JULIUS Evola (1898-1974) did not think of himself as an Anarchist, at least in the way that it is ordinarily understood, but it is nonetheless possible for some of his ideas and beliefs to be incorporated within the framework of what has since become known as National-Anarchism. In his 1961 work, for example, Cavalcare la Tigre (Ride the Tiger), Evola notes that

“it might be better to contribute to the fall of that which is already wavering and [which] belongs to yesterday’s world than to try to prop it up and prolong its existence artificially.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), of course, had already said much the same thing in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), when he insisted that “that which is falling should also be pushed”. Needless to say, one does not usually think of Evola as a diehard revolutionary committed to the overthrow of the state, but the reasoning behind the Italian’s remark about contributing to the demise of the old order is based on his accurate contention that it is

“useful to prevent the final crisis from being the work of the opposition, whose initiative one would then have to suffer. The risks of such a course of action are more than obvious: there is no saying who will have the last word. But in the present epoch there is nothing that is not risky. This is perhaps the one advantage that it offers to those who are still on their feet.”

For National-Anarchists, on the other hand, contributing to the destruction of the existing system need not infer that one should take up arms against it but, instead, actively establish revolutionary structures through which it becomes possible to turn one’s back on the system as a whole and thus hasten its collapse through non-participation. These structures may include educating your children at home, growing your own food, building your own home and engaging in forms of economic activity which operate outside of the capitalist mainstream. This might sound fairly innocuous, but strengthening the periphery at the expense of the core – particularly when increasing numbers of other people begin to do the same – inevitably weakens the latter to the point where it becomes increasingly superfluous.

Whilst serving as a means of defence, therefore, adopting the tactics of disassociation, detachment and disengagement becomes a form of attack. The system is like a plant: the less you water it, the more it will begin to wither and die.