The Alt-Right's Intellectual Darling Hated Christianity

In the summer of 2014, years before he became the White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon gave a lecture via Skype at a conference held inside the Vatican. He spoke about the need to defend the values of the “Judeo-Christian West”—a term he used 11 times—against crony capitalism and libertarian capitalism, secularization, and Islam. He also mentioned the late Julius Evola, a far-right Italian philosopher popular with the American alt-right movement. What he did not mention is that Evola hated not only Jews, but Christianity, too.

References to Evola abounded on websites such as Breitbart News, The Daily Stormer, and AltRight.com well before the Bannon-Evola connection earlier this month. But few have discussed the fundamental oddity of Evola serving as an intellectual for the alt-right. Yes, the thinker was