EVER SINCE THE POLITICAL STRATEGIST Steve Bannon mentioned, vaguely and dubiously, “Julius Evola and different writers of the early twentieth century who are really the supporters of what’s called the Traditionalist movement, which really kind of eventually metastasized into Italian fascism” on a Skype call to a 2014 conference at the Vatican, Traditionalism has been a topic of contemporary fascination and fear.

Across dozens of half-literate magazine pieces and activist blogs, Evola in particular has been denounced as a quasi-supernatural contaminant fuelling an ever-rising far right. Meanwhile the Russian Traditionalist philosopher Alexander Dugin has emerged as an intellectual supervillain to the point where his translators are persecuted, his books are censored by Amazon, and his daughter’s death