ENDING THE COSMIC WAR

JOUISSANCE AND DEATH: THE FAR RIGHT AND THE COSMIC WAR

Throughout I am trying to say that the Cosmic War is backgrounded, that it permeates our thinking, and it crops up in places we don’t expect it. It is no longer just a “religious” idea. Its relationship with the spiritual or numinous is even a little oblique in places. Sometimes ideas that seem at odds with each other, hunt together, along with the people who adopt them, and it is a strange and fierce old hunt indeed.

Kia Ora Tatou, and welcome to Ending the Cosmic War with me, Karen Effie.

In the previous article I gave a loose definition of the far right, and here it is again, from Charlotte Gauthier:

“When we use the term ‘far right’, we mean nothing more than a heterogenous collection of individuals professing a set of political beliefs that include ultra-nationalist, reactionary, illiberal, authoritarian, and often racist and/or nativist tendencies.”

I also want to point you in the direction of Umberto Eco’s classic 14 characteristics of what he calls Ur-Fascism. His booklet of the same name is a quick read, and I definitely recommend it, but here is a summary of the 14 characteristics, in case you want the Cliff Notes version of the Cliff Notes:

https://www.openculture.com/2024/11/umberto-ecos-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html

The characteristic that interests me first off is No. 9, and I will quote it in full, in the translation by Alastair McEwen:

“For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life, but, rather, a ‘life for struggle’. Pacifism is therefore collusion with the enemy; pacifism is bad, because life is a permanent war. This, however, brings with it an Armageddon complex; since the enemy can and must be defeated, there must be a last battle, after which the movement will rule the world. Such a final solution implies a subsequent era of peace, a Golden Age that contradicts the principle of permanent war. No Fascist leader has ever managed to resolve this contradiction”.

So here we are again. The end times. The final battle. The golden age. I don’t actually see Umberto Eco’s contradiction, any more than there is a contradiction for those Christians of an apocalyptic mindset: there is permanent war until the final battle.

When I was reading up on this issue, I held my nose and read “The Turner Diaries”, so you don’t have to. I found a free PDF, which was good because you can’t buy it easily and I did not want to pay for the cursed thing. Later on, I will review it properly, but for now, I will be brief. “The Turner Diaries” was written in 1978 by William Luther Pierce, under a pseudonym. Pierce was the leader of a white supremacist organization, one of many that have come and gone over the decades. It is notable for some important tropes that have taken hold among the far-right in the United States. In the book, which is mercifully brief, “Turner” is a brave white soldier in the war against the Blacks who have taken over the United States, along with their liberal allies. Black people are apparently not bright enough to do their own takeover, so they are backed and inspired and bankrolled by an international cabal of - guess who? “The Jews”, that’s who. This is a permanent war, and it has recently become a shooting war. Turner is part of a cell of brave white soldiers who live and fight together and link up with other cells. The violence escalates into a civil war, and they win it, and it culminates with the “Day of the Rope”, when the Black, White and Jewish leaders are all executed and history in what is left of the USA comes to a tidy end.

Many of these tropes – the international Jewish cabal, manipulated Black people who are taught they are oppressed by liberals, the enemy within the USA being the true enemy, the civil war, revenge and more revenge – have become bog standard among the far right. Some of them are also present in our Cosmic War narrative. The war is longstanding, but victory is total and inevitable. There is a “final solution”. Turner and his group are that Cosmic War standard, the small group of virtuous rebels. Umberto Eco is right about the “Armageddon complex”. Eco’s other point in his essay on Ur-Fascism, No. 11, is that everyone is trained to be a hero, and that closely related to this heroism is the cult of death. Heroism, as part of the saviour hero motif, is also a Cosmic War standard. Ur-Fascism, as expressed in “The Turner Diaries” (and elsewhere) is right in the Cosmic War camp.

So, what is Cosmic about it? It is a permanent war with a total solution, but is it metaphysical? For some on the far right, I guess not. But for some, I think the permanent war described by Umberto Eco is absolutely Cosmic.

