Counter-Currents
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
  • Webzine
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • Mailing List
  • About
  • Contact
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Comments feed
    • Podcast feed
  • Advertise

LEVEL2

  • Webzine
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • Mailing List
  • About
  • Contact
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Comments feed
    • Podcast feed
  • Advertise
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
Print September 9, 2015 5 comments

Albion’s Hidden Numina
Penda’s Fen

Christopher Pankhurst

penda-22,293 words

Penda’s Fen was first broadcast in 1974 as part of the BBC’s long-running Play for Today series. Since then it has only been broadcast on TV once, in 1990 on Channel 4. It has never been released on video, DVD or BluRay but it has cropped up at various film festivals through the years. Fortunately, a video recording of the 1990 broadcast has been uploaded to YouTube so it is possible for anyone to watch this most unusual TV play.

Stephen Franklin is a snobbish, right-wing moralist in his last year at school. He espouses a rigid view of Christian morality that even his mother and his Anglican vicar father find embarrassingly conservative. In a sixth-form debate he praises a well-known, campaigning Christian couple. They have recently succeeded in getting banned a TV documentary investigating the historical truth of Jesus. He describes them as “a mother and a father of England who in this modern wilderness of amorality stand up alone to uphold our Aryan national family on its Christian path.”

But Stephen’s awakening sense of sexuality forces him to realize that he has homosexual desires. With this realization comes an extraordinarily tense and dialectically violent series of supernatural encounters that seem to reflect the sense that Stephen’s metaphysical world is breaking down. At one point he wakes in the night to find a Fuseli-like gnome sitting on his bed. Sitting on a riverbank he sees an angel. And in a memorable scene he meets the ghost of Edward Elgar.

By this point, his previously rigid sense of right-wing, Christian morality has been broken down. Meeting some sort of spectral version of the Christian couple he had so admired earlier, Stephen now rejects their concept of purity: “No, no! I am nothing pure! Nothing pure. My race is mixed. My sex is mixed. I am woman and man, light with darkness, mixed, mixed. I am nothing special, nothing pure! I am mud and flame!”

Ultimately, Stephen encounters a manifestation of King Penda, the last pagan king of England. The pagan king operates as a sort of presiding deity of England and blesses Stephen’s new found sense of identity: “The flame is in your hands, we trust it to you our sacred demon of ungovernableness. . . Stephen be secret. Child be strange, dark, true, impure, and dissonant. Cherish our flame. Our dawn shall come.”

This brief précis barely scratches the surface of this extraordinarily busy play. In fact, an uncontrolled excess of strange symbolism is a recurring structural flaw in the work of the writer, David Rudkin. But what is perhaps most striking of all in this film is the vast power that seems to emerge from the land and the way in which this power is handled ideologically.

The title of the play comes from a small Worcestershire village, Pinvin, which derives from the Old English, Penda’s Fen. Stephen’s gradual realization that his identity is more fluid than he had previously realized is closely connected to the etymological uncovering of the meaning of Pinvin. We are alerted to the significance of this when Stephen sees a workman incorrectly spell a road sign as ‘Pinfin’, inadvertently pointing to the earlier spelling. For Stephen, his identity has always been integrally Christian English, and the notion that either Christianity or Englishness could be undermined in any way would strike him as subversive. The realization that this small village is named after the pagan King allows for the hidden heathen past of England to rise to the surface of Stephen’s consciousness. Stephen’s ultimate encounter with Penda is a direct reckoning with the pagan heritage of the British Isles, and the final nail in the coffin of Stephen’s Christianity.

