The Arts and Culture

“The Return of Odysseus” by Michael Walker

/26 Comments/in , , /by

return of odysseusThe Return of Odysseus
by Michael Walker

This is a well-written and highly readable play, and I got through it in a couple of normal working days. It tells the famous Homeric tale of the prolonged absence and final return of the eponymous Greek hero to his home island, and the resulting revenge he exacts on the unruly suitors of his wife, Penelope.

Author Michael Walker is well known in nationalist circles as the editor of Scorpion magazine, a publication which first began the not particularly easy task of introducing the ideas of the European New Right to an English-speaking audience back in the 1990s.

For this reason it a may be difficult to read this play as it should be read, namely as a purely “metapolitical” work, that is one in which the message is an indistinguishable part of the art. Instead, like me, you may feel a tendency to read it politically, and to interpret certain lines as referring to specific contemporary nationalist issues.

But while political consciousness and an awareness of the writer’s sympathies may detract from a perfect metapolitical reading, I have to say I rather enjoyed these “political flashes,” and many here will also enjoy them, I am sure.

For example, in Act Two, Scene Two, Mentor, a member of the Assembly of Ithaca, describes the sorry state that the island kingdom has fallen into since the monarch’s absence:

There is not one palace which is plundered, but the entire land. Ithaca is growing sick while the tapeworms of the market grow fat on a land for which they never fought, which they never tend and never loved. The homeland has almost as many immigrants as natives. No one respects the Ithacan customs. The children are hardened and use the lowest language of the streets. The public coffers are plundered by parasites and aliens. Money is made by distortion and usury. Honest work is badly paid. The richest men are middlemen and speculators. The labourer is poor. (p. 128)

Reading these words, it is not ancient Ithaca that rises before your mental eye, but modern Britain, or some other “enriched” part of the West. One is almost surprised not to find a reference to Muslim grooming gangs! But, then, a piece of rhetorical eloquence or a classical reference snaps you back to the ancient story world in which this is set, and, from a thinly disguised satire on our diseased modern times, the story assumes once again the elegance of timeless tragedy. Read more

Hollywood Strikes Again Cultural Marxism through the medium of big box-office movies

/62 Comments/in , /by
Los Angeles in 2154 as depicted in Elysium

Los Angeles in 2154 as depicted in Elysium

A review of Elysium (see also “Elysium: An all too real dystopian vision of the future”

It was my misfortune to stumble upon an action movie, that like so many others, did its part in insinuating Cultural Marxist propaganda into the consciousness of young viewers. Despite my disgust, I persisted in watching it because of its blatantly obvious allusions to the issue of illegal immigration. I wanted to see how Hollywood could use a sci-fi flick to convey their “progressive” message on the subject.

The plot was a classic set-up. The rich live in a “gated community”— an opulent space station orbiting the earth—while the global poor, who in this case typically sport Hispanic names (how obvious can it get), are denied access to advanced medical care and the affluent life-style of the rich residing safely above the planet. Those who attempt entry are repelled, and the vehicles they use are identified as “undocumented shuttles,” which in one scene, are ruthlessly destroyed by the order of the head of “Homeland Security.” Again, notice that “undocumented,” the deceitful liberal euphemism for “illegal,” lives on into the middle of the twenty-second century!  I half-expected Hillary Clinton to make a cameo appearance to declare that “No one is illegal!.” The plot is summarized here (see also here):

In the year 2154, two classes of people exist: the very wealthy, who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. The people of Earth are desperate to escape the planet’s crime and poverty, and they critically need the state-of-the-art medical care available on Elysium — but some in Elysium will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve their citizens’ luxurious lifestyle. The only man with the chance bring equality to these worlds is Max (Matt Damon), an ordinary guy in desperate need to get to Elysium. With his life hanging in the balance, he reluctantly takes on a dangerous mission – one that pits him against Elysium’s Secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) and her hard-line forces – but if he succeeds, he could save not only his own life, but millions of people on Earth as well.

I wish that Garrett Hardin was alive. I would love him to take this movie’s ridiculous premise apart. Even a simpleton (but alas not a liberal) would understand that “equality” between Elysium and the many, many billions of global poor would do little to elevate the latter’s living standards. There would simply not be enough resources to go around—as is the case on earth today. State-of-the-art medical care could not be affordably dispensed to everyone (as America’s gateway states have discovered !) That would be a fact of life in this dystopian society of 2154 and it is a fact of life now. If “undocumented” intruders or their political allies in office were able to open the floodgates and extend citizenship to everyone— as they are able to do in this movie—as Hardin would put it, “Low standards of living would drive out high standards.” Read more

Frank Auerbach and the transformation of British cultural life by Jewish émigrés

/4 Comments/in , /by
Head of Paula Eyles by Frank Auerbach, 1972

Head of Paula Eyles by Frank Auerbach, 1972

Interesting article in The Spectator by William Cook in the influence of mainly Jewish refugees from Germany who came to the UK in the pre-World War II period and had a transformative effect on British culture (“German Refugees Transformed British Cultural Life — But at a Price“).

