Julius Evola remains a significant thinker whose ideas have shaped right‑wing discourse worldwide. In a recent conversation with John Morgan—an American editor and publisher instrumental in bringing Evola’s works to English‑speaking readers—we explored Evola’s critique of fascism, his understanding of Tradition, and the broader impact of his thought on the political right.

What are the main features that distinguish Evola from other thinkers within the traditionalist school?

Firstly, the idea that there is such a thing as a “Traditionalist school” is a very problematic contention. None of the major expositors of Tradition ever used the term “Traditionalist” or “Traditionalism,” nor did they refer to a “Traditionalist school.” In fact, René Guénon devotes an entire chapter of his book The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times to denouncing the concept of “Traditionalism.” Guénon refers to the tendency to conceive of Tradition in such terms as “one of the most obvious symptoms of the intellectual confusion that reigns everywhere in the present world; but it must not be forgotten that this very confusion is willed by that which lies hidden behind the whole modern deviation; this thought obtrudes itself particularly in view of the simultaneous appearance in many different quarters of attempts to make illegitimate use of the very idea of ‘tradition’ by people who want improperly to assimilate its significance to their own conceptions in one domain or another.” He goes on to describe “Traditionalists” as 

people who only have a sort of tendency or aspiration toward tradition without really knowing anything at all about it; this is the measure of the distance dividing the “traditionalist” spirit from the truly traditional spirit, for the latter implies a real knowledge, being indeed in a sense the same as that knowledge. In short, the “traditionalist” is and can be no more than a mere “seeker,” and that is why he is always in danger of going astray, not being in possession of the principles that alone could provide him with infallible guidance; and his danger is all the greater because he will find in his path, like so many ambushes, all the false ideas set on foot by the power of illusion, which has a keen interest in preventing him from reaching the true goal of his search.

It is well worth reading what Guénon writes on this topic in full, but in short, the reason for his condemnation is that asserting that there is such a thing as “Traditionalism” is both to suggest that Tradition is an ideology akin to the other “-isms” such as liberalism or communism, as well as that it is something innovative. Tradition is certainly not an ideology, which would suggest that it is something invented by men rather than an eternal metaphysical truth that exists independently of mankind. In fact, the use of the term “Traditionalism” is undoubtedly part of the reason why it is so often confused with being a political ideology. While there is a political approach implicit in Tradition (albeit one that has nothing to do with party politics), its political aspect is also its most mundane and the least useful for someone attempting to embrace Tradition in the postmodern world. Referring to Tradition as “Traditionalism” also suggests that it is a religion in and of itself, whereas in fact it is the essence of all valid religions, but one that men can only know through the practice of a religion. Further, Guénon and those who came after him were not offering a new religion to the world; rather, they attempted to capture the essence of Tradition in terms that would make it comprehensible to the modern mentality, and which they hoped would lead their readers back to the established religions.

The Hungarian philosopher of Tradition Róbert Horváth has added the following important observation to Guénon’s remarks, in his review of the secular scholar Mark Sedgwick’s book Against the Modern World:

The Traditional orientation doesn’t mean “being a follower” of Evola, Guénon, or Ziegler. These authors made the first steps on the road to restauration, their interpretations are significant, their life’s work show the way; it’s not about following them, but about moving onward, about building upon their legacy.

All this having been said, I understand that for the sake of discussion, we sometimes use the term “Traditionalism” as one of convenience to refer to all those who have derived inspiration from Guénon, in the various and sundry ways that this has manifested over the years. We should always bear Guénon’s critique in mind whenever we do so, however.

To answer your question, Julius Evola was unique among the other writers who attempted to follow in Guénon’s footsteps (even though deviation from Guénon’s fundamental teachings in one way or another was to become standard practice by many who came after him, not least of which was Frithjof Schuon). The extent of this has been to render Evola a heretic in the eyes of the “Traditionalist school”; even today one seldom comes across Evola’s name in writings by those who write on Tradition from Guénonian or Schuonian perspectives, unless it is to condemn him. 

