August 10, 2025 • 60 mins
61 Minutes
PG-13
Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.
Thomas takes a detour from the Continental Philosophy but touches on a subject that is tangentially related: the Radical Traditionalist school, which features thinkers such as Joseph de Maistre, René Guénon, Julius Evola, and Mircea Eliade.
Thomas' Substack
Radio Free Chicago - T777 and J Burden
Thomas777 Merchandise
Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"
Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"
Thomas on Twitter
Thomas' CashApp - $7homas777
Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'
Support Pete on His Website
Pete's Patreon
Pete's Substack
Pete's Subscribestar
Pete's GUMROAD
Pete's Venmo
Pete's Buy Me a Coffee
Pete on Facebook
Pete on Twitter
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.
PG-13
Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.
Thomas takes a detour from the Continental Philosophy but touches on a subject that is tangentially related: the Radical Traditionalist school, which features thinkers such as Joseph de Maistre, René Guénon, Julius Evola, and Mircea Eliade.
Thomas' Substack
Radio Free Chicago - T777 and J Burden
Thomas777 Merchandise
Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"
Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"
Thomas on Twitter
Thomas' CashApp - $7homas777
Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'
Support Pete on His Website
Pete's Patreon
Pete's Substack
Pete's Subscribestar
Pete's GUMROAD
Pete's Venmo
Pete's Buy Me a Coffee
Pete on Facebook
Pete on Twitter
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
If you want to get the show early and ad free,
head on over to the Peak Kinyonas show dot com.
There you can choose from where you wish to support me.
Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me
about this, even though I think on the last ad
I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed,
(00:58):
you're going to have to subscribe yourself or through Patreon.
You can also subscribe on my website which is right there,
gum Road and what's the other one, subscribe Star and
if you do that, you will get access to the
audio file. So head on over to the pekan Yonashow
(01:19):
dot com. You'll see all the ways that you can
support me there. And I just want to thank everyone.
It's because of you that I can put out the
amount of material that I do. I can do what
I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred Years Together
and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are
doing together on condinal philosophy, it's all because of you.
(01:40):
And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank
you enough. So thank you. The pekan Yonashow dot com.
Everything's there. Want to welcome everyone back to the Peking
Yona show. Thomas is back and we are continuing the
series on the radical Traditionalist school. How are you, Thomas, I.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Know very well.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I think today I'll wrap up this sort of like
subtropical treatment of you know, the the the fastest internationals
I think of it, and the intellectual cadre that you know,
constituted the the radical Traditionalists sort of vanguard in the
(02:22):
twentieth century.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
To be clear, I'm going to primarily talk about Marcia
Eliotti today, but like a lot of people on social
media and other platforms and stuff, they've been asking about
like Renee Gillon, who was something of a mysterious figure.
I mean, for all kinds of reasons. I think he
curated that image. But he uh and he died I
(02:46):
think in nineteen fifty. But you know, Carl Schmidt, as
I mentioned, Carl Schmidt had an active correspondence with Barcilla Eliatti,
with Julius Evil Up, with Ernst Junger, and you know,
we don't think of Carl Schmidt as being insinuated into
this milieu, but he was, you know, and that goes
(03:09):
to show you again there was a true cadre of
intellectuals and a true internationalism to to Fishism and related movements.
But Carl Schmidt said that he considered Rene Gillon to
be the most like compelling, living intellectual, you know. And uh,
(03:31):
Guillon's conversion to his Lamb, I mean that was a
very French thing of him to do. He was very
much an Orientalist, you know, like a lot of like
a lot of Westerners were and are, and particularly a
certain a certain type of adventurous soul. And uh, you know,
(03:53):
there's a certain ecumenicalism to the traditionalist school, like I indicated.
But also you've got to understand the context, particularly in
the first half of the twentieth century. This was well
before the Islamic Awakening in nineteen seventy nine, but Islam
seemed far more of a living faith and way of
(04:14):
life than you know, it is the case on the
ground in Christendom outside of places like Romania. And we'll
get into that, you know, so and that that's the
way to kind of understand Gione. And I mean he
lived among the Arabs and basically became one culturally, you know,
(04:36):
he went native, as it were. But beyond that, his
attraction to that theological system owes to what I just said.
I you know, the degree to which this kind of
scientific or scientism secular scientism was the dominant conceptual paradigm
(05:02):
that really can't be overstated.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
You know. It was just like a foregone conclusion. You know.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
That's why it was so interesting how the the the
final phase of the Cold War shook out, you know,
and just uh across cultural frontiers, you know. I the
martyrdom of Bobby Sands was tremendously important. And and the
(05:30):
Catholic revival, you know, that was so instrumental in the
resistance behind the Wall and poland you know that that
was an aspect of this zegeist shift, you know, and
a lot of this stuff is coming to like full
realization today.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
You know, there's a there's a theological subtext to.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Discourse right now, and and just the way you know,
an instant bob psychological phenomena and all kinds of other things,
and this is fascinating, and uh, you know, these these
these are very exciting times right now. That's one of
the reasons I disdain it when when when people like
like they live in a boring century or something. I mean,
there's always compelling things like like in any century you
(06:19):
live in, if you know, you if your conceptual horizon
is inadequately wide temporal sample.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
You know, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But interestingly too, you know, Marcia Eliatti was at University
of Chicago and at the Amentsy of Chicago Library. Now
Evila's letters letters to Eliati are you can you can
exst them there. They're in the Mercia Eliotti papers, which
(06:51):
is great. Universities remain a really good resource like that.
Next time I'm in Portland, Oregon, I found found out
lately that uh, the Earthy of Portland that's for h
Keith Steinley, who was uh he he was instrumental in
(07:12):
thean due for Historical Review in like very early eighties,
and he uh h Keith Thompson became pretty close and
uh Keith Steinley he died young. He he died of
as interestingly, and apparently people didn't know that he was gay,
(07:35):
but apparently he was. I mean, it's I'm not speaking
on that one way or the other. But when he died, uh,
he was aggregating all these papers and taking testimony from
you know, a bunch of people because he intended to
write a biography of Francis Yacki and uh, Kevin Coogan,
(07:57):
I believe h. Key Thompson and passed on a lot
of the material at Steinley had aggregated to Kevin Coogan,
who wrote a Obviously the seminole biography of Yacky is.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Is the one.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Uh yeah yeah thanks at a senior moment is the
Kerry Bolton treatment.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
But the.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Book by Kevin Coogan is a great book. And like
the footnotes and endnotes alone are like a treasure trove
of data.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
And it's and and and H. Thompson, else de Witt.
You know a lot of other people who were friends
of Francis Yacky as well as George solzter Virick, you know,
another guy's in that re LOEU. They I mean they
participated in it because they they came to trust Coogan.
So it's not people shouldn't be put off by the
(08:49):
fact that Coogan's uh, you know, uh, this kind of
neo Marxist type of guy. But be that as it may.
The critical thing to understand in terms of UH, in
(09:10):
terms of practice, how this fascist international let I insist
was extant as like an animating force and uh an
intellectual tendency, you know, and in the Inner War years,
and that really as I think I as I think
we discussed the other day, was a really catalyzing influence,
(09:34):
especially after the martyrdom of Ion Mota and thesile Ma.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Mean, but.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
You know Evilah and his he can't he met Mercia
Eliotti for the first time when he traveled to uh
Romania and Uh Evil wanted to meet Kaduri. And in
his estimation as well as in the estimation at Carl Schmidt,
(10:06):
I don't think Younger directly commented on the situation, the
internal situation in.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Romania, but yeah, eve Love viewed it as a.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
He viewed it as a kind of pure expression of
traditionalists capital t traditionalist praxis, you know. And he viewed
it as a new kind of revolution, you know, and
something unique unto itself. And he traveled the Romania to
(10:40):
meet Kodrianu and that's when he first came across Eliati,
you know. And at that time Eliatti was was was
serving in the in the Iron Guard, and Kadrian who
was intellectual mentor and who he kind of considered to
be as spiritual forebear was email Siron Ciron. I'm probably
(11:03):
puncturing that pronunciation. Siron wrote a book called the transformation
of Romania in nineteen thirty six. It was basically a manifesto, uh,
you know, calling for palagenesis and uh ethnocultural terms you know,
(11:28):
and in national renewal, something that uh Evila commented on
how what he wanted to engage with Eliati and these
young these then young guys who were kind of filling
out the ranks of uh the Iron Guard. There's a
(11:56):
characteristic aspect of the Iron Guard movements, you know. And
they constructed their their primary organizational modality was what they
referred to as nests, you know. And this wasn't just
a way of you know, breaking down paramilitary organization for
(12:22):
political warfare and direct action. They represented a an emphasis
and on a common or communitarian formal life that was
primarily centered around ethical and religious sensibilities and criteria, you know,
and that was something there wasn't really a counterpart to
(12:46):
that in uh the German essay or the and the
fascist black Shirts.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
One of the things coche Rian who said Evila is
that quote prayer as a decisive element of victory.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
It was a kind of pure crusader spirit transposed to
the modern era.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Like and uh.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
The kind of the modern interpretation of jihad and militant Islam.
