Defining “Right-wing” is not an easy task. While Russell Kirk’s definition of conservatism is the rejection of ideology (which is materialist and, as Bradley J. Birzer puts it in “Russell Kirk on the Errors of Ideology,” falsely “promises mankind an earthly paradise”), the basic and general catch-all of “Right-wing” often includes movements which are explicitly ideological. For instance, the German Revolutionary Right, which had as its unofficial intellectual the egg-headed and bespectacled pessimist Oswald Spengler, advocated for what Spengler loudly called “Prussian socialism”—a type of authoritarian and nationalist socialism that was billed as the “organic” alternative to Marxist socialism.
Also in the “Right-wing” camp are so-called neoreactionaries, who seem preoccupied with squaring classical liberalism with the Old World conservatism of men like Metternich. This often proves to be a Herculean task, especially since the very term “reactionary” is more or less a Marxian coinage. “Reactionary” denotes someone opposed to change at all costs, and since the Marxist (and increasingly the liberal) view of history sees progression towards collectivization and socialism inevitable, then to be a “reactionary” is to be against history. For thinkers and those spiritually of the “Right-wing,” then there could be no greater insult than being labeled as “against history,” for history, or rather a somewhat romanticized view of it, lies as the heart of Radical Traditionalism—the philosophy and ideology espoused by Baron Julius Evola.
Born in Rome to a noble Sicilian family, Evola spent a large part of his youth living the life of a well-heeled decadent. Although he was born a little too late to have enjoyed the fabled fin desiècle, the baron did not let time nor fashion stop him from enjoying recreational drugs, crafting avant garde paintings (Evola was for a short period of time both a Futurist and a Dadaist), serving in the First World War as an artillery officer, and dabbling in yoga (a practice that would consume much of his later writing). Set against living the bourgeoisie life, the young Evola seems to have had all the vivacity of speeding car and little in the way of patience with eternal things.
Then, sometime in the 1920s, Evola delved deeper into mysticism. He became well-read in the occult as well as esoteric subjects, all the while further enhancing his interest in Buddhism and Eastern culture. Before long, this research became politicized, and after establishing the collection of Italian occult scholars and students known Gruppo di Ur as well as the group’s flagship magazine Ur, Evola tried to establish an elitist and pagan brand of Fascism—a type of Fascism that abhorred materialism and embraced a more mystical understanding of human societies. Eventually, Evola would grow to call this Traditionalism, and through his numerous publications and books he would later articulate a rather complex and at times indecipherable ideology which, as the website for the Julius Evola Society states, appeals “towards an eternal order…”
Just what this “eternal order” is is a tad bit foggy. Unquestionably, Indo-European tradition is a large piece of it, and so to is a hierarchical and even aristocratic view of social interactions. In his famous work Revolt Against the Modern World, Evola argued against the social and economic implications of capitalism by championing the superiority of older orders:
Prior to the advent of the civilization of the Third Estate (mercantilism, capitalism), the social ethics that was religiously sanctioned in the West consisted in realizing one’s being and in achieving one’s own individual nature and the group to which one belonged clearly defined. Economic activity, work, and profit were justified only in the measure in which they were necessary for sustenance and to ensure the dignity of an existence conformed to one’s own estate, without the lower instinct of self-interest or profit coming first.
A devout reactionary, a term that Evola embraced and called “the true test of courage” in Men Among the Ruins, Evola remained throughout his life a man apart and a natural creature of the opposition. Even during the reign of Fascism in Italy, Evola, who always supported an idiosyncratic brand of Fascism throughout his life, was a critic of Mussolini’s demagoguery and his appeals to mob politics. Furthermore, Evola disliked the Lateran Treaty of 1929, which recognized the full sovereignty of the Holy See in the independent state of Vatican City.
Somehow, despite Evola’s clear ties to Fascist Italy and his work in Austria with the SS Ahnenerbe (Himmler’s organization of Nazi intellectuals dedicated to proving the history and the biological superiority of the “Aryan” race), Evola lived out the rest of his days in Italy in relative peace. Only once, in 1951, did he stand trial for his Fascist writings, and even then his case was thrown out for lack of evidence (after all, Evola had never been a member of the National Fascist Party).
In his last major work, called Ride the Tiger, Evola essentially gives up on the idea of ever reviving the “eternal order” of Tradition through political means. In its stead, Ride the Tiger serves as a manual for mentally and spiritually transcending the Kali Yuga—the “age of vice” and the fourth and final cycle of the world in the scriptures of the Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs. Evola considered the modern world the Kali Yuga, and this theory is arguably his greatest and his most lasting contribution to the various segments of the “Right-wing.”
