Counter-Currents
The Counter-Currents 2015 Summer Fundraiser
My European Listening Tour
Greg Johnson
19th-century ear trumpet, Science Museum, London
834 words
Since our last update, on September 17th, we have received 21 donations totaling $6,350.00, in amounts ranging from $5 to $5,150. Three of these donations were merely the first of ongoing monthly pledges, which are especially helpful. I want to thank all our donors, new and old. You make Counter-Currents possible.
Our total is now $22,724.88. We are thus $17,275.12 from last year’s goal of $40,000 (and much further from the goal of $120,331 set by the SJW signalers at Care2petitions, who are trying to shut Counter-Currents down). With basically three weeks to go before the fundraiser ends on Halloween, I have no doubt that we will make it to 40K, but now is the time for someone to step forward with a large matching grant offer, to help us get there.
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One of our donors put forward money earmarked for another European Listening Tour. I flew to Europe on September 23rd, and I will return on October 15th.
On Saturday, September 26th, I spoke in Stockholm at a meeting arranged by Logik Förlag, the publisher of the Swedish translation of my New Right vs. Old Right. The title of my talk was “Towards the Tipping Point,” and it is based on a chapter from a book I am writing called The White Nationalist Manifesto. The audio of my talk will appear on YouTube in the near future.
Also speaking at the same event were Matt Tait from England (YouTube) and Jan Milld from Sweden (YouTube). There were about 80 people in the audience. I was told it could have been larger, but there were two other large Swedish nationalist events happening the same day, which is a nice problem to have.
As is usual with these events, for me, the most important work was done outside the official program, in informal discussions with speakers, organizers, and audience members. Of all the nationalist movements in Europe today, I find the Swedes one of the most impressive in terms of quantity and quality of young, intelligent, and highly committed people. On the surface, Sweden seems one of the most hopeless countries in Europe. But I am convinced that with the Sweden Democrats polling 27%, that surface is brittle, the system beneath it is increasingly hollow, the average Swede’s political slumbers are increasingly troubled by nightmares, and a great national awakening is stirring to life.
On Saturday, October 3rd, I spoke for the third time at the London Forum. Again, there were about 80 people present. My talk was entitled “A Refutation of Libertarianism,” also drawn from The White Nationalist Manifesto. Audio will be available in due course.
As usual, the London Forum is a virtual summit conference of nationalists from around the world. The other speakers were Sebastian Ronin from Canada, who carefully avoided making eye contact with me the whole time but had the cheek to take a swipe at me in his speech, suggesting that American White Nationalists be blackballed from the London Forum (the spirit of resentment is strong in this one) (YouTube); David Yorkshire of Mjolnir Magazine, who in my opinion gave the best talk; Ruuben Kaalep from Estonia, who spoke on nationalism in his homeland (YouTube); Kai Murros from Finland, who presented a somewhat “Old Right” (and Old Left, e.g. Maoist) but nonetheless beatific vision of a national revolution (YouTube); and Mindaugas Sidaravičius from Lithuania, who reported on nationalism in his homeland.
Again, the most productive work of the weekend came in informal discussions with a host of nationalists from England and around the world. I recorded interviews with Mindaugas Sidaravičius and Ruuben Kaalep, and I will also do interviews with David Yorkshire and Kai Murros.
I am now currently in Budapest, meeting with Swedish nationalists, Hungarian Traditionalists, and Counter-Currents writers and supporters from all over central Europe. I will report on the remainder of my listening tour when I return to the United States.
I want to thank Jez Turner and Mick Brooks of the London Forum, the team from Logik Forlag, and the donor who covered the cost of my ticket. None of these networking activities would be possible without the support of our readers. Please pledge your support today.
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Greg Johnson
22 comments
I just read Sebastian Ronin’s speech. Hmm…How shall I say this?
What a dick.
Sebastian “give me five bees for a quarter” Ronin is a millstone.
Greg, why don’t you commission a book from Kai Murros? Here is his latest speech last week:
https://endzog.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/kai-murros-london-forum-4th-october-2015/
Sometimes curiosity is a bad thing. I went to you tube and actually listened to Ronin. I am so embarrassed that he is allowed to call himself a Canadian. I think he just read The Communist Manifesto and substituted ethnic for proletariat. We have a lot on those kind of nut bars in Canada If he followed his own advice in Canada Germans, Norwegians, Scots, English, Russians, etc. would all be at logger heads. What a stupid idiot. I noticed he did not dare mention the tribe with no name.
Really, if you are going to wear red suspenders, then you must wear a plaid shirt. Every Canadian knows that. He is no Canadian.
This is good. This type of networking is infinitely better than sitting in some hall listening to Derbyshire and Weissberg drone on.
“Greg, why don’t you commission a book from Kai Murros? ”
I agree; Murros is an interesting fellow. He’s thought-provoking, even if you may disagree with him on some things.
