January 17, 2014 8 comments

Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 84
Greg Johnson interviews Charles Krafft

60:48 / 361 words

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Greg Johnson interviews Huffington Post award-winning artist Charles Krafft about a very eventful 2013, during which he was “outed” as a “holocaust denier” and White Nationalist and subjected to a media witch hunt. Topics include:

How the Krafft controversy got started
How it went viral on the web and led to interviews and print coverage
Why he stopped giving interviews
Advice for White Nationalists being interviewed
Professional fallout: being blacklisted from college speaking
Professional fallout: being dropped from a Paris exhibition
Professional fallout: The Sacramento Museum put a warning label on one of his works
How this controversy has, in the end, given him more artistic and creative freedom
The personal fallout: some friends lost but new friends gained
Letters of support from White Nationalists and local free speech supporters
On balance, he received more positive than negative responses
The shocking lack of intellectual integrity in the media and “educated” public
Professional fallout: no net loss of income, an increase in sales and commissions
New artists Charlie has met due to this controversy
Greg and Charlie conspire in public to create a New Right art journal dealing with contemporary and historical figures
The model of ‘zines like Jim Goad’s Answer Me!
The importance of Adam Parfrey’s Apocalypse Culture and Apocalypse Culture II
How whites are increasingly intellectually unplugging from the system
Culture is created on the extremes
Charlie’s Facebook page as microblog
Some final advice about how to deal with being outed as a White Nationalist
Why it helps to be self-employed
Why he has no regrets
Why truth is more important, ultimately, than the opinions of others, and why you can’t turn back once your eyes are opened to the truth.
People who are outed today have it far easier than people in the past who died for their ideas.
How the news cycle works for us: readers grow bored quickly, so the vilification will end
An invitation for writers interested in contributing to a New Right art journal or anthology to get in touch

« Thanks, But No Thanks

The Decline of Wit into Camp
Sour Cream:
Michael Nelson’s A Room in Chelsea Square »

8 comments

Carpenter says:

January 17, 2014 at 7:12 pm

Charlie Krafft is such a sweetheart. haha. Who could honestly dislike this guy?

By the way, I did see this one attempt at a possible art journal: http://www.mjolnir-magazine.com/index.html

But that seems dead in the water, so to speak. They announced it and haven’t printed or produced a thing.
Thomas Orecchia says:

January 17, 2014 at 11:24 pm

Kudos to both Greg who did a delightful job in interviewing Charley, and to Charley for being so forthcoming and open. Charley is both a brilliant artist and a wonderful personality who I never get tired listening to or reading about.

I believe that Charley, with his clarity of thought and courage to voice it, is in an ideal position to help promote our cause not only within the sphere of the avangard art subculture but also to the general art loving public.
An actual Australian says:

January 18, 2014 at 1:28 am

Greg, you’re getting very good at this!
1. Greg Johnson says:
  
  January 18, 2014 at 2:07 am
  
  Thanks
WG says:

January 18, 2014 at 6:32 am

Excellent. These broadcasts are really good.
FWM says:

January 18, 2014 at 11:11 am

Greg, it doesn’t show up in the itunes podcast feed – the last one being the interview with Richard Spencer (1/10). I listened on the page b/c who wouldn’t enjoy listening to this… so nonplussed.
1. Greg Johnson says:
  
  January 18, 2014 at 4:45 pm
  
  I will look into this. Thanks.
F.C. Stoughton says:

January 19, 2014 at 3:46 pm

This is excellent. Has anyone pointed out that this year is the centenary of the Vorticist’s BLAST! magazine? If we get ours out by July (the month that Blast was published in 1914) we will be able to fully capitalize on whatever solar cyclic mystical numerology that entails.

I have long wanted to put out something like this. But it seems Greg is best situated for giving our manifesto full impact.

Dare we engage in Marinettian air-raid typography? Or is that already too passe?
I propose a series of serrated edges cutting against all trends of art post WWII. The irony-clad hipster thinks he is being bold by “deconstructing” when in fact the true revolutionary artistic act in our age must be constructive. As Chesterton once said, or implied: any fool can dismantle a carburetor. It takes much more sophistication to assemble or invent one.

Krafft work is a great heresy not so much in that he questions the received history of the modern age, but that he dares fool those who thought his work was only trivially ironic…When in fact he explodes irony into new dimensions. Hitler as teapot not a denigration of the man, but as commentary on how denigration itself has become as much of a suburban reflex response as to bedeck like a nicknack the windowsills of any unthinking pleb.

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