Re: Rene Guenon, Alt Right, Traditionalism etc
 

I think that Qcrisp and Evans have nailed some important points regarding "fascist tendencies" and what the Traditionalists are really about.

Evans: Unfortunately we then have Evola who took many of Guénon's theories and mixed them with the above mentioned sub-theosophical palingenesis e.g. Hyperborean Root Races, Lost Empires and the like, along with a heavy dash of Nietzscheanism. ....Neo-Folk Traditionalism is more likely to be Evola influenced.

Qcrisp: It's also worth noting some of the interesting cross-pollination taking place in Traditionalist ideas. Coomaraswamy, for instance, was influenced by William Morris. It's not hard to see that in their interest in craft, both Coomaraswamy the traditionalist and Morris the socialist were opposing the alienation of the modern world of mass-production.

Evans: What the original Traditionalists proposed can be crudely put as the following: all religions, in their Interior aspect have Non-Dualistic union with the Absolute as their goal - with this in mind dogmatic claims e.g. conversionary obligations, should be taken as secondary to this aim and to resisting the corrupting effects of modernity.

Re: Rene Guenon, Alt Right, Traditionalism etc
 

I've just been watching this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...is-bitter-lake

It's Adam Curtis's film about Afghanistan, and the rise of a narrative of 'good and evil' in politics.

I could say a lot about it. I have reservations but am also finding it fascinating. Anyway, I'm posting it here because there's an image in it that, to me, comes close to summing up why many might be very much in sympathy with tradtionalism (which, as has been pointed out, is distinct from Alt Right).

The image comes at about 01.48 in the film, and it is this:

After America invaded Afghanistan, post-9/11, many foreign experts were sent in to educate and rehabilitate the native population. Among them were even teachers of conceptual art. The film shows one such teacher explaining the origins of conceptual art. She has an image of Marcel Duchamp's work projected in front of the class.

"Do you know what this is?" she asks. "The ladies might not know."

Someone says, "A toilet", and she confirms the answer. A headscarfed woman among the students shakes her head in disbelief.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, after your years of being fought over by various vicious military tyrants (would-be or actual), seeing your cities destroyed and your children killed and maimed, we bring you... Western civilisation! We bring you... modernity!

A pissoir.

Re: Rene Guenon, Alt Right, Traditionalism etc
 

I had a mild curiosity about the Alt-Right and a marginal sympathy for their distaste for the modern world until I had an unpleasant online exchange with one of their members last week.

This gentleman, we shall call him X, is involved in publishing Alt-Right material. He is an American.

The conversation turned to Europe and its future. He started talking about the need to reinstate 'traditional European values' etc. I asked him if he was European and he said he was an 'American-European'. I asked what that was and if it meant one of his parents was European. No, they were both American but he considered himself European due to 'race' issues. He said he disliked America.

I asked him what core programmes his movement had for Europe and he became irritatingly evasive and slightly patronising, with plenty of talk about race etc. I decided to play him by his own rules and asked him how he could talk about European values so confidently given he himself was not European.

That set the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons.

He informed me again that he was European by race and when I asked him if he thought French Muslims born and raised in France, with French as their first language and loyal to the French state were not in fact infinitely more European than he was he became very irritated. He told me that, no, they were not European and he was more so than them. When I expressed incredulity at this he claimed I was 'either ignorant or stupid' and did not not know what being European meant. I informed him that I was European, having lived in Europe all my life and so on, but he claimed to know better than I about the 'real' Europe.

Then one of his buddies piped in and said I 'needed a free helicopter ride', a comment endorsed by X. When I asked this gentleman to say something intelligent he then told me there was 'a blazing oven waiting for me'. (I am not Jewish, incidentally.)

The conversation ended shortly afterwards, but in a bizarre coda X privately messaged me to express his disappointment at my belligerence!

Anyway, to wrap up, the free helicopter offer and oven comments only served to confirm my suspicion that this lot are nothing but a bunch of Neo-Nazi racist thugs, who try and keep their vicious anti-semitism under lids as much as they can, but have a hard time doing so. All the bluster about Tradition and Guenon and Evola and blah blah is nothing but a lot of smoke and mirrors in my opinion to disguise a fairly ugly and sadly familiar agenda.

Re: Rene Guenon, Alt Right, Traditionalism etc
 

This trash surfaces every few years under different name. Few years ago it was NeoReaction, Dark Enlightenment, whatever, with loonies like Nick Land as its head ideologues, nowadays it goes by the name of Alt-Right and has a brand new generation of spokesmen (Theo Beale & co, Counter Currents guys...).
It is always that same old bigoted, reactionary trash aimed at bitter young men, if only ever so modified for the newest batch of aforementioned bitter youths. They are only a lot noisier nowadays and have attracted a lot more of mainstream attention since they have mainstream political outlets in the events such are Brexit or the upcoming US elections, as well as growing Islamophobia and anti-Feminist sentiments among the ever easily manipulated uneducated masses...

