Guénon foresaw that German Orientalism served Nazi political ambitions before Nazism arrived

Evidence

Guénon, on the other hand, exhibited a great deal of prescience, having detected the complicity of German Orientalism in the workings of political power that was to introduce the horrors of Nazism. He patently ties the “hypothesis of ‘Indo-Germanism’ ” to politics, averring that it “scarcely exists but for political reasons: the German orientalism, like their philosophy, has become an instrument in the service of their national ambition.” What is more striking is his intuitive understanding, anticipating Arendt’s analysis of the Holocaust through Eichmann, that this complicity is neither aware of itself nor, therefore, malicious in intention, for “it does not mean that the [hypothesis’s] representatives are necessarily dishonest.” — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 320

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ in Eichmann in Jerusalem — the claim that ideological complicity need not be malicious or self-aware.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: Guénon’s essay on Indo-Germanism and its dating relative to the Nazi rise — how early did he make this link?