This is really kind of the Christian counterpart to that, okay,
and in a very real sense. And this is important
(13:47):
because until fairly recently there wasn't a lot of serious
scholarship other other than people like Ernston Noblety, who you know,
we're in our somebody soteric in their work product, you know,
(14:08):
like Noelty was a political philosopher, you know, he wasn't
an analytic historian. But there's not there was not for
many decades the serious scholarship of a fascist type movements,
you know, and what their characteristics were.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
And even.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Those people in mainstream Agadee who set out to be
reasonably objective, the kind of metrics they were applying and
their methodology we were wrong, you know. And the way
they interpreted these variables were wrong. And the context wasn't
(14:49):
something that they had a meaningful grasp of, you know.
And because so the Iron Guar weren't reactionaries that they
didn't want to just kind of turn the clock back to,
you know, inculcate people like Romanians and medieval sensibilities or something.
(15:14):
Their entire practice was to bring about something that hadn't
been seen before. And to be clear, Seron, he he
had certain progressive aspects to his worldview, Like you said that,
you know, the relative democratization of political life was something
(15:37):
that had to happen because otherwise ontological shock would have
just led to revolution and we'd be in the situation
the Soviet Union is, which is of course correct. Beyond that,
one of the things that ties Younger to a lot
of these movements that were you know, right word of
(16:02):
his own perspective and something that's set Younger apart from
his revolutionary conservative ideological counterparts in a lot of ways.
You know, the concept of the anarch is like a
man who's you know, this kind of self contained agents,
(16:27):
who's neither master nor slave, you know, and who can't
be categorized according to traditional sociological schema in terms of
how he fits into you know, a class paradigm and modernity.
You know, that's very much the kind of historical personality
(16:52):
that the Iron Guard and that Seeron was trying to cultivate.
And this is important. Okay, there is a new fascist
man and if I mean I'm being I'm in voting
kind of a colloquial phraseology. But revolutionary rightist movements had
(17:17):
as much of a concept of a new Man as
did their enemies, you know, uh in in the Marcist Leninists,
because that's what history called for.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
And also, you know, the entire.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Catalyst for this kind of revolutionary activity was ontological, you know,
historical situatedness and the factors that constitute that historical situatedness.
This is what you know, defines the culture in an
(18:00):
of an era. You can't just say like, I'm going
to consciously reject that and you know, ascribe to something
else that I find preferable. You know, that's a kind
of retreat into fantasy or you know, the relegation of
oneself irrelevancy by way of subcultural insolrity.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
You know. So this is important because.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Romania's kind of overlooked anyway, traditionally in analyses of the war,
which in military terms, you know, Romania was the German
reights most important ali and you know they they dedicated
(18:55):
the most forces.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
To the.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Crusade against the Soviets, and Antonescu and Hitler were actually
quite close. But beyond that, you know, Romania, I think
it's ill understood as a culture because it's it's the
direct descendant like literally of both Rome and Byzantium. I
(19:23):
think the Balkans are kind of ill understood anyway. During
the Cold War, Romania kind of staked out its own path,
which was which seemed very asiatic and kind of alien.
There's this kind of morbid fascination with the Cusescu regime,
and it's it's excesses and things in America and in Europe,
(19:47):
Western Europe. But the you know, the the internal situation
there was very dynamic and outsized, and its impact, you know,
so I think that that kind of insolarity caused people
(20:08):
to kind of ignore it as a historical quantity.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
But also.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
One of the the people remain prisoners of the kind
of Cold War conceptual paradigm and something that's neither a
merely reactionary protest against liberal modernity or something that's not,
(20:36):
you know, actively revolutionary in terms of its ambition to
socially engineered traditional modalities out of existence. If there's a
political tendency that's neither of those things, you know, mainstream
(20:56):
scholarship doesn't know how to deal with it. And furthermore, too,
like the big imperative of the traditionalist school. And one
of the reasons why the revolutionary sensibilities the Iron Guard
represents such a pure iteration of traditionalist practice is that
(21:18):
there's an integralism and a symbolic psychological aspect of this
that sets it apart from what we think of as
politics in the late modern sense. You know, people like
Quadrianuho and people like Iliati, they were talking about entire
(21:41):
kind of modes of life and ethics. They weren't talking
about politics. Is this kind of discrete mode of activity
that's separate from all other cultural activity, you know, or
something that's or something that's ay uh uh, that has
(22:05):
psychological aspects onto itself that don't touch in concern other
uh other uh you know, identitarian aspects of the human
being in you know, in in in any meaningful way.
(22:25):
That's the wrong way to look at it, because all
these things are viewed as one, you know, the only
legitimate politics as the politics that derives from Christian ethics,
and you know, orthodox Christian ethics in the case of
(22:45):
Romania and uh orthodoxy is rather congregational, you know, so
the the folk community or like you know, the Romanian
race and it's it's heritage it's it's it's shared memory,
(23:10):
you know, both epigenetic as well as you know, the
the symbolic psychological aspects that individuals share in common, and
the culture relating to ritual and right and religious practice
and things. You know, all these things are what makes
(23:30):
conreational life possible, which in turn allows people to you know,
partake of the grace of the Living God through the Christ.
You know, and this is the metric of all of
all activity as a Romanian patriot, but also like as
(23:56):
a man, as an Orthodox Christian and everything else. You know,
churches and something you do on Sundays so that you know,
you're you have something to do, or for the sake
of appearances, or because you're worried about you know, your
kids not getting an adequate moral education. It's a totally
(24:16):
different perspective than you know, people in kind of like
twentieth century late modern Anglophone cultures ahead of things. You know,
I'm speaking in terms of like the majoritary and sensibility.
Obviously there were exceptions within those cultures and countries. But
(24:39):
it's also you know, another aspect of the Iron Guard
that was kind of overlooked or de emphasized and Elie.
(25:00):
He wrote about this, and the political writing that he
did engage in after nineteen forty five is pretty sparse
for obvious reasons, but his correspondence with evill Uh he emphasizes, uh,
(25:23):
you know, the need for an intellectually rigorous vanguard. You know,
an Eliati was like an urbane intellectual and most of
these Iron Guard legionnaires they were they were university students
and some like working guys. But this was not This
(25:43):
wasn't some like peasant movement or something. It wasn't you know,
comparable to say like the you know, Father Tiso's party
and not being like punitive. And I'm not saying there's
something like wrong with that kind of Agreerian peasant you know,
patriotic sensibility, but it's a very different thing if you're
(26:07):
talking about basically like you know, Cadres and Christian Jahannes,
who you know, dedicate themselves to this kind of like
monastic this like warrior monastic sort of like intellectually driven existence.
It's it's very different, you know.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
And.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You know, and key to uh, I think understanding why
this was an important movement for all the reasons we've
been discussing.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
You know, it's when I.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Talk about the martyrdom of of Ion Motza and Viscio Marine.