One question: were Yockey and/or Salter mentioned at all during this trip? In other words, are any of these nationalists supporters of Yockey’s grand vision? Anyone aware of Salter’s EGI thesis?
I will talk to Murros. Yes, he is always thought provoking, and he is capable of civil disagreement.
Salter was not mentioned. Yockey was actually mentioned along with Ezra Pound and Michael O’Meara by Ronin, for what is it worth.
Too bad it was only Ronin. And it’s puzzling that Salter is not better known in Europe, as he wrote OGI while working in Germany. That may be another split in activism: between the more scientific and empirical Anglosphere tradition and the more existentialist and “spiritual” continental European tradition. Yes, Greg was at the London Forum, but it doesn’t seem like there were lots of science-oriented empirical “Anglosphere” types there.
Unlike the non-Christian/Christian divide, I think the divide described above is capable of being solved, but folks who support the work of both Salter and Yockey.
What is your email address Mr. Johnson?
Theodore, do you have any suggestions on how Frank Salter’s work might be more effectively promoted and popularized, and thus established as a key ideological reference among White nationalists? I’m formulating some ideas on some related matters, but I’m curious as to what you think on this matter.
I recall that Udo Voigt, the former chairman of the NPD, remarked in an interview that the NPD counted ethologists like Konrad Lorenz and Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt among its ideological influences. That might indicate a receptivity on the part of the NPD to ideas like those of Salter. However, Salter’s On Genetic Interests doesn’t appear to have been translated into German or any other language.
It’s truly perverse how some extremely valuable work has been effectively ignored and abandoned.
This is a good question, and one I’ve been coming up against for the past decade, with no easy solution.
At this site:
http://eginotes.blogspot.com/
I’ve tried to summarize the EGI hypothesis in a brief essay, and then translated it (crudely, using online tools) in a variety of different languages (see post headings under “EGI”).
Over the years, I contacted various European nationalist organizations, sending them the essay in their native language. Typically, I get no response. I think Normal Lowell briefly mentioned Salter in one of his books, and that’s it.
I get the impression that continental European nationalists are not interested in empirical science, the NPD comments notwithstanding. I’m not sure why Salter is not getting a better reception in the UK or in his native Australia, or in Canada. The American “movement,” well….
If you have nationalist contacts, please forward to them the brief EGI essay in their language, if possible…maybe that would stimulate interest in Salter’s complete work.
We need to concentrate on the nationalist leadership…the better, smarter, more articulate ones. If some nationalist leader in a European nation really gets to understand Salter, and puts the thesis in the language that others can better understand (ethny = kin = family), that would be helpful.
I myself have failed to generate that interest. Maybe someone else, with better contacts, can do better.
I think the following items might be key considerations with regard to promoting and popularizing Frank Salter’s work:
1. A detailed stocktake or study of Salter’s work as it now exists and of its reception among White nationalists.
2. Summarizing Everett M. Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations, Scott Berkun observes that “new ideas spread at speeds determined by psychology and sociology, not the abstract merits of those new ideas.” (Scott Berkun, The Myths of Innovation [Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2010], p. 65.) Berkun also notes that Rogers identifies five factors that influence the diffusion of innovations: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. He comments (p. 66): “While there’s a lot to be said for raising bars and pushing envelopes, breakthroughs happen for societies when innovations diffuse, not when they remain forever ‘ahead of their time.'”
3. What factors might advance or retard the spread of Salter’s ideas among White nationalists? What does Salter’s work mean for White nationalism and White nationalists? What can it contribute to White nationalism, by itself and in combination with other things? What is the scope of Salter’s work, and to what degree is it compatible and interoperable, so to speak, with that of others? What would be its proper place in White nationalism? What does it challenge and what resistance (in the largest sense of the term) might it generate?
I have the impression that you see the work of Salter and Yockey as having an architectonic function and value (i.e., “of or pertaining to construction; directive, controlling; pertaining to the systematization of knowledge”).
Are we dealing with C. P. Snow’s “two cultures” here (i.e., a split between the humanities and the sciences)? You referred above to a split between “the more scientific and empirical Anglosphere tradition and the more existentialist and ‘spiritual’ continental European tradition.” I think the ideal would be to create a tradition that can draw upon both traditions you refer to, and that would have a thoroughly political teleology and teleonomy. (By the way, both Lothrop Stoddard and Dominique Venner advocated a humanism informed by the life sciences, which they respectively dubbed “scientific humanism” and “virile humanism.” Their humanism was secular, civilizational, and racial, rather than religious or universalist.)
This is off-topic, but I wonder to what degree the prestige accorded to Thomas S. Kuhn’s celebrated work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is attributable to (1) the merits of Kuhn’s works; (2) the fact that Kuhn was a Jew and could therefore benefit from Jewish ethnic networking; and (3) the utility of Kuhn’s thesis for rewriting the narrative (one might say that the narrative is rewritten from right to left, just like Hebrew).
