His comments seem to be very much in line with a lot of Traditionalist and Perennialist thinking, which is not, in and of itself, White Supremacist. Of course, lots of Traditionalists ARE neo-Nazis, so we’re not talking about some radical jump to conclusions. Ultimately, I think it’s important if one is to legitimately battle 21st century Nazism, it’s important not to paint with too broad a brush, which just makes the opposition look scattershot and uncritical. The last thing we need is to give support to the claim that opposition to White Supremacism is merely a smokescreen for an enforced left-establishment groupthink, which I think can happen if we are too quick to label anyone with anti-Modernist views a White Supremacist.

For me, it is the last point that gives the lie to any claim that Dr Jorjani is simply a Traditionalist or Perennialist, considering that René Guénon, one of the most important Traditionalist thinkers, was Muslim. My suspicion is that Dr Jorjani is exactly what most think he is, but as Dr Wilson points out, even reprehensible views are not grounds for reconsideration, though they may call out for a strongly worded repudiation

I have only read a few things by Jorjani on righton and seen videos of him on new thinking allowed. Rather than trying to cast judement based on cursory reading, better maybe to address more deeply how we should talk about this topic. There are two extremes to avoid.

On the one hand, simply censoring people who are drawn to white identitarian views seems off. White identitarian views seem like an extension to white culture of philosophical views like Wittgenstein and Heidegger and their criticism of modernity and an alienated individuality. In saying this, I am not in any way defending the ideas that white identity is special or great or the best. In principle, white identitarianism doesn’t have to mean white supremacy, anymore than being for Indian identity means Indians are the best.

But on the other hand, for the last four hundred years white identitarianism has coincided with white supremacy (just as during the midle ages ChristIan identity coincoded with Christian supremacy, or Islamic identity with Islamic supremacy). So in our society still white identitarianism tends to express itself as white supremacy, and that leads to racial crime. Just as claims of islamic or Hindu supremacy lead to hateful violence. Real care has to be taken to avoid such violence.

What is the middle ground between these extremes? Would be great if we could address it together and make progress, instead of devolving to one or the extreme. With America becoming majority minority in a couple of decades, white identitatiranism is going to rise, not disappear; that is psychologically inevitabe and understandable. Which means distinguishing it from white supremacy is all the more important, and failure to seperate the two only empowers those who insist on not separating them. If Jorjani doesn’t separate the two, I strongly disagree with him. If he does separate the two, that is worth exploring.

Jorjani’s dissertation abstract contains the following: “The mathematical and geometric structure of scientific projections cannot model those phenomena that most strikingly manifest the spectrality of Nature. These so-called “paranormal” phenomena are perfectly normal in animals and even simpler organisms still guided by intact”. It goes on to talk about how we can regain “paranormal” abilities (he has in mind ESP and telekinesis) by abandoning western science and having the right kinds of aesthetic experiences.

Maybe this is just an extreme formulation of what turns out, after extensive philosophical caveats and clarifications, to be reasonable. Googling “Jorjani paranormal”, and listening to a couple of his interviews, inclines me to believe otherwise. He seems to be talking about “paranormal” phenomena in the Ghostbusters/Uri Geller sense.

I can understand how a good institution could grant a PhD to someone who turns out to hold abhorrent political views (white supremacy or what have you). (As we all know, there have been many, many great philosophers with abhorrent political views.) So there *may* be no shame for Stony Brook in the fact that Jorjani turned out to be what he is politically. That, it seems to me, would depend on whether the dissertation explicitly defends white supremacy or what have you.

What I can’t understand is how someone who writes a dissertation arguing that ESP and telekinesis are real and that science’s demand for observational evidence, which theories of ESP and telekinesis can’t meet, is illegitimate. I admit to not having read the dissertation, but the pseudoscience occupies a very large chunk of the dissertation abstract. So maybe there’s nothing wrong with Jorjani’s having received a PhD. I accept this as a genuine possibility. But I would really like for someone from Stony Brook (or anyone who has read the dissertation) to address this issue. The history of pseudoscience can be scholarship and a source of suitable dissertation projects. But Jorjani is peddling pseudoscience and if there’s anything we *shouldn’t* give people PhDs for, it’s peddling pseudoscience.

