Introduction
Throughout the world, from Russia, to India, to Brazil to the United States, the idea of returning to ancient traditions forms a basic part of the global extreme right and fascist movement. Ben Teitelbaum has written a book about this very idea of traditionalism. We were fortunate to have a chance to interview Ben. Here’s a video of that interview and below it is the transcript. Those who are interested might also check out Aleksandr Dugin, Alchemist of “traditionalism”, mysticism and fascism.

John Reimann
So we’re talking here with Ben Teitelbaum. He’s the author of this book, War for Eternity. And he’s written a lot on the theory of Traditionalism. And Ben, is by academic background a musicologist. So it’s interesting to think about how Ben went from the study of music, to writing fundamentally political material, maybe you could explain that a little bit.

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Yeah, I mean, I would explain it in two ways. John, I think that I would say, on the one hand, my interest in music is very much tied into music’s social role. That’s why I call myself an ethnomusicologist.A lot of my training is anthropology as opposed to music theory. So really, the move between music and politics is is not quite as abrupt as it might sound. So that’s one reason – that music actually introduced me to politics. And it also opened a lot of doors to people talking to me, it’s much less threatening if you tell people you’re music scholar, as opposed to a political scientist or an economist or you know, criminologist or something like that. But the other reason is that I have multiple interests. I think like most people, I’ve always been interested in politics. There’s a brief period of time where I considered what direction I would choose within the university world. It became music, but a big part of me has always been reading academic literature on politics, and especially in electoral history.

John Reimann
You know, before we get into traditionalism, one thing in reading your book, what brought to my mind was some of the writings of Gramsci, on like, kind of cultural hegemony and that sort of thing. I wonder if you would comment on that in relation to your interests and what you’ve been writing about?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Sure, there, there are two ways in which Gramsci enters the picture of my research. One of them is simply as a sort of, theorist inspiring the work that I do, someone who I actually think has accurate ideas about society. And that’s in the sense that Gramsci sees culture, broadly conceived as being as being a powerful driver of human society. And it’s sometimes supplanting even economics – being more powerful, in that sense, replacing the standard typical Marxist diagram of social relations, which tends to place economics and material values as at the center, or the base. I think I think Gramsci was right and doing that, and a lot of that type of thinking, undergirds research that I would be doing, in which I claim that music matters. Right, when I say that we act politically, socially, economically in our values, and those values come from things like music. But the other way in which Gramsci matters is more as a social truth, I’d say rather than or in addition to being something that I think is actually true. Another way to put that is that the people I studied follow Gramsci, a lot of them. And even those who don’t do it explicitly seem to intuitively do that. A lot has been written, for example, about Andrew Breitbart, the namesake of Breitbart News, this far right, online news magazine, and in media outlet, who once said that, that politics are downstream from culture. I don’t know if he read Gramsci. I’m not a real close follower of his of his but that basic idea has appealed to a lot of people. For someone like him, it might just have been something that he arrived at more intuitively, but for others, Alain de Benoist, even Rush Limbaugh, believe it or not, there’s real consciousness of Gramsci. They use Gransci to understand why in their mind, it’s impossible for a real, robust, anti liberal, anti modern right to germinate in the West, because in their mind, you know, you can have a radical right, you can have even a radical left, they could probably apply the, the analysis to the radical left as well. And say that, “okay, they can, they might make a political party, maybe they’ll win an election here, there. But the deep current of of society is such that it forces them all into a particular mode, which is liberal, you know, modern liberalism, essentially, there’s no, there’s no really way to get around that through politics,” it comes from it shall be addressed through and they, all these, these actors would hope to change it through the realm of, of culture. So that’s, that’s, that’s where Gramsci figures into this.