All of this is intended to undermine Stephen’s notion of an ‘Aryan’ England, something that David Rudkin is quite clear about: “that boy’s journey is toward the very opposite of a simplistic ‘purity’. That’s the naïve image of himself with which he starts out. In a series of encounters, on various levels of reality, this ‘pure’ self of his is deconstructed. Even his iconic Englishman, Edward Elgar, proves to have Celt in his blood. And those Celts themselves, who might seem original to these islands, came here once from Asian lands.”[1]

So, the point is not to alert us to a prior, more authentic version of England that existed before Christianity, but to resist the very notion of national identity itself. Rudkin explains: “At his last encounter, with Penda himself, what the old pagan king enjoins upon him is to reject the notions of belonging and ‘type’ altogether, and go out instead into a complex world, truly individuated, empowered by his own mixedness and inner contradictions, and unique.”[2]

What this all amounts to is a sort of dark night of the soul, wherein Stephen experiences numinous emanations from the English landscape that cause him to abandon his prior certainties and to adopt a more fluid and layered sense of identity.

As I intend to show, the strength of this story comes from the powerful depiction of the numinous spectres of the land that cause such a dramatic dissolution of Stephen’s identity; the weakness consists in the reconstruction of Stephen’s personality as a prescient anticipation of 1980s Left-wing identity politics. As an exercise in Right-wing hauntology, this analysis will be unique in reversing the received evaluation of Penda’s Fen’s merits that has now become orthodox amongst critics.

One of the crucial things to note about the effectiveness of Penda’s Fen as a work of drama is the powerful role that the spectral emanations play in the narrative. Almost throughout the play Stephen is haunted by various supernatural beings and hallucinatory scenarios. Where these are definitely registered as dreams or hallucinations they are filmed closer to a vérité style rather than as a surreal, hypnagogic intermission. And where the spectral beings simply appear in the narrative, as though they were entirely natural, this is deliberately intended to posit their objective presence in the landscape. Rudkin is clear about this:

I remember one moment in the dub. . . It’s that moment when the angel visits Stephen on the riverbank and the syntax is very careful. You see the objective presence of the angel first, and then you see Stephen seeing the reflection. That’s because the angel is really there, in my book. The dubbing mixer was very unhappy about that. When we did the first edit, he’d taken the bird song off the soundtrack. And I said, ‘Why have we lost the birds here?’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘because there’s an angel there.’ I said, ‘No, no, no. The birds go on. That angel is part of that context.’[3]

And this is one of the reasons why Penda’s Fen exerts such a powerful effect on the viewer. We somehow sense that Stephen’s dissolution is not simply an individual breakdown, but is connected with much wider and more powerful energies, all of which seem to touch on a sense of national identity. Indeed, these sinister emanations appear to conform to Rudolf Otto’s description of the numinous in The Idea of the Holy as the intrusion of the “wholly other.” Never is the viewer invited to feel that these supernatural beings are a psychological projection of Stephen’s troubled mind, even though that would be a rational interpretation. Another film that chose to rely on the psychological interpretation of ghostly phenomena was the 1968 adaptation of M. R. James’ Whistle and I’ll Come to You. That film does depict the ghostly apparition quite clearly as a product of the Professor’s neurosis and it consequently fails spectacularly as a work of horror fiction. Penda’s Fen by contrast shows the numinous intrusion of the sacred landscape as an objective fact and derives great power from doing so.

But at this point we have to deal with Stephen’s subsequent reconstruction as an incipient New Leftist. The emanations from the Worcestershire landscape dissolve Stephen’s ego and compel him to reengage with a different, buried England. This England is shown to be one that conforms closely to the vision of England depicted by another character, Arne, who is a socialist writer. Stephen is initially repelled by Arne (whom he even suspects might be ‘unnatural’ [i.e. homosexual]) but subsequent to his series of strange revelations, Stephen comes to recognize Arne’s England as a place where he more truly belongs. Significantly, Stephen mentions that Arne’s plays always have an ‘unnatural’ character in them. Appearing only a few years after the decriminalization of homosexuality, this was a somewhat radical idea. Naturally, Arne is a sort of synecdoche for the playwright, Rudkin, himself.