Next week Frank Auerbach will be honoured by the British art establishment with a one-man show at Tate Britain. It’s a fitting tribute for an artist who’s widely (and quite rightly) regarded as Britain’s greatest living painter. Yet although Auerbach has spent almost all his life in Britain, what’s striking about his paintings is how Germanic they seem.

I find it difficult to see Auerbach as Germanic, at least not in the sense of what one hopefully would call the German national spirit. This is modernism at its determinedly ugliest, and, as in the UK, it represents an aesthetic that is out of touch with popular tastes.

Auerbach is the featured example of  the “vast wave of Germanic immigration that has transformed British cultural life — mainly for the better, but at a price.” “This wave of immigrants wasn’t just another huddled mass — it was the cultural élite of Central Europe, the best and brightest from every avenue of academia and the arts.” “Although predominantly Jewish, “they were champions of civilised, enlightened values, rather than members of a certain religion, or a certain race.” Read more

On Contemporary Opera and Wagner’s ‘Jewry in Music’

/72 Comments/in , , /by
Kirill Petrenko: “a tiny gnome, a Jewish caricature.”

Kirill Petrenko: “a tiny gnome, a Jewish caricature.”

This month marks the 165th anniversary of the publication of Richard Wagner’s landmark essay ‘Das Judenthum in der Musik.’ Almost right on cue the opera scene, particularly in Berlin, has recently played host to a series of episodes that would have the Old Sorcerer spinning in his grave. Back in June Kirill Petrenko, a Siberian-born Jewish conductor, was appointed as music director to the Berlin Philharmonic beginning September 2018. Petrenko was no-one’s first choice. His name apparently came into the reckoning only after 124 orchestra members split down the middle in an all-day election on May 11, half of them voting for the German favourite Christian Thielemann and the other half for the young Latvian, Andris Nelsons. By nightfall, the players were steeped in conflict, forcing leaders to seek a third, compromise candidate. Petrenko, 43, in his second year as music director at Bavarian State Opera, privately signalled his disinterest in the job. However, when called with the election result, he accepted with ‘euphoria and joy’. As a result, he will be the first Jewish chief conductor of the Philharmonic.

Rather predictably, Petrenko’s appointment has been greeted with enthusiasm by Jewish critics and commentators eager to indulge in the usual effort to promote their co-ethnics as geniuses. In my 2013 analysis of the Spinoza cult, I pointed out that

a recurring theme here at TOO has been the monitoring of ethnic networking in efforts to establish Jewish figures in positions of scientific, academic, artistic or cultural pre-eminence. Erudite studies by several writers, particularly Kevin Macdonald (a major theme of The Culture of Critique) and Brenton Sanderson, have shed light on individual cases (e.g., Boas, Freud, Trotsky, Rothko, Mahler) as well as the more generic processes involved in these efforts (e.g., promotion in the elite media and the academic world). Typically these efforts can be said to begin with the veneration by a group of Jews of a Jewish intellectual or artist, and is followed by the creation of an authoritarian cult-like aura around his or her personality. The process reaches its completion, in some cases after the death of the guru figure, in an aggressive Jewish marketing effort to convince society at large that this figure, together with his or her ideas, is or was of national or international—if not cosmic—significance. It is predominantly by this process that the notion of “Jewish Genius” is perpetuated.

More specifically relevant to the Petrenko case, in 2011 TOO’s Brenton Sanderson wrote ‘Why Mahler? Norman Lebrecht and the Construction of Jewish Genius.’ The piece explored the efforts of Jewish critic and author Norman Lebrecht to transform Mahler’s image “from that of a relatively minor figure in the history of classical music at mid-Twentieth Century, into the cultural icon of today.” Sanderson, commenting on Lebrecht’s Why Mahler?, writes that

The focus here is on alerting us to fact of Mahler’s towering genius, and how this genius was inextricably bound up with his identity as a Jew. Overlaying this, as ever, is the lachrymose vision of Mahler the saintly Jewish victim of gentile injustice. Lebrecht’s new book is another reminder of how Jewish intellectuals have used their privileged status as self-appointed gatekeepers of Western culture to advance their group interests through the way they conceptualize the respective artistic achievements of Jews and Europeans.

