von Leers: Evola's Imperium Europaeum
[Der Weg 1951-09] An original translation of „Imperium Europaeum“
Title: Evola's Imperium Europaeum [de: Imperium Europaeum]
Author: Johan von Leers as “Felix Schwarzenborn”
“Der Weg” Issue: Year 05, Issue 09 (September 1951)
Page(s): 644-647
Dan Rouse’s Note(s):
Der Weg - El Sendero is a German and Spanish language magazine published by Dürer-Verlag in Buenos-Aires, Argentina by Germans with connections to the defeated Third Reich.
Der Weg ran monthly issues from 1947 to 1957, with official sanction from Juan Perón’s Government until his overthrow in September 1955.
See the von Leers Index page for more information on his life and pseudonyms.
Source Document(s):
[LINK] Scans of 1951 Der Weg Issues (archive.org)
Imperium Europaeum
by Felix Schwarzenborn
Baron Julius Evola, already in Mussolini’s fascist Italy one of the finest thinkers, renowned for his book Pagan Imperialism, a Ghibelline and unmatched bearer of the imperial tradition, recently—shortly before his arrest—published a concise work, Orientations. Though much of it addresses purely Italian circumstances, it elucidates problems of design with marvelous clarity.
Evola declares:
“As a spirit, there truly exists something capable of guiding our forces of resistance and renewal: the spirit of a legion. It is the stance of one who deliberately chooses the harder path, who fights even when he knows the battle is lost in material terms, who upholds the ancient saga’s words: ‘Loyalty is stronger than fire.’ Through him, the idea of tradition, the sense of honor and shame—not petty yardsticks of minor morality—find affirmation. For this is the essential distinction, the existential divide among men, almost like the difference between one race and another.
‘What is at stake?’ It is, rather, a silent revolution unfolding in the depths, so that first within the individual, within the inner self, the foundations of that order take shape—an order destined to emerge outwardly, and, like a lightning strike at the decisive moment, to supplant the forms and forces of a world mired in decay and chaos. The ‘style’ we must attain belongs to a man who bears loyalty to himself and an idea, a gathered inner force, a rejection of every corrupt compromise, a total dedication evident not just in political struggle but in every facet of existence: in the workshop, the laboratory, the university, the street, even personal life itself. We must reach a point where the type we describe—the very tissue of our framework—stands wholly distinct, unmistakable, and recognizable, so that it is said of him: ‘Here is one who acts as a man of this movement.’ …
This stance is as anti-bourgeois as it is anti-proletarian, untainted by democratic blemishes or ‘social’ trivialities, pointing toward a clear, masculine, ordered world of men and leaders of men. Scorn for the bourgeois myth of ‘security,’ for the small, standardized, pet-like, compliant, sanctimonious life; disdain for the painless nook inherent in every collectivist, mechanistic system, and for all ideologies that would prioritize muddled ‘social’ values over the heroic and spiritual ones by which we define, in every domain, the archetype of the true man, the absolute personality.”
Evola states plainly:
“For the grand delusion of our time is that democracy and liberalism oppose communism and possess the strength to dam the flood tides of power from below—what the unions’ rogue jargon dubs the ‘progressive movement.’ An illusion: as if one claimed twilight opposes night, the onset of a disease opposes its peak, a diluted poison opposes its pure, potent form…”
With clarity, Evola asserts: There is no “progress,” no “inevitable development” in history. “It is men—those who are truly men—who shape history, or warp it.” It is not “necessary” that every nation have a “democracy”; it is not “natural progress” that demands communism as history’s endpoint. Things can turn out entirely otherwise! And perhaps the greatest feat of Mussolini and Hitler lies in this: they proved to the world that history is not predetermined, that a resolute band of men, borne by an idea, can recast world history in utterly new molds—showing a way out of the vile corral that drifts ever leftward, toward the vast world labor camp.
But where should this new path lead? Evola articulates:
“We must hold firm to this: all that pertains to economy and economic interest, as mere appeasement of animal needs, has held—and will always hold—only secondary significance in a normal humanity. Beyond this realm, an order of higher political, spiritual, and heroic values must rise—an order that, as we’ve said, neither recognizes nor tolerates ‘proletarians’ or ‘capitalists.’ Within its bounds, one can weigh the things worth living or dying for; here, a true hierarchy prevails, new dignities arise, and at its ultimate height, a supreme authority must reign—the Imperium.”
