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.
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| Members of the Traditionalist School, including Steve Bannon and Olavo de Carvalho, in New York in 2019 |
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.
Traditionalists are narcissist and
megalomaniac and use any event to promote the cult of their personality. In
2019,
CPAC held in Brazil its first event and Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of Brazilian
President Jair Bolsonaro, used the event to promote the cult of Carvalho’s
personality. Before this event, the
Brazilian president granted Carvalho the highest award of the Brazilian
government.
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.
Portuguese version of this article: Cuidado
com a Escola Tradicionalista, a seita esotérica que usa o antimarxismo para
promover o sincretismo religioso e o culto à personalidade de seus líderes
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