The Arts and Culture

What to read? (Part 2)

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Literature: Harold Covington

Let us leave aside the political plausibility or post-historical veracity of Covington’s novels dealing with the war of White independence at the beginning of the 21st century in the Pacific Northwest. What needs to be singled out in Covington’s prose is his language, his ability to construct both real and surreal plots, and above all his skill to administer a good dose of empathy with his diverse characters.

And indeed there is a whole gallery of diverse characters in his novels — from disfranchised poor Whites from the South who were once victims of positive discrimination and who have now landed in the embattled Northwest, to ritzy and sold-out WASP politicians in DC, vying to be more Jewish than the Jews themselves. Each of his numerous characters is carefully situated in his own timeframe, each carrying his own clusters of conflicting memories, often haunting him for the rest of his life. Covington, as much as he dissects the mindset of his warring heroes does not just examine their self-proclaimed racial awareness, but focuses instead on their historical consciousness. The reader won’t find characters blaring “White power!” or sporting swastikas, or endlessly debating about the ominous Jews. The frequent monologues by his characters bear witness that their individual memories are seldom sweet. Even in a pristine environment of the Northwest Republic, residents are immersed in their own Shakespearean dilemmas of being vs. not being. In most cases the racial awareness of Covington’s characters is coupled with their reminiscences of the haunting times of bygone eras. Thus, in his latest novel Freedom’s Sons  depicting the nascent Northwest Republic, we come across a man who serves as one of the chiefs of the Northwest secret police. But this man has also a past; he is not just an empty White slate. His grandparents, back in the mid-20th century had fled communist Czechoslovakia and settled in the city of Chicago – only to discover another form of paleo-communist aka liberal insanity. Their progeny, the future settlers in the Northwest, realized that in the land of the free and the home of the brave, they were not just subjects to the terror of affirmative action, but also victims of serial burglaries and rampant Black crime. Finally, after much procrastination they decided to move to the Northwest, encountering on their way both physical and psychological roadblocks which in many ways reflected the predicaments they had once encountered in communist Europe. Read more

Hitler, Ibsen, and Political Theater

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To what extent was the Nazi movement suffused with pure theater? What explains the fascina­tion that Nazi symbols and Adolf Hitler himself had for millions, then and even today? Classic theater in Europe, especially drama, has always been viewed as serious literature, and Germany to this day has more theaters than any other country in the world. During the National Socialist period the Nazi Party made great use of theatri­cal techni­ques to embellish Party events.

In Ibsen and Hitler, Steven F. Sage assesses the impact Henrik Ibsen’s plays had on the develop­ment of Adolf Hitler’s Welt­an­schauung and place in history.  Sage, who completed the book as a scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, must be read with caution because he moves rapidly from Hitler’s appreciation of Ibsen’s plays, especially Emperor and Galilean, which is factual and convincing, to what the author considers the dictator’s slavish obsession and identification with the playwright’s other plots and characters, which is far less convincing. Always mindful that this book has been written to further traduce the National Socialist leaders of the period, nonetheless much of the material intro­duced is new to the American reader and well worth examining.

Ibsen and Hitler argues that there are much more than coincidental similarities between the characters and plot lines in Ibsen’s plays and the policies and speeches of Adolf Hitler. Indeed, textual analysis of passages from Hitler’s speeches and passages in the plays reveals parallels that could hardly be accidental. The three Ibsen plays upon which Sage bases his study are: Emperor and Galilean, The Master Builder, and An Enemy of the People. Emperor and Galilean tells the story of Julian the Apostate, a nephew of the Christian emperor Constantine the Great, and his foiled attempt to reinstate paganism in the Roman Empire. Ibsen considered Emperor and Galilean to be his magnum opus. It was first published in Norway in 1873 and was translated into German in 1899. Read more

Art in the Third Reich: 1933-1945 (Part 2)

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Ernst von Dombrowski (1896-1985), “Little Angels” (woodcut)

The Archaic Postmodernity

National Socialist dignitaries devoted much energy to the promotion of German sculptors and helped them considerably in the execution of massive bas-reliefs and in the erection of monumental stone and bronze sculptures. The political goal was obvious: to bring German art as close as possible to the German people, so that any German citizen, regardless social standing, could identify himself or herself with a specific artistic achievement.

It should, therefore, come as no surprise that the German art of that time witnessed a return to classicism. Models from Antiquity and the Renaissance were to some extent adapted to the needs of National Socialist Germany. Numerous German sculptors benefited from the logistic and financial support of the political elite. Their sculptures resembled, either by form, or by composition, the works of Praxiteles or Phidias of ancient Greece, or the sculptures of Michelangelo during the Renaissance. Read more

Art in the Third Reich: 1933–1945 (Part 1)

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Carl Spitzweg (1808–1885), The Butterfly Hunter

This is a slightly edited version of an article was first published in Ecrits de Paris (Nr. 645, July-August 2002, L’Art dans l’IIIème Reich. Translated by the author.)

