A Review of “The Mighty Dead” by Adam Nicolson — Part 2

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A scene from the Odyssey from a Roman mosaic

A scene from the Odyssey from a Roman mosaic

Part 1

Homer was central to the Ancient Greeks’ conception of themselves and their origins. At their most holy and self-conscious moment, the quadrennial festival of the Panathenaia, the Athenians  “gathered for total immersion in the Homeric stories, drinking up the tales from which most of their great tragedies drew their plots and characters, thinking of Homer as the source of what they were.”[i] According to Nicolson, these origins are fundamentally northern. He observes how, particularly in the Odyssey, the Greeks are depicted as outsiders to the Mediterranean world, with Odysseus portrayed as an impoverished northern wanderer not entirely at home in the Mediterranean world, who, after many trials and tribulations, returns home a broken king, an outsider with few allies. While Odysseus and the other Greek chieftains conceive of themselves as noble kings, the civilized states of the Mediterranean see them as barbarians.

When Odysseus and his crew find themselves facing Polyphemus the Cyclops, the notion of the Greeks as outsiders is manifest. “Strangers, who are you?” the man-eating Cyclops asks them. “Where do you come from, sailing over the sea-ways? Are you trading? Or are you roaming wherever luck takes you over the sea? Like pirates?”[ii]  Nicolson notes that, “he may be the king of Ithaca, the son of Laertes, a man whose fame has reached the sky, but that is not how the world of the Odyssey treats him. Everywhere he arrives anonymous, not somebody but ‘nobody.’”[iii] This epithet features prominently in the same episode from the Odyssey when Polyphemus asks Odysseus his name. Odysseus replies that his name is “Nobody.” When Polyphemus is later blinded and cries out for help, the other Cyclops ask who has hurt and blinded him. “Nobody!” he answers to our amusement. Read more

A Review of “The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters” by Adam Nicolson, Part 1

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The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters is an example of that non-fiction genre so reviled by the anti-White establishment: books that celebrate the European past and the rich and world-transforming culture that emerged from it. Foundational to this culture are the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which have long been pillars of the Western literary canon. While their place in intellectual life of the West has waned over the last century (casualties of the generalized decline of a now Jewish-dominated culture), they remain as alive as ever for many readers. For author Adam Nicolson, in addition to their imperishable literary value, the Homeric epics should matter to all Europeans because through them “Homer tells us how we became who we are.”[i]

Nicolson is an English writer and journalist known for his scholarly but passionately expressed works on history, landscape and literature. The grandson of noted (and controversial) writers Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, he recalls being taught Homer at school, where his fumbling knowledge of Greek meant “it was as if the poems were written in maths.” Today most schoolchildren are unlikely to get even that far — with the majority doubtless associating Homer with The Simpsons and its derisive Jewish caricature of the White American father. Nicolson “rediscovered” Homer in middle age when he found himself electrified by the American poet Robert Fagles’ acclaimed verse translation of the Odyssey.

In The Mighty Dead Nicolson argues that the mainstream historical account of Homer is wrong. The current orthodoxy has the Iliad and the Odyssey as products of the early Iron Age Greece of the eighth century BC, or thereabouts. This was a time, often labelled the Greek Renaissance, when Greek civilization, after five centuries of decline and stagnation, saw a revival that culminated in the golden age of classical Athens in the fifth century BC. This rebirth, yet to be fully explained, coincided with a population boom and the rediscovery of bronze-making, a skill that had fallen into disuse in the preceding four centuries. This was a time in Greek history that saw the growth of

colonies, trade, improved ships, gymnasiums, coinage, temples, cities, pan-Hellenic competitions at Olympia (the first, traditionally, in 776 BC), the art of writing, of depicting the human figure on pottery and in the round, the first written law codes, the dating of history. The first tentative moves towards the formation of city-states: every one of these aspects of a renewed civilization quite suddenly appeared all over the eighth-century Aegean. Homer, in this view, was the product of a new, dynamic, politically inventive and culturally burgeoning moment in Greek history. Homer was the poet of a boom.[ii]

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Eyes on the (Demographic) Prize: Making the Most of Anti-EU and Anti-TAFTA Sentiment

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The democratic credentials of the current Western regimes are, no doubt, greatly exaggerated and indeed completely false concerning any explicit (and often even cryptic) defense of ethnic European interests.

