Kerry Bolton, Artists of the Right: Resisting Decadence

Kerry Bolton
Artists of the Right: Resisting Decadence
Edited by Greg Johnson
San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2012
210 pages

Hardcover: $35

Paperback: $20

Kindle E-book: $5.99

About Artists of the Right

Kerry Bolton’s Artists of the Right: Resisting Decadence is a study of ten leading 20th-century literary artists—including pioneering modernists—who were sympathetic with Fascism and/or National Socialism:

D. H. Lawrence
H. P. Lovecraft
Gabriele D’Annunzio
Filippo Marinetti
W. B. Yeats
Knut Hamsun
Ezra Pound
Wyndham Lewis
Henry Williamson
Roy Campbell

Bolton relates their political commitments to their lives, their art, and their economic, religious, and philosophical convictions. In lucid, driving prose, Kerry Boltonutterly demolishes some of the sturdiest prejudices of the liberal mind.

Advance Praise for Artists of the Right

“Kerry Bolton’s book Artists of the Right blows away the notion of right-wing philistinism and, instead, leads to a radically different assessment of the arts during the first half of the 20th century. For it now appears that almost every significant artist of the period (Pound, Yeats, Lewis) rejected both materialism and the egalitarian solutions of the Left. Bolton’s analysis is brash, opinionated, peppery, honest, and trail-blazing. In the biographies of his major figures he tends to include the material which is habitually left out or skirted over.”

—Jonathan Bowden

“Kerry Bolton is a maverick among scholars. In Artists of the Right he distills for us the political, social, and religious thinking of some of the most outstanding artists of the twentieth century in infinitely readable prose. This is a book that belongs on the shelf of every free-thinking patriot and defender of European man.”

—Leo Yankevich

“K. R. Bolton’s Artists of the Right is something that we have needed for a long time: a clear and unapologetic study of those literary and artistic figures of the last century who explicitly and forthrightly rejected leftism and left-liberalism. Marxist and socialist ideologies are too easily assumed to be the natural badges of modern artists. Bolton shows that was certainly not the case for a great many major figures of the 20th century. His straightforward exposition of the lives and work of these men shows two things: first, that many important poets, novelists, and thinkers of the 20th century were profoundly rightist in their political views; and second, that they by no means presented a seamless front of solidarity in their opinions. Their independence of mind saved them from leftist groupthink, but it also guaranteed that even among themselves they would be strongly divided on many issues. Bolton’s approach is sympathetic and appreciative, and that in itself is a welcome departure from the condemnatory or patronizing tone that a typical liberal academic would have brought to this task.”

—Dr. Joseph S. Salemi, Hunter College, C.U.N.Y.

“Kerry Bolton is the Noam Chomsky of the New Right. His double doctorates in theology and encyclopedic knowledge of 20th century history qualify him as a guru, and as such I recommend his writings on geopolitics, culture, and spirituality to anyone with more than a passing interest in these subjects. Every day since VE Day has been a Marxist holiday for the culture makers of the West. Artists on the Right is a declaration of the manifest bankruptcy of this legacy.”

—Charles Krafft

“Eye-opening, exhilarating, and inspiring, Bolton examines figures both familiar and almost unknown, constructing a counter-canon to show that, no matter what your teachers told you, the great minds of the 20th century were culturally, politically and spiritually of the Right.”

—James J. O’Meara

Contents

Introduction by Greg Johnson
D. H. Lawrence
H. P. Lovecraft
Gabriele D’Annunzio
Filippo Marinetti
W. B. Yeats
Knut Hamsun
Ezra Pound
Wyndham Lewis
Henry Williamson
Roy Campbell
Index

About the Author

Kerry Bolton holds Doctorates in Theology and a Ph.D. h.c. He is a contributing writer for Foreign Policy Journal and a Fellow of the Academy of Social and Political Research in Greece. His books include Revolution from Above (London: Arktos Media, 2011). His articles have been published by both scholarly and popular media, including the International Journal of Social Economics; Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies; Geopolitika; World Affairs; India Quarterly; The Occidental Quarterly; North American New Right; Radio Free Asia; Irish Journal of Gothic & Horror Studies, Trinity College; International Journal of Russian Studies, and many others. His writings have been translated into French, German, Russian, Italian, Czech, Latvian, Farsi, and Vietnamese.

Ordering Information

Hardcover: $35

Paperback: $20