“[For] a new emblem of sovereignty and unquestioned authority is essential.”
This cannot mean reviving the final fascist Republic of Salò—indeed, the very notion of a republic, per Evola, has no place here.
“To be anti-democratic on one hand while fiercely championing the republican idea on the other is an absurdity tangible to the touch.”
This reflection of Evola’s, first conceived for Italy, merits Germany’s heed as well. Perhaps it was already a flaw that National Socialism did not formally dismantle the Weimar Constitution and the label ‘Republic’; in times to come, one must not repeat such odd inconsistency or lack of resolve.
Evola sharply breaks from collectivist nationalism. His thoughts here, at least as a starting point for debate, are so vital they warrant full recounting:
“This concerns our stance on nationalism, the idea of the fatherland—a stance all the more apt as many today, to salvage what remains, seek anew to impose a romantic, sentimental, and naturalistic view of the nation, foreign to Europe’s loftiest political tradition. Practically, how can one, in an age when vast, idea-driven international alliances form, cling to the formula of a quaint ‘national truce’ or ‘solidarity of sons of the same soil,’ while witnessing the fatherland we invoke being rhetorically, hypocritically claimed by opposing factions—even those serving red subversion? It defies comprehension… On a higher plane, what binds and divides is the idea—an idea upheld by a select elite, ready to incarnate itself in a state. In this idea, we discern our true fatherland. Not hailing from the same land or speaking the same tongue, but belonging to the same idea—that is what counts today.”
Evola further rails against a fatherland concept “of Freemasonic origin and anti-traditional,” which sees in 1945’s “liberation” and partisanship a “second Risorgimento,” nodding to the potent democratic, leftist, even Marxist forces that shaped Italy’s unification last century. We Germans face this less encumbered: those same forces that undermined Bismarck’s Reich, forged the Weimar Republic under enemy arms’ shield and forced it on our people for fourteen years, colluded with foes in the Second World War, were hoisted back to power by the enemy in 1945, and then, as “denazification courts,” shamelessly hounded the Reich’s loyal—such forces can claim no national tradition here. They have ever been, in the fine Argentine phrase, the “Anti-Patria.” Yet Evola’s great quandary applies to us too: we must press on from the German Reich through the Greater German Reich to the Imperium Europaeum, lest we turn provincial. The European community, pre-lived in the Waffen-SS volunteer divisions, must be fully conceived on our side. Much remains undone—above all, in thought. The Imperium Europaeum will emerge only when we see it clearly ourselves, when the present elite unites on it—truly outdoing Strasbourg’s democratic Council of Europe, which strives too!—and when we can not just feel but frame our stance. For this, Evola’s Orientations1 is paramount. It marks the first major discussion base for the front rising on our side, beyond national bounds. That these notions stir elsewhere too is clear from a small, hectographed English journal, Frontfighter (great movements have begun “hectographed” too), which boldly states:
“After the years of mass death following the Jewish hate war, Europe sought an idea to free it anew from the alien yoke of extra-European rule and reclaim the brilliance of the fascist revolutions of 1922 and 1933.”
Europe has not waited in vain. From the ruins rose the concept of the Imperium. This idea is the logical fruit of the New Order that Hitler and Mussolini envisioned and toiled for. The mantle of heroes has now fallen on our shoulders—and it is the mantle of invincibility. Let Strasbourg’s jackals savor their fleeting hour; their slogans and warnings will freeze on their pallid lips before they’re voiced. Only death’s stillness awaits them; Strasbourg will yield naught but plans for a planned Jew-SA colonial dominion. The future belongs to the European Imperium…
No matter how tiny this group may be2, what matters is that certain ideas are steadily taking hold: Elite, Imperium Europaeum, a link to grand traditions—and that we move past dirges for the dead and indictments of the present toward grasping the task and its vast potential.
It is not yet finished!
(J. Evola, Orientations, Rome 1950, “Imperium,” Via Porta Castello n. 13)
(European Liberation Front, Mr. P. J. Huxley-Blythe, London W C 1, Westropa-Press)