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Julius Evola, real name Giulio Cesare Evola, aka 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.
Early years
Born Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola in Rome to a noble Sicilian family. He fought in World War I as an artillery officer on the Asiago plateau. Attracted to the avant-garde, Evola became a Dadaist painter and poet & was briefly a member of Filippo Marinetti's Futurist movement. Around 1920, his interests led him away from the production of art. He had began reading various esoteric texts and gradually delved deeper into occult and Oriental studies. He also became acquainted with Mussolini's Fascist program at this time. In 1927, along with other Italian intellectuals, he founded the Gruppo di Ur (the UR Group) for the study of esotericism, specifically of a Guénonian stripe.
Politics
Evola's politics remain ambiguous. He was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche, Herman Wirth, Otto Weininger, Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Ernst Jünger, Gottfried Benn, René Guénon, Oswald Spengler, and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Some claim that his exaltation of a warrior caste may have influenced Fascism and/or Nazism in a roundabout way. Others point out that he rejected nationalism philosophically and in general terms. It has also been suggested that Evola took a position that was "against all politics"[1] (http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/jenseitseng.html). He never participated in the voting process and did not join any political party in his lifetime. 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.
He published an Italian version of the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in 1937, and wrote the introduction.
Paralysis
Toward the end of the war, Evola was working for the SS researching the Freemason's 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, but aquitted, on charges of attempting to resurrect fascism. His political views, after the war took on a Sorelian flavor. Evola died on June 11, 1974 in Rome; his ashes were deposited in hole cut in a glacier on Mt. Rosa.
Influence
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, Gaston Armand Amaudruz's Nouvel Ordre Européen, Pino Rauti's Ordine Nuovo, Alain de Benoist, Michael Moynihan, Giorgio Freda, and the ARN. Giorgio Almirante referred to him as "our Marcuse - only better". In 1998, a Goth/Darkwave compilation CD entitled Cavalcare la Tigre was released to commemorate the 100th anniverary of Evola's birth.
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
- "Myth and Violence: The Fascism of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist" by Thomas Sheehan in Social Research, 48, Spring 1981: 45-83
- Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (Chapter 3), 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
- "Julius Evola--Above the Ruins" in The Nexus issue 10
Other revolutionary minded Italians of the inter-war period
External links
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