When writing about or discussing the plastic and figurative arts in Germany during the period from 1933 to 1945, one must inevitably mention the art that highlighted the epoch of National Socialism. During that short and troubled period of time, art was also a reflection of modern European history, and, therefore, it must be examined, or, for that matter, conceptualized, within the larger geopolitical framework of Europe as a whole.

National Socialist culture has always been a sensitive subject, whose controversial nature is more apparent today than ever before in the ongoing media warfare between so-called anticommunists and antifascists. If one accepts the conventional wisdom, widely accepted in all corners of he world, that National Socialism was a form of totalitarianism, one must then also raise the question as to whether there were any authentic cultural successes achieved during the Third Reich at all. Certain parallels can and should be drawn between artistic efforts in the U.S.S.R. and National Socialist Germany, in view of the fact that culture in both systems was dominated by a specific ideology. Does this therefore mean that there were no valuable works of art created in the U.S.S.R. or in National Socalist Germany? What both National Socialism and Communism had in common was the rejection of “art for art’s sake” (l’art pour l’art) and the repudiation of middle-class aestheticism. Instead, both political systems favored a committed and normative approach to art, which was supposed to be a tool for the creation of the “new man.” On the other hand, from the thematic, aesthetic and stylistic point of view, the differences between art in Communism and art in National Socialism were immense. Read more

Carolina Hartley's article on Ezra Pound's ideas on money

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I am soliciting comment here on Carolina Hartley’s current TOO article on Ezra Pound’s ideas on money. Ezra Pound is a tragic figure–jailed for his pro-fascist sympathies and, as Hartley suggests, because of his unwelcome ideas on money. Pound’s fate reminds us that until the end of World War II there were quite a few major intellectual and artistic figures who had views that are vilified today. It’s important to understand what they had to say.

Kevin MacDonald, Editor

Libertarianism under intellectual scrutiny — and a call for papers

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Rand Paul’s Senate candidacy has been a godsend to the liberals. Jonah Goldberg puts it this way:

Indeed, it’s worth noting that the only people who are really jazzed to reopen the argument about the Civil Rights Act are liberals. And they have good reason: They won that argument, politically and morally. This is a fact liberals never stop reminding us, and themselves, about. Like a paunchy middle-aged man who scored the winning touchdown in the high school championship, nostalgic liberals don’t need an excuse to bring up their glory days (which were not the Democratic Party’s glory days, by the way). Give them a living, breathing politician who suggests, no matter how imprecisely or grudgingly, that the Civil Rights Act wasn’t perfect, and they’ll talk your ear off like a drunk uncle at a wedding.

I’d have to agree with Goldberg that the liberals won the argument politically — hence the liberals’ glee at finding a really fat target. But it’s not at all clear that the liberals won the argument intellectually, or even morally. Goldberg himself is quite confused about what Rand Paul is saying — conveniently, as it turns out, because he comes up with a clever argument that he seems to think absolutely destroys Paul’s position:

For the record, Paul and [Barry] Goldwater were both wrong. The libertarian position is not to defend Jim Crow but to condemn it, and not just because of its unjust bigotry but because of its economic folly that served to entrench that bigotry.

Paul weeps for the lost right of white businessmen to refuse black customers (even though he rejects the practice himself). But he fails to appreciate the perverse irony that one of Jim Crow’s greatest evils was its intrusion on the property rights of whites. Jim Crow wasn’t merely some “Southern tradition” undone by heroic good government. Jim Crow laws were imposed by government. And they banned white businessmen from serving blacks.

Based on his interview with Rachel Maddow, Rand is well aware of the distinction between private discrimination and government laws that would force people to discriminate. Paul stated quite clearly that he supports the aspects of the Civil Rights bill that struck down government laws that enforced segregation, but he opposed the parts of the law that made it illegal for private individuals or companies to discriminate on the basis of race.

So Goldberg is managing to go along with the liberals in bashing Paul, without really confronting the intellectual issue of whether the rights of individuals should include the right to personal discrimination. (Incidentally, one wonders whether Israel apologist Goldberg would condemn Israeli apartheid. I assume he would rationalize or ignore all the official and unofficial ways that Israel discriminates against Palestinians in Israel and especially in  the occupied territories, doubtless citing the “Israel is our democratic ally” mantra.)

