by Welf Herfurth
This article series concerns something that receives little attention from nationalists: celebrities and popular culture, and their influence on both our liberal democratic system and our consumerist society. More specifically, it concerns the role of women in our liberal democracy and popular culture.
This subject matter is very much part of our lives: one cannot avoid the celebrity trash gossip magazines, American TV shows, and the role prominent women in our liberal democracy (such as Hilary Clinton). Moreover, our economy relies, to a great extent, on both consumerism ?especially a consumerist lifestyle promoted heavily to women, through advertisements and celebrity culture ?and female labour.
From a political view, does any of this matter? Do the antics of Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan matter? Did Princess Diana matter? A person with an old-school, left-wing point of view would say, o? The fetishisation of celebrity women in our culture is a symptom of the fetishisation of capitalist consumer commodities. Once capitalism is abolished, the only women who will appear in advertisements, films and the like will be female communist role models ?factory workers, rice paddy farmers, mothers bearing socialist babies and the like.
After the advent of the New Left, the analyses ?of images of women in a capitalist society, as expressed through popular culture ?became a little more sophisticated. The stern Soviet and Maoist bromides became somewhat old-fashioned, and the neo-Marxists argued that there was something deeper going on.
Here I will be taking an approach similar to that of the New Left ?but will drawing upon Evola instead of Marcuse. Bill White, before his Nutzi phase, used to write some intelligent articles. One of them was on the subject of women in American popular culture, and used some Evolian concepts. (Unfortunately, it is no longer available on the Internet). Evola, I think, is a thinker who is the most suitable for this sort of thing. After all, many of his piritual types? or aces?(as he defines them) possess masculine and feminine characteristics. In essays like o we live in a gynaecocratic society??(1936), he said nearly all there is to be said on the subject.
The present article will add little to the discussion ?much of what Evola has written has yet to be surpassed ?but the articles from the 1930s and 1940s are lacking in that they are out of date. They appear dated because Evola did not live in our age ?the age of Angelina Jolie, uffy the Vampire Slayer?and the Hilary Clinton presidential campaign bid.
1. Evola spiritual types
Evola work, as readers familiar with him know, defines a number of spiritual types, which are known to us through myths, religious texts, folklore and the like. Evola believes that these contain metaphysical truth ?and that the task of the Traditionalist scholar is to interpret them. He regards descriptions of ancient events in the Bible, for instance, as history which is literally true ?that is, accurate descriptions of the metaphysical states of affairs.
Evola often begins his narratives of etaphysical history? of the various ages of the metaphysical development (or, in his view, degeneration) of man, by positing a primordial olar? ranian?spirituality, which is followed, in time, by the appearance of emetrian? itanic? and mazonian?spiritualities (among others). It is the Amazonian spirituality which we shall first examine here.
The Amazonian spiritual type represents an interesting combination of both male and female spirituality. To Evola, Amazonian is both a reaction and a transmutation. emetrian?spirituality is feminine, maternal, egalitarian, pacifist, collectivist ?the closest there is to modern day pagan worship of other Earth?and the New Age cults. (Possibly, there is a link here to modern environmentalism as well). In contrast to this, there is the coarse itanic?spirituality ?cruel, masculine, militarist, phallic (in a purely physical way) and forever seeking after the higher, spiritual state as represented by the ranian?and olar?spirituality. (There are several myths of giants and other demonic races who sought to attain the olar?spirituality by force ?by storming Mount Olympus and so forth ?and being punished by the Gods for their impudence).
Amazonianism is a reaction against the coarseness of the Titanic spirituality, and is a defence of the virtues of Demetrianism. In Evola narrative of metaphysical history, the two rival spiritualities ?the ultra-female Demetrian and the ultra-masculine Titanic ?clashed, and produced a feminine spirituality which was not quite one or the other. Amazonianism is feminine, all right, but has taken on assertive, masculine and warrior characteristics. (Evola, of course, has nothing against militarism and the warrior: only the expressions of militarism without a higher, olar?spiritual aspect. The militarism of the Titanic spirituality is militarism devoid of any transcendent spirituality: it is the use of force only to attain purely material goals).
This Amazonianism is prevalent today. As Evola writes:
The woman often asserts her primacy in new mazonian?forms. Thus we see the new masculinised sportswoman, the garconne, the woman who devotes herself to the unilateral development of her own body, betrays the mission which would be normal to her in a civilisation of virile type, becomes emancipated and independent and even bursts into the political field. And this is not all. (o we live in a gynaecocratic society?(1936), translation copyright ?2003 Thompkins and Cariou).
(Further parts of this serialisation will show for online readers under Related Items below or for Daily Briefing readers in our next Email)
–Welf Herfurth is a political activist who lives in Sydney / Australia. He was born and raised in Germany. He can be contacted on:
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angelina jolie,
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gossip,
hilary clinton,
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