This wasn't some expost facto sort of mythification. You know,
in the moments, all kinds of men went down in
theater who were fighting for the nationalist cause and who
(27:09):
had a very romantic sort of back story about what
brought them there. It was these pious orthodox Iron Guard legionnaires,
you know, who became the martyrs and you don't, I
mean the Congreens decided he was a murder and who's
not okay? And this funerary train of the two murtyers,
(27:36):
you know, everywhere they went, they were saluted, you know,
by Philangis, you know, by black shirts, by national socialists,
you know, by Carlos, you know, in Belgium and France
and in Italy, in Austria. You know, there was this
(27:58):
ecumenical kind of fascist reverence around the sacrifice and murdered
him of these two Romanians, you know, who again represented
in a pure sense, the kind of Christian jihad. I
(28:18):
mean that speaks for itself, you know. And Eliotti, throughout
his life, you know, the concept of sacred time and
(28:40):
how that situates people psychologically and historically and how that
functions as you know, an essential aspect of worship. This
is kind of one of the core concepts within his
political theology. But also like the catalyzing effect of sacrifice
(29:03):
and martyrdom, you know. And this was a huge, hugely
revered thing among the Iron Guard, you know, and they
were talking about this years before any of them deployed
the Spain. You know, they they were in touch with
the zeitgeist in instinctive ways. You know that the National Socialists,
(29:28):
save you know, people like Hitler himself, just weren't just
weren't apprehending. And in the case of people like Hitler,
you know, like like Lenin or Mussolini, you know, he
understood the like historical imperatives at play, and you know,
(29:52):
like in an absolutely instinctive way, and he was like,
you know, in some ways he had like a savant
or genius for these things. But uh, we're talking on
something very different, you know. I think that's clear, and
I don't a movement like the the Legionarian movement or
(30:13):
like the Iron Guard. I that wouldn't have jumped off
in Germany, it wouldn't have had a context. I can
see something. I can see maybe a pious Catholic movement
emerged against Austria that was like openly fascist and that
and whose practice was stronglyted oriented towards martyrdom. But I
(30:39):
but even now, I think it's somewhat dubious.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
So this uh, any serious scholar the era and again
of these you know, of of of the of the movement,
it should account for this man. And that's changing. But
like I said, even even among sympathetic scholars, I think
(31:08):
I think there's something. I think there's something basically lacking
in their understanding, not just to the concrete particulars, but
of the kind of conceptual whole, you know. And I
go as far as they two. I mean, Kadriano obviously
(31:34):
was in dialogue with the revolutionary proletarian movement, because I mean,
anybody so engaged in the political struggling in the interwar yors,
I mean that that's literally what all discourse was in
dialogue with. So I mean like that that itself situates
(31:56):
any partisan in a sort of modernist category, you know.
So it's kind of like neither hero or there. I mean,
Quadriano and el Yati, they weren't like reactionaries anyway, but
it it's kind of a meaningless criteria to was signed
(32:18):
as a characteristic, you know, when we're talking about people
who are engaged in like direct action against the communists
you know, in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
That you know, and the u.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yaki some of the language that he lifts or like
some of the concepts that he fleshes out, particularly in Imperium,
like the first few chapters of the book, where he's
kind of talk on like, you know, the new fascist man.
(33:04):
He's talking about how the new Europe is going to
require a new consensus, specifically one of living dangerously and sacrificially.
And that's one hundred percent you know, the kind of
(33:31):
philosophical disposition of the Iron Guard. It's not a conventionally
political concept, you know, and it's not a kind of
superficial extremism. And it's also not a conventionally even among
the more sanguinary and like war oriented modalities of Christianity.
It's not really a Christian sensibility either, at least in
(33:55):
the sense that is under discussion, you know, And that's
very much a modernist understanding, you know, of what constitutes
you know, redemptive factors in worldly conduct, you know it
(34:20):
h And Carl Schmidt too, you know, he even in
Know most of the Earth where which is uh? I mean,
that's his magnum opus. But it's also probably his most
kind of meanstream scholarly work. But he's dealing with a
(34:46):
lot of conceptually theological things, okay. You know, and in
the nineteen fifties and sixties, obviously nobody on the right,
you know, even people who were pretty far right, unless
they were openly dissenting elements or like underground national socialists
(35:11):
or something, you know, they weren't. They weren't openly trying
to drop parallels with themselves and the Fascist International. But
there's concepts that just axiomatically endured within you know, right
wing thought in the in the European sense, you know,
(35:36):
and the concept of sacrifice if not murderedom and the
understanding of sacred ground, and what makes land appropriation legitimate
is the sacramental skilling of blood. You know that that's
(36:01):
uh a Schmidtian concept that it was very much to.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
This kind of political theology.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
You know, So this stuff had It's not like this
stuff was totally dormant or these concepts were totally dormant
until you know, a couple of decades after the Cold War,
and now like you know, the kind of subcultural tendencies
that we represent, like rediscovered this stuff. It was like
insinuated all throughout everything subsequent to it, you know, So
(36:33):
this can't be dismissed as some strange artifact of a
of bontological shock, you know, and and kind of that
tragedy of the commons amidst uh, you know, the European
Civil War and and and all these horrible events that
you know led to.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
You know, led to.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Communism and resistance to it and things. You know, there's
an independent significance here, and there's an enduring significance that
is uh, yeah, is must be accounted for in its
own right, you know, in the younger and even uh,
(37:29):
even in all quite in the Western front. I'm not
a fan of Eric Maria Rimmarkey. I think he's I
think he was a very I think it was a
very egoistic person who dressed up his personal grievances as
a sum in his own moral powerties, as a as
(37:52):
some sort of principal stand against you know, the the
heartless Prussian established or whatever, but the concept of the
First World War constituting a mass sacrifice and thus moving
(38:13):
forward having expiated the sins of the German nation and race,
you know, and thus the punitive sanctions they were availed
to deliberately in terms of the political structure of Versailles.
(38:36):
That that is a subtext to.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
You know, all Vymart discourse.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
You know, even the KPD kind of acknowledged that in
their own strange and toleric way, you know. And also
this understanding of the sacrificial, the sacrificial victim status actual
(39:12):
or potential of the entirety of the nation or as
the kind of international sensibility set in and all trappings
of nationalism fell by the wayside after the Great War,
you know, speaking not in terms of the nation, but
(39:33):
you know, the the race written large, or you know,
the West or European civilization. This understanding of every man,
woman and child therein potentially being availed a sacrificial status.
That also made certain things possible that wouldn't have been before,
(40:01):
you know, in terms of uh, in terms of ethics
and what's becomes what was previously unthinkable, because not just
something that can be entertained in the abstract but can
be implemented for the sake of civilizational survival. You know,
(40:24):
obviously there's like the immediate threat of you know, being
subject to extermination, and that was no the's on point.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
But if people want to know.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
How the uh inner struggle relating to the ethics of
resisting such things by comparable and direct countermeasures became resolved,
I would say that that's how, and that end of
(41:03):
itself as a sacrificial implication. But Kodrianu made the point
that a legion there may condemn himself to hell for
his commitment and for his actions in the service of
(41:24):
that commitment, but that's the ultimate offer of sacrifice. Because
you know, obviously the pious man, the holy warrior, the
man and the path of jihad, he always hopes that
God will let him come back and return to grace.
(41:48):
But if the survival of his people, and if his
commitment to his comrades and even his commitment to God
call for him to do monstrous things that will damn
his soul for eternity, there is no sacrifice greater and
(42:12):
no conceivable murderdom more severe, you know, than to literally
willfully bear witness to one his own damnation. So that's
part of this ontology too, and I'm not just speculating here.
(42:38):
It's uh intrinsic to a lot of the rip. It's
intrinsic to a lot of the reflections I believe of
people like Gearing, especially at Nermer, although he didn't characterize
it that way because Gear was many things, and I
(43:01):
think he was a real hero like we talked about.
But Gary was not a pious man, and I don't
think you spent a lot of time contemplating these kinds
of things. But it was intrinsic to the zeitgeist Eliotti two,
and this is something Eliotti is probably it's probably probably is.
(43:27):
The most famous books were Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy,
which is a great book, and The Sacred and the Profane.
He wrote another book called the Myth of Eternal Return
or eternal recurrence. That problematics because people associate eternal recurrence
(43:54):
with the Nietzschean postulate, which, incidentally, and we'll get to
this later in our series, eternal return in the incense
there's the equivalent of const categorical imperative. It's a fascinating concept.
