Western Culture

Review of Thomas Martin’s “The Victory of Humanism”

/126 Comments/in , /by

The Victory of Humanism: The Psychology of Humanist Art, Modernism, and “Race”
Thomas Martin
Palm Coast, FL: Backintyme, 2011; 177 pages

There can be little doubt that in historical perspective, perhaps the most important upheaval in Western culture has been the decline of aristocratic culture. This is apparent, for example, in two recent books that have influenced my thinking, Ricardo Duchesne’s The Uniqueness of Western Civilization and Andrew Fraser’s The WASP Question (my review will appear in the first issue (June) of Radix, a new magazine edited by Alex Kurtagic and Richard Spencer). For Duchesne, aristocratic individualism is the key to understanding the uniqueness and creativity of the West. Fraser laments the decline of Indo-European aristocratic culture, beginning with the Puritan revolution of the 17th century and carried to its logical conclusion in America with the defeat of the South in the Civil War.

Thomas Martin’s The Victory of Humanism focuses on the decline of aristocratic culture in Western art. Following the “perfection of antiquity,” the breakthrough occurred in the Renaissance with the work of Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, and Michalangelo.

A critical observation by Vasari is that those artists achieved perfection by only portraying the beautiful. They did this by using the most beautiful examples of the human body or nature. In this way, they achieved the idealization or perfection of both body and nature.  In fact, Vasari goes so far as to say that Michelangelo was so wedded to the idea of perfection that he had a policy of never doing a portrait of a living person.This would have been descending away form the ideal in the “mind of God” or the human mind, and losing himself in the particular of the empirical.

Martin correctly points out that this sense of ideal human form is an innate part of human psychology. Evolutionary psychologists have shown that the faces that humans find attractive are generalized. That is, faces that are produced by averaging dozens of real photos are judged attractive. Martin expands on this by suggesting that “there is a certain nobility in the generalized face, which helps create the sense that it is ideal. Seeing the face that is in the mind takes the viewer above or out of this world and into the mind, the most powerful and noble part of our bodies.” Read more

Evil Genius: Constructing Wagner as Moral Pariah, Part 2

/33 Comments/in , , , /by

 

Part 2: Jewish Responses to Wagner’s Ideas

Basically ignoring whether Wagner’s views on Jewish influence on German art and culture had any validity, a long line of Jewish music writers and intellectuals have furiously attacked the composer for having expressed them. In his essay “Know Thyself” Wagner writes of the fierce backlash that followed his drawing “notice to the Jews’ inaptitude for taking a productive share in our Art,” which was “met by the utmost indignation of Jews and Germans alike; it became quite dangerous to breathe the word ‘Jew’ with a doubtful accent.” Wagner’s critique of Jewish influence on German art and culture could not be dismissed as the ravings of an unintelligent and ignorant fool. Richard Wagner was, by common consent, one of the most brilliant human beings to have ever lived, and his views on the Jewish Question were cogent and rational. Accordingly, Jewish critics soon settled on the response of ascribing psychiatric disorders to Wagner, and this has been a stock approach ever since. As early as 1872 the German Jewish psychiatrist Theodor Puschmann, offered a psychological assessment of Wagner which was widely reported in the German press. He claimed that Wagner was suffering from “chronic megalomania, paranoia… and moral derangement.”

The long-time music critic for the New York Times, Harold Schonberg (who was a Jew), described Wagner in his Lives of the Great Composers (1997) as “amoral, hedonistic, selfish, virulently racist, arrogant, filled with gospels of the superman … and the superiority of the German race, he stands for all that is unpleasant in human character.” In 1968 the Jewish writer Robert Gutman published a biography of Wagner (Richard Wagner: the Man, his Mind and his Music) in which he portrayed his subject as a racist, psychopathic, proto-Nazi monster. Gutman’s scholarship was questioned at the time, but this did not prevent his book from becoming a best-seller, and as one source notes: “An entire generation of students has been encouraged to accept Gutman’s caricature of Richard Wagner. Even intelligent people, who have either never read Wagner’s writings or tried to penetrate them and failed … have read Gutman’s book and accepted his opinions as facts.” Read more

