it could be
demonstrated that, in the ancestors of the type in question, down to the most
remote generations, no racial mixing occurred : such a demonstration is nearly
impossible. But since this cannot be demonstrated, the Aryan soul of a Jew or
the Jewish soul of an Aryan could still be considered as a case of reappearance
of exogenous ancestral characteristics which had remained latent, `recessive'."
"This, J. Evola goes on, will not result in the Aryanisation of the former or in
the degradation of the latter into a Jew, but in a case by case discrimination,
limited strictly to the individual and, therefore, not transmittable to
offspring. It is therefore useless to raise again and again this objection to
try to invalidate the theory that distinguishes the race of the body from the
race of the soul."
The condescending opinions of `knowledgeable experts' Hansen feels like quoting
to support his false and empty claims are just as empty and false. For example,
the view that "(the "spiritual" theory of races) (…) renounced the German and
German-derived confusions and tried . . . to confine racism to the plane of a
cultural problem worthy of the name" (Renzo de Felice, History of the Italian
Jews under Fascism) is wishful thinking, notwithstanding the considerations J.
Evola developed in `Il Fascismo visto della Destra' twenty years later, at a
time when he was not aware that some of the material he used to write this book,
such as the notorious `Hitler's Table Talk', was forged. "Here, J. Evola writes
in `Scienza, razza e scientismo', a point should be made about a confusion that
Landra wants to create in the minds of his readers, giving them to understand
that only a scientist and biological racism is followed in Germany. Is this not
precisely what is aimed at by those who devote themselves to a dull intellectual
work of sabotage against the Axis and set people against the `barbarity' and the
`materialism' of German racism ? Cases such as Manacorda's, R. Carbonelli's,
Bendiscioli's and the like are more than meaningful in that regard. But the
reality is completely different, as we have said many times and we must say
again. Landra acts as if he was unaware that, in Germany, as a complement and
counterpart of Walther Gross and his doctors and biologists, there is Rosenberg,
and besides the Rassenpolitisches Amt (the Office of Racial Policy), there is
the Beauftragter besondere des Fahrers fur die gesamte Weltanschauung, whose
power is at least as great. All that we mean by `inner race' and `spiritual
race' has the closest relation with what is defined in Germany by the term
`world view' and, as authoritatively put by the Führer in Nuremberg, has the
character of priority and of infallibility, since only the way of thinking and
of behaving, as well as the world view, can be seen - according to Hitler - as a
confirmatory proof of racial qualities. In this paper, we have commented
repeatedly on the role of the `struggle for a world-view' in Germany, on the
determination with which it has been conducted, and on the fact that, in
National-Socialism, it accounts for the truly active and creative counterpart of
the purely biological and prophylactic racism, so that there is no need to
repeat ourselves."*
A few paragraphs are then devoted to J. Evola's warning against the scapegoating
of the Jew, and, this time, in strict accordance with the Italian author's
views. The longer the quotes, the more consistent with J. Evola's thought : "A
serious formulation of the Jewish problem cannot overlook that which concerns
the Aryan' peoples themselves: the Jew must be prevented from becoming a kind of
scapegoat for everything that in reality the non Jews also have to answer for."
Since it is beyond the scope of this review to discuss the validity of this
warning, let us move on to the next contentious point. It relates to J. Evola's
treatment of `The Protocols of the Elder of Zion' in 'L'autenticità dei
"Protocolli" provata dalla tradizione ebraica" (Edizioni di Ar, Padova 1971, pp.
183-204), in which, according to Hansen, "he included a mass of quotations
allegedly from the Talmud and other Jewish religious writings. However, these
quotes were taken not from the original writings but from second or third hand
sources, such as Rohling's Talmudjuden and Theodor Fritsch's Handbuch der
Judenfrage, whose dubious scholarship and zealous bias should have been obvious
to Evola". According to scholarly standards, it should have been specified that
these quotes were also taken from a far more reliable source, namely, Father
I.B. Prainitis' - Master of Theology and Professor of the Hebrew Language at the
Imperial Ecclesiastical Academy of the Roman Catholic Church in Old St.
Petersburg - `Talmud Unmasked'(http://www.talmudunmasked.com/), to which the
Italian author devoted a whole essay : `I Cristiani e il Talmud' (Biblioteca
della "Difesa della razza", Roma-Milano, 1939-XVII, p. 247), and which is not
mentioned once among J. Evola's sources on the Talmud by C. Mattogno. "Carlo
Mattogno - Hansen goes on - who is probably more partial toward Evola (sic), in
a series of articles for Orion (
http://andreacarancini.blogspot.com/2010/05/evola-e-latuenticita-dei-protocolli.\
html/ Note of the Editor) examined the aforementioned quotes allegedly stemming
from old Hebrew sources, and proved that they were either falsified (though long
before Evola), taken out of context, or in some cases freely invented." In fact,
C. Mattogno, who cannot read Aramaic more than Hansen or us can, and who, as a
result, cannot check the primary sources, does not reveal anything that J. Evola
did not already know, relying as he is on his own second or third hand sources.