So Stephen’s reconstruction of his identity from the ashes of his numinous disintegration is at least partly guided by a rather novel idea of left-wing identity politics. To some extent this notion was drawn from thinkers of the New Left who modified conventional Marxist thinking to move away from a focus on the economic means of production and advocated for feminism, gay rights, etc. as a new means of facilitating social change. Thus, the new focus was more concerned with the cultural means of production. The subsequent and ongoing popularity of this sort of politics is probably one reason why David Rudkin’s works have not dated in the same way as some other politically committed Left-wing playwrights of the 1970s.

For Stephen, this new identity comes as a sort of mystical revelation. He becomes at one level the alchemical androgyne, experiencing the power of sacred anarchy, dissolving boundaries and coming to know the power of disobedience. For Rudkin, this is a Blakean moment whereby the shackles of religion and social conformity are broken and the light of individuation is experienced directly. But for me, as mentioned earlier, this moment of self-realization does not carry the power it is intended to. For one thing, Left-wing identity politics has revealed itself to be more about individualism than individuation. But more significantly, Stephen has merely exchanged one ideology for another. Strangely enough, this can best be understood by referring to Slavoj Žižek.

In his analysis of the John Carpenter film They Live, Žižek explains that ideology is not simply an imposition on reality; that one cannot simply take off the distorting glasses of ideology and see things for what they really are. Elsewhere he elaborates further on the notion that ideology is inscribed into our sense of self-awareness:

One does something, one counts oneself as (declares oneself as) the person who did it, and, on the basis of this declaration, one does something new – the proper moment of subjective transformation occurs at the moment of declaration, not at the moment of the act. This reflexive moment of declaration means that every utterance not only transmits some content, but, simultaneously, determines how the subject relates to this content. Even the most down-to-earth objects and activities always contain such a declarative dimension, which constitutes the ideology of everyday life.[4]

From this point of view, Stephen’s declaration of a new androgynous, pansexual, racially mixed identity is a transformative moment which is ideologically different from his previous identity but no more authentic. He has destroyed one ideologically conditioned sense of identity and replaced it with another. Certainly he has changed as a person but I don’t think that the nature of his new identity carries the weight that it needs to in order to express the sort of mystical, alchemical transformation that is intended. He has dissolved his ego into the Worcestershire landscape but then emerged with a pre-formatted identity based on the emerging idea of identity politics. This might have seemed mildly shocking in 1974 but the subsequent popularity of those ideas only seems to vindicate the reading that I am suggesting; that Stephen’s new identity is an ideological construct just as much as the one he has discarded.

So, if at one level Stephen has simply progressed from one sort of ideology to another, what is there that remains to transmit the evident power that comes from Penda’s Fen? The answer, I feel, must lie with those spectral emanations of the landscape, those ghosts and angels who attend Stephen’s period of greatest dialectical tension. Some of them (e.g. Elgar and Penda) give advice and counsel to Stephen whereas others simply appear and then disappear. It is those latter specters, I would suggest, that best exemplify the nature of the numinous. According to Otto in The Idea of the Holy, the numinous is a direct engagement with the “wholly other,” whereas traditional religions are a systematization and codification of that experience. The specters who counsel Stephen are performing the role of traditional religions, nudging (or compelling) him towards a particular ideologically sanctioned sense of identity. The spectral emanations that simply appear to Stephen without any apparent message are more genuine intrusions of the numinous. Or to put it in slightly different terms, the numinous is a moment of authentic self-realization, whereas the self-awareness of identity is a return to an ideologically inscribed projection of ego.

So, that which remains in Penda’s Fen when all that is ideological is stripped away are a few moments of silent confrontation with something that is wholly other. As soon as one attempts to conceptualize these moments one falls into ideological interpretations of one sort or another. The orthodox reading of Penda’s Fen gives weight to Stephen’s reconstruction as a New Left quasi-mystic, and this ensures its current popularity. But lying beneath this story are some of the latent energies of Albion, and it is in those mute ghosts that the enduring power of the landscape resides.