Here’s where Evola’s second life becomes important. Since the advent of the Internet as a forum for open and unlimited conversation, all kinds of political wonks and esoteric thinkers have taken up Evola’s standard of Radical Traditionalism. His views and work are regularly discussed on the websites Amerika and Alternative Right, while three of his books are proudly listed on the Dark Enlightenment’s reading list under the heading of “Reactionary Thought.”
The Dark Enlightenment, which is like plenty of other “movements” strung all across the Internet, has been in the press’s eye lately. Over at Taki’s Mag, author Nicholas James Pell describes the Dark Enlightenment as “a plucky collection of backward-looking upstarts” who are unified by “hysteria and a complete inability to get the point,” while the Daily Telegraph’s Dr. Tim Stanley calls the whole mess “more tragic than it is scary.” On the Left, the Dark Enlightenment is mostly known for being racist, which, like “Right-wing,” has become a smothering blanket for “Things Leftists Would Rather Not Talk About.” The Dark Enlightenment is as hard-to-define as Evola himself, but the one thing for sure is that it does not necessarily view Fascism as a dirty word.
Writing for Standpoint in 2013, Hugo Schmidt pronounces that: “the crucial argument of the 21st century will not between Right and Left, but between the democratic Right and the fascist Right.” The Left, which has been gutted because of the historic failure of Marxist socialism, is no longer the intellectual force that it once was, and with an increasingly pessimistic view among those caught on the lower end of America and Europe’s slow recovery from fiscal collapse, then fears that many may turn to neo-Fascism no longer seem so wild. Besides the appeal of thinkers such as Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye, several New Right parties in Europe (Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and France’s increasingly popular National Front) and India (most notably Shiv Sena and the RSS) have recently captured the world’s attention.
Then of course there is Russia. Putin’s Russia has long been a bastion of New Right thinking. Besides Putin himself, the other public face of Russian Fascism is Aleksandr Dugin: a Eurasian supremacist and apologist for Stalin who looks strikingly like a young Fyodor Dostoevsky. Since the recent conflagration in Crimea and Ukraine, many journalists have speculated about Dugin’s clout within Putin’s administration, and some have come up with startling finds. None are more jarring than Robert Zubrin’s National Review Online article entitled “Putin Adviser Publishes Plan for Domination of Europe,” which presents a translated communique from Dugin (whom Zubrin calls “a very influential geostratic and ideological adviser”) about a so-called “Russian Spring.” In each scenario, Dugin outlines the various outcomes of the crises in Crimea and Ukraine. Most if not all favor Russia, and in one, Russia leads a “European Conservative Revolution” that unites Lisbon with Vladivostok. In this matrix, Dugin sees Russia as the preeminent power of Tradition and new conservatism, or what he labels “the Fourth Political Theory.” Ultimately this scenario ends with a process of “de-Americanization” throughout Europe and Asia and the collective rebuke of “Atlanticism, liberalism and financial oligarchy.” Dugin, in echoing the words of Evola, places a Russian chauvinist spin on the Kali Yuga, but instead of turning inward in order to “ride the tiger,” Dugin and his numerous followers in Russia argue for a very political reaction to what they see as the ever-encroaching scourge of America and the European Union.
As tempting as some of Evola’s ideas can be, true conservatives should not be wooed by him or the New Right. The New Right is not a conservative enterprise, and Fascism is not conservatism by another name. Even Evola’s more obscure brand of Fascism would require an all-expansive state, while Dugin’s brand of Russian reaction is composed of three elements: 1) war, 2) empire, and 3) anti-Americanism. None of these elements appeal to the natural order of things, and worse still these ideals, which typically extract God and the Christian faith from the equation, can only led to further human unhappiness and destabilization. Ideology is truly a pour substitute.
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Please remember that this was a man who blamed the Jews for WWII and was an ardent admirer of the brutal Legion of the Archangel Michael. He reprinted the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and was a proud, if idiosyncratic, anti-Semite.
Interesting article. Certainly the crisis in Ukraine has caused me to take greater interest in Russian political thought, including that of Prof. Dugin, whose very interesting interview with Polish conservatives I have only recently finished reading. His open letter to Americans was also interesting. My friend once noted, back during the war over Ossetia, that Russians will always lose the public relations battles, because they speak frankly and coursely by nature. If this is true, we cannot think a particularly course and frank Russian from being maliciously frank and course. I have never read Mr. Evola, but I would not jump to conclusions.