John Reimann
I’m trying to fit that into my own experiences, including trying to talk with workers who support Trump, and those who have like conspiracy theories about COVID. And that sort of thing. And it seems to me they start out with kind of a general worldview that’s in part based on fact, and in part, but but then it takes off from there, to the point that facts don’t matter anymore. And so it’s just kind of gut feelings that overwhelm the actual facts. And and that seems to me, it’s related to culture. What What would you think about that?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Oh, absolutely. I think you’re talking, it’s not many steps removed from the sorts of discussions that you would you would encounter in this in this kind of new Marxian territory where, you know what, I think we talk today about identity being a primary driver. And there’s a lot of conversations about that. I hope this doesn’t get derailed, and into one of the more one of the more vivid tracks that we see in our discourse today, but when politics is not about, “okay, what policy would I like to see change? What are my thoughts about this particular reform? What are my thoughts about this particular idea of restructuring society or something, but instead politics are about who am I?” Right? And “is the person who’s speaking, speaking to me as an identity?” I think that the process of getting there, of getting to that place of identification reflects the power of culture. It’s the sort of thing where it used to be brought up, especially from critics on the left, who were saying, “okay does the same people who are being hurt by say, the rural Midwest or rural post industrial parts of the United States, or people who would benefit from more stringent environmental protections, you know, who’s in the actual crosshairs of pollution. It should be these people, but they’re not voting that way.” And, and what has taken over is a sort of cultural identification. People don’t vote for [or against] a particular policy, not because they think it’s bad policy, but because it’s not who they are. And when you talk about the intuitive, the unspoken nature of this, to that also relates to this, taken for granted newness of or common sensical understanding of the world, that that are also harmful hallmarks of hegemony, hallmarks of this, the most powerful type of idea, an idea that does not need to be justified is so so deep seated in your society that it is not, not justified, sometimes not named, certainly not enforced with coercion. And it’s, you know, if, if you have an ambition if you yourself are wanting to read into that or you have an ambitious reader, connecting Gramsci with Hannah Arendt’s writings on violence is actually quite interesting in this respect, because she she views violence and power as being opposites. And hegemony definitely is a sort of synonym for power in the sense that it’s an idea of force that exists in grips people, completely void of coercion, that that power

John Reimann
Or put it another way, talking with some of these people, what always comes to my mind is cutting off your nose to spite your face. You don’t really care if it hurts you, all you care about is do you want to hurt those people?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
It could be a game of, you know, “this the identity, this is who I am. And I’m not them.” Right? If they’re upset, it’s a politics of form rather than content is another way to say it.

John Reimann
So with that as a long way around an introduction, would you explain what Traditionalism is and how it developed?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
It’s a very hard question, John. We’ve got another hour to go just with that. Right? You could call it a religious school, or a philosophy. That’s what it was first – a teaching emerged out of Orientalist lay scholars of comparative religion in early 1900s, Europe late 1800s. And it was premised on the idea that this relates to the concept of perennialism if there’s anyone listening knows what that is, but [it’s] this idea that ages ago, there was an actual true authentic, accurate religion that got it right. And over time, its truths were scattered and dispersed and lost and it exists, its truths only only sprinkle. Our world today in imperfect form, disconnected from one another, in the hands of a few religions that are practice today. And the goal of the traditionalist is essentially to understand what that that whole was, but the way that they they try to do that is often through devoting themselves exclusively to one one particular path. The religions are Hinduism first and foremost. But also Sufism, sometimes esoteric Catholicism, sometimes Kabbalah, but as the mystic branches of these world religions, these so called great religions. Buddhism can sometimes sometimes play a role there.

And I could talk a lot about that about why those things, those religions are the way they are. But the important thing for politics and what came came to be important for the people I studied, were a couple of ideas, a couple of features of that old religion that they think was true and which was scattered and which they want to recreate. One of the features, which explains why the old tradition was lost is a belief in cyclicality, in cyclic time. So beliefs that every moment that passes, we are actually we’re never really leaving our past behind us, we’re in a process of kind of moving away from our past, but also coming back to it. They believe that we cycled through four eras: a golden to a silver, two bronze to a dark era. And as that right there explains, they typically think that the cycle goes from good to bad, until a cataclysmic reset occurs and then you’re back in a good and you’re cycling back to bad and back to good. On and on and on, never really moved, [never] going anywhere. But also as things get bad, you’re also closer to a reset to a cataclysmic explosion when things restart in a golden era.

