Was reviewing my notes on Eliot Neaman's Dubious Past (P. 188-189), and came across this:*
In a two-page critique of the Waldgang, a copy of which Niekisch sent to Juenger, the former editor of the national Bolshevist Widerstand compared Juenger ot Max Stirner, whose individualism was nearly solipsistic. Acording to Niekisch, Juenger doesn’t realize how indebted every individual is to the collective: indeed, he remarks, “glorious isolation” is a version of societal exploitation. Niekisch wonders why the figure of the Waldgaenger has achieved such popularity among conservatives, positing that postwar individualism is the last refuge o the European intellectual, threatened by the mass culture of America nad the Stalinist Leviathan of Russia.* * * *Niekisch detects in all of Juenger’s poses the flight from society, ”whether in Africa, as a heroic soldier, a gourmet of aesthetics, as a runaway from Hitle’rs army in the dreamy reflection of Gardens and Streets, as a mountain dweller in the cosmic sphere of Heliopolis. .. . wherever one looks, one uncovers the figure of the fleeing nihilist.” Finally, Niekisch asks, “where is the forest?” He considers the trees a natural metaphor for solitude and refuge, comparable to Rousseau’s idea of nature. AS such the forest “is the somber feeling, the intuitive sense of the inner self, emancipated from the exterior world.” Niekisch concludes with the material question, “who finances this freedom”* Curious how list members would respond to Niekisch's critiques. Best, Joel
