July Fourth always inspires a nostalgic feeling in me. When I was a kid, the holiday roughly marked the halfway point of summer break. Then, and now, it also means the beginning of the dog days of summer. The term “dog days” originated with the ancient Greeks, who coined it to describe the longest days of the year, which brought with them the most oppressive sunlight. (more…)
Tag: democracy
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F. Roger Devlin talks about translating Alain de Benoist’s The Populist Moment as well as about how populism developed out of the traditional Left-Right dichotomy in this video from the 2023 Counter-Currents Spring Retreat. The text of the talk is here. (more…)
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3,032 words
The following is the text of a talk that was given at the recent Counter-Currents Spring Retreat.
The term populism has been on people’s lips in the United States since Donald Trump’s rise, and its popularity goes back a bit farther in Europe, where it had already gained currency as a kind of curse word for anti-immigration protest parties. Following the Brexit referendum and Trump’s election, books on populism began proliferating in the English-speaking world. I expect many of these were solicited by the publishers, hoping to capitalize on a suddenly fashionable subject. During the Winter of 2018-19, Counter-Currents published a series of reviews of these new titles; I contributed four. (more…)
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“Reality”: the world or the state of things as they actually exist.
One succinct way to characterize the Western “democracies” is that they are, in all their various manifestations, anti-reality regimes. For starters, they are not really what they piously call themselves — “democracies” — in any accepted definition of the term. The governments of these countries are cabals of oligarchs who use political parties as fronts for advancing the interests of backroom, money-connected players. (more…)
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6,611 words
Part 1 of 7 (Part 2 here)
One of the most startling historical truths is that Europeans invented the writing of history as “a method of sorting out the true from the false,” as a conscious search for a rational explanation of the causes of events, while rendering the results of their investigations in sustained narratives of excellent prose. The other peoples of the world, including the Chinese who maintained for centuries a tradition of chronological writers, barely rose above annalistic forms of recording the deeds of rulers or the construction of genealogies devoid of reflections on historical causation. This would not have been judged a controversial view a few decades ago. (more…)
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Part 9 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 6 Part 1 here)
In a representative “democracy,” “public opinion” is a fiction. The people have no voice. They are never consulted directly on policy matters, and they are not given any mechanism through which they can express their honest opinion. Instead, an illusion of public sentiment is artificially generated by a small minority of private actors controlling institutions with disproportionate power and influence that can circumvent organic social pressures and coerce people into conforming to their artificially-produced social norms. (more…)
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4,237 words
Part 8 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 5 Part 2 here, Chapter 6 Part 2 here)
All of them portray themselves as defenders of democracy, but they’re attacking liberal democracy from the inside and using its concepts against it. That makes these people both new and potentially dangerous. – Alejandro Castrillón, Contemporary Far-Right Thinkers and the Future of Liberal Democracy (more…)
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3,973 words
Part 7 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 5 Part 1 here, Chapter 6 Part 1 here)
The other most recent example of the progressive top-down technocratic elite transformation of society is the LGBT agenda. As the LGBT scholar Gary Mucciaroni explains, “sexual politics” in America is “a narrative about a heterosexist majority that has used religion and ideology to maintain its cultural and legal privileges.” The literature of the LGBT movement has always self-consciously identified itself as an elite, minoritarian revolution against this heterosexual majority. (more…)
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3,535 words
Part 5 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 4 Part 1 here, Chapter 5 Part 1 here)
Whereas liberal elites had always harbored a cynical and technocratic rejection of the fundamental premises of popular government, after the Second World War “the highly educated [also began] to deplore working-class movements for their bigotry, their refusal of modernity,” and their apparent instinctual tendency towards nationalism and authoritarian leaders. They became openly and dogmatically hostile towards all forms of “collectivism” and solidaristic political movements because they identified popular social organization as fundamentally incompatible with liberalism’s hallowed individual rights and liberties. Post-war elites embraced anti-fascism and anti-populism as two necessary tenets of contemporary liberalism. (more…)
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3,142 words
Part 4 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 3 here, Chapter 4 Part 2 here)
Politically, democracy means the sovereignty, not of the average man — who is a rather narrow, short-sighted, muddle-headed creature — but of a matured public opinion, a very different thing . . . In the forming of this opinion the sage has a million times the weight of the field hand. With modern facilities for mind influencing mind, democracy, at its best, substitutes the direction of the recognized moral and intellectual élite for the rule of the strong, the rich, or the privileged. — Edward Alsworth Ross, Changing America (1912) (more…)
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6,140 words
Part 3 of 9 (Chapter 1 here, Chapter 2 here, Chapter 4 Part 1 here)
Of the things for which I summoned the people to assemble,
was there one I compassed not? . . .
This is how the people will best follow their leaders:
If they are neither unleashed nor restrained too much. — Solon, circa sixth century BC (more…) -
Part 2 of 9 (Chapter 1 here)
In all countries the rights of the majority take care of themselves, but it is only in countries like England, enjoying constitutional liberty, and safe from the tyranny of a single despot, or of an unbridled democracy, that the rights of minorities are regarded. — Sir John A. MacDonald (more…)