Hinduism, along with the caste system, tends to figure very strongly in the beliefs of the Traditionalists.

So opposite that they also think what they see in their tradition and explanation of what is good and what is bad. In that one way to understand that is the way that they see hierarchy as being called to attention by that old tradition. They think that in a virtuous society, you have essentially the Hindu caste system, what I think in most most people’s understandings is the Hindu caste system, where society should be strictly organized, there should be borders, borders should be allowed to exist between different people. And at the top of the hierarchy should be those who value immaterial things – priests. They should be few in number, fewer than the masses at the bottom, who are slaves and value material things- the body. Above them, we would have merchants valuing goods. Above them you would have warriors who value more more worldly, and immateriality like like honor, things like that. And then finally, priests on top. All that is a way to say the traditional is to put a quick bow on this John, as they say, they see they see a time cycle going on. They think that in order to get to a golden age, you have to move through darkness and move through destruction. And that what is bad about the dark age is materialism, a focus on either bodies or goods is massification and quantification. A belief that that it’s really wrong and bad to be, let’s say organizing society based on majorities or what’s what’s good for the most most of us and in that a better world can come into existence if borders are established. If we’re not borderless and theology, spirituality hierarchy, elitism are able to come back into existence. That’s the basics of traditionalism carried into politics. Of course, I could go on, but I’ll leave it there.

John Reimann
You know, while I was reading your book, I was talking about it with my wife. And I was trying to explain what traditionalism was. And she just got very impatient and said, “You know what? that’s just a lot of bullshit.” And so why are there ideas like the ideology? Why is it not just a lot of abstract philosophizing that has nothing to do with the real world?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
I don’t know. You know, I’ve never really set myself to that particular task of saying, “This is why, you know, this is a good philosophy, or it’s at least at least good enough.” You know, what, whether you’re good or not, not whether you agree with it or not….

John Reimann
But, you know, you can sit in a room and contemplate your navel for several years and come up with all kinds of ideas. But why is it not something like that?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
There are a couple of ways to look at that particular question. One is to say, “I want us to pay attention to what it does for people and the things that it might do that navel gazing would not.” One thing that it does is it tells them nostalgic, and nostalgia is a powerful force in politics right now. But it tells the nostalgic that you don’t have to be in the static, in fact that the past that the golden era that has passed that you think has gone to you can actually be had again. Right? And there’s an odd resonance between that idea and the forward slogan, that was part of the campaign that Steve Bannon worked for, namely, “make America great again. I believe that some golden this or greatness of the past, can be once again had.” So that’s that’s one aspect of this is I think- that deep nostalgia of our society is reframed, and traditionalism as where the past is not past. to paraphrase one of the figures from my book. The other thing is that it brings together a lot of grievances that tend to populate the ideological world of the radical right. Borderlessness in terms of nation states, in terms of the boundary between men and women, between ethnicities, they’re all folded together, Traditionalism tells tells us that they’re all essentially the same phenomenon -, elitism. A sort of disregard for the good, a common good or an in an anti egalitarianism and also a disregard to politics being focused on economics, that does bring traditionalists into conflict with with Neo liberals, let’s say, and capitalists. But it essentially folds capitalist, neoliberal, capitalist and Marxists together in the same cauldron and says that, there are differing opinions about the distribution of wealth. And equity and wealth are really just surface debates that are betraying a deeper unity, which is that both of those forces think that material goods are what matter most in the world. [Whereas] with traditionalism you get a narrative, as strange as quirky as it is. And the strangeness can be can be appealing too, or it can be a real turnoff, but at least it gives a narrative that folds together all of those things and, and for a certain brand of the right, that’s a lot of their ideological universe.

John Reimann

Is Traditionalism just an idyllic dream of returning to an era that’s in the dust bin of history?

