ABSTRACT

‘Anti-Fascism’ had become Aurel Kolnai’s creed, and in its service he began work, in English, on a critical study of the National Socialist mind, The War Against the West. Kolnai’s recognition that The war against the West was in its essence ‘a religious war’, a war of paganism against Christianity, that lent genuine significance to his deeply flawed book. After the war Kolnai remained preoccupied with events in Europe, in particular the Sovietisation of Eastern Europe. Nazism having been defeated, communism seemed clearly to present the greatest threat to whatever was left of Christian civilisation. With obvious and pained regret, Kolnai identified psychoanalysis as one of Christian Europe’s principal enemies. As the Catholic hierarchy and the Christian Social Party embraced the corporative state, Kolnai gave in to ‘fits of anti-clericalism’ and, late in 1930, transferred his allegiance to the Social Democratic Party.