Instead, I think Wittgenstein’s advise to a certain British thinker should be taken to heart:
“…glaube nicht das alles Dummheit ist was Du nicht verstehen wirst…”
Mr. Rieth,
First of all thank you for your comment. Once again, it’s nice to know that one does not write in a vacuum for an audience of dust. As for the article, I had no real intentions other than to put forth my opinions on the “New Right.” Evola, while being a good writer with many brilliant ideas, was still a Fascist. Dugin is similar, but as you correctly point out, he is far more uncouth than the suave Sicilian. Russian thinkers do indeed suffer because of the myth of their own burliness, and most people have a hard time taking bear men (or at least men who look and smell like bears) seriously. Again, as much I find things in Evola and even Dugin’s writing interesting, I cannot agree with the ultimate extension of their thinking – corporatism, statism, and societies built upon illusory definitions of superiority. At the sake of ruining my reputation at the Imaginative Conservative, I am more or less of the Objectivist mind when it comes to “society,” which is an inappropriate blanket term that more often than naught suffocates the individual.
Interesting article. I’m a Platonist and have read and much admired many of the Perennialist figures, such as Guenon and Schuon. The Perennialists are sometimes mentioned in the company of Evola – and he was certainly influenced by Gueon and Coomaraswamy, but the Perennialists rarely bring up Evola and definitely keep their distance. Some of their criticisms are more philosophical or metaphysical, but some of them are political, especially what is seen as his over keen interest in politics and placing of the warrior class over the priestly class.
Still, I’m not sure Mr. Welton’s criticisms are entirely correct, in that he seems to imply a sort of conservatism that is necessarily classical liberal. The conservative can support, if somewhat ambivalently, empire. He can also support monarchy, and not just as figureheads, and aristocracy. In fact, it is important not to conflate political philosophy, even that based in metaphysics and theology, with ideology. Ideology is simplistic. It is either rationalistic slogans or appeals to untutored sentiment, or both. Even the Angelic Doctor and Dante discussed the nature of government and make the claim that monarchy is generally the preferable form of government. Such views need not be ideological.
Besides, Evola is a philosopher and metaphysician. His political thought was built on this foundation. And it largely rises and falls with that foundation.
I think we misunderstand one another. I recomend everyone at TIC watch this interview (it has english subtitles). I do not think it is fair to say of this person that he “looks and smells like a bear”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPkEDRSYUpo
Keep in mind a few things:
1) National Review likes to portray Russia as a “totalitarian” society, yet here is a one hour interview by a liberal of Prof. Dugin, in which the liberal presses him – especially in the latter half when he confronts him with an impassioned defense of the American Declaration of Independence. The content of this interview, the fact that two men with such contrary views can engage in such a dialogue on television – this shows how freedom in Russia looks. Please show me where I can find this level of debate and passion on Foxnews or CNN?
2) Notice Prof. Dugin says “if the Americans went the way of Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan, they would not be our enemies.” Prof. Dugin likewise reacts to the claims of the Declaration of Independence by pointing out practical American policy – in other words, he points out Western hypocricy. He does not take the Declaration of Independence seriously because the actions of the American government do not accord with it. Is that Prof. Dugin’s fault, or is it our fault as Americans?
3) His radicalism is obvious, but can we not see that the radicalism of Prof. Dugin and those who follow him is fed by our own failure to limit our government, and a failure of the European Union to respect the national soveriegnty of its’ member states? I will not even mention the Ukraine fiasco, which simply feeds into his narrative of what is happening.
If we don’t want Prof. Dugin’s views to become the views held by the majority of Russians, then the means to achieve it are within our reach. Radicalism births radicalism.
25 year of neoconservatism are now breeding a reaction in Russia – this was to be expected. We must realize that for Russians and many others in the world, Americans sitting around chatting about whether to invade Nigeria or bomb some other place, whether we should first attack Iran or perhaps Syria, coupled with year after year of actual military intervention creates Blow-Back.
Prof. Dugin is a pessimist about America’s capacity for self-restraint. We can prove him wrong by restraining ourselves.
“Only another Russian could understand the reactionary and Sovietophile blend presented by the pseudo-colorful Komarovs, for whom an ideal Russia consisted of the Red Army, an anointed monarch, collective farms, anthroposophy, the Russian Church and the Hydro-Electric Dam.”