Notes

1. David Rudkin, “Mongrel Nation,” Vertigo, 2(5) Summer 2003.

2. Ibid.

3. S. S. Sandhu, ed., The Edge is Where the Centre is: David Rudkin and Penda’s Fen: A Conversation (No location: Texte und Töne, 2014), p. 46.

4. Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times (London: Verso, 2011), pp. 226-7.

 

 

Related

  • Rozhovor s Alainom de Benoistom o kresťanstve

  • Anthony Bavaria:
    The Voice of Youth

  • The Scientific Basis of Genetic Identity Politics

  • Deconstructing Our Own Religion to Own the Libs

  • Christopher Pankhurst’s Numinous Machines

  • Our Prophet:
    Christopher Lasch’s The Revolt of the Elites, Part 2

  • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 447
    New Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

  • The Union Jackal, April 2022

Tags

Christopher PankhurstEnglish identityhauntologyidentity politicspaganismSlavoj Žižekthe numinous

Previous

« The Pied Piper of Gamblin

Next

» Two Sonnets

5 comments

  1. Jarl says:
    September 9, 2015 at 4:29 am

    If I understand this correctly:

    ““One does something, one counts oneself as (declares oneself as) the person who did it, and, on the basis of this declaration, one does something new – the proper moment of subjective transformation occurs at the moment of declaration, not at the moment of the act,”

    It means that, as in Sartre’s philosophy, conscious self-representation is taken to be the core of personal identity, which is therefore factitious, or even fictitious. I don’t agree, and I doubt many readers of this site would, either. Along with that philosophical libertrarianism goes a view of freedom that is contrary to true freedom: essential a view of freedom as lawlessness, rather than the freedom to express the law of one’s true nature.

    I just wonder whether you meant that quote as approvingly as it sounds. I mean, what haooens to “the latent energies of Albion” if identity is just ideology? It’s not for nothing Zizek is a Trotskyite.

    1. Christopher P says:
      September 9, 2015 at 2:03 pm

      This is a very good question. I used Zizek’s quote because it illustrates a point regarding the construction of identity. If we (as viewers) accept that Stephen’s initial identity was an ideological construct, then consistency should compel us to see his ultimate identity as being equally an ideological construct. Critical responses to Penda’s Fen have typically treated his transformation into a pansexual, raceless androgyne as the play’s ultimate vindication: the creation of a truly ‘liberated’ personality. I was trying to demonstrate that this identity is no more authentic than the stuffy, repressed identity that he has shed. So I’m not trying to suggest that identity *should* be a matter for conscious self-representation, just that when it emerges as such it is constrained by ideological concerns, even if it happens to conform to Marxist expectations.

  2. Durtal says:
    September 9, 2015 at 4:49 am

    I find this analysis to be very persuasive. I have always thought Rudkin’s work (Penda’s Fen, Artemis ’81, and The Saxon Shore, in particular), despite his self-declared ideological intentions, suffused with a quality of ‘cthonic nationalism’.

    The term, incidentally, derives from the words of one hostile reviewer of the poet Geoffrey Hill to describe the latter’s oeuvre. Indeed Hill – with works with Radical Right-resonant titles such as Mercian Hymns and The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Peguy to his credit – might make a good subject for another article in this series!

    1. Christopher P says:
      September 9, 2015 at 2:16 pm

      Thank you for your comments. I agree with what you say about Rudkin. I think that generally in culture one is only allowed to approach these subjects through a framework of deconstruction. I’m not suggesting for a moment that Rudkin is insincere in his ideological beliefs – he isn’t – but beneath that layer of political commitment lurks something else bigger than politics.
      Geoffrey Hill would indeed make for an interesting (although difficult to write!) article. I know nothing about his politics (if he has any) but I love Mercian Hymns.

  3. Dr F says:
    September 9, 2015 at 4:59 pm

    I recall Play For Today.

    Now that subject Landscape and the Numinous or as i also see it Genius Loci is right up my street. My work has that as a central ‘subject matter’

    I believe DH Lawrence wrote a few lines on the subject Britain numinosity

Comments are closed.

If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.

