1/56) After this thread with @HegelNationalism, re-reading @CBonduk’s Gentile posts and some Evola, I have to conclude that there is much value to extract from Gentile, less so from historical Fascism that can be revived/ constructed into a robust project for the dissident right. https://twitter.com/HegelNational/status/1244953451118891009

2/56) Buckle in because this is going to be an extremely long thread.
Long enough to convince me to start a blog.

3/56) Outside of the reactionary worldview, Liberals, Anarchists, modern Conservatives, Progressives, Marxists, and even Fascists themselves will be quick to try and identify Reaction with Fascism or vice versa. On the surface, this seems reasonable.

4/56) Oswald Spengler and Julius Evola had links to the Italian Fascist Party (albeit Evola was a "supra-fascist" meaning that he was beyond Fascism) and the German National Socialists quite liked Spengler's writing.

5/56) Regardless of how much PragerU Neoconservative types, as well as some Libertarians, squeal about Hitler being a Socialist because it is in the name or something trivial.

6/56) Fascism and National Socialism were definitely on “the right” per se - during their own short-lived early 20th Century existences and now in whatever miserable form they still exist in.

7/56) However, Fascism failed spectacularly. Sure maybe due to geopolitical realities more so than the essence of Fascism domestically in its own national manifestations but it still lost.

8/56) But what I am going to argue is that Fascism isn’t desirable in any sense for principled, present-day illiberals or viable for a truly restorationist Reaction.

9.1/56) “When Fascism ascends to power, i) it creates a coherent central authority (good) ii) which is not particularly responsible (bad), iii) maintains itself in power by indoctrinating its subjects (bad), and practices unnecessary and sadistic violence (bad).

9.2/56) Thus we have one good and three bads, which makes bad. It is not surprising that Fascism is generally considered bad.” - Mencius Moldbug, Gentle Introduction ch.8

10/56) While I personally am not, in the same manner as Moldbug, this critical of Fascism, in focusing on the core good it has, and how Fascist statecraft basically butchers that good, I'll try and present a sweeping critique which explains its undesirable affections.

11/56) The reactionary view of sovereignty and authority, is that it should be characterised by distance from the demos - this principle of Traditional authority Julius Evola calls 𝘢𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘴.

12/56) This feeling of distance is one that induces a sense of veneration, natural respect, and a disposition towards fruitful obedience and loyalty to the Rex (King), as distinct from Dux (General/Captain).

13/56) Fascism blends these two distinct roles into one which problematises sovereignty because this means that power is not anagogic (drawn from above - i.e. from the Sovereign Good, Divine Right etc.).

14/56) The 𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘰𝘯 (function) of Dux compared to Rex has to be one of closer distance to the people for military purposes. With this, the Fascist sovereign runs the risk of being caught up in the very 𝘳𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘤𝘩 (popular intoxication) that he is supposed to be directing.

15/56) He then begins to find himself in confused positions such as deriving authority in a catagogic manner - from the ‘will of the people’, ‘volk’, ‘proletariat’ー

16/56) ーin some shape or form as representative of the demos instead of in orientation to that which is above him, justified by priests after “he who decides the exception” has given his discretion.

17/56) Fascist power thus finds itself lacking any higher consecration - hence why its attempts at religion are extremely flimsy with only a few real exceptions - most of which are fairly short-lived.

18/56) Fascism is naturally inclined to be a secular power where religion is supplanted by an irresponsibly material intoxication of the masses. The "Nation" does not deserve the highest veneration.

19.1/56) “The notions of nation, fatherland, and people, despite their romantic and idealistic halo, essentially belong to the naturalistic and biological plane and not to the political one;

19.2/56) ーthey lead back to the ‘material’ and physical dimension of a given collectivity.” - Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins p.127

20/56) The priorities of the Fascist state become disordered as such. Just like in democracies and other oligarchical statesーper Robert Michels' Iron Law of Oligarchyー

21/56) ーfascist sovereignty has to necessarily concern itself, under the same delusions of “the will of the people”, with ateleological thought control.

22/56) Educating the public as such, maintaining a shared good in order to cultivate a virtuous populous, even in a militaristic fashion is morally acceptable and an imperative of the sovereign

23/56) in order to foster homonoia, but a homonoia that is bred from the political management of the demos is disordered when it is not towards some higher-end but towards material ends themselves.

24/56) True Reaction is to be orientated upwards, towards the universal destination of goods - to the form of the Good, to the Divine, to God.

Another compounding factor of Fascism’s disordered nature is that of sovereign turnover.

25/56) Evidently in modern liberal democracies, sovereignty isn’t truly held by the President or Prime Minister but by managerial authorities that are anterior to the democratic process such as Civil Service, Intelligence agencies etc.,

26/56) ーoutlasting the turnovers of one head of state to anotherーhowever, liberal democracies are much more insecure in just about every other conceivable way per imperium in imperio.

27/56) In Fascist states, such security of sovereign turnover is much more absent, and so Il Duce is much less secure in his power. Unlike the sovereign emperors of the Roman Empire, the hereditary Monarchs of Christian Europe, the guarantee of his successor is much more dubious.

28/56) In short, the difference between a truly Reactionary sovereign and the typical Fascist sovereign is the difference between “by the grace of God” to that of “by the will of the nation.”

