2/29/2012
[...]
When bland patriotism turned into radical nationalistic forms, the regressive character of such tendencies and the contribution from the emergence of the mass-man in the modern world became clearly evident. For the essence of nationalistic ideology is to hold homeland and nation as supreme values, conceiving them as mystical entities almost with a life of their own and having an absolute claim on the individual; whereas, in reality, they are only dissociated and formless realities, by way of their negation of any true hierarchical principle, and of any symbol or warrant of a transcendent authority. In general, the foundation of political unities that have taken form in this direction is antithetical to the traditional state. In fact, as I have said, the cement of the latter was a loyalty and fidelity that could dispense with the naturalistic fact of nationality; it was a principle of order and sovereignty that, by not being based on this fact, could even be valid in areas including more than one nationality. It was the dignities, particular rights, and castes that united or divided individuals "vertically," beyond the "horizontal" common denominator of "nation" and "homeland." In a word, it was unification from above, not from below.
Once all this is recognized, we can see in a different light the present crisis, both objective and ideal, of the concepts and sentiments of homeland and nation. Again, one might speak of destructions that attack something already having a negative and regressive character, so that they could even signify a potential liberation, if the direction of the whole process were not toward something still more problematic. Therefore, even if only a void remained, it would be no reason for the differentiated man to deplore that crisis and concern himself with the reactions in the "realm of residues." The void could be filled, the negative could give rise to the positive, only if the ancient principles returned to replace the dissolving naturalistic unities with those of a different type; if it were no longer homelands and nations that united or divided, but rather ideas; if the decisive thing were not sentimental and irrational adhesion to a collectivizing myth, but a system of loyal, free, and strongly personalized connections - something that would naturally require as a fundamental point of reference leaders invested with a supreme and intangible authority. Along this line they could even be formed by transnational groupings such as were known in various imperial epochs and, partially, in the Holy Alliance. Today, the degraded counterfeit of all that is taking form alongside the crisis of national sovereignties: power blocs determined solely by factors that are material, economic, and "political" in the worst sense, devoid of every ideal. Hence the insignificance of the antithesis between the two principal blocs of this type existing today, between the democratic West and the communist and Marxist East. For lack of a third force of a different character, and a true ideal to unite and divide beyond homelands, nations, and anti-nations, the only prospect is that of an invisible unity, in a world without frontiers, of those few individuals who are associated by their very nature, which is different from that of the man of today, and by the same inner law - in short, almost in the same terms as Plato used, speaking of the true state, which idea was then taken up by the Stoics. A similar, dematerialized type of unity and state was at the basis of the Orders, and its last reflection, deformed to the point of being unrecognizable, can be seen in secret societies like Freemasonry. If new processes are to develop when the present cycle exhausts itself, perhaps they could have their point of departure in this very kind of unity. Then we could see in action the positive side of overcoming the idea of homeland, whether as myth of the romantic bourgeois period or as a naturalistic fact almost irrelevant to a unity of a different type. Being from the same country or homeland would be replaced by being, or not being, for the same cause. Apoliteia, the detachment of today, contains this eventual possibility for tomorrow. In this case too it is necessary to see the distance existing between the attitude indicated here and certain recent products of modern political erosion: a formless and humanitarian cosmopolitanism, a paranoid pacifism, and the whims of those who want to feel themselves only as "citizens of the world," eventually becoming the "conscientious objectors."
Julius Evola
From “Ride the Tiger”
Posted in: english,Evola,politeia,traditio
