847 words
German translation here
The Singing Revolution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-fsTAnmNIY
The story is centered on the Estonian Song Festival (the Laulupidu), an event held every five years for over a century in which tens of thousands of Estonians gather to sing traditional folk songs. They sang lyrics such as “Land of my fathers/Land that I love/I can’t abandon you” in public and recited slogans such as “One day, no matter what, we will win” in private until they were a free country. The narrator claims it’s “the story of how culture saved a nation,” giving credit to “The Singing Revolution” for lifting the shackles of oppression with neither hatred nor violence.
It’s forgivable that both the national myth and the documentary’s thesis are that they defeated Bolshevism with all their singing. After all, “When 20,000 people start to sing a song, even without a conductor, you can’t shut them up.” In reality, Bolshevism imploded on its own. Up until then, both the militant “forest brothers” and the effete musical conductors were equally powerless against the daunting global juggernaut. It was, however, subversive in its own way. It played a critical role in preserving the Estonian tribal identity against dissolution so that there could be an Estonia left to restore at a later date.
The attentive American White Nationalist will find this offering littered with several parallels with our own struggle. At one point, a man opines that “At school they taught a load of crap, but my father told me how it really was.” It’s heartening to see these populations recover their senses so rapidly in the wake of widespread government brainwashing efforts. Should Global Capitalism implode in a way similar to how Global Communism imploded, will our own people recover their senses as quickly? Are we torchbearers doing everything we can to keep a sense of identity alive?
Far from it. How are we supposed to defeat “them” if we invest so much energy in attacking “them” and so little energy in reinvigorating “us”? If a bunch of White Nationalists got together and were stirred enough by a spirit of fellowship to break into song, what song would that be? I suppose those of a more neo-confederate stripe have “Dixie.” It’s actually written by a Yankee about a Black man pining for slavery, but that’s still better than nothing. And it’s not like this would be difficult to do if one single person bothered to do it. The Wobblies at the turn of the previous century pulled this off by merely re-wording some popular Christian hymns. It’s not hard.
We have over two hundred times as many people in our “nation” as Estonia and yet we lack one single subversive folk song. This suggests that our failure in this department is due to more than a mere oversight. We’re not trailing our European fellow-travelers at the practical politics because we’re too impractical. Practical politics are what people do once they’ve been inspired, once their spirits have been enraptured by a transcendent ideal. White Americans continue to exist in some abstract demographic sense, but we’re in a much worse predicament than the Estonians found themselves in. If White America isn’t already spiritually dead, it’s indubitably on its death bed.
This movie inspired me to the verge of tears, and I strongly recommend watching it. Unfortunately, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that they apparently have something that we don’t. All the pyrotechnics on The Fourth of July put together can’t match the explosive power these Estonians erupt with when they sing in unison. We have traditions worth cherishing and preserving, and we have a folk memory that ought to be preserved, but we don’t have a national song because we don’t have a national voice to sing it with.
And don’t tell me it’s “The Star Spangled Banner” . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDMvfAq7QPw
While I support practical political and intellectual projects, these won’t budge until the metaphysical matters have been addressed. This is why I consider Counter-Currents Publishing so important and encourage folks to support it. There’s something deeply wrong with America, and it’s more than can be accounted for by Jewish mendacity, Black deviance, or the Mexican invasion. In the final analysis, our vulnerability to these problems result from our failure of will, our philosophical missteps, and our general decadence. I still remain proud to be an American, but I recognize that my duty to my nation includes helping to radically re-imagine it and reinvigorate it. Only then, in the wake of that rebirth, will we have something to sing about.
8 comments
I would like to expand my mind a little from what I said today in the other thread, a comment which contains a link to a video, “The Philosophy of Beauty” which features Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (Dolorosa): an hymn that, by the way, my sister, a professional musician, loves to sing.
@ “While I support practical political and intellectual projects, these won’t budge until the metaphysical matters have been addressed.”
Metaphysical… Uh! How true: and Winnie the Pooh’s plain and “practical” approach will never do it by itself.
Yes Matt: we can successfully track the rise and fall of Western civilization through music, which belongs to the metaphysical or spiritual realm of the human mind.
Have you touched the black, rectangular monolith (of the film 2001)? One of the problems with intra-psychic emergency is that it cannot be communicated downhill; only equals can understand it. I don’t want to elaborate much this point but, just as a classic ballet dancer can dance everything but a disco dancer cannot dance ballet, someone who understands classical music can “understand” all musical genre including disco music, even if he feels like throwing up after listening it.
Music represents states of psychogenic development. When Solzhenitsyn said in the US that some American pop music was disgusting, or that it was better the regime of Francisco Franco than the liberal regimes in Germany or France, he seemed totally detached from reality.
But he was right. It is no coincidence that the 18th and 19th century Europeans who treasured Bach, Mozart and Beethoven would have never allowed masses of Neanderthalesque immigrants into their soil. Every time I listen the garbage music outside my home I “know” for sure that the West is committing cultural suicide. There is no question about it. I place quotation marks because this is a subjective knowledge, impossible to express through rational arguments.
Conversely, if the westerners still identified themselves with beauty (including classical music) at the same time of feeling disgust for the degenerate forms of art, it would be infinitely easier to detect the treason of those who are importing those millions.
Touch the monolith. I almost cried tonight after my sister sang it…
@ “…it will not deterministically lead to an awakening.”
I am afraid that’s true. But while the West increasingly becomes Gomorrah, and I not only have in mind the West’s sexual mores but its Gomorrean music as well, at least a few desperate souls might turn their minds to the art and beauty of yore.
Hegel spoke of three moments: art, religion and philosophy. Without reference to Hegelian philosophy, in part 6 of “The Philosophy of Beauty” Roger Scruton said that beauty could be seen as a substitute of religion. “Why give priority to religion? Why not say that religion is a beauty substitute? Why describe the two as rivals? The sacred and the beautiful stay side by side: two doors that open into a single space. And in that space we find our home.”
Secularized nationalists like myself (or religious nationalists like my friends Matt Parrott and FWM) could hope that the moment of art with the moment of philosophy of this webzine might, finally, lead some of the readers to their awakening.
Estonia still has birthrate well below the replacement level. in fact, it was probably higher under communism than it is today. Why?
@ “Why?” – Son of Wotan
Precisely because, as Iranian stated above, their display of nationalism is not standing “the withering Leviathan of modernity” as exemplified through “their ‘music’: the underlying boom-boom beat, electric guitars, rock n roll-inspired noise”. What a difference with the spiritually asymptotic music that my sister sang yesterday!
The Estonians’ music is poisoned indeed, which means that their minds have been poisoned. You cannot have it both ways, son of Wotan. If you want healthy reproductive rates you have to reject en bloc the modern culture of today, including its “liberation of women”, its music, the TV and nasty Hollywood films that promote both of them. The whole lot. It’s the ring des Nibelungen what is causing this mess and even Siegfried fell under the spell of it.
But you could help us to destroy the ring.
You are spot on Chechar. And what is “modernism” but Judaism on steroids.
Someone once posited that : “No great cause has ever moved forward but upon the wings of a song.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnGAgS8GzYg
This was a beautiful article about Estonians – a beautiful and courageous people. They sung while opposing bare handed the Russian OMON troops.
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