[lbo-talk] Negri and Evola?

Michael Pugliese debsian at pacbell.net
Thu Jun 12 10:29:01 PDT 2003


<URL: http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/empire.htm > Hmm, neo-fascist "New Age" Traditionalist, Third Positionist, Julius Evola and Negri? http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/ata.htm "After the Third Age:Eschatological Elements of Postwar International Fascism."

Presented at the Seventh Annual Conference of the Center for Millennial Studies Boston University, November 2 to 4, 2002


> ...Esoteric fascism is not the cause of all the world's troubles, but its
> agenda is much with us. Consider antiglobalist anarchism, as represented
> by Hardt & Negri's book "Empire." 29 Negri's analysis of modern history
> follows Evola's point by point, even when it makes no sense, as in the
> assertion that America is the first country whose political system wholly
> excludes the transcendent. 30 Modern anarchism embraces the Traditional
> prediction that capitalism will be brought down by a post-modern
> multitude, not by economic forces.

I don't want to dwell on Islamicist ideology; I don't know that much about it. Still, we should note that recent Islamicist terrorists quote Evola with facility. 31

Then there is pan-Europeanism. Esoteric fascists generally supported European solidarity, provided it was anti-American. This take on the subject is no longer confined to heavy-metal enthusiasts. There was, maybe there still is, an annual colloquium called the Politica Hermetica, 32 hosted by the School for Applied Advanced Studies at the Sorbonne. It deals largely with Evola and Guénon, and not particularly critically. The old New Right even has a postmodern version of Tradition in the thought of Alain de Benoist. 33 This sort of thing is too esoteric to find a wide audience, but it does leak into elite opinion.

Finally, there are the new, progressive forms of anti-Zionism, made possible by the internationalization of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. After nearly seventy years of propaganda, America and the Jews are finally linked as joint targets of progressive opinion throughout the West. Francis Parker Yockey would have been so pleased. http://www.autonomedia.org/dreameroftheday2.html

28 Thomas Sheehan, "Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist," Social Research 48: 45-73 Spring 1981 29 Empire by Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Harvard University Press, 2000. Reviewed here, <URL: http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/empire.htm >

30 I am scarcely the first person to notice the parallels between Negri and Evola. See Sheehan, op. cit.

-- Michael Pugliese

"Without knowing that we knew nothing, we went on talking without listening to each other. Sometimes we flattered and praised each other, understanding that we would be flattered and praised in return. Other times we abused and shouted at each other, as if we were in a madhouse." -Tolstoy



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