Let us go further : as is well-known, as any Semitic language, Aramaic uses no
vowels. "Imagine, A. Fomenko rightly points out, how precise the kind of writing
that consisted of nothing but consonants would be today, when the combination
BLD, for instance, could mean blood, bled, build, boiled, bald, etc. (…) The
vocalization aleatory quotient in ancient Hebraic and other old languages is
exceptionally high. Many consonant combination may be vocalized in dozens of
ways. Gesenius wrote that "it was easily understood how imperfect and unclear
such writing method had been" (quoted in [765]). T. R Curtis also noted that
"even for the priests the meaning of the scriptures remained extremely doubtful
and could only be understood with the aid of the tradition and its authority"
(quoted in[765], p. 155). Robertson Smith adds that "the scholars had no other
guide but the actual text, that was often ambiguous, and oral tradition. They
had no grammatical rules to follow; the Hebraic that they wrote in often allowed
for verbal constructions that were impossible in the ancient language."
In the last paragraphs of `J. Evola's attitude toward the Jews', scholarly
self-righteousness, boosted by intellectual dishonesty, reach new heights of
second-hand Jesuitism. When the preface writer asserts that "Even if some things
announced in the Protocols, although already easy to recognize at the time of
their publication, such as Liberalism and Rationalism and the dissolution of
family ties, have come to pass, there are scores of contradictions and
absurdities in them that destroy their `authenticity'" he shies away from the
main point made by the Italian author, which is that "the problem of their
`authenticity' is secondary to the far more serious and essential problem of
their `veracity', as was already emphasised by Giovani Preziosi when he
published them for the first time seventeen years ago. The serious and positive
conclusion of the whole controversy which has developed since is that, even if
we assume that the `Protocols' are not `authentic' in the narrow sense, it comes
to the same thing as if they were, for two capital and decisive reasons :
1) because the facts show that they describe the real state of affairs
truthfully ;
2) because their correspondence with the governing ideas of both traditional and
modern Judaism is indisputable." (http://thompkins_cariou.tripod.com/id68.html)
"(…) the theoretical convergence between the essence of the `Protocols' and that
of Judaism is indisputable, and we can infer that, even if the `Protocols' are
invented, the author has written what Jews faithful to their tradition and to
the deep will of Israel would have thought and written." (ibid.)
True, "In his preface, Evola himself described certain parts of the Protocols,
especially toward the end, as "fantasy"", but these parts do not invalidate in
the slightest the "theoretical convergence between the essence of the
`Protocols' and that of Judaism". What, to J. Evola, "is fantasy" is merely
Nilus' attempt to compare ", in an apocalyptic tone, the principal ideal of the
`Protocols' to the coming of the anti-Christ (the obsession of the Slavic soul)"
; in doing so, "he simply raves."
"A list of these contradictions (the contradictions contained, according to
Hansen, in the `Protocols') is presented in Pierre Charles's `Les Protocoles des
sages de Sion' (Paris-Tournai, 1938)". Those who can read Italian are welcome to
check the "condensed Italian version of this book (that) also appeared in Orion"
at
http://andreacarancini.blogspot.com/2010/05/lo-storico-opuscolo-di-pierre-charle\
s.html/
This Belgian Jesuit displayed the full extent of his naïve incompetence in the
economic areas or, maybe; of his full Jesuitism, when, commenting on Protocol n°
21, 11 ("We shall replace the money markets by grandiose government credit
institutions, the object of which will be to fix the price of industrial values
in accordance with government views. These institutions will be in a position to
fling upon the market five hundred millions of industrial paper in one day, or
to buy up for the same amount. In this way all industrial undertakings will come
into dependence upon us. You may imagine for yourselves what immense power we
shall thereby secure for ourselves…"), he wondered – please seat down and fasten
your seat belts : "With what resources the state, which will not be able to take
out loans and will only be able to levy moderate taxes, will carry out this
wonderful task, the Elders do not tell us. Yet this is the main thing."
E. C. Kopff once wrote : "With the publication of Men Among the Ruins: Post-War
Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist, English speakers can read Evola's
political views for themselves. They will find that the text, in Guido Stucco's
workman-like translation, edited by" a dubious individual called Michael
Moynihan, "is guarded by a double firewall."
