When intellectuals cheer on fascism
Many thinkers supported fascist regimes in the 1930s, a precedent that is very disturbing today
Guillermo Altares
27 December 2024
A famous photograph taken by Louis Monier in 1977 in one of the most beautiful squares in the Latin Quarter in Paris shows three great intellectuals of the 20th century whose influence continues to this day: the philosopher Emil Cioran, the historian of religions and novelist Mircea Eliade, and the playwright Eugène Ionesco. The first two had a very dark secret to hide: their sympathy for Romanian fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, their antisemitism, and their intellectual support for a regime responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews. The third, the inventor of the theater of the absurd, of Jewish origin, survived the war and spent the rest of his life in France. They were very good friends in their youth, but their relationship was forever affected by Cioran and Eliade’s past.