You know, you’re talking about those ancient religions, and my view, you know, all philosophies are related to the class nature of the society that they come from, and really you’re talking about these ideas that sprang from feudalism and the feudal ruling classes. So that’s the significance of I mean… so in a way they’re trying to return to or would you agree with this, that in a way they’re trying to return to ancient societies that are never coming back?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
You could say that. I mean, if you were to ask them,I think that they would say, kind of Aleksandr Dugin, who’s one of the figures who’s at the center of my book, he doesn’t write that much about returning to feudal medieval Europe or something like that. But instead, it is values. It’s still values, it’s more though, it’s more Iran. It’s more contemporary Iran. You know, an era aristocratic military order, and one where we’re economics, you know, we’re the people on the top, we’re also the most wealthy, I don’t think that that would be pitched in ways that appear to these appeal to these people primarily. It’s rather that you have this sort of feudalism. But that is fixed so that it doesn’t relate to worldly honor or to money, but instead relates to spiritual spiritual power. Now, that doesn’t mean that that’s that’s an explanation to justify the economics of that, but but I think we would want to be sensitive so that we know what we’re talking about. That’s certainly not how they would frame it, they would want to see the hierarchy organized around around religion.

John Reimann
So but of course, in reality, those religions sprang from feudal societies or in some cases, slave societies. So in one part of your book you say that, that from their view, and I think you were referring to Bannon in particular, they see globalism, as, quote, “a threat to the sovereignty of average people everywhere.” And well, I’m curious, how would Bannon reply to this: “look, globalism… you want to talk about it globalism in the sense of international capital, international and markets, international production of goods, that’s here, and it’s never it’s not going away. And so, the only question is, whether the capitalist class controls it or the working class.” But what what Bannon is trying to return to is a period that’s gone and never coming back. So how would he respond to that?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
I think he would encounter in that question and his likely response, why traditionalism appeals to him? Because he would say “no,” he would say that globalism… In fact, we had this conversation a couple of times. I mean, he thinks that globalism is absolutely in the process of dying. And, you know, the explanations for that could be the rise of China. It could be Russia, it could be the disintegration of the European Union. It could be the weakening of the United Nations, it could be you know, tended to China’s rise, the weakening reach of the United States, the new the newfound revulsion for for US foreign

Today’s modern factories produce so much that they cannot efficiently produce for just one nation; they must produce for the world market.

intervention. For him, those I think those would be would be signs that know something is actually changing. And that the you know, I think that’s what he would meet you with first, John, he would say all those things. But at a deeper level, he would say, also don’t don’t buy into a progressive myth that you know, that things have changed and they can never go back. Because that, you know, I think he would call that a modern modernist misunderstanding, that history might not perfectly repeat itself, but it will almost and we are going to find ourselves in a place where we view globalization in these mass attempts at global integration as being foolhardy attempts to do something in kind of a parenthetical experiment in a grander human history. theory that that is bound to something else does that? I mean, I think so I think he would come up with specific examples to push back on. But then there would also be this there, there would be a deeper metaphysical point he would try to make there as well.

John Reimann
I can see that. I mean, the counter veiling argument as well, the same thing can be said about nationalism, that we went from localism, to regionalism in terms of production, culture and everything else. From local production and distribution to regional to national. And now what you’re seeing is actually the nation states breaking down, like [even individual] states [in the U.S.], people are talking about secession. And I mean, people are talking about Civil War literally. Right? Oh, yeah. Breaking down, but it’s breaking down into what? chaos and and destruction? I guess at least Dugin, would welcome that. That’s like final battle that will lead us back to the Golden Age.

