SURE, KEEP ON PUBLISHING EVOLA…
Just tell the whole truth about who he was and what he stood for, will you?
Looks like Inner Traditions/Bear & Co. decided to skip the promised essay by Joscelyn Godwin and instead gave us their own commentary on why they keep on publishing Evola.
It’s an apologetic piece that continues to treat the readers like ignorant oafs, repeating half-truths and straight-up lies and pretending certain connections aren’t easily spotted in the age of information.
This one particularly irks me:
Evola has been accused of being a Nazi and Fascist even though he has written extensively against these two ideologies.
He wrote against those ideologies in the sense that they failed to go “all the way” as he needed them to. He considered himself a “Super Fascist” in the sense that he saw Mussolini’s Fascism failing at enforcing the racist and xenophobic ideas of Aryan supremacy he saw enshrined in what he calls “tradition”.
I find it incredibly problematic and disingenuous to keep pretending the wider public isn’t made of people who actually read Evola and can point out these facts. Especially when, in the very next sentence, they quote Evola himself:
We are in open opposition to a certain mythos: the one that wants to turn spirituality and culture into a realm that is dependent on politics. We, on the other hand, claim that it is politics that must be dependent on spirituality and culture.
I wonder if Inner Traditions thinks we are all stupid. It would seem to be the case.
But I would also argue, why are they presenting the words of Gianfranco de Turris as gospel without giving the wider international audience a clear understanding of who Gianfranco de Turris is and what he stood for his entire life?
I appreciate that most non-Italians won’t know his name, even if Inner Traditions presents him in their piece as a renowned scholar we all should listen to.
So let me bring you all up to speed. De Turris is a right-wing journalist who has carved for himself a spot in Italy’s counterculture as editor of many sci-fi and fantasy authors, first and foremost Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft. This must give him a sort of counter-cultural icon status, the kind we tend to associate with liberal or at least centrist political viewpoints.
That’s not the case for De Turris, who has been a very public supporter of the neo-fascist group CasaPound — the same group where current ultra-reactionary Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, started her political career.
So… why should we exactly take the words of Gianfranco de Turris, a far-right intellectual with ties with far-right organisations, as gospel when defending Julius Evola from accusations of being, frankly, a terrible human being?
As I was writing this piece, fellow author and magician Phil Hine noted that “even Hansen (aka Hans Thomas Hakl) admits he rejects Evola’s “numerous unambiguously racist outpourings” — but Inner Traditions can’t even admit that directly.
Now that said, I do agree that we cannot continue with the wave of cancellations or asking for banning books. I certainly made that error myself in recent years, and I can tell you — it simply doesn’t work.
So, by all means, keep on publishing Evola, but stop trying to whitewash him the way Inner Traditions is trying to do. Furthermore, people should be well aware of which “eminent scholar” ’s ideas are called to support the decision to keep on publishing the works of a racist and a white supremacist.
I grew up in Italy, and I read all of the available material on Evola — and some that wasn’t easily accessible either, as I knew folks connected to the remnants of the UR Group. Even so, I remain convinced that this piece by Sam Block will tell you pretty much all you need to know about Evola’s incredibly brief interest in magic.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
