It's the latest, hippest, most happening thing.
Dugin's Fourth Political Theory is all about deconstructing the liberal individual and returning to a Dasein grounded in pre-modern/traditional notions of church, nation, ethnos etc.
Lots of dodgy sorts reading Evola, for a spiritualised, metaphysical notion of Tradition as distinct from the melange of cultural accretions that make up actual traditions in their historical development. Mors triumphalis, inner jihad, the realisation of a heroic suprapersonal identity.
One common theme: a longing for depersonalisation. It's framed as a revolt against the narrow conception of humanity as homo economicus, the liberal subject, the good neoliberal citizen. But that revolt takes the form of a radical heteronomy, i.e. submitting to the authority of a suprapersonal ideal (the Church, the Leader, the Volk etc)
Bonhoeffer writes about this in his Ethics, comparing the Nazi who says "my conscience is Adolf Hitler" with the Christian who says "my conscience is Jesus Christ". In the former case, one is authorised to say "I was following orders" - it's considered heroic to do disgraceful things on command, because it shows a willingness to sacrifice one's own moral integrity for the greater good represented by the Leader. In the latter case, it's a matter of undertaking responsible action (such as, in Bonhoeffer's case, taking part in an assassination plot against Hitler) in the knowledge that one is already morally compromised and the justice of that action is not guaranteed: Christ doesn't give us an alibi or a guarantee that our actions are just because they are undertaken on command, but liberates us to act in irresolvable moral uncertainty (because of the resurrection and the forgiveness of sins).
The far-right seduces those who are weary of the burden of sustaining their own broken and devalued personality, by offering them heroic transcendence as an imaginary solution. This works at the collective as well as the individual level: Hitler seduced not only individual Germans, but (a large tranche of) "the German people".
Besides the fact that this is demonic on the face of it, it also as collateral damage diminishes our ability to appreciate and respond creatively to actual traditions, as complex and contradictory things, repositories of image and feeling and diverse understandings of the human situation. Lots of Dissensus-types have a deep love of the esoteric and antinomian, the hermetic and subcultural, counter-current and counter-knowledge. But when all of this is treated just as material for the Traditionalist sage to "discern" the invariant eternal metaphysical kernel within, it loses its texture. Live orgones to stale bullshit. It's the difference between what I understand by "folk music" - the Copper family, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, Dick Gaughan - and the "neofolk" of Death In June.
Dugin's Fourth Political Theory is all about deconstructing the liberal individual and returning to a Dasein grounded in pre-modern/traditional notions of church, nation, ethnos etc.
Lots of dodgy sorts reading Evola, for a spiritualised, metaphysical notion of Tradition as distinct from the melange of cultural accretions that make up actual traditions in their historical development. Mors triumphalis, inner jihad, the realisation of a heroic suprapersonal identity.
One common theme: a longing for depersonalisation. It's framed as a revolt against the narrow conception of humanity as homo economicus, the liberal subject, the good neoliberal citizen. But that revolt takes the form of a radical heteronomy, i.e. submitting to the authority of a suprapersonal ideal (the Church, the Leader, the Volk etc)
Bonhoeffer writes about this in his Ethics, comparing the Nazi who says "my conscience is Adolf Hitler" with the Christian who says "my conscience is Jesus Christ". In the former case, one is authorised to say "I was following orders" - it's considered heroic to do disgraceful things on command, because it shows a willingness to sacrifice one's own moral integrity for the greater good represented by the Leader. In the latter case, it's a matter of undertaking responsible action (such as, in Bonhoeffer's case, taking part in an assassination plot against Hitler) in the knowledge that one is already morally compromised and the justice of that action is not guaranteed: Christ doesn't give us an alibi or a guarantee that our actions are just because they are undertaken on command, but liberates us to act in irresolvable moral uncertainty (because of the resurrection and the forgiveness of sins).
The far-right seduces those who are weary of the burden of sustaining their own broken and devalued personality, by offering them heroic transcendence as an imaginary solution. This works at the collective as well as the individual level: Hitler seduced not only individual Germans, but (a large tranche of) "the German people".
Besides the fact that this is demonic on the face of it, it also as collateral damage diminishes our ability to appreciate and respond creatively to actual traditions, as complex and contradictory things, repositories of image and feeling and diverse understandings of the human situation. Lots of Dissensus-types have a deep love of the esoteric and antinomian, the hermetic and subcultural, counter-current and counter-knowledge. But when all of this is treated just as material for the Traditionalist sage to "discern" the invariant eternal metaphysical kernel within, it loses its texture. Live orgones to stale bullshit. It's the difference between what I understand by "folk music" - the Copper family, Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, Dick Gaughan - and the "neofolk" of Death In June.