Re: Rene Guenon, Alt Right, Traditionalism etc
 

Aren't most of the Alt Right just young Trump fans, MRAs and Gamergater types? I don't imagine most of them care about philosophy and thinkers other than to give themselves an appearance of legitimacy and the more extreme figures help them feel edgy.

Re: Rene Guenon, Alt Right, Traditionalism etc
 

Phil Sandifer's book on the phenomenon of Internet far-right looks promising (it is also apparently somewhat inspired by Ligotti and CATHR, of which he is a great fan).
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Sadly, it is still only available to KS backers at this point. Anyone here had a chance to read it?

Re: Rene Guenon, Alt Right, Traditionalism etc
 

An interesting thread, though I have wondered if some posters were serious about what they wrote.

Malone wrote:

Anyway, to wrap up, the free helicopter offer and oven comments only served to confirm my suspicion that this lot are nothing but a bunch of Neo-Nazi racist thugs, who try and keep their vicious anti-semitism under lids as much as they can, but have a hard time doing so. All the bluster about Tradition and Guenon and Evola and blah blah is nothing but a lot of smoke and mirrors in my opinion to disguise a fairly ugly and sadly familiar agenda.

That sounds like a distressing encounter and those people repugnant. However I left your post unconvinced that these neo-nazis (I will accept your judgement of them) are qualified to speak about Traditionalists or have anything whatsoever to do with them. Were they religious scholars or academics familiar with the world's esoteric traditions or world classical literature? Those are the people qualified to speak about the Perennial Tradition in the sense that has been referred to in these posts.

Apologies if I'm mistaken, but it seems that you've somehow learned to equate Tradition with right wing Euro-centric nationalism and the so-called "Alt-Rght." I have no doubt that there are indeed some right wing nationalists somewhere who have some slight familiarity with Tradition, but to therefor tar the whole with the dirt of the (very) few seems mistaken.

How is that different from dismissing all progressive Black Liberation movements based on the actions of a few rioters at a BLM demonstration? Or justifying anti-Semitism based on the action of some Israeli settlers? Or perhaps with a more specific analogy - dismissing the centuries of Madhyamika and Yogacara philosophy because some ethnic Buddhist nationalists in Sri Lanka have been violent oppressors? I would argue equally against taking these extreme positions for the very same reasons.

Again, perhaps I have misunderstood your argument and you are well familiar with the multi-cultural exponents of Tradition such as Frithjof Schuon, Rene Guenon, A. Coomaraswamy, and Hossein Nasr? Otherwise it seems you are basing your argument about a scholarly matter on live research with a few rude internet trolls, surely not a serious attempt.

For those new to the discussion, the early responses to this thread have already laid out the issues with this line of thinking, and provide some in-depth definitions of what the Perennial Tradition actually is.

Re: Rene Guenon, Alt Right, Traditionalism etc
 

You are equating extremists who are abusing WORTHY movements and philosophies, with their action sometimes being in the direct opposition of philosophies they outwardly claim to support, with those who are acting in accordance with philosophy whose very core is authoritarian and bigoted.

Re: Rene Guenon, Alt Right, Traditionalism etc
 

Just to chime in at this point - I have some idea what Tradtionalism is. After some thought, I realise I have no real idea what the Alt-Right is.

This is what Wikipedia says:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right#Beliefs

And here's a quote from someone called Ian Tuttle, also from the Wiki article:

Some years back, I heard the term (which now seems to have vanished) 'South Park Republican', which meant someone who voted Republican, but also smoked joints and was 'down with the kids', etc. I assumed that the 'Alt-Right' was an extension of this kind of idea.

Someone like Gavin McInnes would appear to fit this model:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_McInnes

However, it seems clear that much or most of the Alt-Right is not adequately described in this way, and it's hard to know quite where the 'Alt' comes in much of the time.

Anyway, here Gavin McInnes identifies 14 kinds of right-winger:


He starts with Alt-Right. He distances himself from them a little because, among other things, as he says, they "attack race-mixers like me". (It seems his wife is of Indian ethnicity.)

Anyway, must have lunch.

Re: Rene Guenon, Alt Right, Traditionalism etc
 

I think the label of "South Park Republican" fits many members of America's Libertarian Party better than the Alt-right. A better label for the Alt-right would be "South Park Nazis".