Fascist Religiosities, III

From the Archive of Drafts

This continues discussion of the cohesion of neoliberalism, Traditionalism, and Fascism (Fascist Religiosities, I link; Fascist Religiosities, II link; and No, all religions are not “ultimately the same,” link).

The phrase “Fascist religiosities” occurred to me when Steve Bannon referred to Julius Evola as an inspiration for his own views. Evola was an Italian Fascist and Nazi sympathizer in the first half of the twentieth century. He wrote extensively on various religious topics, consistently promoting a hierarchical, elitist, and authoritarian view. Bannon, along with others (such as Putin of Russia, Trump of the US, Bolsanaro of Brazil, and Orbán of Hungary) who form the present global neo-fascist movement, promotes the need to preserve “Western civilization,” and have repackaged Evola’s ideas for modern consumption. A couple of decades ago, I was shocked to find some of Evola’s writings being used as textbooks for classes at one of the member schools of the Graduate Theological Union, including classes that taught about Buddhism. (For further on this topic, see “Traditionalist Representations of Buddhism,” Pacific World, link.)

Fascist religiosities are embedded in a broader discourse—a way of talking about religion that assumes the truth of certain concepts in such a fashion as to naturalize (make seem obviously true) and thereby deflect explicit reflection on those concepts. “Religion” only exists as a conceptual object, one that is formed by how we talk about it and by how we cannot talk about it.

A grab bag of these concepts includes:

(1) a pragmatic conception of religion, metaphorically a toolkit, from which one selects what one needs in response to some particular life-situation,

(2) a metaphysical conception of the transcendent unity of religions, metaphorically many paths up a single mountain, and the claim that all are (somehow) ultimately the same,

(3) an authoritarian or elitist conception of religions, metaphorically those insiders who know “the real truth,” and

(4) a failure to distinguish between apologetics and the academic study of religion, metaphorically an inability to move off one’s (ahem) perspective.

In this post, we will look at the first two of these claims, reserving the latter two for later.

First, the metaphor of religion as a toolkit suggests that one's choice of religious commitment (or practices, or affiliation, or identity) can/should be based on pragmatic utility. Religion X, or perhaps religious teachings Y, seem useful to me at this point in my life, so I will adopt them. Please note, this is a simplification, and thereby comes off as unsympathetic, but is simplified of necessity as the pragmatic claim generalizes over the individual existential issues involved in such a decision—what I'm highlighting is the general late capitalist conception of a “religious marketplace” that enables an approach to religious commitment on the model of consumerism.

Thus, in addition to being individual, private, and experiential, just like all other consumer products, religion—especially in the self-help frame—is judged by its pragmatic utility. Under such a conception, one is free not only to pick up entire toolkits, but also free to pick and choose individual tools out of different kits.

Second, the idea that all religions are ultimately the same is commonly read as a "liberal" perspective on religions, one that teaches mutual respect and accommodation. I would claim some personal authority here, as this is exactly what as a teacher of undergraduate introductory courses in the liberal arts colleges of a public university many years ago (briefly) used as an interpretive frame for teaching world religions. And indeed, I've known colleagues who justify the entire project of religious studies on these grounds. For example, the pedagogic model that Huston Smith employs, and which a colleague repeated to me at a departmental retreat, is that teaching religious studies is like teaching music appreciation. Students are expected to gain a more liberal sensitivity and more accepting attitude to the value of other religions.

The Traditionalist/Perennialist metaphoric claim that there is one mountain, however, only serves to preserve Euro-American cultural hegemony under the guise of religious pluralism—this is the lesson (and indeed a paraphrase of the subtitle) of Tomoko Masuzawa's The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago, 2005)—as important an intellectual history of religious studies, as are the works of Timothy Fitzgerald. More in my own terms, the idea of one mountain is a religious imperialism that imposes the same framework onto all religions. Far from being universal, however, that framework is itself simply a Christian one, but for which the explicitly Christian aspects have been obscured. This is quite evident in what is (humorously, I think) called "philosophy of religion." At its basis the project of “philosophy of religion” is only a meta-theology, an attempt to “lift up” (aufheben) some issues that are claimed to be universal, despite originating out of Christian theology, and which therefore necessarily bring the presumptions of that origin invisibly along into the discussion.

In other words, the cost of the Traditionalist/Perennialist claim is the loss of difference, a flattening out of characteristics that contribute to the unique character of a religious tradition—and the exchange in that colonialist economy is supposedly “a seat at the table.” This is the name of one of Huston Smith’s books, but which, if you think about it, seems to be an incredibly condescending metaphor. It implies that those at the table now find that you’ve cleaned yourself up, or in the case of religions re-described yourself in acceptable ways, enough to join them. The intellectual imposition of uniformity onto all religions is premised upon the consumerist economies of late capitalism/neoliberalism. Like a vast shopping mall, in which consumers can acquire pants from Eddie Bauer and tee shirts from American Apparel, commodified religions exist in a tension of competition (which, no, does not magically make everything better).

But, beyond the relatively tepid conflicts of consumerist competition, such a vision of how to attain peace and respect among religions ignores the realities that for many people their religious identity is not simply a religious fashion, easily acquired and as easily discarded as the shoes that were in fashion last year. Those who hold Bannon's apocalyptic medieval worldview of good/us versus evil/them are not going to become religious liberals, accepting diversity just by being told that all religions are ultimately the same. How can they be expected to do so when they don't seem even able to accept Judaism and Islam as other members of the Abrahamic family?\

The claim that all religions are ultimately the same is incoherent, and contrary to some who make that claim, cannot be resolved by historical research. The claim is not that all religions have the same historical origin, which is either trivially true (“cavemen” in the mists of an unreachable and therefore imaginal past), or entirely nonsensical. Instead, the claim all religions are “ultimately” the same is that all religions lead to the same mystical, transcendent insight—one that is beyond language. And that claim is incoherent because there is really no way to show that it is false, or in philosophic jargon, it is unfalsifiable.

So, no, unfortunately, the ideological claim that all religions are ultimately the same does not bring a peaceful acceptance of difference.

TO BE CONTINUED…