Monday, April 27, 2020

Beware the Traditionalist School, the Esoteric Sect that Uses Anti-Marxism to Promote Religious Syncretism and the Personality Cult of Its Leaders


Beware the Traditionalist School, the Esoteric Sect that Uses Anti-Marxism to Promote Religious Syncretism and the Personality Cult of Its Leaders

By Julio Severo
When Christians hear of Traditionalists they think in terms of Christians guarding their traditions, or cultural customs of guarding traditions. Very few people know that there is a spiritualist or esoteric sect devoted to political ambitions also engaged in traditionalism. This sect is called the Traditionalist School.
Members of the Traditionalist School, including Steve Bannon and Olavo de Carvalho, in New York in 2019
A group of traditionalists met in New York in 2019 and a Jewish scholar sought to understand the influence of this sect.
Benjamin Teitelbaum, the Jewish scholar, posed a question to these traditionalists, including Steve Bannon and Olavo de Carvalho, a self-exiled Brazilian immigrant in the U.S.

According to the University of Colorado Boulder,
“Are you a Traditionalist?” he asked, referring to a little-known spiritual sect rooted in notions that time is cyclical, the “dark age” is upon us, and Aryan males inhabit the top of an ancient cosmic hierarchy.
That simple question kick-started a year-long odyssey in which Teitelbaum, an ethnomusicologist-turned-alt-right scholar, recorded more than 20 hours of taped interviews with Bannon and traveled the globe getting to know his Traditionalist contemporaries.
The resulting new book, War For Eternity: Inside Bannon’s Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers, out this week, sheds light on a bizarre ultraconservative ideology shared by advisors to populist leaders in Brazil, Russia and Hungary—and the surprising political power they may be wielding.
Teitelbaum’s interest in the Traditionalist School began after he read press reports in 2016 suggesting that Bannon, then chief strategist to President Donald Trump, was reading the works of Traditionalist writer Julius Evola. Since then, Trump expelled Bannon from the White House for opportunism and for leaking confidential information to the press.
According to the University of Colorado Boulder,
Teitelbaum defines Traditionalism as “a bizarre underground and philosophical school with an eclectic if miniscule following.” It hinges on philosophical truths that borrow from many faiths, from Hinduism and Zoroastrianism to the pre-Christian pagan religions of Europe.
Teitelbaum said that different schools of Traditionalists share different beliefs, but many agree on one key themes: “modernism” — especially Marxism — must go in order for the spiritual advance of humanity to occur. This spiritual advance is a mixture involving many faiths, especially Catholicism and Islam.
According to the University of Colorado Boulder,
Through exclusive interviews in esoteric salons and secret meetings with far-right thinkers from rural Virginia [where Olavo de Carvalho lives] to Budapest, Teitelbaum makes the case that this obscure worldview is having a notable impact on global politics today.
He notes that Aleksandr Dugin, who is heavily influenced by Traditionalist works, has had the ear of the Kremlin and Olavo de Carvalho, another Traditionalist thinker, serves as an advisor to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
Even though it is undeniable that Dugin and Carvalho have the same esoteric roots and both are members of the Traditionalist School, I do not know if Teitelbaum’s assessment of Dugin having in the Russian government the same influence Carvalho has in the Brazilian government is correct.
Carvalho, who is Bolsonaro’s special adviser, keeps him and his sons under his esoteric spell.
Even though Dugin is the Russian Carvalho, there is no sign that he keeps the Russian government under the same spell. At least, I can speak of my experience. In 2014, I attended at the Kremlin the greatest conservative conference in Russia. I was with American Jews, Catholics and Protestants, especially from the World Congress of Families. Dugin was not a speaker and he did not even attend the event. No Russian speaker mentioned his name.
There is no news that Dugin has ever received the highest award from the Russian government. Surely, the ideas and movement of Dugin, inspired in the Islamic occultist René Guénon, are a political and spiritual threat, but he was not able so far to achieve the massive influence Carvalho did in the Bolsonaro administration.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin treats Dugin the same way Bolsonaro has treated Carvalho, sooner or later he will see Russia sunk in the same confusions Brazil is facing.
If Dugin had the same spell Carvalho has in Brazil, the greatest conservative conference in Russia, attended by me, would have had the same cult of Dugin’s personality that happened at the CAPC, the greatest conservative conference in Brazil, which Eduardo Bolsonaro used to promote the cult of Carvalho’s personality. In fact, Bolsonaro funded such private event with over $1,200,000 in Brazilian currency directly from the pockets of the Brazilian taxpayers, and such move should have been condemned as unethical because real conservatives do not sacrifice taxpayers to fund their private events. Only socialists do such tax exploitation.
My take is that Russia, the largest Orthodox Christian nation in the world, will fall prey to Dugin or other member of the Traditionalist School, because Orthodox Christians are not much different from Catholics. Brazil, the largest Catholic nation in the world, has already fallen prey to the Traditionalist School through Carvalho.
The U.S., which still maintains a majority of evangelicals in its Christian population, has successfully escaped the traps of the Traditionalist School and its anti-Marxist appeal. Trump expelled Bannon from the White House and surrounded himself with evangelicals.
If Bolsonaro, in the same way, expels his Traditionalist advisers, especially Carvalho, and surrounds himself with evangelicals, there will be hope for Brazil. Putin and Orthodox Christians are not spiritually prepared to avoid in Russia the same bad experience from the Traditionalist School that Catholic Brazil has embraced and that Protestant America has rejected.
The tragedy in Brazil is that Bolsonaro was elected especially by evangelicals, but after election, he chose to fill his administration with Traditionalists connected to Carvalho. That is, evangelicals were politically exploited by Bolsonaro, who now uses the Brazilian government to promote Traditionalism and its adherents. They did not have enough power to elect themselves. So they exploited evangelicals with a conservative speech, but now they promote a larger agenda involving issues not familiar to many people.
According to the University of Colorado Boulder,
“Some of these actors [Bannon, Dugin, Carvalho] who are trying to shape the future of our society are thinking in terms that are so foreign to most educated, thoughtful and engaged people,” he said. “It is time we start paying attention.”
Teitelbaum is right. Most people, even “most educated, thoughtful and engaged people,” are unable to understand the strange and mysterious esoteric sect of the Traditionalist School. American leaders of CAPC who attended the tax-funded Brazilian CAPC were unable to understand that they were used to promote a member of the Traditionalist School and that virtually all the Brazilian speakers at the CAPC Brazil were not representative of the Brazilian conservative movement. They were directly connected to Carvalho. So Traditionalism has in Brazil, as in no other nation, a upper hand, even against real conservatives.
No nation has been so duped and victimized by Traditionalists as Brazil has been — perhaps only Italy under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, whose adviser and guru was right-wing philosopher Julius Evola, the most prominent disciple of Guénon and the most prominent member of the Traditionalist School. Evola wrote several books against Marxism.
Bannon, Dugin and Carvalho were heavily influenced by Guénon and his esoteric ideas.
Even though Carvalho brags that he had been forming an army of anti-Marxist intellectuals since the 1980s, through investigation Teitelbaum found that Carvalho was involved in an occult Islamic tariqa in the U.S. in the 1980s. This tariqa was involved in sexual scandals. Teitelbaum only did not investigate how Carvalho cheated the U.S. immigration to get a visa as a correspondent from a small Brazilian newspaper that could not afford an international correspondent.
I agree with Teitelbaum: It is time we start paying attention to the spiritualist sect of the Traditionalist School and its members who lure and hijack conservative movements and influence presidents — from Mussolini to Bolsonaro.
With information from the University of Colorado Boulder.
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