So the intellectual and moral issues remain.  I have recently become editor of the Occidental Quarterly. (Formal announcement and plea for subscriptions TOQ later, but you can subscribe now, if you want.) Greg Johnson, the previous editor, initiated a contest for the best essay on “Libertarianism and Racial Nationalism.” (The deadline is June 1, but it will be extended to July 1. $1000 to the winner!) Great topic.

Libertarianism is a strong tradition in American history — the tradition of unfettered individualism. Eric Kaufmann’s treatment emphasizes the idea that 19th-century libertarians saw their freedom-loving ideology as an aspect of their Anglo-Saxon ethnic heritage, and as an evolutionary psychologist I agree that there is an ethnic basis to libertarian tendencies.

But Kaufmann also notes that this libertarian tendency became part of the culture of Western suicide in the 20th century. One of the things I noticed in writing the chapter on the Frankfurt School for The Culture of Critique was that these very Jewish (and therefore profoundly anti-libertarian in their own commitments) former Marxists had nothing but good things to say about individualism.  “In the end, the ideology of the Frankfurt School may be described as a form of radical individualism that nevertheless despised capitalism—an individualism in which all forms of gentile collectivism are condemned as an indication of social or individual pathology.”

So it’s not surprising that Goldberg as  a Jewish neocon presents himself as true to libertarianism — while ignoring the more difficult issue of personal discrimination.  But for us White advocates, the problem is even deeper. On the one hand, there is good reason to think that we Whites have a natural tendency to want to live free from intrusive governments and not have to march in lock step with others. That’s not to say that we can’t organize as a collective, it’s just that it’s harder for us to do.

Indeed, White advocacy is essentially a plea that Whites have collective interests and a right and an interest in organizing in order to achieve their interests in what has now become a cauldron of competing ethnic interests. Ethnic competition is always the death knell of individualism, as people organize themselves into competing groups. (That’s the real point  of the Arizona ethnic studies law: The last gasp of American individualism.) Any putative White homeland would necessarily discriminate on the basis of race, if only to secure its borders against the sort of invasion that we are now undergoing. Are Whites really so principled that that they would fail to see a moral imperative in preserving themselves, their culture, and their institutions, even if it meant that they had to discriminate on the basis of race.

It seems clear to me that libertarian individualism is indeed a culture of White suicide given the current political landscape. As Whites become a smaller and smaller percentage of the population, libertarianism will become an “okay” ideology for Whites — an officially approved harmless palliative to make them think they are intellectually honest while they sink into the sunset.

But I am open to all sorts of ideas on this topic and am definitely looking forward to reading the contributions to the special contest issue of TOQ.

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The Arizona Ethnic Studies Law: The Last Gasp of American Individualism

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Things keep getting more and more interesting in Arizona. Now they have penalized school districts that have ethnic studies courses: As reported by the NYTimes, “any school district that offers classes designed primarily for students of particular ethnic groups, advocate ethnic solidarity or promote resentment of a race or a class of people would risk losing 10 percent of its state financing.”

The people involved in teaching these courses deny that there is any advocacy of ethnic solidarity or racial resentment against Whites. And if you believe that, I’ve got some land I’d like to sell you.

Tom Horne, the state superintendent of public instruction, is the main man behind the law. He points to an incident in which all the Mexican students walked outon a speech by his deputy, a Republican Latina who was trying to counter another speaker who said that Republicans hate Latinos: “In the middle of her speech, a group of students that are in the Raza [!] studies program got up, put their fists in the air, turned their back to her. The principal asked them to sit down and listen, and they walked out on their own principal.” Sounds like a hostile act of ethnic solidarity.

The NYTimes article mentions that Horne objects to Pedagogy of the Oppressedby Paulo Freire, and the LATimes mentions Horne’s objection to Occupied America: A History of Chicanos, by Rodolfo Acuña, a professor and founder of the Chicano studies program at Cal State Northridge. Who would ever think that titles like that could lead to resentment against a certain (very evil) race?

Actually reading these books is well beyond my tolerance level. Friere’s book sounds like straight cultural Marxism right out of the Bill Ayers playbook. A reviewerquotes Friere: “Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indocrinating them to adapt to the world of oppression.”

Occupied America emphasizes the evil that Whites have inflicted on Mexicans and Native Americans in the past. An Amazon review titled “Abajo con los Gringos!” (“Down with the Gringos”) states that Acuña’s book “contributes additional heft to the indictment of White settlement and expansion in this hemisphere as the cause of immense suffering by an essentially stone-age culture at the hands of a militarily superior civilization.” Another states that Acuña

pulls up countless accounts of slaughter, rape, torture, mutilation, and abuse of Mexican men, women, children, mostly incited as a sort of blood sport by American cavalry, enlisted men, volunteers, and associates, as well as the leveling of Mexican cities and towns just for target practice. To add to the war crimes, most of the Americans involved, even the command of Zachary Taylor, were never brought up on any charges, nor even in the most slightest way, reprimanded for their actions.

