Featured Articles

Decline and Empire in Ancient Rome and the Modern West: A Review of David Engels’ Le Déclin, Part 1

/12 Comments/in , , /by

David Engels, Le Déclin: La crise de l’Union européenne et la chute de la République romaine—quelques analogies historiques
Paris: Éditions du Toucan, 2016, 3rd ed.

David Engels is a professor of classics at the French-speaking Free University of Brussels (ULB). While most academics and their works languish in relative obscurity, the 38-year-old Engels has already made a name for himself as a conservative cultural critic, known for his op-eds and interviews in the mainstream media, as well as for his best-seller comparing the decadence of ancient Rome and modern Europe: Decline: The Crisis of the European Union and the Fall of the Roman Republic—A Few Historical Analogies.[1]

Hailing from Belgium’s small German-speaking community, Engels writes about Europe from a refreshingly multinational perspective, drawing from English-language, French, and especially German sources, as well as, of course, the vast body of surviving Greek and Roman literature. With over 600 endnotes and numerous graphs and statistics, Engels’ book has been written with Teutonic scrupulousness.

Engels’ thesis is simple and compelling: there are many parallels between the late Roman Republic (the period roughly from the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C. to Augustus’ founding of the Principate in 27 B.C.) and today’s European Union: There is above all a general ethno-cultural decline, which makes a shift towards autocratic politics inevitable. Engels frames his provocative thesis in just such a way as to still be considered respectable enough by academia and the media, and thus be treated as a responsible but critical interlocutor.

The parallel between the late Roman Republic and today’s European Union is somewhat forced in places, but really serves as a useful framing device for comparing and discussing the social trends in these two very different societies. Specifically, Engels structures the work by comparing European public opinion on various topics (identity, family, democracy…) as expressed in Eurobarometer polls with Roman developments as expressed in the surviving sources. This somewhat strange structure nonetheless works, and I would say Le Déclin is a fine introduction to late Roman republican history. Engels furthermore recognizes that many of Europe’s symptoms of decadence are also evident across the West in general (255).

Engels’ observations on contemporary EU politics—the hollowing out of democratic processes and civil rights, economic reductionism, a growing chasm between the elite and the people, rising ideological intolerance, and so on—are all on point, and have since almost become received opinion. I will then focus especially on Engels’ analysis of Roman decadence. As will become quite apparent, the Roman experience, one of the truly epic achievements of Western political history, offers many lessons for us today. Read more

Prague, Czech Republic

/13 Comments/in /by

Sunrise at Prague Old Town Square, Czech Republic

It’s a party city—or so I’ve heard. And it’s part of the Visegrad group. I’ve been checking these special countries all off my list one by one, and Prague puts me at three out of four. It wasn’t even a deliberate decision on my part, I just got tired of the West, in all its shapes and forms.

The Czechs seem to be in a nice spot though. They got some prime real estate right smack in the sunny center of Europe. The grim dark grey gloom of Poland and Russia give way to blue skies and scattered groups of drunk Millennials sprawled out on green lawns by the historic landmarks during all hours of the day.

And, it doesn’t have a massive Roma problem like Budapest. You pick up on that very quickly.

Other than that, I’ve heard something about the city being famous for alchemy, its beautiful castle and while no one else seems to know it, I happen to have read that the first sighting of the Golem was here as well. “Nuh-uh,” they say, but a quick google search on my phone confirms the Golem story, and I show a picture to the two American girls. They say, “oh wow,” and nervously titter.

I’m kicking myself inside just as I finish forcing out a laugh as well.

I thought it would be funny and conversation-worthy, but I get the sense it creeped them out. We’re wandering in the historic Jewish Quarter, by the cemetery when I bring up the Golem. The sun is already setting.

All in all, a bad idea. And I’ve long ago noticed that normal people have this sort of voodoo-like approach towards Jewish history. Throwing a never-ending pity party makes people involuntarily shy away and reflexively shudder at stories about the Jews, regardless of context. See, these girls are as anti-anti-Semitic as they come, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think of black and white pajama-clad skeletons and twisted bearded men shuffling around in strange robes when they think about the Jewish people. That’s just a vibe killer, plain and simple.

I should have known that. I should have kept it light and funny. Irreverent and pointless. American-style. Read more

“Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark”: A Review of Holy Wrath: Among Criminal Muslims by Nicolai Sennels

/10 Comments/in , /by

Nicolai Sennels, Holy Wrath: Among Criminal Muslims
Helsingborg, Sweden: Logik Förlag, 2018.

The reader of Holy Wrath is likely to be overwhelmed by a single question: Why would a peaceful, progressive, and prosperous society such as Denmark invest resources to bring an alien and disruptive population into its midst? The book does not address this question, but it does analyze why Third World immigration, especially from Muslim countries, is problematic, and offers suggestions for ameliorating the situation.