It redefines ethics and moral action, and in terms of
(44:15):
esthetical principles, it's just fascinating. But Eliot's meaning of that phrase.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Was that.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Ritual and spiritual practice in uh in the form of rights.
You know, it's uh, it's it's temporarily situated outside of
ordinary human time, and UH it connects the past and
(44:56):
the present and the future in a way that no
other human activity does. And that's part of its purpose,
you know. And obviously there's a the symbolic psychological aspects
that presumably trigger epigenetic memory and things. There's a aspects
(45:20):
of the shared cultural mindset that respond two aspects of
you know, uh, ritualized worship that are familiar even though
(45:41):
you know, people have never been taught these things, as
you know, and in the way that one is au availed,
you know, simple steps in a process that they then emulate,
you know. But Eliotti's main one of his main contributions
(46:09):
was his methodology and the way that he approached discussion
of ah, you know, religious phenomenon, you know, in terms
of worship and UH and and existential aspects of it.
(46:29):
You know, he said that you've got to approach something
if you take if you're looking at whether you're talking
about like a primitive tribe in Africa or whether you're
talking about some highly developed society like Japan, and you know, like, uh,
the shamanism that they practice, like with a Shinto priest.
(46:54):
You know, there's not like variables you can code to
try and flesh out this agnifican into this the human
psychology or the cultural learning. It requires a kind of
instinctive ability to perceive the meaning of these things and
(47:16):
symbolic psychological capacities. You know, it requires a certain empathy
that you know, allows one to see subjects through the
eyes of the other and such that these things can
be modeled in a more conventional analytics format. The variables
(47:40):
we're talking about in something like shamanism or sacramental practice,
you've got to identify the aspects in common that allow
for a proper categorical description. Now, what are the aspects
(48:00):
of shamanism? There are things, uh like actual projection, real
or perceived. I mean some people believe, not gonna think,
some people don't. But the inner experience of it, of
that sort of ecstatic response, A lot of people attribute
(48:21):
it to, you know, a sort of spiritual soaring or elevation.
You know, things uh that relate to people's pre rational
(48:44):
emotional responses to uh sacramental symbols across cultures. You know,
like you can't you can't code these things in a
way that reveals the essential meaning of them to the
human being. You know, it's something that can only be
(49:07):
experienced and kind of anecdotally relayed. So Eliotti relied a
lot on direct testimony on subjective interpretation and in common
psychological features of a symbolic nature that could be observed,
(49:33):
you know. And obviously Mainsham make a deem claimed that
well this is all conjecture and like reaction to romanticism
or you know, fascist apologia.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
But Eliotti was right.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Wolfgang Smith his methodology was a bit different and the
subject may or that he emphasized was a bit different,
but he similarly eschewed uh conventional modeling when dealing with.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
This kind of uh.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Experience like like religious phenomena as experience. Okay, this is
what wolfgangs Smith called traditional data. You know, it is data,
make a mistake, but it can't be analyzed and interpreted
or properly situated within a wider analytical paradigm. According to
(50:47):
conventional and quantitative research methods, you know, and it's it
goes yeah, it's not just you know, I know it
when I see it. It goes is beyond that there's
a real there's there's a real method here, although not
(51:09):
again in the sense we think of it in something
like economics or you know, other types of social research,
you know. And the concept of course too, of the
return to sacred time. This is one of the things
(51:32):
that grounds people in their own culture because it means that,
you know, there are aspects of the human psychology and
the human inner life. You know, if you're a religious
man or woman, you know, you interpret that as spiritual
(51:53):
life that are not historically contingent, you know. And that's
one of the functions in terms of revolutionary praxis that
prayer and ritual serve is that it literally takes us
out of you know, historical time and situates us in
sacred time, you know. And that's the key element of
(52:19):
void is sacred and what is profane? And that dichotomy
is it just isn't just an essential aspect of Mercia
Eliotti's thought, it was an essential aspect of email crans
a paradigm. It was an essential aspect of Coadrian, who's
(52:39):
understanding of the existential aspects of you know, the path
of the legionaire, you know. And also while removing us
or the subject popular or congregation or cature from historical time,
(53:05):
at the same time, it does allow us to relate
to historical and primordial psychological settings, you know. So in
these renewal ceremonies, they're they're on the one hand, they're timeless,
(53:29):
but on the other hand, you know, they bring a
historical phenomenon into not just living memory, but living experience,
you know, and a participation of the individual and and
(53:49):
self contained capacity as well as a member of the
congregation and you know, the nation and the race. It
initiates him into a kind of mythical framework, you know,
such that these things aren't merely trivial abstractions or inaccessible,
(54:16):
you know, arecane behavioral observances of the distant past. And
that's essential as part of a cultural education as well
as communitarian bonding. Because one of the things about Sacramento
(54:41):
practices it's very intimate. It's not a kind of thing
you share with strangers, you know. The deliberate diminishing and
in some cases purging of these things from cultural and
national life. This is one of the reasons, and this
is changing, Thank god, that people are overly focused on
(55:07):
sex in these posts.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
Number of socially engineered.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
Cultures, because that's one of the only avenues of intimacy,
like people still, that's just available, whether people can even conceptualize,
and that's very worked, doesn't gonna be wrong. And people
who think it through or who you know, have a
their modesty and their kind of internal moral core intact,
don't go that route. But a lot of men and
(55:36):
women are weak and there's nobody there to properly guide
them as to why that's that's perverse. I'm not like
acquitting them from responsibility, but a lot of people are
easily misled. Okay, that's a fact, but yeah, I don't
(55:57):
want to die. But in the next part of the
subject matter yet, I was going to kind of try
and tie this into the broader topical essence of the series,
but we'll do that next time, and and long the last,
we return to the to the main topical thrust, which
is kind of a philosophy. I hope people found this worthwhile.
I think it was important to kind of artigulate that
(56:20):
the significance of the tradition was school of thought to
you know, the revolutionary right and all of that.
Speaker 1 (56:31):
You know, I wanted to add this just because our
mutual friend Carl Doll and I were recording on the
uh the Iron Guard yesterday.
Speaker 3 (56:43):
Yeah, that's awesome. Both you guys told me that that's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Here's here's Vasilli Marine's quote that we ended it on,
has said, soaked in dynamism, our movement is revolutionary. The
Legion promotes the creative spirit in all the fields of
public life and sincerely rejects conservatism. The Legion organizes the
(57:07):
conquest of the future with the help of all the
productive categories of the nation. And it does not represent
a reaction towards the past.
Speaker 3 (57:15):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (57:16):
And I think a lot of people will will hear that,
and they will forget that they're Orthodox Christians and that
nothing that is said there negates that.
Speaker 3 (57:29):
No, it defines, it defines it. No.
Speaker 2 (57:34):
And this was you know, I know, Carl's a he's
a great guy, like he's our he's our friend and comrade.
But he's also a brilliant dude. And the it's not
just uh like intellectual curiosity that that brings thoughtful people
to a study of the Iron Guard. It's it's got
a hugely outsized significance in terms of a revolutionary practis
(58:01):
you know, and and the and the essence of uh,
you know, it was not only was it not reactionary,
it was like very forward looking. That kind of thing
is incredibly I mean, one of the things that doomed
the Legionary movement was that it was like too early.
I think, you know it, Uh, it's very much suited
(58:22):
to the world of like nineteen eighty nine and beyond,
like obviously you know, it's our present. Yeah, no, that's
that's great. And no, I'm glad that you and Carl
were covering that subject matter because that this will be
kind of a complement piece to that stuff too.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
Well.
Speaker 1 (58:44):
I think this this went a lot more into the
philosophy behind it and why.
Speaker 3 (58:50):
Yeah, good deal. No, I'm glad. I'm glad I'm being
useful and not just redundant.
Speaker 1 (58:54):
But yeah, all right, Thomas, tell everybody where they can
find you.
Speaker 2 (59:00):
Yeah, man, you can find me on my website. It's
Thomas seven seven seven dot com. It's number seven h s.
Speaker 3 (59:10):
I.