Benjamin Teitelbaum
As part of, if you think to the pyramid, the hierarchy I was talking about, and kind of the the two alternatives that you have there an intact hierarchy with all these borders versus, you know, just a mass undifferentiated. For them, I think that that resonates with a view that that, you know, taking the large structure and breaking it down into small pieces is a good thing. It’s a more natural and it’s hopefully in their minds, they will also lead in a more spiritual direction. The connections between that have never been especially clear to me, I should say it’s more of a co occurrence in their mind that you know, break down borders will equal spirituality. But yeah, you’re you’re certainly right about that. I think oddly that a lot of the calls for sovereignty, and also for feeling a sense of control, whether it is economics, whether it’s politics, I think even on the left with environmentalism in a certain sense, you know, the belief that, “well, can we, can I, myself, can my contribution, do anything about these large these larger issues?” And the answer is kind of “no, but you do have domain over some territory and some arena and in order to realize that domain, you need to turn local. Right? Doing anything else is waste is always a wasted effort. Yeah. So there. And that’s sub national.” Absolutely.

Steve Bannon and Aleksandr Dugin. Do their ideas matter?

John Reimann
You know, the other part of this question is, I would guess, like, for instance, in the United States, that 99% of people that follow Trump and maybe support Bannon, in some way or another, have never heard of traditionalism are totally unfamiliar with the theory that you described. So how important are those theories that ideology? In terms of actual political developments in the United States? Why does it matter?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Yeah, it’s a wonderful question. It’s not only that they don’t know about it, they truly would be alienated by it. They wouldn’t want anything to do with it. It’s it would seem weird and foreign to them, foreign to their identities, what we were talking about in the beginning. So what the question, if I were to rephrase it, what is the causual impact of traditionalism in populism today? It’s not a question that I actually offer a firm answer to in my book. I really don’t know. It’s more speculative. For me, what we have seen is that some of the most diehard ideologues of populism not the voters on the one hand, and not the not the politician speaking to the voters, but the ideologues who are kind of working behind the politician, who’s trying to organize is trying to make sense, in some cases, who’s trying to narroativise this historical moment. Those are the figures who have either been inspired by traditionalism or found traditionalism to be a useful language for them to make sense of things to themselves in most cases and other people who are like them, but not to the masses. So what is that? What does that mean in terms of what traditionalism is doing? It could be egging on the more ideologically radical and ideologically devout figures of this world, and of this moment, that’s one thing.

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Another way to look at it is less a commentary on traditionalism and more commentary on populism. You could say, “okay, traditionalism, has produced some really radical thinkers who look at politics and society in ways that are quite quite a bit different from, let’s say, the standard GOP Republicans. They’re really out there. But populism is such a vague program. It’s such an open, non committed political ideology that it makes space for these figures too.” So those are those are really the two ways that I think about it, that traditionalism kind of, you know, can perhaps inspire greater radicalism among, in more a more kind of unbridled commitment from from these ideologues. But the other thing is, don’t ask the question about traditionalism, ask the question about what it tells us about populism.

John Reimann
So, you know, in your book, you in a couple of places describe when Bannon tries to explain his views as far as traditionalism, he just gets completely mixed up and hems and haws around and can’t even put a coherent sentence together. And so, for myself, as socialists and political activists, or for any serious worker – Why would we not just say, “look, as my wife said, this is all just a bunch of bullshit. What he’s really after, is to divide and confuse the working class to in order to further empower a small section of the capitalist class to run right over society and do whatever the hell they want, pollute, Plunder it to their heart’s content.”

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Well, one reason is I’m not sure that’s true. That’s the main one and and I should I should divulge a bias: I’m always skeptical. I have to be skeptical as an intellectual. But it’s also I think, my honest feeling, I do have a little kind of gut reaction against someone saying, “oh, this person is just this. Right? I see this veil of complexity, but underneath the veil is actually a brutal simplicity.” The reason I’m I’m suspicious against it is not so much that that could never occur in that person. It’s just that the motive itself saying that about someone is just too beautifying of myself. Too, rationalizing of disengagement and a lack of curiosity and a lack of analysis. It justifies a sort of intellectual laziness, that is always going to be attractive. Because we don’t want to do work. We don’t want to do that work of considering the possibility that someone is doing something genuinely new, or if not genuinely new, at least that deserves serious analysis. Right? And in advance, so what? So that’s one reason why I don’t go down that path as an analyst. What do we get from from looking more closely at him? I don’t. I’m not sure.

