Julius Evola

Giulio Cesare Andrea Evola (Italian: [ˈɛːvola]; 19 May 1898 – 11 June 1974), better known as Julius Evola, was an Italian far-right philosopher and writer. Evola regarded his values as traditionalist, aristocratic, martial and imperialist. An esoteric thinker in Fascist Italy, he also had ties to Nazi Germany. In the post-war era, he was an ideological mentor of the Italian neo-fascist and militant right.

Evola was born in Rome and served as an artillery officer in the First World War. He became an artist within the Dada movement, but gave up painting in his twenties; he said he considered suicide until he had a revelation while reading a Buddhist text. In the 1920s he delved into the occult; he wrote on Western esotericism and Eastern mysticism, developing his doctrine of "magical idealism". His writings blend various ideas of German idealism, Eastern doctrines, traditionalism and the Conservative Revolution of the interwar period. Evola believed that mankind is living in the Kali Yuga, a Dark Age of unleashed materialistic appetites. To counter this, Evola invoked a rebirth of the "world of Tradition". Tradition for Evola was not Christian—he did not believe in God—but rather an eternal supernatural knowledge with values of authority, hierarchy, order, discipline and obedience.

Evola advocated for the Italian racial laws, and became the leading Italian "racial philosopher". He mentioned having worked for the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence agency of the Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS). He fled to Nazi Germany in 1943 when the Italian Fascist regime fell, but returned to Rome under the Italian Social Republic, a German puppet state, to organise a radical-right group. In 1945 in Vienna, a Soviet shell fragment permanently paralysed him from the waist down. On trial for glorifying fascism in 1951, Evola denied being a fascist, instead declaring himself "superfascista" (superfascist). The historian Elisabetta Cassina Wolff wrote that "It is unclear whether this meant that Evola was placing himself above or beyond Fascism". Evola was acquitted in his first trial, but convicted a few years later in the second.

Evola has been called the "chief ideologue" of the post-war Italian radical right, and his philosophy has been characterised as one of the most "antiegalitarian, antiliberal, antidemocratic, and antipopular systems in the twentieth century". His writings contain misogyny, racism, antisemitism and attacks on Christianity and the Catholic Church. He continues to influence contemporary traditionalist and neo-fascist movements.