Note on comments privacy & moderation

Your email is never published nor shared.

Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.

  • Recent posts

    • Remembering Philip Larkin:
      August 9, 1922–December 2, 1985

      Greg Johnson

    • The Selfie Poet

      Margot Metroland

      2

    • Philip Larkin on Jazz:
      Invigorating Disagreeableness

      Frank Allen

      2

    • Quidditch By Any Other Name

      Beau Albrecht

    • The Worst Week Yet:
      July 31-August 6, 2022

      Jim Goad

      19

    • Hunter S. Thompson:
      The Father of Fake News, Part 6

      James J. O'Meara

      2

    • The Journey:
      Russian Views, Part One

      Steven Clark

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 473
      Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • This Weekend’s Livestreams
      Ask Me Anything on Counter-Currents Radio & Anthony Bavaria on The Writers’ Bloc

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Raising Our Spirits

      Howe Abbott-Hiss

      6

    • Hunter S. Thompson:
      The Father of Fake News, Part 5

      James J. O'Meara

      11

    • The Freedom Convoy & Its Enemies

      Gunnar Alfredsson

      3

    • The China Question

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      52

    • Rozhovor s Alainom de Benoistom o kresťanstve

      Greg Johnson

    • Your Donations at Work
      New Improvements at Counter-Currents

      Greg Johnson

      13

    • Mau-Mauing the Theme-Park Mascots

      Jim Goad

      18

    • The Overload

      Mark Gullick

      12

    • Knut Hamsun’s The Women at the Pump

      Spencer J. Quinn

      3

    • Remembering Knut Hamsun
      (August 4, 1859–February 19, 1952)

      Greg Johnson

      8

    • Tito Perdue’s Cynosura

      Anthony Bavaria

    • Hunter S. Thompson:
      The Father of Fake News, Part 4

      James J. O'Meara

      4

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 472
      Hwitgeard on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Ask A. Wyatt Nationalist
      Is it Rational for Blacks to Distrust Whites?

      Greg Johnson

      29

    • سكوت هوارد مجمع المتحولين جنسياً الصناعي لسكوت هوار

      Kenneth Vinther

    • Europa Esoterica

      Veiko Hessler

      21

    • Hunter S. Thompson:
      The Father of Fake News, Part 3

      James J. O'Meara

      4

    • Yarvin the (((Elf)))

      Aquilonius

      12

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 471
      Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson & Mark Collett

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • The Worst Week Yet:
      July 23-30, 2022

      Jim Goad

      37

    • Hunter S. Thompson:
      The Father of Fake News, Part 2

      James J. O'Meara

      2

    • Real Team-Building

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      10

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 470
      Greg Johnson Interviews Bubba Kate Paris

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • This Weekend’s Livestreams
      Bubba Kate Paris followed by Mark Collett on Counter-Currents Radio & Hwitgeard on The Writers’ Bloc

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Význam starej pravice

      Greg Johnson

    • The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Reasons to Give to Counter-Currents Now

      Karl Thorburn

      1

    • Hunter S. Thompson:
      The Father of Fake News, Part 1

      James J. O'Meara

      16

    • I Dream of Djinni:
      Orientalist Manias in Western Lands, Part Two

      Kathryn S.

      31

    • مأساة الأولاد المزيفين

      Morris van de Camp

    • Announcing Another Paywall Perk:
      The Counter-Currents Telegram Chat

      Cyan Quinn

    • I Dream of Djinni:
      Orientalist Manias in Western Lands, Part One

      Kathryn S.

      34

    • The Great White Bird

      Jim Goad

      43

    • Memoirs of a Jewish German Apologist

      Beau Albrecht

      7

    • Je biely nacionalizmus „nenávistný“?

      Greg Johnson

    • The Union Jackal, July 2022

      Mark Gullick

      11

    • Normies are the Real Schizos

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      24

    • The West Has Moved to Central Europe

      Viktor Orbán

      28

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 469
      Pox Populi & the Dutch Farmer Protests on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Serviam: The Political Ideology of Adrien Arcand

      Kerry Bolton

      10

    • An Uncomfortable Conversation about Race

      Aquilonius

      24

    • The Intermarium Alliance

      James A.