Given Sanderson’s comprehensive treatment of Lebrecht and his motivations, and the wider context of Jewish ethnic networking, I was unsurprised to see Lebrecht emerge as one of Petrenko’s earliest and most gushing admirers in the aftermath of the diminutive Jew’s election. According to Lebrecht, Petrenko is a “profound and experienced Wagnerian,” who “spares nothing in his musical passions and gives both musicians and audience the feeling that the music could not be performed in any other way.” Lebrecht assures us that Petrenko is “a genuine maestro.” Read more

Cleon Peterson’s Dystopian (Anti-White?) Future

/33 Comments/in , /by

CLEON_DETAIL

cleon_peterson004

“Glory”

It’s well known that the art world has been a fiefdom of the left for over a century, so finding art that speaks to the issues facing White America seems unlikely at best. It’s obvious enough that Cleon Peterson‘s paintings depict a world of savage violence and depravity:

Artslant 

In Cleon Peterson’s End of Days, … Peterson’s world of depravity does not simply crash and burn: it reverses polarity, inherited not by the meek but by the vengeful and merciless. Whatever days have ended, they have been succeeded by a new age of barbarism, with clear winners and losers. The triumphant take no trophies, apart from the occasional severed head, but the defeated have clearly lost more than their viscera – they have lost all semblance of control, dignity, strength and, most of all, hope.

But not all is lost, nor is it over. If that sounds like the good news, well, it’s not. The scenes of brutality are depicted in medias res, after the first blows were struck, in most cases not quite lethally. As the victims live to suffer, their tormenters seem to revel in that persistence. In fact, the tormenters, which Peterson calls the “shadows,” appear to derive their strength from their subversion.  …

Many of those scenes have featured characters with physical appearances largely undifferentiated from one another, suggesting a classless unsympathetic society, yet in this new body of work Peterson incorporates “shadow” figures and a new dichotomous order. There are haves and have-nots, but amid the havoc it’s hard to decide who’s who.

Cleon Peterson

Cleon Peterson

Read more

The Beginnings

/2 Comments/in /by

The Beginnings by Rudyard Kipling (published 1917)

It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
When the English began to hate.

They were not easily moved,
They were icy-willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the English began to hate.

Their voices were even and low,
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show,
When the English began to hate.

It was not preached to the crowd,
It was not taught by the State.
No man spoke it aloud,
When the English began to hate.

It was not suddenly bred,
It will not swiftly abate,
Through the chill years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the English began to hate.

Friedrich Georg Jünger: The Titans and the Coming of the Titanic Age

/1 Comment/in , /by

 Translated from the German and with an Introduction by Tom Sunic

Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898-1977)

Friedrich Georg Jünger (1898-1977)

Introduction: Titans, Gods and Pagans by Tom Sunic

Below is my translation of several passages from the last two chapters from Friedrich Georg Jünger’s little known book, Die Titanen, 1943, 1944 (The Titans). Only the subtitles are mine. F.G. Jünger was the younger brother of Ernst Jünger who wrote extensively about ancient Greek gods and goddesses. His studies on the meaning of Prometheism and Titanism are unavoidable for obtaining a better understanding of the devastating effects of the modern belief in progress and the role of “high-tech” in our postmodern societies. Outside the German-speaking countries, F.G. Jünger’s literary work remains largely unknown, although he had a decisive influence on his renowned brother, the essayist Ernst Jünger. Some parts of F.G Jünger’s other book, Griechische Götter (1943) (Greek Gods), with a similar, if not same topic, and containing also some passages from Die Titanen, were recently translated into French (Les Titans et les dieux, 2013).

In the footsteps of Friedrich Nietzsche and along with hundreds of German philosophers, novelists, poets and scientists, such as M. Heidegger, O. Spengler, C. Schmitt, L. Clauss, Gottfried Benn, etc., whose work became the object of criminalization by cultural Bolsheviks and by the Frankfurt School in the aftermath of WWII, F. G. Jünger can also be tentatively put in the category of “cultural conservative revolutionaries” who characterized the political, spiritual and cultural climate in Europe between the two world wars.

Ancient European myths, legends and folk tales are often derided by some scholars, including some Christian theologians who claim to see in them gross reenactments of European barbarism, superstition and sexual promiscuity. However, if a reader or a researcher immerses himself in the symbolism of the European myths, let alone if he tries to decipher the allegorical meaning of diverse creatures in the myths, such as for instance the scenes from the Orphic rituals, the hellhole of Tartarus, or the carnage in the Nibelungen saga, or the final divine battle in Ragnarök, then those mythical scenes take on an entirely different meaning. After all, in our modern so-called enlightened and freedom-loving liberal societies, citizens are also entangled in a profusion of bizarre infra-political myths, in a myriad of weird hagiographic tales, especially those dealing with World War II vicitmhoods, as well as countless trans-political, multicultural hoaxes enforced under penalty of law. Therefore, understanding the ancient European myths means, first and foremost, reading between the lines and strengthening one’s sense of the metaphor. Read more