It would be impossible to comprehensively explore the many differences between Evola’s conception of Tradition and that of Guénon and others in the space of an interview. One of the most important, however, is Evola’s disbelief in the ability of the Traditional religions that survive in the modern world to provide a valid initiatory path. In fact, he went so far as to say that even if valid initiatory centers are still in existence, they would have closed themselves off to the public in this age. This is very much at variance with the views of most others who follow the path of Tradition, who typically follow Islam, Catholicism, or one of the other Traditional religions. To this Evola countered the idea of “self-initiation,” although he acknowledged that only certain higher individuals are capable of such a feat.

Another major difference is Evola’s disdain for Christianity. While Guénon believed that Catholicism had become too corrupted by modernity to serve as an effective carrier of Tradition any longer, he never denied that it was a Traditional religion or that it was the vehicle through which Tradition had been revealed to the peoples of Europe. By contrast, Evola felt that Christianity was an un-Aryan, Semitic religion that had usurped the position rightfully held by the solar and heroic religions of pre-Christian Europe, and that the continent’s conversion had laid the seeds for Europe’s later degeneration and downfall. This critique is not unique to Evola, and similar iterations of it can be found in Friedrich Nietzsche, Evola’s mentor Arturo Reghini, and others. While Evola’s approach to Christianity softened over the years from the fierce opposition he had expressed in his early book Pagan Imperialism, which was condemned by the Vatican, his basic critique remained unchanged. Although in his later work he acknowledged that by absorbing many of the Aryan elements of pre-Christian Europe, the rise of Catholicism there led to a rectification of what he termed “primitive Christianity,” and thus he did not believe that Catholicism should be regarded as a wholly un-Aryan religion.

Lastly, Evola was the only writer on Tradition who engaged with politics in any significant way in his work. While other Traditional authors have occasionally touched on the subject, and clearly the Traditional worldview must be anti-liberal given that liberalism is a manifestation of the leveling effects of the last age, Evola was the only author who developed not only a fully-fledged critique of modern politics from a Traditional perspective, but also offered guidance on how politics could be used to achieve a Traditional rectification. This is of course the most controversial aspect of his work, and the reason why he is regarded as “toxic” by many, even by some who might be sympathetic to other aspects of his worldview. In those currents which derive from Guénon and Schuon, politics is usually considered too mundane – and too problematic – to be worthy of consideration.

How did the rupture between the sacred authority of traditional societies and the political legitimacy of modern secular states shape Evola’s thought?

This rupture was the focus of the political aspect of Evola’s work, which was directed toward undoing it. A continual point of reference for Evola was the conflict between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines in northern Italy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which emerged as the result of the Investiture Controversy. The Guelphs, who often represented the interests of the rising merchant class, regarded the Pope as the supreme authority, while the aristocratic Ghibellines favored the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor. Evola believed that the Ghibellines represented a reemergence of the genuinely Aryan social order. Evola’s views on this were highly unorthodox given that he asserted in Revolt Against the Modern World that in primordial times, the warrior caste had been superior to the priestly caste in the social hierarchy. The Traditional writer Ananda Coomaraswamy politely criticized Evola for this claim and pointed out that the Hindu ritual that he had cited as evidence of this had been mistranslated. Regardless, Evola never retracted this view.

Evola believed that the rise to supremacy of the priests over the warrior caste was the beginning of the end for the Traditional political order in the West. This culminated in the French Revolution, when the monarchy was swept away and replaced by new, secular leaders who were put into power by popular will and business interests (i.e., the lower two castes), a trend which soon took hold and spread throughout the world. The sacred order that had once prevailed everywhere, in which kings were consecrated and advised by a Traditional priesthood, has now been consigned to history. As Evola said when he was put on trial for the charge of attempting to revive Fascism, denying that he was a Fascist: “My principles are only those that, before the French Revolution, every well-born person considered sane and normal.” 