Nonetheless, one must admit that genuine democratic debate is currently being allowed on two major issues in Europe today:

  • Membership in the European Union is being debated and decided in a referendum in Great Britain, with major conservative politicians such as Boris Johnson campaigning in favor of “Brexit.”
  • The so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) — a proposed EU-U.S. free trade agreement, also known as TAFTA — is facing considerable opposition from mainstream leftists in both politics and the media (mainly on grounds that it would strengthen corporate elites).[1]

A question then arises: What attitude should European patriots and White advocates take on these issues? Most no doubt oppose the EU and TAFTA, if only to stick it to our globalist elites. But not all do. Richard Spencer has ridiculed Brexit advocates for campaigning on a distraction. Roman Bernard has tentatively defended TAFTA on the grounds that this could be the first moves towards a Transatlantic government uniting the Western world. These issues are complex and both sides have valid points.

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Calculs Électoraux pour une Victoire de Trump

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English version: Playing the White Option: The Electoral Math for How Trump Can Win

Article d’origine publié le 10 mai 2016

Traduction par Blog Blanche Europe

Pour la cause des Blancs, et pour nos derniers espoirs de type électoral, je crois que la candidature de Trump survient vraiment à la onzième heure, ou à la dernière minute. C’est ce que disait Jared Taylor juste après que Trump se soit mis sur les rangs. Car on arrive vraiment au moment critique du point de vue de l’immigration (tant en Europe qu’aux USA). Jusqu’à présent, l’establishment républicain a été contrecarré par la base à chaque fois qu’il a essayé de régulariser les immigrés clandestins dans le cadre de sa stratégie hispanique (qui consiste à mexicaniser le parti républicain). Mais si l’investiture avait été remportée par un Jeb Bush, un Marco Rubio, un Lindsey Graham ou un John Kasich, cette résistance aurait probablement été vaincue, et de même, la résistance deviendra vaine si Hillary l’emporte et que les Démocrates prennent également le Congrès.

Trump est intervenu in extremis pour donner à notre peuple une chance d’éviter que cette régularisation ne se fasse. Mais son succès va nécessiter une victoire majeure sur le principe de “l’option blanche”. Read more

Introducing Jacobin Magazine

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Given how often Conservatism Inc. labels even the most milquetoast Democrats “socialists” and/or “communists,” it can be easy to forget about the continued existence of genuinely Marxist intellectuals and activists — the kind that hate Democrats for being sellouts, neoliberals, and imperialists. As bad as the Cultural Marxists of the mainstream left are, they still don’t hold a candle to the evil of those who openly admire Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

A good example of this school of thought is Jacobin Magazine, which was recently profiled by the liberal website Vox. Named for the French revolutionaries who killed over 40,000 people in ten months, the publication’s radicalism knows no bounds. Some examples:

—It is a measure of our current ideological morass that liberals, in their own enlightened and open-minded way, still masochistically embrace a throne-and-altar orthodoxy that subordinates the people’s will to a virtually unalterable diktat handed down by an ancient council of aristocratic, semi-deified lawgivers. — “Burn the Constitution” by Seth Ackerman

—[T]he standard liberal motto — that violence is never legitimate, even though it may sometimes be necessary to resort to it — is insufficient. From a radical emancipatory perspective, this formula should be reversed: for the oppressed, violence is always legitimate (since their very status is the result of the violence they are exposed to), but never necessary (it will always be a matter of strategy whether or not to use violence against the enemy).

— “The Jacobin Spirit” by Slavoj Žižek—The populist reactionaries of the world — Ron Paul, Marine Le Pen, and others like them — propose to re-nationalize capital, which is a complete impossibility. It is for the Left to square the circle the other way, by globalizing labor; that is, eliminating borders….The unification of the world’s workers demands this. — “The Case for Open Borders” by Jesse A. Myerson

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Donald Trump in Eugene, OR

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A Trump speech has to be experienced in person to really begin to grasp the incredible appeal this man has generated. The atmosphere inside the convention center in Eugene was electric. There were around ~5000 supporters —close to capacity, with many more outside who were, according to Trump, prevented from getting in because of fire regulations (Trump: “What are they worried about? It’s a cement floor. It’s not going to burn. Let ’em in,” to great cheers. )

I got there so 2-1/2 hours early, hoping to get a good place to stand (no seating), so many of the more obnoxious protesters hadn’t arrived yet. This is a very good video from InfoWars showing the types of people, the hatred, the Mexican flags, etc. that eventually showed up. The InfoWars reporter talks to a flag-holding anarchist/syndicalist duo who refused to talk to me. I guess it’s because I told them that they are pillars of the establishment. They just stared straight ahead.

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