Counter-Currents
1,979 words
Fenek Solère
Rising
San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2017
“Tom had long harbored the suspicion that because the Slavs escaped most of the corrosive influence of political correctness, they would act as a catalyst for a White revolution.”
Russia. Less than a decade into the future and the Third Rome is under siege. Muslim militants run rampant, savaging innocent Slavic girls in a manner akin to the Bolshevik rape and torture gangs of the late World War II period on the Eastern Front of German defenses. The American President is dead from a sustained attack by militants, and several of the United States’ more “vibrant” cities have devolved into Liberian-style Bandenkrieg. George Soros is still alive and funding the browning of the Russland. Putin has been recently impeached following a severe economic crash in Russia. The largest (and most politically influential) oil company in Sweden is now owned by someone named Mohammed. Rahm Emmanuel is still the mayor of Chicago. The conflict in Syria has turned into another conflict of the new cold war with forces backed by the US (i.e. Uncle Sam financed Muslims) taking down Russian Federation aircraft while somewhere deep in hell Charlie Wilson cackles with a sick sort of glee reserved for warmongering perverts and the criminally insane.
Dugin evades arrest – fleeing to Europe. Issur Babel – of the Eurasian Party (having split between factions of Russian loyalists and the mongrelized neo-liberals) leads the Coalition for Renewal movement to power in Russia. The newly elected President Babel appoints a gaggle of juden to the country’s highest offices and suspends the Duma.
In our own time Putin has doubled the minimum wage. By the time he is forced out of office into home arrest the stable financial growth brought by the Russian autocrat flounders, leaving two-thirds of the citizenry below the poverty line. Now ethnic Russians die off in the thousands during the winter as “The Great Migration” of Chinese and Turkic invaders displace and replace the Slavs. A Third Chechen War taxes the already waning army.
Welcome to the manic world of political dissident Thomas Hunter PhD. It’s the dystopian Russia Gen X has been waiting for and Fenek Solère is our Mad Hatter guide. His protagonist Dr. Hunter arrives in Saint Petersburg for “The International Forum.” A symposium of assorted representatives from Nationalist political parties and direct-action groups throughout the White world. During his off hours he explores the streets and museums of Russia’s Venice of the North, now made over with the aesthetics of Metro 2033. It’s a world in which we’ve almost lost. The influx of the unwashed — having taken America and Western Europe — has spread east. Yet still Dr. Hunter rages against the dying of the light.
After sketching out the dynamics of Eastern Europe’s downfall Solere delivers on the prose that makes his books such page turners. The abundance of witty, alliterative adverbs and adjectives — to which, as an Anglo I’m quite amiable — coaxes the reader to keep the lights on late at night and devour one more chapter.
“They are Russian Gary Coopers, sauntering self-importantly, scratched leather holsters riding high on their hips.”
Fenek Solère is a bi-athlete of Right-wing literature, switching from the grueling gross-motor movement of cross country skiing to the calm controlled breathing of a seasoned sniper at the range. He sets the mood through atmosphere and details of the gulag gray ruins of a once great global superpower before focusing on the adopted intellectual heritage of his protagonist for character development. For Solère this later part is his key flaw in that he is so reliant on that he neglects to flesh out other characters in his novels. Though he gives details of Tom Hunter’s life in academia and where his marriage went south, he relies primarily on interests in film, literature, and music of his main characters to make them relatable. Though, this works very well, the rest of the personalities in Rising (or his previous novel) can be described as what you see is what you get. WYSIWYG characters are more often the stuff of comic books and role-playing games, and as a fan and fellow comrade I would encourage Fenek to provide more background to the other people we meet in his stories. Ideally, I’d like to see an in-depth portrait of a villain.
Like The Partisan (2014), Rising is a didactic novel tempting the reader to set down the book momentarily and google the other titles mentioned. Whether time tested classics or newly released metapolitical best sellers the reader will finish this book with a laundry list of new titles for self-enrichment. William Pierce set this standard for pro-White literature with his own novel Hunter – considered by most to be the better of the two he authored.
The continuous political updates provide a sense of urgency to the reader. Also, it works on those of us becoming more adept (or simply being born into) social media. We’ve learned to expect notifications of social and political developments almost hourly and in that way Rising will also appeal to the youngest readers among us.
But to those in the know these headlines becomes spine-chilling at times. Fenek Solère has spent quite a lot of time in Piter — as the locals call it — and is clearly well versed in the rumble and mumble of the cryptosphere as it pertains to Eurasia. The mass migration of Chinese, Islamic, and most importantly Uyghurs described in the book is indeed part of the plan for Russia’s downfall and has been for over a decade and a half. As Yossef Bodansky describes in Chechen Jihad, prior to Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh around late 2001 his final project was the establishment an Islamic state engulfing Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and China’s Xinjiang province. This was code named LIVO by bin Laden — whose appointed council was made up of Chechens, Pakis, two Taliban officers, and the senior leader of Muslim Uyghur Separatists. The invasions and Muslim attacks of Russia fulfill the last of Bin Laden’s plan for an eastward Jihad. Once again Fenek shows us a vision of the world we’re fighting to avoid. A world where the White global minority has been overrun by a Caliphate and undermined by Jewish cosmopolitans. In light of these real life details the novel becomes more Tom Clancy than George Orwell. If we do not resist than the horrors you read about will take hold of our people. The process has already begun.