      38

  • Classics Corner

    • Blaming Your Parents

      Greg Johnson

      29

    • No Time to Die:
      Bond’s Essential Whiteness Affirmed

      Buttercup Dew

      14

    • Lawrence of Arabia

      Trevor Lynch

      16

    • Notes on Schmitt’s Crisis & Ours

      Greg Johnson

      8

    • “Death My Bride”
      David Lynch’s Lost Highway

      Trevor Lynch

      9

    • Whiteness

      Greg Johnson

      30

    • What is American Nationalism?

      Greg Johnson

      39

    • Notes on the Ethnostate

      Greg Johnson

      16

    • Heidegger & Ethnic Nationalism

      Greg Johnson

      14

    • To a Reluctant Bridegroom

      Greg Johnson

      26

    • Lessing’s Ideal Conservative Freemasonry

      Greg Johnson

      16

    • Restoring White Homelands

      Greg Johnson

      34

    • Introduction to Plato’s Republic, Parts 1 & 2

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • White Nationalist Delusions About Russia

      Émile Durand

      116

    • Batman Begins

      Trevor Lynch

    • The Dark Knight

      Trevor Lynch

    • Leo Strauss, the Conservative Revolution, & National Socialism, Part 1

      Greg Johnson

      22

    • The Dark Knight Rises

      Trevor Lynch

      22

    • Introduction to Aristotle’s Politics

      Greg Johnson

      16

    • Hegemony

      Greg Johnson

      11

    • Pulp Fiction

      Trevor Lynch

      46

    • Reflections on Carl Schmitt’s The Concept of the Political

      Greg Johnson

      14

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • What Is the Ideology of Sameness?
      Part 2

      Alain de Benoist

    • On the Use & Abuse of Language in Debates

      Spencer J. Quinn

      26

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 462
      The Best Month Ever on The Writers’ Bloc with Cyan Quinn

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • A White Golden Age Descending into Exotic Dystopian Consumerism

      James Dunphy

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 460
      American Krogan on Repatriation, Democracy, Populism, & America’s Finest Hour

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • Cryptocurrency:
      A Faustian Solution to a Faustian Problem

      Thomas Steuben

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 458
      Gregory Hood & Greg Johnson on Burnham & Machiavellianism

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Brokeback Mountain

      Beau Albrecht

      10

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 457
      Greg Johnson & Millennial Woes on Common Mistakes in English

      Counter-Currents Radio

      12

    • Deconstructing Our Own Religion to Own the Libs

      Aquilonius

      20

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 456
      A Special Juneteenth Episode of The Writers’ Bloc with Jim Goad

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • “I Write About Communist Space Goths”:
      An Interview with Beau Albrecht

      Ondrej Mann

      6

    • Christianity is a Vast Reservoir of Potential White Allies

      Joshua Lawrence

      42

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 455
      The Counter-Currents 12th Birthday Celebration, Part 2

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 454
      Muhammad Aryan on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

      8

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 453
      The Counter-Currents 12th Birthday Celebration, Part 1

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Look What You Made Me Do:
      Dead Man’s Shoes

      Mark Gullick

      4

    • Rome’s Le Ceneri di Heliodoro

      Ondrej Mann

      8

    • Anti-Semitic Zionism

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      11

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 452
      The Best Month Ever on The Writers’ Bloc with Stephen Paul Foster

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • No More Brother Wars?

