Ann Coulter: “In Trump We Trust”

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The beautiful and tack-sharp Ann Coulter continues to rise in my estimation. Here, the long-legged conservative goddess discusses her latest book “In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome”.

D, LDN

Notes on ‘Ride the Tiger’ (by Julius Evola).

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I’ve been reading philosophy since I was 15 years old. Since my teenage years, my favourite writer has been Friedrich Nietzsche, the predominant poet of the German language and (in my view) the greatest thinker of the last 500 years. But for the last decade or so, I’ve tended to neglect philosophy in favour of history and politics. My degree is in Politics and Economics. I am a political blogger and we all live in a uniquely politicised era.

Julius Evola’s ‘Ride the Tiger’ is the first work of philosophy to distract my attention in many years. You may remember that this blog is named as a refutation of Evola – whose work ‘Revolt against the Modern World’ advocated a rebellion against industrial development.

That book, commonly regarded as his masterpiece, is garbage. ‘Ride the Tiger’ on the other hand, continues to fascinate me. At its heart, this book (described by some reviewers as a self-help book for fascists) ponders the right way for a person of intellectual and spiritual depth to survive an age of stupidity, dissolution and over-democratisation.

To try and allow the reader to learn this ‘correct’ way, Evola takes issue confronts Nietzsche directly by reforming the philosopher’s classical dichotomy of ‘Dionysian’ against ‘Apollonian’.

In case you are unfamiliar with that dichotomy, I’ll try to briefly explain it here.

For Nietzsche, to be ‘Dionysian’ is to live in slack obedience to reaction and emotion; that is, to follow the impulses of pure physiology and worldliness; to live, as it were, without rationalisation (Dionysus, incidentally, was the Greek God of intoxication and wine). Nietzsche often suggests more explicitly in his later work that the reader choose ‘life’ over ‘thought’ and his noted thought experiment imagining an ‘Eternal Recurrence of the same” is designed to provoke this way of thinking in the reader. ISIS and al-Qaeda for example, pursue a life of unrestrained impulse and barbarity. In this way, they are far closer to the Nietzschean ideal than many of his Western readers would care to admit.

The Apollonian spirit, by contrast, is an attitude to life and art that rationalises and ‘stands back’ from existence; one that refuses to follow impulse and places greater value on the mind and the realm of intellect. This is undoubtedly closer to the spirit of the modern age than the former concept, given that we are encouraged to sublimate our instincts into the pursuit of rational goals (wealth creation, civility, security etc…).

In Ride the Tiger, Evola suggests a fusion of both concepts – the construction of what he called Dionysian Apollonism. As this name would suggest, Evola advises us to take inspiration from both philosophies. We should live in a way that honours our nature and innate drives, but in a way that allows us to navigate our way through modern society.

Evola rejects the barbaric as infeasible and self-destructive. He suggests instead the pursuit of primeval goals in a disguise of civility. This is what ‘Ride the Tiger’ is chiefly concerned with.

The title of the book is derived from a Hindu parable. There are many variations on it, but the basic gist is as follows: Imagine a tiger is charging at you at great speed… Your first impulse might be to fight or ‘take on’ the beast. But if you do this, you will surely lose, since the beast is more powerful than you are. However, if you manage to leap on the back of the tiger and ride it, you may be able to harness its energy and strength for your own ends.

For Evola, the tiger is modern industrial society, something he hated with a terrible passion but which he conceded was too strong to oppose. Rather than commit suicide by attempting a futile revolution against it, we should instead try to play by its rules, integrate into its system, but all the while stay faithful to higher and more transcendent concepts.

I understand and concede that Evola’s philosophy is esoteric and strange and also that the Italian was a confused anti-Semite and political fascist. But this short, strange and beguiling work has the potential to haunt the thinking of the reader long after he/she has closed it.

D, LDN.

Book Review: Mein Kampf.

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Following someone else’s lead, I decided to spend this week reading my (barely touched) copy of Adolf Hitler’s bestselling autobiography ‘Mein Kampf’.

Firstly, I can tell you that reading this book in Starbucks attracts a lot of unwanted attention. Secondly, I don’t think I’ve ever read a more poorly written book in my life.

I expected nothing else, of course, and in the introduction (I was reading the Picarus edition), the translator even forewarns the reader that the book is quite laborious and difficult to finish. Hitler’s sentences ‘lack rhythm and poetry’. He stresses the wrong words, leads with the wrong phrases and finishes without conclusions.

The attempts at scientific comment in particular, amount to ranting ignorance.

Here is a representative paragraph:

“Whenever Aryans have mingled their blood with that of an inferior race the result has been the downfall of the people who were the standard-bearers of a higher culture. In North America, where the population is prevalently Teutonic, and where those elements intermingled with the inferior race only to a very small degree, we have a quality of mankind and a civilization which are different from those of Central and South America. In these latter countries the immigrants – who mainly belonged to the Latin races – mated with the aborigines, sometimes to a very large extent indeed. In this case we have a clear and decisive example of the effect produced by the mixture of races. But in North America the Teutonic element, which has kept its racial stock pure and did not mix it with any other racial stock, has come to dominate the American Continent and will remain master of it as long as that element does not fall a victim to the habit of adulterating its blood.”

This kind of rambling pub philosophy takes up a good third of the book. The other two thirds are tedious (and often phoney) recollections of childhood and youth.

Still, as with any book of this length, there are occasional flashes of truth, and occasionally, insight. One such moment of clarity is when the Austrian talks about the transient convictions of the general public. About halfway through, the budding despot complains that after a rally in which the audience seemingly accepted his arguments, it would take only a few days for that same crowd to applaud an opposing thesis.

This is (sadly) all too accurate and the process can be observed in any democratic society. Just watch an episode of Question Time to see how fickle the modern crowd can be.

As regards this volume in general, it’s an agonising shame that Europe was once in such a low mood that it accepted this drivel as profound.

D, LDN.