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Really. It’s, you know, in following different reactions to my book, there are those who say, “Okay, this, this guy is an actual ideologue. And I like it.” There are those who say, “This guy’s a real idealogue. And well, look at how terrifying This is. And, and this is different. This is not Mitch McConnell. This is not, you know, Newt Gingrich, this is something entirely different. We need to be ready for it.” And there are also others who say “no, I don’t think… I think this is a blowhard. I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. I think he likes the idea of himself being a fancy intellectual and thinker, and he’s come up with this language for doing that for mystifying himself but he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He really is just out after enriching himself.” And I can I can see evidence for all three positions. I really can’t or I will not… I shouldn’t say for the first one: “This guy is strange, and I like him” – that one I don’t I see. I see evidence for the two positions of him having, in some sense developed a coherent and semi original way of thinking and original in the sense at least that diverges from the mainstream. And I can see this someone saying this is all a game, he’s actually doing something tremendously familiar, not radical, but in fact, just just very, very typical of the American. Right.

One example of the latter, if I can riff on this for a moment, John, is, and I wrote this about him, it was a Wall Street Journal op ed of all places: After the after the fraud indictment that he had for the border wall in Texas/New Mexico, along the Mexican border. You know, what we saw was very clearly a project that was meant to oppose some sort of globalization right building a border wall, “we’re gonna finance it privately.” Why does one want to build a border wall? Bannon will give you a lot of explanations that have to do with workers rights. And he’s very good at, very articulate at, offering those examples – that really, migration of the flow of goods and people is bad for workers in the United States. What did he do with the initiative? What actually was the outcome of it? He enriched himself with a lot of money. Right? Built a mile of border wall that does nothing, did not help anything and enriched himself and his friends with a lot of money that speaks to something that is plainly familiar. The other stuff that would speak against it. Um, I do think that he is genuinely interested in tearing up establishments in this country, institutional establishments, you know, whether or not he enriches himself in his particular friends is another question, but he does not seem to want Fox News to survive, does not want the Republican Party to survive necessarily. Isn’t that interested in the power of the US federal government, but all but his his interest in destruction goes far beyond the typical libertarian frame? And his romanticism of the white working class? Well, creepy. And with more than one racist kind of race, ideological undertone to it, or overtone, still strikes me as different from Mitt Romney. It is the sort of thing I can never ever imagine Mitt Romney saying. So it’s a serious question that deserves a long response. But but that’s gives you gives you a little bit of a lay of the land as to why is with him ambiguity.

John Reimann
I mean, there’s no doubt that he’s different from Mitt Romney. And really, even a lot of the Republicans in his camp. I’m not talking about the mainstream, or the former mainstream Republicans. But you say, well, he’s developed a coherent theory. But in your book, you describe how he’s absolutely incoherent. When he tries to explain it,, he can’t put a full sentence together even.

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Yeah, and the question is, what do we make of that? It could be that he’s making it up. But it’s also what he’s trying to describe is very, very difficult to talk about. It’d be difficult for him if if we were to try and discuss the mysteries of the universe in these terms and discuss comparative religion, and and metaphysics. That’s a difficult conversation, for anyone to have… His sloppiness – You know, that he’s not a professional philosopher. He doesn’t write. He reads a lot. But he doesn’t write that much. He wrote some some kind of crappy articles for Breitbart. He’s more though of a conversationalist. That’s the area of his production. It’s it’s not a place that is going to demand that he be as disciplined as he is. I’m making excuses for him here. But I think it’s the wrong conclusion, simply to say that because he’s inarticulate. And he really is on these matters. And in particular, that it means that there’s not an actual coherence there. Because I do suggest in the book at the same time, as there’s linguistic semantic incoherence, I do think across the number of interviews that I had with him, there were consistent ideas. There were consistent values, there was a consistent agenda as well into into how he relates to those ideas. That’s the coherency opposite, opposite the other incoherence.

