Key Thinkers of the Radical Right Read online

  less hegemonic. In the US, a series of challenges to the Republican main-

  stream culminated in the 2016 election of Donald Trump, and America’s

  liberal orthodoxy is also challenged. The reasons for these developments

  are many and complex, and it is not the objective of this book to add to what

  has already been written about them. Rather, the objective is to contribute

  to the understanding of one of the consequences of the general shift to-

  ward the Right: the new importance of the thinkers of the radical Right.

  There are many problems of definition and classification involved in

  writing about the radical Right. Terms such as “Far Right” and “Extreme

  Right” are widely used and are thus useful for denoting the phenomenon

  in question, but they are less useful for defining or delimiting it. There

  is no general agreement as to where the mainstream ends and the ex-

  treme starts, and if there ever had been agreement on this, the recent

  shift in the mainstream would challenge it. Terms such as “Fascism” and

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  “neo- Nazism” are also widely used but refer to political parties that rose

  and fell in historical circumstances very different from today’s, and so

  have limited value in a contemporary context. Nazi symbolism may some-

  times be used for its countercultural shock value, but there is no serious

  movement to reestablish the Nazi Party, and it is hard to imagine what real

  neo- Nazism would look like. Among contemporary thinkers of the radical

  Right, only one of any importance (Greg Johnson) expresses any sympathy

  for Nazism.

  The radical Right, too, has its own terminology. The term “New Right”

  is often used, and the term “Alt Right” has recently come into prominence.

  There are also nationalists, identitarians, libertarians, neoconservatives,

  paleoconservatives, counter- jihadists, and neoreactionaries. These differ

  in important ways, but all have something in common.

  The approach taken by this book is to avoid questions of definition

  and classification by focusing on thinkers who are widely read in all these

  circles, in the US and in Europe. The thinkers who are discussed have been

  selected on a number of bases. The selection reflects the editor’s own view

  of the significance of different thinkers, and also the views of American

  and European scholars working on the right who were consulted by the

  editor. Reference has also been made to authors promoted on important

  rightist websites such as Arktos, which has a European emphasis, and

  Counter- Currents, which has an American emphasis, both of which are

  discussed in the book, and to the views of selected participants in the rad-

  ical right scene. The key question has been whether a thinker is widely

  read today, whatever the period in which he (or, occasionally, she) wrote.

  Only thinkers with a major current international audience have been in-

  cluded. Many interesting contemporary thinkers writing in French or

  German who have a primarily national audience have thus been excluded.

  Thinkers who are also widely read outside the radical Right, and who for

  that reason are already widely known, have also been excluded. In some

  ways this is unfortunate, as the exclusion of Nietzsche and Heidegger

  implies a greater divide between the radical Right and the more general

  intellectual scene than actually exists. But many excellent discussions of

  Nietzsche and Heidegger are already available elsewhere.

  Like all such selections, this book’s choice of key thinkers is somewhat

  arbitrary. In the end, it is representative rather than exhaustive. This is es-

  pecially true when it comes to younger thinkers. It is easier to identify the

  now classic thinkers who wrote in the early and middle twentieth century

  than it is to identify more modern thinkers,1 and harder still to identify the

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  key thinkers who are emerging today, as there are many more of them,

  and it is impossible to predict which will remain important.

  Despite these limitations, this book gives a good idea of the thought

  of the “radical” Right— a term that is used as it carries somewhat less

  baggage than most alternatives. The book deliberately avoids making po-

  litical judgments or value judgments. Its contributors write as scholars,

  not activists, and its purpose is likewise scholarly. Attempts were made to

  contact all the living thinkers covered, who were offered the opportunity

  to suggest corrections of any errors they found. Not everyone responded

  to these attempts, and not everyone then agreed to read and comment, but

  the comments of those who did provide them were all taken into account.

  Each chapter, however, is the responsibility of the author concerned.

  The book is divided into three sections. It starts with four “classic”

  thinkers: Oswald Spengler, Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt, and Julius Evola.

  These four are classic in the sense that, along with Nietzsche and Heidegger,

  they are required reading for today’s intellectual radical Right. Three of

  them were German (as, of course, were Nietzsche and Heidegger), part

  of the informal group that was later identified as forming a “Conservative

  Revolution,” a group to which the fourth classic thinker, Evola, an Italian,

  was close. All save Spengler were active in the period in which their coun-

  tries were under Nazi or Fascist rule, but only one, Schmitt, was an active

  member of the Nazi Party. Jünger was courted by the Nazis, but neither he

  nor Spengler supported them, Evola at times supported both the Fascists

  and the Nazis, but he was never a member of the Fascist Party. It is im-

  portant, then, to distinguish between this group of classic thinkers of

  the radical Right and the historical Nazism and Fascism with which they

  were contemporary. Only one of the classic thinkers of the radical Right

  (Schmitt) was ever really a Nazi or Fascist, though one other (Evola) did

  have a strong relationship with both Nazism and Fascism.