4. What changes does Salter’s work call for with regard to White nationalist ideology and discourse? What work does it call for? By what means could and should Salter’s work be developed and popularized among White nationalists, inside and outside the English-speaking world? What does it call for with regard to theoretical development, doctrinal articulation, and cultural diffusion? How might Salter’s work be adapted to discourse (which can range from complex theoretical systems to simple slogans and soundbites)?
The distinctions between theory, doctrine, and discourse are worth noting. At present, Salter’s work is effectively a theory, not a doctrine or a discourse that one can readily encounter and easily assimilate, and On Genetic Interests is just one book among many.
5. What exactly do you mean when you refer to “the nationalist leadership”? Adapting Salter’s work is more metapolitical than political, which means that the relevant leaders and cadres will consist more of thinkers, writers, translators, editors, and publishers than the leaders of nationalist political organizations.
It might be better to focus more on the receivers and amplifiers, so to speak, than the loudspeakers.
6. What does it mean to weaponize doctrines and discourse? I should outline my considerations on this matter later, addressing discourse in static and dynamic terms.
I realize that the above might come across as jargon-heavy, pretentious, and poorly articulated. It’s a very rough sketch of things to address later.
Those are all interesting comments and points and certainly not pretentious or poorly articulated. I admit some of the jargon I’m not familiar with.
Those questions are not anything that can, or should, be answered quickly now by a comment here on the post thread. Instead, I see these questions as a (very useful) outline for future analysis by myself and others (including Proofreader or anyone else interested),
One thing I can say now is that, yes, Snow’s division is sort of what I have in mind. For example, I have contacts in both camps. The empiricists look at the work of Yockey, or the interest of some activists with Nietzsche and Heidegger and shake their heads sadly. “What’s all that about,” they mutter, thinking it subjective and irrelevant to problems they define in more precise and quantitative terms.
On the other hand, those on the other side dismiss Salter and racialist empiricism as “shallow zoology” and assert that sterile science has no answers, and is part of the problem.
Adherents of those two viewpoints can likely express their objections better than I, who span both viewpoints.
In any case, thank you for those questions/comments, which I have saved and will also share with potentially interested parties.
Theodore,
I’m thinking of rewriting my previous comment so that it more clearly outlines issues, defines terminology, and specifies references, and having Greg forward it to you. I’m not happy with it in its present form: I wrote it hastily, there’s a lot that I could rework, and there’s a lot I could add.
The relationships between theory, doctrine, discourse, media, and culture can be quite complex. This is especially true if one is thinking of synthesizing systems like those of Yockey and Salter, and developing them in such a way that they can inspire and inform a political culture. A political movement shouldn’t simply have political goals, it should take politics seriously, its members should conduct themselves according to a political logic (that of grand politics rather than petty politics), and its culture should support its political work.
Prompted by this article, I looked up Sebastian Ronin, some videos, and some speeches. I do not want to dog-pile the guy, but he does seem a little prissy and hysterical. Beyond that, I need to say that his occasional format of commentary, the tried-and-true laptop-gazing, parked in front of the web-cam, looking slightly down at the viewer (perhaps smoking a cigarette) has got to be the laziest form of discourse and probably the most narcissistic. I cannot wait until production costs drop on higher quality formats. Every time I see people issue bulletins from their desk, like Giscard d’Estaing retiring, I imagine the Butlerian Jihad destroying all computers.
I agree that Ronin’s videos are astonishing in their smug weirdness, but apparently it is like catnip for tweakers.
Things seem to be happening, Greg. I agree with you that Sweden’s activists are impressive. I just stumbled on the Right On (“Putting the Action in Reactionary’) website, which I believe is based in Sweden.
https://www.righton.net/
I’ve recently stumbled upon Right On website and Marcus Follin’s YouTube channel, the “True Champion of Mother Evropa” , as he calls himself. First, he was just a bodybuilder; then he went full Identitarian, with almost 20.000 subscribers. I don’t know if he embodies what you mean by “impressive”, but he is really impressive in a very physical way, the kind of guy capable of slaying the dragon (i.e., beheading a Peter Sutherland or any other undesirable). And that gives me an idea, which is gathering a faithful audience and followers around some topic of interest, not directly related to nationalist/identitarian/traditionalist ideas, and then taking advantage of it in order to promote your views and leading your audience through new territories.
The Golden One is awesome I discovered him awhile back as well, very good stuff. I think of him as the Alt-Rights strength and conditioning coach.
If a 1000 persons had given 10 dollars every month, totaling 120 dollars per year that would have been 120.000 dollars in total . Just saying. There is strenght in numbers. This is what those who resist us fear the most i think.
Proofreader:
If you want to rewrite that and have Greg send it to me, that will be fine. At some point I’ll need to address these issues, and I would like others to tackle them as well.
Did you get that interview with Murros?
Not yet
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