John Reimann
You know, I mean, my view is that ideas do matter. If ideas don’t have practical conclusions, then they’re just sophistry. And in his case, you know… or to put it another way: the way to understand the ideas is to see what practical conclusions they lead to. And so that’s the way that we can understand Benton’s ideas.

Benjamin Teitelbaum
I agree with you. Absolutely. With one, one little asterisk. And in that I don’t believe in logical conclusions of ideas. That’s a phrase that’s used, used a lot. The the problem, the way that anthropology, sociology crashes into the world of of intellectual history, political theory, philosophy, is hypocrisy. Of course. It’s people who say that they are one thing or will do one thing, and then act an entirely different way. And that’s not a limited phenomena. And it means to me that that, you know, you can’t just say, “Okay, here’s the idea, and this is what the idea will do.”

John Reimann
Right. There’s not a simple direct clear line, from an idea to an action, or to put a different way: Everybody, ourselves included, hold contradictory ideas in our minds, and which ideas tend to dominate at one particular time can change?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Yes. And yes.

John Reimann
So it’s not like logic, where is two plus two equals four. But the world doesn’t work that simply,

Benjamin Teitelbaum
No, I mean, because two plus two equals four in the abstract, first and foremost, right,

John Reimann
Right. But sometimes four is greater than two plus two.

Matt Heimbach. He’s since dropped the overt Nazi regalia.

This is kind of an aside, but I don’t know Are you familiar with Matt Heinbech?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
The name sounds awfully familiar.

John Reimann
At the time, this was a couple of years ago, he had formed a group “The Traditionalist Workers Party.” And this was, when I read about it, this is a couple of years ago, I didn’t think very much of it, you know, that term. But I’m now starting to see, this is where kind of traditionalism has found his way in. He’s since I think he went to prison for some kind of sexual misconduct and the party collapsed. He’s now back out again, participating in the, quote, anti war movement, you know. But anyway, this is where kind of traditionalism found its way into practical, everyday politics.

Benjamin Teitelbaum
It’s very interesting, because this party, I remember when that came out, taking a look at it, passing references of it to a few colleagues and talking about it and everyone… No one was really convinced that this guy had actually read much traditionalism; it’s very hard to read. It doesn’t appeal to the average person. But it had provided a sort of symbolic banner for him. And there were small phrases on the website that suggested I really should have tried to interview him, really, if I wanted to investigate it seriously, but they were just small phrases, little catchphrases, memes, but you know, banner slogans, that that seemed to suggest that he had at least watched a YouTube video of someone talking about traditionalism or certainly, you know, something in that vein. And, and yet it collapsed. You know, another part of the story and one reason why I want to make sure people reading my book don’t think that I’m saying traditionalism is the new thing that’s going to take over populism. That’s not settled, but one thing you see is that everyone who has tried to bring these ideas into politics usually ends up self destructing in some way. And it could be because there’s something in these ideas, I think, rather it tends… it’s a co occurrence here that the ideas tend to appeal to very very reckless, overly idealistic people who are not going to be resigned to the type of coalition building and socialization that is necessary for at least for party politics these days. So yeah, in that case, this traditionalist Workers Party is very much in line with with with trends.

Benjamin Teitelbaum
I’m so sorry, John, I probably just have time for one more question here.

John Reimann
Okay. Yeah. Well, just in conclusion. How do you see…. it seems like you’re saying that traditionalism is not about to take over US politics. But it does represent kind of…. it gives a clearer picture of a more general trend in US politics, and not just the US. So my view as a socialist is the answer is a socialist movement. But how would you see the alternative to this general trend in American and really in global politics?

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Oh, my gosh, that’s a difficult, I don’t know.

