"PHILOSOPHICALLY SPEAKING...":

Philosophy doesn't often make headlines, but The New York Times recently ran an article about Italian philosopher Julius Evola. Why? Because Evola was referenced by Trump advisor Stephen Bannon in a 2014 speech. Influenced by Nietzsche and part of the post-WWI Dada movement, Evola believed, among other things, that the Enlightenment ideals of equality, individualism, and social progress were part of a "newly emerged disorder" and that "a general antidemocratic cleansing" is necessary.  (I pulled these quotes from Evola's Men Among the Ruins. Evola strikes me as not unlike Nietzsche but nuttier and less pithy and readable.) Evola was embraced by Mussolini but broke with Italy's Fascists because he considered them too half-hearted; he preferred the Nazis. His writings were later embraced by Italian neo-fascist groups in the 1960s and '70s and far-right movements in the U.S. and Europe. To read the NYT article, see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/world/europe/bannon-vatican-julius-evola-fascism.html