Giulio Evola
Julius Evola, aka Giulio Evola or Baron Giulio (May 19, 1898-June 11, 1974), was a controversial Italian esotericist, who wrote prolifically on matters political, philosophical, historical, and religious from a Traditionalist point of view.
Born Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola in Rome to a noble Sicilian family. He fought in World War One as an artillery officer. Attracted to the avant-garde, Evola became a Dadaist painter and poet & was briefly a member of Filippo Marinetti's Futurist movement but he renounced art and delved deep into occult and Oriental studies.
It is hard to speak definitively about his politics. Some claim that his exaltation of a warrior caste may have influenced Fascism and/or National Socialism in a roundabout way. Others point out that he rejected nationalism philosophically and in general terms. Evola sought to influence Fascism in the direction of archaic ethnic Traditionalism; away from the Christian Church, the bourgeoisie, and the masses.
Evola believed in a race of Hyperborean "nordic" people from the North Pole who had a crucial hand in the founding of Atlantis.
Evola was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Otto Weininger, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Ernst Jünger, Gottfried Benn, René Guénon, Oswald Spengler, and Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
Toward the end of the war, Evola was working for the SS researching the Freemasons archive in Vienna. He became paralyzed from the waist down (and remained so throughout his life) after trying to defend Vienna at the barricades from the encroaching Soviet Army in 1945 (March/April). According to Mircea Eliade he was shot in the "third Chakra".
In 1951 Evola was arrested briefly on charges of attempting to resurrect fascism.
Evola died on June 11, 1974 in Rome; his ashes were deposited in hole cut in a glacier on Mt. Rosa.
Evola has come to have a growing influence in both the occult and political realms. In the later, he has specifically influenced GRECE, The Scorpion, the MSI, Ordine Nuovo, and the ARN. Giorgio Almirante referred to him as "our Marcuse - only better"
Books
Early
- Arte Astratta (an work on abstract art)
- Teoria Dell'Individuo Assoluto (a Nietzschean work borne out of a mental and spiritual breakdown)
- Imperialismo pagano (a polemical work urging the Fascist regime to conduct an anti-Christian, pagan revolution, 1928)
Significant
References
- "Julius Evola and the Ideological Origins of the Radical Right in Contemporary Italy" by Richard H. Drake in Aspects of Political Violence
- "Julius Evola, Radical Fascism and the Lateran Accords" by Richard H. Drake in The Catholic Historical Review 74 (1988): 403-19
- Social Research, 48, Spring 1981: 45-83
- Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, 2001, ISBN 0814731554
- Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 edited by Philip Rees, 1991, ISBN 0130893013
- Arktos: The Polar Myth in Science, Symbolism, and Nazi Survival by Joscelyn Godwin, 1996, ISBN 0932813356
- Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the postwar fascist international by Kevin Coogan, Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY 1998 ISBN 1570270392
Other revolutionary minded Italians of the inter-war period