(http://www.toqonline.com/blog/julius-evola-on-tradition/). Drawing on this
metaphor, it would be more accurate to say that J. Evola suffered a hacking
attempt.
* J. Evola's translation of some excerpts from `Der Mythus des Zwanzigsten
Jahrhunderts` are rather free, free enough to make the Italian author's views
and A. Rosenberg's on race sound far more antithetical than they actually are…
--- In evola_as_he_is@yahoogroups.com, "Evola" <evola_as_he_is@...> wrote:
>
> The preface and introduction to the American edition of `Gli uomini e le
rovine' by H.T. Hansen (http://www.juliusevola.com/site/MenAmongtheRuins.pdf)
has become a universal reference in the field of Evolian studies in the United
States, and, beyond, in the Anglo-Saxon world. Leaving aside G. Stucco's `The
Legacy of a European Traditionalist'
(http://elkorg-projects.blogspot.com/2008/04/guido-stucco-legacy-of-european.htm\
l) and J. Reilly's less known introductory reviews
(http://www.johnreilly.info/mar1.htm), it stood, at the time of publication, and
still stands, almost ten years after, as the only comprehensive attempt
available in the English language at reviewing J. Evola's work as a whole, in
spite of it being called 'Julius Evola's Political Endeavors' (*). Admittedly,
it is, in some respects, an impressive work of scholarship, a work which cannot
but impress Anglo-Saxon students of J. Evola who, for whatever reasons, cannot
check and research into the primary sources.
>
> Much of what is stated about the decisive influences on Evola's thought, his
artistic experiences, his philosophical period, his first steps towards
politics, is accurate, from a scholarly perspective, insofar as, from this
perspective, a man's worldview can only be shaped by his readings, by literary,
scholarly, influences, and in no way by his nature, his race of the spirit, his
race of the soul, and his experience ; by, say, `The Crowd', and not by the
observation, the study of a crowd - true, it is stressed that "Everything that
these people said might be apposite, but it amounts to nothing in an Evolian and
traditionalist worldview if it is not elevated by and grounded in transcendence.
These opinions become valid only when they are seen against the backdrop of a
higher, timeless realm", yet this transcendence is seen as being, so to speak,
of a bookish nature, since the assessment of the extent to which various
`profane' writers shaped J. Evola's "line of thought" is followed by the mere
need to "investigate the extent to which religious and mystical writings
complement the thinkers mentioned thus far, or better, place them in a timeless
framework so that many passages that smack of the "worldview" will be
spiritualized and given a different background as to their meaning", a need
which, while being perfectly legitimate from the perspective adopted by the
preface writer, should be complemented, first, by the expounding, in a much more
systematic and discriminatory manner, not only of the author's points of
agreement, but also of his points of disagreement with his influencers, and,
secondly, by an examination of the alchemy by which the complex interactions of
those varied well assimilated influences resulted in an organic, essentially
consistent and coherent, worldview ; of how, for example, what is valid in
Bachofen's typology of civilisation, in the substantive part of H.F.K Günther's
racial typology and of L.F. Clauss' Husserlian psychological racialism, in
relevant findings of historians of antiquity such as A. Piganiol and F. de
Coulanges, once defragmented and crowned with a sound knowledge of primary
sources, is synthetised and converted into the coherent account of the Roman
tradition which is given in the anthology `La tradizione di Roma'. Obiter
dictum, the somehow decisive influence of R. Guénon's traditionalism on the
Italian author's thought, as from the editing of `Revolt against the Modern
World', is, as is the case with most authors concerned with the investigation of
J. Evola's bookish influences, hardly touched upon, while the impact of `Sex and
Character' is exaggerated, insofar as most of the considerations of the
half-Jewish Austrian author's about female sexuality, female psychology, about
motherhood and prostitution, can already be found, not always only in nuce, in
the writings of various novelists and poets of the XIXth century, from C.
Baudelaire to J.K. Huysmans, from P. Villiers de l'Isle-Adam to P. Bourget, from
the Goncourt brothers to G. de Maupassant, whose works were well-known by J.
Evola, who, besides, also knew quite well, among other representatives of the
weaker sex, M. de Naglowska, and not just, it would seem, in the Biblical sense.
