The Soviet Who Saved the World (w/ The Eastern Border)

“When a cycle of civilization is reaching its end, it is difficult to achieve anything by resisting it and by directly opposing the forces in motion. The current is too strong; one would be overwhelmed. The essential thing is to not let oneself be impressed by the omnipotence and apparent triumph of the forces of the epoch. These forces, devoid of connection with any higher principle, are in fact, on a short chain. One should not become fixated on the present, and on things at hand, but keep in view the conditions that may come about in the future. Thus the principle to follow could be that of letting the forces and processes of this epoch take their own course, while keeping oneself firm and ready to intervene when ‘the tiger, which cannot leap of the person riding it, is tired of running.’”
—Julius Evola
“We are only against people who are harmful. And we don’t hate them. There’s no need of hating them. We don’t hate bugs. We fight them. We don’t hate lice. We fight them. They’re harmful. They bite us... they infect us with disease. Mosquitoes: the same thing... You have to do something to make them go away, at least to get rid of them. It’s the same thing with races that do harm to ours. We defend ourselves, and that’s all... But in this Yuga, this Dark Age nearing its end, you get more and more power in the hands of those people. That’s natural. And there will be a racial struggle somewhere. I can see it coming. I can see it coming in the USA. I wouldn’t be at all astonished if one day, not tomorrow, perhaps not in fifty years, but perhaps later on, the USA had a National Socialist government, made of Americans, after a terrific fight with the other races... I think America will precede Europe in that way, not for any other reason but because in America the pressure of the dark races is much more powerful.”
—Savitri Devi
“What we are against will unite us, while what we are for divides us. Therefore, we should emphasize what we oppose. The common enemy unites us, while the positive values each of us are defending actually divides us. Therefore, we must create strategic alliances to overthrow the present order of things, of which the core could be described as human rights, anti-hierarchy, and political correctness – everything that is the face of the Beast, the anti-Christ or, in other terms, Kali-Yuga.”
—Aleksandr Dugin
These quotes are key to understanding a very particular strain of thought that has been discussed a few times on History Impossible; first, on the episode we did on Savitri Devi, “The Hitler Avatar and His Masochistic Priestess”, and then again on the first episodes we did with Kristaps Andrejsons of the Eastern Border podcast, where we discussed Aleksandr Dugin, Putin’s so-called “brain.” This strain of thought is Traditionalism, a perennial philosophical school, often attributed to a number of European thinkers of the 19th century. Very few people can be called experts in this field, though I’ve been lucky enough to get to know one of them: Benjamin Teitelbaum, the author of the book War for Eternity: The Return of Traditionalism and the Rise of the Populist Right from 2020, as well as contributor to many different august publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic (he’s also a professor of ethnographic and international studies!).
As many listeners know, War for Eternity has come up a lot on History Impossible, so it seemed fitting to sit down with Ben and discuss the central aspects of his work, which included conversations with Aleksandr Dugin and the late Brazilian populist and Bolsonaroist firebrand Olavho de Carvalho, and, of course, the many hours spent speaking with the most famous American populist, Steve Bannon.
The key to understanding a philosophy as dark and twisted as Traditionalism—one might be tempted to call it unwittingly nihilistic—is to take it seriously, which Ben absolutely does. It’s a thick subject, and being pressed for time, we were not able to cover everything, so this is likely the first of hopefully more than one conversation. In this one, we went through the basics of Traditionalism, its odd connection to religious thinking, Savitri Devi, the Tucker Carlson-Aleksandr Dugin interview, and just what the hell is going on with Steve Bannon these day...