Men Among the Ruins is the fullest explication of Evola’s political views, and remains one of the clearest statements of what the “True Right” that preceded the rise of modern liberal-democratic politics was.

How did Evola’s ideas influence the Italian right and where did his criticisms of fascism focus?

Julius Evola’s influence on the Italian Right before 1945 was marginal. It is always important to remember that Evola was never a member of the Fascist Party and that he remained a strong critic of the regime both during and after its reign, even if he considered it preferable to liberalism and communism, given that he believed that Fascism at least offered the possibility of developing in a Traditional direction. While Evola often published his writings in some of the journals affiliated with Fascism, and despite the fact that he was personally acquainted with many high-ranking individuals within the regime (not least of whom was Mussolini), there is little indication that he had any impact on the party or its policies. The one exception was his writings on race. Mussolini himself thought highly of Evola’s more “spiritual” conception of race, as a counter to the purely biological understanding of the term adopted by the German National Socialists. I’ve read varying accounts of exactly what this meant politically, but it seems that Evola’s writings on race influenced the official Fascist understanding of it in the late 1930s and early ‘40s. To what extent remains unclear to me.

Evola had a much more profound impact on the Italian Right in the post-war period. This is no more aptly shown than in the fact that Giorgio Almirante, the first leader of the Italian Social Movement – a major party of the Italian Right during the post-war years – famously referred to Evola as “our Marcuse, only better.” Nevertheless, the real influence Evola exercised was not on party politics, but on those Right-wing radicals who participated in the “years of lead” between the late 1960s and 1980s. Evola was widely read by young men on the Right in post-war Italy, although it is uncertain how well they inculcated his ideas. By the 1960s Evola was encouraging apoliteia, or detachment from politics. By contrast, some of those who were reading him carried out political violence against the Left and developed new ideologies such as “Nazi-Maoism,” an idea put forward by Franco Freda and embraced by others who would go on to become quite prominent on the Italian radical Right such as Claudio Mutti. It seems doubtful that Evola would have had much positive to say about this attempt at a synthesis between the far Left and far Right, given his criticism of National Socialism and his total rejection of all forms of socialism. Thus, it’s highly questionable to what extent such activities should be seen as a manifestation of an Evolian form of politics.

Since I’m not Italian, it’s not clear to me to what extent Evola continues to exercise influence on the Italian Right today. From what I have heard he is still regarded as essential reading for young Italian Rightists, however. Certainly groups such as CasaPound continue to make reference to Evola. Moreover, given the vigorous activity in terms of publishing and conferences and such that continues to revolve around Evola’s work in Italy, it seems that there is still a great deal of interest in him there.

As for Evola’s critique of Italian Fascism, he dedicated an entire book, Fascism Viewed from the Right, to this topic, as well as numerous essays. While Evola acknowledged some positive qualities in Fascism, such as its retention of the monarchy, he also criticized it for ultimately being a product of the liberal order that it deposed. He saw it as being invested with all of the same materialism, socialism, pandering to the masses, totalitarian proclivities, disdain for genuine hierarchy, and fixation on “progress” that liberal governments embody. Thus, while he regarded the fascist movements as being superior to either liberalism or communism, he rightfully did not see them as Traditional.

While Evola analyses the modern world in the context of the collapse of Tradition, Jünger takes a more phenomenological approach, examining technique, war and the transformation of the individual; what are the points of intersection between these two thinkers?

Evola was in close contact with many of the German “Conservative Revolutionaries” during the 1930s. It does not appear that he ever met Ernst Jünger during this period, however. Although both thinkers at that time could be termed “men of the Right,” their approaches were nevertheless different. Evola saw the political ideas that were gestating in the Conservative Revolution as a possible route back to the world of Tradition, whereas Jünger as a nationalist was always very forward-thinking; he sought the destruction of the old in order to release forces that would lead to the rise of a completely new and terrifyingly inhuman world order, as well as a new type of man to inhabit it. (In later life Evola acknowledged that such a thing was possible, but did not see it as being any different in substance from the new type of man proposed by communism.) Thus, while the two had the same enemy in bourgeois liberalism, their goals were quite different.