>
> Much of what is revealed about his relations to Fascism and to Fascists in the
years 1935-1945 is substantiated, while hearsays and rumours, such as that
according to which "Mussolini was afraid of Evola's magical powers and formed
the well-known gesture against the Evil Eye whenever he was mentioned", are
offered as such ; the summary of J. Evola's final assessment of Fascism is also
correct, supported as it is by particularly well chosen quotes such as the
potent and all-encompassing following one : "We are not afraid to invert the
thesis of a certain antifascism, and assert that it was not Fascism that had
negative effects on the Italian people, but rather the other way round: it was
this people, this `race,' that negatively affected Fascism, i.e., the Fascist
experiment, because it showed that it did not have enough men on the necessary
plane of certain higher qualifications and symbols... capable of further
developing the positive possibilities that could have been contained in this
system." Where does maliciousness lie here ? In J. Evola's assessment, which,
from a Fascist standpoint, goes to the bottom of the matter in bringing into
light the fact that Fascism failed essentially because the Italian man was
simply not up to Fascism, or in the preface writer's related comment, who has a
hard time taking into account that J. Evolas's criticism of Fascism is made from
a rightist perspective, from a supra-Fascist standpoint, that "This is not
necessarily as malicious as it seems, even though it is of course provocative
(provocation being, after all, one of the special inclinations of our author)" ?
>
> The account given of the Italian author's connection with National Socialism
is not inaccurate, both on the political-historical plane and on the
intellectual plane, except it is - dramatically – incomplete ; what a statement
such as "Evola tried to construct a racial theory that combines the history of
the spirit with racial history" may mean, we do not have a clue, yet it is the
explicit conclusion reached at the end of the chapter on "Evola and Racism", in
which one cannot but wonder how on earth it can be stated that J. Evola's
"forefathers were (among others) Montaigne, Herder and his Volkergeist (…),
Fichte", when strong reservations are expressed in the first chapter of `Il Mito
del sangue' against Fichte's and Herder's position and constructions on race ;
in actual facts, what J. Evola tried to do in this respect was, as noted by the
preface writer of `Sintesi di dottrina della razza' (1994, 2d ed.), "to give a
traditional content to a modern concept", or, more accurately, to re-actualise,
on the basis of a theoretical assumption of the three-dimensional Indo-European
view of man as body, `soul', and spirit, what was once actually experienced and
had become latent (see the introduction to `Il Mito del sangue').
>
> "The final report on Evola's June 1938 lectures, kept in the handwritten files
of the personal staff of the Reichsführer-SS (file AR/126)", is then extensively
quoted and its conclusion highlighted : "there exist no grounds for National
Socialism to place itself at the disposal of Baron Evola. His political plans
for a Romano-Germanic Imperium are of a utopian character and moreover very apt
to cause ideological confusions. Since Evola is also only tolerated and barely
supported by Fascism, it is tactically not necessary to accommodate his
tendencies from our side. It is therefore recommended to:
> 1. Not support Evola's current efforts for the establishment of a secret
supra-national order and the founding of a magazine directed toward this goal.
> 2. Curb his public activities in Germany after this lecture series, without
taking any special measures.
> 3. Prevent his further penetration into leading offices of the party and the
state.
> 4. Observe his propaganda activity in neighboring countries."
>
> Additionally, a short letter, dated August 8, 1938, from the author of the
report to H. Himmler is quoted : "The Reichsfuhrer-SS has acknowledged the
report regarding the lectures of Baron Evola and is in full agreement (rather :
in agreement) with the thoughts and recommendations (rather : the terms) stated
in the last paragraph thereof."
>
> As if that was it, the conclusion is reached that "According to this, the SS
as a whole was not favorably inclined toward him, even though he was apparently
unaware of it", following which thoughts are given on "some areas in which he
(J. Evola) thinks National Socialism (which he refers to as "the new views") has
made a positive development" and other areas he thinks there is room for
improvement, in the light of the highest Aryan tradition.