      Veiko Hessler

    • After the Empire of Nothing

      Morris van de Camp

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 451
      The Writers’ Bloc with Josh Neal on Political Ponerology

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 450
      The Latest Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 449
      Greg Johnson & Gregory Hood on The Northman

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • Paying for Veils:
      1979 as a Watershed for Islamic Revivalists

      Morris van de Camp

      3

    • Céline vs. Houellebecq

      Margot Metroland

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 448
      The Writers’ Bloc with Karl Thorburn on Mutually Assured Destruction

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 447
      New Ask Me Anything with Greg Johnson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 446
      James J. O’Meara on Hunter S. Thompson

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

  • Recent comments

    • Bob Roberts The Worst Week Yet:
      July 31-August 6, 2022
      And let us not forget that it was the American Indians who started the cycle of conflict with the...
    • Edward The Worst Week Yet:
      July 31-August 6, 2022
      How brave of Christopher Forth to be in the vanguard of such a cutting-edge topic like Angry White...
    • Davidcito The Worst Week Yet:
      July 31-August 6, 2022
      Christians werent 1/100th as violent as the savage cannibals that occupied this continent.  I’ve...
    • Edmund Philip Larkin on Jazz:
      Invigorating Disagreeableness
      Thanks for the thorough comment. It's strange how people who hate old things defend the formerly...
    • Vehmgericht The Selfie Poet The Left has noticed and Larkin is gradually being ‘cancelled’: a leading schools’ examination board...
    • James J. O'Meara Philip Larkin on Jazz:
      Invigorating Disagreeableness
      “Larkin often mistakes taste for philosophy” pretty much says it all, but I’d like, if I may, expand...
    • Lee The Worst Week Yet:
      July 31-August 6, 2022
      I love how classic gangsta rappers get mentioned on here way more often than I would have ever...
    • DarkPlato The Selfie Poet Larkin is one of my favorite poets.  The “prison for the strikers” poem has a second stanza which I...
    • Kök Böri I Dream of Djinni:
      Orientalist Manias in Western Lands, Part One
      That´your second best of the best essays I have read. The first best of the best is about the...
    • Kök Böri The Journey:
      Russian Views, Part One
      nobody believed any Romanov survived the Red butcher squad And later Pole Goleniewski, former...
    • Kök Böri The Journey:
      Russian Views, Part One
      Taras Bulba The real life prototype of Taras Bulba by Gogol was Nogay prince and great poet of...
    • Ray Caruso The Journey:
      Russian Views, Part One
      "Approbation" means "approval". I don't think that's what the author meant.
    • 40 Lashes Less One Hunter S. Thompson:
      The Father of Fake News, Part 6
      Thompson used the N word in interview with Charlie Rose and disturbed Charlie.
    • Franz The Journey:
      Russian Views, Part One
      That's a good tally of Brynner pictures.  I would add: "Anastasia" --  By the time this movie was...
    • Alexandra O. The Worst Week Yet:
      July 31-August 6, 2022
      Using the Bible to make any point is futile for us, for the Jews claim that book -- the entire Old...
    • Rearguard Your Donations at Work
      New Improvements at Counter-Currents
      The topic of "parasitic castration" within the GOD hypothesis is quite serious, particularly the...
    • Lord Shang The Counter-Currents 2022 Fundraiser
      Raising Our Spirits
      Thanks, though written like a lawyer or diplomat, not a philosopher. If we do hear from "Robert...
    • Eric The West Has Moved to Central Europe I am afraid the European Union was just another way for Jews to control Europeans the same way the...
    • Eric The West Has Moved to Central Europe I read the entire speech. As an American it was inspiring to hear such a mature speaker. No nonsense...
    • Hylarium Your Donations at Work
      New Improvements at Counter-Currents
      The CUCK hypothesis
  • Book Authors

    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Beau Albrecht
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Collin Cleary
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Fenek Solère
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Greg Johnson
    • Gregory Hood
    • H. L. Mencken
    • Irmin Vinson
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Jef Costello
    • Jim Goad
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Julius Evola
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Michael Polignano
    • Multiple authors
    • Savitri Devi
    • Spencer Quinn
    • Tito Perdue
    • Trevor Lynch
  • Webzine Authors