— Vladimir Nabokov, “Pnin”, likely anticipating Prof. Dugin and his grotesque National Bolshevism.
The gist of the article is that conservatives may dabble in any form of right-wing ideology they want, as long as liberal democracy is the only one they take seriously. That said, bravo for even mentioning Baron Evola and Professor Dugin. No other mainstream “conservative” journal will touch either with a ten-foot pole.
If you re-read Evola’s beliefs about organic states, the idea of needing ‘an all expansive state’ is 180 degrees from what he believes. That we as moderns can’t discern the difference between an all-powerful and yet materially and bureaucratically sparse monarchy from a totalitarian system such as those he criticized (Fascism, Nazism) is exactly the problem and the reason why Riding The Tiger exists. He and the conservatives are in agreement here, you can’t reconstruct an order via force, even if you have the force of an all expansive state.
As for the thing about Protocols, Evola does admit that much of the text is actually fantasy. Either way, there are works where Evola knows what he is talking about and those where he doesn’t. Because he is still rather obscure, this delineation is not quite established. Jonathan Bowden has a talk on Evola which can be quite helpful; and in either case, Evola does speak with an authentic voice though one must not believe him alone in what he says but read others with differing opinions, especially on spiritual matters.
His criticisms of democracy however are spot on, and are an extension of the old conservative criticisms of democracy we conveniently forgot at some point.
His criticisms of the bourgeoisie, the “market mentality” of so-called modern conservatives, and the belief that only a return to the heroic/ascetic/religious values of earlier ages can effectively defeat the Left echoes so much of what Richard Weaver was writing at about the same time. Its uncanny.
Mentioning Evola reminds me of Francis Parker Yockey, another person not lacking in imagination, but who could not be ever considered “conservative”. In a study on neo-Nazi and fascist (not really the same thing, BTW) thought of the late 20th century, both names came up repeatedly, as being “intellectual roots” for the genteel Authoritarians (George Lincoln Rockwell and successors), as well as the punk-rocker Skinheads.
While I do not know anything of Dugin, placing him in the same company with Evola or Yockey does no favors for whatever he thinks or says.
Conservatism is a wet blanket atop the fire of Tradition.
written here not by me:
http://www.moreright.net/paleoconservatives-alarmed-at-the-rising-influence-of-julius-evola/
Paleoconservatives Alarmed at the Rising Influence of Julius Evola
Posted on May 20, 2014 by Michael Anissimov
The paleoconservatives at The Imaginative Conservative have caught wind of the rising profile of Julius Evola among those on the far right, and they aren’t happy about it.
The primary error of the article is making too strong connection between Evola and Russian traditionalist Alexander Dugin, both overestimating his influence on the Russian government and on Anglosphere neoreaction. The article uses anti-Russian scare tactics to connect Evola to Dugin and Dugin to a Cold War 2.0 threat, thereby hoping to disabuse American conservatives of any growing interest in Evola’s ideas.
The article quotes Robert Zubrin as the source for the claim that Dugin is an influential advisor to Putin. Zubrin, writer for National Review, is a well known anti-Russo scaremonger, as evidenced by the hysterical attempts to link Putin with National Socialist fascism and alleged plans for the “domination of Europe”. So, linking something he doesn’t like to Russia and thereby to evil is his go-to tool for putting down philosophical influences he dislikes. Benjamin Welton at The Imaginative Conservative happily reuses Zubrin’s neocon-flavored tool to scare his fellow upstanding conservatives away from the fascist evil of Evola.
Instead of addressing the substance of Evola’s arguments, the Imaginative Conservative article uses the same tactic employed by University Leftists—if there’s something you dislike, call it Fascism! Quote from the article:
Evola tried to establish an elitist and pagan brand of Fascism—a type of Fascism that abhorred materialism and embraced a more mystical understanding of human societies.
This is a blatant untruth, as not only was Evola not fascist, he actually risked his life and freedom to criticize Fascism in Fascist Italy. His critiques were so pointed that he had to be accompanied by a cohort of bodyguards on his regular walks around Rome.
What Evola advocates is a system of government that existed for hundreds and thousands of years before Fascism, which he calls the Organic State. In his writings, Evola laments a simplistic worldview that divides everything into pro-Fascist and anti-Fascist. He was writing in the 1950s, when such a black-and-white dynamic would have been extremely noticeable, but one wonders whether he would be surprised that the same false dichotomy persists today in 2014.