>
> Let us go through the various other documents published in `Julius Evola nei
rapporti delle SS' (Quaderni di testi evoliani n°33, Fondazione Julius Evola,
2000) that are not taken into account by Dr Hansen in his judgment of the
relationship between the Italian author and the National-Socialist
plenipotentiaries. In a short letter, dated September 6, 1938, to the personal
staff of the Reichsfûhrer-SS, the `Società Italo-Tedesca' confirmed they had
received the day before a payment of "300 Reichsmark for the stay of J. Evola in
Germany" the previous June. In March 1939, G. Landra, who became later the first
director of the Office of Racial Studies and who, at that time, was a lecturer
in anthropology at the University of Rome, wrote to the Reichsführer-SS,
informing him that their attention had been drawn by J. Evola to the "biological
and racist basis of the SS led by you, as well as to the aspects that make it a
caste order". Six weeks later or so, the SS. Obersturmbannführer Grau, in a
letter to SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. R. Brandt, Himmler's personal chief of
staff, reminded him that "The Baron Evola, who once published a brilliant
article on the SS in the Italian review `La Vita Italiana', (…) after he read
the speech delivered by the Reichsführer-SS (…) in Magdebourg, wrote another
article which is essentially based on this speech and which he would like to
publish, under the signature of the Reichsführer, in `La Vita Italiana' or in
the review `Regime Fascista'. The Baron is acting under the explicit orders of
Professor Landra, that is, of the Minister (of Popular Culture) Farinacci." Two
days later, Dr. Brandt informed Grau that J. Evola's request had been favourably
considered by the Reischsführer, who, however, did not wish the article to be
published with his signature, and asked that a few minor changes be made to some
passages of the article "that could hurt Italians". It was published on June 15
of that year, in `Regime Fascista', and sent to H. Himmler, who, on July 26, had
Standartenführer Ullmann, informed G. Landra of the following :
>
> "The Reichsführer-SS is willing to keep supporting in the future the work of
writer of the baron J. Evola. The baron J. Evola is therefore asked to make
proposals on the topics he intends to tackle in the field of activities of the
SS."
>
> There is further evidence in that part of the preface to the American edition
of `Gli Uomini e le rovine' to support the claim we once made that most National
Socialist officials do not seem to have had first hand information on J. Evola's
work, nor on his precise relations with the Fascist regime, in the light of the
fact that, in a review sent by Dr Huettig to the head of the NSDAP Racial Policy
Department Dr Gross on 'Sintesi di Dottrina della Razza' on September 9, 1942,
the former wrongly stated that J. Evola 'was not authorised' to call it
'Synthesis of Fascist Racial Doctrine', when B. Mussolini had already gone so
far as to explicitly authorise J. Evola to call the German edition of 'Sintesi
di Dottrina della Razza' - 'Synthesis of Fascist Racial Doctrine' - 'Grundrisse
der Faschistischen Rassenlehre'. This further piece of evidence is
unintentionally provided by Dr. Hansen, when he refers to "Another document from
Himmler's personal staff" which purportedly shows that "Himmler personally
received and collected information about Evola" and "reports that Himmler again
ordered a thorough examination of Evola's Heidnischer Imperialismus, in which
the German translation should even be compared to the original Italian text in
order to eliminate errors in translation (sic)." So H. Himmler or/and the chief
of the Sicherheitshauptamt (main security office) who was supposedly in charge
of collecting information about the Italian author was/were not aware of what
was known by any contemporary Italian-speaking German reader interested in J.
Evola's work, that is, that `Heidnischer Imperialismus' was not the German
translation of `Imperialismo pagano', and that it was even a completely
different book - the huge shortcomings of German intelligence agencies of that
time have been pointed out by various post-WW2 historians and experts, who also
noted how infiltrated they were by allied spies or, simply, by civil servants
nostalgic of Weimar.
>
> It would be interesting to know exactly when that "document from Himmler's
personal staff", which is "archived in the aforementioned file under no. II
2113", which includes a most unfavourable opinion of the then chief of the
Sicherheitshauptamt on a not so unfavourable appreciation of the
National-Socialist world-outlook by J. Evola, and of which we have not been able
to get hold, was concocted.
>
> Whoever this chief of the Sicherheitshauptamt may have been, let us wish he
did not meet the same fate as Wiligut/Weisthor, who, a few months after having
urged "Not (to) support Evola's current efforts for the establishment of a
secret supra-national order and the founding of a magazine directed toward this
goal, (and to) Curb his public activities in Germany after this lecture series,
without taking any special measures", was retired from the SS, and the return of
his Totenkopf ring, of his SS Dagger and his Honour Sword was requested by H.
Himmler.
>
> In 1944, following the invasion of Italy by the Anglo-Saxon cannon fodder of
the anti-European forces, J. Evola moved or, perhaps, was moved to Austria,
where, in Vienna, he was commissioned by the SS to translate Freemasonic
documents seized by the Gestapo from various lodges which had just been raided
by the SS.
>
> The second part of our review of the preface to the American edition of `Gli
uomini e le rovine" (`Men and the Ruins') will deal with its antepenultimate
part, "Evola's Attitude Toward the Jews", about which there is quite a lot to
say.
>
>
> * A 192-page book, due to be out in mid-May, by Paul Furlong, Professor of
European Studies and Head of School, School of European Studies, Cardiff
University, is, as suggested by its title, mainly concerned with the `Social and
Political Thought of Julius Evola (Extremism and Democracy)', as are a few more
or less anecdotic pages by T. Sheehan, M. Sedgwick and R. Drake.
>