In June 1947 the Jewish terrorist organization Irgun kidnapped and later executed two British army sergeants in Mandatory Palestine. This caused immense backlash in Britain and anti-Jewish rioting and graffiti claiming “Hitler was Right” only two years after the end of WW2.

“Netanyahu and his Judeo-supremacist cronies are determined to prolong the conflict for their own goals: either to remain in power or to annex the land. Israel’s actions over decades have prompted the accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The Western states go to great lengths to avoid criticism of Israel, much out of Holocaust guilt. Our worst ‘ally.’ We get literally nothing out of the ‘partnership’ other than the enmity of millions of people in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. The US has not been an honest broker. We have overwhelmingly enabled Israel’s bad behavior.”

— Colonel Nathan McCormack, American soldier who was removed from his status after criticism of Israel

@FolkishEurope

Haljand Udam (8 May 1936 – 17 December 2005) was a distinguished Estonian orientalist, translator, essayist, and scholar of Eastern cultures and religions.

Born in Rakvere to a farming family. He finished Rakvere I Secondary School in 1954 and went on to study geology at the University of Tartu, graduating in 1959. His passion for natural sciences led him to travel throughout Central Asia, which sparked a deeper fascination with Eastern languages and cultures.

Udam began studying Chinese in 1956 under Pent Nurmekund and subsequently expanded to Hindi, Persian, Urdu, Tajik, Arabic, as well as European languages like German, French, and Italian. He would continue his studies in Persian at Tashkent University (1963–1964) and later in Moscow, earning his Cand. Sci. (now PhD) in Iranian philology in 1971 with a dissertation on Persian Sufi terminology.

It would be at Moscow where Udam would be introduced to Traditionalism (with a capital T), quoting from Against the Modern World by Mark Sedgwick page 223:

''Traditionalism was only found at Moscow, through Graves's correspondent Stepanov was the agent for the introduction of Traditionalism into Estonia. He encouraged the interest in Traditionalism of Haljand Udam, an Estonian who between 1967 and 1971 was working on a PH.D. thesis at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. Udam's original interest had been in Indology, and he found Guenon's Introduction générale à l'étude des doctrines hindoues while looking for works on Indian philosophy in a library catalog. Udam was impressed, and he located and read other Traditionalist works with the help of Stepanov...He then returned to Estonia and became Estonia's first Traditionalist. There was no significant contact between Udam and Golovin's circle in Moscow, however, and Udam later became a critic of the Russian Traditionalists.''

Udam is known for translating seminal works such as:
Omar Khayyam’s “Rubaiyat”, Persian classics (Rudaki, Saadi), Ali Safi, Ibn Tufail’s “Hayy ibn Yaqdhan”, Mulla Nasreddin, and Mulla Nasreddin tales, The Quran (completed posthumously, published December 2007), all into Estonian from Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Tajik, and Uzbek.

Deeply influenced by traditionalist thinkers like René Guénon, Udam authored several collections of essays and reflections, including Loetud ja kirjutatud, Orienditeekond (2001), and Maagid, filosoofid, poliitikud (2003) including translations of Guénon's work such as Nüüdismaailma kriis (Crisis of the Modern World) 2009, Ida metafüüsika (Oriental metaphysics) 1997, and so on. Udam also wrote articles and essays on Baron Ungern von Sternberg, Mircea Eliade, Julius Evola as well as Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin. It's also possible that Udam met Dugin in Moscow, and later in 1990 when (at the time, a Soviet dissident) Dugin visited Tallinn to give a lecture.

In 2023, a posthumous anthology entitled Traditsiooni jõud (Enduring Tradition) was released, compiling his speeches, translations, and thoughts on religion, society, and Eastern wisdom. Udam was also known as one of the few Estonian intellectuals who aligned with the Conservative Revolution.

It's also written in an Arktos article, quoting:

''Moreover, according to Dzhemal’s recollections, in Soviet times, he served as a guide to Evola’s books for Haljand Udam, a prominent Estonian Orientalist and translator of the Koran into Estonian. Udam, finding himself in conflict with the Soviet reality, turned to Ride the Tiger (he read it in French) on Dzhemal’s advice at a time of deep inner crisis and was thus saved from committing suicide. One can only marvel at the spiritual and intellectual courage and fidelity of the dissidents of the time.''

As his recognition, Udam was awarded the Order of the White Star, V class in 2001 and the Estonian Cultural Prize in 2002, he served as a lecturer in Oriental Philology at Tallinn Pedagogical University from 2002 until his death. Haljand Udam is remembered as a Christian intellectual who bridged Eastern and Western spiritual traditions.

Haljand Udam’s political and philosophical views can best be described as Traditionalist, spiritually conservative, and deeply anti-modernist—in the vein of René Guénon and the Traditionalist School. While he was not overtly political in the partisan sense, his worldview had clear implications for politics, culture, and the nature of society.

Udam was heavily influenced by René Guénon, the French metaphysician who argued that modernity represented a catastrophic break from the Primordial Tradition—a metaphysical unity that underpinned all genuine civilizations. Like Guénon, he believed that traditional metaphysics (not just religious dogma, but a supra-rational, spiritual understanding of the cosmos) was the foundation of authentic human life.

Udam viewed the modern world—with its materialism, secularism, individualism, and liberal democracy—as spiritually bankrupt and disintegrative. He saw initiation, sacred knowledge, and the transmission of wisdom as necessary for human flourishing and for the survival of a culture.

Udam did not reduce religions to mere sociological expressions. Following Guénon and Frithjof Schuon, he held that major traditional religions (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc.) were different forms of the same metaphysical Truth, his translations of the Qur’an, Rubaiyat, and Sufi writings were done with deep reverence, not as mere linguistic exercises but as spiritual works.

Udam viewed Western civilization as having entered a terminal stage of decay, in line with Spenglerian and Guénonian interpretations: the loss of sacred kingship, spiritual hierarchy, and ritual order had led to a collapse of meaning. He saw liberalism, communism, and capitalist consumerism as three faces of the same anti-Traditional force—subversion of the transcendent order.

While Udam never openly declared himself anti-democratic, his writings and influences suggest that he viewed modern democratic society as a shallow system ruled by quantity, not quality—echoing Guénon’s critique of the “reign of quantity”, the “flattening” of spiritual and cultural hierarchies was not seen as liberation, but as degeneration. Technocracy, mass media, and ideological propaganda were perceived as modern tools of spiritual alienation.

He was sympathetic to forms of sacred kingship, religious leadership, or traditional priesthoods—not in a nostalgic sense, but as necessary structures for human orientation toward the Divine. Udam's worldview implicitly favors civilizations guided by metaphysical truths over secular nationalist or populist regimes.

Haljand Udam was a Christian (specifically a Lutheran), but in a manner that was deeply mystical and metaphysical, not merely confessional or dogmatic, he believed in a universal metaphysical Tradition that could be expressed in traditional forms of Christianity, Islam (particularly Sufism), or other authentic spiritual paths.

Udam was not a partisan political figure, but rather a spiritual-intellectual counter-figure to the materialism and liberalism of both Soviet and post-Soviet Estonia, he offered a quiet resistance to nihilism by restoring interest in sacred texts, symbolism, and cosmic order.