    Contemporary authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Beau Albrecht
    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Michael Bell
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Collin Cleary
    • Giles Corey
    • Jef Costello
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Ricardo Duchesne
    • Émile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Stephen Paul Foster
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Jim Goad
    • Tom Goodrich
    • Alex Graham
    • Mark Gullick
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Richard Houck
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas R. Jeelvy
    • Greg Johnson
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • Trevor Lynch
    • Kevin MacDonald
    • G. A. Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Margot Metroland
    • Millennial Woes
    • John Morgan
    • James J. O'Meara
    • Michael O'Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Quintilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Hervé Ryssen
    • Kathryn S.
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solère
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunić
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Dominique Venner
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Michael Walker
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
    • Leo Yankevich

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Julius Evola
    • Ernst Jünger
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Francis Parker Yockey
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
Sponsored Links
Alaska Chaga Antelope Hill Publishing Paul Waggener Breakey Imperium Press American Renaissance A Dissident’s Guide to Blacks and Africa The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Editor-in-Chief
Greg Johnson
Books for sale
  • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema
  • The Enemy of Europe
  • Imperium
  • Reactionary Modernism
  • Manifesto del Nazionalismo Bianco
  • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco
  • Vade Mecum
  • Whiteness: The Original Sin
  • Space Vixen Trek Episode 17: Tomorrow the Stars
  • The Year America Died
  • Passing the Buck
  • Mysticism After Modernism
  • Gold in the Furnace
  • Defiance
  • Forever & Ever
  • Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition
  • Resistance
  • Materials for All Future Historians
  • Love Song of the Australopiths
  • White Identity Politics
  • Here’s the Thing
  • Trevor Lynch: Part Four of the Trilogy
  • Graduate School with Heidegger
  • It’s Okay to Be White
  • The World in Flames
  • The White Nationalist Manifesto
  • From Plato to Postmodernism
  • The Gizmo
  • Return of the Son of Trevor Lynch’s CENSORED Guide to the Movies
  • Toward a New Nationalism
  • The Smut Book
  • The Alternative Right
  • My Nationalist Pony
  • Dark Right: Batman Viewed From the Right
  • The Philatelist
  • Confessions of an Anti-Feminist
  • East and West
  • Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Will Come
  • White Like You
  • Numinous Machines
  • Venus and Her Thugs
  • Cynosura
  • North American New Right, vol. 2
  • You Asked For It
  • More Artists of the Right
  • Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics
  • The Homo & the Negro
  • Rising
  • The Importance of James Bond
  • In Defense of Prejudice
  • Confessions of a Reluctant Hater (2nd ed.)
  • The Hypocrisies of Heaven
  • Waking Up from the American Dream
  • Green Nazis in Space!
  • Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country
  • Heidegger in Chicago
  • End of an Era: Mad Men & the Ordeal of Civility
  • Sexual Utopia in Power
  • What is a Rune? & Other Essays
  • Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • The Lightning & the Sun
  • The Eldritch Evola
  • Western Civilization Bites Back
  • New Right vs. Old Right
  • Journey Late at Night: Poems and Translations
  • The Non-Hindu Indians & Indian Unity
  • I do not belong to the Baader-Meinhof Group
  • Pulp Fascism
  • The Lost Philosopher, Second Expanded Edition
  • Trevor Lynch’s A White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • And Time Rolls On
  • Artists of the Right: Resisting Decadence
  • North American New Right, Vol. 1
  • Some Thoughts on Hitler
  • Tikkun Olam and Other Poems
  • Summoning the Gods
  • Taking Our Own Side
  • Reuben
  • The Node
  • The New Austerities
  • Morning Crafts
  • The Passing of a Profit & Other Forgotten Stories
Sponsored Links
Alaska Chaga Antelope Hill Publishing Paul Waggener Breakey Imperium Press American Renaissance A Dissident’s Guide to Blacks and Africa The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
  • Rss
  • DLive
  • Telegram
  • Gab
  • Entropy
Copyright © 2022 Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd.

Paywall Access





Please enter your email address. You will receive mail with link to set new password.

Edit your comment