Evil Genius: Constructing Wagner as Moral Pariah, Part 1

/79 Comments/in , , , /by

PART 1

In the 2010 feature-length documentary Wagner and Me the British celebrity Stephen Fry explored his love affair with the music of Richard Wagner. Fry, who is Jewish, homosexual, and bipolar, enjoys a multi-pronged “victim” status that has made his identity politics credentials the aesthetic equivalent of a nuclear warhead. The inevitable consequence of this (and his Leftist politics) is his constant presence in the British media. Indeed, Stephen Fry is possibly the most overrated and overexposed individual in the history of British entertainment, and has benefited enormously from the intellectual elite’s construction of Jewish genius to the point where he is routinely hailed in sections of this fawning media as a “genius” and a “national treasure.”

As well as providing another celebrity vehicle for the overrated Stephen Fry, Wagner and Me offered another platform for exploring the life, work and thinking of one of the world’s most famous “anti-Semites.” While acknowledging Wagner’s undoubted genius, Fry reminds us in portentous tones that “a shadow falls across the sublime music. It’s not only the fact that it was later appropriated by Hitler which makes some people think of Wagner’s art as tainted. It’s also because Wagner himself was outspokenly anti-Semitic.” Read more

The Conservative Revolution Then and Now: Junger and the European New Right

/52 Comments/in , /by

The conservative revolutionary writers, as with some of the European New Right commentary on them, are not the easiest writers to interpret, let alone use. Their writings nevertheless provide a necessary base for any effective socio-political action. As Vladimir Lenin wrote “Without a revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement”.  Besides the type of revolutionary bomb thrower, who goes out in a quick blaze of glory, there are many other useful types for the activist or revolutionary, as Tom Sunic noted:

Unfortunately, many self-proclaimed White racialists think they can fight the System by violent means. Jünger’s sovereign type of a nonconformist wisely watches from his watchtower and waits for the right moment before he strikes.

There is, as I noted previously, an element of self-serving ambivalence one discovers in Jünger’s writing, and I suspect this is true of other conservative revolutionary writers as well. However, his insights are still broadly admired by those familiar with his writing. Read more

The Southern Point: Remember the Alamo!? Part 3

/20 Comments/in , /by

William Barret Travis (“Buck”) is the revolutionary idealist of Davis’s book. The Alamoitself was his shining and penultimate moment as its doomed leader who refused to yield his position, thus dying in defense of it. As soon as the fighting began, Travis reportedly rushed out to the North wall and, leaning over the parapet, began blasting away with a double barreled shotgun. Almost instantly, he received a bullet through the forehead in response. He died without dropping his weapon. His final words were “Come on Boys, the Mexicans are upon us, and we’ll give them Hell!”(560).

His five years in Texas locate him at the vanguard of the revolutionary movement, going from lawyer all the way to lieutenant-colonel of a cavalry command that he never got to fully outfit (505). In fact, he had just been commissioned when he was sent to reinforce the Alamo command under J.C. Neill in January of 1836. He arrived with only 30 men and resented the assignment and the difficulty of soliciting volunteers until Neill left on February 11 due to a family illness and put Travis in charge. At that point, “he dropped all pressure to be relieved” (518).

Travis was the youngest of the three men, dying at the age of 26. He also had the best education, furnishing him with the wherewithal to promote the cause of Texas independence through his pen well before he took up the sword. His repeated passionate calls for reinforcements between February 24 and March 5 give us an eloquent and tragic glimpse into the heart of the conflict as well as a striking example of self-sacrificial bravery.

