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    The Nationalism-ists

    Oct 23, 2020 5 minutes
    BRIAN DOHERTY

    IN WAR FOR Eternity, Benjamin R. Teitelbaum situates Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former campaign CEO and White House chief strategist, in a context likely unknown to 99.9 percent of the voters Bannon helped steer toward Trump: Traditionalism, with a capital T.

    This Traditionalism is distinct from its common colloquial meaning of “advocating older ways of life.” It draws inspiration from such obscure figures as René Guénon, a French esotericist who moved from Catholicism through theosophy to Sufi Islam while calling for an elite aristocratic order and denouncing the materialism of industrial civilization, and Julius Evola, an Italian occultist and fascist fellow traveler who thought that “bourgeois civilization and society” are anathema to a noble and heroic man.

    What inspires a true Traditionalist? As Bannon tells Teit-elbaum, it’s “the rejection of modernity, the

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