Nicolai Sennels is a Danish psychologist who worked as a therapist at a Copenhagen juvenile detention facility from 2005 to 2008. Most of the hundreds of young offenders Sennels counseled were Muslims. In the winter of 2008 he attended a conference on immigrant integration in the Danish capital where he presented his views on the subject. His remarks were not well received by some, deemed at odds “with the core values of the Copenhagen Municipality.” He was soon forced out of his job. He used his severance pay to write Blandt Kriminelle muslimer (2009), a book widely reviewed and discussed in Denmark. It was translated into Swedish in 2017, but received the silent treatment by the establishment media there. The English language edition, translated by Maria Celander, was published in early 2018. Read more

Diplomacy in absentia: Trump searches for Russia G-spot and sundry other musings

/4 Comments/in , /by

The blame game surrounding Russia’s exclusion from the Group of Seven (G7) was just one of the many side stories piquing Western leaders in their recent display of irrelevance. It’s somewhat fitting that even the G7’s token communiqué was left in tatters—with all of its hackneyed neoliberal pledges for gender change and climate equality. Instead it was the insider anecdotes that dominated the news cycle. This summer, a remarkable array of summits is taking place, from NATO and BRICS to Finland and North Korea, but if the Quebec G7 entrée was anything to go by, we are in for a smorgasbord of sour grapes and humble pie.

Now that the 2014 reincorporation of Crimea into Russia is no longer seen by the international community as the great Anschluss of our times and given that the election meddling hysteria is not sustainable for much longer, something has to give. With Trump and Italian PM Conte expressing support for Russia’s return to the group, other members seem to have countered with a secondary strategy: they now disagree about the disagreement. Hardliners now argue that Russia is choosing to self-exclude from the Group of Seven, even neocon-supervised encyclopedia Wikipedia cites an article on Russia’s intent to leave, but contains nothing other than sardonic hypotheticals from Russian officials. Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have stated on a number of occasions that Russia never left and is in fact still waiting to resume hosting of the boycotted Sochi summit. Read more

Civilization vs Savagery: Black Criminals and the Traitors Who Import Them

/47 Comments/in , /by

Irony. It’s another over-worked term in modern popular culture. But there are times when it’s perfectly appropriate. The Dutch academic Dr Jeroen Ensink devoted his life to improving water-supplies in the Third World, thereby helping non-Whites to lead healthier lives and raise more children. He had worked everywhere from Pakistan to Malawi, but in 2015 he was based in London and “working on a large study” on the Congo for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Random Attacks Read more

Thinking about Civil War II

/101 Comments/in , /by


Lately a lot of people—31% in a recent poll—have been thinking the previously unthinkable — a civil war. Specifically, they agreed that “it’s likely that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years.” Moreover:

Women and those under 40 are more worried about a possible civil war than men and older voters are. Forty-four percent (44%) of blacks think a second civil war is likely in the next five years, a view shared by 28% of whites and 36% of other minority voters. Whites are also less concerned about political violence than the others are.

There’s no question that the level of polarization we see now is greater than perhaps any time since Civil War I. There is simply no common ground any more. Absent a complete capitulation to their policies (which is not going to happen), there is literally nothing that Trump can do that would be approved by the liberals and the left. The weeping that we saw after the election has turned into cold anger at Trump, his family (Peter Fonda wanting to “rip Barron Trump from his mother’ and put him in a ‘cage with pedophiles'”), and everyone in his administration (e.g., Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Scott Pruitt harassed). Read more

Multiculturalism, Feminism, and the Transport Rape Epidemic

/16 Comments/in , /by

“There have been rises in reported sexual offences on London Underground and London Overground networks.” Transport for London, 2017/2018 Crime Statistics Bulletin.

“The number of rapes and sex assaults of taxi and private hire passengers in London reached a 14-year high in 2016.” BBC News.

One of my all-time favorite thrillers is Richard Harmon’s claustrophobic The Hitcher (1986). Its premise is superficially simple.  A young man, Jim Halsey, is in the process of delivering a car from Chicago to San Diego when he unwittingly stops to pick up a psychopathic hitchhiker, John Ryder, who is in the midst of a murder spree. The film, as it then swiftly unfolds, is essentially a single chase sequence as Halsey attempts to escape Ryder’s obsessive and maniacal attentions and avoid becoming the latest of his victims. The film was released to great critical acclaim in Europe, where it won the Critics Award, Grand Prix, and the TF1 Special Award at the 1986 Cognac Festival du Film Policier. It was less well received in the United States due to the extremity of its rarely depicted, but often suggested, violence. Along with Rutger Hauer’s magnificent performance as the enigmatic Ryder, the overall success of the film probably resided in the way in which it subverted cherished notions about modern transport, and about the car in particular. Much of modern ‘car culture’ and associated marketing orbits an often dubious and self-contradictory rhetoric of freedom, sex, speed, escapism, youth, individualism, ostentation, and safety. Rebuking this rhetoric, The Hitcher portrays the car itself as a kind of lethal trap; a means of imprisonment in one sense, and hostile pursuit in another. Read more