[How About This Book] Standing on the 'Right' of Trump and Putin

Bannon and Putin's Advisor Dugin Contributed to Trump's Victory
Influenced by French Philosopher Gr?gnon's Traditionalist Thought
Defines Modernity as an Age of Decay and Dreams of Returning to the Past
Anti-Immigration, Nationalism... Far-Right Expanding in Three Areas

'The Eternal War' is a book that analyzes who Steve Bannon, Donald Trump's key advisor who played a decisive role in his victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and Aleksandr Dugin, an advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, really are. The author, Benjamin Teitelbaum, an associate professor at the University of Colorado, analyzes the background behind the rise of far-right forces worldwide today, which emphasize anti-immigration and nationalism, through Bannon and Dugin. Professor Teitelbaum conducts a multidimensional analysis of the two figures by meeting and interviewing them over a long period and socializing in gatherings they participate in.

The book consists of 22 chapters in total. The first chapter begins with a question Professor Teitelbaum posed to Bannon during an interview at a luxury hotel in New York in June 2018. "Are you a traditionalist?" Bannon reacts sensitively, suggesting an off-the-record (non-public) interview. This is because the term traditionalist could be interpreted as someone dissatisfied with the current system.

Professor Teitelbaum explains that a traditionalist refers to someone who prefers old cultures. These are people who criticize modern times, saying that life used to be much better, and they oppose modernity. Modernity refers to the phenomenon where the social way of life on the European continent came to dominate the world, beginning in the 1800s. Professor Teitelbaum explains that this modernization process involves the decline of public religion replaced by reason, weakening of the symbolic world, and strengthening of the literal world. Things that cannot be easily quantified or measured are pushed out of people's focus, while spiritual, emotional, and supernatural aspects are sidelined, and material things come to the forefront.

[How About This Book] Standing on the 'Right' of Trump and Putin

Traditionalism is a philosophical and spiritual school that has barely survived underground for the past 100 years. The founder of traditionalism is the French philosopher Ren? Gu?non (1886?1951), whose ideas greatly influenced both Bannon and Dugin. Gu?non explored esotericism, meaning personal and spiritual feelings in a religious context, and converted to Islam after becoming an adult. Gu?non's ideas were inherited by Julius Evola (1898?1974), an Italian baron. Benito Mussolini (1883?1945), the Italian dictator who founded fascism, is known to have greatly admired Evola's writings.

Professor Teitelbaum introduces an anecdote from 1980 to prove Bannon is a traditionalist. Bannon was 26 and serving in the Navy. The USS Paul F. Foster, where Bannon was stationed, docked in Hong Kong, and while his colleagues headed to bars, Bannon went alone to a bookstore. The book he bought that day was Gu?non's work, 'The Human Phenomenon: The Wisdom of the Vedanta School.' Bannon enjoyed reading. He graduated from Harvard Business School and said he was happy to be able to read as much as he wanted at the time. "Harvard Square was a blessing to me. There was the Widener Library and the Harvard Business School Library. I lived buried in books. I wanted to be buried in books forever without limit."

Bannon joined Goldman Sachs in 1985, left in 1990 to start his own investment firm, and made a fortune investing in TV dramas and film production. After accumulating wealth, he focused on his favorite pursuits of reading and spirituality. In the early 1990s, Bannon found spiritual solace through exchanges with Jacob Needleman, a philosophy professor in San Francisco well-versed in Gu?non's ideas.

Dugin was active in the 1980s in an underground social movement organization called the 'Yuzhinsky Circle,' which had a complex platform involving fascism, Nazism, nationalism, occultism, and mysticism. At that time, the president of the Yuzhinsky Club was a follower of Gu?non. In 1997, Dugin wrote a book titled 'Foundations of Geopolitics,' which proposed ways to prevent U.S. world domination. "Geopolitical chaos must be injected into U.S. domestic politics. All kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts must be fanned. Extremists, racists, cults, and all kinds of resistance movements must be supported. Thus, the U.S. domestic political process should be thrown into an unstable state." Professor Teitelbaum explains that what Dugin wrote in 'Foundations of Geopolitics' is closely related to suspicions of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election process.

Besides Bannon and Dugin, the book features various figures. These include Olavo de Carvalho, who served as a theorist in Brazil's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro's government, and Jason Reza Jorjani, former editor-in-chief of Actos, an English-language publisher specializing in far-right intellectualism and traditionalist books.

These traditionalists tend to define the modern era as a corrupt age, dream of a return to the past, and pursue spirituality. Bannon became engrossed in books on religion and spirituality and read Gu?non's works, while Dugin worships Iran, the world's most solid theocratic state. Carvalho read books on traditionalism and Gu?non's works since the late 1970s and in the 1980s created ritual spaces and gathered followers.

With Trump and Bolsonaro failing to secure re-election, it may seem that far-right forces have declined. However, in Europe, far-right parties and politicians are expanding their influence fueled by anti-immigration sentiment, and Trump is aiming for a comeback in the upcoming November election. This book is interesting in that it traces the ideological origins of the far-right, which has become a global phenomenon, offering a new perspective.