Speaker 2 (59:11):
I'm on social media at the time being, like we'll
see if I'm SORR at some point they're gonna like
ban this account too, even though I I never violate
t OS. But it's at Thomas Sear that's my government
name t H O M A S c y R
(59:31):
seven seven seven and my substack roll out of the
Magic Happens, you know, like my podcast, like some video content,
long form stuff like announcements relevant to like our cadre,
you know, and and when and where we're meeting up
and stuff that's at real Thomas seven seven seven dot
(59:53):
substack dot com. And forget like my voice and stuff
like I'm feeling a lot better and that was like
some weeks back, but I I'm still dealing with like
respiratory stuff, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
All right, no problem, Thank you to ill ten in
a couple of days. Take care
If you want to get the show early and ad free,
head on over to the Peak Kinyonas show dot com.
There you can choose from where you wish to support me.
Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me
about this, even though I think on the last ad
I stated it pretty clearly. If you want an RSS feed,
(00:58):
you're going to have to subscribe yourself or through Patreon.
You can also subscribe on my website which is right there,
gum Road and what's the other one, subscribe Star and
if you do that, you will get access to the
audio file. So head on over to the pekan Yonashow
(01:19):
dot com. You'll see all the ways that you can
support me there. And I just want to thank everyone.
It's because of you that I can put out the
amount of material that I do. I can do what
I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred Years Together
and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are
doing together on condinal philosophy, it's all because of you.
(01:40):
And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank
you enough. So thank you. The pekan Yonashow dot com.
Everything's there. Want to welcome everyone back to the Peking
Yona show. Thomas is back and we are continuing the
series on the radical Traditionalist school. How are you, Thomas, I.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Know very well.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I think today I'll wrap up this sort of like
subtropical treatment of you know, the the the fastest internationals
I think of it, and the intellectual cadre that you know,
constituted the the radical Traditionalists sort of vanguard in the
(02:22):
twentieth century.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
To be clear, I'm going to primarily talk about Marcia
Eliotti today, but like a lot of people on social
media and other platforms and stuff, they've been asking about
like Renee Gillon, who was something of a mysterious figure.
I mean, for all kinds of reasons. I think he
curated that image. But he uh and he died I
(02:46):
think in nineteen fifty. But you know, Carl Schmidt, as
I mentioned, Carl Schmidt had an active correspondence with Barcilla Eliatti,
with Julius Evil Up, with Ernst Junger, and you know,
we don't think of Carl Schmidt as being insinuated into
this milieu, but he was, you know, and that goes
(03:09):
to show you again there was a true cadre of
intellectuals and a true internationalism to to Fishism and related movements.
But Carl Schmidt said that he considered Rene Gillon to
be the most like compelling, living intellectual, you know. And uh,
(03:31):
Guillon's conversion to his Lamb, I mean that was a
very French thing of him to do. He was very
much an Orientalist, you know, like a lot of like
a lot of Westerners were and are, and particularly a
certain a certain type of adventurous soul. And uh, you know,
(03:53):
there's a certain ecumenicalism to the traditionalist school, like I indicated.
But also you've got to understand the context, particularly in
the first half of the twentieth century. This was well
before the Islamic Awakening in nineteen seventy nine, but Islam
seemed far more of a living faith and way of
(04:14):
life than you know, it is the case on the
ground in Christendom outside of places like Romania. And we'll
get into that, you know, so and that that's the
way to kind of understand Gione. And I mean he
lived among the Arabs and basically became one culturally, you know,
(04:36):
he went native, as it were. But beyond that, his
attraction to that theological system owes to what I just said.
I you know, the degree to which this kind of
scientific or scientism secular scientism was the dominant conceptual paradigm
(05:02):
that really can't be overstated.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
You know. It was just like a foregone conclusion. You know.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
That's why it was so interesting how the the the
final phase of the Cold War shook out, you know,
and just uh across cultural frontiers, you know. I the
martyrdom of Bobby Sands was tremendously important. And and the
(05:30):
Catholic revival, you know, that was so instrumental in the
resistance behind the Wall and poland you know that that
was an aspect of this zegeist shift, you know, and
a lot of this stuff is coming to like full
realization today.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
You know, there's a there's a theological subtext to.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Discourse right now, and and just the way you know,
an instant bob psychological phenomena and all kinds of other things,
and this is fascinating, and uh, you know, these these
these are very exciting times right now. That's one of
the reasons I disdain it when when when people like
like they live in a boring century or something. I mean,
there's always compelling things like like in any century you
(06:19):
live in, if you know, you if your conceptual horizon
is inadequately wide temporal sample.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
You know, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
But interestingly too, you know, Marcia Eliatti was at University
of Chicago and at the Amentsy of Chicago Library. Now
Evila's letters letters to Eliati are you can you can
exst them there. They're in the Mercia Eliotti papers, which
(06:51):
is great. Universities remain a really good resource like that.
Next time I'm in Portland, Oregon, I found found out
lately that uh, the Earthy of Portland that's for h
Keith Steinley, who was uh he he was instrumental in
(07:12):
thean due for Historical Review in like very early eighties,
and he uh h Keith Thompson became pretty close and
uh Keith Steinley he died young. He he died of
as interestingly, and apparently people didn't know that he was gay,
(07:35):
but apparently he was. I mean, it's I'm not speaking
on that one way or the other. But when he died, uh,
he was aggregating all these papers and taking testimony from
you know, a bunch of people because he intended to
write a biography of Francis Yacki and uh, Kevin Coogan,
(07:57):
I believe h. Key Thompson and passed on a lot
of the material at Steinley had aggregated to Kevin Coogan,
who wrote a Obviously the seminole biography of Yacky is.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
Is the one.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Uh yeah yeah thanks at a senior moment is the
Kerry Bolton treatment.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
But the.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Book by Kevin Coogan is a great book. And like
the footnotes and endnotes alone are like a treasure trove
of data.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
And it's and and and H. Thompson, else de Witt.
You know a lot of other people who were friends
of Francis Yacky as well as George solzter Virick, you know,
another guy's in that re LOEU. They I mean they
participated in it because they they came to trust Coogan.
So it's not people shouldn't be put off by the
(08:49):
fact that Coogan's uh, you know, uh, this kind of
neo Marxist type of guy. But be that as it may.
The critical thing to understand in terms of UH, in
(09:10):
terms of practice, how this fascist international let I insist
was extant as like an animating force and uh an
intellectual tendency, you know, and in the Inner War years,
and that really as I think I as I think
we discussed the other day, was a really catalyzing influence,
(09:34):
especially after the martyrdom of Ion Mota and thesile Ma.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
Mean, but.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
You know Evilah and his he can't he met Mercia
Eliotti for the first time when he traveled to uh
Romania and Uh Evil wanted to meet Kaduri. And in
his estimation as well as in the estimation at Carl Schmidt,
(10:06):
I don't think Younger directly commented on the situation, the
internal situation in.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Romania, but yeah, eve Love viewed it as a.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
He viewed it as a kind of pure expression of
traditionalists capital t traditionalist praxis, you know. And he viewed
it as a new kind of revolution, you know, and
something unique unto itself. And he traveled the Romania to
(10:40):
meet Kodrianu and that's when he first came across Eliati,
you know. And at that time Eliatti was was was
serving in the in the Iron Guard, and Kadrian who
was intellectual mentor and who he kind of considered to
be as spiritual forebear was email Siron Ciron. I'm probably
(11:03):
puncturing that pronunciation. Siron wrote a book called the transformation
of Romania in nineteen thirty six. It was basically a manifesto, uh,
you know, calling for palagenesis and uh ethnocultural terms you know,
(11:28):
and in national renewal, something that uh Evila commented on
how what he wanted to engage with Eliati and these
young these then young guys who were kind of filling
out the ranks of uh the Iron Guard. There's a
(11:56):
characteristic aspect of the Iron Guard movements, you know. And
they constructed their their primary organizational modality was what they
referred to as nests, you know. And this wasn't just
a way of you know, breaking down paramilitary organization for
(12:22):
political warfare and direct action. They represented a an emphasis
and on a common or communitarian formal life that was
primarily centered around ethical and religious sensibilities and criteria, you know,
and that was something there wasn't really a counterpart to
(12:46):
that in uh the German essay or the and the
fascist black Shirts.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
One of the things coche Rian who said Evila is
that quote prayer as a decisive element of victory.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
It was a kind of pure crusader spirit transposed to
the modern era.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Like and uh.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
The kind of the modern interpretation of jihad and militant Islam.
