Book review.
See this; Evola’s critique of Italian Fascism.
The negatives of this book outweigh the positives. The writing is, in general, bad, typical of these types. Good writing is clear, and relatively easily understandable by educated people. Overly complex writing is the refuge of those with weak arguments; after all, obfuscation can be effective camouflage for incompetence.
All of Evola’s traditionalist obsessions sicken me. He is an advocate of monarchy and thinks it proper that Mussolini had to share power with an inept king (who, according to Evola, “rightfully” had the power to remove Il Duce – although Evola does imply a disapproval of the king’s disloyalty); indeed, according to Evola, Mussolini could have just been an advisor to the king. After all, who cares about superior men from the “proles” – we must make way for the king! What an ass.
Evola opposes mass movements of all sorts and rejects populism, as if we can garner White support for changing society by a hyper-reactionary, monarchist creed that will appeal only to the top 0.1% of the population.
Evola’s comments against Mussolini’s pro-natalist policy were stupid when they were written, and today must be classified as grotesque, given Italy’s rock-bottom low birthrate and rapidly aging population. I suppose to Evola and the “traditionalists,” large families is a “mass” ”prole” phenomenon, and not optimal for the “aristocrats of the soul.” If we leave things up to these pie-in-the-sky elitist traditionalists, Whites will be demographically swamped even faster than we are now.
Further, Evola’s criticism of Giovanni Gentile is disgusting, given that Gentile is, say, several thousand orders of magnitude superior as a philosopher compared to the traditionalist hack Evola.
I also do not approve of Evola privileging the status of the State above that of Nation and People.
What are some of the positives of this book? Evola’s assertion that Fascism should have established an elite, an “Order,” as opposed to a single party state, is valid. Evola’s comments about the economy and corporatism were also valid. One can also agree with Evola that if a state is sufficiently strong, it can afford allow a degree of individual freedom and decentralization of the internal components of the state. This is compatible with Lowell’s Imperium-Dominion distinction, in which a strong and overarching Imperium allows local sovereignty (decentralization) among the components of the Imperium. Evola opposed an intrusive totalitarianism, and instead advocated that the state embody itself as a role model, actualizing a “tension,” a gravity, drawing people to the correct rightist paradigms, overseen by an elite order.
Evola’s view of the war was basically sound, and he brought up the interesting idea that, analogous to how returning WWI veterans influenced the politics of post-war Italy and Germany, in the event of a hypothetical Axis victory, returning WWII veterans would have influenced the internal politics of Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany in a direction more compatible with Evola’s ideals (whatever we may think of those ideals).
What about race? Here, Evola was both negative and positive. I oppose Evola’s emphasis on “aristocratic, spiritual race” and have often discussed this. On the positive side, I agree with Evola that the individual superiority of elite men needs to be considered in any comprehensive evaluation of race. Similarly, I often state that superiority is not a birthright, it is something that needs to be earned. This view contrasts with the viewpoint of the Quota Queen Herrenvolk – that their ancestries confer automatic superiority, untainted by their histories of comical ineptness, and by their manifest personal inadequacies.
Evola was also correct in stating that the racial archetype of Italy should be “Aryo-Roman” and not “Nordic-Aryan” and, also, that a properly rightist Italian State has an obligation of “race formation,” to mold a new type of Italian (at least for the elite) from the human material at hand. Finally, Evola correctly identified the fact that it was not that Fascism failed the Italian people, but the reverse. Like me, Evola harshly criticizes the feckless, hedonistic, undisciplined, weak, foppish, “anvil of history,” character of the (modern) Italian people, and recognizes that this had much to do with the eventual failure of the Mussolini regime.
While Evola had a low opinion of the Italian Social Republic, which was Mussolini’s rump republic at the end of the war, he did state that one positive of this second Fascist state was that it was in that State that the Italian people stepped up and acted in a more heroic and disciplined manner, fighting with loyalty for a lost cause.
In general, when Evola writes from a general rightist perspective – a “Pan-Rightist” perspective if you will – much of what he says is applicable to rightist activists of widely different ideological-spiritual backgrounds. However, when he – as often occurs – takes a particularly “traditionalist” view, he loses those of us who vehemently disagree with that outlook. Evola’s anti-populist, monarchial, “traditionalist” view, while overlapping positive features in some aspects, is in my opinion fundamentally flawed.
My own outlook is futurist and opposed to traditionalism (as defined by Evola and his adherents in the “movement”).
eginotes 
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