Evola is enigma to many; not to Bannon
Taboo Italian thinker became a darling of Italian Fascists, and post-Fascist terrorists
Those trying to divine the roots of Stephen Bannon’s dark, and at times apocalyptic worldview, have repeatedly combed over a speech that Bannon, President Donald 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 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. Evola became a darling of Italian Fascists, and Italy’s post-Fascist terrorists of the 1960s and 1970s looked to him as a spiritual and intellectual godfather.
More important for the US administration, Evola also caught on in the United States with leaders of the alt-right movement, which Bannon nurtured as head of Breitbart News and then helped harness for Trump.
“Julius Evola is one of the most fascinating men of the 20th century,” said Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader who is a top figure in the alt-right movement.
In the days after the election, Spencer led a Washington alt-right conference in chants of “Hail Trump!” But he also invoked Evola’s idea of a prehistoric and pre-Christian spirituality — referring to the awakening of whites, whom he called the Children of the Sun.
Stark difference
Spencer said “it means a tremendous amount” that 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 recognises 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.”
Bannon, who did not return a request for comment for this article, is an avid and wideranging reader. He has spoken enthusiastically about everything from Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ to ‘The Fourth Turning’ by William Strauss and Neil Howe, which sees history in cycles of cataclysmic and order-obliterating change.
In his Vatican talk, Bannon suggested that although Putin represented a “kleptocracy”, the Russian president understood the existential danger posed by “a potential new caliphate” and the importance of using nationalism to stand up for traditional institutions.
“We, the Judeo-Christian West,” Bannon added, “really have to look at what he’s talking about as far as Traditionalism goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism.”