To identify Traditionalism with Fascism is idiotic. Fascism is an essentially populist ideology (just watch any of Hitler’s speeches and you’ll see this is obvious), which adopted both modernist ideas such as universal equality/fungibility as well as modernist aesthetics such as the Futurist art movement. The totalitarian state under fascism is designed to create an artificial, non-organic role for everyone and compel them to fulfill that role, regardless of fit or appropriateness. In this way, it is similar to Communism, which imagines everyone is best suited to be a proletarian factory worker.
The Traditionalist state, in contrast, is based on the same organic hierarchy that emerges whenever human beings are put into social groups with one another, and is based on the ancient motto “suum cuique pulchrum est” (to each their own). Instead of expending great effort to fight natural human inclinations towards hierarchy and differentiation, as neoliberal socialism does, or connecting every form of hierarchy and status to material wealth, as Capitalism does, Traditionalism encourages natural hierarchy and differentiation based not on just wealth but also traits with much deeper roots, such as upbringing, cultural accomplishment, social influence, exceptional performance for the well-being of the community, and so on.
Until conservatives understand the difference between Fascism (a philosophy barely a century old) and Traditionalism (a philosophy thousands of years old), their critiques of reactionaries will be superficial indeed.
I think you are mistaken both in tying Evola and Dugin to Fascism as well as mistaken in tying them to each other.
Oh look, someone else butchering a quote from my article with a breathtaking lack of irony.
“Mentioning Evola reminds me of Francis Parker Yockey, another person not lacking in imagination, but who could not be ever considered “conservative”. In a study on neo-Nazi and fascist (not really the same thing, BTW) thought of the late 20th century, both names came up repeatedly, as being “intellectual roots” for the genteel Authoritarians (George Lincoln Rockwell and successors), as well as the punk-rocker Skinheads.”
Despite his extreme anti-Semitism, Rockwell was mostly a conservative USA patriot of the time who stayed in regular contact with the FBI. By contrast, Yockey was hunted by the FBI because of his work for the Soviet Bloc. Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby was Yockey’s main fan in the Anglosphere. In addition, two small sects in the NYC area (NRP and Common Sense) were Cold War skeptical and had connections with Yockey. Maybe we’re starting to forget how important the US-Soviet conflict was during the era of the Cold War.
AS far as Evola goes, if you read any of his books you’ll be dubious of the notion that he had any influence on someone like Rockwell. And,what is more, I doubt that anything by Evola had been translated into English and made available in the US by the time of Rockwell’s death.
It is simply impossible to do justice to Evola’s multifaceted thought in a brief article – or in a combox note. His autobiography, “The Path of Cinnabar”, is well worth reading. I don’t believe that applying the fascist label to him is in any way accurate. He was first of all a very individualistic thinker, completely outside any larger movement (in fact, both Mussolini and the Nazis rejected his ideas). By the way, fromMarch 1945 Evola was partly paralyzed and wheelchair-bound due to a shrapnel wound apparently received in Vienna during its bombardment by the Red Army. Despite this, Evola died standing up.
Mr. Michael Anissimov wrote a reply to this article:
http://www.moreright.net/paleoconservatives-alarmed-at-the-rising-influence-of-julius-evola/
Evola is a FIERY issue the Imaginative Conservative editors are going to be forced by history to face – as his influence is growing in the Anglo-sphere Western domain, his ideas are actually worthy of debate, and more youthful conservatives grown tired with the consumerist materialistic “conservatism” of McDonald-ized America, of “Girl’s Gone Wild” fame, seek more desperately in a desperate time for solutions to difficult problems.
The bastions of “palaeo-conservatism” should treat Baron Evola (I verified his title was not fake, being myself a Sicilian lower nobleman) with very gentle handling, if wise. I sat this in sternness and in heart-felt hopefulness of future potentialities. Sicilians are known to be intellectually intimidating. This Sicilian I have studied, and he is no hack, but a true “political ontologist”, as a “radically aristocratic reactionary”, and his thoughts and reflections are…YOUR OWN, dear paleo-conservatives, Kirkeans, and Kirkean libertarian-anarchistss…Evola is YOU, 99% of the time, my audience.