One has to agree with Horne and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer that this sort of thing is likely to produce hatred toward Whites. A spokesman for Brewer stated, “Governor Brewer signed the bill because she believes, and the legislation states, that public school students should be taught to treat and value each other as individuals and not be taught to resent or hate other races or classes of people.” Horne says much the same.

So the ideology underlying the bill is to let bygones be bygones and get on with the project of getting along with each other. The intellectual basis is classic libertarian individualism. Horne puts it this way:

I believe that what’s important about us is what we know, what we can do, what’s our character as individuals, not what race we happen to have been born into. And the function of the public schools is to bring in kids from different backgrounds and teach them to treat each other as individuals. And the Tucson district is doing the opposite. They’re teaching them to emphasize ethnic solidarity, what I call ethnic chauvinism. And I think that’s exactly is the wrong thing to do in the public schools, and that’s why I introduced this legislation to give myself the authority to put a stop to it.

This libertarian ideology is indeed the last hope of those intent on avoiding a race war as the inevitable consequence of present trends. The idea is that the faces will look different as the US absorbs all these immigrants, but we’ll still have a consensus commitment to individualism — nothing but vestigial group loyalties. No group conflict. No retribution for what happened in the past.

But now that America has gone so far down the road of minority ethnic consciousness and has signed on to massive non-White immigration motivated by fear and loathing of the traditional White population, is it really possible to turn back and pretend we are all nothing more than individuals? One reason to think that this is very unlikely to happen is that individualism is a unique creation of Western culture. No other culture has developed individualist institutions, and there is no reason to suppose that the millions of non-Whites who are crowding our shores will do so. Certainly these programs of ethnic consciousness raising will do nothing but strengthen group loyalties and hatred and resentment and hatred of the White majority.

At TOO we have repeatedly emphasized that White Americans are crazy to voluntarily become a minority in a society where the non-White majority has historical grudges against them and continues to have a strong group consciousness. Hostility to the traditional people and culture of America is a powerful current among Jews, spanning the entire Jewish political spectrum, from leftist intellectuals like Susan Sontag (“The white race is the cancer of human history”) and Howard Zinn (whose A People’s History of the United States has been a staple of college history courses for three decades) to neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz (see also here). It goes without saying that these attitudes are common among Blacks, and the fact that Acuña’s work is mainstream among Latino intellectuals is yet another indication, if any were needed, that it is common among Latinos too.

All the indications are that non-Whites are coalescing into a powerful political coalition centered in the Democratic Party. This coalition is formidable in large part because of the prominenc of Jews who are such an important component of American elites in the areas of personal wealth, media and political influence, and in the legal and academic worlds.

This plea for individualism is really the last gasp of hope for avoiding a racial bloodbath in the future. It is simply inconceivable that a non-White majority led by racial and ethnic activists filled with anti-White hatred of the sort that we see every day now will somehow be magically transformed into an idyllic Neverland of individualists of all races, ethnicities and religions. Unless Whites manage to develop a separatist state or manage to massively reverse the changes of the last 45 years, they will be in a physical fight for survival.

This is not to deny that Whites have been brutal towards other peoples in the past. But it is naïve to suppose that non-Whites would behave any differently if they could have. Speaking as an evolutionist, the idea that Western culture is uniquely evil is ridiculous.

But the idea that Western culture and White people are uniquely evil have been common among the intellectual activists of the left that now dominate in the academic world, beginning with the Boasian anthropologists who dominated anthropology for most of the 20th century. The Boasians created an imaginary past expunged of ethnic violence and warfare (see here, p. 29 ff.) Non-Whites were portrayed as gift-givers and myth-makers, not at all prone to ethnic warfare.

Non-White intellectual activists are now celebrating their ethnocentrism and hostility toward Whites. Legions of them are tenured professors in departments of ethnic studies. Acuña’s department of Chicano studies at CSU-Northridge has 28 professors, and it’s the same pretty much everywhere. The Arizona legislation shows that this sort of intellectual ethnic activism also pervades the K-12 curriculum.

So Whites really have three choices:

  • Reverse the trends of minority empowerment by getting rid of ethnic studies programs and deporting illegal immigrants, as Arizona is doing. However, that won’t be enough, unless they succeed in getting the very large numbers of legal non-White immigrants to leave.
  • Stake out a White separatist area in North America.
  • Get ready for the coming race war.


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