The first chapter wraps up with a sex scene that’s a bit overplayed. I’d suggest he uses more euphemism and not terms sounding so . . . medical. These scenes don’t detract from the plot in any way. He makes up for this later with an all too believable misadventure with a prostitute. Unrestricted migrants, as we’ve seen in the US, bring alien or otherwise contained virii with them — yet one more fear to add to the Chernobyl-like meltdown of social cohesion.
Though there are somewhat promiscuous scenes in book they’re not out of place. Russia has long had it’s ups and downs with prostitution. State sanctioned during Soviet times. Out of hunger and desperation during the “shock therapy” Soros incited through his lackeys in the nineties. Whereas The Partisan is a love story, Rising is meant to prepare the reader for the inevitable confrontations down the road even if they are to face it alone. Those who’ve read his first novel will not only pick up on the clever alliteration and didactic name dropping, but will recognize references in Rising to the characters in The Partisan. One need not read the first to enjoy the second, but they are part of the same near-future mythos that Solère is developing. By his own admission and evidenced in his writing for Counter-Currents Publishing this is a man who enjoys portraying femme fatales in his work. During an interview with New European Conservative he remarked that “As for myself I believe in the full engagement of women within all social and professional spheres based on their capability and inclination. I have said many times, I am not threatened by independent and talented women. Rather the opposite, I find them attractive and interesting.” Solère is pro-woman, pro-natalist, and well-read on feminism. Somewhat unique in America’s far right circles these days, though not so among our cousins in Europe.
The work of oft debated Alexander Dugin is also critiqued through the dialogues in the book. Solère shares my own views on Dugin. He’s in the right camp, coming out of Traditionalism. But his pro-Islam/Orthodox unity is misplaced, and sadly he downplays the role of ethnicity. Dugin is not an identitarian like the heroes of Rising or its author.
Criticism of Putin is not off the table. “Who passed the law criminalizing anyone challenging the findings of the Nuremberg trials? Who talked about the threat of militant nationalism? . . . Lavrov went around Europe making speeches about antisemitism.” Says one of Prof. Hunter’s confederates over sushi in Saint Petersburg, insisting the foreign minister represented a fifth column within the Russian state.
Zhirinovsky has been assassinated, so the story goes. Many nationalists mourn his demise. I like Zhirinovsky too, I even own his book (the title of which translates to “My Struggle” in English). The man is a bit of a buffoon and half Jewish — his father emigrated to Israel after leaving his mother. Very entertaining, though. Throwing water in the face of journalists and brawling with kosher politicians on the floor of the Duma? If I saw that in congress I might like the man who did it too. Zhrinovsky’s trademarked hyperbolic rhetoric made him the inspiration for Russian villain Vladimir Radchenko — played by the late Daniel von Bargen — in the Gene Hackman film Crimson Tide (1995). If you’d like to be entertained by Vlad, just go to google and type in the words “Zhirinovsky threatens” then watch the list of things that appear in the drop-down box. Yes. He really did all of that. Though whether or not those characters whom are sympathetic to Zhirinovsky are speaking with Solère’s voice or if it is representative of the folks he spent time around while living in St. Petersburg, I am unsure.
The novel is a quick but entertaining and educational read. In the future I’d like to see more development of other characters and slightly fewer obscure references. The scene where Tom Hunter makes his speech at the symposium with the next Russian civil war oncoming is great, but when his two comrades congratulate him they mention a philosopher so obscure and unknown to Western audiences it becomes a wet blanket on an otherwise near-climactic moment. But we can’t have a Solère novel without some shoot ’em up action, can we? Through the climax he delivers the excitement most seek out of racial fiction. Thankfully he served it up with intellectual stimulation first. Sometimes it’s best to eat your vegetables before you cut into the steak. You’ll enjoy the entire dining experience all the more.
After setting the book down I sat still for a moment, ruminating on the story and its implications. I’d lifted that morning and hit the heavy bag in the early evening. Walking to the bookshelf I took down Zhirinovsky and Dugin. Somewhere was Gogol and Pushkin — though I’ve never read any of that either. I eyed a worn biography of Bakunin — one of Marx’s contemporaries. I recalled my pre-9/11 days as a self-styled anarchist. I was young and angry. Full of zeal. One slogan echoed in my mind (there were so many among their ilk, you know): Educate yourself for the coming conflicts. Stooping low, I traced my index finger along hardbacks and pulled a thin booklet out. Transcriptions of several speeches. Solzhenitsyn’s Warning to the West. A good place to start. Yes Fenek, you have succeeded. Now it is time to prepare.
You can buy Rising here.