Evola was not at all perfect, and his weaknesses should be presented…but in all honesty, with pedophilia-rings around nowadays, etc., etc., in AmeriKa, I do not know who presents as the more objectively immoral figure, the average American Joe Six-Pack, pornocratic serf of a man, if conceded to be even a VIR at all, or this dissident thinker we should not simply dispose of as a “pagan fascist” (only read his LATER, MATURE thought: Evola advocates Christianity against neo-paganism STRONGLY; Evola was opposed to only feminized, degenerative Judeo-Christianity (Podles, “THE CHURCH IMPOTENT”, hmm?) – not Christianity per se!)… American paleos if wise shall lose any provincialism and synthesize selectively Evolian philosophy… He is simply a force to be reckoned with, and NOT going away… The association with Dugin is totally immaterial and insubstantial; Dugin is a clown among serious “Traditionalism” expounders…
There are many youths inwardly hungry for a “conservatism” not of McDonald’s but true conservatism of MORAL-SPIRITUAL IMAGINATION, of onto-theological order among the Evolian and “Traditionalist” sub-cultural milieus. Those among the Evolians who are themselves wise shall join those under the banner of Christ only if we present Christianity AS IT IS, i.e., totally opposed to all that is MODERN.
I SAT: Let us declare war on the false conservatives, the time is come… Let us become more resolute and fiery and set our sights on the small-spirited “bourgeois conservatism” that has begotten, from its lack of intellectual fundaments and materialistic-hedonistic cowardice, our totally “sensate” (Sorokin) culture of pluto-pornocratic legalized anarchy, and things shall self-resolve!
Well, Evol has just been translated into Polish. I suppose I should endeavor to pick him up. Of late, I’ve been trying to read books on paleontology and evolutionary biology. Realizing that we’re rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things is a good way of staying sane. Still, Evola sounds interesting.
Your conclusion is incorrect.
Evola’s vision is profoundly rooted in the world of Tradition (the world really prior to the mid 1500s). Are you honestly arguing there were ‘all-expansive’ states at this time? That is ludicrous, not least because no state had the means to be all-expansive! We live under FAR more laws and tyrannies today under the guise of the ‘will of the people’, than we ever did under any monarch or ecclesiastic elite.
You misunderstand the traditional order because you are coming at it from this post-French Revolution perspective that for over 2000 years, everyone on earth was a slave and only thanks to those brilliant men in the 1600s did man taste liberty. Frankly, this view is childish.
Evola advocates a reconnection to the spiritual realm through politics, through the orientation of the state. He does not wish for the government to be regulating every aspect of human life. No Traditional society did this because its authorities did not see this as part of their authority. Think of this striking example.
Who has the responsibility of educating children?
Traditional World – their parents and the church
Modern World – the state
As a throne & altar reactionary myself, I encourage you to cast aside conservative assumptions for a little while, ignore Dugin and other spinoff brands, and really sit down and read classical authors like Julius Evola (the indomitable Joseph De Maistre is an excellent start of course!). We have these assumptions about our world, both conservatives and progressives, but have we ever questioned whether these assumptions are correct? Secularism, pluralism, democracy, suffrage, these are ideas that we just accept as good without thinking about it, and Evola challenges these ideas. He presents what the majority of human being have believed taking all human history into account.
As a side point on the Kali Yuga, this hermetic concept in the Vedic tradition is the idea that at the end of a cycle, humanity will be at its most materialistic, atheistic, and disconnected from the divine. Do you not think we are witnessing that?
Also, I echo Sindre’s point.
You make a mistake tying reactionary traditionalism to fascism. We consider fascism to be a blind stab in the dark coming from a correct instinct (that something was not right, something was out of balance), but concluding at an incorrect place. Fascism was incorrect because it was at heart populist, secular, and modernist in its economic outlook. It is an interesting study though.
I disagree with a lot of this article. It seems like you share the typical American view (a perverse view.) of the conservative cause. I personally don’t mind being called a reactionary, but I call myself a conservative because I adhere to the ideas (not ideology) of de Maistre and Burke. We Americans often forget the extremely important contribution to Conservatism that de Maistre made, (Probably because we live in a republic). If reactionary means being a racist than I not one, but if it means being a political disciple of Joseph de Maistre than I am one.
“I will define the political categories “Right” and “Left” as I intend to use them in this article. By Left I mean those who believe in the ideology of equality and progress; they are associated with liberalism and modernity. By Right I mean those whose outlook is elitist (inegalitarian) and cyclical; they are associated with Traditionalism (in the Evolian sense). By Right I do not mean conservatives, whom I regard as Classical liberals, only with socially conservative attitudes.”
— Alex Kurtagić in “Vanguard, Aesthetics, Revolution”
Read more : http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/vanguard-aesthetics-revolution/