Here are two useful examples of true metaphysical Nazis. Savitri Devi was born in Lyons to English and Greek-Italian parents in 1905. She developed ultra-nationalist and anti-egalitarian views in her teens. She supported Hitler throughout her long life, seeing him as a Hindu avatar. She moved to India, but travelled in Europe and tried to influence the Nazis there after the war. She married a Brahmin, and adopted a deeply conservative, caste-based form of Hinduism which later influenced Hindutva. (Hindutva, which roughly means a Hindu identity, is now the official policy of the Indian government under Narendra Modi. Hindutva has inspired much violence towards Muslims and other minorities, as well as some outright conspiracy theories, such as the “Love Jihad”, a conspiracy where Muslim men marry Hindu women to convert them and produce Muslim babies. The far right in the US likes Hindutva a lot. Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was raised in an offshoot of the Krishna Consciousness movement. She has ties to militant Hindu groups and to Modi, according to Hindutva Watch.) Devi was a lover of other animals and of nature; her writings on the natural world are deeply mystical. She was a vegetarian. Her later life was devoted to caring for the stray cats of India. However, she viewed humanity from a vast and superior distance, with general contempt. Devi was almost forgotten by the public until her life story was revived by the new far right, and now her writings are available again.

The other example I want to give here is the magician and self-described Super-Fascist Julius Evola. Evola has been made fashionable again by the newer style of fascist thinkers, such as Richard Spencer, Steve Bannon, and Aleksandr Dugin. Evola, (1898-1974) was a traditionalist, who believed that society was at the end of the Kali Yuga, the end of its slide into degeneracy. The signs of this were both capitalism and communism, and the emphasis on economics and the material. He wanted to create a new man (and I mean man) who would exemplify nobility and principle – the “man who would become different”, who would transcend the ages, who would embody a “legionary spirit”, who would live a spiritually heroic life. Evola owed much to Buddhism and had also been considered a Pagan. He studied and wrote about esoteric and magical matters, and is considered to be a fine magician, especially by those on the left-hand path. He was also wildly misogynistic, anti-Semitic, and racist in the sense that he saw race in a “spiritual” sense, with caste trumping race. He influenced contemporary fascism, especially in his native Italy, and he also influenced other spiritual thinkers, in a sense embedding himself in the New Age movement with his emphasis on individual transcendence and his contempt for the modern age.

Devi and Evola have their spiritual side in common. Both were influenced by Eastern mysticism and religion, both had a general contempt for ordinary humanity, and both found transcendence in nature.

Their ideas also provide for us a kind of sideways introduction to that bricolage of ideas that appear on the far right, as well as the contemporary spiritual (ex-New Age) community, the anti-civ movement, and even the manosphere. These are ideas that do not necessarily have a logical relationship, but they grok. They vibe. They hunt together. Here are some of them in their diverse hunting pack.

The classical world, especially classical Rome: far right thinkers sometimes use the term “classical” to describe their ideas. The Kali Yuga and modern degeneracy, which is beyond repair, and an impending catastrophe. The Golden Age. Arthurian legend, and illumined history in general. Reverence for nature – sometimes in a Blood and Soil ultranational sense, but also in a transcendent sense: this is related to what is called eco-fascism. An ultimate value placed on principles over human experience: free speech, for example, the will to power. The elite and noble man, who is spiritually superior. Individual physical and mental health, sometimes extreme health, and experimentation with this through magic, psychedelics, transgression. The world not being real, but created by our thoughts (New Thought). The mystic East: the Brahminic system, Yoga (which is in part a Western invention), Tantra. Strong aesthetic sensibilities, and a distaste for commonality. A disdain for institutions and the apparatus of government. A contempt for most or even all humans.

I think I am showing the complex relationship between the far right and its metaphysics. I am also hinting at least at the confluence of ideas among the far right and the esoteric/spiritual community, the far right and the world of conspiracy (MAGA, QAnon), and the far right and the politics of accelerating chaos. The far right is a part of the Cosmic War, even outside of the major religions. It is an example of how the Cosmic War occurs in secular or “spiritual but not religious” spaces.

I have read several comparisons of communism and fascism in 1930’s Europe, as attempts to explain why people voted for fascists. Fascists didn’t just promise cultural safety and regular train services, though. They didn’t even just promise to get rid of despised and scapegoated peoples. Whereas the communists promised equality and modernity and hope, the fascists promised Thanatos over Eros. They promised heroic struggle, the redemption of noble manliness, and the jouissance of apocalyptic destruction. Jouissance: overdriven pleasure, the pleasure of pain, the ecstasy of madness, or death, or its likeness. If you think of yourself as special, as magical, as persecuted, as misunderstood, as doomed, what’s not to like?

If you got this far via some mixed metaphors and some very strange personages, thank you for reading, and I hope you hang in there with me. Please, if you haven’t, read my intro post, it will make it much clearer. Ma te wa!

Further exploration:

Umberto Eco’s “How to Spot a Fascist” or read his essay on Ur-Fascism for free online.

Michael Millerman has a sympathetic view of Julius Evola on his own website; try “Julius Evola Against the Modern World