Evola made his disdain for what we could term the “post-nationalist” Jünger well-known, given that he – in my view, unjustly – believed that Jünger had acted disloyally in having contact with those who attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler in July 1944, and also that he had turned against his earlier position and accepted the liberal values of the Federal Republic of Germany after the war. He nevertheless always respected Jünger’s work from before 1933. A critique of Evola’s views on Jünger falls outside the scope of this interview, however. 

To my knowledge, there is no reference to Evola in any of Jünger’s work. This is perhaps not surprising, as while Jünger’s critique of modernity in some ways resembles the Traditional one, and despite the fact that he asserted the existence of hidden metaphysical forces that drive history, he never posited initiation into a transcendent metaphysical order as a solution to the modern world’s ills, always remaining something of a Nietzschean. Jünger did occasionally write about religion, such as in his book The Gordian Knot – which Evola reviewed rather harshly – although his conception of it has little to do with the Traditional perspective.

We nevertheless know that Jünger was aware of Evola, since the latter sent him a letter in 1953 in order to request permission to translate Jünger’s 1932 book The Worker into Italian. As far as is known, that was the only direct contact the two ever had. In the end Evola did not translate the work, but instead wrote a book-length summary and critique of it.

Despite Evola’s disdain for the later Jünger, there is some overlap between their post-war perspectives. In Ride the Tiger, Evola asserts that the only correct attitude that a man of Tradition in our age should observe toward politics is that of apoliteia, or detachment from the political. (It is important to note that this is different from not engaging with the political at all, since one can still engage with it while remaining detached from such activities.) This bears an obvious parallel with Jünger’s Forest Fleer, which he describes in The Forest Passage, and the Anarch, as detailed in his novel Eumeswil. In the latter work, Jünger asserts that as technology encroaches more and more on all aspects of our lives, the only form of freedom that will be available to man will be to detach as much as possible from our surroundings and embrace “inner freedom,” even while remaining outwardly fully integrated into society. The Anarch never rebels against society, as Jünger contended that this would inevitably lead to self-destruction (itself consistent with Traditional doctrines). 

The two thinkers are positing similar solutions to the postmodern predicament, although the main difference is that Evola holds that genuine freedom can only be realized by cultivating contact with the higher realm of Tradition, whereas Jünger suggests that freedom can only come from the individual himself. (Evola never had the opportunity to critique Jünger’s Anarch given that Eumeswil was not published until 1977, three years after Evola’s death.) While that is a fundamental distinction, I nevertheless believe that the two approaches can be fruitfully compared and contrasted. I hope to do so more fully myself in writing at some point.

How can today’s rising populist right, alt-right and neo-fascist movements be analysed within Evola’s conceptual framework?

Exactly what constituted the “Alt-Right” is a matter of debate, since there was never any political party or unified group which went by that name. Starting in 2016, the mainstream media co-opted the term to refer to all those individuals, media outlets, and organizations in the United States which fell outside the boundaries of mainstream conservatism, despite the fact that there were huge differences in ideas and approach between them. It can hardly be said to be “rising,” however, given that the efforts of those who accepted the moniker at the time – most notably Richard Spencer and his allies – completely disintegrated in 2018, in the wake of the Charlottesville disaster. Even Spencer himself has long since given up using the term. There of course remain individuals and groups on the fringes of American political life who espouse similar views, but few if any use the term “Alt-Right” today, since one of the few things all of them agree on is that the “Alt-Right” was a fiasco; one usually hears of the “dissident Right” and such terms.

That being said, the only proper Evolian or Traditional view of all three of the phenomena you named is severe criticism. All of them are entirely caught up in the modern paradigm and accept all the presuppositions of liberalism. I will explain more fully below.