I don’t… I won’t have an answer to that. I mean, to me, if you’re trying to think about, Okay, what does this mean for the future? I think that we have a level of discontent with certain modernist values that is deep and restless. And it’s finding various expressions. Traditionalism is one of them. I think it could as well express itself in a different way. You have populism that, again, is noteworthy, because of what it is not, because of its absences and its absences. It’s the the hollowness of a lot of populist visions and explanations for society are what allows such a diversity of of ideas to germinate, and it’s meant… I’m not a socialist, I’m one of these probably much reviled, centrist left wing people, in your circles. [Laughs] I’m sorry. My My instinct is to look in a different direction. I am very concerned about the loss of community, the loss of meaningfulness and the loss of sovereignty, that I think is being played upon here. And that is being instrumentalized in different ways. If socialism can address those issues very well, then I’m in favor that. I like socialism in that respect, but something needs to happen, it needs to be taken seriously. Those drives cannot be left to the voices of racism, of exclusion. They cannot be left to these hyper reactionary causes, because they will use them. They will use them to great effect. So I would much rather see the opponents of the populist right, hone in on those questions — meaningfulness, control community. We’ve known the whole time, theorists of modernity, theorists of liberalism, have always been aware of the fact that these these changes were going to harm our ability to place ourselves in the world and find a role for ourselves in society. And we’ve just kind of nodded at that, at that observation and plowed forward. So [we must have] something, something to address it.

John Reimann
So, since we have to leave it there, I’ll just leave it. Since this is for my blog site, with this column, my riff on what you’re saying is the alternative sense of community is class, to see ourselves as the world working class. And that’s the community that’s the alternative to kind of identity politics, both of the quote left and the right.

Benjamin Teitelbaum
If that will, yeah, will actually give if that will give you a sense of community and meaning.

John Reimann
Yeah, I can’t see any alternative to if you start looking at community in terms of geography, or identity, you know, in terms of your this or that or the other ethnic or religious group or gender or whatever. It inevitably opens itself up all the kinds of things that we’re grappling with and and trying to counter. And as I said, the alternative is to see yourself as part of the world working class. That’s why we support the working class in Ukraine. And or Syria, for that matter. Or Tennessee. So, anyway, thanks so much for your time, Ben.

Benjamin Teitelbaum
Yeah. You know, I do a lot of interviews. Thanks for some real hardball questions and to your wife. You’d be surprised you’d be surprised how seldom it is that someone actually puts puts those types of questions. So thank you.

John Reimann
Okay. Well, I hope that we have a chance to continue this in the future.

Further thoughts:
The interview left me with more questions than I came into it with. The main ones revolve around how a Traditionalist – Bannon or Dugin, for example – would answer these points:

• We see that different traditionalists look to different allies. For example, Bannon sees China as almost an enemy of a traditionalism, whereas Putin sees the opposite. It’s similar with Iran. So, isn’t traditionalism really just a disguised form of nationalism and isn’t it really just based on whatever the particular traditionalist sees as the ally of their capitalist class?
• As for this Traditionalist idea of turning away from crass materialism and towards some sort of higher spiritualism, consider this: The Iranian mullahs, who Dugin sees as some sort of model, are infamous inside Iran for their corruption as well as sexual abuse of young women. Or take Bannon, who used his border campaign for his personal enrichment, never mind his popular leader, Trump, who was probably the most corrupt and money grubbing president this country has ever known. I could go on and on, but my question to Bannon, et al is: “Why should anybody not see as simple rank hypocrisy your calls for some sort of higher spiritualism?” 
• Also, isn’t it a bit hypocritical for Bannon to be denouncing globalism when he is really one of the foremost practitioners of it and when he made his millions (Breitbart, Cambridge Analytica) by being a global capitalist?
• Finally, as far as the Traditionalist calls for unity around some ancient religion and some sort of national identity: That simply means that the workers should unite with the boss. We in the unions are well familiar with that. Whenever this even tends to happen, the boss will use it to play favorites, speed up the work place, cut wages, etc. And it’s the same in the political world. Any thinking, union conscious worker is all too familiar with your “ideas” and what they mean in practice.

I hope I get a chance to hear what Ben Teitelbaum thinks Bannon or somebody like that would answer these questions.