His road to Texasled directly from Claiborne, Alabamawhere he had failed in his initial professional pursuits. After being publicly humiliated by his mentor, James Dellet, in court in early 1831 for debts owed and quite possibly threatened with imprisonment by his creditors, Travis abandoned his wife and two children and headed to Texas, seeking a better fortune and promising to follow through for his family (204–5). He was only twenty years old at the time. Despite the fact that he had passed the bar after only one year of study, at the age of nineteen, had published his own newspaper, The Claiborne Herald, and by all accounts was a very hard worker and an honest man, he was unable to make a living there.Davis suggests that it may’ve just been a combination of a difficult economy and basic maturity issues (206). Alabama, at that time, may also just not have been a large enough stage. A friend commented that “he hungered and thirsted for fame — not the kind of fame which satisfies the ambition of the duelist and desperado, but the exalted fame which crowns the doer of great deeds in a good cause” (205). Read more

The Southern Point: Remember the Alamo!? Part 2

/4 Comments/in , /by

Big Jim Bowie

James Bowie is cast as an absolutely fearless, daring, and dangerous leader of men — his impulsive recklessness matched by his extraordinary ability to repeatedly overcome overwhelming odds to the astonishment of all involved. He was a man of big ideas and fortunes, and men naturally were attracted to his banner, whatever the endeavor, legal or illegal. As far as the fight at the Alamowent, however, he did not participate at all. He was deathly ill with typhoid fever and was shot, stabbed and killed while lying in his sickbed. Davissuggests that he may not have even been lucid when the Mexicans overran the compound (561). He had been sent to San Antonioby Sam Houston to collect whatever he could in the way of useful equipment and arms and then to blow up the compound because Houstonbelieved that it could not be held (493). When Bowiegot there, however, he thought it was strategically valuable as a stronghold for preventing the Mexican army from infiltrating further into Texas. On February 2, 1836, Bowie wrote Henry Smith, provisional governor of Texas, that “the salvation of Texas depends on keeping Bexar [San Antonio] out of the hands of the enemy. … We will rather die in these ditches, than give it up to the enemy. … It would be a waste of men to put our brave little band against thousands. … Again we call loud for relief” (500). Of course, they never got it.

What is important, in regards toBowieinTexas, is the role that he played leading up to theAlamo. On several occasions he had been at the forefront of the Texians’ fight for independence and yet he never held a formal military commission. Davis writes that “Ironically, the one Texian who … had seen more action in independent command then any other held no official rank whatever” (492). Read more

Interview with Viktor Orban: “A majority of European leaders have lost their faith in what made Europe great”

/143 Comments/in /by

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 4th March 2012.

In conversation with Viktor Orbán

“There is a hidden Europe”

“Nations without character and ambitions will not be able to make the European Community great”: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on national pride, Christianity, German greatness and Hungary in the eye of world politics

Translated by Peter Stuyvesant, with Tom Sunic. See also Styvesant’s “Encouraging Developments in Hungary.”

Mr. Prime Minister, you are being criticized by the EU institutions in Brussels like no other head of government. We will discuss this later. But first we are interested in how you see the state of affairs in Europe.

I have a mind map before me. And what I see there fills me with extraordinary worries. When I look at the development of the world in the next twenty years, I see on this map an ever weakerEurope. We are continually losing importance, and we are declining in numbers in comparison to the total world population and also in comparison to the earlier Europe. Our share in world trade and the global GDP continues to decline. In our European democracy and our economic and social system more and more people lose their European self-confidence, because they see that those who set up their economy and society differently than we do are more successful in ever growing numbers than we are.

Why is that?

I have this feeling that a majority of European leaders have lost their faith in what made Europe great and into an influential factor in the world. Moreover, it seems as if it would be something shameful or something forbidden to talk about this issue. We can not help to see that those who are coming up now, stand firm for their spiritual identity: the Islamic peoples to Islam, the Asian peoples to Asian traditions and their spiritual system. It’s not just about God, but also about the culture that was influenced by their traditional beliefs. We on the other hand reject the power that comes from the fact that this is the world of Christian culture. The successful ones make sure that there is no future without children and family. Read more