This is really kind of the Christian counterpart to that, okay,
and in a very real sense. And this is important
(13:47):
because until fairly recently there wasn't a lot of serious
scholarship other other than people like Ernston Noblety, who you know,
we're in our somebody soteric in their work product, you know,
(14:08):
like Noelty was a political philosopher, you know, he wasn't
an analytic historian. But there's not there was not for
many decades the serious scholarship of a fascist type movements,
you know, and what their characteristics were.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
And even.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Those people in mainstream Agadee who set out to be
reasonably objective, the kind of metrics they were applying and
their methodology we were wrong, you know. And the way
they interpreted these variables were wrong. And the context wasn't
(14:49):
something that they had a meaningful grasp of, you know.
And because so the Iron Guar weren't reactionaries that they
didn't want to just kind of turn the clock back to,
you know, inculcate people like Romanians and medieval sensibilities or something.
(15:14):
Their entire practice was to bring about something that hadn't
been seen before. And to be clear, Seron, he he
had certain progressive aspects to his worldview, Like you said that,
you know, the relative democratization of political life was something
(15:37):
that had to happen because otherwise ontological shock would have
just led to revolution and we'd be in the situation
the Soviet Union is, which is of course correct. Beyond that,
one of the things that ties Younger to a lot
of these movements that were you know, right word of
(16:02):
his own perspective and something that's set Younger apart from
his revolutionary conservative ideological counterparts in a lot of ways.
You know, the concept of the anarch is like a
man who's you know, this kind of self contained agents,
(16:27):
who's neither master nor slave, you know, and who can't
be categorized according to traditional sociological schema in terms of
how he fits into you know, a class paradigm and modernity.
You know, that's very much the kind of historical personality
(16:52):
that the Iron Guard and that Seeron was trying to cultivate.
And this is important. Okay, there is a new fascist
man and if I mean I'm being I'm in voting
kind of a colloquial phraseology. But revolutionary rightist movements had
(17:17):
as much of a concept of a new Man as
did their enemies, you know, uh in in the Marcist Leninists,
because that's what history called for.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
And also, you know, the entire.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Catalyst for this kind of revolutionary activity was ontological, you know,
historical situatedness and the factors that constitute that historical situatedness.
This is what you know, defines the culture in an
(18:00):
of an era. You can't just say like, I'm going
to consciously reject that and you know, ascribe to something
else that I find preferable. You know, that's a kind
of retreat into fantasy or you know, the relegation of
oneself irrelevancy by way of subcultural insolrity.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
You know. So this is important because.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Romania's kind of overlooked anyway, traditionally in analyses of the war,
which in military terms, you know, Romania was the German
reights most important ali and you know they they dedicated
(18:55):
the most forces.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
To the.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Crusade against the Soviets, and Antonescu and Hitler were actually
quite close. But beyond that, you know, Romania, I think
it's ill understood as a culture because it's it's the
direct descendant like literally of both Rome and Byzantium. I
(19:23):
think the Balkans are kind of ill understood anyway. During
the Cold War, Romania kind of staked out its own path,
which was which seemed very asiatic and kind of alien.
There's this kind of morbid fascination with the Cusescu regime,
and it's it's excesses and things in America and in Europe,
(19:47):
Western Europe. But the you know, the the internal situation
there was very dynamic and outsized, and its impact, you know,
so I think that that kind of insolarity caused people
(20:08):
to kind of ignore it as a historical quantity.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
But also.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
One of the the people remain prisoners of the kind
of Cold War conceptual paradigm and something that's neither a
merely reactionary protest against liberal modernity or something that's not,
(20:36):
you know, actively revolutionary in terms of its ambition to
socially engineered traditional modalities out of existence. If there's a
political tendency that's neither of those things, you know, mainstream
(20:56):
scholarship doesn't know how to deal with it. And furthermore, too,
like the big imperative of the traditionalist school. And one
of the reasons why the revolutionary sensibilities the Iron Guard
represents such a pure iteration of traditionalist practice is that
(21:18):
there's an integralism and a symbolic psychological aspect of this
that sets it apart from what we think of as
politics in the late modern sense. You know, people like
Quadrianuho and people like Iliati, they were talking about entire
(21:41):
kind of modes of life and ethics. They weren't talking
about politics. Is this kind of discrete mode of activity
that's separate from all other cultural activity, you know, or
something that's or something that's ay uh uh, that has
(22:05):
psychological aspects onto itself that don't touch in concern other
uh other uh you know, identitarian aspects of the human
being in you know, in in in any meaningful way.
(22:25):
That's the wrong way to look at it, because all
these things are viewed as one, you know, the only
legitimate politics as the politics that derives from Christian ethics,
and you know, orthodox Christian ethics in the case of
(22:45):
Romania and uh orthodoxy is rather congregational, you know, so
the the folk community or like you know, the Romanian
race and it's it's heritage it's it's it's shared memory,
(23:10):
you know, both epigenetic as well as you know, the
the symbolic psychological aspects that individuals share in common, and
the culture relating to ritual and right and religious practice
and things. You know, all these things are what makes
(23:30):
conreational life possible, which in turn allows people to you know,
partake of the grace of the Living God through the Christ.
You know, and this is the metric of all of
all activity as a Romanian patriot, but also like as
(23:56):
a man, as an Orthodox Christian and everything else. You know,
churches and something you do on Sundays so that you know,
you're you have something to do, or for the sake
of appearances, or because you're worried about you know, your
kids not getting an adequate moral education. It's a totally
(24:16):
different perspective than you know, people in kind of like
twentieth century late modern Anglophone cultures ahead of things. You know,
I'm speaking in terms of like the majoritary and sensibility.
Obviously there were exceptions within those cultures and countries. But
(24:39):
it's also you know, another aspect of the Iron Guard
that was kind of overlooked or de emphasized and Elie.
(25:00):
He wrote about this, and the political writing that he
did engage in after nineteen forty five is pretty sparse
for obvious reasons, but his correspondence with evill Uh he emphasizes, uh,
(25:23):
you know, the need for an intellectually rigorous vanguard. You know,
an Eliati was like an urbane intellectual and most of
these Iron Guard legionnaires they were they were university students
and some like working guys. But this was not This
(25:43):
wasn't some like peasant movement or something. It wasn't you know,
comparable to say like the you know, Father Tiso's party
and not being like punitive. And I'm not saying there's
something like wrong with that kind of Agreerian peasant you know,
patriotic sensibility, but it's a very different thing if you're
(26:07):
talking about basically like you know, Cadres and Christian Jahannes,
who you know, dedicate themselves to this kind of like
monastic this like warrior monastic sort of like intellectually driven existence.
It's it's very different, you know.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
And.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You know, and key to uh, I think understanding why
this was an important movement for all the reasons we've
been discussing.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
You know, it's when I.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Talk about the martyrdom of of Ion Motza and Viscio Marine.
