Responses to Modernity: the Political Thought of Five Right-Wing European Thinkers in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries by Matthew Gibson B.A. in History, May 2007, The University of Miami M.Phil. in History, January 2011, The George Washington University A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 31, 2016 Dissertation directed by Andrew Zimmerman Professor of History and International Affairs The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Matthew Carter Gibson has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of October 9, 2015. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Responses to Modernity: the Political Thought of Five Right-Wing European Thinkers in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries Matthew Gibson Dissertation Research Committee: Andrew Zimmerman, Professor of History and International Affairs, Dissertation Director Alf Hiltebeitel, Professor of Religion and History, Committee Member Katrin Schultheiss, Associate Professor of History, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2016 by Matthew Gibson All rights reserved iii Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Andrew Zimmerman, Hugh Agnew, Peter Caws, Alf Hiltebeitel, Katrin Schultheiss, Robert Adcock, Francis Adams, his family, the GW Libraries Interlibrary Loan Office, the George Washington University History Department, Bradley Keefer, Alan Nichols, Derek Pillion, Elisabeth Rice, Karl A. Roider, Geri Rypkema and the Office of Graduate Student Assistantships and Fellowships, Salem Srour, and Michael Weeks. iv Abstract of Dissertation Responses to Modernity: the Political Thought of Five Right-Wing European Thinkers in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries This dissertation discusses the political thought of five right-wing European thinkers of the twentieth and early twenty-first century: René Guénon (1886-1951), Julius Evola (1898-1974), Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), Alain de Benoist (b. 1943), and Guillaume Faye (b. 1949). The intellectual careers of these thinkers represent a story that runs parallel to the trajectory of the history of the European political right, from the Action Française, through the interwar “fascisms,” to the Cold War era OAS and Ordine Nuovo, and the anti-immigration and Eurosceptic Front National party of the current day. Their thought provided intellectual cover for these movements; at the same time, these movements often inspired active endorsements from them. This dissertation analyzes the strong diversity in this thought, which has more typically been presented as a monolithic right-wing perspective, even at times by the thinkers themselves. A like perception has also generally been the point of departure for analyses of their political thought. Webs of associations have been produced to demonstrate the existence of a single far-right ideology, whose fundamental character nonetheless perpetually eludes definition. We have proposed here to avoid drawing any inferences on the basis of associations, and to analyze the political ideologies implicitly or explicitly expressed in the authors’ works themselves. We claim that three distinct ideologies can be detected on the scene of the twentieth century European right. One, orthodoxy, holds that political legitimacy lies in being able to connect subjects to a v metaphysical realm so as to negate the perishability inherent in the sublunary human condition. A second, Prometheanism, is a future-oriented orientation that values creation for its own sake, the as-yet-uncreated precisely because it has never yet existed, and denigrates the past precisely because it has already been. A third, conservatism, has already been documented, but we propose to emphasize the meaning Huntington has given it, as a past-oriented orientation that values what is precisely because it is and has been. We conclude by making some observations on the distinction between right and left, and on the commonalities that all political ideologies tend to come to share in late modernity (which Roger Griffin has identified but which, pace Griffin, do not in themselves indicate ideological orientation as such). Disaggregating right-wing thought into orthodoxy, Prometheanism, and conservatism helps us more clearly understand the insights others have had on the nature of right-wing thought and on political modernism. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..iv Abstract of Dissertation……………………………………………………………………v Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: The Traditionalist School: A Twentieth Century Orthodoxy…………………67 Chapter 2: Mircea Eliade: Microcosm of the Right…………………………………….147 Chapter 3: Legionarism in the Cemetery: Eliade After the War…………………………222 Chapter 4: A Postmodern Fascism? The French New Right…………………………….262 Chapter 5: From Rhodesia to Eurosiberia: de Benoist and Faye beyond the GREC…......341 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...383 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………405 vii Introduction In the twentieth century, there have been a number of intellectual and political reactions to modernity, reactions which can be termed as “modernist” in the sense given the term by Roger Griffin. For Griffin, modernism is a reaction (political or otherwise) to the perception of modern ity as a state of “[spiritual regression],” of the continual loss of “beauty, meaning, and health,” as “rushing nowhere ever faster.” Modern ism seeks to rectify these losses by creating a new subjective experience of reality, a sense of a “new beginning beyond the ongoing dissolution”; an experience, and a beginning, seemingly laden with meaning. 1 Three such reactions, have been the work of the historian of religions Mircea Eliade in establishing a unifying theory of religious phenomena, the Traditionalist School founded by René Guénon (and whose most notorious member was Julius Evola), and the French New Right, a school founded by Alain de Benoist in 1968. 2 However, these three have much more in common besides their modernism. They share a series of interlocking (if not always reciprocal) influences and admirations. Evola and Eliade were personal friends, and Eliade acknowledged an admiration for Evola, Guénon, and their fellow Traditionalist A. K. Coomaraswamy. 3 In turn, Guénon privately acknowledged a high degree of agreement with Eliade’s ideas (expressed, as Guénon’s own were not and could 1 Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 53. 2 Griffin has identified these as such reactions himself. Griffin’s view of Eliade and the New Right as modernist, and of the former indeed as exemplary of modernism, will be discussed at further length later. Griffin gives a brief description of Evola’s purported modernism (Griffin, Modernism and Fascism , 39-41), and in passing identifies Guénon’s original formulation of Traditionalism as a “politically ambiguous” “revitalization movement,” and his followers Evola and A. K. Coomaraswamy as, respectively, a “right- wing” and “left-wing” “[form] of modernism.” (Griffin, Modernism and Fascism , 138.) 3 Mac Linscott Ricketts, Mircea Eliade: The Romanian Roots (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 1144. 1 not be, in an academically acceptable form). 4 Alain de Benoist refers to Evola frequently and, in his major work of sustained argument, finds himself “fully in agreement with many other passages in this text [ Pagan Imperialism ] by Evola” 5; the second thinker of the French New Right, Guillaume Faye, has called himself a “devoted reader of Evola” and has invoked the necessity “to reconcile Evola and Marinetti.” 6 Evola, who died six years after the founding of the New Right, does not seem to have associated himself with it or otherwise acknowledged it, but Eliade joined the patronage committee of the New Right journal Nouvelle École in 1979 (and, unlike some others, never withdrew before he died in 1986). 7 In his own show of pleasure at having gained such a show of support (and, implicitly, of his particular admiration for Eliade), de Benoist indicated by name, out of the “over two hundred French and foreign personalities” he observes belong to the patronage committee, only Arthur Koestler, Konrad Lorenz, Jules Monnerot—and Eliade. 8 The fact of these figures’ partaking in the “modernist” impulse does not in itself necessarily, even for Griffin, imply an ideological commonality (as Griffin’s reference to “right-wing” and “left-wing” forms of modernism attests). 9 Do they, however, share a 4 Harry Oldmeadow, Journeys East: 20 th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions (World Wisdom, 2004), 123. 5 Alain de Benoist, On Being a Pagan , trans. Jon Graham (Atlanta: Ultra, 2004), 202. (Alain de Benoist, Comment peut-on être païen? [Paris: Albin Michel, 1981], 1-2.) 6 Guillaume Faye, Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance , trans. Michael O’Meara (Arktos, 2011), 34; Guillaume Faye, Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post-Catastrophic Age , trans. Sergio Knipe (Arktos Media, 2010), 89. (Guillaume Faye, Pourquoi nous combattons: Manifeste de la Résistance européenne [Paris: L’Æncre, 2001], 14; Guillaume Faye, L’Archéofuturisme: Techno-science et retour aux valeurs ancestrales [Paris: L’Æncre, 2011], 88.) 7 Anne-Marie Duranton-Crabol, Visages de la nouvelle droite: le GRECE et son histoire