  All of these classic thinkers save Spengler wrote their most important

  work during the interwar period, and were thus marked by the First World

  War, either directly or indirectly. Spengler wrote his most important work,

  The Decline of the West ( Der Untergang des Abendlandes), during the war,

  when a German victory was still possible. Schmitt was also marked by the

  troubles of the Weimar Republic, in which, as a constitutional lawyer, he

  was personally involved. All save Spengler, who died in 1936, also wrote

  in the postwar period, but only Evola’s postwar work equals his interwar

  work in importance. There were, of course, many other comparable

  thinkers in the same period, from the official ideologists of Nazism and

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  Introduction

  Fascism to individual thinkers such as the English writer Hilaire Belloc.

  These other thinkers, however, are generally no longer much read. Belloc,

  ironically, is now remembered primarily as the author of Cautionary Tales

  for Children and of other books of verse that remain popular in Britain and
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  which might be compared to the works of Dr. Seuss in America.

  Spengler is best known for The Decline of the West, which was only in-

  cidentally political. It aimed to develop a philosophy of history through a

  comparative analysis of past cultures and civilizations, and on this basis

  concluded that the West had reached the stage development where de-

  cline would inevitably set in from about 2000. The Decline of the West

  introduces two ideas that remain central to the radical Right: apocalyptic

  visions of decline, and a focus on cultures and civilizations rather than on

  nations and states.

  Jünger, likewise, was also only incidentally political. He is best known

  for his Storm of Steel ( In Stahlgewittern), a book more literary than polit-

  ical, presenting the experience of war in heroic style, in stark contrast to

  alternative works such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western

  Front ( Im Westen nichts Neues)— also a literary work with political signif-

  icance. Jünger’s work did, however, draw explicit political consequences

  from the Storm of Steel: that the liberal nineteenth century was dead. In

  this he effectively agreed with Spengler. Jünger stands in today’s radical

  Right for the virile and the heroic, for struggle. He was also the earliest key

  thinker of the radical Right in whom we find concern about the rise of a

  global cosmopolitan elite lacking specific cultural roots, a concern that is

  of great importance today.

  Schmitt, in contrast, was directly political, though his primary focus

  was law, especially constitutional law. Schmitt attacked many of the

  assumptions of the political liberalism of his time, and especially the lib-

  eral parliamentary state. He was a distinguished academic scholar, and

  his arguments were complex in a way that the arguments of Spengler

  and Jünger were not. They have since been developed by the Left as well

  as the Right. Most significant for the radical Right, perhaps, is his dis-

  tinction between friend and enemy— his argument that what ultimately

  underpins politics is the fundamental distinction between us and them,

  friend and enemy, and that any state must ultimately reflect this fun-

  damental basis of the community. Schmitt’s concept of the political

  emphasized the individual political community against liberal univer-

  salism, which he saw as a cover for economic interests and as doomed

  to failure, given that it denied the most important basis of the political

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  community, the distinction between friend and enemy. Schmitt thus

  continues and develops the suspicion of the global universal elite that

  we find in Jünger.

  Schmitt also developed the distinction between the “State of Normality”

  ( Normalzustand) and the quasi- apocalyptic “State of Emergency” or “State

  of Exception” ( Ausnahmezustand) to argue that any community had or

  needed a sovereign, and that under certain circumstances this sovereign

  could best represent the political community in a dictatorial state governed

  not by law but by decree. The ultimate objective, however, was the State

  of Normality, the stabilization of political forms as legal relationships. The

  antidemocratic potential of such arguments is obvious, and Schmitt used

  them to support the Third Reich. Schmitt also participated in the persecu-

  tion of the Jews under Nazism, somewhat ironically, given that he also had

  close intellectual and personal relationships with individual Jews, both be-

  fore and after the Third Reich.

  Evola also addressed the political directly, though his own point of de-

  parture was not political but philosophical and spiritual. For Evola, the

  concept of “tradition” derived from the French esotericist René Guénon,

  leads directly to political consequences, both for political authority (which

  must be connected to the transcendent) and for society (which must be

  hierarchical). It also leads to an apocalyptic vision of inevitable decline.

