Mister D
12-13-2012, 02:05 PM
An interesting excerpt from an interview with James J. O’Meara. I've mentioned before that a large segment of the radical right or traditionalist right advocates a pagan ethos.
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You are strongly opposed to what you call "Judeo-Christianity," and at one point in your book you state a preference for Mithra-worship. I am a practicing Roman Catholic who overall sees the influence of Christianity in the West in a positive, not a negative light. Yet we, and others like us, find ourselves united, comrades in arms, in opposition to the Zeitgeist of our day... What do you make of this "big tent"? How did so many people with such disperate systems of belief get thrown together like this?
A thorny question! Here again, I take my inspiration from Baron Evola rather than Guenon, who had a much higher opinion of Christianity, or at least Roman Catholicism (but perhaps only because he had a loathing of Classical culture, due perhaps to his French schooldays, and on the other hand, thought there were still valid Traditional forms available, though apparently well hidden even from himself, in the 1930s Church). For Evola, just as every nation was a mixture of two or more racial types—like the Roman and Mediterranean types mentioned before—so the Roman Church was the remains of the Roman culture—the “Roman”—with the more primitive and alien Christianity—hence ‘Church’. The history of the West for Evola is the rise and fall of each influence‘s dominance; Catholicism, Empire, Authority on the one side, Protestantism, Nationalism, Free Thought on the other. I’ve simply extended that analysis into the contemporary scene, and address popular culture and even sexuality from that perspective; something not done since Coomaraswamy and Danielou in the first generation of Traditionalists, while the later ones have tended to follow, say, Frithjof Schuon into a haughty isolation involving vague mysticism, Native American-idolatry and dancing naked with little girls. I’ll let my readers decide which path is more productive—and less perverse!
As for Christianity, or Roman Catholicism, Evola eventually decided it was not just decadent but had never even been an authentic tradition in the first place—unlike the cult of Mithras. As Hoffman would say, they switched the authentic entheogenic sacrament of the Mystery cults with a phony “symbolic” substitute for general consumption, hence outgrowing their rival. It’s unlikely the actual Church today would change his mind. On the other hand, and in practical terms of “well, what next?”, the best strategy for Traditionalists, or archeo-futurists, or even pagans, might be something like political “entryism” where we reverse the Church’s infiltration of the Roman Empire and instead infiltrate the Church, gradually taking over and using its powerful existing structure—which olde tymey Protestants say is just paganism anyway—to rebuild the Heathen Imperium. The use of “Anglo-Catholicism” as a “public closet” for Catholics and Anglicans of a homoerotic persuasion—such as the great American architect Ralph Adams Cram and his Boston Bohemian circle, whom I wrote about recently on Counter Currents—would be the model here. The Church was, in the late 19th century and early 20th, a “more respectable” identity, or refuge, for a whole host, as it were, of social deviants; there’s no reason it couldn’t be the same for today’s Radical Traditionalists, as long as we are aware that our enemies—equalitarianism, feminism, etc.—are rooted there as well.
http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/the-homo-and-the-negro/
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You are strongly opposed to what you call "Judeo-Christianity," and at one point in your book you state a preference for Mithra-worship. I am a practicing Roman Catholic who overall sees the influence of Christianity in the West in a positive, not a negative light. Yet we, and others like us, find ourselves united, comrades in arms, in opposition to the Zeitgeist of our day... What do you make of this "big tent"? How did so many people with such disperate systems of belief get thrown together like this?
A thorny question! Here again, I take my inspiration from Baron Evola rather than Guenon, who had a much higher opinion of Christianity, or at least Roman Catholicism (but perhaps only because he had a loathing of Classical culture, due perhaps to his French schooldays, and on the other hand, thought there were still valid Traditional forms available, though apparently well hidden even from himself, in the 1930s Church). For Evola, just as every nation was a mixture of two or more racial types—like the Roman and Mediterranean types mentioned before—so the Roman Church was the remains of the Roman culture—the “Roman”—with the more primitive and alien Christianity—hence ‘Church’. The history of the West for Evola is the rise and fall of each influence‘s dominance; Catholicism, Empire, Authority on the one side, Protestantism, Nationalism, Free Thought on the other. I’ve simply extended that analysis into the contemporary scene, and address popular culture and even sexuality from that perspective; something not done since Coomaraswamy and Danielou in the first generation of Traditionalists, while the later ones have tended to follow, say, Frithjof Schuon into a haughty isolation involving vague mysticism, Native American-idolatry and dancing naked with little girls. I’ll let my readers decide which path is more productive—and less perverse!
As for Christianity, or Roman Catholicism, Evola eventually decided it was not just decadent but had never even been an authentic tradition in the first place—unlike the cult of Mithras. As Hoffman would say, they switched the authentic entheogenic sacrament of the Mystery cults with a phony “symbolic” substitute for general consumption, hence outgrowing their rival. It’s unlikely the actual Church today would change his mind. On the other hand, and in practical terms of “well, what next?”, the best strategy for Traditionalists, or archeo-futurists, or even pagans, might be something like political “entryism” where we reverse the Church’s infiltration of the Roman Empire and instead infiltrate the Church, gradually taking over and using its powerful existing structure—which olde tymey Protestants say is just paganism anyway—to rebuild the Heathen Imperium. The use of “Anglo-Catholicism” as a “public closet” for Catholics and Anglicans of a homoerotic persuasion—such as the great American architect Ralph Adams Cram and his Boston Bohemian circle, whom I wrote about recently on Counter Currents—would be the model here. The Church was, in the late 19th century and early 20th, a “more respectable” identity, or refuge, for a whole host, as it were, of social deviants; there’s no reason it couldn’t be the same for today’s Radical Traditionalists, as long as we are aware that our enemies—equalitarianism, feminism, etc.—are rooted there as well.
http://www.alternativeright.com/main/blogs/zeitgeist/the-homo-and-the-negro/