This wasn't some expost facto sort of mythification. You know,
in the moments, all kinds of men went down in
theater who were fighting for the nationalist cause and who
(27:09):
had a very romantic sort of back story about what
brought them there. It was these pious orthodox Iron Guard legionnaires,
you know, who became the martyrs and you don't, I
mean the Congreens decided he was a murder and who's
not okay? And this funerary train of the two murtyers,
(27:36):
you know, everywhere they went, they were saluted, you know,
by Philangis, you know, by black shirts, by national socialists,
you know, by Carlos, you know, in Belgium and France
and in Italy, in Austria. You know, there was this
(27:58):
ecumenical kind of fascist reverence around the sacrifice and murdered
him of these two Romanians, you know, who again represented
in a pure sense, the kind of Christian jihad. I
(28:18):
mean that speaks for itself, you know. And Eliotti, throughout
his life, you know, the concept of sacred time and
(28:40):
how that situates people psychologically and historically and how that
functions as you know, an essential aspect of worship. This
is kind of one of the core concepts within his
political theology. But also like the catalyzing effect of sacrifice
(29:03):
and martyrdom, you know. And this was a huge, hugely
revered thing among the Iron Guard, you know, and they
were talking about this years before any of them deployed
the Spain. You know, they they were in touch with
the zeitgeist in instinctive ways. You know that the National Socialists,
(29:28):
save you know, people like Hitler himself, just weren't just
weren't apprehending. And in the case of people like Hitler,
you know, like like Lenin or Mussolini, you know, he
understood the like historical imperatives at play, and you know,
(29:52):
like in an absolutely instinctive way, and he was like,
you know, in some ways he had like a savant
or genius for these things. But uh, we're talking on
something very different, you know. I think that's clear, and
I don't a movement like the the Legionarian movement or
(30:13):
like the Iron Guard. I that wouldn't have jumped off
in Germany, it wouldn't have had a context. I can
see something. I can see maybe a pious Catholic movement
emerged against Austria that was like openly fascist and that
and whose practice was stronglyted oriented towards martyrdom. But I
(30:39):
but even now, I think it's somewhat dubious.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
So this uh, any serious scholar the era and again
of these you know, of of of the of the movement,
it should account for this man. And that's changing. But
like I said, even even among sympathetic scholars, I think
(31:08):
I think there's something. I think there's something basically lacking
in their understanding, not just to the concrete particulars, but
of the kind of conceptual whole, you know. And I
go as far as they two. I mean, Kadriano obviously
(31:34):
was in dialogue with the revolutionary proletarian movement, because I mean,
anybody so engaged in the political struggling in the interwar yors,
I mean that that's literally what all discourse was in
dialogue with. So I mean like that that itself situates
(31:56):
any partisan in a sort of modernist category, you know.
So it's kind of like neither hero or there. I mean,
Quadriano and el Yati, they weren't like reactionaries anyway, but
it it's kind of a meaningless criteria to was signed
(32:18):
as a characteristic, you know, when we're talking about people
who are engaged in like direct action against the communists
you know, in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
That you know, and the u.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yaki some of the language that he lifts or like
some of the concepts that he fleshes out, particularly in Imperium,
like the first few chapters of the book, where he's
kind of talk on like, you know, the new fascist man.
(33:04):
He's talking about how the new Europe is going to
require a new consensus, specifically one of living dangerously and sacrificially.
And that's one hundred percent you know, the kind of
(33:31):
philosophical disposition of the Iron Guard. It's not a conventionally
political concept, you know, and it's not a kind of
superficial extremism. And it's also not a conventionally even among
the more sanguinary and like war oriented modalities of Christianity.
It's not really a Christian sensibility either, at least in
(33:55):
the sense that is under discussion, you know, And that's
very much a modernist understanding, you know, of what constitutes
you know, redemptive factors in worldly conduct, you know it
(34:20):
h And Carl Schmidt too, you know, he even in
Know most of the Earth where which is uh? I mean,
that's his magnum opus. But it's also probably his most
kind of meanstream scholarly work. But he's dealing with a
(34:46):
lot of conceptually theological things, okay. You know, and in
the nineteen fifties and sixties, obviously nobody on the right,
you know, even people who were pretty far right, unless
they were openly dissenting elements or like underground national socialists
(35:11):
or something, you know, they weren't. They weren't openly trying
to drop parallels with themselves and the Fascist International. But
there's concepts that just axiomatically endured within you know, right
wing thought in the in the European sense, you know,
(35:36):
and the concept of sacrifice if not murderedom and the
understanding of sacred ground, and what makes land appropriation legitimate
is the sacramental skilling of blood. You know that that's
(36:01):
uh a Schmidtian concept that it was very much to.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
This kind of political theology.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
You know, So this stuff had It's not like this
stuff was totally dormant or these concepts were totally dormant
until you know, a couple of decades after the Cold War,
and now like you know, the kind of subcultural tendencies
that we represent, like rediscovered this stuff. It was like
insinuated all throughout everything subsequent to it, you know, So
(36:33):
this can't be dismissed as some strange artifact of a
of bontological shock, you know, and and kind of that
tragedy of the commons amidst uh, you know, the European
Civil War and and and all these horrible events that
you know led to.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
You know, led to.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Communism and resistance to it and things. You know, there's
an independent significance here, and there's an enduring significance that
is uh, yeah, is must be accounted for in its
own right, you know, in the younger and even uh,
(37:29):
even in all quite in the Western front. I'm not
a fan of Eric Maria Rimmarkey. I think he's I
think he was a very I think it was a
very egoistic person who dressed up his personal grievances as
a sum in his own moral powerties, as a as
(37:52):
some sort of principal stand against you know, the the
heartless Prussian established or whatever, but the concept of the
First World War constituting a mass sacrifice and thus moving
(38:13):
forward having expiated the sins of the German nation and race,
you know, and thus the punitive sanctions they were availed
to deliberately in terms of the political structure of Versailles.
(38:36):
That that is a subtext to.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
You know, all Vymart discourse.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
You know, even the KPD kind of acknowledged that in
their own strange and toleric way, you know. And also
this understanding of the sacrificial, the sacrificial victim status actual
(39:12):
or potential of the entirety of the nation or as
the kind of international sensibility set in and all trappings
of nationalism fell by the wayside after the Great War,
you know, speaking not in terms of the nation, but
(39:33):
you know, the the race written large, or you know,
the West or European civilization. This understanding of every man,
woman and child therein potentially being availed a sacrificial status.
That also made certain things possible that wouldn't have been before,
(40:01):
you know, in terms of uh, in terms of ethics
and what's becomes what was previously unthinkable, because not just
something that can be entertained in the abstract but can
be implemented for the sake of civilizational survival. You know,
(40:24):
obviously there's like the immediate threat of you know, being
subject to extermination, and that was no the's on point.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
But if people want to know.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
How the uh inner struggle relating to the ethics of
resisting such things by comparable and direct countermeasures became resolved,
I would say that that's how, and that end of
(41:03):
itself as a sacrificial implication. But Kodrianu made the point
that a legion there may condemn himself to hell for
his commitment and for his actions in the service of
(41:24):
that commitment, but that's the ultimate offer of sacrifice. Because
you know, obviously the pious man, the holy warrior, the
man and the path of jihad, he always hopes that
God will let him come back and return to grace.
(41:48):
But if the survival of his people, and if his
commitment to his comrades and even his commitment to God
call for him to do monstrous things that will damn
his soul for eternity, there is no sacrifice greater and
(42:12):
no conceivable murderdom more severe, you know, than to literally
willfully bear witness to one his own damnation. So that's
part of this ontology too, and I'm not just speculating here.
(42:38):
It's uh intrinsic to a lot of the rip. It's
intrinsic to a lot of the reflections I believe of
people like Gearing, especially at Nermer, although he didn't characterize
it that way because Gear was many things, and I
(43:01):
think he was a real hero like we talked about.
But Gary was not a pious man, and I don't
think you spent a lot of time contemplating these kinds
of things. But it was intrinsic to the zeitgeist Eliotti two,
and this is something Eliotti is probably it's probably probably is.
(43:27):
The most famous books were Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy,
which is a great book, and The Sacred and the Profane.
He wrote another book called the Myth of Eternal Return
or eternal recurrence. That problematics because people associate eternal recurrence
(43:54):
with the Nietzschean postulate, which, incidentally, and we'll get to
this later in our series, eternal return in the incense
there's the equivalent of const categorical imperative. It's a fascinating concept.
It redefines ethics and moral action, and in terms of
(44:15):
esthetical principles, it's just fascinating. But Eliot's meaning of that phrase.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Was that.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Ritual and spiritual practice in uh in the form of rights.
You know, it's uh, it's it's temporarily situated outside of
ordinary human time, and UH it connects the past and
(44:56):
the present and the future in a way that no
other human activity does. And that's part of its purpose,
you know. And obviously there's a the symbolic psychological aspects
that presumably trigger epigenetic memory and things. There's a aspects
(45:20):
of the shared cultural mindset that respond two aspects of
you know, uh, ritualized worship that are familiar even though
(45:41):
you know, people have never been taught these things, as
you know, and in the way that one is au availed,
you know, simple steps in a process that they then emulate,
you know. But Eliotti's main one of his main contributions
(46:09):
was his methodology and the way that he approached discussion
of ah, you know, religious phenomenon, you know, in terms
of worship and UH and and existential aspects of it.
