A Handbook for Right-Wing Youth

by Julius Evola

In the individual, these correspond exactly to what in the modern social and historical world is represented by the crisis, the movement from below, subversion, the revolutionary substitution of the higher by the lower, and the contempt for every principle of authority present in the modern social and historical world. The same tendency is acting on two different levels and the two effects must end up becoming united in turn.

Consequently, the natural and fundamental prerequisite for a ‘traditional’ Right would appear to be the acknowledgement of a reality of a higher order which also possesses a deontological, which is to say normative, character. In ancient times, people would speak of an overworld opposed to the world of becoming and contingency. Later, religion came to serve as a basis.

This is bound to be hierarchical and aristocratic; bound to posit clearly differentiated hierarchies of values and assert the principle of authority; bound to oppose the world of quantity, the masses, democracy, and the rule of the economy; bound to emphasise what is truly worthy of effort and to completely subordinate its own particular interests to the attainment of anagogical virtue, that virtue which draws upwards (‘upwards’ as the counterpart to ‘from above’) — precisely by being anchored ‘above’, to that reality of a higher order.

With respect to modern civilisation and society, it may indeed be said that nothing possesses a more revolutionary character than Tradition, which — in proper and Hegelian terms47 — constitutes the ‘negation of a negation’: for the latter is what, through ‘progress’, has desecrated everything and subverted every normal order, leading us to the state we find ourselves in today. This negation must be denied.

Thus, a further watchword might apply to the traditional Right: ‘revolution from above’ — the opposite of all the anarchical tendencies of today, which only amount to a vain and senseless commotion, with no positive counterpart.

while the Machiavellian leader may invoke spiritual or religious values, he will do so by simply endorsing them as a useful means to his rule, without acknowledging their instrinsic worth. The argument could be extended to those principles — including principles of a higher order — which are used simply as ‘myths’ within the framework of totalitarian dictatorships, which is to say through formulations that enable them to stir or channel the irrational forces of the masses.

Is it not the case that so-called ‘neo-realism’57 and other, similar tendencies unjustifiably present only the lowest, most squalid, questionable, and often even obscene and vulgar aspects of life as ‘real’? It is as though everything else had nothing to do with what is authentic, sincere, and ‘real’.

Our so-called ‘national history’ is marked — and not merely in its most stereotypical forms — by the emphasis and glorification of what possessed a chiefly anti-traditional character: from the revolt of the city-states against imperial authority70 to those aspects of the Risorgimento which most reflected the ideas of ’89,71 to Italian intervention in the First World War.72 This applies not just to our ‘national history’ but to history in general.

Even leaving aside the more unpleasant features of this theory — the unscrupulous use of any available means to achieve given ends — we are compelled to point out that we do not wish at all to associate the Right with the mere use of force, and with a form of power that resolutely affirms itself even when it is a shapeless power lacking any genuine foundation or a higher legitimacy.

Art is a fluttering about things, not a means to penetrate their core. ‘Life is serious, art is lighthearted’: we can once again appreciate the meaning of Schiller’s words.

Youth has a revolutionary character, where revolution is understood not as an inordinate desire for what is new and different or as a subversive force, but rather as intolerance for stagnation, a yearning to ensure the perennial relevance of one’s ideal, and as a constant fire destroying all inertia and overcoming all obstacles.

Here, however, one can already point to the most important difference from the ‘Right-wing anarchist’ type: the Beat does not react or rebel from a positive standpoint — which is to say, by having a precise idea of what a normal and sensible order would be, and firmly keeping to certain fundamental values. He reacts against the prevailing situation as though by instinct, in a confused, existential way reminiscent of certain biological reactions. By contrast, the ‘Right-wing anarchist’ knows what he wants; he has grounds for saying ‘no’. The Beat, in his chaotic revolt, not only lacks any such grounds, but would probably reject them were they shown to him. Hence, the definition ‘rebel without a flag’ or ‘rebel without a cause’ fits him well. This implies a fundamental weakness, in that the Beats and hipsters who are so wary of being ‘externally conditioned’ — that is to say, controlled by external forces — ultimately run precisely this risk, insofar as their attitudes, as mere reactions, are provoked by the situation at hand. If anything, cold detachment would be a more coherent attitude.

A serious misunderstanding on the part of anarchist individualists, generally speaking, is constituted by the idea that one is ‘being oneself, free from bonds’, when one is in fact enslaved to oneself. Herbert Gold’s observation in regard to those cases in which this self-examination is missing is certainly correct: ‘The hipster is victim of the most hopeless condition of slavery — the slave who does not know that he is a slave and is proud of his slavery, calling it “freedom”.’

This confused need to achieve a higher, supra-rational point of reference, and — as someone has noted — to grasp ‘the secret call of Being’, is completely misdirected when this ‘Being’ is confused with ‘Life’, according to theories such as those of Jung and Reich.139 This is also the case when one sees in the sexual orgasm, and in giving oneself over to the sort of degenerate and frenzied Dionysianism sometimes offered by Negro jazz, other suitable paths for ‘feeling real’ and getting in touch with Reality.140

Things being so, there are grounds for thinking that the negative and dissipating aspects of the sexual experience will predominate — once again, because the existential prerequisites for the opposite to happen are missing: sex and the uncontrollable force of the orgasm will control the self and not vice-versa, as ought to be the case in order for all of this to serve as a path. As in the case of drugs, experiences of this sort — which, incidentally, may also play a role in the Left-Hand Path — are not suitable for an uncentred young generation.

In everyday life, moreover, one must look out for the snares of sentimental matters — marriage, the family, and any other surviving structure belonging to a society whose absurdity one acknowledges.

But if there was ever a field in which the existence of a principle of authority seems natural, legitimate, and unquestionable, it is precisely in the field of learning. Those who do not know must acknowledge the authority of those who do — of those who possess knowledge and suitable means to convey it, based on long experience and an established tradition. There is nothing humiliating in this.

But the contemporary world is governed by democracy, socialism, egalitarianism, socialitarianism, and so on.: sociopolitical forms that go in an opposite direction, since — as others have rightly noted — they all possess a ‘feminine’ and ‘maternal’ character. What has a masculine and ‘paternal’ character, by contrast, is the idea of a monarchical, aristocratic, and hierarchical state, few traces of which survive nowadays.

People should make up their minds about the much-deplored issue of ‘repression’ once and for all. Plato argued that those who lack a sovereign principle within ought to at least have one without. Thus, any normal order entails certain limits which are designed less to bind than to support those who are incapable of giving themselves any law, form, and discipline.

What we observe, instead, are individuals identifying with the instinctive, irrational, and amorphous part of man (his ‘underground’) — that part which in every higher human being is not stubbornly ‘repressed’, but rather held at a certain distance and in check. The links between the protest movement and the most spurious and promiscuous aspects of the so-called sexual revolution, just like the fact that it is in cahoots with ‘hippie’ junkies and other such types, are certainly revealing, as is the spectacle offered by the many sectors in which the repressive ‘system’ is increasingly being replaced by a ‘permissive’ one.

Zarathustra states: You call yourself free? Your dominating thought I want to hear, and not that you escaped from a yoke. Are you the kind of person who had the right to escape from a yoke? There are some who threw away their last value when they threw away their servitude. Free from what? What does Zarathustra care! But brightly your eyes should signal to me: free for what?153