  The tradition that Evola himself preferred was the pagan tradition, an anti-

  Christian position also found elsewhere in the radical Right. The concept

  of tradition was the basis of his engagement with Fascism and Nazism,

  and is why this strain of the radical Right is termed “Traditionalism.” The

  concept of tradition also underlay Evola’s postwar work, some of which

  developed a theory of apoliteia, especially in his Ride the Tiger ( Cavalcare

  la tigre), his most important postwar book. The tiger that must be ridden

  until it collapses from exhaustion is modernity. Apoliteia is either a com-

  plete retreat from politics or an engagement in politics that does not allow

  one to be inwardly affected. Quite which Evola meant, and quite what the

  relationship is between apoliteia and political violence, remains controver-

  sial. Apoliteia, however, has been important to the radical Right, as has the

  idea of riding the tiger, an idea that fits with Jünger’s heroic vision and also

  with Spengler’s apocalypticism and Schmitt’s State of Exception.

  The book’s second section covers seven “modern” thinkers: Alain de

  Benoist, Guillaume Faye, Paul Gottfried, Patrick J. Buchanan, Jared Taylor,

  Alexander Dugin, and “Bat Ye’or” (a pen name). All of these are still alive

  and form the generation succeeding the “classic” thinkers, writing under

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  Introduction

  very different circumstances, and addressing not the interwar but the

  postwar world. All are explicitly political.

  Two of the book’s modern thinkers— de Benoist and Faye— are French,

  major figures in the so- called New Right ( Nouvelle Droite) that emerged in

  the 1960s in parallel to the better- known New Left of the same period, and

  responding to similar stimuli. Antonio Gramsci, the Italian neo- Marxist

  of the interwar period whose thought was so important for postwar neo-

  Marxism and the New Left, was also of great importance for the French

  New Right, which embraced his view that political revolution starts with

  intellectual revolution: once the way people think about certain issues

  changes, political and social change inevitably follows. This idea, known

  as “Metapolitics,” became central to the French New Right and then to

  other parts of the radical Right. The French New Right became a reference

  point for the radical Right elsewhere in the West, and especially for the

  single Russian thinker covered in the book, Dugin.

  De Benoist drew on Nietzsche and Heidegger and on the classic

  thinkers of the radical Right, especially Jünger (whom he knew, and whose

  concept of the Anarch inspired him), Schmitt (whose distinction between

  friend and enemy he used), and Spengler. Like Evola, de Benoist is a self-

  declared pagan. He echoes Spengler’s understanding of cultures, though

  he is interested in smaller communities than Spengler was. Like Jünger,

  he is alarmed by what he saw as a homogenizing “ideology of sameness”

  promoted by egalitarianism.2 Against this he pitches the “right to be dif-

  ferent,” which he developed into “ethnopluralism,�
�� the idea of communities

  based on ethnicity rather than territory, called “ethnospheres” by Faye.3 De

  Benoist and Faye were concerned about threats to European traditions and

  culture during the Cold War, and initially saw both the Soviet Union and

  the United States as a threat. Faye, but not de Benoist, then came to see

  Muslim immigration and Islam as the threat, and the pairing of Muslim

  immigration and ethnopluralism became characteristic of radical- Right

  thought, one of the main bases of identitarianism, which stresses the im-

  portance of protecting ethnic identities. Muslim immigration was not the

  only threat that Faye saw in an apocalyptic “convergence of catastrophes,”4

  which in effect constituted Schmitt’s State of Exception and required a

  dictatorial response, but it was one of the most urgent.

  Three other “modern” thinkers in this section of the book— Gottfried,

  Buchanan, and Taylor— are American, men who in different ways estab-

  lished intellectually sophisticated positions to the right of mainstream

  Republicanism, the space that had previously been occupied by the

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  “Straussians,” conservatives who claimed the mantle of Leo Strauss, and

  neoconservatives. Gottfried and Buchanan are both “paleoconservatives,”

  an important strain in the American radical Right. Gottfried, who was

  fluent in German and thus could continue interwar European debates

  in the postwar American context, argued against Strauss for reference to

  history and tradition as a weapon against liberalism and progressivism.

  Gottfried also echoed Schmitt in suspicion of global liberal elites, which

  he saw as perpetually adrift, the basis of what he called the “managerial

  state,” working against the traditional bases of society.5 Gottfried was thus

  also a traditionalist, though in a very different way from Evola. This al-

  ternative form of Traditionalism became especially important for the

  American radical Right, and also the “Alt Right,” a term that Gottfried

  may have helped to invent.

  Buchanan was an experienced political actor and TV journalist who

  could translate intellectual arguments into something that could be

  used as a basis for political mobilization. Like Gottfried, he believed that

  American society was based not on abstract universal principles (as many