For the record, for those who are concerned with painting too broad a brush, or forming judgments on too cursory of a reading of Jorjani’s views, Leiter’s discussion of this rests not only the one speech he gave at the NPI conference (though, I suppose, I’m actually quite surprised people don’t think that’s enough to justify an allegation of holding white supremacists views — whether or not he said as much explicitly, in a way that is obvious to all of us, that he is an Aryan supremacist, the mere fact that he would willing give a talk at that conference that didn’t begin something like, “I’m here because I think the political beliefs represented here are problematic, and I’m hoping to change your minds…” should be enough to ring serious alarm bells). After Leiter posted about this, I spent some time reading through some of his writing and watching some of his videos. Lest anyone think the charge of neo-Nazi was being applied indiscriminately, he gave a talk in October at an identitarian event that looks to the Nazi regime as a sort of blue-print for his idea about psychic revolution.

Of course, you might think praising Hitler’s views about the Occult are separable from his ideas about how German society should be structured, but Jorjani himself concluded otherwise. He said: “However catastrophically they failed, these first postmodernists not only understood that the key to overcoming modernity lay in a psychical revolution in the sciences, but also that such a scientific revolution presupposes a political one. It cannot come about unless society has been radically reorganised into a hierarchically integrated organic state.” He says that to call such a society ‘identitarian’ would be an understatement, because once everyone has ESP or whatever, we cannot have anything that would stand between relationships of deep trust with our fellow citizens.

If we are not justified in saying that someone who thinks society ought to be identitarian, hierarchically organized, that Aryan culture is uniquely worthy of affirmation, and that while they might have failed, the Nazi’s got it right that we need this hierarchical reorganization, is a Neo-Nazi, I honestly don’t know when we would be.

I’d like to draw attention to this strange article by Jorjani:

https://www.righton.net/2016/11/05/world-religion-of-the-future/

As you can see if you follow that link, the article appears on a website called “RightOn” which proudly calls itself reactionary, promising to put the “action” in “reactionary.”

Let’s use this to look at Jorjani a bit. The article is called “The World Religion of the Future.” It kicks off with Heidegger, and a story about a Japanese student of his, who in 1919 introduced Heidegger to aspects of Zen Buddhism.

Then there’s a long bit in which Jorjani is just quoting and sometimes paraphrasing Leo Strauss on Heidegger, without giving us any clue whether he thinks Strauss was right. Then we’re really just trying to hold on tight as a train of thought zigs and zags through the mountain passes. The Indian caste system, Descartes, Nishida Kitaro, Dostoevsky, etc. All signifiers of “I’ve read everything and thought about everything.”

But if I understand it at all, the key points of the article can be phrased simply:

1. There will be a single global state — the fact is inevitable, resistance is futile;
2. The single global state will need a single globally dominant religion;
3. This ought not to be any of the three religions that trace themselves back to Abraham, because they have all sold themselves out to a “soulless global marketplace.”
4. In order to devise a world religion that has some soul and can serve in a market-transcending way the need of the coming global empire, one needs to syncretize Japanese traditions involving Zen with the Indian caste system and the German culture as reflected in Heidegger’s work.

Thoroughly ugly stuff. Of course, Japan and Germany were once allied in a struggle for world domination. India? Well … throwing in India helps sanitize the swastika, and the reference to the caste system suggests that some people are just naturally better than others, born that way: which presumably will be recognized by the world religion of the future.

India was of course part of the British Empire when Japan and Germany were allied. There was a strong Independence sentiment at the time, and independence would become a fact not long after the war. So yes there were Indians who out of principled pacifism and/or a refusal to serve their own colonial overlords, refused to co-operate with resistance to the Japanese.

Nonetheless, there were also many Indians who fought bravely against the Axis powers, notably in the two-week battle of Kohima and Imphal. This battle (or these two simultaneous battles — as the name indicates that’s a matter of interpretation) represented Japan’s furthest push westward, and the moment when the rising sun were thrown back below this particular horizon. This was the “Midway” of the BIC theater. And nearly all the troops throwing the Japanese back were Indian.

Relatedly, perhaps, there are two different sorts of swastika, a fact Jorjani doesn’t mention. The crooked arms can turn in one direction or the other.

And, yes, the idea of a single global state can and should be resisted. In large part it must be resisted because of the reasonable fear that people like Jorjani and his idols will end up running it. There must never exist the concentration of power such a presumption implies.