The populist Right is a rebellion against Tradition since it bases itself on “the people” rather than on sacred or regal authority. Evola was critical of the populist elements of Italian Fascism, and he would no doubt be even more strongly critical of today’s populism. Italian Fascism at the very least retained the monarchy and the relationship between the State and the Church, even if these remained subservient to party interests. Today’s populism in the West doesn’t even go that far. The understanding of tradition propagated by today’s populists in Europe and the US never goes beyond the entirely superficial level of a vaguely-defined set of “traditional values,” and even in that they seldom do more than pay lip service to it. If there is anything illiberal in populism, it is only of an oligarchic nature rather than a monarchist or religious one. There may be pragmatic reasons to support populists over other political tendencies in some countries, but they have nothing to do with Tradition.

As for the Alt-Right, given that I was intimately acquainted with it during the brief time that it existed, I can say confidently that while Evola, and to a lesser extent Tradition, were occasionally referenced by those who might be categorized as such, this rarely extended beyond the level of “Surf the Kali Yuga” memes and the like. None of the major figures of this “movement,” if we can dignify it with such a label, evinced any significant trace of an influence of Tradition on their words or actions, even when they claimed to be acting according to it (I’m thinking of the Traditionalist Worker Party). There were some individuals here and there associated with those circles who began a more in-depth exploration, and in some cases embrace, of Tradition, but this always ended up drawing them away from explicitly political activities (as is logical once one inculcates the Traditional worldview). Most people from that milieu seemed to see Evola and Tradition more as a tool to be used for other ends rather than as the bedrock of their lives and activities, which is precisely the sort of thing Guénon warned against. This is unfortunate, since a deeper understanding of Evola and the other Traditional authors might have helped them to overcome their inability to transcend those limitations which have led to the Right’s repeated failures over the last century: an almost mystical worship of the alleged wisdom of the “common man,” a fixation on biological race as the be-all-and-end-all of politics, an ignorance of the genuine meaning of hierarchy, a total disregard for religion apart from often ill-conceived efforts at a reconstruction of European paganism (a task both Guénon and Evola regarded as impossible), an inability to think beyond the modern liberal construct of the nation-state, an excessive fascination with the fascist movements of the interwar period, contempt for authority, a lack of seriousness and preoccupation with irony and degeneracy, and so on.  

The situation with the “radical Right” in the anglosphere today remains largely the same; if anything, Evola is even more tangential to it than before. I see few references to Evola or Tradition among today’s “dissident Right.” When he is referred to, it is often to denounce him – which is unsurprising given that anyone who actually reads Evola will soon realize that he was critical of or even opposed to many of the suppositions that they hold dear, as I alluded to above. One exception to this is the scholar who goes by the name of Academic Agent (real name Neema Parvini). But I’m hard-pressed to think of any others.

As for neo-fascism, one only needs to read Evola’s book Fascism Viewed from the Right, as well as his other writings on the topic, to see that he was highly critical of Fascism, as I already discussed above. I’m aware that there are still neo-fascists today who cite Evola as an influence, although I’m not sure how they reconcile the two. Already in his own lifetime, Evola lamented somewhere or other in his writings that the post-war Italian Right-wing youth were overly obsessed with Fascism and National Socialism, which he attributed to their ignorance of figures who actually represented Tradition in history, such as Metternich; he referred to this shortcoming as a “lack of proper referents.” It nevertheless seems to be the case that today’s neo-fascists in the anglosphere – it appears to be different in Italy – more often denounce Evola than embrace him. This has certainly been my observation of those who refer to themselves as such in the anglosphere today. 

While Evola never condemned those who were interested in Tradition and yet wanted to remain politically active, he nevertheless implored such people to remain inwardly detached from the vulgar world of party politics and to keep Tradition at the center of their activism, which he thought was better represented in the form of a sacred Order rather than a political party (he outlines his thoughts on this in his late essay “The Order of the Iron Wreath”). He also wrote at length on how a man of Tradition can live in a world where there is no hope of political rectification along Traditional lines in one of his last books, Ride the Tiger.