(46:29):
You know, he said that you've got to approach something
if you take if you're looking at whether you're talking
about like a primitive tribe in Africa or whether you're
talking about some highly developed society like Japan, and you know, like, uh,
the shamanism that they practice, like with a Shinto priest.
(46:54):
You know, there's not like variables you can code to
try and flesh out this agnifican into this the human
psychology or the cultural learning. It requires a kind of
instinctive ability to perceive the meaning of these things and
(47:16):
symbolic psychological capacities. You know, it requires a certain empathy
that you know, allows one to see subjects through the
eyes of the other and such that these things can
be modeled in a more conventional analytics format. The variables
(47:40):
we're talking about in something like shamanism or sacramental practice,
you've got to identify the aspects in common that allow
for a proper categorical description. Now, what are the aspects
(48:00):
of shamanism? There are things, uh like actual projection, real
or perceived. I mean some people believe, not gonna think,
some people don't. But the inner experience of it, of
that sort of ecstatic response, A lot of people attribute
(48:21):
it to, you know, a sort of spiritual soaring or elevation.
You know, things uh that relate to people's pre rational
(48:44):
emotional responses to uh sacramental symbols across cultures. You know,
like you can't you can't code these things in a
way that reveals the essential meaning of them to the
human being. You know, it's something that can only be
(49:07):
experienced and kind of anecdotally relayed. So Eliotti relied a
lot on direct testimony on subjective interpretation and in common
psychological features of a symbolic nature that could be observed,
(49:33):
you know. And obviously Mainsham make a deem claimed that
well this is all conjecture and like reaction to romanticism
or you know, fascist apologia.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
But Eliotti was right.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Wolfgang Smith his methodology was a bit different and the
subject may or that he emphasized was a bit different,
but he similarly eschewed uh conventional modeling when dealing with.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
This kind of uh.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Experience like like religious phenomena as experience. Okay, this is
what wolfgangs Smith called traditional data. You know, it is data,
make a mistake, but it can't be analyzed and interpreted
or properly situated within a wider analytical paradigm. According to
(50:47):
conventional and quantitative research methods, you know, and it's it
goes yeah, it's not just you know, I know it
when I see it. It goes is beyond that there's
a real there's there's a real method here, although not
(51:09):
again in the sense we think of it in something
like economics or you know, other types of social research,
you know. And the concept of course too, of the
return to sacred time. This is one of the things
(51:32):
that grounds people in their own culture because it means that,
you know, there are aspects of the human psychology and
the human inner life. You know, if you're a religious
man or woman, you know, you interpret that as spiritual
(51:53):
life that are not historically contingent, you know. And that's
one of the functions in terms of revolutionary praxis that
prayer and ritual serve is that it literally takes us
out of you know, historical time and situates us in
sacred time, you know. And that's the key element of
(52:19):
void is sacred and what is profane? And that dichotomy
is it just isn't just an essential aspect of Mercia
Eliotti's thought, it was an essential aspect of email crans
a paradigm. It was an essential aspect of Coadrian, who's
(52:39):
understanding of the existential aspects of you know, the path
of the legionaire, you know. And also while removing us
or the subject popular or congregation or cature from historical time,
(53:05):
at the same time, it does allow us to relate
to historical and primordial psychological settings, you know. So in
these renewal ceremonies, they're they're on the one hand, they're timeless,
(53:29):
but on the other hand, you know, they bring a
historical phenomenon into not just living memory, but living experience,
you know, and a participation of the individual and and
(53:49):
self contained capacity as well as a member of the
congregation and you know, the nation and the race. It
initiates him into a kind of mythical framework, you know,
such that these things aren't merely trivial abstractions or inaccessible,
(54:16):
you know, arecane behavioral observances of the distant past. And
that's essential as part of a cultural education as well
as communitarian bonding. Because one of the things about Sacramento
(54:41):
practices it's very intimate. It's not a kind of thing
you share with strangers, you know. The deliberate diminishing and
in some cases purging of these things from cultural and
national life. This is one of the reasons, and this
is changing, Thank god, that people are overly focused on
(55:07):
sex in these posts.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
Number of socially engineered.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
Cultures, because that's one of the only avenues of intimacy,
like people still, that's just available, whether people can even conceptualize,
and that's very worked, doesn't gonna be wrong. And people
who think it through or who you know, have a
their modesty and their kind of internal moral core intact,
don't go that route. But a lot of men and
(55:36):
women are weak and there's nobody there to properly guide
them as to why that's that's perverse. I'm not like
acquitting them from responsibility, but a lot of people are
easily misled. Okay, that's a fact, but yeah, I don't
(55:57):
want to die. But in the next part of the
subject matter yet, I was going to kind of try
and tie this into the broader topical essence of the series,
but we'll do that next time, and and long the last,
we return to the to the main topical thrust, which
is kind of a philosophy. I hope people found this worthwhile.
I think it was important to kind of artigulate that
(56:20):
the significance of the tradition was school of thought to
you know, the revolutionary right and all of that.
Speaker 1 (56:31):
You know, I wanted to add this just because our
mutual friend Carl Doll and I were recording on the
uh the Iron Guard yesterday.
Speaker 3 (56:43):
Yeah, that's awesome. Both you guys told me that that's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
Here's here's Vasilli Marine's quote that we ended it on,
has said, soaked in dynamism, our movement is revolutionary. The
Legion promotes the creative spirit in all the fields of
public life and sincerely rejects conservatism. The Legion organizes the
(57:07):
conquest of the future with the help of all the
productive categories of the nation. And it does not represent
a reaction towards the past.
Speaker 3 (57:15):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (57:16):
And I think a lot of people will will hear that,
and they will forget that they're Orthodox Christians and that
nothing that is said there negates that.
Speaker 3 (57:29):
No, it defines, it defines it. No.
Speaker 2 (57:34):
And this was you know, I know, Carl's a he's
a great guy, like he's our he's our friend and comrade.
But he's also a brilliant dude. And the it's not
just uh like intellectual curiosity that that brings thoughtful people
to a study of the Iron Guard. It's it's got
a hugely outsized significance in terms of a revolutionary practis
(58:01):
you know, and and the and the essence of uh,
you know, it was not only was it not reactionary,
it was like very forward looking. That kind of thing
is incredibly I mean, one of the things that doomed
the Legionary movement was that it was like too early.
I think, you know it, Uh, it's very much suited
(58:22):
to the world of like nineteen eighty nine and beyond,
like obviously you know, it's our present. Yeah, no, that's
that's great. And no, I'm glad that you and Carl
were covering that subject matter because that this will be
kind of a complement piece to that stuff too.
Speaker 3 (58:43):
Well.
Speaker 1 (58:44):
I think this this went a lot more into the
philosophy behind it and why.
Speaker 3 (58:50):
Yeah, good deal. No, I'm glad. I'm glad I'm being
useful and not just redundant.
Speaker 1 (58:54):
But yeah, all right, Thomas, tell everybody where they can
find you.
Speaker 2 (59:00):
Yeah, man, you can find me on my website. It's
Thomas seven seven seven dot com. It's number seven h s.
Speaker 3 (59:10):
I.
Speaker 2 (59:11):
I'm on social media at the time being, like we'll
see if I'm SORR at some point they're gonna like
ban this account too, even though I I never violate
t OS. But it's at Thomas Sear that's my government
name t H O M A S c y R
(59:31):
seven seven seven and my substack roll out of the
Magic Happens, you know, like my podcast, like some video content,
long form stuff like announcements relevant to like our cadre,
you know, and and when and where we're meeting up
and stuff that's at real Thomas seven seven seven dot
(59:53):
substack dot com. And forget like my voice and stuff
like I'm feeling a lot better and that was like
some weeks back, but I I'm still dealing with like
respiratory stuff, you know.
Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
All right, no problem, Thank you to ill ten in
a couple of days. Take care
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!