Taboo Italian Thinker Is Enigma to Many, but Not to Bannon

[herding cats]

ROME — Those trying to divine the roots of Stephen K. Bannon’s dark and at times apocalyptic worldview have repeatedly combed over a speech that Mr. Bannon, President Trump’s ideological guru, made in 2014 to a Vatican conference, where he expounded on Islam, populism and capitalism.

But for all the examination of those remarks, a passing reference by Mr. Bannon to an esoteric Italian philosopher has gone little noticed, except perhaps by scholars and followers of the deeply taboo, Nazi-affiliated thinker, Julius Evola.

“The fact that Bannon even knows Evola is significant,” said Mark Sedgwick, a leading scholar of Traditionalists at Aarhus University in Denmark.

Evola, who died in 1974, wrote on everything from Eastern religions to the metaphysics of sex to alchemy. But he is best known as a leading proponent of Traditionalism, a worldview popular in far-right and alternative religious circles that believes progress and equality are poisonous illusions.

<>

Mr. Spencer said “it means a tremendous amount” that Mr. Bannon was aware of Evola and other Traditionalist thinkers.

“Even if he hasn’t fully imbibed them and been changed by them, he is at least open to them,” he said. “He at least recognizes that they are there. That is a stark difference to the American conservative movement that either was ignorant of them or attempted to suppress them.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-evola-fascism.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur

[JHan]

1. They're all throwbacks and fear progress. Fuck em.

I could expatiate more but at this point.. just "fuck em" -- fuck them and their backward shit.

[herding cats]

3. I agree, fuck them.

The WH is basically being run by people who believe Mussolini wasn't fascist enough?!

[dchill]

2. When you eat poop...

What is the quality of YOUR poop?

[eppur_se_muova]

4. "progress and equality are poisonous illusions" - exactly the beliefs of fundamentalists everywhere.

Muslim-bashers like Bannon and 45 can't see the irony that their view of the world is the same as that of the terrorists behind al-Qaeda, ISIL, etc. They choose to generalize the problem of fundamentalist Muslims to all Muslims, when it should be generalized to all fundamentalists, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, whatever.

I don't see why the authors even bother to make Traditionalism a proper noun -- it's just fundamentalism, with less emphasis on the purely religious aspects, since its followers like to quote scripture and claim divine guidance but are ignorant as shit about the religion(s) they profess to cherish. You could classify Bannon and his ilk as "authoritarian fundamentalists", whose defining common belief is that The Boss Is Always Right.

[Lithos]

5. Right-wing anarchism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National-anarchism

The conservative revolutionary concept of the anarch, as articulated by Jünger, is central to national-anarchism.[1] National-anarchists see modernity, liberalism, materialism, consumerism, immigration, multiracialism, multiculturalism, and globalization as the primary causes of the social decline of nations and cultural identity.[1] They stress a strategic and ideological alliance of racial separatists in the Western world, neo-Eurasianists in Russia, Islamists in Muslim-majority countries, autonomist and secessionist movements in the least developed countries, and anti-Zionists everywhere to resist the "New World Order"—globalization viewed as an instrument of Jewish-dominated international banking and American imperialism—that is inevitably leading to global economic collapse and ecological collapse.[1]

This is primarily the world view of the alt-right and the type of anarchist which Bannon self-identifies.

L-