29/56) What occurs in this inversion is not merely just a shift from one institutional structure to another, but from one world (anagogic and divine) to another (catagogic and physical).

30/56) As St. Thomas Aquinas outlines in De Regno - the disorder of the latter’s situation breeds tyranny whereby the common anagogic good is abandoned for catagogic petty politics and private good.

31/56) However, as Chris Bond outlines in his book 'Nemesis', there are also problematic manifestations of seemingly anagogic power - the Divine Right of Kings, which is itself a modernist doctrine seeing no natural relations of authority amongst men.

32/56) And so the Divine Right of Kings should also be rebuked in favour of something more robust such as the Great Chain of Being which sees God instantiating a natural cosmic hierarchy, and so authority is both in man’s social nature and good.

33/56) Here’s a great article on the GCoB in relation to Bond’s work. https://aidanmaclear.wordpress.com/2019/08/17/book-review-c-a-bonds-nemesis/

34/56) But ok, Fascism still looks cool, the sleek black Hugo aesthetic seems pretty based so let us undo the aesthetic attraction to Fascism by throwing Hitler’s favourite jew - Otto Weininger - back at his face for a dash of irony.

35/56) Before that, let us give a name to this catagogic mode of political organisation that transcends merely Fascism.

36/56) What I have been describing in the ills of Fascism is Bonapartism (also see: Caesarism). Bonapartism represents a despotism based on a democratic view, which it might deny de facto, but fulfills it in theoryー

37/56) ーas if the omnipotent people led and disciplined themselves in this absence of auctoritas (obviously this means that my critique of Fascism isn't entirely unique to Fascism and can be applied to any form of popular government that appropriately fits these qualifiers).

38/56) Weininger described the “great politician”, (a Stalin, a Mao, a Hitler, a Woodrow Wilson) as one who is a popular despot and at the same time a worshiper of the peopleーsimultaneously a pimp and a whore.

39/56) He is enslaved to the complex of popularity; attending rallies from which he may derive the feeling, illusory though it may be, that the people follow and approve of him, this pimp/whore dynamic being encoded in democratic theatrics.

40/56) Whilst this may produce a popular feeling that the sovereign is “one of us”, it is as Weininger describedーmutual prostitution. All democratic politics is performatively populist. Fascist politics is inherently populist and so is all revolutionary politics.

41/56) All of this is political prostitution. Cringe.

42/56) In this sense, the Reactionary, the principled illiberal should disassociate their political identity from all modern politics because all of it participates in some shape or form in this misguided veneration of the demos.

43/56) The elitism and spiritually aristocratic character inherent to the conception of the political presented in the works of Robert Michels, Thomas Carlyle, Evola, St. Thomasー is what separates Traditionalism from petty Nationalism and Fascism.

44/56) This isn’t to say that the view I have expressed here is antithetical to the core components of Nationalismーa secure elite that exhibits auctoritas will select for a virtuous flavor of homonoia.

45/56) Yet, the sovereign Rex needs to be secure enough to delegate power to the Dux in order for this to come aboutーwhich is where Formalism comes in.

46/56) Aside from all these reasons, calling yourself a Fascist is just political satanism. You repel everyone around you, you immediately put yourself in the crosshairs of the Cathedral - its just not an intelligent move.

47/56) The old Fascist praxis isn't even viable anymoreーa Fascist winning a democratic election and making any meaningful change won't ever happen in the West because the Cathedral administers the democratic process itself.

48/56) What needs to be done is a further strip-mining and filtering of historical Fascism, but much more of Gentile, Jose Primo de Rivera et al., who have intellectual contributions worth subsuming into the Post-Liberal/NeoAbsolutist project.

49/56) To illustrate what elements of Gentile’s thought I think have an affinity to an ontologically absolute position, I’ll concede to Zolt thought-as-act//actual Idealism epistemology does indeed lend itself to a seemingly ontologically absolute position.

50/56) I only say “seemingly” because I haven’t read enough Gentile myself, but he seems to reject the various Cartesian and Franciscan elements of modernity that run their course into various absurdities.

51/56) Moverover, Genitle shares advocacy for both autarchy and corporatism with Evola, which effectively dissolves the nonsensical private-public distinction of liberalism, which itself compounds liberalism.

52/56) Gentile’s Actualist System also very rigorously rejects the liberal individual in an explicitly absolutist sense, whereby outside of authority individuality has no meaning.

53/56) As I have said before - Justice in the individual is analogous to justice in the State. With proper discipline keeping desire in order towards a good end, they are just in virtue of harmony that exists between their inner multiplicityー

54/56) ーas each element performs proper function in tandem with each other. I think both the NeoAbsolutist position and Actual Idealist position converge here, yet Actual Idealism just seems to miss the mark on the ordering of the goodsー

55/56) ーyet it in practice requires a social order that would encourage said ordering. I think this may be attributed to the latent atheism of Gentile’s “cultural Catholicism”, which allows him to continue in an extremely humanistic tradition.

56/56) Nevertheless, replacing Gentile’s humanism & Absolute Immanentism with something more anagogic is not the most intricate surgical procedure, and should be done.
Thank you for making this far.
Sorry, I don't have a prize for you.
Have this fish burger.
~fin~